Lois's new 'family' in the Congo are called the Bangala. Io wondered if it were too much like Bangla (from Bangladesh). If I had made up the name, she would have had a good point. However, Bangala are/were a people living along the Congo River in the early 20th century, 'discovered' by European missionaries. 'Bangala' means 'River People'. Sorry if there's been any confusion (not to mention that I should have said this weeks ago!)
Actually what slightly confused me is I looked up Bangala in wikipedia and learned that it is a dialect of Lingala/ another name for Lingala. Bangala itself is spoken by people in Iriental PRovince in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), eastern Uganda and in South Sudan. It is largely used as a language by people not historically connected with Lingala but who adopted it as that language spread culturally to the west and south of its initial location.
However I did another search recently and came across the article on Makanza, which was formerly named Bangala Station, and is the main city on the Congo River in Equateur Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city of Makanza was a European-built trading post by 1890 and was later named New Antwerp. It is also from that article that I learned the Bangala are a specific people, and were among the first to come in contact with Europeans in that part of Congo.
However since you pointed out that this story is set in alt-world, I decided that we can explain the Bangala being so little connected with the outside world as a result of various changes between out world and alt-world.
