What did I learn: GABON

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This month I learned more about Gabon – a country I had very little knowledge about when I started!

I focused a lot on politics in Gabon, especially President Ali Bongo – who holds power despite ill health, and inherited control of the country from his father Omar Bongo on his death (while Ali’s mother has taken her career in a different direction). The 2016 election still resonates deeply around Gabon’s politics and culture – the opposition almost ousted Bongo democratically, but vote rigging and then a violent crackdown balanced the tables back in Bongo’s favour.

France’s role in Gabon also kept coming up – like most of French Africa, Gabon is economically and fiscally tied to the former colonial power, and Gabon is particular was the poster child for La Françafrique – France’s neocolonial method of keeping control and access to resources in its former colonies.

Gabon’s own natural resources play a big part in the country’s story – the export of oil and timber, the deposits of uranium (including a rare natural nuclear reactor), and Gabon’s interesting new position as a climate leader, where it uses a carbon-negative status to garner international investment.

Gabon’s thick forest is also home to incredible natural wildlife, some of which is vanishingly rare in the rest of the world – forest elephants, beach hippos, and western lowland gorillas. There’s some amazing videos of them in the wild (including the famous mirror test). I also got a chance just a few days ago to see some of these Gabonese animals in-person at the Calgary Zoo – they’re part of an international western lowland gorilla breeding program, as the species is critically endangered. I even got an up-close from a soon-to-be mother who had propped her feet up on the glass to relax.

Nature and politics aside, Gabon also has some really interesting culture and media – lots of good podcasts, radio, tv shows like Mami Wata (please point me in the direction of episode 2!), movies like Boxing Libreville, Yannis Davy Guibinga‘s photography, and Angèle Rawiri’s novel The Fury and Cries of Women. There’s also great music, including modern pop from Shan’L, Arielle T, Latchow, J-Rio, 80s disco from Ondendo, and traditional musical instruments like the ngombi harp and the ngongo mouth bow. On top of that, I got to learn more about beautiful traditional weddings and Bwiti healing.

As for Gabonese cuisine, I definitely got to try a lot of new things – nyembwé chicken with rondelles was really tasty, and iporo is a great way to cook cassava leaves. I also found some good instant fufu and a great baked banana recipe. However, I may have had my biggest culinary failure of this year (not great since it’s only February) – I learned a hard lesson about checking an ingredient’s freshness with odika chicken.

GABON: Yannis Davy Guibinga

From Tèt Grenn, Tèt Kale and Pigments

From The First Woman

Yannis Davy Guibinga is a Gabonese photographer, now based in Montreal, who does incredible portraits exploring race, gender, decolonization, and the history and culture of Africa. His photography series come in stories – I’m really taken by The Grief, setting out the stages of grief and the reconnection to the self. I’d suggest scrolling through the whole story, but here are some beautiful excerpts:

From The Grief

Another incredible collection is Boy Wives & Female Husbands, a look a third-gender and gender-non-confirming stories from around Africa:

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  From Boy Wives & Female Husbands

GABON: Gabonese Radio and TV

A surfing hippo near Port-Gentil – Source: Olivier Stocchi, TrekNature

I poked around Radio Garden and a few other sites to find some live radio from Gabon – there’s not a lot available, but there were a few neat channels.

Urban FM 104.5 – This has definitely been my favourite station, it’s great to put on when I’m working. Reggae, rap, hip hop, dance, pop – most of it Gabonese or from other parts of Africa. It’s a big fun mix. It’s pretty much uninterrupted music too! Listen live here.

Gabonews – The online feed isn’t up all the time, but it’s a major private radio station in Gabon. There’s a lot of variety – some news and talk in French, some pop and rap, and some more traditional Gabonese instruments – or “tradmodèrne” mixes. Listen live here.

Africa Radio – Africa Radio is notable for being a longstanding Gabonese institution that is no longer Gabonese. It was launched in 1980 as Africa No. 1, broadcasting out of Libreville, with French and Gabonese state investment. Africa No. 1 expanded into additional radio stations in Paris and Libya (with involvement from both Gaddafi and the post-Gaddafi governments). However, after strikes and complaints of poor working conditions, Africa No. 1 had its licence pulled and ceased broadcasting in Gabon in 2018. It has since been reborn as Africa Radio, with stations in Côte D’Ivoire and the Republic of Congo. You can listen live to regional broadcasting with music and talk in French, or music streams with club, rumba, and African dance music.

Notre-Dame de Lourdes, Libreville – Source

There’s a few live TV channels streaming from Gabon as well:

Gabon 24 – Gabon’s national broadcaster – formerly part of state broadcasting, now they’ve been spun off into a standalone company. They livestream on Youtube, and post individual clips from news stories on their channel. They’re still very much the state broadcaster, so they don’t really rock the boat, but there’s news, weather, sports, talk shows – the whole deal.

