June 18, 2007

Here are some more random vignettes from São Tomé. I can't seem to find a way to organize them, so please forgive the jumping around from paragraph to paragraph.

The climate here is unbelievable! I would never have thought one could be so comfortable at the equator. It was a little muggy when we first arrived, but nothing like Guinea. Since the rains have mostly ended, the gravana has started. The gravana is a period of about four months with little rain, more clouds than usual (though not horizon-to-horizon gray like a Michigan winter), and cool dry winds. Since the beginning of June, daytime temperatures peak at around 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) and nighttime temperatures drop to near 65! With less humidity in the air, the views are crystal clear, and with the passing clouds and bright, gorgeous sunshine flashing through, the colors of the water and flowers and tree-covered mountain slopes are intensely vivid. We never experienced temperatures this cool in Guinea – not even in the coolest season – and Guinea is further from the equator than STP! I think it's all because of the islands. Land heats up faster than water, yet the nearest large heat-generating landmass is 200 miles away. STP has such little landmass of its own that it doesn't generate much heat, and what little heat is generated is blown away by ocean breezes from the coast, which is never more than 15 miles away. We have high hopes that STP's hottest season will also be markedly cooler than Guinea's!

Another feast for the eyes is my morning jogging route. I have never had a more beautiful run than what I am experiencing here. The first beauty is that we live near the top of a hill, so the first 2-3 minutes of my jog are downhill! At the bottom of the hill starts a very long crescent beach with coconut palms lining one side and crystal clear waves gently spreading out on the other. I run in the corridor between the two, looking out to sea at the ever-changing sunrises, dodging the profusion of beautiful shells in such quantities that it would take you a month to collect just as many in tourist-clogged Florida. I turn around at a picturesque pier with a yacht bobbing gently offshore and return past the succession of ambassador's homes (and one quiet resort hotel) with their impeccably maintained grounds and lovely landscaping. By the time I return home and walk up our drive facing the mountains, the tips of the peaks are just beginning to bathe in the first rays of sun, and they glow like a warm fire.

Okay, I have a public confession to make. I have an STD. Well, okay, I've got several. Well, "several" being maybe a couple thousand. Okay, fine, fine. I'll admit it. I've got millions of STD's! And I don't want to get rid of them! For one US dollar, I can buy nearly 13,500 STD's! Talk about cheap! (Before the rumor mill gets in full swing, let me just point out that just as "USD" is the official abbreviation for "US Dollar", "STD" is the official abbreviation for "Sao Tomean Dobra." Dobras are the currency used in this country). There, I feel much better. Confession is good for the soul.

One thing I have found quite interesting is the tremendous number of Taiwanese here. I would say they are the second most common group of foreigners, after the Portuguese (maybe they even surpass the Portuguese?). What might draw such large quantities of Taiwanese to STP?, you ask. Diplomatic recognition. You see, mainland China and Taiwan have been in dispute for years over whether Taiwan is a separate country (Taiwan's view) or a province of China (China's view). Both sides staunchly stick to their version, and neither will give up any ground. So they duke it out diplomatically around the world. Countries are not allowed to recognize both China and Taiwan, since to side with China would discredit Taiwan's view, and to side with Taiwan would discredit China's view. Each country around the world must decide which side they will recognize, and once they make that decision, they exchange ambassadors and trade and investment. Even if a country wanted to support both Chinas (whose views are mutually exclusive), one or the other China would probably cut off diplomatic relations in protest and withdraw their ambassador and trade and investment. As it turns out, not many countries around the world side with Taiwan – not necessarily because they disagree with Taiwan's sovereignty, but because mainland China is such an economic powerhouse that they want to establish trade with Beijing. On the other hand, the few countries that are willing to recognize Taiwan instead get lavished with gifts and trade and investment and development projects! It's kind of like the Cold War when the US and the Soviet Union amassed allies like baseball cards simply to show off to the other guy that "more countries think I'm right than you!"

Anyway, STP is reaping royally from its exchange of ambassadors with Taiwan, instead of mainland China. The most remarkable feat of the Taiwanese development projects has been the nearly complete eradication of malaria. Because STP is so small, it is possible to visit EVERY house in the country. This the Taiwanese do at least once a year, asking the residents to pull all furniture away from the walls and get lost for an hour or so. Then they spray against mosquitoes. And by spray, I don't mean the dainty little squirts that Florida pest control people do across thresholds and window ledges. I mean floor to ceiling spraying of every square inch of wall in the house. After an hour of airing out, the pesticide disperses to a safe level for humans, and people can re-enter their houses. But they should avoid touching the walls for a few days or so, as it can burn the skin lightly. The end result is not only the instant death of every insect and arachnid resident of a house, but also the future prevention of any insects or arachnids even thinking of breaking and entering. They say that for six months after spraying, you won't even see so much as a gnat's eyebrow casting a shadow upon your house (well, okay, they don't say it in those exact words; it's an Adam paraphrase). I'm looking forward to it! Our apartment's last spray was in October last year, so it's wearing off and we're becoming a virtual residence hall for all manner of rowdy and drunken cockroaches and ants. In any case, the spraying cuts down enough on mosquitoes in the house that combined with ADRA's blanketing the country in insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets and the doctor's association of São Tomé establishing consistent strict guidelines for each doctor to follow in treating malaria (reducing the disease's resistance to half-hearted treatments), malaria prevalence has dropped way below anyone thought possible for this region of the world. We are not taking any prophylaxis, and neither are any of the expatriates we know, yet no one is getting sick. Yet another measure of the success of the malaria-control program is that last month in the Health Post of Porto Alegre (one of the clinics participating in our project), there was only one positive case of malaria out of 52 people tested. That's 1.9% prevalence!

