Mozambican War of Independence

Mozambique · 1964–1974

“Listen well: this telling travelled far to reach our circle.”

FRELIMO crossed from Tanzania in 1964 and fought Portugal for a decade — through the loss of its founder Mondlane to a parcel bomb, through Portugal's great dam at Cabora Bassa built as a fortress of concrete confidence, through the massacre at Wiriyamu that stripped Lisbon's denials bare.

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.