Word: ibos
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...hello? In a time of overnight city breaks and sequestered spa retreats, shaking hands with old-timers in straw hats with names like Joao Baptista (who turns out to be the local historian) may seem like a simple pleasure, but it is an increasingly rare one. Then again, Ibo Island in the Indian Ocean off northern Mozambique is a very rare place. (See pictures of luxury private islands...
...Ibo was an Arab trading post from about A.D. 800, then a Portuguese one from 1760. At the turn of the 20th century, it consisted of two forts, a grand plaza, countless mansions and a population of 37,000. But with the end of colonialism in 1975, Ibo was forgotten. Today, just 3,500 people live in and around the crumbling colonnades and red-tiled townhouses whose gardens still overflow with frangipanis, bougainvilleas and Indian almonds imported by the island's opulent forebears. And somehow, despite being considered for U.N. World Heritage status, Ibo has been barely rediscovered. There...
...Africa, Durban and Mombasa endured but Goree (Ghana) and Ibo (Mozambique) declined with the end of slavery. Nowhere, though, was harder hit by the end of that terrible trade than Zanzibar. Its former capital, Stone Town, was literally built on slaves: the bones of thousands were encased in the foundations of several buildings in a horrific form of reinforced masonry. But if slavers deserted Zanzibar, the immense houses they built on the backs of their ghastly cargo remain, along with a host of cultural legacies. And that's Stone Town's main draw: the chance to walk through the past...
...negotiated throughout his career. Achebe traverses cultural boundaries by integrating them. In “Things Fall Apart,” he blends features of the African oral tradition with English literary tropes. Although the novel is written in English, Achebe mimics the cadence and narrative structure of the Ibo language, and the characters’ lives revolve around priorities informed by Umuofian values. This blurring of boundaries is to be expected from Achebe, who was born in a Nigerian village to Protestant parents. Though he came of age in a Christian household, Achebe was surrounded by manifestations of traditional...
Soyinka’s activism has resulted more than once in his arrest and imprisonment. After the outbreak of civil war in Nigeria in 1967, Soyinka tried to negotiate a cease-fire with the Ibo secessionists. The government accused him of conspiring with the rebels and detained him, without trial, at the notorious Kaduna prison in northern Nigeria where he spent two years in solitary confinement...