THE ARRIVAL.

 

  Here we go, we get off the train at the privas station, there were two other guys and I thought to myself that they were there to participate at the seminar. We were waiting for Gerard the ethnologist, I asked one of the guys if one of them was called Paulo because I knew that he was suppose to participate, they answered no.

  Finally Gerard arrives with his car and take us to a small castle, very cute, none the less a reinforced castle on top of the mountain that dominates Privas. We install ourselves in the rooms, we started chatting, there were ten of us, all guys, I shared a room with a baker and Nicolas, a junkie who was under Subutex, an heroine analogue, but some people take Subutex for 20 years, which doesn't solve anything. The baker had been using alcohol heavily and smoked, that is why is was there.

  While we were waiting, I watched a film on the bwiti and when it was over, Gerard came to get us.

  I made a mistake because they had told us not to take anything ( drugs, alcohol, etc...) before taking iboga, and I had drank a beer on friday at noon and that compromised my first night since iboga must fight harder.

  Nicolas had taken Subutex in the morning and he threw up all night. Iboga gets rid of the addictive substances and places itself in the neural receptors, so it is harder for iboga if there are already substances in your receptors.

  Some people came for personal development, others for spiritual reasons, others because of depression and one was looking for direction in his life.

  Around 10 pm the initiation begins. the first night is about cleaning oneself from the inside. We went in a room, there were mattresses and pillows, everyone took a blanket because when you take iboga sometimes you feel cold, a bucket for throwing up into and a bottle of water to rinse your mouth after eating iboga. The room was quite spacious, there was an altar with grigris on it, this was where the Nganga would be.

  His name is Mallendi, a 25 year old gabonese. He will be our initiator, he was wearing a traditional African outfit for the ceremony, in red with white paint on his skin. He gave all of us a piece of fabric with african colors to make us feel united.

  Gerard was there as well, he is the one organizing the seminars, he was initiated 20 years ago in Africa.

  Gerard will be with us all night, as well as Jeanne, his wife from Cameroon... a real goddess. There were also two assistants to empty the buckets and give us water and such.

 

THE FIRST NIGHT.

 

  Here we go, from 10 pm to 6 am, on an empty stomach eating iboga.

  Mallendi started to walk by us and gave each of us a teaspoon with powder on it, I take the iboga in my mouth with a little bit of water to dilute it and at the moment of swallowing it, I feel an horrible taste, very hard, extremely bitter that reminded me of when I was little and ate raw mushrooms.

  Mallendi returns behind his altar and plays the harp while talking in gabonese and told us that if we want to speak we must say "Bokaye'", and when we are finished talking we must say "Bokaye'" again.

To thank the musicians or just thank people one must say "basse'" and the other answers " basse', basse'".

When someone finishes talking or playing an instrument we must say "hi".

  Sometimes, maybe to catch our attention, Mallendi says something in gabonese and we must say "hi".

  He played for about 45 minutes and walk by us again with more iboga, at that moment Nicolas started throwing up ! It was funny because during the afternoon, while we were all seating at the table to tell him what was our reason for being there, Nicolas said he had taken subutex and Mallendi told him :

-ah, you will be the first one to throw up !...

I didn't tell him I had had a beer because I was a little scared...

  So he gave us some more iboga and went back playing music with his mouth harp (Mogongo) which makes incredible sounds made even more incredible because of iboga. More iboga, more music, and on and on until 4 or 5 am.

  I started having some visuals, little oras, when I stand up I can see things and lights changing in the mirror.

  We were lying down waiting for iboga to take effect. The goal is for iboga to install itself in your body, clean it, get rid of the alcohol and take its place. That is why if you take enough of it - Mallendi explained to me- all the receptors would be coated and you will not want to drink or take drugs, and if you don't take enough you will probably still want some drugs or alcohol.  Essentially by taking enough to clean the body and have it in your blood...it is said to heal many physical ailments as well.

I felt like when I drink to much in the week, a familiar symptom, I wake up in the morning, I have dry hives, I have diarrhea and can not eat anything, and can not stand up because of the pain, it happened to me many times where I had to lye down in the subway for almost an hour. That is how I felt, the only position in which I felt good was, lying down on my stomach with my arm over my head, forced to breathe heavily. As soon as I would move I would feel nausea. I threw up as well although I was trying to keep the iboga in. Everyone stayed in the position that felt more comfortable while they waited for iboga to take effect...Mallendi approached every single one of us and offered assistance to those who needed it.

  Gerard was in and out of the room, mallendi stayed with us from the beginning to the end of the two nights.

  Even after, if you need feedback Mallendi is there to answer your questions.

