The War of the Hoe Handle

Central African Republic / Cameroon · 1928-1931

“This one the empire tried its hardest to forget. The circle remembers it instead.”

In French Equatorial Africa in the 1920s, the concession companies held the people as the land's accessories. Rubber had to be collected to quota or the penalties were physical.

The lesson the elders kept: When a colonial power refuses to name what happened, the silence is itself a form of evidence - three years of military columns does not suggest a minor disturbance.

Jelikan · Ìtàn · A story is told at night

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.

244 tellings from the African Conflict Atlas, every one carried in the griot's own voice — empires and uprisings, taxes and stools, gold roads and broken promises. Told the way a griot tells them: by voice, by lesson, by question.

“A story, a story!”

32 fires burn through the year →

Choose a thread

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Tonight

All time

1200 CEToday

— and the circle answers: “Let it come, let it go.”

Sit by the fire.The griot remembers.

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.