BaAka Birth Story (#2)-Central African Republic
- Sophie Mbongo
- Mar 17
- 8 min read
Massise's Birth Stories, Mother (of 11, 5 living) and Grandmother
These stories were collected on July 5th, 2022, transcribed and translated on February 3rd, 2024, and edited on January 18th, 2026, by Dr. Melissa Remis. This post was created by Sophie Mbongo.
The BaAka who reside in the Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas in the southwest of the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) are a formerly mobile group of hunter-gatherers who continue to travel to forest camps and rely on forest resources for subsistence and medicines. They gather wild plants and hunt in regulated community hunting zones within the protected area. Many now participate in part-time wage labor and plant small fields of manioc.
This is the second installment in our series of birth stories by three Ba'Aka grandmothers told to Dr. Melissa Remis and Sophie Mbongo in Bayanga, C.A.R.
All names have been changed except for the grandmothers, who preferred to keep their names. Massise passed away in October 2023.
Read the first installment here:
Massise: “Good. Before I begin, I want to say thank you to Melissa. This is beautiful. I am giving you my highest greetings and regards. Thank you to God. This is beautiful today. We hear our own stories-- one day, it will be good, we will be able to hear our voices, and these stories later. Everyone will be able to hear them.”
Massise: Before, when I was a young woman, having my first baby, it hurt. My first labor began in the morning; it hurt. Just about 8 am in the morning.
Some Gbaya people lived over there nearby with the medicine. They came to help me. 6 hours later, still going. At two in the afternoon, the baby began to come. It felt like a poop. I thought I had to make a big poop. The person picked me up and picked me up again from where I was. I said leave me alone! They pushed me when I was pooping and put me into a squat so I was sitting to have the baby. I grabbed my legs. She held me when I was pushing.
The baby was born with a bloody face.
My mother-in-law held me gently. They pushed. She told me to bite her (for the pain).
I wanted to cut her with my teeth. When my teeth were still beautiful, you know. I eat you? They hit me again. They hit me, don’t just lie there still. “Listen to me,” they said, “you need to push!”
I was like dead, like no good [exhausted].
Memba [other grandmother interviewee]: Asks a question.
Massise: “What do you mean, I died like an idiot?”
Massise: “You pushed the baby, you really felt it. You pushed and then already. I sat like this, this is the way you do it--the path for the baby to come out like this [gesturing], this is the way I was sitting [squatting]. I pushed, one time, and the arm of the baby came out first, like this [extends her arm], beautiful. At 2 PM, a good, fat baby was born, and you were amazed by that big baby!”
“He cried,“waa, waa!" The baby’s blood was good. My mother-in-law cut the umbilical cord
He cried well. The baby began to grow big, he began to play like a person, and then it was all done. I don’t know why, why I never forgot. No, he was not sick. Melissa, see this. Imagine your baby died like this as a baby. His father slept with some woman…I know that is why…it is sadness. Despair.”
Massise: After that, I sat just for a little while, about 3 months after that loss, I got my period twice. Time went by. Then I gave birth to my second baby, a boy.
The two of them, death took them. They both came out well, but death took both of them.
[More discussion of how women told her that her husband was being unfaithful, and she believes this caused her babies to die].
Massise: He [my husband] was beautiful, and I lived with the consequences.
Massise: Then I came to give birth to a girl. She slept outside, with all the women, with the Gbaya women.
People came to sit with her. She grew to sit, to look for food, and she looked for honey by herself. I didn’t say anything.
Three babies died (should be three kids).
The girl and two boys, the three of them, just went away.
Then came the one baby that was named DM. I gave birth to him near the tourist welcome center at the Project, the one on this road. This car route here. I gave birth at first on the road. I was all by myself with my sister-in-law.
Massise: My husband sat over there… like the distance to Bayanga. He came to town to see the wife of an important person. All of these women, they knew him. They all mocked me.
I got to the healthcare worker's place, out of the hospital. I was in the process of turning around to look for my husband. My belly hurt! Who knows where he was?
People asked me, "are you going to the hospital?" I said "no, I’m not going to the hospital." I stopped to pee in the healthcare worker's outhouse. I came out. “Baby, come out quick already!” I said to my belly. I am going on my way already. They went with the water, and I was making ngu ti kasa [soup].
“Did you give birth already?" they asked me.
“Wait, I said--I haven’t given birth yet.”
I went to the healthcare worker's house, I went past the school, and I kept walking. My belly was still hurting.