  So for me, I didn't have any hallucinations, actually I slept even though we are not suppose to sleep since iboga is a stimulant, but I was in such pain that I slept. It was a very difficult night for me.

 

THE SECOND DAY

 

It was 6 in the morning, we all went to bed in our rooms. It feels strange since we didn't eat and stayed up all night. So we slept, I got up around 1 pm and walked around the castle, roll a cigarette and Mallendi saw me and said :

- ah, but what are you doing ?

  I said :

  - I am rolling a cigarette !...He said you can smoke but it's not good, it confuses iboga, it confuses it...

  Oops, so I decide not to smoke as some others were already smoking.

  I ate an apple nothing else all day and I was not hungry. It is true that with alcohol I was used to not eating. Plus my stomach tortured me so much that I didn't want to eat. I felt like when I was an alcoholic, I didn't eat anything all day because I knew I would throw up.

The second evening I thought to myself, "I hope my stomach isn't gonna hurt again because that was terrible" but all of a sudden around 8 pm my pain was gone, so I was ready for the night.

 

THE SECOND NIGHT

 

  Mallendi explained that we were going to exercise with a mirror to be in contact with our subconscious.

So same ceremony, he walks by us giving us iboga, plays music, talks, tells us stories half in French and half in Gabonese, ( especially near the end when only three of us were awake). Sometimes he said things that seemed addressed to particular individuals present even if we didn't understand everything I was certain that he talked to me, it sounded like : bla-bla-bla BAR, bla-bla-bla  ALCOHOL , even if it seemed that he was talking in the wind, it was very fine and intelligent. The Nganga must be able to tell you things unconsciously.

You are under iboga, in an alternate state of consciousness and he must be able to shock you like the things I heard at Tobby Natan's place when he said that certain sorcerers beheaded chickens at a strategic moment to shock people.

  Around 3 am, I stood up and had trouble with my balance and my sight...he gave us each a mirror and I sat down again, the mirror was positioned in front of oneself in order to see your face. Then he told us to concentrate on a point anywhere on the face. We are at the 6th or 7th spoon of iboga, everyone has his mirror, the prior night he had given us 8 spoons each and this time he gave us 10 each, 11 to Paul and 12 to me because I threw up and asked for more and also because I had not felt anything the first night.

  I thought it was like lsd, heroine or coke, when you shoot it you feel it immediately, and I had not felt much the first night except for some trouble walking and my eyesight but nothing compared to what I thought. I was a little frustrated and spoke up. So Mallendi told me that I probably needed a higher dose, because everyone is different.

The others had felt things, some of them had never taken any drugs before, for the first time there body was in a condition that I knew well. So I concentrate on a point in the mirror, I started with the third eye, I concentrate, concentrate, nothing, I don't see anything, nothing. I stayed like that for about an hour and a half, so I told Mallendi that I didn't see anything. Mallendi started to go through moments of reassurance to moments of toughness like the Africans that play djembe that yell at you when you can't do it.

  So Mallendi said 
- But what are you doing ? Concentrate ! You will succeed, you must see something, it will happen, when it happens you will know, try !

  So I concentrated, could not do it when all of a sudden...I see a spot on the rim of my glasses, one of the lenses opens up like a window and I see a video screen with images running through it.

  Then I lost it, concentrated again and it was back.

  The first image was a pair of green shoes, high heels woman shoes, naked feet inside. Two women that walked between two cars, it looked like a "dauphine" it was the sixties, something I must have seen while I was in my stroller.

  The vision left, Mallendi explained that once you start having visions you are in contact with your subconscious and it's time to consult it. You must ask the plant, ask iboga to give you answers, you must ask with you heart, very important...ask a question on what preoccupies you, why do you drink...so I asked...why do I drink ? Could you tell me about my mother, my childhood ? I gave it big titles like that but it never answered, my questions were not answered but I was amazed to be able to be in touch with my subconscious.

I didn't have much fixed images or films unlike Paul who saw films but his were on a screen similar to a computer. he was able to question. When I told him I only saw a little window, he said I should ask for a large screen !!! He said that he asked for a large screen and boom! he had a large screen just like a computer.

  Then Paul explained to me :

  - it would show me all my family with my father, my mother, my brothers...with percentage of love, all organized, with curves and graphics, and then I would ask the questions.

  He seemed to be right into it and succeed, maybe he had open is heart more ?

  So there are parameters : how much you take, what you are able to see, are you asking with your heart and are you asking the right questions. I didn't get any answers when I asked about my mother, so I reformulated my question using my mother‘s name, Gilberte, but it didn't work.

  So I didn't receive the answers to my questions, but I saw other things like a scooter, which I had no idea what it was doing in my visions, with two blonde girls with a scarf on their heads on this cream color vespa from the early seventies. I was not able to make the connections, I asked about my childhood and I see two women...

