17th of May
We are able to sleep a bit longer this morning since we have a presentation about a wireless broad band communication project here in cameroon. This is the first meeting we have on the „business side“ on our journey. Dov, a private investor we know from switzerland, has an interesting project to bring wireless internet access to a broad population in cameroon. It is very interesting to see what problems they are facing in an african country and learn more about problems of other areas. We have lunch with dove and go to the airport where we walk to the plane and take off in no time.
We fly on 16‘000 feet above the clouds with a very good speed of over 400 km/h. Loves flying over the open sea und hät fascht äs hörnli. Rainer flies another perfect landing and we line the plane up for refueling. The handler is a bit difficult and we learn what „laid back“ means here; lazy and complicated! He does not want to fill us up. Captain tom pulls all his tricks and we give the guy a hard time. Finally he understands and after 30 minutes we finally get moving. Around us are some old russian illjuschins, some with no engines. Looks like another graveyard for planes here. A gulfstream lands and we learn it is the president‘s plane. He is picked up and will arrive soon to go to cameroon for the independence celebrations.
The handler drives with us to the hotel. All of a sudden he gets very friendly and it looks like that he realizes that he got himself into deep shit! The houses remind me of the carebbean and we upgrade the hotel and go to a 5 star place; well at least that is what they think. It has wifi which is convenient for skype since our mobiles don‘t work here!! We jump into the really nice pool overlooking the atlantic and enjoy a beautiful sunset.
The history of sao tomé and principé is typical for many countries in africa. The islands were discovered by the portuguese in the late 15th century. In the 16th and 17th century the labour intensive sugar production demanded a lot of cheap slave labour that came from africa. When the sugar price fell, the islands focused on the slave trade becoming an important weigh station for slave ships heading from africa to brazil. In the 19th century two new cash crops, coffee and cocoa, overtook the old sugar plantations. By the 20th century, sao tome was one of the world‘s largest cocoa producers.
In 1876 slavery was outlawed, but was simply replaced with a similar system of forced labour for low wages. Frequent uprisings and revolts were brutally put down by the portuguese. In 1953 the massacre of batepa, in which many africans were killed by portuguese troops, sparked a full-fledged independence movement. Portugal held on, however, until the fall of the fascist government in 1974 and sao tome & principe achieved independence on 12th july 1975.
The portuguese exodus left the country with virtually no skilled labour, an illiteracy rate of 90%, only one doctor and many abandoned cocoa plantations. An economic crises was inevitable and radical members of the government forced the nationalization of the plantations. The country remained closely aligned with angola, cuba and communist eastern europe until the demise of the soviet union, when santoméans began to demand multiparty democracy. The first multiparty elections were held in early 1991.
Dinner is very good with a fantastic bottle of portuguese wine!
18th of May
Since it is our first „day off“, we have breakfast a bit later, read the swiss newspapers that we got from dov and decide to rent a 4×4 to explore the island on our own. We don‘t take a guide since we don‘t want to have somebody talking to us all the time.
The car is half hour late (leve leve) and we drive into downtown. We are amazed how the place is crumbling and in what a bad shape the town is. People don‘t look very happy here and they don‘t like it when we take pictures. We need petrol and ask a cab driver where to get it. He told us to go back where we came from. We find a the „shop“ and buy it: not by the pump but by the bottle. They get filled inside the shop where it heavily smells of gasoline. Hopefully nobody lights a match here! We buy 3 bottles for 15 euro and are happy to leave in one piece!
Taking the road north, we drive through real poor slums and after reaching the city limits we are in the jungle immediately. The road is really bad and rainer has to drive real carefully. The road along the coast offers some real nice sights. After 30 km we turn back and drive through some very poor villages. In the rivers, people are washing themselves and their cloths. According to our guide book, there should be a great seafood restaurant. We can convince tom that we are not really hungry and have lunch back in the hotel.
We hang at the pool, work on the photos, diaries and website. Captain tom discovers skype and calls the family back home. We have a beer with a senior banker from worldbank who explains us how some things work here. Dinner is in the hotel since we did not find some restaurants we really liked. It was a good day today to re-charge our batteries!
People are really poor here. When our foreign minister micheline calmy-rey travels on the swiss government business jet, many people complain in switzerland that it is too expensive. The president of sao tomé has a plane that costs 4 times more!
