Exploring West Africa: Bissagos Archipelago, Guinea Bissau (Part 7)

Exploring West Africa with Silversea's Silver Explorer, starting in Accra, Ghana on 10 April 2013 and ending in Dakkar, Senegal on 26 April 2013.

April 20^th, 2013

Population of Guinea Bissau (2016): 1.8 million

Population of Bissau, the capital city (2015): 500,000

Currency: 583 CFA (West African Francs) = US$1

Demonym (people from Guinea Bissau are called): Bissau-Guinean 

GDP per capita (PPP 2018) = US$ 1,951 (in Kuwait it’s $69,669)

HDI (2017): 0.455, ranked 177th.

Anyone knows what bird this is?

The first thing we encountered when approaching Guinea Bissau were the mangroves.  The advantage of cruising on an expedition ship is that you get to explore the shores on a zodiac.  It would’ve been impossible to dock on the islands of the Bijagos Archipelago on a cruise ship.  Zodiacs can carry up to 8-12 passengers, and will swiftly take you to whatever it is that you find fascinating.  On this particular landing we took our time and slowly flowed towards the shore through these bushes that grow along the coast of saline waters.  When you come closer you’ll see that the mangroves inhabit an entire ecosystem of all sorts of creatures such as algae, barnacles, oysters, sponges, shrimps, lobsters…etc.  And then there are the animals that depend on these creatures for food, like birds and fish.  Mangrove forests are also an important part of the cycling and storage of carbon in tropical coastal ecosystems.  What’s amazing about these plants is that they tolerate living in such harsh conditions: immersed in salt-water as well as low oxygen conditions in the waterlogged mud.  Unfortunately the mangrove habitat is continuously being removed because of urban development along the costs of the world.

After admiring the mangroves we land on Roxa island. 

This little fellow was standing by the shore and gave the gesture to follow him to the village.

The walk to the village was about 20 minutes through the jungle.  As hot and humid as it was, I’m always happy to walk among trees.  I live in a place where houses are stuck to each other, the temperature over the summer stays close to 50C/122F, and the Air Quality Index is above 100 on most days :-(

As we got closer to the village we started hearing the rhythm of the drums and people singing and dancing.  The whole village was out having a good time.

The main ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau are the Fula and the Balanta.  The Fula, who are widely dispersed across West Africa and the Sahel region, are the largest nomadic pastoral community in the world.  As an ethnic group, the Fula language as well as their history is what unites them, and they happen to be mainly Muslims.  Whereas the Balanta, meaning “those who resist”, are known to practice indigenous, spiritual customs and rites even though some of them have adopted either Islam or Catholicism as their “official” religion.  Most people I have come across in rural Africa tend to merge their ancient practices (animism) with the Abrahamic religions more recently introduced to them.  

People from all ethnic groups who still live in village settings take initiation rites very seriously.  There is always a celebration of someone leaving childhood and entering adulthood in all of its stages: those who become 15, then those who are ready to get married, and the Balanta men specifically also have a rite of passage when they’re ready to become landowners.  You can read more about the Fanado ceremony here.

Animism is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems—as animated and alive.

If you ask anyone who practices animism “are you an animist?” They will most likely not understand what you’re trying to question. The concept itself is made up by anthropologists who want to distinguish indigenous religions from organized religions, whereas animism is just a way of experiencing life differently from what Western thought and Eastern thought have perceived life to be.

Isn’t it interesting how religions came to be in each human society..?

Different tribes practice animism in different ways. The only common feature between all animists is that they believe objects in nature (trees, animals, rocks, rivers) have souls or spirits, and that this phenomena is not limited to us humans.

This man has entered a state of trance in order to communicate with the spirits of the ancestors. It’s a very common thing to witness during these ritualistic ceremonies in West Africa: men wearing masks and entering an altered state to act as an intermediary between our world and the spirit world.

Spectators are under no circumstances allowed to touch men who have entered a state of trance. This can be dangerous to both parties —who knows what might happen if you touch a person who is halfway to the spirit world? Can’t be anything good.

When a person enters a state of trance they usually do it with the help of mind altering substances such as alcohol, psychedelics, herbs, hallucinogens; or then they induce it by starvation, sleep deprivation; or mind controlling techniques such as prayer or chanting meditation.

It has been interesting to see how families in West Africa are so close. They pretty much do everything together.

