The Cacheu Fort “is the bulwark"of the northern city of Guinea-Bissau, built from this 1588 building that, like the city itself, has become part of history 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 takes everything”, according to the local community, which is calling for the urgent rehabilitation of the space.

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 Guinean received training and is involved in the work that the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) AD (Ação para o Desenvolvimento) has been carrying out in this area, which is linked to slavery and the slave trade in Africa. Previously, explains Gino Gomes, it was managed by a state committee, but later ended up handing the space over to them.to take care of, so as not to spoil".

The population “joins in mass"when it's 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 this celebration.

36 years have passed and “now the space needs repair because it is already falling into disrepair”, observed the young guide in the Lusa 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”, he said.

The central administration “has already sent three teams to survey what needs to be done”, but so far there have been no developments and the strong “needs improvement, otherwise the water will take 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 is not being preserved in the best possible way”, 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 largest number of visits occurs between April and June, especially from students, since “almost all students in Guinea want to know this space, to learn about the history because this is where almost all history begins” of the country, he stressed.

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.

The local community also looks out for them, with the help of the NGO AD, which invests in development and memory preservation projects in Guinea-Bissau. This work "should be a concern of the State itself”, as the guide noted. Lusa tried to contact the Ministry of Culture of Guinea-Bissau, without success.