Have a picture 1: Fort of São João, Ibo Island

This shot was taken in one of the creepiest places I've ever been to in my life: Ibo Island, located just off the Northern Mozambican town of Pemba in the Quirimbas archipelago. The structure I'm in/on is an ancient Portuguese fort (São João), built atop a far older Arab one, which was used by traders and slavers on the coast of East Africa for centuries. During the time of Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique it was used to house, torture and kill political prisoners, an extreme Robben Island of sorts. No hard labour, no sunlight (glaring or otherwise), just damp, dark starving isolation punctuated with brutality and the occasional dragging out into the light of a fellow prisoner to be broken and killed, then dumped into the ocean or left on the exposed beach to rot. I love this shot because of the dollar sign some asshole smeared on the inside of the minaret-like watch-post. That and the rusting cannons propped up between the parapets, useless yet somehow still menacing. There is a violence to it, in other words, but it is a violence inextricably linked with commerce, possession and oversight. The idea that the same structure could serve many different purposes all related, finally, to the same old thing is a fascinating one I think. The town is renowned for its silver-work, and the silver used by the smiths comes mostly from old Portuguese coins found along the islands beaches and mangrove-lined waterways. There is fresh water on the island, brought up from the coral bones of the place by a series of wells. The water, though, is distinctly salty, and this, I think, is the reason behind the madness I often caught glimpses of lurking behind the gazes of many of the local inhabitants - the salt and the centuries of violence and death, perhaps. Djinns stalk the streets of the town at night - as they do much of this part of the East African coast. While I was there, one was caught by a local Imam and burnt in a jar on the soccer field. It was a one-armed, one-legged slapping-djinn, which would hop up behind lonely walkers of the night and strike them a blow to the side of their heads. A fairly harmless djinn, then, but so long as it was abroad, few dared venture out or walk home by themselves. Spooky place, as I've said.