Gabonews – This is a private broadcaster, also with livestreams and clips from their broadcasts on Youtube. Again, a similar mix of news, weather, sports and talk, but an very interesting little difference: they also carry addresses by Jean Ping, the opposition leader who narrowly lost the 2016 election due to vote rigging in Ali Bongo’s home province. He’s positioned himself as a statesman, and continues to address the nation as the “Elected Gabonese President”.

GABON: Bwiti

Most focus on Bwiti seems to be a little superficial – a lot of media characterizes it as a “religion” and there’s a lot of attention from Western lenses on the fact that practices often include the psychedelic iboga root. But Bwiti is really more of a spiritual discipline focused on healing than a standalone religion – it’s flexible and syncretic and incorporates traditional elements of African spirituality, local medicinal plants, plus occasional elements from Christianity. If you speak French, here’s an interesting clip from a larger doc on Bwiti:

And in English, an interview with Moughenda, a Bwiti spiritual leader about the importance of self-knowledge and connection to nature, history, and culture, and why many people turn to Bwiti for healing.

Bwiti isn’t a practice that’s closed off, and there are many videos of initiations and healing ceremonies online. A lot of these vids try to play up the “exotic” lens, but this one below is pretty solid, including comments from practitioners themselves about what’s taking place and why:

Music is a big part of Bwiti ceremonies as well, and often features the ngombi harp and the ngongo mouth bow, plus percussion and singing. Here’s a couple good examples with beautiful complex polyrhythms and use of both male and female voices.

GABON: More podcasts

Boulevard Triomphal, Libreville – Source

Some more podcasts from and about Gabon – language as marked!

The Talking Point: African Perspectives – Gabon (En) – If you’re looking to get your head around just the basics of Gabon, this South African podcast has a good interview with the head of a Gabonese ex-pat organization in the country. The interviewee wants to get more into the meat of the political struggles, but also wants to show Gabon well and promote the lovely things about it.

France Culture: Gabon, comment sortir de l’impasse? (Fr) – French analysis from 2016 during the contested election between Ali Bongo and Jean Ping – it covers the vote rigging, the violence, and the media blackout, but also covers the political history that lead up this, including France’s involvement in Gabon’s politics – all in 7 minutes.

Sky News ClimateCast: How do you put a price on nature? (En) – Gabon is one of the most forested countries and has some of the lowest levels of deforestation, making it not just a home for incredible biodiversity, but as a vital carbon sink. This makes Gabon is one of the few carbon-negative countries, taking in through its forests more carbon than it emits – even with an oil industry. However the podcast looks into Gabon’s economic choice over its forests as its oil reserves begin to run low – it could log the forests, or it could solicit investments from other countries to keep its forests intact. The question is if other countries will pay to stop Gabon from logging, and would this model work elsewhere?

RFI Couleurs tropicales – Sémaine Speciale Gabon Ep 1 (Fr) – The first episode of a multi-part series on RFI’s African music show focusing exclusively on music from Gabon and its diaspora. It’s more of a DJ set with a bit of interview clips and artist details mixed in (all the artist names are listed in the description). Really high energy and fun, with a host with a lot of national pride about Gabon’s music scene.

Urban FM: Mystères Urbains (Fr) – This is so much fun if you like spooky campy stuff, this Gabonese podcast covers urban legends, occult, and monsters from across the country. I listened to one on an urban legend of the “Devil’s Cat” – a lesson in kindness to animals that builds off superstitions around black cats.

GABON: The Fury and Cries of Women by Angèle Rawiri

Angèle Rawiri holds the honour of being not just the first female Gabonese novelist, but the first Gabonese novelist, with her books published through the 80s. Her third novel, The Fury and Cries of Women is her best-known and most widely acclaimed. It follows Emilienne, an accomplished professional in a fictional Gabonese city, who met her husband while they were both at university in France. While outwardly successful, Emilienne is caught up in pressures from her husband (and from herself) to have a second child, especially after their daughter’s death – despite Emilienne’s pregnancies ending in painful miscarriages. Conflict with her husband over his infidelity and an antagonistic mother-in-law grows worse and more antagonistic, crossing from dysfunctional to melodramatic, and sending Emilienne into the arms of her female secretary, and things spiral from there.

It’s a really interesting book that puts a deeper spin classic “modern woman vs. tradition” trope, building on African feminism vs. Western feminism, and the inability of women to “have it all”. The afterword had an interesting discussion on “rebellious women” vs. “disobedient women” in literature, and where Emilienne crosses the line between the two. There’s also a class element here – Emilienne has her struggles intensified (but also has the ability to fight back) exactly because she is a powerful woman, who owns her home and out-earns her husband.