However, with globalization things are changing rapidly, even in a small country like Guinea-Bissau. I’m guessing the newer generation of people prefer the urban life if given the opportunity. 

Here’s an interesting paper on the effects of urbanization on ecology and biodiversity in Africa: Urbanization in Africa: Challenges and opportunities for conservation (1).

Palm oil is originally from West Africa. Only recently (in the 20th century) has it become poplar to farm in Asia and Latin America. Because of its many benefits the farming of palm oil has exploded to overtake the natural habitat of many forest animals. Because of the creamy texture that it provides, palm oil is used in candy, baked goods, soaps, ice-cream, butter, cosmetics, frozen pizzas, and instant noodles. Companies have already thought of expanding production on a larger scale in West Africa. This would require cutting down more rainforests. Western environmentalists are worried that if Africa decides to expand its palm oil business this will further compromise the forests around the equator. 

Because of the overwhelmingly negative image palm oil has been exposed to in the Western media, a group of African women have come to the defense of their traditional way of preparing food with palm oil (2).

I was trying to organize the kids for a group photo.. that never happened :-)

Bijago culture tends to be matriarchal, with women managing the household, the economy, law, as well as initiating courtship.

Portuguese Guinea (i.e. Guinea-Bissau from the late 15th century to 1974) was known as the Slave Coast, as it was a major area for the exportation of African slaves by Europeans to the western hemisphere.

One of the uninhabited islands of West Africa.

I wonder what this place would look like in a hundred years. Maybe there will be Marriott resort right where I’m standing.

~ The End ~

*All facts are from Wikipedia unless otherwise stated.

1. Güneralp, Burak, et al. “Urbanization in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities for Conservation.” Environmental Research Letters, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, p. 015002., doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa94fe.
2. “West African Women Defend Traditional Palm Oil.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, GRAIN, 2016, www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/417205/.

Exploring West Africa: Freetown, Sierra Leone (Part 6)

Exploring West Africa with Silversea's Silver Explorer, starting in Accra, Ghana on 10 April 2013 and ending in Dakkar, Senegal on 26 April 2013.

Life on the hills of Freetown

April 18^th, 2013

Population of Sierra Leone (2015): 7 million

Population of Freetown, the capital city (2015): 1,056,000

Currency: 8,810 SLL (Sierra Leonean Leones) = US$1

Demonym (people from Sierra Leone are called): Sierra Leonean 

GDP per capita (PPP 2018) = US$ 1,608 (in Kuwait it’s $69,669)

HDI (2015): 0.420, ranked 179th (among the 10 lowest in the world).

Street art depicting slave trade of the colonial era.

Street art depicting slavers of the 20th century (i.e. consumer capitalism).

The air in Sierra Leone was heavy.  Our first stop was the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary.  Founded in 1995 by Bala Amarasekaran and his wife Sharmila, and with the help of Jane Goodall, it’s a place where abused, orphaned and abandoned animals have been taken care of for more than two decades now.  Unfortunately baby chimpanzees are still stolen from their families in the wilderness and sold as pets.  Furthermore, their habitat is threatened by an increasing human population, deforestation, disease and hunting.  Many are kept in research laboratories around the world.

DNA sequencing shows that chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to the human lineage.

Fossil sites of chimpanzees have been found in Kenya, which means they coexisted with early humans in the East African Rift Valley during the Middle Pleistocene (781,000 to 126,000 years ago).  The chimpanzee line split from the last common ancestor of the human line around six million years ago (we’re still not sure what the hominin lineage looked like that long ago (1)).

Chimpanzees are capable of using tools: they modify sticks, rocks, shrubs and anything else they find in nature to extract honey and termites, to crack nuts open, to retrieve water, to kill small mammals, and for self-defense.

The human genome is very similar to the chimpanzee’s.  One of the major differences however is concerning the gene responsible for speech development, which has gone through rapid development in humans, but not so much in the chimpanzees.  Attempts have been made to teach chimps human sign language.  They are capable of memorizing signs, but not developing new sentences, unlike human children who form new sentences as soon as they learn new vocabulary.

Male chimpanzees are known to throw rocks at each other as a sign of aggression (3). This particular rock was not thrown at anyone, so all’s good.

Look at those fingers, how he’s grabbing the fistful of nuts. It’s amazing.

