The Guardian, 7 March

With little more than cow horns, 8ft drums and hollow shells, Guinea-Bissau throws one of the best parties on earth.
A chiming melody rings through the crumbling streets of the city of Bissau, the capital of the west African Republic of Guinea-Bissau. An old man, dressed in a Rafia skirt with strings of pink and white seashells draped across his torso, presses a spectacularly curved cow horn to his lips. He puffs his cheeks and blasts a tune, raw and rasping, which echoes through the rapt crowd. Behind him a parade of pubescent girls, glistening in the sun and dancing to the beat of a cracked wooden drum.

Bissau’s carnival, which takes place over the four days before lent, is like no other. Although traditionally a Christian celebration, less than 10% of Bissau Guineans call themselves Catholic; the rest worship either Allah or the spirit of the island and forests. Today’s carnival, which has been going for as long as anyone in the city can remember, is, as one long time Portuguese resident put it, about ‘local ethnic traditions combined with a Portuguese date’. Guineans have taken an imported religious festival and used it as an excuse to have a very big, cultural celebration.

But there is no electricity in the country, and petrol is too expensive for most people to afford. So there are no motorised cavalcades of elaborated expensive costumes or amplified music, as in the grand carnivals of Rio or Venice. Instead, hundreds of groups representing the country’s various different tribes charter wooden boats and battered trucks and pour into the city.

It is one of Africa’s most vibrant celebrations in a country that is chaotic and quirky at the best of times. Guinea-Bissau is just twice the size of Wales, dwarfed by its larger Muslin neighbours Senegal, to the north, and Guinea Conakry to the south. It is a country of forests and islands. Once a colony of Portugal, it gained its freedom through a violent 11-year war of independence that ended barely 30 years ago. Since then the country has been under the rule of ruthless dictators and army generals, and emerged just a few years ago from a short but brutal civil war that left the economy in tatters.

This year’s Bissau carnival has a theme, inspired by the country’s latest woes. A slogan is hand painted on banners strung between rough wooden poles: ‘Support the fight against illegal immigration and drug trafficking.’ It is carried by the leaders of each carnival group. Guinea-Bissau, with its unprotected borders and insufficient law enforcement, is suffering the depredations of drug lords using the fragile country as an easy route for sending massive quantities of cocaine to Europe.