In a Bind

By Alli Sinclair

Billions of dollars, perhaps trillions, are spent every year on hair products and styling. It’s a lucrative industry and is a classic example of us humans obsessing over our noggins. This fascination isn’t new. In fact, the ancient world took this one step further—by altering their skulls.

Head binding, also known as artificial cranial deformation, dates back to 45,000 BC. The ancient Egyptians, Syrians, Maltese, Russians, Germans, and Australian Aborigines have all undertaken various forms of skull “enhancement” by binding their skull or placing cradleboards around a baby’s head to change the shape of their head.

Zip over to the Americas, and you’ll find the Mayans, Incas, and the tribes of the Chinookan and Choctaw people in North America also undertook the custom of deforming skulls as part of their culture. The Choctaw, Chehalis, and Nooksack Indians practised head flattening and on the coastal of Peru, not far from Lima, the Paracas culture had an array of altered head shapes.

Scientists have discovered at least five different shapes of elongated skulls in different cemeteries in the Paracas region. The most remarkable being a site called Chongos, not far from the quaint town of Pisco where the famous cone-shaped skulls were discovered.

Archaeologists specialising in the Mayans have discovered how altered skulls vary, depending on their geography. Skulls found in the lowlands had a slanted appearance, while skulls discovered in the highlands had an erect shape. They’ve even unearthed skulls that have a division down the middle and two distinct holes. The Mayans believed that every object has an essence, including the elements. While the mother was giving birth, the Mayans ensured the house was closed so the evil wind couldn’t harm the baby and as the baby’s soul was no yet tethered to the baby, the infants were even more vulnerable. Binding the baby’s head was akin to creating a roof over one’s head, and therefore a form of protection for the young child that would stay with it forever.

Some archaeologists believe the act of altering one’s skull was to create a “desirable” shape to make the person more aesthetically pleasing and on Tomman Island in Vanuatu, where it is still practised today, elongating the skull signifies intelligence and being closer to spirits. Whether it was for social status, such as an Incan nobleman, or for an affiliation with a tribe, the act of altering one’s skull causes great controversy in the archaeological world and certainly makes for some interesting discussions. Whatever the reasons, humans have always taken great care to alter their bodies, including their hair and head. So next time you go to the hairdresser, be careful what you ask for!

Joyful Noise: Pop Culture in Africa

By Jenni Gate

From some of the least hopeful places on the planet comes some of the most hopeful music. Throughout Africa, the trend in pop culture is for musicians to uplift and inspire, with folk instruments, upbeat rhythms, and lyrics.  They sing of their own transitions from desolation to optimism, or give tribute to the struggles of their compatriots.

BOMBINO Photo: By Modiba Productions (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Last week, Bombino, one of Africa’s fastest-rising musicians, released the album Nomad to critical acclaim. The album was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and the result is mesmerizing. Omara Bombino Moctar is a Tuareg born in Niger in 1980 in the midst of cultural and political upheaval. The Tuareg are a nomadic ethnic group common throughout northern Africa from Burkina Faso to Mali, Niger, Algeria, and Libya. Due to their nomadic lifestyle, they have been the subject of violent suppression since the days of colonialism. With North African governments seeking to restrict their movements as population growth stresses the desert environment, the Tuareg have found themselves marginalized and repressed. This led to several uprisings and reprisals from the 1960s through the present. Bombino grew up in the midst of violence. His family was forced to flee Niger several times to neighboring Algeria and later to Libya. During his years in exile, Bombino taught himself to play the guitar, watching videos of Mark Knopfler, Jimi Hendrix and others until he mastered their styles. In 2007, the government of Niger outlawed the guitar and executed two musicians, forcing Bombino to flee once again. His sound is electrifying with a voice like butter accompanying high-energy guitar and in the process encapsulating the sounds of rebellion and optimism. His music speaks of peace and rights for the Tuaregs spread throughout the Sahara.

