Day 3 of fieldwork started with rain but thankfully it did not persist for the whole morning. I had 2 main itinerary points on the agenda for the day: 1) a visit to Belém and; 2) participant observation on a 4-hour walking tour.

Belém: The bus journey into Belém was quite an experience given how full it was. It turned out the full bus was a precursor to what was to come upon arrival. I don’t know if this is what ‘overtourism’ looks like but we added up to so many many people in a relatively small area. To think that this is not even the proper start or peak of the tourist season. The lines to get a taste of pastry in a shop and the lines to get into the monastry snaked around for quite some distance. After observing tourist behaviour in action for a bit, I made my way as the explorer that I am to discover the ‘Monument to Discoveries’ that has been talked about for so long in folklores. I was on a mission and after navigating through the seas of people and other obstacles I finally sighted land. I landed and proclaimed to myself that I have discovered it. I planted my flag and renamed this place as after myself as Akwasikrom. Now all that is left is for me to enforce this new name 🙂

After my discovery of Akwasikrom and surveying all the untapped resources around, I had to make it back to the city centre in time for the second participant observation of Naky’s Afrikan Lisbon Tour. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the start of the tour. There were some drizzles towards the end but not much. I actually forgot and left my umbrella behind on the bus ride back to the hostel. So much went on on this tour and it was very interesting see how the process of group forming unfolded. This process of a sense of ‘group’ among the guests on the tour was further cemented at ‘drinking’ breaks on the tour and finally at the shared meal at Mambo Restaurant at the end. The conversations around history-heritage-memory continued over the meal and afterwards. Guests shared their knowledge and experiences as well as exchanged contacts for further connection.

All in all this was a very eventful and fruitful day of research fieldwork discoveries….