Our house is in a nice apartment block with Brazilian embassy personnel as our neighbors. The Cape Verdean ambassador's house is just over the wall from our compound, and the Taiwanese ambassador's house is just down the hill from us. We feel very important! Apparently, our apartment complex is highly desirable – not because it's the most beautiful in town (it's not), but because the landlord is incredibly wonderful! He must be very business savvy, because he rushes to trip over himself to accommodate whatever need or request you might have.

Our apartment came furnished, and very well-organized: the ants are confined primarily to the kitchen (big biteless things that swarm over dirty dishes within minutes of putting them down), the flies stay primarily in the living room and kitchen, the mosquitoes (few that there are) can be found mostly in our room and bathroom, and the horses... I mean, cockroaches... congregate neatly in the guest bathroom. It's a very well-planned society!

On my part, I have discovered the joy of hunting. I never considered myself part of hunting society – it's so cruel and unfair – but my in-laws gifted us with a tennis-racket-lookalike which is actually a bug zapper, and now I have experienced the thrill of stalking and bagging flies. The mesh of the racket is actually a grid of wires that charges when you push a button; when the wires come in contact with a fly (or centipede, or mosquito, or ______), it electrocutes him. One good swipe of the racket (much like playing tennis), a loud POP, a flash, and a wisp of smoke wends its way upward to that great garbage dump in the sky. I alone am responsible for some two dozen fly transfigurations. Too bad the antlers aren't much for mounting on the wall. And like a compulsive hunter who cannot stop himself when the deer are out of season, I find myself overtaken with urges to move my operations outside when flies are too few in number in our house. Somebody please help me! Is there a chapter of FZA (fly-zappers anonymous) here in São Tomé?

Despite the annoying character of the ants (they enter the kitchen marching in delta formation like Blue Angels that have lost their wings and they never ask permission to eat here), they are amazingly efficient cleaners. I haven't yet put dirty bowls and plates back in the cupboard without washing them, but I almost could after the ants clean up. If one of their kind perishes under my shoe, they sniff him out, go berzerk running around in a panic (are ants smart enough to sense fear and grief?), and then make quick work of escorting him out of the kitchen to who-knows-where. Same goes for cockroaches. I purposely left a cockroach in the middle of the kitchen floor where I smashed him one evening, and just as I suspected, he was completely gone in the morning. Not a trace of him to be found anywhere!

Okay, I'm starting to sound a little obsessed with insects, so I'll stop here. But not before I tell you who is REALLY obsessed with insects: the Minister of Health. This gentleman (who is a Seventh-day Adventist and used to work for ADRA just before being appointed to the government) made a public health career out of malaria control and prevention. You are going to laugh your head off when I tell you this, but I kid you not: he has a mosquito collection! I'm talking about mosquitoes pinned to a board (like butterflies), each labeled scientifically, with a banner above it declaring "Mosquitoes of São Tomé." How on earth one manages to pin mosquitoes to a board is a mystery to me (I'll have to look closer next time I'm in his office), but THAT, my friends, is what an obsessed insectophiliac looks like. I'm a mere amateur compared to him.

Attending church is a multi-sensory experience here. We attend the Central church (the church associated with the Seventh-day Adventist headquarters in São Tomé), which has about 500 members. Because it's the main congregation (there are about 10 Adventist churches throughout STP), it's the place where various choirs from other congregations come to perform. Every Sabbath we have a new choir, and they shuffle and sway down the aisle, making their grand entrance slowly from the back, singing their hearts out in the most beautiful harmonies that remind me of southern Africa (I guess that makes sense, considering that most are descendant from Angolans and Mozambicans). Tall windows (nearly floor to ceiling) let in cool breezes, so we rarely feel hot (unlike Guinea, where we roasted even with the ceiling fans going full blast on us). The church is very much alive, with enthusiastic participation, lively sermons, packed pews, and a responsive audience.

