Batouala: Analysis of Setting.

*Grimari (gree-MAH-ree). Village in the southern part of French Equatorial Africa’s Ubangi-Shari colony (which is now the Central African Republic) that is the novel’s principal setting. Grimari lies in a hilly terrain with many small rivers running through the grasslands, forests, and jungles in its immediate vicinity. During the rainy season, its rivers swell and make travel and communications difficult. At the time in which the story is set, game and beasts such as lions and panthers are still abundant in the bush outside the village limits. The village’s people grow rubber for the country’s French colonizers, while growing millet and hunting wild game for their food and raising livestock.