More than fifty years between France, Gabon and the forest.

Hugues Obiang Poitevin grows up in Gascony, in south-western France. On 10 October 1971, at twenty-one, he arrives in Gabon to join his mother, Madame Villas. Having come at first for fifteen days, on a Gabonair DC6 charter flight, he would stay by choice. He will not leave. His mother has rested in Gabon since 2013, alongside their son Noé, loved by all, who passed away at twenty-four; three of his children were born on this soil. He settles in Libreville and would later describe himself as a “cultural métis”. He would become a Gabonese citizen in 2005. As he likes to put it: “I became Gabonese after thirty-three years of presence and love for the country, its nature, its cultures and its people.”

His working life as a road haulier, from 1976, leads him to travel the country and to encounter the local cultures, then so disparaged by the imported religions. It is one of those roads that, on the night of 2 August 1976, near Kango, after a car breakdown, leads him to knock at the only lit door in the village. It is that of André Ngi Ovono — Papa André, the “Dalai Lama of Gabon” —, liturgical harpist and great healer of the Bwiti. From that night a friendship is born that will end only with the death of Papa André, in 2017. It is also the threshold through which Tatayo will enter, over the years, into the tradition.

In 1979, Tatayo is initiated into the Bwiti Fang Dissumba — the path tied to the Sacred Wood and the Iboga of the Fang peoples of northern Gabon — by Evariste Nguema Mba Ndong, Papa André's elder brother. He is the first Westerner initiated into the Bwiti Fang. Evariste would pass away from tetanus on 9 August 1979, just three weeks after this initiation. The Bwiti Dissumba, “which saves”, as the peoples of the forest affirm.

Tatayo does not remain a spectator. In 1980, carried by that initiation, he founds a first “association for the agricultural and cultural promotion of the Gabonese village”, with Daniel Odimbossoukou and Catherine Oneto, both since departed. Rural cooperatives follow, set up with Jean Robert Rengouwa: a demanding undertaking that came into being only with difficulty, despite the wholehearted commitment of these companions. Understanding that a structure able to fund action from its own profits is needed, he founds the company Trip Gabon (Transports Rapides Inter-Provinciaux) in 1984. For nearly seventeen years, its profits would directly fund rural micro-projects in the service of the villages.

In 1993, Katy Euillet, mother of their 3 children, and Tatayo are received into other traditional rites of the Middle Ogooué, with Jean Tsanga, who later became Motamba (“Root of the Earth”). It is through this path that Tatayo is initiated into the Bwiti Misoko Ngondé na Dipouma, tied to the Akèlè Simba tradition, in central Gabon. He is the third Westerner to be initiated into it. Receiving both lineages — Dissumba among the Fang and Misoko among the Simba — is rare. It is this twofold transmission that would later give Ebando its position of reference, without making it a school.

Before and after the birth of Ebando, Tatayo has also been a bridge for culture between Gabon and the world. In 1996, the Association of the Friends of the Equator Circus enables twenty-two Gabonese artists to sign a two-year, renewable contract with the Barnum & Ringling Circus, in the United States. In 2004, Ebando is the driving force behind the Gabonese part of the String Music Festival, over ten days, at the French Cultural Centre, since become the French Institute, a success carried in particular by the host Irène Labeyrie and the conductor Toups Bebey.