Okuyi / Mukudji (Punu white mask)
Kaolin-white Punu stilt-dance mask of the *mwiri* society, representing a beautiful female ancestor returning from the spirit world; worn in daylight at the conclusion of mourning rites.
Okuyi (also mukudji, mukuyi, moukouji; regional variants include okukwe, mbwanda) is both the kaolin-white face mask of the Punu and the masquerade ceremony in which it appears. The mask represents a beautiful female ancestor — never a living portrait — returning from the spirit world; the white pigment encodes the threshold between the living and the dead. Male mwiri initiates wear the mask atop two-metre stilts under a full fibre costume that conceals their identity, at the conclusion of the mourning period.
Regional spelling varies along the Ngounié bend: okuyi in the south, moukouji or mokoi further north. The dark-faced counterpart of the white okuyi is the ikwara (the night mask), worn after dark for judicial proceedings and anti-witchcraft rites; okuyi and ikwara together form a complementary masquerade system rather than two unrelated object types (Perrois 1985; Perrois & Grand-Dufay 2008).