The few hours we were given to spend time with the chimpanzees of Tacugama, we observed them grooming, napping, using rocks as tools to break into fruits and nuts, vocalizing with each other, and sometimes towards us.  It was amazing to watch them just hanging out.  Some of their moves seemed so human.  Like when they’re trying to pick at a nut with their fingers from inside its shell, that’s exactly how I would do it.  I hope it won’t be too late by the time the masses realize how precious these creatures are, and how vital it is to preserve them in their natural habitat.  I would hate to see a future where chimpanzees are confined to sanctuaries and zoos.  Ideally there would be no zoos in existence.  All wild animals deserve to live freely in their own environment.

If you want to adopt a chimp at the Tacugama sanctuary, you can do that for US$80/year at (http://www.tacugama.com/adopt/).

Some of these billboards seemed out of place.

78% of the population are Muslim, 21% Christian. Religious violence is very rare in Sierra Leone. Even during the civil war people were never targeted because of their religion.

There’s a significant number of illegal fishing vessels around Sierra Leone. Illegal fishing goes unchecked, so the fish in the sea is reduced drastically, which doesn’t leave much for local communities who depend on seafood for survival.

Our second stop was Lady Deborah Berewa outpatient Hospital.  

I can’t imagine the challenges that Sierra Leone has faced with healthcare, especially after the civil war.  The civil war of 1991-2002 was brutal.  There were mass killings (50,000 people), rapes (more than 215,000), and one side was famous for hacking the limbs of civilians.  About a quarter of the soldiers serving for the armed forces were under the age of 18.  The children were often abducted from their families, and sometimes made to kill their own family members.  Most of the time they were drugged.  After the war they suffered from drug withdrawal, physical and mental wounds, and a lack of memory as to who they were or where they came from before the war.  Mental healthcare in Sierra Leone is almost non-existent.  All they have is the help of traditional healers.

Another unfortunate effect of an 11 year war is that children don’t get to vaccinate.  There is no data available, but a significant proportion of Sierra Leone’s disabled people are polio survivors (2). 

In Sierra Leone the life expectancy at birth is 48.2 years, infant mortality rate is 89 deaths/1,000 live births, and under-5 mortality rate is 140 deaths/1,000 births (4).

Autoclave.

If these walls could talk…

The First Lady of Sierra Leone (2007-2018), Sia Koroma, greeted us and gave a speech at the hospital.

Sierra Leone is known for its blood diamonds.  They were mined and sold to to advance the purposes of the civil war.  And before that, in the 1970s and 1980s, diamond trade only benefitted the corrupt.  To Sierra Leone diamonds are a resource curse.

Two thirds of the adult population of Sierra Leone are illiterate.

About 42% of the population are under the age of 15.

The last place we visited was to watch a football match between players who suffered the atrocities of the civil war.  A team of amputees played with a team of polio victims —and they played fiercely.  Nothing seemed to hold them back.  We were told that they take all their matches very seriously.  It was a memorable game to watch, certainly the most inspirational I have witnessed.  No matter what life puts you through, you take up the pieces you’re left with and make the best out of it, because you’re still here, and you’re still breathing.

This book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, is a biography of a child soldier. I read it a few years ago, but it remains one of the best (or I should say one of the most emotionally agonizing) stories I’ve read out of Africa.

“I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.”
~Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone.

“One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end.”
~Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone.

Celebrating new beginnings.

A Rolex store.

The Lovers Garden.

Life by the sea.

One of the better living conditions I’ve seen in Sierra Leone.

How do kittens survive wars?

The End

*All facts are from Wikipedia unless otherwise stated.

1. “Human Evolution: 3.2 Evidence from the fossil record.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Evidence_from_the_fossil_record.
2. Kühl, Hjalmar S., et al. “Chimpanzee Accumulative Stone Throwing.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 29 Feb. 2016, www.nature.com/articles/srep22219.
3. UNHCR. “Sierra Leone's Polio Disabled Battle Adversity.” Refworld, IRIN, 2 Sept. 2013, www.refworld.org/docid/5225bb374.html.
4. “Lady Deborah Berewa Outpatient Hospital Lakka, SL.” GlobalGiving, Greatest Goal Ministries USA, www.globalgiving.org/projects/medical-clinic-healthcare-education-sierra-leone/.