Journal

Some experts call this the greatest center of plant biodiversity in the archipelago. It is also where the water is, which is the same story.

Salt pans worked inside an extinct volcano, fed by channels from the sea, on an island whose name is simply the Portuguese for salt.

Cape Verde calls it the camp of slow death. It held prisoners from four countries of the Portuguese empire for more than thirty years.

We do not publish months we cannot source. What we can tell you is what the year is organized around, and where the birds are.

Gorée is on the World Heritage list for one reason only: what happened there. The criteria line says so, and it is the whole argument.

Three of Senegal's living traditions are inscribed by UNESCO, and one of them is a meal. Culture here is practiced, not displayed.

The largest gathering in Senegal is a religious pilgrimage, and this page publishes no attendance figure for it, because no authority gives one.

The national dish is inscribed by UNESCO, and the amount of care that goes into your bowl is a measure of how welcome you have been made.

Three peoples, three landscapes, and a settlement pattern eight centuries old that is still lived in rather than preserved.

Most World Heritage properties are listed under two or three criteria. Gorée carries one, and that single line is the whole argument.

It was the capital of Senegal for eighty-five years, the capital of French West Africa before that, and the birthplace of the national dish.

Two hundred and eighteen mounds of shells, some hundreds of meters long, heaped up by people eating from the same water for centuries.