SOCIALIST MONUMENTALISM AND VOODOO RITUALS
DECEMBER 27 ⇾ January 11
Additional private tour departures available all year round
The following tour has a strong focus on the Socialist-Era Monumental and Architectural Heritage of West Africa. If you are more into classic attractions (traditional villages and natural parks), we can design a bespoke itinerary according to your own specific preferences. Get in touch for more details on our tailored routes across and beyond West Africa.
DAY 1 to DAY 4 – Guinea Bissau
Meet-and-greet at Bissau International Airport and transfer to our hotel of choice in Bissau and introductory briefing about the region, the route, and the set of rules to observe while travelling in West Africa.
Bissau-Bolama Architectural Tour: we’ll devote three-and-half days to the architectonic heritage of Guinea Bissau marvelling at the rich colonial legacy of Bissau Velho and Bolama and rediscovering the hidden beauty of the many socialist shapes scattered around modern Bissau.
The splendid and crumbling architecture of urban Guinea Bissau reflects the two main phases of the country’s political and cultural life: the signs of Portuguese domination appear in the shape of moderno-tropical administrative buildings, elegant colonial villas and pastel-coloured churches; whereas the artistic influence from Eastern Bloc are recognisable through the numerous modernist and brutalist concrete structures marking the post-independence cityscape of Bissau, such as the odd-looking Black Fist sculpture, somewhat reminiscent of a Yugoslav spomenik.
Movies and books: Mortu Nega (Flora Gomes, 1988); The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Flora Gomes, 1992); Struggle in Guinea-Bissau (Amílcar Cabral, 1979); Micro-state to Narco-State (Chabal & Green, 2016).
Overnights in Bissau.
DAY 5 to DAY 7 – Guinea Conakry
Morning flight to Guinea Conakry via Dakar (depending on the flight schedule, we may also indulge in a short architectural tour of Dakar).
Guinea Conakry Architectural Tour: for the next two days we will tour the capital Conakry as well as the large satellite towns of Manéah and Dubréka. The country’s post-independence modernist architecture and socialist monumental heritage will be the main leitmotiv of our visit, but we’ll also give due regard to the few elegant leftovers of the French colonial yoke. During our sojourn in town we’ll also ride the popular Conakry Express, a crowded commuter train that runs through the 30-km-long capital: the best way to experience the real modern life of urban Guinea.
The architectural landscape of Guinea is admittedly less attractive than the one of its Portuguese-speaking neighbour. Nevertheless one can still find some bygone-era gems, discreetly fading away in the oldest parts of the city such as the Chemin de Fer quarter. Furthermore, since Guinea achieved its independence, the country’s paysage métropolitain has been enriched by an interesting display of modernist architectures (Palais Mohammed V and the Palais du Peuple), brutalist behemoths (CERESCOR building), and Soviet-style public art such as the marvellous Black Prometheus mosaic and the massive Monument du 22 Novembre.
Movies and books: Il va pleuvoir sur Conakry (Cheick Fantamady Camara, 2008); Dakan (Mohamed Camara, 1999); Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea (Elizabeth Schmidt, 2007); The Radiance of the King (Camara Laye, 1954).
Overnights in Conakry.
DAY 8 to DAY 10 – Burkina Faso
Farewell to Guinea and onward flight via Abidjan towards Ouagadougou, the impossible-to-pronounce capital of Burkina Faso.
Burkina Architectural Tour: a two-day sightseeing around and about Ouagadougou and the nearby town of Koudougou, an important transportation hub along the Ouagadougou-Abidjan railway. Our visit will be mainly centred around Burkina Faso’s daring modernist experiments and socialist mementos, but we will also lose ourselves among the scents and the shades of the daily hustle and bustle enlivening the country’s throbbing heart. A de rigueur pilgrimage to the newly-built Sankara’s memorial is, of course, mandatorily included.
Burkina’s modern architecture is best seen in its capital Ouagadougou, which boasts a decent amount of Afro-modernist structures and Soviet-inspired monumental forms. Particularly striking is the contrast between the imposing profile of a few concrete giants from the 70s and the dominant low-rise constructions, where most city dwellers live. Peculiar to Burkina Faso is also a certain architectonic and monumental genre, a local splinter of ethnic modernism. Pompous neo-Islamic architecture and discreet colonial vestiges eventually complete the urban picture of this vibrant and captivating West African capital.
