Tsogo

Tsogo, also called Getsogo, is a Bantu language of the forested highlands of southern-central Gabon, spoken by the Mitsogo people of the Ngounié river country around Mouila. Oral tradition and comparison with the related Myene speech suggest that the ancestors of the Tsogo split from a wider Bantu group during the Stone Age and had settled these valleys by around 1200 BC, living by slash-and-burn farming, hunting and fishing.

Tsogo is also one of the principal languages of the Babongo Pygmies of the Gabonese forest. Tsogo society is organised through matrilineal initiation societies, of which the Bwiti ceremony is the most widely known, and the language carries their hymns, ritual knowledge and oral histories.