Church is also the most sustained exposure we have to nonstop Portuguese all week. I am rapidly picking up vocabulary, since so much of it is similar to Spanish. There are a few pretty consistent rules that have helped me a lot. Among them are:

Aside from differences in writing, there are some differences in pronunciation, too – even when words are written almost exactly the same as Spanish. For example, "o" is pronounced "u" (that's "ooh" for my American readers) when it's in the middle or end of a word. "S" is pronounced "sh" in the middle or end of words. So a simple word such as "anos" (that's "years", y'all, not an anatomical part) gets pronounced "ah-noosh". The combination "rr" that gets rolled vigorously in Spanish turns into a hard "h" in the back of the throat in Portuguese, such that "burros" (donkeys) is approximately pronounced "boo-hoosh". (I am told that the Portuguese here resembles that of Portugal most closely, so this may not resonate perfectly with my Brazilian friends). Granted, there is plenty of vocabulary that differs greatly from the other romance languages (if not, they would all just be dialects of each other). For example, "children" gets rendered as "niños" in Spanish, "enfants" in French, and "crianças" in Portuguese. "Thank you" is "gracias" in Spanish, "merci" in French, and "obrigado" in Portuguese.

In my last tome, I declared that the islands were uninhabited until the Portuguese discovered them in the 1400's, and then populated them with slaves from the mainland to work their sugar and coffee plantations. That's the official history. The story on the streets here, however, is that the islands were populated long before the arrival of the Portuguese by shipwrecked Angolans, who landed and settled in the southeast portion of São Tomé (which is now Caué province where we work), and who still to this day speak "Angolares", a language that is a mixture of African tongues from Angola peppered with borrowed Portuguese terms (Angolares, incidentally, is also the short-hand name for the capital of Caué, São João dos Angolares). It's not surprising that the locals viewed the Portuguese with friendly suspicion at best, but the Portuguese also had their nemeses – other European states who also explored the African coastline and claimed portions for their respective crowns. The Portuguese and Spanish were particularly at odds with each other (especially in Latin America), and the Portuguese who "discovered" STP were delighted to find a unique kind of tree here whose fruit starts out growing like an open hand, but then folds over on itself and closes upon reaching maturity. Gleefully, the Portuguese placed coins on the open "hands" of the young fruit and then waited for the coins to be enveloped completely when the fruit ripened. Then they hurriedly shipped off some of the fruit to Spain, claiming they had discovered a "money tree". The incredulous Spaniards opened the fruit, and to their astonishment, found coins inside each one! Delighted, they planted the seeds and awaited the arrival of their fortunes. Years later when the trees reached maturity, the Spaniards discovered to their dismay that the fruits did NOT contain money like the ones shipped from STP. Too bad! So kids, your parents are right: money does not grow on trees.

So, what do I do all day (other than get regaled with stories of money trees)? Sometimes my job seems to consist primarily of signing checks and purchase orders and authorizing payments. Most primary project activities were held off until I arrived, so there's been a flurry of equipment to buy, health clinic repairs to begin, and training activities to prepare for. Some days I take a full day field visit to Caué with Valdmir, the community mobilizer for that district (he goes every other day to Caué, as his main job is to be the "hands and feet" on the ground, interacting with the people, addressing their concerns, explaining the objectives of the project, and transmitting the wishes of the people to me to assist me in setting the course for the project). Other days, it seems that all I do is correspond by email or instant messaging with all the other stakeholders in the project – ADRA STP's administration, ADRA International, USAID (the donor), and assorted government personnel and sister aid agencies. Everybody has their particular vision for the project, some more binding than others. I see my job primarily as a translator/coordinator. I get bombarded with requests from the outside (USAID: please begin such-and-such training by next month), requests from the inside (community residents and leaders: could you please train us in thus-and-so before such-and-such?), and priorities that I set for myself (me: if we finish such-and-such task by the time the ambassador visits, he'll be really pleased and may increase our funding). I take all of these disparate requests and priorities and strategically organize them so that they work. With broad empowerment, support, and financing, there are no barriers to what can be accomplished (at least, not many). And when a particular task has been successfully navigated to most everyone's satisfaction, then I write a report about it.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of working (and living) here is the logistics. In Guinea, the problem was getting around Conakry. It's a super long peninsula with few main arteries leading to the downtown area, so the roads are always clogged with traffic, and a simple trip downtown to buy groceries can take half a day. In STP, the problem is business hours. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason (and certainly no regulation) governing when offices must be open. Each business sets whatever hours they want. They don't even have to work a full day, as long as they bring in enough revenue to maintain the status quo. So if you want to go downtown and knock off several errands from your list (visit the STP Airways office to buy tickets for Príncipe, go to the bank to withdraw money, visit an electronics shop to price some network routers, fill the car with fuel), you might discover (the hard way) that STP Airways' office hours are from 8:00 to 10:00 in the morning, and 2:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon; the bank is open only from 9:30 to 11:45 in the morning and 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon; the electronics shop is open from 7:30 in the morning until 1:00 in the afternoon and then closes for the day; and the gas station is usually open when you are going to town, but happens to be out of fuel today. These are all hypothetical times (I'm not sure what their business hours really are), but they are definitely completely plausible here. Unless you can memorize the exact business hours for every agency in town, you're bound to leave at least one errand undone. Victor, one of our ADRA logisticians (and the one assigned to the AWARE project, among others) has a phenomenal sixth sense for these bizarre business hours. He is a top notch logistician, made for his job. All I have to do in the morning is give him my list, and by noon he has completed everything I asked of him and more (remember, he works for other projects, too). How he does it is a mystery to me, but I am in awe of him. Zachary loves him to death, too, as Victor often takes Kristi and Zachary to town to run their errands while he's out and about. Zachary happily chatters Victor's ear off about the progress of his potty training ("Big boy underwear, Victor; big boy underwear!") or whatever comes to his mind, and Victor reciprocates the love and friendship. They really have a special bond.

