Mbulu Ngulu
Mbulu ngulu are Kota reliquary guardian figures that ornamented baskets holding the relics of ancestors. A group of three—male, senior female and junior female—represented ideal ancestors whose relics were held in a basket below. The faces would have glimmered inside a dimly lit room; the lower half of the diamond-shaped support was placed inside the reliquary basket, not exposed as in museum displays. Kota communities moved every few years when the soil no longer guaranteed abundant crops, and the reliquary baskets helped families maintain a memorial to their dead when they moved. After conve