This video about the making of Nomad includes background about Bombino and the history of the Tuareg people: 

Watch Bombino’s performance of a simple, yet beautiful Tuareg dedication song:

Listen to sample tracks from the album Nomad and discover more about this fascinating nomadic musician here: 

http://www.allmusic.com/album/nomad-mw0002494357
 

Photo: Harry Wad, CC by SA 3.0

Africa’s most inspiring musical couple is Amadou and Mariam. Amadou Bagayoko became blind at the age of 16, and Mariam Doumbia lost her sight at age 5 due to measles. Amadou and Mariam, both from Bamako, Mali, met in 1975 at an institute for the blind. They married in 1980 and began touring, recording, and playing at festivals worldwide. A 2004 collaboration with Manu Chao, a world-famous Latin musician, to produce the album Dimanche à Bamako propelled the couple to worldwide fame. Their music blends rock and blues with traditional Mali, Middle Eastern, and Indian instruments. Their French lyrics uplift and inspire, giving hope for the downtrodden of Mali. Many of their songs are love songs, like Je Pense à Toi. Themes of friendship, happiness, and community infuse their music.

In the midst of the current conflict in Mali, the couple has joined with several other musicians to speak out against the violence. See the story about this effort at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2013/01/18/169730172/watch-a-supergroup-from-mali-sing-for-peace

Je Pense à Toi:

A recent video about the current political situation in Mali:

Watch and listen to their official videos and songs here: http://www.youtube.com/amadouandmariam

Baloji. Photo: by Peter Forret, CC by 2.0

An edgy R&B rapper is making a mark on the African and European music scenes with a compelling personal story of triumph over adversity. Baloji, whose name means sorcerer in Swahili, was born in 1978 in Lubumbashi, Congo to a Congolese mother and Belgian father. When he was 3, his mother sent him to live in Belgium with his father. His father lost his fortune in Congolese investments when Baloji was 7 and deserted him. Baloji grew up in a school for delinquent children run by nuns. Angry, alienated, and out of sync with mainstream Belgian culture, he ran away at age 15 and joined a rap group. The group eventually became known as Starflam. They cut an album, Survivant, in 2001 that went platinum. Due to disagreements, Baloji quit the group in 2004, turning his back on music altogether.

Out of the blue, he received a letter from his mother who had not been in contact since 1981. His mother commented in her letter that when she sent him to Belgium she had intentionally sent him to the land of Marvin Gaye. Baloji deeply considered that musical legacy contrasted with the current condition of people in war-torn Congo. He realized that his life perspective was skewed. Rather than being a victim of a cross cultural childhood, he was fortunate to have escaped the intense poverty and violence of the Congo. When they spoke by phone, his mother asked him what he’d been doing for all the years they were apart. He produced his first solo album, Hotel Impala as a way to respond with the highlights of his life. Compelled to return to Kinshasa, a city built for 500,000 people but now home to over 12 million, he began a journey of exploration and self-discovery. Music in the Congo had not changed much in 25 years. Caught up in the feverish energy of the city, Baloji turned his confused cross-cultural identity into a strength. In just six days, he recorded the album Kinshasa Succursale with Congolese bands Konono No 1 and Zaiko Langa Langa. The album reworked several songs from Hotel Impala with several new songs, all blending Congolese instruments and rhythms. Gritty music videos were filmed on the streets of Kinshasa.

Karibou Ya Bintou (meaning Welcome to Limbo) is the signature track. It tells the tale of how he evolved from an angry young man to a music sorcerer, a creative spirit fully engaged with his cultural identity. Here is the video with English subtitles [for mature audiences only]:

Mellower sounds abound in Le Jour d’Après, which harkens back to the more constrained musical days of Independence.

If you happen to be in Britain this summer, catch a train tour called the African Express. About 80 musicians, including Amadou and Mariam and Baloji, are riding a train across country to promote the best in African music. Many of these artists have compelling personal stories, coming from war-torn areas, or overcoming lives of turmoil. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/26/africa-express-bound-for-glory

My First Time In A War Zone

By Jenni Gate

Car in Sandbox
Photo by Tim Lang (CC by 2.0)

At the age of six, I was magical. I had the power to create and shape anything I wanted in my sandbox. I spent hours creating and destroying, shaping mud into magical foods and fantastic animals. In my sandbox, I was like Aladdin flying on a carpet around the world. With magic thoughts, I visited my grandparents in America. Magic sang from me in my sandbox. I traveled down a river on a raft, through a jungle with snakes hanging from the trees. With a blink of the eyes, I was on a camel in the Sahara.

