This mask is a variation of the "white masks of the Ogooue", present in a large area of Gabon up to the border with the Congo and used by the Kota people in the eastern interior of the country. Known as okuyi or mukuyi, these are used in festivities for the amusement of the people. Apparently, they once had a ritual dimension associated with the ancestors and funerary celebrations. Dressed in cloths, vegetable fibres or animal skins, the masqueraders walk on pair of stilts shouting piercing cries that recall the most fearsome animals of the forest, frightening, scaring away and amusing the people.