Movies and books: Burkinabè Rising (Iara Lee, 2017); Capitaine Thomas Sankara (Christophe Cupelin, 2015); Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary (Ernest Harsch, 2014); Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle (Thomas Sankara, 2007).
Overnights in Ouagadougou.
DAY 11 to DAY 14 – Benin
We’ll leave Ouagadougou and board our morning Air Burkina flight to Cotonou, the largest city in Benin.
Benin Architecture-and-Voodoo Tour: we’ll base ourselves at the modernist Hotel du Lac and spend four days visiting architectural jewels and bustling markets around and about of country’s deep south: Porto Novo, Cotonou, Grand Popo and Ouidah, the latter being also Benin’s voodoo capital. Architectural and monumental highlights of our stay will include splendidly elaborated Afro-Brazilian churches, mosques, basilicas and private mansions alike, the moving memorials to the slave trade, the afro-modernist BCEAO Headquarters, the lake-side village of Ganvié, the über-Soviet Place de l'Étoile Rouge, the socialist-realist Martyrs’ Monument and the super-odd brightly-coloured statue of Georgi Dimitrov, the first leader of communist Bulgaria (yes, you read that right, Bulgaria!).
The architectural landscape of Benin bears, indeed, the strong influence of the country’s powerful cold-war allies: modernist buildings and socialist realist monuments were built all over Benin’s largest towns, further enriching a preexisting diverse architectonic heritage of colonial opulence, Islamic curviness and vernacular quaintness.
Movies and books: In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven (Djimon Hounsou, 2018); Cobra Verde (Werner Herzog, 1987); The Viceroy of Ouidah (Bruce Chatwin, 1980); Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey (Stanley Alpern, 1998).
Overnights in Cotonou.
DAY 15 – FAREWELL TO WEST AFRICA
Togo-GHANA ADD-ON | 4 DAYS
Transfer to Ghana via Togo, the former German and later French colony of Togoland, a narrow strip of land inhabited by thirty-seven tribal ethnic groups.
Lomé, the capital of Togo, makes for a great architectonic stopover thanks to a fascinating mixture of concrete internationalist buildings from the 70s/80s, post-modernist experiments and traditional West African vibes.
Accra, on the other hand, still boasts a vast afro-modernist heritage of socialist-era edifices, urban spaces and monuments: during Kwame Nkrumah’s brief but fruitful reign (1960-1966), Ghana developed a strong national construction industry inspired, both in theory and practice, by the Eastern Bloc’s prevailing architectonic trends.
Movies and books: The Burial of Kojo (Samuel Bazawule, 2018); Kukurantumi: Road to Accra (King Ampaw, 1983); African Modernism: The Architecture of Independence (Manuel Herz, 2015); Consciencism (Kwame Nkrumah, 1964).
Overnights in Lomé and Accra.
3850 €
INCLUSIONS
Double/twin hotel accommodation (breakfast included), private transport in West Africa (car/minivan), all entrance fees, English-speaking guiding service, 24/7 on-site and remote assistance.
EXCLUSIONS
Single supplement, international flights, main meals (lunches and dinners), extra drinks, visa fees (if required), tips, travel insurance.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Guinea-Bissau, now sadly known as the first narco state in Africa, is a former Portuguese colony with a troubled history of conflict and instability. The country’s political power has long been in the hands of the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), a formerly Marxist-Leninist party that led the long and bloody 1963-1974 liberation war against Salazar-ruled Portugal. The war in Guinea, led by the heroic revolutionary figure of Amílcar Cabral, has often been termed "Portugal's Vietnam" as it featured all the characteristics of its more famous Southeast Asian counterpart: remarkable guerrilla tactics, difficult combat terrains, an indigenous revolutionary insurgent movement gaining the sympathy from neighbouring countries and the worldwide military and economic support from brotherly communist powers such as Cuba and the USSR.