  I remember a scene with three children that were running, I imagined my great grand mother's court so they must have been cousins or my brother with other children.

  I also saw a dog licking the feet of a woman, and again her shoes. I thought to myself, these are not answers to my questions but answers to why I have a foot fetish, why I love feet, it is giving me answers but on other subjects.

  So I continue to visualize, trying to get in contact with the registers and chapters of my life that interest me, because that's the trick, I think that with mastering the vision long enough, to have enough time to understand how to get in touch with the plant, the root and ask the right questions from the heart. Once the vision starts you must concentrate and stay with it long enough even if you ask a different question the video keeps on playing. If you don't like the visions, ask something else...you can even laugh you know, Paul started laughing hard and told me :
- It is giving me some answers…hilarious...

  Paul had to stop because it was getting out of hand. The root was playing jokes on him but all of that was in his subconscious.

  I knew that you can get in contact with your subconscious but was shocked to find in my head all those real images that play in sequence and it is totally possible to ask questions and receive answers, but I simply didn't find the trick.

  Mallendi is a fine psychologist, it was not what I expected. I was a little apprehensive in regard to our language and cultural barriers, he will talk about rituals, I have a hard time with rituals, I am rational, European, I even lightly laughed every time I heard about rituals, shamanism, from people that were not even initiated, it felt insignificant, so I thought we would have problems communicating, because we go see the psychologist they go see the shaman.

  But no, he speaks French perfectly, he participate in conferences, he is perfectly integrated and Europeanized, gave his ritual a nordic flair - he comes from the south - for "the poor people" that don't have the same culture.

  This guy, with his mouth harp, he is powerful, you feel like you are in the jungle, you really are with him, he is inside you and you are inside of him. You can feel the shaman and not the guru, you don't feel manipulated, he leaves you alone, you and the root, let's you deal with yourself, he intervenes only if you ask or depending on your vision. If you have horrible visions of your childhood ( some people lost it, cried, one saw his dead brother which he didn't see in real life), Mallendi comes to help you just like a psychologist when someone has lost it or like an African sorcerer can do it in his country.

Mallendi really is in between the two humans you see, the root, the pygmies, the human in all of us, animal, I don't know how to say it but, primitive and rough and the complicated human modernized. He knows the basic human and at the same time the psychological subtleties of Freud. He can communicate and give you strong messages, gives you little tricks, like little keys. You don't realize at first, but we have richness even if he doesn't say it in a certain way and we all have things in common. It's like when I was in detox, they told us that all alcoholics are megalomaniacs and paranoiacs, common traits that are all childhood problems. Mallendi knows and keeps that in consideration.

  So I enter the mirror and discover this fabulous trick of contacting my subconscious. I would like to go back to 2 years old...no actually Christmas around 4-5 years old...and you see all the presents, you see everything since it's on your "hard drive" ! Everything you have seen, heard, felt, you can relive it or actually visualize it, since your body remembers as well, if you suffered great pain or surgery, you would be able to see yourself then and remember the pain.

  I started to feel tired from concentrating so much and Mallendi continues with the music which was starting to feel a little crazy which went well with what we were doing.

  I think this plant is made for man, no lethal doses,you can eat lots of eat and not die, direct communication with your heart thanks to this root that speaks to you, the visions, this plant which is not recreational, doesn't give you pleasure like ecstasy or something you eat Saturday night. This really brings you to reflection thanks to it's intelligence, the root will bring you to your subconscious and not an orgasm or whatever...it's a plant for work, a root they call "sacred wood".!

  So the night goes on, Paul was still there, it's funny because we were next to each other. I've met him on the second day, he was a friend sent by Patrick, and found ourselves together during the two nights and at a moment he even disturbed me on an energy level. I could not concentrate because he was there and it felt strange. I never felt my energy, when people use to say :

  -yes, you are full of energy...I didn't understand, I never felt it.

And now, I felt an energy disturbance...like they say! On the other side there was a guy which didn't disturbed me. When Paul left I was able to concentrate better. He left because he could not stop laughing so he wanted to exit in order to not disturb the rest of the group. An assistant walk with him for a while to make sure he was ok and then left him alone. He told us later he was glad he was alone because he saw some completely delirious things, he was attacked by dogs, then they became his friends, then domesticated them, etc...( there were two cats at the castle but no dogs) so he mixed up cats, dogs, a mix between the real world and the transformed world of iboga.

