Center São Tomé, São Tomé and Principe

From Roça to Roça, Towards the Tropical Heart of São Tomé


patriotic curtain
pure cocoa
Seeing Life Pass
Bombay Country Boys
Lucas, from the Bombay farm
A Roça Monte Café
Mother and son
Roça Santa Clara
Mist over the Jungle
PN Obo Jungle
trindade-city-sao-tome-island-cars
Postcolonial Trinity
On my way
Batepá Massacre Painting
Roça Monte Café
Resident of Roça Santa Clara
The Trinidad Post Office
The Presidential Palace of Trinidad
On the way between Trindade and Santa Clara, we come across the terrifying colonial past of Batepá. Passing through the Bombaim and Monte Café roças, the island's history seems to have been diluted in time and in the chlorophyll atmosphere of the Santomean jungle.

The day is still dawning, hazy and gray from Gravana, when, pointing to the southwest and the heart of the island, we notice a strange coexistence of names, some familiar, others, above all, strange and that wouldn't even remember the devil.

Almeirim appears in the vicinity of Blublu. Água Creola overlaps Caixão Grande.

António Vaz precedes Trindade, capital of the Santomean district of Mé-Zochi and second city of São Tomé, even if it is only seven kilometers away from homonymous capital.

In Trindade, the old CTT building with its round facade is still closed. In front, a few officials advance on their way to their posts.

And groups of residents, pointing to a source of drinking water painted green, matching the wood business next door.

Trindade is home to more than six thousand inhabitants, only a tenth of the population of the capital.

From time to time, one of them is the President of the Republic of São Tomé and Principe, housed in a pink mansion set on a verdant hill, shaded by palm trees with large crowns.

This inaccessible mansion intrigues us for a moment. The yellow colonial building, with its high doors and windows and attic openings on a roof that has been oxidized by the years, stands out from the humid gloom of the landscape.

It compels us to photograph it in different scenes, with passers-by and the traffic that circulates there.

The Colonial Taint of the Batepá Massacre

Alongside Batepá, Trindade was one of the poles where the colonial violence inflicted on the black population of Santomean proliferated and which many believe to have triggered their nationalist sentiment and independence yearning.

It was generated by the Governor-General made Calígula of the archipelago, Carlos Gorgulho.

Appointed in 1945, artillery colonel Gorgulho dictated a series of laws and measures aimed at controlling the community of farm servants and the like.

They aimed, in particular, to prohibit forms of subsistence to which the natives were beginning to get used to, such as the sale of palm wine and sugarcane brandy, drinks that Gorgulho considered that reduced the productivity of workers.

As if that were not enough, he increased the labor tax.

The development that Carlos Gorgulho wanted to ensure with slave labor

At the turn of the 50s, Gorgulho also put into practice an ambitious plan for the urbanization of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.

It combined a new residential neighborhood for employees, arranged in the middle of Av. Marginal, a municipal market, new airports, a stadium, a cinema and a network of avenues and streets that connected the planned buildings.

So far so good. The enslaving abuse would have been repeated, however, when recruiting workers for the said works.

It is said that Gorgulho tried to resolve it by publicizing that the State was looking for wage earners for various posts. When candidates came forward, they were informed of an unexpected lack of funds to remunerate them.

Shortly afterwards, they found themselves surrounded by the police and forced to work for the equivalent of one Euro a day, much less in the case of volunteers. In Trindade, specifically, only five or six candidates appeared for about thirty vacancies.

Frustrated, Gorgulho orders the police to sweep the island looking for undocumented workers to force the labor brigades to fill up. The police do it with such zeal that those targeted create alarm procedures against work based on kidnapping and manipulation based on whipping and other corporal punishment.

Accordingly, the lack of manpower for Gorgulho's projects remained unresolved and was made worse by the impossibility of recruiting workers in Angola, a colony that suffered from the same problem. Other rumors arose that made the Linings (so the potential victims were called) feel cornered.

The conflict intensified. In Caixão Grande, an Angolan policeman is the victim of a machete blow. Days later, anonymous writings appear on the walls of Trindade threatening Gorgulho with death if he continued to try to bend the Forros (farm workers).

On the same day, Anonymous Forros take notices of jobs placed by the authorities. The authorities announce that they will pay the equivalent of five thousand euros to those who report the offenders. From then on, the lack of manpower became even more complicated.

Like the mutual distrust and aggressiveness that did not take long to fall apart.

Carlos Gorgulho's Paranoia and the Dissemination of Violence

The paranoia that the Santomeans were preparing an uprising worsened in Governor Gorgulho's mind. Gorgulho reacted in a preventive and extemporaneous manner.

It mobilized the Portuguese colonists to arm and protect themselves. The plantation owners recruited Cape Verdean, Angolan and Mozambican workers.

