Ngumba, Mvumbo in Cameroon

Introduction / History

Ngumbas are historically forest-dwelling farmers and hunter-gatherers. They are also called Mvumbo. Their heart language is Kwasio. Their villages relocated around 1900 and now live near roads and along the coast.

What Are Their Lives Like?

Ngumba women tend to the family food. They grow cassava and other staples. Plantain and wild fruit are abundant seasonally. Today many are highly educated theologians, and civil servants.

What Are Their Beliefs?

The living fear the dead that's what outsiders would conclude from the elaborate tombstones and explicit memorials surrounding older, plainer homes in a Ngumba village. And the outsiders would be right, especially if they learn that these poor farmers sometimes pay thousands of dollars to bury a loved one.

Church is primarily a social gathering place. Clergy sometime perform exorcisms or other rituals to help protect believers from the evil spirits they so deeply fear.

What Are Their Needs?

Few church members understand Christ's work on the cross, and fewer still embrace the freedom and peace implicit in a relationship with the living Savior. Until now, churches have always used another language.

Prayer Points

Pray for Ngumbas to take up their mantle to become fishers of men among the less reached peoples of Africa.
Pray for the Holy Spirit to give the Ngumbas a spiritual hunger and a desire to please Christ.
Pray for them to have an abundant harvest as a testimony of his power and goodness.

Text Source:   Joshua Project