Ten days and counting...

We have less than 2 weeks left of our trip, and I have to say, the time has flown! With our few remaining days, Jared and I plan to make the most of this beautiful place. Dinner, drinks and good byes with our friends Doug and Amanda, Freddy, Pastor Milton, Allen, Jose and Maria, Isilda, and Madalena will be filling a lot of the last days. Jared is cruising through as much as he can at the archives and is completely satisfied with the work he has done in the last 9 months. We closed our account at Eco Bank on Friday, and the bank manager and tellers were surprised and a little sad to see us go. It was pretty touching to have everyone waving and wishing us luck in life.

We are taking our fill of the sun and the food too before we go. We are eating as much marlin, sail fish and swordfish as we can at B24 (a hole in the wall in the park) because it is so delicious and cheap! We pay about 3 Euros for a huge steak of fish, fried bananas and rice – and in the US, these types of fish are $10 per pound usually! We are also eating our fill of buzio del mar (sea snails) at Papa Figo and enjoying the grilled chicken and rice at Sabor da Ilha. This is the only meat on the island that we trust and eat, and it is so good! The restaurant is owned by a Portuguese man, and it has wonderful food! The rice here is fried in oil and then boiled, so it remains a bit crunchy, but has a ton of flavor! We can’t get enough of it! We also are visiting Jasmin quite a bit because this spot has the best dessert on the island. Jared favors a cake made of wafer cookies and I love the chocolate mouse! And of course, we are spending as much time as possible at our favorite spot, the Pesante café next to Mirimar hotel. This café is right on the ocean and the view is stunning! Blue and white waves crash on black volcanic rock, there is always a breeze, so no matter how hot the sun is, sitting there is refreshing, and there is usually some sort of ship out in the bay to watch. Jared and I waste so much time here on the weekends! I order a café (European espresso) and Jared orders a galao (café with milk) and we chat and stare, completely at ease and relaxed like we have never been before. I am so going to miss this!

We are also working on our tans at the pool! Neither of us have ever really been the type to tan easily, and so even though we are totally tan for us, I am sure we will not be as tan as our friends back home. Oh well, I think the sun has done us some good. It has relaxed us, I think!

Along with food, sun and friends, we are plotting the rest of our souvenirs to buy. There really aren’t a lot of options on this front. São Tomé does not have much tourism yet and the tourism that does exist is resort, 5 star, very elite and expensive tourism. So, the few items that are available are totally expensive, way out of our price range, and really not at all “São Tomean”. – Like a painting will be of elephants, but there aren’t any elephants here, and it will cost 250 Euros. So, there really isn’t much for us to choose from. However, the island is known for its coffee and chocolate, so these items are what we are going to arm ourselves with.

10 days and counting….

It's Election Time in Sao Tome

For the last month, 15 different political parties were having parties all day and night trying to sway São Tomeans to vote for them. Luckily for us, most of these parties were held across from our apartment in the soccer stadium in the local park. These parties did not consist of speeches and promises for a better tomorrow, no, they were straight up parties - loud music, local musicians, food and drinks. Some of these political rallies went late into the night and some were held during the day specifically for children. During the days, trucks and cars drove around town with flags waving, people yelling out the windows, and some with speaker systems in the bed of the trucks blasting loud music. The different parties had colors, so if the cars and trucks were driving by super fast (which was usually the case) then you could still see what party it was for. There were about 4 major parties with the most money to spend for votes that we saw most frequently in the city. Oddly, around the same time as the elections were drawing near, new clothes and accessories started to appear on people, new cars and trucks appeared on the roads, and tons of new scooters and motorcycles appeared. Our friend who is the Cape Verde Ambassador told us that during election season (which happens every 5 years) money suddenly appears. Money that is not around any other time for roads, education, or health care. Another friend of ours told us that the owner of the Toyota shop in town was bragging that during election season, he sells 5000 motorcycles and scooters! Enough to get him through till the next election time. A guy we know worked for one of the parties, and his job was to go into communities with a truck full of clothes, beer, and soccer balls and to just give it all away in the name of the party. The local park, like I said earlier, held quite a few of the rallies, and because of this, light bulbs that had been out for months were replaced for the late night parties! Its so nice to walk through the park and see where we are going now. I know that in our country votes are bought and bribed for. I am not so dumb as to not think it happens. But to see it so openly and blatant, especially in the face of such need and negligence – it was really hard to witness. There is not a local paper that regularly is printed here, and the news on the TV and radio did not talk about specific parties, so Jared and I have no idea the platform of these various parties, and I think – given the multiple rallies we witnessed – that a lot of São Tomeans did not either. Several people we talked to (Pastors, artists, and the guard on our street) all said that they do not vote because the whole government is corrupt and it doesn’t matter, that the parties are not about issues, just money. How sad. To be a democracy, to be able to vote and to feel that your vote does not matter – its just like the USA in that respect, I guess.

