The Casamance & the East

The Casamance developed apart from northern Senegal. The Diola (Jola) settled the coastal rice lands many centuries ago in villages without kings, except for the priest-kings of places such as Oussouye. Inland, Mandinka states tied to the Kaabu kingdom ruled the middle Casamance, and Fula herders later founded the kingdom of Fuladu around Kolda. The Portuguese founded Ziguinchor in the 17th century as a trading post, and it was ceded to France in 1888. The French had already built a post on Carabane island in the 1830s.

Colonial rule faced resistance. The best-remembered figure is Aline Sitoé Diatta, a young Diola woman who urged villagers to refuse French wartime requisitions of rice and was arrested in 1943; she died in exile in Timbuktu and is honoured today as a national heroine.

After independence, grievances over land, neglect and the distance from Dakar fed a separatist movement, the MFDC, whose rebellion began in 1982. Decades of low-intensity conflict followed, with ceasefires, splits within the movement and army operations; recent years have brought peace agreements with some factions and the return of displaced villagers. The east has a quieter modern story: Tambacounda grew as a railway town on the Dakar–Niger line, and Kédougou, long remote, has been transformed by a gold boom.

The Casamance is Senegal's most culturally distinct region. The Diola, the largest group on the coast, are Muslim, Catholic or followers of traditional religion, and sacred forests still host initiation rites such as the bukut. The Kumpo, a masked figure covered in palm leaves who appears at village festivals, is a Diola tradition. In Mandinka areas, the Kankurang, a masked figure of the initiation rites, is listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage.

Many people speak Diola, Mandinka, Pulaar or Balante as well as Wolof, and Ziguinchor's Portuguese past survives in a local creole. Many Casamançais stress their difference from the Wolof north.

The Bassari country around Kédougou has its own traditions: the Bassari and Bedik peoples live in hill villages and hold initiation festivals with masks and dances, alongside Fula and Malinke neighbours. Music ranges from the kora of the Mandinka to Diola drumming and the ekonting, a folk lute.

Ziguinchor is the largest city, a port and market town on the Casamance river, with a university. Kolda, Sédhiou, Bignona and Oussouye serve their districts; in the east, Tambacounda is a transport crossroads and Kédougou a fast-growing mining town.

The Casamance is Senegal's breadbasket for rice, grown in flooded paddies worked with the long-handled Diola spade, and it produces cashews, mangoes, palm oil and fish. Tourism centres on Cap Skirring. The east lives on cotton, livestock, farming and, increasingly, industrial and artisanal gold mining around Kédougou.

Life follows the rains, with the rice season from June to November. Current issues include the legacy of the conflict, land mines in some farmland, rural poverty, unregulated gold mining, and deforestation from illegal logging.

The Casamance has a distinctive cooking tradition. Yassa, chicken or fish marinated in lemon and onions, is widely said to have originated here. Soupou kandja is a thick okra and palm-oil stew with fish or seafood, served over rice, and caldou is another Casamance fish dish. Oysters from the mangroves are grilled or dried, and rice is eaten at almost every meal.

Palm products are central: red palm oil for sauces and palm wine, tapped from the trees and drunk in the villages. Cashew nuts, mangoes and other fruit are sold at roadsides in season.

In the east the diet shifts to millet, maize and fonio, a small grain grown in the Kédougou hills, with groundnut sauces and grilled meat. Across the region, bissap and baobab juices and ataya tea are the everyday drinks.

In the lower Casamance, Ziguinchor has its colonial quarter, markets and river port, and is the base for trips into the region. The Diola villages are the main draw: Enampore's large round impluvium house, Mlomp's two-storey earth houses and giant fromager trees, and Oussouye, seat of a traditional king. Cap Skirring's beaches stretch south towards the border with Guinea-Bissau, and to the north the coast continues to Kafountine and Abéné. Carabane island, at the river mouth, was the first French trading post in the Casamance.

Further east, the Casamance river winds past Sédhiou and Kolda through forest and farmland. Tambacounda is the gateway to Niokolo-Koba National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of savanna, gallery forest and the Gambia river, with hippos, antelopes such as roan and western Derby eland, primates including chimpanzees, and a small population of lions.

The Bassari country hills around Kédougou form the UNESCO-listed cultural landscape of the Bassari, Fula and Bedik peoples. Visitors walk to hill villages such as Iwol, to Bassari villages on the hilltops, and to the Dindéfélo waterfall, which falls from a cliff near the Guinean border.