One of these days I read a post here on Steemit about Sao Tome and Principe. I was quite enthusiastic with the title but when I opened the post, the content was a pure copy/paste without any reference of the source! At least, I felt that the content didn't come from the author at all. Disappointing...
So I thought about writing my own thoughts on this Equator's Paradise.
I've lived in Sao Tome from 1994 to 1998, so almost 20 years ago! My dad's from Sao Tome. We left our Maputo, Mozambique, to our second home. I'll only write about Sao Tome because we've never visited Principe's island. My memories are from... a hot land (humid and stuffy are better adjectives!), some of those pieces of land where even when it rains, we feel the moist merging with our bodies,
a land of simple and smiley people, a people that thinks only about today, and tomorrow... well, we'll deal with it tomorrow; its motto is "leve leve sô", the same as "slowly slowly..." without the weight of responsibilities of arriving as soon as possible to work or to our kids' school, a "slowly slowly..." that means "we live life one day at a time, there's no worries about tomorrow". (Points against? Yes, maybe, but let's keep it for another thoughts...),
a land full of natural contrasts, beautiful blue water beaches and white sand, beaches of black sand, beaches of sand covered with shells, beaches with all kinds of mixtures with fishermen bringing fresh fish and the sellers picking fish to sell and the children taking bath after school...,
a land of dense jungles of incredible dangers we of the city heard about: the black snake, lethal! Mountains with peculiar shapes covered with clouds (or is it fog?). Beautiful colonial time fields, with huge houses and huge lands of coffee, cocoa and other products, but the majority in ruins or others trying to reborn by the hands of national entrepreneurs,
a land where development takes too long to arrive, where who doesn't have energy generators, stays completely at dark if electricity fails (and how many times it failed!), where the majority of the houses are made of wooden planks on top of wooden stakes to prevent destruction after floods, where almost zero roads have asphalt and the huge holes almost swallow a tire!
a land that leaves us filled with nostalgy for the warm people (and friends and family we left there), for the pleasant warm beaches, for the history left by the Portuguese, for the culture that the Sao Tome people built, for the tasty fruit and delicious fresh fish, always garnished with bananas (and there are so many types of bananas!),
Note: the photos are from back then, when we lived in Sao Tome, taken by my family. The majority is about the paradise and not the city itself, from one day that we decided to cross all the country from the capital (Sao Tome) to Rolas Islet (here's the publicity), where the Equator's Line crosses the land.
Attention! My thoughts are memories I have from 20 years ago, they don't reflect nowadays or at least it seems to me things are a bit better now. By the way, whoever has news from our Equator's Paradise just share it please!