  So without Paul there I felt better but I could still not get answers to my questions, so I took a little break, looked at the ceiling and fixed a point. The ceiling starts to come down a change shape, boom! I let go of the point and the ceiling goes back up, so I decided to go outside and play with the stars since I was able to control my hallucinations ( fixing a point and letting go when I wanted to). So I stepped out on the terrace and concentrate on a point, there are many. So I fixed on a star, she gets closer to me at high speed and at about 30 meters, she transforms into a mosquito or dragonfly like in peter Pan, not an elf but a little flying creature. She leaves, I grab another star, I let her go. so I played with the stars, the trees and the lights of Privas.

  Usually you don't take iboga alone and they don't leave you alone, but not because you gonna jump out the window like a bird (because you are still conscious) but because you could hurt yourself due to the lack of balance. In Africa they dance a lot, but there are people around to catch them when they fall.

  Iboga is also (I look around the room when I let go of the mirror) all those people with their eyes fixed on something, you don't know what, but in fact they are fixing on a point and that point helps them visualize and enter their subconscious. You an fix your sight on whatever you will be in your unconscious.

  And all that, alternated with throw up, each one with his bucket because mallendi gives it to you every half hour, so at one point you see him, he gets up, put his harp down, take the plate, take his little spoon and start over. Nicolas first then me, and you get ready, take your spoon. Some could not take anymore, one guy was lying down and Mallendi would walk by with spoon and say ;

  - Iboga!

  and the other would say :

  - no, I can't take it no more, I don't want anymore, I don't want anymore...

  Maybe he was not ready, maybe the taste, that taste that makes you throw up, he would take the spoon and throw up instantly, at the end Mallendi would show him the spoon and he would throw up even though there was nothing to throw up.

  Mallendi had told us to try to not throw up and keep the iboga in your body and try to take all the spoons.

  At the end, I thought that iboga is good, not to eat, but good for you, I wanted more and more. And I try to keep it, there was only one time where I threw up after he gave it to me (maybe 5 minutes after) and it was a lot of liquid so the iboga stayed but I asked for more because I wanted to go further than the others, because I knew that there is no lethal dose and Mallendi told us we could eat 25 spoons of it and we had only 8, if I could have 15 or 16 it wouldn't be any worse.

  So I wanted to take a lot of it to really experiment, and at 6am I look at the mirror again and see things, nothing deep and still no answers to my questions, maybe I lack technique or experience, I was really disappointed.

  Mallendi explained to us that if we were visualizing and realized we didn't have enough iboga to go deep into our subconscious, we could clap our hands and move our bodies to circulate the blood, and that's what I did, clap! clap! with the music...it really is a plant that compliments humans I think...really trippy, no negative or bad after effects, delirious, I must stop saying delirious and trippy because that is not iboga.

  The day came, everyone slept, the assistants (who were up for two nights), they took only one spoon, because it is a stimulant like cola nut.

  Everyone was tired and sleeping, except a young man that didn't say anything all weekend but left full of energy. At the moment of his departure, he talked, was much more social, he probably had a pretty strong experience, he didn't sleep and two others in a corner of the room were talking to each other.

  Mallendi said :

  - It's 6:30 am, you can all go to bed now.

 

THE THIRD DAY

 

  I waited until 7 am, went for a walk and then to bed. I woke up around 12, got up and drank half a liter of orange juice with lots of ice, an apple and walked around the castle.

The weather was beautiful and I played the sanza. I called Antoine and Magaly, my cousin, who were interested in the seminar, we talked for a while about the weekend and after hanging up, I sat in the sun, and realized I understood that technique to enter into your subconscious and which questions to ask, I understood how it works, I don't know how to explain it now, but I felt super intelligent and super everything, so I decided to room and write.

I wish I brought my tape recorder, it would have been good. So here I am in the room, the window open, the baker is sleeping, Nicolas is in the garden.

I start writing : " iboga, la,la,..." and stop, no inspiration. I look outside and see the city of Privas and the gorgeous sun, little birds singing, I feel good, in harmony with all of that. Nothing particular but just really good. I hang out by the window and ask

Nicolas :

  - Are you feeling like I do ?

  Because I was wondering if everyone that participated was feeling like I was at this moment.

  Nicolas shrugged his shoulders, didn't know if he felt like me since he was not in my body.

  So I slept at the castle Sunday night onto Monday morning, woke up around 11 am in really good shape, I hug everyone, had a big breakfast. Some left Sunday evening and Gerard and Jeanne offered me and Paul to come for dinner and spend the night at their place about 20 kms from the castle. That was a good opportunity to talk. The next day was very soothing and Tuesday I went back to Paris, happy to discover that I didn't want to drink or smoke.

  This weekend was the most extraordinary adventure of my life and I invite every man, woman and adolescent (even if they don't have any pathologies) to be initiated, simply for a personal development of a quality and strength difficult to imagine...