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01 Eighty-eight islands
Isolation explains a good part of the story. There are no bridges, no airports, and the channels are shallow and shift constantly with the tide, so reaching the islands has always been a matter of boats and of knowing the water. That difficulty has preserved forms of organisation that on the mainland have gradually dissolved.
It also explains the scale: of the eighty-eight islands, only some are permanently inhabited. The rest are forests, palm groves, mangroves and beaches reached by pirogue, and in many cases used seasonally rather than lived on year-round.
02 The maternal line
The detail that most surprises visitors is the one about marriage. In Bijagó society it is the woman who chooses, and the choice is communicated by a specific gesture: a prepared plate of food is left at the house of the chosen man. If he accepts, he eats it; and from then on the husband moves into her house.
Four clans, and you belong to all of them through your mother. Name, land and place in the community do not come down from the father: they come down from her.
But what really structures the society is not that custom but the clan system. The Bijagó are organised into four matrilineal clans, and membership always passes through the mother. From that follow far more practical things: who inherits land, who administers a village's resources and who has a voice in the decisions affecting family and community.
It is worth saying without exaggerating in either direction. This is not a symmetrical inversion of other societies, nor a place without inequalities; it is a system of its own, with its own rules, in which the maternal line determines belonging and in which women carry a weight in property and decision-making that surprises anyone arriving with other expectations.
03 A biosphere reserve since 1996
The archipelago is not recognised for its social organisation alone. In 1996 UNESCO declared it a biosphere reserve under the name Bolama-Bijagós, and its natural value is of the first order: mangroves, savannas, palm groves and tropical forest spread across a mosaic of islands and shallows.
The wildlife figures back it up. It is the most important site in West Africa for green turtle nesting and the second for migratory birds, with around a million birds each year. And in its waters and on its islands live dolphins, manatees and hippopotamuses, in an environment where salt and fresh water mix.
The two things are connected, and that is the point. The community system of managing land and resources — the one largely administered by women — is one of the reasons cited when explaining why these islands have reached the present day in the state they are in.
04 What to do with this
First, do not turn it into an attraction. This is not a custom put on display or a tour you book: it is the way communities living on their islands are organised. What is appropriate for a visitor is to understand it, not to go and watch it, and certainly not to photograph people without permission.
Second, adjust your practical expectations. Reaching the islands is a matter of boats and tides, and of doing it in the dry season, November to April, when the sea is calm and the crossings are reliable. Between June and September everything gets harder: 371 millimetres of rain in July and 468 in August.
And third, use the fact to read the whole country. Guinea-Bissau presents itself as a poor capital on a continent full of poor capitals, and that reading falls far short. Opposite that city lies an archipelago with a social organisation of its own and the largest green turtle nesting area in West Africa. What is interesting is not on the mainland.
