What do you do and what is Bwiti?

Okay, Bwiti is pretty much like you guys call here a religion, and it’s a way we get contact with the ancestors. And inside Bwiti you find the therapy also. Yes. That’s what Bwiti is. Yes. It’s a religion which started with day one, all the way back in Africa, then after that and after that. On day one, when our First People started with it. Yes, then after that, Bwiti comes with the therapy, the things of the healing process, using iboga.

Is that like Ancestor Worship?

Yes, ancestor worship. We believe that the ancestors are the ones closest to God. Yes, and it’s pretty much easier to get in touch with God through them than any other ways. By just going to our ancestors, because we believe that the ones who are dead are never gone. That’s just the easy way, the fastest way to get any answers whatsoever. We talk to them first and they just transmit to God straight up.

You’re from Gabon?

Yes, I was born and raised in Gabon. All my life.

Until you came to the Americas.

Yes. I left for the United States, and I went to France for a while. Then I went back to Africa. I traveled quite a bit in Africa–west coast and east coast–before I left Gabon to move to the United States. Yes, I lived in New York City and then moved to Michigan.

What kind of work did you do?

I was a truck driver. I was driving the big rigs! Well over 40 states. So I pretty much know your country. (Laughter).

What’s the higher reason for a Bwiti healer to do this? What was your mission?

For my mission the Bwiti sent me here to spread the plant iboga. Because iboga is not just for African people, it is for the whole world, for whoever needs iboga. But of course it’s difficult to find out about iboga. Even using the internet it’s hard to find out about it. And it’s kind of difficult for non -Africans: you have to be reconnected to the plant spirit.
So me being here is great–talking to people, talking about iboga. Because iboga is a whole medicine–you are using it to treat addiction but it can be applied to many other maladies. It does a lot of healing. This is news to us, its’ abilities with addiction, but it is no surprise, at all.

How did you find Rocky?

I found him on the internet. It was amazing because I was at the end of my mission. When Bwiti gives you a mission, you don’t go to get it done right away. You have to wait until your time is up. You don’t just decide–This is my mission, I’m going to do this and this and this to accomplish it. After many years my time was up and I had to find the right person and the right place. I started reading everything there was online, about Bwiti and the iboga. When I found Rocky’s website I had to send him an email, just to say hello and give my blessings to his Dream House, where they use ibogaine to treat addicts. He invited me down to see how the medicine was being used, and it’s happened pretty fast. It’s like we’ve known each other for years now. Rocky’s a very good man.

What did you think when you saw what we were doing with ibogaine, which comes from your sacred plant, so far away from Bwiti culture and separate from its source?

Right. Actually, there are not intended to be any secrets about the iboga. It is not reserved for the Bwiti, it belongs to all of mankind. What might be secret is the Bwiti stuff, the rites. No, I was amazed, to see you guys here, running this show, using the ibogaine to help people. It made me feel really good, you know, that people like you would show interest about iboga and working with it. You just have to know how to use it and you guys do, you understand it.

But there is a difference between ibogaine and iboga. You could not easily conduct an initiation with ibogaine. It would take a lot. In your treatments you have to give a lot of medicine and you know exactly how much because of expertise and knowledge. Same with initiations: we must know exactly what we are working with, it’s an ancient process. So I work with iboga. Somebody like me, or anyone with experience working with the root, could mix them, and use them together. Ibogaine is a good medicine and strong. It has simply been stripped away from the roots but contains the spirit. I think it is very interesting that they’ve done this.

Who should be initiated? How does one arrive at the decision?

"They wanted a secret religion. Most Gabonese from different tribes are going to have a heart attack to find out you’re initiated Bwiti."
First of all, Bwiti at first was pure and African. From day one it was African, and there’s a group of people in Gabon who will not share anything, who kept Bwiti a secret. They wanted a secret religion. Most Gabonese from different tribes are going to have a heart attack to find out you’re initiated Bwiti. But we Masango Missoko from the South, we want to explain the Bwiti religion and let people get help from the Bwiti religion. Because Bwiti is a religion with therapeutic offerings. We do all types of spiritual work. We serve anybody, all over the world who is called to Bwiti. If you are initiated into Bwiti you’re going to discover many things not just about the spirit world but also about your life. So anyone can get initiated into Bwiti–as long as you can eat iboga. (laughs) It is totally different than taking ibogaine. A capsule is easy to swallow! You have to eat a lot of iboga, the root itself, to be initiated, to become visionary. You have to be strong to become initiated.

Can you describe an initiation?

It is a long process to take the wood. It starts with a master or father of the Bwiti. He has to determine the readiness of the banzi. The first step is to ask the spirits if the guy is ready to be initiated. It may take a lot of training and preparation to become ready for initiation. They may have a bad spirit that makes initiation forbidden.

There are women’s rites and men’s rites. We start in the afternoon and go to the jungle. We perform a symbolic bathing or cleansing on the banzi. They are about to be born, and must be pure to fit through the birth canal. You’re given a new name there. We give you the first dose of iboga. Two or three portions. We come back to the home at sunset. But already you are not yourself anymore. You know how when you’re in an airplane, you’re on the tarmac, the runway, and the thing is about to take off? While we were in the forest the people in the village were working on the temple, preparing it for the initiate’s experience, transforming the energies. It’s a place with a unique purpose. You won’t miss your wife or your mother because she will be there. You need a little break and to feel comfortable.
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Everything starts at eight o’clock. The m’congo–a pygmy bow instrument–will start the music for the occasion. We give you more iboga, start really feeding it to you. About two hours later the mirror–because you’ve got a big mirror in front of you–is going to start to change for you. Sometimes we put designs on the mirror. This is where we determine the dosage. We’re not like you guys here, determining a person’s kilograms and letting us decide that this many grams of iboga will be sufficient for initiation. No! We have techniques to find out how much iboga you have to eat. We can tell by touching a certain part of your body, we can know how far along you are already.