In 1966, our house in Kaduna, the capital of the Northern Region of Nigeria, was in the suburbs of the city in the agricultural heartland. There was a large field surrounding our house. Nearby, cattle grazed on dry, grassy plains, hot and dusty, with snakes slithering through long grass.

We loved Nigeria. We had an active social life, clubs and parties, friends of every nationality, road trips into the country, lazy days spent by the river or at a hotel swimming pool. We loved our nanny, Martha, who watched my little sister and me when my mother was out during the day. Ussman, a highly-respected hajj in our community, managed our household. 

At night, before we crawled under our mosquito netting, we watched termites swarm around the light posts on our street. As some touched the heat of the bulbs, the lights sizzled, their bodies popped, and they fell to the ground. Sometimes the hot, charred scent wafted past our noses in the night. The Nigerians gathered and ate the fat termite bodies. Ussman said they were a gift from Allah, to feed the people. It was magic.

When I played in my sandbox, I created swarms of termites to feed my pretend people. My older sister Susie dug streets and built houses on her side of the sandbox. She honked the horns of her match box cars, revved engines and sped the cars through her town. She was not happy when my imaginary termites tried to feed her imaginary people by dropping in big clumps all around her cars.

Sometimes when we played, we saw dik-dik, small bush deer, watching us from the field next to our house. Magic shimmered in the air, as if the deer could talk to us.

Every afternoon, Ussman came out on the porch at dusk and called us in. "Pickin," (children) he called, "time to come in now." He worried about the cobras, adders and scorpions living under our house and porch and in holes in the ground. Once we were safely inside, large, black cobras, as high as my shoulders and as dark as the night swayed before the windows, spying on us from the pitch black night.

My parents loved to entertain. The Irish Catholic priest, Father Bell, was a frequent guest. At Christmas, he always blessed our house, expecting a nog in return. If Dad shared his good whiskey, Father Bell blessed the house no matter what the season was. He was jolly and loved to drink and dance. We once had him in a conga line, and a woman dancing in line behind him flopped his cassock up and down with the beat of the music.

"Father Bell, do your blessings really work?" I asked.

"Aye, child," he said, "they keep you safe and happy." He was the most magical person I knew.

Playing in my sandbox one spring day in 1966 while Susie was at school, I heard explosions. I hurried inside as a crowd of angry people ran down the street, sticks and machetes in hand. Ussman reassured us that he would not let anything happen to us.

That night, we heard on BBC radio that the Premier of Nigeria was assassinated, and his home a few blocks from our house was destroyed. Military leaders of Ibo ethnicity seized power. 

There were frequent riots, and school was often disrupted. I sat in my room, scooting Susie's matchbox cars along the windowsill, wishing my sandbox could be inside.

At school, air raid practices became the norm for Susie, who never believed her desk would really save her. Whenever she dove under her desk, she invariably found herself with her nose butting up to the smelly boy in front of her. She began to think she would take her chances if there ever was an air raid.

Masks & Spears

One night we were robbed as we slept, and the blankets were stolen from our beds. In a patch of brush across from our house, Dad and several neighbors and servants armed with poison-tipped spears and bows and arrows converged on a hiding place and found curtains, weapons, our silverware set, even a typewriter. The thieves had a spear and some ground nuts in a little wooden bowl with primitive animal patterns burnished into the surface.

Thieves' Bowl

It turned out our night watchman had failed to pay his "dues" or protection money to the corrupt police chief who was running a protection racket. Dad fired the watchman and hired one Tuareg, a fierce nomadic warrior, to guard our house. Although we hired only one, at night we saw hundreds of small cooking fires in the bush surrounding our house. When we put our lights out, they hid and waited for thieves. I felt safer with the Tuaregs guarding our house, their fires flickering magically into the distant brush. But I still made Dad check under my bed every night.

Playing in my sandbox, I used sticks as spears and knives. My make-believe people locked their doors at night. Sometimes they fought battles and had to have a priest bless their homes.