Anyway, another very popular bribe is power. The electric company is owned by the government, and as the elections drew closer, our power got better and better. In fact, the elections were supposed to be in March, but were pushed back twice and finally were in late July. As we discussed power issues with people the whole time here, a common lament was “Oh, the power is good now because of the elections. Just wait until they are over. You haven’t seen anything yet!” On any given day, Jared and I have about 14-20 hours of power. The outages are usually 1-3 hours long and happen all throughout the day. There is no schedule for the power here, unlike other countries and even the island of Principe. The longest we went with out power was 14 hours – we had two of those back to back with 2 hours of power in between. But, as the elections drew near, we were having 20 -22 hours of power everyday! It was great! But, we were also worried about the days following the elections. Luckily, it hasn’t been too bad. The last two weeks we have been having about 16 hours of power or so a day and usually the longest outages are late at night when we are sleeping.

A new party ended up being elected, but not by a huge majority, which means the old party and the new one will have to work together. This, we think, will be good for São Tomé. Learning to compromise and work together is good for anyone!

Thank God we are in a country that is stable, safe, and non-violent. The last attempted coup was 5 years ago, after the last elections. A group of rebels stole the nation’s only tank and planned to storm the Presidential Palace. However, the tank needed gas and the São Tomeans in line at the central gas station in town refused to let the tank cut. So, while the tank was waiting in line at the gas station, the military retook the tank and the “coup” was over.

July, 2010

It has been a month since our last blog post. Sorry about that. Really, there has not been too much to report on. In the last month, we rented a car again and our friend Beth joined us on our trip. Beth is from Washington D.C. and works with Waveplace, a non-profit that picks up with programming where One Laptop Per Child has left off. She came to Sao Tome last year for 2 months to start a program in a school here and came back for a month this summer to check on the progress. Her arrival brought about Polly's departure, which was really sad, but Beth was fun to hang out with, so that was cool. And, she introduced us to some people on the island, which has proven to be useful.

So, the rent-a-car trip...Jared needed to get pictures of various monuments, statues, and the like in several places on the north and west of the island, so this was the direction we set out. We hit Guadelupe, the 5th largest city on the island (not that big of a deal seeing as how there are only like 7 cities total). Then we went to Augustino Neto Roca, the largest one on the island. THis one was quite impressive, as it had a beautiful, maintained garden to visit as well as a hospital (no longer in use) and a church that happened to be decorated for a wedding the next day. Most of the items in the National Museum are from this roca and it is a big tourist attraction, if you want to go so far as to say there are tourist attractions here. After this, we drove to Neves, the 3rd largest city where the Rosema brewery is, and then on to the landing cite of the Portuguese nearly 400 years earlier. We are lunch at the lighthouse above Lagua Azul and I have to say, it was one of the nicest moments of our time here. The dry season had taken its toll on the long grasses around the inlets and everything was golden like hay and the waters around were dark blue, the sky was bright crystal blue and in the distance, you could see huge Baoba trees with their empty short and twisted limbs framed in the blue above. It was so peaceful! Also, along our way, we had picked up sugar cane and cocoa to try, so after lunch, we munched on some fresh sugar cane - so hard to rip apart with your teeth, but super good - and then we cracked open a cocoa pod and sucked on the beans inside. It was awesome!

After that break, we went to Fernad Dias, a north point on the island that where the horrible Batepa Massacre ended. A deep water port is in the slow, African process of being built, and so the monument that once stood there in memory of the massacre has been destroyed. Not moved, but demolished!!

*Interesting side note here - the port right now is in the city, very near our apartment. This has been the port since the city was born. However, the water in the bay is very shallow (and as a result, cluttered with lots of decaying and rusting boats and ships) which causes container ships and all other vessels to anchor out in the ocean. Then, little tug boats with small barges go out, load or unload, 3-4 containers at a time and then chug its way back to the port. The whole process is very slow and ships will be out in the sea for a week waiting to unload and reload. The new deep water port would be twice as fast if not more! Its amazing it hasn't been done yet!

So that was our rent-a-car day number 2 and our last trip around the island before we go home Now we have done and seen everything outside of the city that was on our list!

And now, Polly and Beth have been added to the list of people who have gone. Our friend pool now consists of Doug and Amanda, Baptist missionaries from the states, and their two girls - we have dinner with them about once a week or so. They lived here for 4 years, left for a year to raise funds and are now back for 4 more years. Their youngest girl was born in Sao Tome and has dual citizenship. We also met a guy from Sweden, Freddy, who is here building a hotel. He has traveled everywhere, speaks English, and is bored just like everyone else here. So, we get together with him once a week to have a drink and talk about the few things that actually happened that week. Then, there are Allen, Nilton, and Reggie. All Sao Tomeans and all really nice guys. We were introduced to them through Beth and now that she is gone, we see them every once and awhile, which is really nice. There are also Pastor Milton and Pastor Marquez, who Jared taught English too, and of course, the people we see everyday on our walks that we stop and say hi to, discuss the weather, and chat about whatever is happening that day. These people are the kids in the park who wash the cars during lunchtime, the guards of all the important buildings, and the workers of the cafes and such that we visit regularly.