Home Archive by category "Africa" (Page 6)

Category: Africa

Voodoo for beginners. Part 1

The somewhat challenging nature of Voodoo for animal lovers is put to the ultimate test at the fetish markets. These are the pharmacies of the voodoo world: after a consultation the priest will provide a prescription which is then purchased from the market. The stalls look a bit like the trophy collection of some psychotic, random animal hunter: great arrays of heads in varying states of decomposition, dogs, monkeys, cattle, birds and even most definitely endangered creatures such as leopards…

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Cotonou Benin – African streetlife

Arriving at night in Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin and typical of West African cities, you  are enveloped in a mist of dust, smoke of cooking fires and burning rubbish, as the dawn breaks these flavours are joined by less savoury ones such as traffic fumes and sewage. The dust is courtesy of the Harmattan wind that is progressively delivering the Sahara desert and every bit of loose dirt in the Sahel region on its southern borders, to the…

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The many faces of Uganda

If the first thing you think of at the mention of Uganda is Idi Amin and the brutality of his regime then you will be delighted to hear that Ugandans are some of the most polite, courteous and softly spoken people you could meet. With the usual exception of the driving and some regions bordering less stable states, it’s just about the safest country in Africa and its a wonder that such a society could create the horrors of Amin and…

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A wedding, Rwanda style……or maybe Burundi

Having been invited to Rwanda for my friend Chance’s wedding  to lovely, local girl Fausta I could only have been kept away at gunpoint. Although there were three days of festivities in all, two of them broadly followed the outline of the wedding I attended during the visit two years ago, see  http://insideotherplaces.com/2008/03/18/rwanda-2008-not-just-gorillas-and-killers/ . Hence what follows concerns only the traditional wedding ceremony day. Unlike the previous wedding where we were guests I was honored (not a term I would…

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Mauritania – history to hip hop

The desert town of Chinguetti was once a must see for the predominantly French tourists in Mauritania but the decimation wrought by  EU government travel warnings meant that Steve and I accounted for at least 25% of the visitors on any day of our 4 days there. Whilst this may well add to the level of “authenticity” of the travel experience for those of us who have bothered, it is difficult to overstate the desperate plight of the inhabitants of…

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Welcome to Mauritania

Lets be honest, how many of you could point to Mauritania on the map?  There is a distinct lack of Thomas Cook package tours to the country to boost its tourist profile and little sign of that changing.  However, the welcome Steve and I received was in complete contrast to the UK and French government advice to travellers, which paints the country as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism where foreigners should tread every step with fear. Mauritania does indeed have…

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Two sides of Senegal

It is easy and probably even justified to fill travel blogs on Africa with tales of its’ charming inhabitants, but there is always an exception and that is Dakar, the capital of Senegal. It is difficult to summon any positive words to say of Dakar, so I won’t bother lest I leave any of you with the merest glimmer of a reason for ever going there. Most of you, I am sure are aware that I am perfectly happy to…

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Good vibes in The Gambia

I have come to learn that public transport offers an enlightening, microcosmic view of society in many countries, the first bus journey I and my friend Steve take in the Gambia being a case in point. Our weather beaten, crumpled carriage finally clanged and grumbled into life on the 5th attempt when several of the passengers had got out to help push starting;  amiable locals chatted away in a melange of languages typical of the region (I have heard four…

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Burundi – Where?

Burundi may not seem to you an obvious destination for a beach holiday, in fact many people’s response to the name will probably be “where?” In case you need to know its to the south of Rwanda on the NE shore of Lake Tanganyika    – a vast body of water by which we have been sunning ourselves on the goldenish sands. Sunday was hardly heaving like Brighton beach on a bank holiday but on monday we shared the beach…

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Tanzania – wildlife and wild life

I am sure most of you will have seen countless wildlife programmes over the years, undoubtedly many of these will have had footage of both the Ngorongoro crater and the Serengeti in the Masai Mara. It goes without saying that experiencing the animals in the wild is a great improvement on the telly. First stop the Ngorongoro crater, even without the wildlife it would be worth the visit: A 20km wide caldera (essentially a massive volcano that blew its top…

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