Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”
Pictured left to right: Ndongo (Luba's wife), Luba, Richard, and Bola. circa 2014 taken shortly before Luba's passing. Image courtesy of Richard Bokatola.
Luba was a Batwa selected to help me learn Lingala. He was sixteen years old and lived with his mother, brother and sister. His father had deserted their family two years prior and they had not seen him since. This was a common problem amongst the Batwa, as the men often fled to other regions in order to escape the oppression of the Ekonda.
Luba was one of the few Batwa who completed grade school and could read and speak some French. He wanted to further his education, but his family did not have the money to pay for seventh grade, so he worked with his uncle in a field instead. Luba was very bright and I began to teach him how to give health education lessons on tuberculosis, intestinal worms and nutrition. I used flip charts on these subjects and Luba began to help me translate them from French into Lingala.
Because Luba went to school for six years, he did not learn the hunting and fishing techniques of the Batwa men, and he was not married yet. He had just built his own house and was prepared to move out of his family’s home. Most boys moved out of the home at age fourteen because houses typically only had one room and because their customs did not allow two men to live in the same house. Luba was polite, but he was not timid and was quite adamant that he would never be a slave to the Ekonda. He had real leadership capability and I knew it would be interesting to follow his life as he matured.
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