The Bijagós, an archipelago that lives by its own rules

You leave Bissau along the Geba estuary, as wide as an arm of the sea, and for hours there is nothing but tea-coloured water, sandbanks surfacing at low tide and, far off, a dark line of palms. Then the islands stand out one by one, flat, wooded down to the shore, fringed with white beaches. Dolphins cross the boat’s path. This is the entrance to the Bijagós, eighty-eight islands and islets of which about twenty are inhabited, a world apart sixty kilometres off the coast.

This notebook follows the boat: Bubaque, the home port; Orango and its saltwater hippos; Poilão, the sacred island where green turtles come to nest; then Bijagó society, its queens, its masks and its rules, which earned the archipelago a biosphere reserve in 1996 and World Heritage inscription in 2025.

Bubaque, the home port

Bubaque is the gateway: an island of seventy-five square kilometres, the only settlement in the archipelago that deserves to be called a town, with its quay, its market, its school and the headquarters of the biosphere reserve, which houses a small museum of Bijagó culture. Portuguese colonial houses crumble at the water’s edge; children dive off the quay at high tide.

On the far side of the island, some twenty kilometres along a straight track through the forest, Bruce beach is the best known in the Bijagós: a crescent of white sand stretching out of sight without a single building. You go by bicycle, motorbike taxi or a lodge’s pick-up, and stay until sunset.

Bubaque is also where you organise what comes next: finding a boat for Orango, Rubane or the southern islands, buying water and supplies, and telling someone you are leaving. Cash machines are scarce in the archipelago: CFA francs are drawn in Bissau.

Poilão, the turtle island

In the far south-east, four uninhabited islands form the João Vieira and Poilão Marine National Park, created in August 2000. Poilão is the smallest and the most important: its beaches are among the main green turtle nesting sites in the whole Atlantic. From July to October, thousands of females come out of the water at night, dig, lay a hundred or so eggs and leave before dawn; two months later, the hatchlings run for the sea.

The island is sacred to the Bijagós of Canhabaque, who hold their initiation rites there, and access is regulated: you come by boat for the day, accompanied, and you touch nothing. Rangers and biologists camp there through the nesting season to count nests and fit tags. Hawksbill and olive ridley turtles also come, more rarely.

Witnessing a nesting means agreeing to stay still in the dark, without a light, at a distance, while an animal of over a hundred kilos breathes and digs a few metres away. Few places in West Africa offer it with this intensity, and none with this setting: an island of sand and palms, without a building.

A society apart

The Bijagós are first of all a people. Every island, every village has its rules, and the visitor quickly understands that this is not their home. Social life is organised in age grades: you pass from one group to the next through initiation ceremonies, the fanado, which last months and may be held on reserved islands. The carved masks, bulls, sharks, sawfish, hippos, come out at the young men’s dances, horns forward, to a roll of drums.

The position of women has struck observers since the 19th century. They run the household, a large share of the economy, and in the Orango tradition it is they who choose their husbands and may end the marriage. Ethnologists debate the real extent of this power; what is beyond debate is the figure of Okinka Pampa and the priestesses who still keep the shrines.

A traveller arriving in a village presents themselves to the chief or the elders, asks before photographing, stays away from sacred places and accepts that a ceremony may take place without them. In return, the welcome is direct and warm, in Kriol, the Portuguese creole that serves as the common language of all Guinea-Bissau.

The Guinea-Bissau guide