Like Goa, Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony, and now has a strong cashew connection with India, writes Jorge de Abreu Noronha, from Lisbon (Goa Today)
Although most of the adult and school-going
residents of Goa at the time when the state was still a Portuguese territory
must have learnt something of Guinea-Bissau (or Portuguese Guinea, as it was
known at that time), I feel sure that very few of them and almost none of the
younger generation know about the realities of this country which has some
interest to India, mainly to the state of Kerala.
In colonial times there were different Guineas on the western coast of Africa.
Portuguese Guinea made its unilateral declaration of independence in September
1973 with the name of Republica da Guine-Bissau (provisional capital at Madina
do Boe and definitive capital in Bissau), and was admitted two months later as
member of the United Nations Organisation and of the Organisation of African
Unity. It was recognised by Portugal in August 1994, following the deposition
of the Portuguese dictatorial regime on 25 April of that year, with a formal
transmission of power to the new rulers on 24 September. French Guinea, has
been the Republic of Guinea (Capital: Conacry) since 1958. Spanish Guinea,
comprising the mainland territory of Rio Muni or Mbini and the islands of
Fernando Po and Annobon (renamed Bioko and Pagalu), gained independence in
1968 and assumed the name of Equatorial Guinea (capital: Malabo, on Bioko
island).
The first of these countries to be colonised was Guinea Bissau which, together
with practically all the present nations of western Africa south of the
Sahara, from Senegal in the north to Angola in the south, greatly enriched
their Portuguese, French, Spanish and British colonisers, as well as the Dutch
crown, with the huge profits from the slave trade to northern, central and
southern America up to the mid-nineteenth century.
Portuguese settlement in what is today the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (RGB)
commenced in 1446, when Nuno Tristao landed there. Effective occupation was
however restricted to areas bordering the Atlantic Ocean, and it was only in
the second half of the nineteenth century that Portugal ventured inland. From
its independence, the country was run by governments formed by the only
authorised party, the PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independencia da Guine e
de Cabo Verde) founded by Amilcar Cabral, with a centrally planned economy. On
14 November 1980, the first President Luis Cabral (brother of the assassinated
leader Amilcar) was deposed and sent into exile by a military coup headed by
Gen Joao Bernardo Vieira (best known as Nino Vieira) who became president.
When free market economy and a multiparty system were adopted in 1994, Nino
was elected president and his PAIGC swept the legislative elections and
secured 62 of the 100 parliamentary seats.
The country has a 386-km border with Guinea (Conacry), a 338-km frontier with
Senegal and a coastline of 350 km. Like many of the West African countries and
some in East Africa, RGB is an exporter of cashew nuts. This is indeed the
country's major foreign exchange earner, the entire lot of 40-50,000 tonnes
annual production being shipped to Cochin, destined for Indian processing
plants located in the state of Kerala. Its other exports are timber and, to a
certain extent, fish and other seafood. It is however a pity that the cashew
apple is not taken advantage of to any noteworthy degree, either for domestic
consumption or for export. Mango is also a minor export item. This fruit,
which botanists say is 4,000 years old and originates from the foot of the
Himalayas in India, spread in ancient times throughout the far east and in the
sixteenth century was taken by the Portuguese to Africa and Brazil.
There is a lot to be said (or perhaps not) about the cashew nut trade. I
recently spent about three months in Bissau and had the opportunity of mixing
at my hotel's lobby bar and lounge with a number of foreigners involved in the
trade, some in their individual capacity as brokers between Guinean
exporters/shippers and Indian end-users, others representing Kerala's
processors to test and certify the quality of nuts at origin, and still others
trying to do business on behalf of big trading corporations. Among others, I
met or saw three Keralities, a Greek, a couple of Chinese and delegates from
French, Vietnamese and Singaporean trading houses. The business is conducted
in utmost secrecy, with protracted dealings over three, four or more months
and with each one endeavouring to outdo competitors; and I'm sure you'd be
surprised, as I was, at the amount of underhand cut-throat activity that goes
on in the meantime, both at the shipping and the unloading ends.
Ayyappan Pillai, Mohanakrishnan and a colleague of the latter whose name I
cannot now recollect, all from Quilon, were among my Bissau acquaintances.
Greyhaired Pillai was quite a character, jovial and talkative, who used to
have Indian meals specially prepared for him by a private cook and taken to
his hotel room, and who one late evening entertained us with a Malayali song
at the hotel's lobby bar. He used to say, quite truthfully, that our hotel was
four-starred only in terms of the rates they charge but by no means for the
quality of service rendered; and he should know, because he had been to Bissau
for cashew nut deals for the last few years. Poor Mohanakrishnan, quiet and
more sedate, was always complaining of the poor quality of food both at the
hotel and at the city restaurants, with which his delicate stomach did not
agree. The Greek man, who lived for over twenty yeas in Brazil and so speaks
fluent Portuguese (which is an asset in Guinea-Bissau), was always in and out,
disappearing from the hotel for days on end and then saying that he had
travelled by road to Ziguinchor (in the neighbouring Senegalese region of
Casamance, where from time to time there are guerilla movements for secession
from Senegal) and even further north to Banjul (The Gambia), and putting in
all efforts to come out of his predicament of not succeeding in his intended
cashew nut business deals.
