Introducing Cape Verde and Sao Tome

So Wow do I have a LOT to write about. I really do not know where to start-so this might be long.

To start with, I WENT ON MY FIRST PLANE RIDE EVER and My FIRST TIME EVER out of the country to Cape Verde on June 24th 2011! Crazy huh? The plane was not as scary as people make it out to be, but because a wisdom tooth is growing in-it made my eardrum feel like it was bleeding and melting to death when we came down.
Once I looked outside of the plane window for my first time, I woke up to this:

It was unlike anything I have ever seen. The sunrise was so beautiful that my professional camera could not capture it. Gods creation is mysterious and infinitely wonderful, no one can doubt that.


Once we landed, I used a program that uses wifi to call my parents-however wifi in these areas are VERY hard to find. Like, Incredibly hard. So it does not come in handy much:/
Then we were on our way driving on the most rugged terrain on mountains over 8,000 feet up in the air and along cliffs and rocks. The land here is very dry, only the toughest plants can survive here-so dry that I saw my first few cactuses living in this soil! There are stray goats, pigs, ducks, chickens, dogs, some cats and donkeys wondering all over. Some belong to the people here. But most are strays. The roads can be dangerous, with pot holes all over the place and sharp curves around some high edges. The cars are mainly toyotas, so they are a good brand and they sure wear them out until the last drop-because most are highly beat up looking with thin tires and no shocks when you are going over major bumps. But never the less, they were strong machines that fought until the end and Always got us to our destination safely.





The hotel we stayed at was the only hotel in the area, and it was fairly nice. It had no wifi (lol), but I got my own room and a beautiful window to let some great light in. It was rather lonely but still peaceful to read in.







We only stayed in Cape Verde for 2 days. The first and 2nd day we went to two different beaches there-the first one was BEAUTIFUL. I am not one for beaches, but I did enjoy going in the water and photographing-only to find out that the underwater camera I had bought was not taking anything I was photographing :/. But the kids are super friendly and beg for me to take their photograph-which is fun at first, until they follow you around 15 minutes later. Even the adults here are rather kind and are okay with letting me photograph them or their children when I ask-OH, thats another thing, I cannot speak the language here! They speak Portuguese...and I...barely speak english;D But no seriously, I know only a few words here, "Hola", "Obrigada-(thank you)", "Chao", "Quanto -(how much?)", "Donde?", "Que?", and "Posso tirar uma photographia fash favor?-(can I take your photograph please?)".....and thats about it. A lot huh?



Then, on the last day there, we visited a small village way off of the main highways (which look like backroads in the United States). This village was something you would have seen out of national geographic! I really could not believe it. It was a handful of families living on the very top of a mountain in shacks and buildings made out of rock. Each of them had their own pigs/sheep/chickens/dog roaming around, and many were tied up or in little pens they built out of scrap wood. Here, people did not seem to want me to photograph them as much, but still many said yes and I did, only to find myself being barked at by 3-4 dogs that looked like they were ready to bite my head off. But I am not frightened by dogs. I did however get a video of these pigs that a woman was feeding and how ear piercing their cry for food was! The woman did not want me to get her in the video though, its amazing how much we can still communicate without speaking the same language-and amazing how much we take for granted that everyone back at home can understand you-it is a blessing here when they do.












Then that night, as we were heading back to the airport, we witnessed something I had also never experienced before. In pitch black night, the car infront of us, before our very eyes, tried to speed around a sharp turn. However, before the driver could stop the car, it had wheeled out of control into the air and spun and crashed down onto the drivers side against the mountain hill. Everyone saw and shouted for the bus driver to stop and to check on him-however for some reason, our leader did not join in with us and beg for him to help the man....so we continued. Everyone was confused and could not understand why we would not go back to see if the driver was okay, and our leader and teacher claimed that help was probably already on the way and that if we had stopped, we would have put ourselves in danger and he cannot be held accountable for it. I still wonder to this day if the man was okay-the last glance I saw was of him pushing himself off of the floor. I really pray that God had brought help to him before it was too late.



The next morning, we were in Sao-Tome, a very very lush and green area from up above and on the ground below. It was so much more beautiful than Cape Verde IMO of course, yet both had its strong points in my eyes. On the ride to the hotel, we drove along side of a beautiful blue beach and through the capital of Sao-Tome and past women washing their cloths in the stream and people selling food and clothing in the marketplace. This is probably by far the most populated place in all of Sao-Tome. It is not a very large island either, we traveled to the other side of it in only 4 hours....and Cape Verde I believe was even smaller-because we traveled that to both ends in less than 1 hour!
The hotel we are staying at is beyond beautiful. I am in love with the color blue that they have painted the walls with. There are palm trees bearing fruit growing less than 20 feet away from my door, and I am currently sitting in my hotel room on my laptop with wifi:) All is well so far. We get breakfast every morning-and though it is not much to eat (fruits, bread, and some eggs), it will do.
The area here is beautiful. Everything seems so blue and green. The temperature here is what I wish it could be in USA all year round-except less humid;) It stays a steady 70-80 degrees, and almost never rains-at least not during this season. The trees grow tall and some grow in the form of a fan-as though it were fake! However, that is a real design that is held within the seed before it is even planted-because they are Everywhere!:) The palm trees grow bananas and other yellow fruits. There can always be found huge green fruit handing from the trees, or maybe even genuin coco beans depending on where you are. Apparently there are monkeys here too-though I have not seen one yet. There are also suppose to be giant beautiful birds. Multiple times I saw a humming bird hovering above me, and we have also been lucky enough to see some of the worlds smallest birds here!-though they are too quick to photograph upon surprise;P I have also seen little salamanders that raid the bushes like the squirrels and chipmunks do back at home.




