Second Chapter
- On the Beach
By the sea, everything is
colorful. Young men engage in fishing, sailing in rickety wooden boats as in
old movie films, young women dressed in colorful clothes, their babies tied on
their backs, and on their heads baskets full of fruit, walking like dancers,
while smiling to everyone. Is everyone so happy here? Here is my personal Journal
in this wild Africa.
The government of Sao Tome and Principe gave us a car
with an adjoining driver - a luxury in this island, and Felisa and I decide to
take every spare moment and visit every possible corner. Our driver is a young
guy who answers all our questions with a broad and optimistic smile. Listening
to him, one might think that we are in a European city that invites us to incredible
culture and nightlife.
On the beach named Brazil, everything is colorful.
Young men engage in fishing, sailing in rickety wooden boats, much of which can
be seen in old movies of the early cinema era. Young women, dressed in colorful
clothes, with their backs tied to a baby and with their heads loaded with
baskets of fruit. All of them walk in dance movements smiling in every
direction, with happy faces and laughing eyes. Children in torn or naked
clothes happily photographed, exposing their intimate organs with great pride.
Is
everyone so happy here? And why Emerilio did tell us that a teacher's salary (a
respectable profession!!) is about $ 30 a month, which allows "to die and
not to live"...
The hotel
owner, a German-born man who has lived in Africa for 40 years, looks at us
ironically when we ask where the theater or cinema on the island is: "Your
innocence... There is neither a movie hall nor a theater ..."
"So
how do people spend their leisure time?" We ask - "make
children," the man answers us. Each family has between 15-20 children.
A little house on a tree
While this is true, this unknown island does not have
a closed theater, where well-dressed people sit and clap politely when the
lights go out. But there is a "street theater" here: it is enough to
travel along the seaside or walk around the open market on the main street of
the city and meet the people living here, and you have a wonderful spectacle, a
spectacle open for every person's soul and amazing to who is used to urban
civilization, that that opens and closes the heart and the mind at the same
time.
Sunday
morning and we wake up at a hotel whose windows overlook the Atlantic Ocean and
the tropical backyard of the hotel. The quietness around is wonderful. It is
impossible to accelerate a step here because no one is running anywhere. There
is no bus noise and ambulance sirens are not heard. After a while, we learned,
from conversations with the group members that few Red Cross ambulances serve
the entire population, and that there is a small, shabby hospital in the city
that runs the risk of being hospitalized.
The backyard
of the hotel
And yet,
on Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the course opens, we sit in the lobby
of the hotel and prepare again for our first day of study. We are both
extremely excited: how many people will attend the course? How will they
receive us? Will the things we have prepared be relevant? Repeating to
ourselves that no doubt we are about to meet intelligent and nice people and we
are sure we will learn a lot from them.
I
remember the anthropological studies I read, written by the
"European" eyes of European scholars, following observations about
tribal societies. In my opinion observations that, were wrong, since they
presented a clear dichotomy (for them) between the society they called
"primitive" and modern-western society, generally Christian. We are
all familiar with the stories of missionary actions in many countries, a process
in which quite a few wonderful cultures have been lost. Felisa and I reject
this worldview, and in retrospect are glad that our prophecy fulfilled itself
(about this I shall write in the chapters about the course and its
participants).
From our
brief stay on the island so far it is clear to us that we are in a place that
has nothing to do with the concept of what we call "technological
advancement", and therefore we should not expect modern technical means to
be available. We ponder loudly and realize that what will enable this course to
success lies in the human side of all of us (theirs and ours), and the ability
of discourse that we shall have in common.
In my
room, when I am alone knowing that I will need to, starting tomorrow morning,
over long hours of everyday thinking and speaking in Portuguese, I memorize the
first things I'll say. I believe it will flow naturally. Felisa and I decide we
will call this course, among ourselves (with real optimism), "to flow with
the changes," another self-fulfilling prophecy.
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