LONTSINGO

The smallest of the first creatures, companion of the bearer of the sun

Lontsingo belongs to the folklore of the Congo basin. The only traceable mention of his name holds in one line, in a French-language repertory of African mythology: a fly that flew up to the sky with Nkombe to bring back the sun. Taken alone, the notice seems thin. Set back within the Mongo and Nkundo cosmology, it changes weight. This people of the river basin carries the epic of Lianja, handed down orally since the fourteenth century, in which the hero's mother, Mbombe, after years of pregnancy, gives birth to the insects, then the birds, then the animals, then an entire race of humans, before at last delivering her twins. In this cosmology, an insect is not a negligible creature: it is the first-born of the same mother as the hero and as humanity. The same cycle tells of the sending of a solar bird charged with going to fetch back the light. Two points of honesty. The name of Lontsingo is documented by no ethnography and no published collection of Nkundo tales: it is known only through this compilation notice. And if the cosmological frame described here is well attested, nothing proves that Lontsingo figures by name in the epic of Lianja: this connection is a reading, not a source. What remains of the motif is clear, and it suffices: the smallest of the first creatures accompanies the bearer of the sun to the threshold of the sky, and returns with the day.