Bria

Bria grew as a colonial post and then on what lies under the ground around it. The French established themselves in the Haute-Kotto in country inhabited by Banda communities that had been raided for captives from the north in the nineteenth century, and in 1930 the Comouna cotton company built a ginning factory in the town. The alluvial diamond and gold workings of the Haute-Kotto, dug by hand from the river gravels, later made Bria the administrative and trading centre of a mining district, and diggers, buyers and traders came from across the country and beyond.

After independence in 1960 Bria remained a mining town and prefecture capital, its economy running on pits and gravel washing worked by hand and on the buyers who moved stones towards Bangui. Distance defined it: the road from the capital runs for hundreds of kilometres and fails for months of each year, so the town has always been supplied irregularly and expensively.

The crisis that began in 2013 hit the east hard, and control of the mining areas was part of what armed groups fought over. In 2013 the Kimberley Process, which regulates the trade in rough diamonds, suspended the Central African Republic from exporting them, cutting the legal market on which the town depended; a partial resumption from approved areas was allowed from 2015. Fighting in and around Bria repeatedly drove people from their homes, and the PK3 site on the edge of town grew into a large displacement site, supported by humanitarian agencies alongside a United Nations peacekeeping base.

The savanna around Bria is Banda country, and Banda communities — among the largest of the Central African peoples — make up much of the town, with Runga, Gula and other groups whose ties run north-east towards Chad and Sudan, and traders from elsewhere drawn by the diamonds. Sango is the shared language, with French for administration and local languages at home.

Bria is more religiously mixed than most towns of the south: a long-established Muslim community, many of them traders and cattle keepers, lives alongside Catholic and Protestant congregations, and the town has mosques as well as churches. That mixture was one of the fault lines of the violence after 2013, and the separation of quarters that followed is part of the town's present reality.

Mining shapes the culture as much as religion does. Digging is seasonal and collective, organised around teams and financed by buyers, and it draws young men from far away; the language of stones, licences and buyers is part of everyday talk. Music, drumming and dance mark weddings and funerals as elsewhere in the country, football is played on cleared ground, and radio — including stations run by humanitarian and peacebuilding organisations — is the medium that reaches furthest.

The 2003 census counted about 35,000 people in Bria. Since 2013 the population in and around the town has fluctuated sharply with displacement, and the PK3 site has at times held thousands of people in shelters of tarpaulin, thatch and timber.

Most households combine farming with digging. Cassava is the staple crop, with maize, groundnuts, sesame and vegetables, and fishing in the Kotto adds to it. Alluvial diamond and gold digging in the surrounding savanna is the cash economy, worked by hand with shovels, sieves and washing frames, and it remains unpredictable and dangerous work. Trade, transport and employment with aid agencies account for most of the rest.

Services are provided largely by others: agency clinics, water points and school feeding, with a hospital that depends on external support. Electricity comes from generators. Goods arrive by air or over the long road, so prices are high and supply irregular. The day begins early, before the heat, and ends soon after dark, and what people can do in a given week depends on the security of the roads and the mining areas.

Bria eats the food of the eastern savanna. Gozo, the stiff cassava paste, is the staple, eaten by hand with a sauce; maize and sorghum porridge appear alongside it, and rice is an expensive import that arrives by road or air.

Sauces are made from pounded cassava leaves, okra, sorrel leaves, groundnut paste and sesame, cooked with palm oil and hot pepper. Fish from the Kotto, fresh or smoked, is the usual protein, and beef and goat are more common here than in the forest south because of the herds moved through the region; grilled skewers are sold near the market, and sweet tea is drunk in the Muslim quarters.

Wild foods matter in the lean months between harvests: caterpillars gathered when they swarm and fried or dried, mushrooms after the first rains, wild honey, and leaves and fruits from the bush. Mangoes grow around the compounds. Palm wine and home-brewed maize or sorghum beers are the village drinks. For families in the displacement site, distributions of maize, beans and oil have been a regular part of what is eaten.