The Republic of Guinea, formerly French Guinea, is a predominantly Islamic country inhabited by twenty-four ethnic groups. French remains the main language of communication in schools, in government administration, and the media, but more than twenty indigenous languages are also spoken. Guinea’s modern history is largely associated with and epitomised in the person Ahmed Sékou Touré, a Mandinka political activists and trade unionist who led the largely non-violent struggle for independence and was consequently elected as the first president of the country in 1958 (a position he held until his very death in 1984). During his long reign, Sékou Touré pursued socialist economic policies, including nationalisations of banks, energy and transportation; whereas in foreign affairs he opted to join the Non-Aligned Movement and developed very close relations both with China and the United States, thus irremediably distancing Guinea from the Soviet sphere of influence. Touré also maintained a strong relationship of economic cooperation and military support with its smaller namesake northern neighbour (Guinea-Bissau) culminating during the dramatic events of the mostly unsuccessful Portuguese-led Operation Green Sea, an amphibious attack on Conakry, to overthrow Touré's government, capture Amílcar Cabral and rescue Portuguese POWs; the episode is now commemorated by a massive and archetypically socialist monumental complex in downtown Conakry.
Burkina Faso, formerly known as Alto Volta, is nowadays mostly associated with famine, turmoils and the recent islamist insurgency ravaging the country’s northern provinces with unprecedented sectarian violence. The modern history of Burkina Faso (literal translation: “Land of the Upright Men”) is, however, way less archetypical than its very last disastrous years might lead you to think. This is, in fact, the proud homeland of Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, a Marxist and pan-Africanist revolutionary sometimes referred to as "Africa's Che Guevara". In 1983, still in his early 30s, Sankara became the president of the country and immediately launched programmes for social, ecological, and economic change. His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund. Domestically he focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating millions of children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Moreover, he outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. His revolutionary programmes for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa's poor but his policies alienated and antagonised several groups, which included the small, but powerful Burkinabé bourgeoisie, the tribal leaders who were stripped of their long-held traditional privileges of forced labour and tribute payments, as well as the imperialist government of France and its local allies, the Ivory Coast in the first place. In 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by grimy and coward Blaise the Traitor Compaoré. A week before his assassination, Sankara declared: while revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.
Benin, the ancient kingdom Dahomey, is mostly famous for having been both the birthplace of voodoo as well as one of the largest exporters of forced human labour during the dark days of Atlantic Slave Trade. After a long period of nominal self-rule, the Kingdom of Dahomey eventually fell under the French colonial yoke from 1904 to 1958. The Gaulois eventually left a completely unprepared post-colonial Dahomey to its newly regained independence and after a series of shortsighted coups the country eventually became the latest improbable actor in the African Cold War theatre: in 1972 Mathieu Kérékou, a French-trained high-ranking officer, led a successful military putsch crowned by the proclamation of the People's Republic of Benin, titularly a Marxist nation but in reality just the umpteenth member of the un-prestigious club of African Rouge States. Although there were a few positive initiatives and reforms (such as campaigns for rural development and education, as well as massive efforts to root out voodoo, witchcraft and retrograde beliefs), Benin remained, in fact, a politically isolated and economically broken caricature of a corrupt Sub-Saharan country.
Once home to the almost-mythical Ashanti Empire, present-day Ghana fell under British rule during the second half of the XIX century after four bloody wars against the last descendants of the ancient Ashanti house. The crown colony of the Gold Coast (as the Britons aptly renamed the mineral-rich Ashanti land) finally regained independence between 1957 and 1960 under the rule of Kwame Nkrumah, a philosopher, writer, revolutionary, Lenin-Peace-Prize winner and ante litteram pan-africanist who led his nation through a peaceful and successful liberation struggle to a more equal (and slightly Soviet-aligned) society in accessible education, universal healthcare, women’s rights and nationalised industrial development were paramount policies. His pan-African socialist visions obviously didn’t please Ghana’s former colonial masters and in 1966, while on a state visit to North Vietnam, he was overthrown by a CIA-funded military-executed violent coup codenamed Operation Cold Chop. The event marked the irreversible end of Ghana’s ambitions to become a just socialist nation emancipated from the Anglo-American economical and political hegemony.