GABON: Patience Dabany – On vous connait

This is not the first relative of a country’s leader to launch a music career (see Uzbekistan’s Googoosha). Patience Dabany (also known as Joséphine Bongo) was President Omar Bongo’s second wife, and is the mother to Ali Bongo, the current president. She divorced Omar Bongo in 1987 and then built her musical career under this new name. (Omar Bongo later remarried a third wife 30 years younger than him.)

The marital drama of the Bongos didn’t just stay with the older generation – when Ali Bongo assumed office in 2009, his estranged (but not divorced) wife Inge was living on food stamps in California.

GABON: Mami Wata, le mystère d’Iveza

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Mami Wata, la mystère d’Iveza is a 8-part Gabonese tv series that debuted just a few months ago on Canal+ Afrique, directed by Franco-Gabonese director Samantha Biffot. It’s a drama-horror series, following Oliwina, a journalist working in Burkina Faso who returns to her hometown in Gabon after her teen brother’s disappearance. While she is there, the bodies of five children surface in a nearby mangrove – somehow connected. But Oliwina’s unhappy family history comes back up on her arrival; the first episode only gives hints into her break with her parents and deeper trauma. There’s also some connection to the spirit Mami Wata, a mermaid-like water diety that, like a rusalka or siren, lures people to their doom.

The whole first episode is available on Canal+ Afrique’s Facebook page (only in French, no subtitles, however), but I can’t seem to find anywhere to watch the rest! Most of it seems both paywalled and region-locked to Africa, which is a shame, because it’s super high quality production value and I was totally hooked from the first episode. I want to figure out what happens!

GABON: Chicken nyembwé with chikwangue

Chicken nyembwé is the classic Gabonese dish – there’s a million variations, but at it’s base it’s smoked chicken in sauce graine, a thick palm nut sauce. I’m building off this recipe from Popo Loves Cooking; she brings together everything I saw in other recipes (and the recipe is bilingual!)

Whole smoked chicken was surprisingly hard to find, but my local African grocery had them – they’re easy to defrost and work with because the smoking means they’re partially cooked already. This recipe also includes garlic and onion, hot pepper, sorrel leaves (similar to spinach), bay leaves, and a couple rondelles chucked in whole. Rondelles are also called olum, bobimbi, or country onions/garlic – they look like a hazelnut but have a pungent garlic and onion aroma that really oomphs up a dish.

I also picked up chikwangue for a side dish – these are batons of grated fermented cassava, wrapped in banana leaves. You can buy them frozen and steam them – they’re a versatile accompaniment to Central African dishes, or you could swap for fufu or rice.

There was a fair bit of splatter as the sauce cooked down, but it turned out really tasty. The smokiness of the chicken comes through the strongest, and goes really well with the earthiness from the palm nuts. It’s got the richness and consistency of a thick curry (and stains like one too – don’t wear a light shirt!). There’s a bit of heat from the pepper, and all the onion, garlic, and rondelles add lots of flavour. The tang from the fermented cassava balances the creaminess of the sauce. Yum!

I’m also totally sold on smoked chicken itself, it’s absolutely delicious. I’m saving the carcass to use for broth – I’m thinking a smoked chicken noodle soup. I’m also glad I had much more success than my other Gabonese chicken dish.

GABON: The CFA franc

Building on the last post about la Françafrique, another element of France’s neo-colonial influence on Africa remains the CFA franc. The franc is actually two interchangeable currencies, one for West Africa (XOF) and one for Central Africa (XAF).

While a single currency does help trade between the 14 countries using it, and it is pegged to the Euro for stability, it is a deeply unfair deal. Each country must put 50-70% of their foreign currency reserves into France’s treasury, and to use their own money, France will loan it back to them at fixed commercial rates. I’d suggest the below video for an excellent look at the CFA franc and how it continues to disadvantage these countries:

There has been movement from West African countries to ditch their side of the CFA franc and start their own monetary union with a currency called the Eco, but the countries of the Central African half of the CFA, including Gabon, have not signed on. An African monetary union is definitely a point of discussion, and definitely seems like the CFA franc it can’t continue on in its current form. There’s differing viewpoints – I read an article by Gabonese economist Mays Mouissi calling to keep the franc, but reform it so France is not controlling access to funds and to un-peg it from the Euro: “Gabon: monnaie unique, non, évolution du CFA, oui“. I’d also suggest the interview with Togolese activist Farida Nabourema about France’s influence and the CFA franc.