Filling food here is kind of hard to come by. Well, at least coming from America, I am use to huge servings of filling food. However, here, their servings are less than half of the size! Mostly all that is ever on the menu anywhere we go to eat is fish, fish, fish, and more fish. All different types of Fish. The other night we ate this tasty fish that looked like an el with a beak! However, certain restaurants we go to we can find pizza and omelets. I have yet so see pasta or any kind of sandwiches other than hamburgers. Being a vegetarian is sort of difficult here-even though they do have multiple different fruits that I have never heard of, some of which I find very tasty, the main course meals are meat. Though they always give rice and these DELICIOUS banana fried slices/chips with the food. Also, the food here is SO cheap! Everything here is pretty dirt cheap! I get dinner here for less than $6 a night! Huge 1.5L bottels are only $1.50 of american money, where as in America, it would be closer to $3-4. Water is another substance that is hard to come by here-because the people here can all drink regular tap water, where as we must stay away from it. We have to be prepared with water when we drive out to certain places because we are never certain if the area has any restaurants near by or even carries any water. Its funny-when people think of restaurants, they usually probably think of places like TGIF, or pizza hut, or maybe your local diner....but here, I have now witnessed restaurants that look like miniature colored shacks the size of my room. Just about everyone we meet here is poor and probably just making it by, but they are still happy people.



The kids here are always fun and yet super annoying. They are so curious about the 'white folks' that they see, and are usually not shy to run up to us and speak with us. So I will end up photographing them, and asking them to move infront of here, or for others to move out of the picture frame, and they usually obey very well!-However after I snap just a few photos, and I show them the results on the camera (which never fails to make them grin the largest grin), they will not leave me alone! I then get a crowd of 5-15 children that follow me around begging for me to photograph them or to see what I have photographed. Children are precious, Jesus loved them and blessed them all of the time, I do not know how He handled the multitudes in which they came to Him in.





I overheard a few people in my group talk about how they wonder what the relationship between the kids and the parents are-because these children are constantly running around in large groups without a parent to be seen. In some cases, it looks as though the older child is the parent because of the way they scold the younger ones and abuse them. Today, I cannot tell you how much physical abuse I saw amounts the children, between the males to the males, the males to the females, the females to the males, and the females to the females! Every gender attacks on the other gender or the same gender-it does not matter. And they do not hit any less hard if it is a girl or a younger kid. I wish I could hear some of the things the kids are being punished for, because as an outsider, it just looks more brutal and unnecessary to me. I too wonder what kind of role the parent has in the child's life-if they are constantly separated, how could a healthy relationship form? Why would the child have a reason to obey their parents if they never see them? And if they really do not have any control of their children, than it only proves more what the bible quoted about the end of times: II Timothy 3:1-5- "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”




The people here are usually friendly too like in Cape Verde, and allow me to photograph them. In the capital, a lot less people welcome me to photograph them-for example, when we went through the market place the other day, I held my camera by my side and one lady selling fish heard the shutter snap...well that was it! Because she got up and starting Yelling at me while 2-3 other women behind her started shouting and waving their hands with her-ordering me to leave! Thankfully I was with the group and we Were heading out the door. I was told that they do not want me to photograph them because they feel as though I will bring their photo back to America and make money off of it-so in a way it is like 'gipping' them of their money. Of course, I do not know what will become of the photos I take, but I hope they will be put to good use.
Besides the market place and the populated areas, the less populated areas (such as the places with the wooden shacks just barely held together) are very happy for me to photograph them-and they get great joy and thank me when they see their photo in my camera. I do have a printer that I purchased specifically for this trip so that I could give them something in return-however I wanted to scope out the area first before I take it anywhere with me. I am nervous to bring it with me because of how many people me as a white girl attracts, along with how many people my camera attacks! I do not want to be bombarded and in danger of how many people an actual hard copy photograph and printer will attract. But I will be sure to use it before we go.





Usually every day we go to a new area. One of the days we traveled to the other side of the island and slept over night, to wake up the next morning and go on boat to a tiny island resort that looked like the honey moon commercials do to a T. Everyone on the trip is aloud to pretty much do whatever they want. If they want to stay back that day, that was fine. If they want to come on the drive (which usually we are out between the hours of 9am-5pm...btw Sao Tome is 4 hours ahead of EST in NY), they can do that too. They are aloud to come to the area our leader chooses for us next to go and just sit and stare at the beautiful landscape, or try and mingle with the locals of the area. But many walk around for a bit and draw or paint, since almost Everyone I am here with is coming on this trip for the illustration credit. Only a few are creative writers and even them I believe have taken on the challenges of drawing. I am the Only photographer on the trip-which is pretty cool and kinda lonely, since I am always out and about alone while the others sit and draw silently by themselves. However, since we have so much time per area, I have found myself sitting patiently and drawing certain trees/buildings that I find interesting too-this I can do for 3 hours at times while listening to a good sermon to help the time pass. I also have been keeping a personal journal updated almost every day for this trip.












There is So much more to talk about, Everything more! And I still have yet to tell you details of what we have been filling these past few days with, though I will have to do it another time. The internet here works, but is Very slow..and I am afraid I will not be able to put in here all of the photos I have recently posted on my facebook fan page. I will have to also do that another time.

Until then!:)