Under the green canopy of the Massaha forest in northeastern Gabon, Arsene Ibaho leads a group of visitors toward a tree that he says is sacred and speaks to his people.
Red clay is daubed on everyone’s foreheads, enabling them “to connect to the ancestors and warn them of our coming,” Ibaho said.
With that accomplished, the 43-year-old conducts a ritual at the foot of the kevazingo tree, reciting words in the local language, Kota.
Photo: Reuters
Ibaho is one of about 200 inhabitants in Massaha, a village in the vast province of Ogooue-Ivindo more than 600km from the capital, Libreville.
The sacred tree is also embedded in folklore as the bringer of good luck for fishers during the mid-year dry season, Ibaho said.
Rituals at the tree enabled fishers to fill a 15m-long boat with a bounty of fish, “and all the village could tuck in,” he said.
Beatrice Itsetsame, 69, recounted her trips into the forest, where she collected nkumu, a small edible vine, and also bushmeat for ceremonies.
“The forest is rich, it supports us,” Itsetsame said, wrapped in a blue boubou robe with a yellow motif.
Massaha, lying on the Libumba, a tributary of the Ivindo River, finds itself at the heart of a passionate debate about the future of logging and conservation in Gabon.
The central African state is hosting a two-day summit that began yesterday on how to protect tropical forests.
Loggers were given authorization to fell trees in the Massaha area covering 11,300 hectares.
Ibaho said that the loggers set up a lumber yard in a forest clearing where there once had been a village.
Their bulldozers gouged a swathe through the area, making it impossible to identify the location of three graves, he said, wielding a machete to clear undergrowth.
“They had no idea where the old villages were — now our history has been cut in half,” said Serge Ekazama-Koto, a community spokesman.
Angry and fearful, the local community three years ago asked the government to scrap the logging licence on the grounds of suspected rulebreaking and a threat to “biocultural heritage.”
In March last year, their activism garnered a visit from Gabonese Minister of Water, Forests and the Environment Lee White.
White, a British-born conservationist, subsequently stopped the logging, ordered the company to withdraw its machines and floated the theory of creating a new status of protected area.
The idea is being discussed as part of a logging code overhaul.
White in an interview said that there had been problems.
“The fact that bulldozers came to a sacred forest close to a village means that we failed at every stage,” he said.
That is why “we are currently asking: Do we need a stronger status?” White said.
Local people say they have been heartened by progress since White’s visit.
Last month, a government team went to the area to geolocate the coordinates of sacred sites — a key step in the process of protection.
Communities “want to be at the heart of governing the area” yet current protection status reflects “a model of state management,” said Alex Ebang Mbele, head of a non-governmental organization called Nsombou Abalge-Dzal Association, which is calling for new conservation laws.
“Often, it’s the state that imposes the creation of protected areas,” said Lucien Massoukou, director-general of wildlife and protected areas at the forest and environment ministry.
However, “when a community has the will to preserve its space, it starts to take on ownership of the concept of conservation,” he said.
Ibaho said that local people had already chosen a name for the site in the Kota language — Ibola Dja Bana Ba Massaha, meaning “the reserve for all the children of Massaha.”
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