In July, 1966, there was a second military coup, putting Colonel Yakubu Gowon in power. There were several riots. Kaduna, as the capitol of the Northern Region, became embroiled in turmoil. The Muslim Hausa from the north swept south, slaughtering Christian Ibos from the east. The Ibos retaliated. Portrayed as a religious war in the international press, it was probably rooted more in nepotism than religion. Thousands of refugees fled across Nigeria. Bodies lay in the streets near our home. 

Throughout 1966, we heard sporadic gunfire and fighting. Mom worried about Dad being stranded from us at his USAID job in the city, and he often was. Ussman began warning us to stay away from certain areas of the city because there was going to be a spontaneous riot. His predictions were always right. 

Magic thoughts dimmed as I started school. Our Embassy advised that if there was an air raid, we should dive into the ditches along the road, essentially open sewers. Mom said she would rather take her chances with the planes. Life went on.

We lived with riots and gunfire in the night. Our dreams were full of army men coming into the house while we slept. Susie sometimes whispered, "If anything happens to our parents, Ussman can walk us north to Niger. We will find people to help us there."

"What's going to happen to them?" I asked.

"I don't know," Susie answered, "but we need to figure out how to get back to the States."

I no longer fantasized about magic. Streams of refugees passed through our city. My childish prayers and magic would not help anyone. I stopped pretending.

In 1967, after months of violence, the evacuation orders came. We said a quick goodbye to Ussman with no time to say goodbye to the other people we loved. The plane loomed large before us. Dead and injured bodies littered the tarmac. My magic was also dead.

In our absence, the Embassy sent packers to pack and ship all our belongings to us. When our things arrived in America months later, everything of value had been stolen, but the packers had carefully wrapped all the garbage in our wastebaskets and shipped it to us. Unpacking the box from my room, I smiled when I noticed a sandy matchbox car cocooned in the trash.

Dogs of Africa

Our guest today is Jenni Gate, who has worked as a paralegal, a mediator, a small business consultant, and a writer. Born in Libya and raised throughout Africa and Asia, Jenni’s upbringing as a global nomad provided a unique perspective on life. As a child, she lived in Libya, Nigeria, the Congo, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the Washington DC area. As an adult, she has lived in Alaska, England, and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her published work includes several articles for a monthly business magazine in Alaska and a local interest magazine in Idaho. She has written several award-winning memoir pieces for writing contests. Jenni currently writes fiction, drawing upon her global experiences. New adventures abound. To read more about Jenni's adventures around the world, visit her at Nomad Trails and Tales.

In Kaduna, Nigeria, at about the age of 8, my sister spayed our dog. The scent of wet dog wafted through the garage as she shaved Tippy’s abdomen, Susie was excited; eager to find out what our dog looked like on the inside, curious about the organs, arteries, and veins. She still remembers the coppery smell of Tippy’s blood as she cut into the abdomen with a scalpel. Our family friend, a veterinarian we called Doc, was standing nearby, giving her directions. Doc’s son was there because Doc hoped he would become a vet too. As Susie cut Tippy open, she was so fascinated she barely noticed Doc’s son running out of the garage to vomit. The operation was otherwise a success, and Tippy was soon recuperating with a lampshade around her head to keep her from pulling out the stitches Susie had sewn with such intense concentration. Doc told her she had done so well, he would teach her how to pierce her ears if our parents let him. It might seem a little anti-climactic, but she was thrilled.

Tippy in Nigeria

Tippy was a good companion. Outside during the day, she barked to warn us of snakes and pit vipers in the grass. When I was 7, and my little sister was 4, we played for hours in our sandbox or wandered in front of our house through the elephant grass where the Fulani grazed their cattle as Tippy kept a watchful eye out for us. When we were evacuated from Nigeria during its civil war, our household staff promised to look after our dog. We left without saying goodbye to friends, including Tippy. I don’t know if she made it through that war alive.

We then moved to Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As we shopped in the market one day, struggling to understand the French and Lingala spoken all around us, my sisters and I discovered a basket full of wiggly, golden-colored puppies. Mom tried to stop us, but we ran to the box and reached in, petting their soft fur and feeling their wet little noses. One puppy stood on his hind legs, tail wagging more furiously than the rest. We worked on Mom and left with a puppy that we paid far too much for. We argued for days about what to name him. Sometimes, he walked in circles as if in a daze. He walked into table legs, ran and chased us wildly only to sit down as if confused. One of our houseboys called him Futu. We asked what that meant, and he laughed and said “all shot - crazy.” He thought the dog was a lost cause. So Futu he was. As he grew into a dog, he developed terrible mange. Mom tried every remedy she could think of, but his fur fell out in clumps. He never got very big, but he had a good personality and never tired of playing with us.

