Bambari

Bambari began as a French post on the Ouaka, at a crossing on the long route running east from the Ubangi into the Banda country of the interior. Under colonial rule the Ouaka became part of the cotton belt, and the administration built up Bambari as its centre: villagers were required to grow cotton, a ginning plant was opened in 1930, and an agricultural station was set up at Grimari to the west to improve the crop; ginning and trading gave the town a commercial life larger than its size suggested.

Missionaries followed the administration. Catholic schools, a hospital and eventually a diocesan seat made the mission the town's biggest employer of teachers and nurses, a pattern that has outlasted the state in much of the country. After independence in 1960 Bambari remained the prefecture capital and a market town on the eastern road, its fortunes tied to cotton prices and the condition of the road east.

The war reached the Ouaka early: Séléka fighters took Bambari in December 2012 as the rebellion swept south. The town became one of the most contested places in the Central African Republic: armed groups formed from the Séléka coalition and anti-balaka militias fought over it, control changed hands repeatedly between 2014 and 2021, the United Nations mission established a base, and tens of thousands of people left villages in the prefecture for sites on the edge of the town. That displacement, and the insecurity of the roads around it, still define the town's situation.

The Ouaka is Banda country. The Banda, among the largest peoples of the Central African Republic, live in a broad belt across the centre of the country around Bambari, Sibut and Kaga-Bandoro, and their initiation ceremonies, masked dances and Banda-Linda horn ensembles of wooden pipes belong to a tradition that runs through this savanna. Gbaya, Mandjia and other communities live alongside them, and Fulani herders bring cattle through the surrounding country.

Sango is the shared language of the market and the street, with French used for administration. Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, is the majority religion, and mission compounds function as social as well as religious centres; a Muslim community, many of them traders and cattle keepers, has long lived in the town. The violence since 2013 divided quarters that had been mixed, and the question of how communities live together again is discussed openly in the town.

Music, dance and storytelling mark weddings, funerals and harvests, with drums, harps and the sanza thumb piano. Football is played wherever there is level ground. Church choirs, youth groups and market associations carry much of the town's organised social life, and radio, including the stations run by humanitarian and peacebuilding organisations, is the medium that reaches furthest.

The 2003 census counted about 41,000 people in Bambari, and the population since 2014 has risen and fallen with waves of displacement from the surrounding prefecture. Most households live in compounds of mud brick under thatch or iron sheet, with a courtyard, a cooking fire and a cassava plot; the displacement sites on the edges of the town have at times held tens of thousands more.

Farming supports nearly everyone: cassava above all, with maize, groundnuts, sesame and vegetables, and fishing in the Ouaka. The cotton trade that built the town has collapsed, and the cash economy now turns on market trading, transport, work with aid agencies and remittances. Large iron ore deposits have been found near the town and at Bakala, though the distance from the sea has kept them undeveloped. Prices in the market track the state of the road to Bangui closely.

Basic services are thin and largely supplied by others: the mission hospital, agency clinics, boreholes and school feeding. Electricity comes from generators. The day starts before dawn with the walk to the fields and the market, slows in the afternoon heat, and ends early, and movement in the countryside depends on what the week's security allows.

Bambari eats what the savanna centre of the country eats. Gozo, the stiff cassava paste, is the staple, made from flour pounded and sifted at home or bought in the market, and eaten by hand with a sauce. Maize porridge appears alongside it, and rice is an imported luxury dependent on the road.

Sauces are built on pounded cassava leaves, okra, sorrel leaves, groundnut paste and sesame, cooked with palm oil and plenty of hot pepper. Fish from the Ouaka, fresh or smoked, is the usual protein; beef and goat come from the herds that pass through the prefecture and are eaten grilled on skewers at the roadside or stewed for occasions. Chicken is kept for guests and feast days.

Wild foods fill the gaps between harvests: caterpillars gathered when they swarm and fried or dried, mushrooms after the first rains, wild honey, and fruits and leaves from the bush. Mangoes and papaya grow around the compounds. Palm wine and home-brewed maize and sorghum beers are the village drinks, sweet tea is drunk in the Muslim quarters, and bottled beer from Bangui reaches the town when the road allows.