With the entire Orango archipelago to the west and blocking the open ocean, the “africa princess” sails from Roxa Island to the eastern coast of Orangozinho over even calmer waters.
Both the tide and the sun go down in plain sight. The captain launches anchor near Ponta de Canapá.
The transfer leaves us within reach of the south coast of the island and the extensive beach that defines its end.
As always, Pinto leads the way and sets the pace, along the sand where the low tide left a few puddles.
As often happens in Bijagós, instead of bathers, a few small spotted cows frequent it, more intrigued than distressed by our sudden appearance, averse to any contact.
“We’re really in a hurry!” We playfully teased the guide. “I wanted to see if we could get to the colonists' landmark with light still on, for you to see and photograph. But there’s still a bit to go.”
We walked. And we continue walking south of Orangozinho. Under the surgical gaze of fish eagles at the top of palm trees.
Until we reached the southeast tip of Orangozinho. A rock reef reduces the sand. Tighten it in such a way that it lifts it against the vegetation.
The lighthouse bequeathed by the colonists
“The colonists’ landmark is behind it! “, assures Pinto. “But the vegetation has grown a lot. It’s more hidden than before.” We climbed to the top of the threshold dunes.
From there, we finally managed to glimpse a rusty metal tower, crowned by an old lamp. Pinto called it a landmark for the colonists.
In practice, it would be another piece of infrastructure left by the Portuguese after the Bijagós exchanged their fierce resistance for a peace treaty.
In those years of the Scramble for Africa and after the Berlin Conference, the Orango archipelago was governed by a powerful queen, Pampa, (died in 1930, considered the last true monarch of the Bijagós) and by an enlightened, determined and warlike elite who arrived profiting from the slave trade of rival ethnicities.
We realized that a staircase served the lighthouse. Attracted by the possibility of going up, we suggested to Pinto that we look for the base. Pinto wrinkles his nose. “Everyone is going to get scratched, and the ladder is falling apart.” These were the most obvious demotivations I had experienced.
Later, we discovered that the lighthouse was located next to an area delimited for the Women's Fanados, ritual periods of initiation for the Bijagó ethnic group in which they were supposed to remain isolated from the community.
Bijagó himself, a native of the neighboring island of Canhambaque that we had previously passed through – to the east of Bubaque – Pinto felt obliged to protect us from such intrusion and the likely punishment.
We submit to your judgment. We return to the flattened sand. We resumed our walk through Orangozinho.
The Sunset that Gilds the Southeast Threshold of Orango National Park
Having passed a final corner of the coast, we were left with the southern beach ahead, so long that we could barely see its end.
The sun was setting towards these sides, which blurred the contemplation.
We focused on the immediate: how a nearby palm grove generated silhouettes of which, at intervals, ospreys took off.
And, already back, how distinct palm groves ripped the sky in fire, with a saltwater mirror reflecting it.
We return to "africa princess". We planned to return to Orangozinho.
As such, we had dinner and spent the night offshore.
Back to Orangozinho, in search of Uite
Dawn confirms another transfer to the support boat and incursion to the island.
Still with the reference to Ponta de Canapá, we enter the Canecapane River and the mangrove forest that surrounds it.
At the entrance, in a mangrove forest that the low tide had left with its roots exposed, we came across a group of green monkeys busy eating seafood.
We snaked our way above Canecapane.
At a certain point, we diverted to a channel pointing towards the interior of the island.
We climbed it to its muddy end, where two traditional boats added colors to the green landscape.
To avoid attacking each other, we take off our shoes.
Between suspicious periopthalms, we move onto a narrow and dark path. Without warning, the trail opens into a clearing that used to house a school.
The Biggest Tabanca on the Island
After some time without seeing a soul, we were surprised by dozens of young pupils and students.
Some chattered, sitting side by side, on the horizontal trunks of an old tree. Others peered through the windows of one of the classrooms, trying to understand who those people were who were visiting them.
We spoke for some time with the young professor, posted from Bissau. When he informs us that he has to start a new class, we resume our journey.
We were in Uite, the largest town in Orangozinho, with more than seven hundred inhabitants, as Pinto explains to us, not all of them from the Bijagó ethnic group.
As is typical of visits to Bijagó tabancas, we are surrounded by a crowd of begging children.
They complain about the attention that several adults who became hosts enjoyed.
One of them informs us that the village wasn't like this before, that it had traditional thatched roofs, but that an uncontrolled fire destroyed most of the houses and dictated their reconstruction with sheet metal.
Now, if this explanation catches us off guard, the next one even more so.
Uite, a Muslim, Christian and Animist Tabanca
When he sees a resident having language difficulties, Pinto resorts to his struggling Portuguese.
In practice, they tried to justify to us why so many girls and women in the tabanca wore abayas, or similar things.
“Here in Uite, there are two religions.
On that side of the tabanca, they are Muslims. Therefore, they are Christians and believe in Bijagó things.”
We had been exploring the archipelago for ten days. That was the first island where this happened. The reason for the unexpected communion intrigued us.
Now, it is known that at a certain point during the colonization of the Orango islands, families of fishermen from the Beafada and Mandingo ethnicities left the African continent and occupied the south of Orangozinho.
Their descendants form a large part of the Uitense population. They are responsible for the Islamization of the island and the archipelago, even if, in Orangozinho, they compete with the Catholic and Protestant churches.
The settlement of these two ethnicities is far from being unique. The so-called Nhominca fishermen also came down from the Senegalese region of the Saloum River Delta, known as the Barbacins River, in the era of Discoveries. They settled in Orango and on islands in the vast Bijagó Urok archipelago.
Attracted by the abundance of fish and the permissiveness of the natives, from time to time, they also settle in Bijagós or groups arriving from the Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry and even Sierra Leone visit them.
The integration of the Nhomincas, the mandinga, beafadas, roles and other ethnicities in the Bijagó territory and society would be enough for an entire doctoral thesis. Instead, let's resume our tour of Uite.
Pinto explains to us that, despite the territorial division established by the main land “avenue”, everyone in the tabanca gets along well. “They know how to respect each other and conflicts are rare.
A Journey Endured by Uite
Look, just to see, the football team here in Uite is one of the best in Bijagós. They were the last to win the championship here in the archipelago!”
Judging by the kids' passion for football in different forms, this achievement made perfect sense.
A few remain engaged in a tournament held with caps, buttons and tuna cans as goals.
Others, older, touch a ball tied to a rope.
When we photograph them, two or three women confiscate their ball and show us what they are capable of.
Once the exhibition is over, they ask neighboring spectators to let us taste their freshly fermented cashew wine. We drank.
It tastes much better than the last palm wine we had tasted in Accra, the capital of Ghana.
Pinto indicated that it was time for us to leave.
Returning to Africa Princess, we stop at a spit of sand offshore, perfect for swimming.
There, aboard their traditional boat, fishermen from Uite were preparing an imminent continuation of fishing.
They ask Pinto if we didn't need to take some. Pinto explains that during our visit to Uite, the crew of the African Princess had already taken care of their own fishing.
So it was. When we re-entered the mother vessel, we almost had a lunch full of fish from the Bijagós.
That afternoon, we would continue towards the island of João Vieira, part of the sub-archipelago of the same name neighboring that of Orango, which we had already covered, starting from Kere Island, in Search for your elusive hippos.
HOW TO GO:
fly with the euroatlantic , Lisbon-Bissau and Bissau-Lisbon, on Fridays.
“AFRICA PRINCESS” CRUISE
Book your cruise through the Bijagós archipelago at: africa-princess.com
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +351 91 722 4936
