Island of Abandonment
Mandji is as beautiful and perfect as a tourist poster. But it is also a rubbish dump of history.
A few bungalows are being built in the expectation of tourism. But tourists do not come. And the bungalows decay, even before being finished, while their owners leave for France or Spain in search of better economic opportunities.
There are countless logs stuck in the flat, siliceous beaches of Mandji—plastic-tagged and iron-chained trunks that fell from the ships transporting tropical wood to Europe.
There are plastic sandals that somebody lost in Libreville and half-carved canoes where white crabs climb.