Massise (chuckling to herself): I made the ngu ti kasa food for myself so that I would have something to eat the next day after giving birth to this baby.
The Gbaya woman, the one whose house is over there by the road, came. She asked, "You gave birth already?"
I said, "I am resting already by myself. I am pressing my belly."
She took the child, and she put a cloth on it [swaddling]. Thank you.
The guard said, “huh {her husband's name} 's wife, what happened? Have you already given birth?
My friend told them, "yes she gave birth to a baby boy."
My sister-in-law went to give the name of the baby to the Tourist Welcome Center. I went down there. A BaAka man was sitting like this. The older wife of my husband's brother went there with the baby.
They asked: “What is happening?”[Du wa te she says in Aka. This is a BaAka phrase for, What is happening?]
I said, “I gave birth already.” My sister-in-law took the baby and wrapped it in cloth.
The guards sat there. They said, “M’s wife, what happened? Gave birth to whose baby? The chief's daughter [Massise was the daughter of the former chief of Mossapoula] gave birth. Where is the father?”
My relatives were there. They used to work in tourism.
They named the baby Centre de Arcueil (tourism center. We took the baby back home.
My belly didn’t hurt. I gave birth just like that, there behind the road. I got to the road, but some BaAka men were there, so I wrapped myself up. I didn’t want to see men. I hid myself after the birth, and I saw the men. I went past people.
People asked to hit (pika) their baby with money.
A Gbaya woman saw me.
I was sick and my belly hurt. “You gave birth?” I told her, "I am leaving already.”
Those BaAka men. At the end of the month, they all went to Sylvicole (logging company). They were singing, dancing, drinking, they had all taken the road to Bayanga to go there already by that point…they were all on the road
“No, I didn’t even have water on my clothes (after giving birth).” I just got back to Mossapoula.
Five days passed. The baby grew. Then three months passed and the baby became a person, began to smile, became a person.
I don’t know this. The three girls died on me.
Someone gave me advice
Baby C [girl] died.
People spoke badly about me.
I said, I didn’t even have a chance to buy underwear for the baby, but my baby refused me for no reason. My baby put me in a state of grief. I didn’t give birth again.
Massise: Only my child and a Gbaya woman called for me. They helped me. I went to them as is customary. I slept in Bindjo [a neighborhood in Bayanga], and people did the customary practice for me.
[Counts off the names of the surviving kids.]
After birth, I put them on the forehead. My head was still dirty, it is customary, I didn’t wash my head.
MR: What about the baby I heard about a long time ago? The baby you and your husband had in the middle of the forest?
Massise: That one, that was before. Some babies had already died.”
My surviving children, I gave birth to all of them at home--near town, by myself (meaning no doctor, no midwife).
Massise then spoke about the later kids, the ones she had after these three.
Twins and Other Birth Stories
Massise: “My daughter, S, was a twin. One of them died.
The twins (1 boy, 1 girl) grew big enough to eat, and they ate this; they were aware already. Then he died-- not sure where he went…”
She continues: “I gave birth again after the twins' birth. It was then another boy named N. N came out by himself [meaning no midwifery care]. S, his older sister, refused him when they were eating food. After they were bigger already, she asked all the time for the twin who had died”….trails off…
Massise: “My husband went with his hunting net to my ita (cousin) in Ouesso (town to the south). He went to see the Ganga (local healer) after I’d had the twin babies; after that, I saw my moon (period) five times. After five months, my husband stopped hunting, then he hunted a pangolin that came out of my belly.
“Esanjo (blood?) came out of my belly”. My husband was still alive to give me meat to give birth with. He was still alive then (kambaba so).
Massise: During the birth, “I clenched my teeth, Meat of the owner
Our food, you eat it-- the owner comes with his name at night
We are not children of the house [village?}. My father is dead; he is from the past.
The last one I gave birth to differently.
Three girls survived (lists names), two boys came (lists names). So five children are left with me. Only these are left with me.
“Aye Aye” (she wails)
After that, I became terribly skinny. I got very small. It [birthing children?] destroyed me in my belly.
I came back from Bai Hokou. I came back from Dzanga.
MORE TALKING from all three grandmothers: They are telling another story about one time when my daughter S was sitting outside in the car. Mama sat with her like you and me. S told me then that she came out a true mundju before (light skin). But the last child was born, like a little monkey, I asked myself, did I give birth to this? Someone said it is your child, you take care of him, so I took care of him, gave him the breast. My husband died.
Massise: I had one miscarriage between two kids. I lost five babies that had already been born. This is my story--My mother is gone, my father is gone.
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