Africa's Carnival City — the Cross River port where one million visitors descend for December's Calabar Carnival (Africa's biggest street party), Nigeria's cleanest city title holds year after year, the last Cross River gorillas survive in the Afi Mountain sanctuary, and palm wine is the drink at every table
Calabar is the capital of Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria — consistently voted Nigeria's cleanest and most orderly city, a distinction that reflects its distinct cultural character within Nigeria. The Calabar Carnival (December 1–31) is Africa's largest street carnival, drawing 1–3 million visitors annually to a month of parades, street performances, and competitions between five rival bands (bands, not musical groups — each a massive costumed troupe with hundreds of performers) that has been growing since its founding in 2004. The carnival's peak is the Grand Finale street processi…
The Calabar River estuary was home to the Efik and Calabari peoples — the Efik in particular became dominant traders who controlled the European slave trade at 'Old Calabar' (the original settlement, now called Creek Town, a few km from modern Calabar city). Old Calabar was one of the largest slave-exporting ports in the Bight of Biafra from the 17th to early 19th centuries — an estimated 1.5 million people were enslaved and shipped through Old Calabar between 1600 and 1840. The trade was controlled by the Efik through the Ekpe (Leopard Society), a secret society that also enforced commercial…