Project · Welcome · Structure · Cultural residency
Discovering the traditional culture of Gabon (Bwiti), with guidance for young people. A setting close to nature, one that lets you reconnect with the founding values of life. Not a wellness retreat: a demanding, slow apprenticeship.
The intention
We offer guidance in a setting close to nature, with the aim of reconnecting with the founding values of life. This residency is built around discovering several ancestral traditions that long remained secret and reserved for the initiated. This tradition asks only to be known and recognised in the eyes of the world, in respect for what it is.
The setting
A new rhythm, at the heart of the village.
The residency is not a tourist interlude. The young people we welcome share the everyday life of the community: the rhythm of the village, the gestures of life in the forest, the long time of apprenticeship.
What is passed on cannot be reduced to techniques. It is a way of inhabiting the world, in respect for one another and for the forest that holds it all.
On the ground
The life that is passed on.
Five lines of work
What is passed on during the residency.
Living in community
Adjusting to a new rhythm of life, in respect for one another, around the founding values of a life shared in the forest.
Knowing the forest
Learning to live in the forest, to read it, to find your way through it. To respect it in its power and its fragility.
Traditional instruments
Assembling and building traditional Gabonese musical instruments. And learning to play them, all the way to the right gesture.
Choreographic heritage
Discovering the choreographic and musical heritage of Gabon's various traditions, passed on within their own setting.
Garments and headdresses
Making traditional garments, hairstyles and headdresses specific to the rites. A gesture that meets the material.
The gesture that meets the material
You don't tell an instrument. You make it.
Building a ngombi harp, stretching a drum skin, weaving a raffia headdress, fitting a ritual garment: each skill passes through the hands before it passes through words. It is in the slowness of the gesture that the tradition is etched.
Learning to play it, afterwards, is finding the right gesture, the one you no longer correct. Object and body end up speaking the same language.
Designing a residency together
Request a cultural residency.
To discuss a cultural residency — its length, its precise content, its rhythm — write to Ebando. The format is shaped together.