The Cacheu Fort is the "bastion " of the northern Guinean city, built upon this 1588 structure which, like the city itself, is remembered for its connection to the slave trade. Now, the historic fort, a symbol of the founding of the Guinean city, is falling into ruin, with the threat of " the sea taking everything ," according to the local community, which is demanding the urgent rehabilitation of the site.

A must-see for anyone passing through Cacheu, at the mouth of the river that gave the Guinean city its name, it is currently the initiative of the local community that maintains the space, Gino Gomes told Lusa.

The young man from Guinea-Bissau received training and is involved in the work that the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) AD (Action for Development) has been carrying out in this locality linked to slavery and the slave trade in Africa. Previously, explains Gino Gomes, it was a state committee that was managing it, but later ended up handing the space over to them " to take care of, so as not to spoil it ".

The population " gathers en masse " when it is necessary, for example, to clean, but more than this care is needed at the Fort, which was only rehabilitated in 1989, on the occasion of the city's fourth centenary celebration. A plaque on one of the walls recalls that the former President of Guinea-Bissau, Nino Vieira, and the then Prime Minister of Portugal, Cavaco Silva, were present at that celebration.

Thirty-six years have passed and " now the place needs repair because it is already falling into ruin ," the young guide observed in the Lusa news report.

“It will collapse soon, the water is crashing back there, it is destroying the wall itself.”

"Soon we won't have this space in decent conditions anymore ," he stated.

The central administration “ has already sent three teams to assess what needs to be done ,” but so far there has been no progress and the fort “ needs improvements, otherwise the water will carry everything away .”

“It’s a tourist space, but it just needs to be valued for the space itself.”

“There is nowhere to eat, nowhere to stay longer and experience the space as it deserves, as it has so much history.”

"It's not being preserved in the best way possible ," warned the young guide.

The fort is connected to the Slavery Museum, built on the site of a 16th-century trading post for slaves while they awaited the arrival of ships. In addition to the museum, the space is connected to the port, the small church built with the arrival of the Catholic Church, the cemetery, and the valley where slaves were buried and a hotel was built.

The highest number of visits occurs between April and June, mainly from students, since " almost all students in Guinea want to visit this place, to learn about the history because this is where almost all of the country's history begins," he pointed out.

Statues linked to Guinea-Bissau's colonial history, which independence removed from the country's squares, are also housed there. Leaning against the walls of the forts and damaged, are statues of the navigators Nuno Tristão, who discovered Guinea, and Diogo Cão, as well as the military men Teixeira Pinto and Honório Barreto.

The statue of Nuno Tristão was in Bula, that of Teixeira Pinto in Cachungo, that of Diogo Cão in Bissau, and that of Honório Barreto in Cacheu. They were deposited in the fort with the expectation that they would return to the ancient squares of Guinea-Bissau, but they remain there.

It is also the local community that looks after them, with the help of the NGO AD, which invests in development and memory preservation projects in Guinea-Bissau. A task that “ should be a concern of the State itself ,” as the guide observed. Lusa tried to contact the Ministry of Culture of Guinea-Bissau, without success.