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Togo

Houses built like fortresses.

In the Koutammakou valley, the Batammariba build takienta — the "tata somba": turreted fortified earth houses where people live, store grain and honour their ancestors. The landscape is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

  • One to two days
  • November to March, when the roads are good

The place

What Tamberma tells you

A tata reads from bottom to top. Ground floor: livestock and kitchen; you climb a ladder cut from a single trunk; on the terrace, granaries capped with straw hats and the place people sleep in the warm season.

Nothing about it is decorative. The wall thickness keeps the heat out, the turrets were defensive, the orientation of the entrance follows precise rules. It is explained to you where it was invented, by the people who live in it.

You climb onto the terrace at sunset. From there the valley unrolls in aligned tatas up to the hills, and the shadows stretch across red earth. It is probably the image you will keep longest.

Which journey

Tamberma fits into a bespoke journey.

This destination is not part of the 14-day signature itinerary in Benin: it is built into a Bespoke journey, alone or combined with other stages in Togo.

See the Bespoke package

See also

The other grounds

The Black River seen from the pirogue: dark still water, a curtain of palms and silk-cotton trees on both banks
The Black River Benin
A fisherman standing at the bow of his pirogue casts a net that opens into a sheet above Lake Nokoué, a second fisherman watching from a nearby boat
Ganvié Benin
The Door of No Return at Ouidah, a concrete arch carved with bas-reliefs facing the ocean at the end of the Slave Route, a crowd gathered at its foot
Ouidah Benin

Around the place

More views of the region

A Tamberma tower-house with its round granary set on the terrace, the wooded Atacora hills closing the horizon behind the village
A Tamberma tower-house with its round granary set on the terrace, the wooded Atacora hills closing the horizon behind the village
A hamlet of takienta scattered through the tall grass of Koutammakou, large trees rising above the earth and straw roofs
A hamlet of takienta scattered through the tall grass of Koutammakou, large trees rising above the earth and straw roofs
Open view over the Koutammakou savannah from an earthen terrace, two conical granaries in the foreground and the track running to the horizon
Open view over the Koutammakou savannah from an earthen terrace, two conical granaries in the foreground and the track running to the horizon
A person standing in the cleft of a hollow baobab with a thick, folded trunk, at the entrance to a Tamberma village
A person standing in the cleft of a hollow baobab with a thick, folded trunk, at the entrance to a Tamberma village

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