A Bakuba Creation Myth

“Kuba (also called Bakuba) people are agriculturalist.”(Kwekudee) They live in the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Kuba people are a smaller group in the Bantu ethnicity. Speak a language called Bushong, which they adapted from the Bantu ethnicity. (Kwekudee) Kuba people, farm many crops including corn, cassava, millet, peanuts, and beans. Men usually hunt in the dry season. They would use traps to get their prey. Men also fished to get food.

The Kuba people were artistic. They made some of the best clothes in East Africa. They also liked to carve things out of wood such as sculptures and wooden masks. They had a dance where they would dress up and wear masks. “The men wore a ceremonial and mask representing a deity.” (Kwekudee)

A Kuba Creation Myth

The God Mbombo started off alone with just water and darkness. Mbombo also know as Bumba. Mbombo was a giant white creature who was very ill, and had been ill for millions of years. “The reason for his illness was his incurable loneliness.” (Parkes, Veronica.)

He was so ill and so lonely that he started to puke things into creation. He first vomited out the sun which created the light and day. The sun made the water start drying up and this created the land. He vomited a second, this time it was the moon and the stars. This created the night. He then puked a third time this time out came animals. The animals were a leopard, crested eagle, crocodile, fish, tortoises, heron, goat, scarab, and a black cat-like animal. From these animals came more creations of more animals. Leading to human life. (Parkes, Veronica.)

Mbombo eventually had three sons. The first son died after trying to vomit white ants into creation. The second son created a plant that helped all other plants and trees grow. The third son created the last bird known as the Kite. Mbombo retreated to the heavens after everything on Earth was created and left the world in the peoples hands. (Parkes, Veronica.)

Kuba’s Myth in Relation to Other Myths

This creation myth falls under the category Ex-nihilo creation myths. I think this because the world started off with an empty canvas and one god, and only water and darkness. He then created light and day. After that came the land, then the creation of animals and the rest of the Earth. These are the main keys to Ex-nihilo myths.

Creation Myths Affect on the Culture

This myth has different effects on its culture. In this creation myth, one of the first things created were animals. This shows that animals mean a lot to them. It also talked about how animals eventually evolved into humans. If humans started as animals then that shows they respected animals very much.

In this creation myth there was no women at all, but the god Mbombo had three sons. Without any existence of women I think this shows they do not respect women. I also do not think that they would treat their women very well. The sons of Mbombo created new things though such as the last bird, and a plant to make everything else grow. Only males created things in this story so I believe they thought of women as useless.

Cite this page