Futu in Kinshasa

President Mobutu’s corrupt policies were already leading to a sense of desperation among the Congolese people. Every night we had an attempted break-in. We awoke each morning to find metal filings around all the bars on our windows. Then one morning, we were robbed at breakfast. Two men showed up at the door showing false US Embassy identification, pushing their way into our house. Mom’s French was non-existent and their English was minimal. Mom yelled, “Get out of this house!” One of them said, “Après vous, Madame.” But out the door they went, and up the hill behind us, terrorizing our neighbors along the way. We got Fafner soon after that.

The Belgians used German shepherds as tools of oppression during King Leopold’s reign, creating fear and hatred in the Congolese people. Years later, George Foreman gained the instant antipathy of the Congolese when he showed up for the Rumble in the Jungle against Mohammed Ali with his German shepherd. Many believe it cost Foreman the fight because the crowds yelled so loud for Ali, and the hatred of Foreman was palpable.

Belgian Shepherd Dog
Photo by Olgierd Pstrykotworca (CC BY 2.0)

We knew nothing of this when Fafner came to us, but he was a great deterrent. Built for brute force, he was huge. He could even kill on command (not that we ever put it to the test), and he was viciously protective. Trained by his previous owner, Fafner took all his commands in French. He must have felt like a foreigner in our English-speaking household. Whenever we had French-speaking friends over, he listened intently, crawling on his belly to get closer, and looking adoringly into their faces, nodding at words he seemed to recognize.

My sisters and I often played in a frangipani tree by the wall in front of our house. One day we saw a camp site below on the other side. Soon a police sergeant appeared with a Belgian man asking to check around our yard. The Belgian’s air conditioner was stolen and the thief’s tracks led to the wall in front of our house. While my dad led them out to the wall, Fafner ran behind the sergeant and bit his calf.

"Merde!" the sergeant shouted. He rolled on the ground, shaking a finger at the Belgian. "See, I told you. You need a dog like this for protection."

What pet memories have you accumulated in your travels, and have you ever traveled or lived abroad with a pet?

Off The Beaten Track: Chobe, the Greatest River I Know

Yolanda L. Comedy is a world traveler and an independent consultant who works on science and technology policy issues while chipping away at the possibility of a novel writing career. Somewhere along the way, she has learned that she has so much to say that can’t be captured in her technical papers and policy speak. However, she has had a wonderful career with opportunities that include: a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Political Science and Public Policy; an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship; and working at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at IBM, and starting her own consulting business. 

I stretched my feet out, lying on my side with book in hand. So beautiful, so relaxing, and just what I needed after three months leading a group of students working in Botswana in the Kalahari desert. We were with Operation Crossroads Africa, a precursor to the Peace Corps, designed to give students the opportunity to visit African countries while working on development projects. We made bricks to build a new school, helped build latrines and, in turn, caught a glimpse at a life very different from our own. Now I wonder what ever happened to those students in my group?

But at that moment, all I knew was that I had a corner of peace and quiet. Everyone was “off doing their own thing” and I was finally alone. “This is so beautiful,” I thought looking out over the Chobe River, a nature preserve in Botswana. I tried to read my book, but my mind was elsewhere, dizzy with the memories of the few days we had been staying in a camp on the banks of the Chobe. I tried to return to the words on the pages of my book. Success, two more paragraphs read. Then suddenly I jumped to my feet, my heart pounding as the memories of my journey while still in Chobe came rushing back.

Gnus and zebras at Chobe National Park in Botswana

“What the hell am I doing?” I asked myself, not knowing how to react to my stupidity as I backed away from the bank of the river. Botswana’s Chobe River is spectacular. In all my years of travel, all of the places I have seen and experienced, Chobe, Botswana’s first national park, is among the top on my list of favorites. It will always be printed indelibly on my brain. Chobe is the place where I learned never to forget that humans share this planet with other forms of life that are as much a part of Earth as we are. I saw first hand some of the living diversity of our planet and was humbled before it. That’s why it was so amazing that I thought that I could sit and read a book on the banks of the Chobe River when just hours before, I had witnessed crocodiles swimming lazily along its shores. Humbled by the many species I had seen, but not wanting to be dinner for any of them, I decided to enjoy the scenery from a few feet back. I put my book down and thought about my wonderful experiences over the past couple of days.

