Visiting Islands in the Atlantic Off the Coast of Africa

 Western history tells of the explorations and “discovery” of new worlds by the Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch.  Many of the modern nations in the Americas and Africa were at one time or another occupied and controlled by one of these explorer nations.  A decree by Pope Alexander VI in 1494, in negotiations with Spain and Portugal, divided the world by establishing a line of demarcation approximately 370 miles (600 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.  Spain was given the right to control lands west of the line, including the Americas, while Portugal could conquer the lands east of the line, including parts of Africa and Asia.   In 1506 the line of demarcation was moved farther west so that Portugal could lay claim to what is now Brazil.  Many of the nations I visited on the Grand Voyage I am currently undertaking speak either Spanish or Portuguese, depending on which country colonized them.

Nearing Africa, our cruise ship (Oceania’s Marina) stopped at several Atlantic islands which bear the imprint of their respective colonizers.  These islands are the subject of this post, along with a report on our stop in the African nation of Senegal. (The approximate locations of these islands are shown on the map I drew in my travel sketchbook.)

It took four days to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Brazil before docking in Porto Grande, the busiest port in the nation of Cape Verde.   Porto Grande is near the city of Mindelo and on the northern coast of São Vicente Island, one of ten islands that make up Cape Verde (Cabo Verde).  While Cape Verde is an independent nation, thanks to its previous colonization, Portuguese is the official language of the islands; however, the population is primarily African.  The islands are mountainous but very dry, with little vegetation.  We understand that fresh water is in short supply and comes from very deep wells.

Two of the photos show the islands of Cape Verde, the others are of the town of Mindelo

We found Mindelo to be a lovely city with colorful buildings, a vibrant fishing culture, and many markets selling produce and handicrafts from all over Africa. 

Mindelo markets.  I bought several African fabrics at one of the stalls.

Fishing activity in Cape Verde

Skyline of Dakar as seen from the ferry to Goree Island

From Cape Verde, we sailed to Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.  Historically, Western Africa was home to many different tribes and cultures, and warfare between them was not uncommon.  The winning tribe often took prisoners or captives; although being captured was not typically a permanent state.  However, when the Europeans came to Western Africa, they found tribesmen that were willing to sell these captives for goods such as textiles, alcohol, and weapons. 
  

We decided to visit Goree Island, a UNESCO Heritage Site,  in memory of those who were enslaved in the Americas.  We learned that from the 15^th to the 19^th century, Goree was the largest slave trading center in Africa.  Senegal had been ruled variously by the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French, and all were involved in slave trading at one point or another.  The French built a fort on Goree Island and colonized Senegal.  While French is the official language of Senegal today, it is only spoken by about 37% of the population.  About 1,800 people live on Goree Island at present.

Top left photo is of the French fort; bottom photos show Goree houses; top right, Goree today

Africans enslaved for transport to America were kept in one of the slave houses on Goree.  Families were separated with men, women, and children being housed separately.  Those who had a needed trade escaped transport and were put to work on Goree.  Some of the African women were impregnated by their European captors and bore mixed-race children known as “signares.”  The signares remained on Goree island as free men and women.  

The bottom center photo is of a mural depicting native life before slavery.  

Several years ago, I read the novel “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi, which tells the story of imprisonment and transport from another African location, but I kept thinking of the horrific details provided in that novel as I walked through Goree Island.  The European traders lived in the second floor of the slave houses and the captured people in dark rooms on the ground floor.  Groups of twenty or more were placed in a single room.  The rooms had a little bit of light and air from openings that were wide inside and very narrow on the outside so that no one could escape through them.  The prisoners were allowed out once a day for exercise and personal needs.  Of course, their “living” quarters were dirty, smelly, and very unhygienic.  The stay on Goree Island was typically short, before the captured people were crowded into the holds of ships for the transatlantic journey to either South or North America.  As many as a million may have died during transport. 

Bottom left photo shows a painting of a typical slave house; top left shows the narrow window in slave rooms and bottom center a door through which the captured people were moved to a waiting ship.  Note the transport doors on the slave houses in top center photo.  Right is a sales poster.

The photo to the right shows a plaque on a wall in the slave house we visited.  My translation of it is:  “Millions and millions of men, women, and children of today can say no to misery and shame, because the men yesterday, who were traded as slaves by the powerful, affirmed in their hearts that they were men.   And many died over three centuries so that no one would ever forget it.”

Leaving Senegal, our ship sailed to the Canary Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles off the coast of Morocco.  Seven of the islands are populated, with a total population of more than two million.  The Canaries are part of Spain and the southernmost portion of the European Union.  We visited three of the Canaries with our first stop in the town of La Palma on the island of Gran Canaria. 

According to our shore excursion guide there, the islands were populated by Africans when the Spanish claimed the islands in the late 1400s.  The natives provided a ready source of slave labor, much in demand at the time.  Our guide reported that approximately thirty percent of the current population of the Canaries has some African markers in their DNA.  The prevailing theory is that the natives were Berbers who had arrived from Morocco, perhaps with the Romans.  There is evidence of a Roman presence on the islands which suggests that the Berbers were brought as laborers.  This statue, in one of the gardens we visited, depicts the action many of the Africans took—jumping off a cliff to a certain death rather than face being captured and enslaved. 

