During their ritual use, the surfaces of these figures were rubbed with a reddish mixture of oil and camwood powder, both a cosmetic and a sign of mediation.
It is no coincidence that in Yombe thought the color red indicates transitional conditions such as death and birth. The fact that some mother-and-child figures hold or carry what appears to be a dead baby alludes to the close interrelationship in Kongo beliefs between the spirit world and the world of the living.
It has been suggested that the figures were thoroughly cleaned and polished after their use by their original caretakers. The resinous material on many examples in Western collections seems to have been applied not by the people who made and used them but by their first Western owners.
Note that here, it is a different Phemba... First, it is a man, there is a magical charge... We found a reference to a similar piece in "Arts et Kongo" de M.L. Félix, page 105, but the symbolism is not explicated...
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He who does not cultivate his field, will die of hunger. 