My group and I arrived in the village of Kasane by bus. We had no hotel reservations, no idea what we were going to do or where we were gong to stay. Somehow it worked out beautifully.  We found a camp that we could afford—a grouping of traditional-style houses, with several latrines and an outside shower. We were as happy as could be. (After all, we had spent the last three months in a makeshift concrete building in the middle of the Kalahari desert where the temperature dropped to freezing at night, scorpions didn’t hesitate to join our campfires, and shooting stars simultaneously thrilled us and scared us to death.) 

Tourists arriving at Chobe River

Upon arrival at our campsite, we met a group of white South African hunters. Their race was very significant because apartheid had not yet ended in South Africa and, since we were a multiracial group, we were not quite comfortable with their friendly overtures. They, on the other hand, seemed thrilled to meet a group from the United States and offered to take us on a non-hunting safari. So many mixed feelings invaded our group, and we went off to have a major discussion about their offer. We had little travel money and going on safari was not on our list of possibilities. Some did not hesitate to admit that they wanted to go, others wanted to protest apartheid by saying “no,” and others could not decide what to do.  After a long discussion and a vote, most decided to go.

I will never forget that safari. Since then, I’ve been on many safaris, but my first cannot be surpassed. We went out early the next morning; the sun had barely risen in the sky. The smells reminded us of the diversity of life all around. We went on safari in jeeps, with the hunters carrying guns, to be used for protection if needed. They treated us to a day of adventure and beauty that surpassed my wildest expectations. For hours and hours, we drove, quiet, waiting for animals as we marveled at the beauty of the land, the peace of being in the middle of the bush, and the anticipation of what we would see. And see we did! Out guides expertly followed tracks, sounds, and movements, revealing to us the elephants, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, Cape Buffalo, snakes and more, in all of their splendor. It was extraordinary. I quickly learned that people go on safari because there is no feeling like it. Communing with nature feeds one’s soul in ways I do not have words to describe.

After the heat, the dust and the beauty, we went to the Chobe Game Lodge, where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had once honeymooned. We sat on the veranda and had cool drinks, recent memories crowding our brains. We marveled at our day, the experience of joining such stately and wonderful birds and animals in their own habitats. We were happy that our hosts had never needed to use their guns, and that they had so skillfully guided us into a beautiful world none of us had experienced before. 

That night, I slept, exhausted but happy, only to be awoken by elephants rambling through our camp! The next day, just when I didn’t think life could get any better, our group went on a cruise down the Chobe River at dusk and watched the animals partaking of their evening drinks of water. So different from the day before, when our guides had to work so hard to provide us with a view of animals, this day we saw so many elephants (my favorite), zebra, hippos, crocs and birds, that it was nearly unbelievable. The entire journey will stay indelibly on my brain and in my heart. I had the opportunity to experience Chobe’s majesty, hidden and out in the open. Because of that, I have tried harder to be a better being on this earth that we all share.

Off The Beaten Track: Kwei Quartey’s Murder in Paradise

Kwei Quartey was born in Ghana and raised by an African-American mother and a Ghanaian father, both of whom were university lecturers. Even though his professional writing career began after he became a physician, his desire to be a writer began at the early age of eight. Kwei Quartey’s debut novel, WIFE OF THE GODS, was released by Random House Publishers in July 2009. CHILDREN OF THE STREET is his second work (2011), and his third, MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, which features Ghana’s new oil industry as a backdrop, comes out mid-2013. Kwei Quartey now lives in Pasadena, California. He writes early in the morning before setting out to work at HealthCare Partners, where he runs a wound care clinic. 

Forty miles off the coast of Ghana in the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf of Guinea is a drilling rig belonging to Malgam Oil, a multinational petroleum company that has been operating in Ghana’s territorial waters for 18 months. Large offshore reserves were discovered there in 2007, and production began 40 months later in 2010.

