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At the crossroads between Togo and Benin, where the borders merge into a rich cultural tapestry, lies a unique community: the African returnees from Brazil. Several other African countries also have these people, who returned to Africa after the so-called Golden Law abolished slavery.
Anice Lawson, a doctoral student at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris, explained that the group has preserved aspects of Brazilian culture in their daily lives.
“We identify this community by their surnames: De Almeida, Da Silveira, Da Silva. These surnames they kept after they returned from Brazil,” she said in an interview with Sputnik, adding that there are several communities of returnees in these two countries, as well as in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and countries in southern and eastern Africa.
She assumed that “Brazil and Africa are distant places because the Atlantic Ocean separates us, but I think we are the same people. It’s only the distance that separates us.”
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