louiseinlimbo

Trying to minimise my long-distance flights (for both environmental and cost reasons) I had organised back-to-back trips in Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, although the cost bit didn’t really work as the 45-minute flight from Port Harcourt to Malabo actually cost me more than the Malabo to Mumbai flight I was taking one week later! Equatorial Guinea is apparently the least visited country in Africa, with just 6,000 foreign tourists per year, and to be honest there isn’t that much to attract your typical tourist – I mean the coastline is beautiful, but you wouldn’t go there for a beach holiday!  I was again on a tour focused on the traditional cultures, but as with Nigeria it is hard to pin down precise days and times of ceremonies or even meetings, and several of those on the itinerary did not materialise.  But we covered a lot of the country – both the island of Bioko where the capital (Malabo) is situated and the mainland, Rio Muni.  There were only three of us, with one...

  Whilst still wishing I had more time in Lagos, I took my flight from there to Port Harcourt, to join a ten-day tour of what the agency naughtily called Biafra – a term you should not use in front of most Nigerians.  Yes, a lot of time has passed since the Biafra War (1967-70), but it resulted in the deaths of more than a million people, and the country is still battling to maintain its unity.  Our tour included a visit to the Biafra War Museum in Umuahia (which was for a time the capital of Biafra), and I did hear a few rants from people in the region who still resent being a part of Nigeria (given that most of the wealth of the nation consists of the oil in their region), but it is generally not something you should talk about today. What we tried to talk about was the cultural history of that part of the country, but I have to say that we met so many kings and chiefs, and saw so many different masquerades, that my head is still reeling, and I think I just have to acce...

  So I finally made it to Lagos.   Somewhere I’ve felt for many years that I should visit, but never found the courage to do so, as I’d bought into the view that it was a dangerous city.   Then I read a report by a female traveller who’d spent a month there, who said it was nowhere near as scary as people assumed, so I decided to spend a few days there. & I wish I’d spent longer.   I took advice not to follow my usual cheapest-available-accommodation approach, but booked myself into a nice little boutique hotel in a safe neighbourhood, and also booked their airport transfer.   As I researched what to see, I realised that I should have given myself two more days, but anyway, I had a half day and three full days to do what I could. I started with the National Museum, which I enjoyed – some great masks and other traditional artifacts, one of the Benin bronzes (so they’re not all in the British Museum!) and a rather unexpected exhibition of photographs docum...