But my usual mates in leisure hours were the Anand-Tony duo. Anand was born in
Mumbai of Keralite parents, spent the first seven years of his life in New
Delhi and is now a Paris-based French citizen aged 23, fluent in French and
English and able to express himself in Hindi too. Tony is a British young man,
his mother being English and his father Sardinian. They were colleagues in the
London University from which they graduated and now work as a team in several
overseas assignments. They were in Bissau when I moved in and were still there
when I checked out twelve weeks later. "Completely fed-up" is a mild
_expression to describe what they felt after all that time in a city where
there are practically no amusement or entertainment avenues; but... travail
oblige! We spent a lot of time together despite the huge age difference
between them and me, and it is not easily that I will forget them.
You can also, time and again, come across a couple of Indians - some of them
Goans - in downtown Bissau, who are crew members of some of the cargo vessels
calling at the port.
Commodities like rice which "in the good old times" used to be exported, have
now to be imported. Mineral deposits which could bring in handsome amounts of
dollars but are awaiting foreign investment and know-how for their
exploration, include phosphates, bauxite, argil, quartzite, dolerite and
laterite. Guinea-Bisau has an area of 36,125 sq km which includes 1,500 sq km
of the 40-island Bijagos archipelago, and a population of just over a million.
It was peopled by some 40 ethnic groups, of which 20 still exist, a few of
these facing extinction. The main groups are the Balanta (27 per cent), the
Fula (22 per cent), the Mandinga (12 per cent), the Manjaco (11 per cent) and
the Papel (10 per cent).
Though the country is a member of the Communidade dos Paises de Lingua
Portuguesa (CPLP or the Commonwealth of Portuguese-Speaking Countries) and has
Portuguese as its official language, most of the people speak Creole (a
mixture of Portuguese and the local dialects) and, as the country is
surrounded by Francophone nations, a large number of city dwellers are
conversant with French. Religionwise, as per the 1991 census, 46 per cent are
Muslim, 36 per cent Animist, 13 per cent Catholic, 2 per cent other Christian
and 3 per cent without religion. As far as music is concerned, it doesn't
differ much from the beats and melodies of the neighbouring countries like
Senegal, Guinea (Conacry), Mali and Sierra Leone. And, although nowadays the
bands use electric guitars, drums, synthesisers and the like, indigenous
instruments are also played, mainly to render traditional musical items. Some
of these instruments are the kora, the balaphone, the nhanhero, the dom-dom
and the bombolom.
Early Mary 1997 RGB joined the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA),
an organisation which has seven other (all French speaking) member countries.
As a result, after a transition period of three months, the national currency,
the Peso Guinenese was replaced by the union's common currency, the Franc CFA
(CFA meaning Communaute Financiere Africaine) which is convertible into the
French Franc at the rate of 100 FCFA to 1 FrF. At the same time the country's
national bank, the Banco Central da Guine-Bissau was dissolved and its
position was taken by the union's bank Banque Centrale des Etats de I'Afrique
d'Quest (BCEAO). Will this adhesion to UEMOA help boost RGB's economy which is
presently in a shambles ? "Not very likely in the next millenium," said an
economist friend of mine, with a strong - and perhaps uncalled for - dose of
pessimism. He thinks that this new member will eventually prove to be a big
liability not only to the union but also to France, which backs it. As far as
the demographic factor is concerned, I told my Guinean acquaintances that,
while their country of 36,125 sq km has a little over a million inhabitants,
my own little native state of Goa holds 1.3 million persons on about 11 per
cent of Guinea-Bissau's area; and that against their cashew nut output of
around 50,000 tonnes, my native state produces 13,000 and plans to increase
the yield fourfold by the year 2005 (O Heraldo Illustrated Review, 31 March
1997 centrespread).
The weather is extremely hot and humid. The temperature can go up to 38°C and
the average humidity is 67 per cent. Rainfall is particularly heavy in
July/September and whenever there is strong rain, the capital city gets
flooded owing to the clogging of the drains. Barring three or four avenues
(including the 7-km-long Avenida 14 de Novembro which links the capital's
urban centre to the airport), all the roads and streets of Bissau are in a sad
state. As Guineans themselves say, Portugal created there a sort of garden
city, small but beautiful, which used to be envied by the people of the
neighbouring nations; but the absence of any maintenance work throughout the
years after independence, almost a quarter of a century ago, has brought about
a complete degradation. For administrative purposes, RGB is divided into nine
regions, each with a governor, namely, the Bissau Autonomous Sector
(headquarters in Bissau), Cacheu (Cacheu), Bafata (Bafata), Gabu (Gabu),
Tombali (Catio), Qunara (Buba), Oio (Farim), Bolama/Bijagos (Bolama) and
Biombo (Quinhamel).
Though 'discovered' by the navigator Nuno Tristao in 1446, the territory's
first official seat of government did not rise until about 150 years later. It
was Cacheu, which began to be built in 1588. In the last quarter of the 19th
century, when Guinea was delinked from Cabo Verde and became a separate
'overseas province' of Portugal, Bolama was chosen as the capital, and it was
only in 1919 that Bissau earned the status of a city and became the capital.
This is why RGB shares with Brazil the privilege of having two cities as
members of the Union of Capital Cities of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (UCCLA)
: Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia in Brazil, Cacheu and Bissau in RGB. (Another
country which might eventually join these two in such a privilege is
Mozambique, whose presents capital Maputo is member of UCCLA and which is, if
it chooses, in a position to register as member also its first capital - the
island city of Mozambique which, like the monuments of Old Goa, is a world
heritage site.)