A semi-submersible rig used by Malgam Oil

Malgam’s oil rig is protected by the Ghana Navy Service (GNS), which often finds itself in conflict with Ghanaian fishermen who venture far out to sea to catch fish with large nets that can get snagged on oil drilling installations. Fishing canoes are not allowed to approach the rig within a 500-meter radius.

Four months ago, a fisherman’s 12-foot-long canoe breached that boundary, and the rig’s oil installation manager alerted the GNS. A man and woman occupied the vessel, but they weren’t paddling it. There was good reason for that: they were dead. Two corpses crumpled together in the floor of the canoe, both shot in the head at close range.

A shocking turn of events. Fictional, as it turns out. Although there really is an oil rig 40 miles off Ghana’s coast, it belongs to Tullow, not the imaginary “Malgam,” and the tale of the corpse-containing canoe is from the opening scene of my upcoming novel, Murder at Cape Three Points.

However, there’s nothing fictional about the geographic location of Cape Three Points in the Western Region of Ghana. In 2011 when I chose to include its name in the title of my novel, I hadn’t yet visited the spot. When I finally made it there in March 2012, I discovered I had unknowingly selected an extraordinarily lovely site to set a murder. Sometimes called the “land nearest nowhere,” because it is the closest land to a central point on the globe that is zero latitude, longitude and altitude, its name derives from three peninsulas that jut parallel to each other into the Atlantic.

The small fishing village of Cape Three Points lies on the center peninsula. 

Shoreline at the Cape Three Points Village, where fishing is the main livelihood

I went up into the working lighthouse that affords magnificent views over the bay.

Cape Three Points lighthouse, one of Ghana's five lighthouses

View of the bay from the lighthouse, with the third peninsula in the background

Walking some distance from the lighthouse, I came to stand at the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which is a majestic spectacle of sight and sound. The waves crashing against the rocks send up a gossamer spray that stays suspended in the air for a few seconds before dissipating.

I wouldn't go any closer to the edge if I were you.

It's a spectacular show of sight and sound.

My murder plot mind always at work, I couldn’t help thinking about how perfectly awful it would be for someone to slip, fall and be dashed against those cruel rocks. Accidentally, of course.

Both a beautiful and treacherous landscape

Indeed, on seeing the young man pictured above fishing off the craggy cliffs, I did think about such a scenario for my plot, but I decided not to fiddle with what I already had – a corpse-carrying canoe adrift in the Atlantic Ocean.

How could this canoe with its dead bodies have gotten so far out to sea? It was probably towed by another canoe under paddle, wind or motor power. Many are surprised that fishermen go out as far as forty to fifty miles from the shore to catch fish, but they do. Ghana now faces a crisis of rapidly dwindling fish populations. Fishermen claim that the oil industry is making the situation even worse, which the petroleum folks deny. Hence the animosity between the two groups.

There are lots of places along the lovely coast of Ghana’s Western Region where you could quietly launch a canoe at night with a couple of dead bodies, like Ezile Bay, an almost achingly lovely location a few kilometers from Cape Three Points village.

This is a scene right out my novel, Murder At Cape Three Points

I recommend you select a less moonlit night for your nefarious deed, however.

Ezile Bay Village is a small and delightful resort owned by French couple Olivier and Danielle Funfschilling.

Dawn at Ezile Bay

Mid-morning low tide at Ezile Bay

Hilltop view of Ezile Bay with the village of Akwidaa in the background

Akwidaa fishermen coming home

There are many sinister countryside settings in the mystery-writing tradition – think of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Adventure of the Speckled Band, which is said to have been inspired by a story recounted in 1891 by a captain who had been dispatched to West Africa. But there’s also something chilling about murder in beautiful places, where one doesn’t expect to come across heinous crimes.

In Murder at Cape Three Points, there is another uncomfortable juxtaposition: wild beauty against the threat of an oil spill that could mar the incomparable setting like the slash of a knife across the face of a beautiful woman. Such a catastrophe could jeopardize the wildlife that exists at Cape Three Points and points offshore, including dolphins and whales. In an environment as stunning as this, that would be like murder in paradise.

Cape Three Points Village