Kunyi love poem
Kididi kiaku mu lumueno
Idi lumbu luami yi yiokidini bubote
Ka sa mawasa, ya mu ku tsimbila
Yidi ke na "na kutsodini" ami yi mansukina
→ French poem ←
Kunyi language
Love poem translated into Kikugni (Kikuni, Kunyi, Kugni, Nyaanga, Kinyaanga, Kikunyi, Kuni), a Kongo language of the Republic of Congo, spoken by 100,000 Kugnis.
The Kugnis descend from a Kongo group which have leaved the northeast of Mayombe to establish as cultivators.
It is one of the 12 ethnic groups of the Republic of Congo! The Kongos or Bakongos, established on both sides of the Zaire River, constituted at the end of the 15th century, a Christian kingdom. The state then gradually disintegrated until colonization, while the population decreased because of the slave trade.
The exploitation of the forest has undermined the basis of their material culture. They were traders and farmers, divided into clans and lineages of free men and former captives, with matrilineal filiation, linked to a land and a proper cult of ancestors lineage.