Our mission · Nature · Culture · Future
In Gabon, a land of founding arts, Ebando works for the recognition and transmission of the essential cultures of Central Africa.
Our reason for being
Ebando is a Gabonese non-governmental organisation. Its conviction: the knowledge of the forest peoples of Central Africa forms a living heritage, as precious as it is threatened. Our mission can be held in three words.
Act I
the land · the ancestors · the knowledge
The source forest
A people, a forest, a bond
Before it is a culture, the Bwiti is a root: that of the forest peoples and their bond with the land, the ancestors and the living world. It is there, in the Ogooué basin, that knowledge nothing has written down is passed on.
Iboga, the sap
The plant that opens perception
Iboga is the sap of this knowledge: the plant that opens perception, passed down from one generation to the next long before it was given a scholarly name. It cannot be improvised; it confides itself to those who respect it.
The struggle
Preserving, against plunder and oblivion
This knowledge belongs to no one. To preserve it is to refuse to see it plundered, turned into folklore or forgotten. To fight the poverty and prejudice that erase it. This is Ebando's first struggle.
This struggle also runs through the plant itself: the sustainability and ethics of Iboga, a Gabonese national treasure threatened by poaching.
Act II
the art · the face · the Truth
The mask that works
The face of the invisible
In Gabon, the mask is not a decoration. It works, it dances, it links the living to the creating spirits of the forest. What the West files away in a museum is here a living instrument.
Icon · the Mvudi mask
"The Truth", born of the water
The mask that gave us our mission
Ebando's own was born of the water: a floating mask, recovered one morning in 1999 and named "the Truth". It became our name, our logo, our oath.
The crucible of modern art
These wooden faces are not a distant curiosity. The Fang and Kota masks and figures transformed the way the greatest artists saw.
Picasso, Braque, Derain,
Brancusi, Giacometti.
What the West called "primitive art" is here a founding art. And still alive.
The living network
Those who carry it
Ebando is not an institution, it is a living network: sculptors, Ngombi harpists, traditional practitioners, keepers of the chants. They are the ones who bridge the "source forest" and those who come to approach it.
Act III
the transmission · the commitment · the future
Pass it on, not sell it
A requirement before an offer
A vision only has value once it is passed on. Ebando accompanies those who come to approach this tradition — within a strict framework, never lightly — and makes sure it benefits first those who carry it.
A committed NGO
Beyond the initiation
Our commitment does not stop at the initiation: defending cultures and rights, supporting the forest communities, passing knowledge on to the young, making room for women. A full NGO, not a spiritual retreat.
Encourage the initiatives that matter most.
— The spirit of Ebando, since its founding
Tomorrow
Places where knowledge is passed on continuously, where natural and human resources are valued rather than exhausted. Putting the challenges of the third millennium at the centre.
Our fields of action
In practice, what Ebando does.
The mission does not stay an idea: it is lived through precise actions, on the ground, for more than twenty years.
Join Ebando
Ebando lives on the commitment of those who believe in this transmission. You can support the association, or come and experience the initiation yourself.