Mbongo

Mbongo (also called Mbengo, Nambongo, and Nembongo) is the common ancestor of the Sawa peoples of Cameroon according to their oral traditions.

From there, Mbongo's grandsons migrated south toward the coast to found the various Sawa ethnic groups.

For example, in 1668, a Dutch writer named O. Dapper, drawing from the records of Samuel Blommaert, described a people called the Kalbongos at the Rio del Rey: "The people who live higher up the river [from a coastal trading settlement], by them called Kalbongos, are bold men, but villainous rogues.

[9] A later writer, John Barbot, wrote, The lands opposite to the latter places, on the north of Rio Camerones, are inhabited by the Calbonges, .

a strong and lusty people very knavish and treacherous dealers, and miserably poor, continually at war with the Camerones Blacks, living higher on that river, governed by a chief or their own tribe, called by them Moneba .