Thank God for what He allowed me to get today. Today I started getting into gear and writing up what I would say to news stations back in the US about Sao Tome's Presidential election and their 36th year of Independence from the Portugees (July 12th, 2011). As I was doing so, even though today I was already out for a few hours photographing past the market place, I had this urge to look for presidential campaign ads and trucks. I followed my instincts, I prayed, and guess were God had led me? Straight to a HUGE concert for one of the presidential candidates! Its amazing how much prayer works-because just 2 hours before that moment, that area was completely empty. So I started photographing and trying to record (which is Extremely hard when your zoom has broke and you do not have a tripod in a very crowded area), and then I saw a few professional photographers in the area on stage to photograph and record the event. I thought I would give it a try and see if they would allow me to go on stage with them-maybe they would assume I was one of the other professional photographers in the area (which is highly unlikely because I am the only white person to be seen for miles!). But I gave it a try anyways, and they gladly let me up on stage and allowed me to move around to photograph whatever I wanted to! The photographers on stage were very generous to me too, it felt like we all had each others backs while still trying to get the best shots we could each get. Amazing.
(BTW: I have made these photos below tiny incase any news stations wanted to steal my photos without asking my permission first)
Also, here are more pictures from the other night (July 12th) of Sao Tome's Independence day concert:
Yesterday we visited a chocolate factory, which was nothing that I had expected. It was tiny and homey-not at all factory like. And when the owner started talking to us about his chocolate, he turned everything we thought about coco upside down.
It turns out that raw coco is not suppose to be bitter (I actually tried it too!-pure coco straight from the bean, and it tasted, good!). The reason Why it is bitter is because these large industry companies dont take the time to find the best quality beans and sort out the good form the bad, Or to take out bitter parts that are within the bean, so they just melt them all together at such a high temperature so it melts away any of the 'bad' parts. This is what causes the 'dark' look (burnt) and the bitter taste.
We tried his 100% PURE coco, Nothing added, (not even salt/sugar), and it resembled the color of milk chocolate. It was not bitter or sticky-just very strong. Then we tried 99% coco bar from America, and it was disgusting-very sticky and totally black and bitter.
The owner, Claudio Corallo, also let us taste samples of his orange peals with chocolate, peper and sea salt with chocolate, coco bits with chocolate, wine with chocolate (that of which I did not taste), and coffee with chocolate (also had no part in trying). Interesting right?
(A photo that contrasts the 100% coco bar Claudio Corallo has made [the middle bar] next to mass produced 99% coco bar [the darkest pieces on the tablet]).
Today and the other day I also heard some interesting and not so good news about Sao Tome and Africa. Well, interesting thing is that one of the major reasons why Africa is last in line of developing countries is because everyone who was visiting the continent was dying off here because of malaria. No one would make it back!
The not so good news is that I found out that the major reason why many children here (and in many other poor countries) have protruding belly buttons is because of a hernia-which is from a lack of nutrition. And sadly, many will never get that fixed, and it will stay with them for years, which severely limits the life span of the child/person. To top it off, Sao Tome's culture is for the men to have up to 20-30 children with multiple different wives-it is only then that they are seen as a 'man' in society. Disgusting. Why would they continue with that mindset if they cannot even manage to properly take care of one child's health situation? The health care here is poor and they are still struggling to feed all of their people here properly, along with all of the animals they have on this island that look as though the are scrawny and dying.
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