Iboga: the Search for Self in Africa

(Africa Teacher) — BBC adventurer Bruce Parry goes on an adventure to live with the Babongo, a Congo Basin forest tribe in Gabon risking life and limb to go through a cleansing Iboga ritual. He does not trivialize the experience but fully immerses himself in the experience for our vicarious education.

The Babongo of Gabon have an expertise and knowledge of the forests and are unique in their use of Iboga. Iboga is a powerful hallucinogen that lies at the heart of Babongo culture and the Bwiti religion, famous throughout Gabon. The Babongo have recently changed from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled villagers with subsistence agriculture supplemented by hunting.

Bwiti is an animistic West Central African religion practiced by the forest-dwelling Babongo and Mitsogo people of Gabon (where it is one of the three official religions) and the Fang people of Gabon and Cameroon. Modern Bwiti is syncretic, incorporating animism, ancestor worship, and missionary Christianity into its belief system.

Bwiti uses the hallucinogenic root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga plant, specially cultivated for the religion, to induce spiritual "enlightenment," stabilize community and family structure, meet religious requirements, and to solve problems of a spiritual and/or medical nature. The root bark has been used for hundreds of years as part of a Bwiti coming-of-age ceremony and other initiation rites and acts of healing, producing complex visions and insights anticipated to be valuable to the initiate. The root bark or its extract is taken in doses high enough to cause vomiting and ataxia as common side effects.

Tabernanthe iboga or Iboga is a perennial rainforest shrub and hallucinogen native to Western Central Africa. Iboga stimulates the central nervous system when taken in small doses and induces visions in larger doses. In parts of Africa where it grows, the bark of the root is chewed for pharmacological and ritual purposes. Ibogaine, the active alkaloid, is used to treat substance abuse.

Normally growing to a height of six feet, T. iboga may eventually grow into a small tree up to 33 feet tall, given the right conditions. It has small green leaves. Its flowers are white and pink, while its elongated, oval-shaped fruit are orange. Its yellow-colored roots contain a number of indole alkaloids, most notably ibogaine, which is found in the highest concentration in the root-bark. The root material, bitter in taste, causes an anaesthetic sensation in the mouth as well as systemic numbness to the skin.

The Iboga tree is the central pillar of the Bwiti religion practiced in West-Central Africa, mainly Gabon, Cameroon, and the Republic of the Congo, which utilizes the alkaloid-containing roots of the plant in a number of ceremonies. Iboga is taken in massive doses by initiates when entering the religion, and on a more regular basis is eaten in smaller doses in connection with rituals and tribal dances, usually performed at night.

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