According to our guide, the port at La Palma generates around 5000 jobs with the chief exports being bananas and tomatoes.  Approximately four million tourists-- mostly from Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain--visit the island annually with the peak season being from October to May.  Our tour on Gran Canaria visited three different botanical gardens.  We were in this port on Easter Sunday so the gardens were largely empty, and we had a lovely time strolling through the gardens and viewing a wide variety of plants.  The first garden surrounded the Hotel Santa Catalina (photo to the right) which was built in 1890 to accommodate the British trade industry.  Agatha Christie was among the guests who have stayed at this hotel.

Trees, clockwise from top right:  Jackfruit, Jackaranda, candle cactus, short leave ficus, banana, Canary pine

We were also treated to a group of peacocks with some of the males demonstrating their mating behaviors for females who reminded largely uninterested.

Male peacocks, top photos; female peacock, bottom left; rooster and black swan.

Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands.  It was our second port, and the one at which about 700 Oceania guests disembarked and another 900 embarked the vessel.  We had enjoyed the relatively uncrowded conditions of a less-than-fully-occupied ship on our Atlantic crossing, but now that we are in Europe, the ship is fully booked with about 1,200 passengers on board.

We took a walking tour in the city of Santa Cruz (“Holy Cross”).  We stopped to view a large monument to those who were lost during the Spanish Civil War.  We learned that it is a controversial monument because it was built by the government of the dictator Francisco Franco and aggrandizes those who fought on his side during the Civil War.  As we stood in front of a building that had been the seat of government, our guide told us that Francisco Franco and others had planned a secret action in the forest and had then assassinated the governor of the Canaries in this building.  This coup started the war and ultimately led to the overthrow of the Republic and the establishment of Franco as dictator. 

These stories piqued my interest in knowing more about this period in Spanish history.  What I know of the Spanish Civil War comes largely from novels such as “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, so I consulted Google and Wikipedia for “the facts.”  Spain had been ruled by a monarchy which ended with the establishment of a Republic in 1931.  One of the aspects of the new Constitution was that schools could no longer be controlled by the Catholic church but were to be run by the government.  Franco and other “Nationalists” advocated the return of the monarchy and an end to the reforms initiated by the Republicans to modernize and equalize the country.  The civil war, which was viewed as a class and religious struggle or as a battle between communism and fascism, lasted from 1936 to 1939.

Left photo and bottom center are from the monument.  Top center is the outside of the governor's house where Franco shot the governor.  Right photos are inside the house, which is now a tourist information center.

As we strolled around this beautiful city, we learned that the people of the island, whose main industry was fishing, were labeled as such in a derogatory manner, so the people of Tenerife embraced the label  and created a fish statue as a point of pride.  Next to the fish statue is one of a “water woman.”  Water had to be carried from a city fountain to homes, so some enterprising women earned money by carrying water for others.

Photos clockwise from top left:  the harbor; colorful houses; statues of water woman and fish;

dragon tree, native to the islands; the market; and the town and harbor as seen from our ship.

I found the city library to be a very unique building.  It is built on a hillside and is triangular in shape.  One side has a concrete wall with small irregularly shaped windows and the other side is all glass.  Here are some photos of the structure.  (The inside was full of people reading or studying.)

Photos clockwise from top left:  More colorful buildings, outside the library, looking down into the library, the old social club building for the common people, school girls on a field trip.

Our third Canary Island port was at another city named Santa Cruz, but this one is the capital of the island of La Palma, reputed to be the most uniquely beautiful of the Canaries.  Although his island chain was formed largely from volcanos, La Palma’s volcanos are still active, with the most recent eruptions having occurred in 1949, 1971, and 2021.  The most recent eruption caused much damage as lava flows reached populated areas of the island destroying thousands of buildings and banana plantations.  

Our shore excursion on Las Palmas took us to the site of a 1677 eruption, which now houses a museum about volcanic activity.  We walked alongside the volcano and peered into its caldera.

Photos clockwise from top left:  sign at the entrance to the museum, two photos of the caldera; plantlife coming back after the 1971 eruption, a village built on one of the lava flows that added land to the island, a video of the 2021 eruption.

Photos from around the island.  Volcanic rock is everywhere and is used to build retaining walls on the highways and houses.  To the left of the lighthouse are salt flats.

According ot our guide, banana production is the main industry on the island of La Palma.  The photos below show fields of bananas, some of which are covered with a permeable covering that acts as a greenhouse and also captures moisture.  We had a banana rum tasting at one of our stops.

Before heading to the European mainland, we stopped at one more island, this one in the archipelago know as Madeira.  Along with the Azores, the Maderia islands are part of the nation of Portugal.  Our port was Funchal, the capital of Madeira.  We had been here before on another cruise, so just strolled around town and took some miscellaneous photos of buildings, gardens, and sidewalk cafes.