MoughendaFoundation
The Moughenda Foundation

The Moughenda Foundation team surveying village development land in rural Gabon

Healing returns to its source

The medicine that heals the world was born in Gabon. We exist to return its value to the Gabonese people who have carried the Bwiti tradition for generations.

Support the WorkOur Programs
About the Foundation

A living lineage

The Moughenda Foundation is guided by the lineage of Moughenda Mikala, a 10th-generation Missoko Bwiti shaman dedicated to preserving and transmitting the ancestral framework of the tradition.

Where the global iboga economy extracts value from Gabon, the Foundation sends it back — to patients, to youth, and to the villages and temples at the origin of this healing.

The ceremony is not the product.
The tradition is the container.

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Moughenda and his grandson
Rainforest landscape in rural Gabon where iboga grows
Why It Matters

The source matters

Iboga does not come from a laboratory. It comes from the forest — protected as a national treasure under Gabon's constitution.

Yet Gabon has just 5 psychiatrists for 2.3 million people and allocates zero percent of its health budget to mental health. The people who hold this medicine are the least able to access its care.

Here, healing is not imported.
It is returned.

Our Three Programs

Three forms of healing

Iboga shrub growing in the Gabonese forest

Addiction Treatment

Iboga · Ibogaine · Bwiti

Treatment for alcohol, tramadol, and cannabis dependence — care that does not otherwise exist in Gabon.

  • Community screening & preparation
  • Traditional Bwiti ceremony
  • Integration & aftercare
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Bwiti practitioners preparing traditional medicine over a fire at a ceremony in Gabon

Youth Reconnection

Rites of Passage

Bwiti rites of passage for at-risk youth, addressing both substance use and cultural disconnection.

  • Preventive rites of passage
  • Responsive intervention
  • Elder–youth transmission
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Child outside a traditional thatched-roof village building in Gabon

Temple & Village

Infrastructure & Support

Restoring the ebandja as living health infrastructure, with water, solar, and practitioner support.

  • Temple construction & restoration
  • Water, solar & sanitation
  • Practitioner support
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What Makes This Different

Care at the source, not from outside

Western programs treat indigenous practice as heritage. We treat it as healthcare — available in-country, with no import required.

Rooted in Gabon

Traditional structure

Community-based

Ethically led

Long-form care

Community Bwiti ceremony with flame and palm fronds in Gabon
Who Leads This Work

Rooted in lineage

This is not an outside organization arriving with a program. It is built on decades of relationship inside the Missoko Bwiti community — designed, led, and owned by the people it serves.

Moughenda Mikala

10th-generation Missoko Bwiti shaman. Guardian of the tradition, whose authorization gives this work legitimacy across Gabon.

Ryan “Ghenigho” Rich

Bwiti practitioner trained and empowered by Moughenda. Founder of Root Healing and Basse Root. Focused on operations and fundraising.

How to Support

Send the value home

Every contribution moves resources directly to Gabonese patients, youth, and villages.

Fund a Cycle of Care

Sponsor a full treatment or ceremony series — assessment, ceremony, integration, and aftercare.

Donate

Fund a Village

Support outreach, temple restoration, and clean-water or solar infrastructure for a rural community.

Donate

Partner With Us

For foundations, ministries, and NGOs: co-design, co-fund, and co-measure the work together.

Donate

The source has given the world its medicine. It is time to give back.

If you are ready to support healing at its origin, we invite you to begin the conversation.

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