Although modern forms of art and design are being used more and more, the traditional hand painted signs for shops are still common in much of Africa. Benin has largely retained the distinctly African style of commercial shop painting developed during the last century, whereas in Ivory Coast for example, you see a lot more work that seeks to portray people and objects in an overtly realistic fashion, as is more typical in the West. Although some would describe the…
What Africans have been telling me about Covid this year The arrival of the Omicron variant has finally, although rather unfairly, brought some of the focus in the pandemic onto Africa. There is at least now more discussion of the inequalities in the system that is putting profit before people, leaving Africans at the bottom of the vaccine supply chain. Having spent this year living in Africa and I ought to add, living with Africans, entirely disconnected from any expat…
Why would you want to stay in an African village in a country like the Ivory Coast? There’s little immediately evident appeal: no big sights to see; limited or no electricity and certainly no plumbing –  your shower will come out of a bucket and if you want a crap you’ll have to squat over a pungent hole in a dingy shack that’s steaming hot in the day and roach infested at night; you’ll get to sleep on an…
Learning what its like fasting for Ramadan, living with a Muslim family in West Africa
Motorbikes, Muslims, fashion and the modern woman in Burkina Faso. When your brain does a Google image search on the terms Muslim women, African women or African Muslim women, what comes to mind? I won’t be so presumptuous to think that my regular readers are the kind of people to jump immediately to the stereotypes of poverty and oppression, or at the very least to move on from them after a moment’s reflection – after all there are many…
Traditional religion and accusations of witchcraft in West Africa. Centuries after the introduction of Islam and Christianity to Sub-Saharan Africa, traditional religions may have been relegated to the margins in much of the continent but they still have a powerful hold over the culture of many Africans. Traditional religions, or at least elements of them, are often practiced alongside peoples’ professed faith, despite the best efforts of Imams and priests to paint the acts as haram or heretical. However, the…
Its 40C, what do you fancy doing? Sitting in the shade, drinking some ice-cold beer, going for a swim? Work wouldn’t be at the top of your list would it? If you had to work, you’d probably envision some kind of air conditioned environment and a source of ice cubes for your cold drinks. You bone idle slob! What about lugging a pile of granite on your head up a steep slope or swinging a bloody great sledge-hammer all day,…
The wonders of African shop art. I may be in a small group of weirdo aficionados of African shop art but I can’t get enough of it so here are a few more examples from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, for my fellow weirdos. This was certainly enough to convince me I had to buy a beer in this bar The art form always has to catch up with new technology, though it has to be said that solar panels provide little…
Why Burkina Faso’s revolutionary president still matters Under the full moon glow in the warm Ouagadougou night, to the thud of ominous beats, the Congolese rapper strode onto the stage, declaring, “I may be from Congo Brazzaville but tonight, on the anniversary of the death of Thomas Sankara we are all Burkinabe”. For the first time in the night the previously subdued crowd roared in appreciation, from then on he could do no wrong. But why, twenty-nine years after he…
More hand painted African shop art Given that my post on the hand painted shop art of Somaliland seemed relatively popular with some of you, it seemed sensible to give you something to compare it to and put it into perspective. Of course, the term relatively popular here is no actual indication of actual popularity, which could more accurately be described as woefully unpopular, which puts you, dear readers, in the travel blog reading category of weird deviants, which is…
