A collection of tales from the Kasai area of Central DR Congo as told to Richard Lear cj during the period he was working there in the 1970s. These tales from part of the oral story telling tradition of the people of the Kasai

What was it like to be colonized by foreigners? Highlighting a region in central Congo, in the center of sub-Saharan Africa, Being Colonized places Africans at the heart of the story. In a richly textured history that will appeal to general readers and students as well as to scholars, the distinguished historian Jan Vansina offers not just accounts of colonial administrators, missionaries, and traders, but the varied voices of a colonized people. Vansina uncovers the history revealed in local news, customs, gossip, and even dreams, as related by African villagers through archival documents, material culture, and oral interviews. Vansina’s case study of the colonial experience is the realm of Kuba, a kingdom in Congo about the size of New Jersey—and two-thirds the size of its colonial master, Belgium. The experience of its inhabitants is the story of colonialism, from its earliest manifestations to its tumultuous end. What happened in Kuba happened to varying degrees throughout Africa and other colonized regions: racism, economic exploitation, indirect rule, Christian conversion, modernization, disease and healing, and transformations in gender relations. The Kuba, like others, took their own active part in history, responding to the changes and calamities that colonization set in motion. Vansina follows the region’s inhabitants from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, when a new elite emerged on the eve of Congo’s dramatic passage to independence.

Routledge is proud to be re-issuing this landmark series in association with the International African Institute. The series, published between 1950 and 1977, brings together a wealth of previously un-co-ordinated material on the ethnic groupings and social conditions of African peoples. Concise, critical and (for its time) accurate, the Ethnographic Survey contains sections as follows: Physical Environment Linguistic Data Demography History & Traditions of Origin Nomenclature Grouping Cultural Features: Religion, Witchcraft, Birth, Initiation, Burial Social & Political Organization: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance, Slavery, Land Tenure, Warfare & Justice Economy & Trade Domestic Architecture Each of the 50 volumes will be available to buy individually, and these are organized into regional sub-groups: East Central Africa, North-Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Central Africa, Western Africa, and Central Africa Belgian Congo. The volumes are supplemented with maps, available to view on routledge.com or available as a pdf from the publishers.

This is a true story about a naughty dog named Kuba and his special friendship with a wild donkey named Irene. It demonstrates that friendship isnt defined by similarities but by trust. It also shows how predicting behavior or stereotyping based on things such as species or race or gender can have unexpected outcomes.

Kuba is a small but cunning tortoise living in the animal kingdom. Because he is small and slow, he is always coming up with tricks so he can compete with the bigger, faster animals. As an unwelcome drought places the animal kingdom in jeopardy, Kuba and the others learn about an island in the sky with lots of food. When Kuba and his friends visit Skyland, the sneaky tortoise develops a plan to keep the food for himself. But it is not long before Kuba discovers the consequences of trickery and greed. In this exciting tale, a cunning tortoise visits an island in the sky with his animal friends where he learns a valuable lesson about sharing and kindness for all.