Research Month Conference at MINRESI
The October 2018 Communication of the Month was massively attended by the public on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 1 p.m. in the MINRESI conference room in the presence of Madam Secretary General Mrs. Rébecca Madeleine Ebéllé Etamè.
Dr. Amina Djoulde Christelle, the speaker of the day, entertained the audience on the theme: “At the heart of “Oko’o Nga’a mo”: Women and peace-building in the Gbaya societies of Cameroon and the Central African Republic”. The aim was to explore the many assets of Gbaya women in building peace in society.
The teacher-researcher at the University of Ngaoundéré, lecturer in the History Department and Executive Coordinator of COREDEC (Centre de Recherche en Sciences Sociales), based in Ngaoundéré, specializes in political history, more specifically, in the study of cartoons in relation to political phenomena.
From a combinatorial perspective and based on the Oko’o Nga’a mo (women of peace), this presentation analyzes the endogenous mechanisms for building, promoting and preserving peace within the Gbaya community of Cameroon and the Central African Republic. Built around the Soré de Nga’a mo, a peace ritual belonging to the esoteric circle composed exclusively of the Oko’o Nga’a mo, the reflection explores the rationality of peace in the Gbaya cultural universe. The scientist highlights the cultural engineering of the Gbaya, which works for peace not only through its endogenous semantic/notional conception, but also through its ritualized ordering, which makes it a cardinal cultural fact. In addition to its epistemological foundation, this postulate aims to discover, legitimize and valorize the Gbaya discourse on the issue of peace, at a time when peace is the most sought-after commodity, and for reasons of applied research.
The Oko’o Nga’a mo are considered the true repositories and transmitters of historical knowledge. Although the peace initiative remains the exclusive domain of men, its implementation is essentially carried out by women, who are the appointed officiants and authorized to perform the ritual of pacification through the Soré.
