Fisherman Alphonse Akadie was forced to exhume the bodies of his relatives last year from the village cemetery in Ivory Coast to avoid their remains being carried off into the ocean.

Over the last 50 years, the Atlantic waters, rising as a result of man-made climate change, have eaten away most of the site where residents of Lahou-Kpanda laid their loved ones to rest.

Distraught and with no official help, Akadie, 53, decided he would organise a ceremony for the moving of the remains of his parents, uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather.

Hundreds of other families have had to do the same.

It was a tough decision for Akadie to attend the exhumation. “We take the bones, the hair and then the teeth, whatever isn’t rotten, and we put that on white cloths,” before placing them in small co

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