Me Atomo Ribenga, a retired gendarme died at the age of 80. He was the greatest master of the traditional Bwiti rite, widely practiced in Gabon before colonization. Faced with the great penetration of Christianity, the bwiti was demonized and Me Atomo Ribenga had become the greatest defender of this initiation rite whose practitioners form a kind of secret society.
With our correspondent in Libreville, Yves-Laurent Goma
” It’s a great monument, a baobab that fell “, summed up one of his relatives. Master Atomo Ribenga of his real Marcelin Eyene Abaga marked the Gabonese when in the early 1990s, he publicly defended the bwiti, this sacred initiation rite most practiced in Gabon. It consists of healing by invoking the spirits during dance ceremonies mixed with traditional music. Its followers go through an initiation before becoming practitioners.
The Bwiti had gone underground with the arrival of the settlers. Colonial administrators having tried to make it disappear by calling it a mystical and diabolical practice.
In the 1990s, Atomo Ribenga embarked on a real popularization of this rite through national television. In his appearances, he invited the Gabonese to no longer be ashamed of the Bwiti.
A retired policeman, Atomo Ribenga had his temple in the north of Libreville where he initiated and trained in bwiti. ” Gabonese don’t even know what treasure they have at home “, he concluded during a recent broadcast on national television. It was like a farewell.
The Bwitist tradition is articulated around 4 main axes. You have the harp, you have the sacred wood, the temple and the sacred chants. The harmonious way of using all these elements according to very specific rites that we will call the science of the Bwitist tradition.
Ovono Eyene Simon, son and disciple of Atome Ribenga