Historical places in Africa

If you enjoyed the movie "Out of Africa" about the world famous Danish author Baroness Karen Blixen, it is recommend that you visit her old coffee farm and house in the Kenyan capital. The house, which in 1986 was converted into a museum on the outskirts of Nairobi, and although houses are now built around the farm, you can still see the beautiful Ngong Hills from the large park of the house. The house / museum itself is not particularly large, but you can definitely "sense history", when you stand in the baroness's office, among her original furniture and look at her books and authentic photos of her, her husband Baron Bror Blixen and her lover Denys Finch Hatton, who died tragically in a plane crash.

Dinosaur footprints are scattered all over Lesotho and there are a few near the village of Roma. They are located at the top of the mountain and are difficult to find by yourself, but, luckily, the local kids are happy to act as guides for a few maloti/rand. It takes about 30 minutes on foot from the village to reach the few footprints. They lie unprotected on a slab of rock and are eroded by weather and tear from the locals, so their condition is thereof. But it's cool to 'explore' something in the real world instead of a museum setup with fences and explanatory texts. The panoramic views from the footprints are equally amazing and worth the walk up, even if you don't give a hoot about a few dinosaur footprints.

Lesotho has more prehistoric sites than just dinosaur footprints, namely rock paintings, also known as bushman paintings. As with the dinosaur footprints, the rock paintings are totally unprotected and difficult to find without help from a local. For the rock paintings at Ha Tjooeng, you first have to walk through the village down to the bottom of the gorge, cross the river, and up to the overhanging on the rock face. Among newer drawings and carvings, you will be able to make out the original rock paintings - some men, a cow and a lion(?) - which surprisingly have survived millenniums of tear, wear, and graffiti. As with most sights in Lesotho, the journey through the breathtaking scenery is half the reward.

Throughout Mali's history, an endless array of small kingdoms have risen and fallen. The Bamana Kingdom of Ségou rose in the 18th century a little down the road from the modern town. Ségoukoro – Old Ségou – was the original seat of power and is one of the best places in Mali to see the remnants of these kingdoms. The old castle has been restored; so has the tomb of the kingdom's founder, Kaladjan Coulibaly. His descendants still rule as the village's chiefs and live in a likewise renovated house nearby the castle. As an additional bonus to its history is Ségoukoro also a study in Saharan mosque designs. The town has four mosques: One predates Islam's arrival in the region and was probably build by a wealthy Moroccan merchant passing through. The second is a dome mosque build in mud, like the ones in Timbuktu and Gao. Finally, the last two are of Sudanese design, found all over the Sahel.

Sahara's important historical caravan towns also attracted celebrated scholars. These medieval professors of the Islamic world tough lessons of the Quran, geometry, grammar, ancient Greek philosophy and Babylonian law in the middle of the Sahara. This while Europe was clouded in the Dark Ages, still debating whether the Earth was flat. At the same time, these Islamic scholars – as the librarians will show you – knew both the Earth's diameter and the construction of the Solar System. The most famous of these towns is, of course, Timbuktu in Mali, but the highest concentration is found in Mauritania. Here are these ancient manuscripts still cared for in privately owned libraries, handed down through the generations. Chinguetti alone has twelve libraries with more than 3.000 books and manuscripts, the oldest more than 1000 years old. These libraries are historical treasures for all of the humanity and it's easy to fear for these manuscripts when you see the dusty and crumbling libraries they are kept in. But remember, that they have been around for the past 500 years.

When slavery was abolished on Mauritius, the sugar plantations were looking for labourers. Contract workers from Asia, mainly Indians, were "invited" in great numbers. Every single one of them went through the Aapravadi Ghat in Port Louis. It is a complex of buildings at the harbour where the immigrants were kept while papers were sorted out. Today these buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage site and have recently been turned into an informative museum.

Probably the best preserved colonial mansion on Mauritius. It was built in 1830 following special tropical architecture that keeps the interior cool. Today, it is a museum, where most of the rooms are decorated with furniture from that time. Note the marble bathtub and very-modern-at-that-time shower. There is a series of small waterfalls in a beautiful jungle setting a short hike behind the mansion.

The Kingdom of Benin has nothing to do with the modern country Benin. It was a kingdom in what is now southwestern Nigeria. It was formed around the 12th century, but annexed by the British Empire in 1897, when the British sacked and burned Benin City. Up until then Benin City was known for its city walls, a series of earthworks made up of ditches and banks. With a length of 15 km inside the city and an additional 16,000 km outside (yes, it sounds like there is a zero too many), it's considered to be the largest earthwork carried out prior to the mechanical era. Unfortunately, there isn't much left of the ditches, but the remains have made it to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative list (not the proper list, yet). A "world heritage site" sign is already hanging over the brass casters street, Igun street (see picture).

Even though we've seen and read numerous reports about Rwanda's genocide in 1994, it might still be hard to grasp the magnitude and sheer horror of the event. The Murambi Genocide Memorial could be the place to help people get a sense of what happened. Set on top of a hill with incredible views and a seemingly peaceful environment, the Murambi technical school has been the theatre of the killing of 40,000 to 50,000 Tutsis in just one night. Mass graves were quickly dug and volleyball courts and baseball fields set on top of them to cover the massacre. 20,000 bodies have since been found, exhumed and reburied, but about 1000 of them have been preserved with lime to be exposed in the many small dorm rooms on site. It's a tear-inducing, stomach-churning experience to see all those contorted mummified corpses piled one on top of another... and it goes on and on, room after room, until you reach the point where, overwhelmed, you want to scream "No more!", but you keep watching this incredible display, feeling invested in a certain duty to bear witness and make your motto the same as Rwanda's: Never again.

Out of respect for the victims, picture-taking is forbidden inside the rooms.

Too many visitors only visit Gorée Island as a short day-trip from Dakar, but they will miss out. Let the tourists, souvenir sellers and school classes leave Gorée with the last ferries and stay behind for what is, by far, the best antidote for chaotic and polluted Dakar. The island is less than a kilometre long and not 400 metres wide. Here are no cars, no con-artists and no worries. Visiting on a Monday will ensure that this feeling lasts all day as all the museums are closed. Instead, wander the cobblestones between the colonial houses that dominate the island, some restored, some crumbling; visit the craftsmen on the hill; wash the fresh seafood down with a drink. However, the museums, which include a fort, some the colonial buildings and the world famous Maison des Esclaves (covered elsewhere in this guide), are essential what all the fuzz is about and should not be missed.