CESA Research

Religion:        Roman Catholic
                        0% Evangelical Christian (CPPI, 2004);
Population:     185,078 (CPPI, 1999)
Status:   Unreached, Unengaged (CPPI)
Registry of Peoples codes                                         Registry of Language codes
Ngongo people  107281                                             Nkutu language (as reported by CPPI) (nkw)
Ngongo people 107281                                              Ngongo language (as per Ethnologue, but small population) (noq)
Ngongo sub-group of Nkutu people  107363         Nkutu language (nkw, dialect NKW05)

====================

NARRATIVE PROFILE

Location:
The Ethnologue describes the location of the Ngongo people as follows:  Bandundu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congon (DRC).  However, there is an Ngongo group that is a sub-group of the Nkutu, which is a larger group, and their location is in Northern Kasaï Oriental Province of DRC.

Identity:
Sources report that they live in the forest, where they clear out small ares for their basic living. Access is very difficult, with few roads in this region of DRC.  CPPI reports a population of 185,078 for the Ngongo.  They report this group, however, under the ROP code 107281, corresponding to the Ngongo people.  Other sources, however, report the Ngongo as having a population of only about 4000.  There is not a separate population given in CPPI or other sources for the Ngongo sub-group of Nkutu.

Additionally, CPPI reports this Ngongo entity with the Nkutu language (nkw), not the Ngongo language.  CPPI also lists the Nkutu people separately with their language, also with a large population (119,406).  But they do not report any Ngongo group with the expected lower population and the Ngongo language (noq).

There are three possibilities here:
1.   CPPI has included the Ngongo segment who speak Nkutu language to get the higher population for the Ngongo entry (with the larger group's language and no Ngongo language). In this case, however, it is not clear that the population for the Nkutu speakers has been adjusted to account for the deduction of the Ngongo dialect of Nkutu.
2.   CPPI has confused the Ngongo people (ROP 107281, ROL noq) with the speakers of Ngongo dialect of Nkutu people (ROP 107363, dialect NKW05), or
1.   CPPI editors have determined that the Ngongo ethnic group (107281) with its own language by the same name (noq) is actually now extinct, or no longer speaks a distinctive language, and have used the Ngongo name to represent the Ngongo segment of the Nkutu poeple. Populations are uncertain or old in most sources, so the population is not a viable cross-check to clarify the situation.

Language:
The discussion above includes some of the information on language that is involved with the identification of an ethnic group by the name Ngongo.  The name Ngongo refers to a dialect of the Bantu language Nkutu, uniquely identified by the language code nkw (and dialect code NKW05, for Ngongo dialect).

The name Ngongo also refers to a unique ethnic group with their own language also called Ngongo, uniquely identified by the language code noq.  This is a small group whose language is called Ngongo (noq), with a population of about 4000.

The language of this people is in the Yaka group, which are related to the widely-spoken Kongo and Mbundu languages.  It is not related to the Nkutu language. This Ngongo ethnic group are also, according to the Ethnologue, "quite bilingual in Kituba" (ktu), a Creole of Kongo language used by various tribes as an inter-language.

The speakers of Nkutu are the descendants of the ancient Mongo empire.  The Mongo are now represented by a large group of tribes with different languages.

There area several other languages, also, that have a dialect called Ngongo.  It is unclear if any of these Ngongo sub-groups might be counted together by some sources as a separate Ngongo entity with a larger population.

Religion:
The CPPI (http://www.peoplegroups.org/Detail.aspx?PID=14749) reports the religion of the Ngongo as Christianity, Roman Catholicism, with no evangelical believers.

The Ethnologue reports the religion of the Nkutu as Traditional Religion, while it had no information the religion of the Ngongo people.

The Jesus Film is not available in Ngongo or Nkutu.  There are no forms of Christian scripture in the language.  Global Recordings Network has recorded oral gospel resources in two varieties related to the Nkutu language (nkw), which would likely serve the Ngongo sub-group of the Nkutu people.  They report none in the Ngongo language (nqo).

====================

Sources
Ethnologue entry for Nkutu language
http://www.ethnologue.com

Ethnologue entry for Ngongo language
http://www.ethnologue.com

Nkutu: Ngongo (Global Recordings Network)
http://globalrecordings.net/language/15025

Ngongo (CPPI)
http://www.peoplegroups.org/Detail.aspx?PID=14688

Nkutu (CPPI)
http://www.peoplegroups.org/Detail.aspx?PID=14693

========================================
Prepared 25 February 2006
Last Updated 23 November 2007
Dr. Orville Boyd Jenkins
Cultural Research Consultant
researchguy@iname.com