The m’congo is playing to push you, too, keep you on the road. There are two types of people. One takes a long time before he starts to see. Others, four, five doses and they start to see. Because the vision, it’s not like when you take ibogaine. With ibogaine you’re seeing with your eyes closed. Bwiti initiations are 100 percent different because you cannot dream, you cannot close your eyes. You’re just sitting up with your eyes open, looking in the mirror. When you get your vision, it comes like a movie. It might take you back to, like 50 thousand years ago! Yes! You’re going to meet your parents, your ancestors! Each of them will come to you and introduce themselves and say their names. You see it all right there in the mirror. It will be all night long, and you’re not going to be tired, or feel like taking a pee or a crap. No. You don’t feel anything. But you might be uncomfortable in the stomach, and you’re going to be throwing up, and I mean throwing up a lot.

And by the next day you’ll have seen all your visions. By six in the morning if we think that you didn’t really see your ancestors, get what you came for, it’s got to be done again, only this time double. We want to make sure you see everything. We go again and again in the process, until the desired vision is seen.

"The spirits will know you and they will give you the power like that–BAM! When you master Bwiti you are deeply connected with all the spirits."
We conclude by taking you back to the river. Now we give birth. We must cleanse for the last time and enter the world. You never look back. You’re a free man, and you can go. Anybody initiated into Bwiti might end up being a healer, easily. The spirits will know you and they will give you the power like that–BAM! When you master Bwiti you are deeply connected with all the spirits. You start to learn the Bwiti language–the codes; there are codes in nature, codes illustrate the spirits. Once you know this language you are a free man. And you won’t get sick so easily. I see in the United States all the high blood pressure and other ailments. In Gabon Bwiti practitioners are not eager to go to the hospital because have all the healing inside of us. Illness can’t really take us because we’re protected by the Bwiti. We’re in control of our bodies.

How old were you when you tasted iboga, and how did it shape your path?

I first started when I was eight years old. Just a little bit of iboga, but it was hard. Next when I was twelve, with my Grandfather. But my big times, my initiation, when I was fifteen. I was fifteen when I took on everything. I became nganga, or one of the initiated. Like an apprentice. Bwiti has been in my family for decades. I wasn’t in a rush to get initiated, but I could feel that it would sweep me away, that it was in my blood because it was practiced by my family. Just a little bit and I was gone!

After becoming nganga I was initiated four more times. Because Bwiti is like roots: one root is the Sopa, Missoko, sukama hundi, bonde, noba, dissumba. In dissumba they have powerful visionary traditions. In missoko we have a mastry of therapy. I was initiated into all five traditions. Because each tradition is speaking to distinct spirits. As each person has different needs in their healing, different spirits must be called. If you know each tradition, you will know all the possible spirits to call.

But this is a traditional point of view. Now in Gabon is some messed up stuff: the Fang Bwiti have put parts of Christianity into the Bwiti. You can’t put those together, man. There’s nothing you can change about Bwiti by adding to it or by taking away from it. If you want to work with Bwiti you’ve got to use it the way it is, not the way you want it to be.

So the plan is; you want to do full-blown Bwiti initiations for people in North America?

Why not? We can make a temple any where in the world. The plan is to import the wood from Gabon, shipping it here to Mexico. We will have a temple, and there I can do any type of spiritual work. I can access many spirits here, and for bad spirits, I can knock them all down. (laughs). How this fits with Rocky’s Dream House we don’t know yet.

What other plants do you work with, and can you find any in these forests here?

I work with a lot of different plants and many kinds of herbs. Even different trees provide us with different medicines. Iboga’s number one, but we’ve got a lot of them, all throughout the forest, we’ve known for thousands of years. And actually it’s similar here in Mexico. I can find everything I need in these woods. It’s different and not exact, but these basic plants are familiar to me. Of course the jungle in Gabon is much deeper than this, with places where no man has ever visited. What interests me is that this land used to be much nearer to Africa. Somehow it drifted away, but every jungle came from Africa just as every human did.
I feel very comfortable here in Mexico. You have a great amount of spirits here and they are regarded. When I was in Michigan I was out of touch with the spirits. There it’s very hard to get connected. There is so much pollution. Spirits can’t inhabit places like that. Here in Mexico I call a spirit and it’s right there. Not so in Detroit.

This is the early stages and this is evolving–you’ve only been here for a few weeks–but what’s in the future? What’s six months from now looks like?

Set up a temple, where people come from all over the world, whoever wants to do spiritual work. And initiations into Bwiti. You have to train for initiations, for like a week before. We’ll use different facilities to get the different pieces of preparation together. We’re connecting people with their histories, so we have to prepare them. These people are going to get a whole new program! Their brains are like computers and the program is going to get a new version!

So yes, and six months should mean we have land here, and are starting to grow iboga. I know iboga will grow here in Mexico. That’s the future, take the gift from the African jungle and give it to the Americas. Bwiti America!