The hammer crashed on the concrete tomb, disturbing the morning calm in Lahou-Kpanda, a small fishing village located 140km southwest of Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan.

“We have to dig up my mother,” said Franck Avit, standing next to the tomb in the decaying cemetery. Rows of gravestones, often completely in ruins, are covered in sand. “If we don’t, the sea will take her,” he said, while beads of sweat glistened on his skin in the unrelenting West African sun.

After half an hour of hammering, the tomb cracked open. Avit picked up the remains of his mother, Odette Avit, and placed her in a small casket. Then he carried the coffin on his shoulders across the graveyard, placed it onto a cart and pulled it along the coastal path. “The sea has taken it all,” explained Patrick who has been helping Avit move his family to a new cemetery. 

“Now we are losing our ancestors,” he said. “It is like they die twice.”

Read my article with photography from Abidjan-based Alejandra Loreto for Climate Change Home: here.