On a recent trip to Caué with Valdmir, I learned more about the history of the rundown plantations that pepper the countryside. When the Portuguese left, the national government took over all of the plantations that were left behind and managed operations from within the palatial plantation buildings. These plantations produced primarily palm oil, sugar cane, cocoa, coffee, and bananas. Problems arose when the previous government administration ran into a budget crisis in 1993, the reasons of which are not crystal clear to me, but might have been related to mismanagement or corruption. Salaries of workers were left unpaid for months until the plantations eventually stopped working altogether. To solve the problem, the government decided to dissolve the bureaucratic management teams and privatize the plantations, divvying up equal plots of land for each unpaid worker, and hoping that personal pride of ownership would be incentive enough for production. What privatization didn't do, however, was provide the tools necessary to do the work. When operations were nationalized, the government provided expensive high-tech machinery; when operations were privatized, no individual citizen could afford the equipment necessary to work their plot of land. Valdmir says that Saotomeans are not the sharing type (it's foreign to their culture), so forming associations to collectively buy and use equipment wouldn't work (somebody would make off with the treasury or equipment and sabotage the whole thing). So many people turned to fishing (little equipment, little effort in these rich waters, and huge returns) and the colonial buildings crumbled and were taken over by nature within 10 to 15 years. The new government is trying to change that in various ways, but it's hard to unfry an egg.

Okay, one last story, and then I'll quit for this time. Want a story of spying and intrigue? Well, you've got it! Who would ever think that little old out-of-the-way unknown and forgotten São Tomé would have spying and intrigue?! Well actually, that's precisely why it's an attractive place to hide and blend into society. Apparently, São Tomé sent some soldiers to South Africa years ago to acquire much better training than is available here. In fact, those soldiers were so well trained that they joined an elite group of mercenaries known as the "Buffaloes". It is said that the Buffaloes have played huge roles (unofficially, secretively) in virtually every major conflict in Africa. The Saotomean Buffaloes have now mostly returned and blend quietly into society. A number of South African Buffaloes, too, have moved here, and control the most lucrative real estate, the best resorts, and the most prosperous businesses. When needed, the Buffaloes are prepared to reactivate and influence the destiny of countries all over the continent. Is it true? I don't know, but certain pieces of the puzzle are certainly here, and it makes for a good "ooh!" story.

But I've left out an important part of the story. When the Saotomean Buffaloes initially returned, they knew they were the best and they asked for positions in the military and industry that reflected it. The government at the time refused, so they staged a week-long bloodless coup while the president was out of the country on a diplomatic trip to Europe. Their terms: give us the positions we asked for, and you can get your presidency back – no hard feelings. So, the government set up a reconciliation commission to negotiate the details, and began casting about for a chairman who is well-respected yet not involved in national politics at all and is neutral to the conflict. Pastor Dias Marques, the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in STP fit the bill perfectly, and was asked to head the reconciliation commission. Being a neutral non-politician, he initially refused, misunderstanding the nature of the request. But when the government couldn't find anyone else, he asked permission from his superiors at the Euro-Africa Division of SDA's office. They initially refused, too (also misunderstanding the nature of the request), but the president of the republic personally telephoned the Division office and persuaded them to relent. He did a stellar job, and São Tomé resumed its peaceful, hum-drum pace of life. The Buffaloes, however, had shown their muscle. There has been only one other coup since then, also ridiculously classified as such, since no blood was shed and the president was reinstated again after negotiations. For the most part, the Buffaloes blend in as good members of society. Nobody knows who they are individually, but everyone seems sure that they do exist here in large numbers.

As I said in an earlier email post, the picture page of my website is now up, as are most of the other pages. Check it out at http://www.geocities.com/adamkis18/.

Until next tome...

Adam