On February 3, Gorgulho instructed the CPI (Indigenous Police Corps) and other authorities, with the help of landowners, to capture, beat, torture and murder hundreds of suspects, mainly from Trindade, Batepá and surrounding areas.

In certain cases, the massacre took place in terrible ways.

In the aftermath of the killing, Gorgulho would have uttered “throw all this shit overboard, to avoid problems”. His employees followed the order to the letter.

Marco de Batepá and the Shame that Subsists

From Trindade, we head to Batepá. There we find a landmark painted in different colors that remembers the tragedy and its victims. Paintings around the memorial recreate its most gruesome details, such as a truck dumping corpses into the Atlantic.

We came across a group of visiting friends. One of them, who wears a shirt of the Portuguese national team, asks us to photograph him next to the memorial. The companions turn up their noses, bothered by the request.

They beg you not to. Confident in his principles of Portuguese brotherhood, the boy replied “Stop it! Santomean people are ignorant!” said just like that, as the Santomeans do, with the r loaded.

From Roça de Santa Clara to Roça de Bombaim

We pass through the Santa Clara farm. In its plantations and sanzalas, we see a misery of the workers comparable to what the antecedents suffered in the times of Governor Gorgulho.

To which is added the unavoidable data from Cape Verde and the times of poverty and hardship, at least free, in the islands of the Macaronesian archipelago.

Wilson, the guide who guides us, takes us along a path that cuts through the rainforest, which serves as a shortcut to a swidden to the south, in times concurrent with Bombay.

We find Bombay – the village and the farm that gave rise to it – on the edge of the vast wild and untamed domain of the Ôbo Natural Park.

Bombay emerged as another of the many coffee and cocoa producing plantations on the island. It had its peak of production and profit.

Roça Bombaim and the Decline that Lasts

With the abolition of slavery and the internationalization of cocoa production, entered the process of decay in which we find it. Several buildings are ruined, given over to fig trees and other bushes. As always happens in São Tomé,

The bare and degraded sanzalas are still home to some Santomeans. Less and less in Bombay.

In 2001, the place welcomed 30 souls. A decade later, there were less than twenty.

A kid walks along the rutted path in the grass, towards us. Shy, he gains courage and introduces himself. It's Lucas. We follow him among ducks, chickens and pigs, to the section of the sanzala occupied by his parents.

We salute you. Immediately, we felt them absorbed. As if sedated by the abandonment to which they were voted. An inscription made in charcoal on a wall sums up their condition: “Roça Bombaim. Damned city. Fulfill yourself”.

Even though everything remains to be done, just before we leave what's left of the field, Lucas' father stops us by the car. He offers us a bouquet of porcelain roses that he had just composed.

We say goodbye moved. With a mixed feeling of guilt and powerlessness for leaving them like this. And yet, this is what almost all visitors to Bombay and the plantations do.

The New Life of Roça Monte Café

Unlike Mumbai, the Monte Café swidden we passed next, at an altitude of 670 meters, is home to an abundant population.

It insists on an attempt to recover the production of Arabica coffee and cocoa which, inaugurated in 1858, makes it one of the oldest in São Tomé.

From that date until its decline, Monte Café generated enough profit to expand and build its own hospital.

When we walked through it, we found young families living in part of the premises.

Another section is managed by Taiwanese who, as part of their support program for São Tomé and Príncipe, provided appointments twice a week.

Mist hangs over the forest above the swidden.

From time to time, it settles down and cools down the kids who play up and down the old staircases and pathways that join the secular buildings.

Gradually, the freshly picked coffee dries up. we lack the time São Tomé and their swiddens were lost.

São Tomé and Principe

Cocoa Roças, Corallo and the Chocolate Factory

At the beginning of the century. In the XNUMXth century, São Tomé and Príncipe generated more cocoa than any other territory. Thanks to the dedication of some entrepreneurs, production survives and the two islands taste like the best chocolate.
Príncipe, São Tomé and Principe

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150 km of solitude north of the matriarch São Tomé, the island of Príncipe rises from the deep Atlantic against an abrupt and volcanic mountain-covered jungle setting. Long enclosed in its sweeping tropical nature and a contained but moving Luso-colonial past, this small African island still houses more stories to tell than visitors to listen to.
São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe

Journey to where São Tomé points the Equator

We go along the road that connects the homonymous capital to the sharp end of the island. When we arrived in Roça Porto Alegre, with the islet of Rolas and Ecuador in front of us, we had lost ourselves time and time again in the historical and tropical drama of São Tomé.
Rolas Islet, São Tomé and Principe

Rolas Islet: São Tomé and Principe at Latitude Zero

The southernmost point of São Tomé and Príncipe, Ilhéu das Rolas is lush and volcanic. The big news and point of interest of this island extension of the second smallest African nation is the coincidence of crossing the Equator.
São Tomé, São Tomé and Principe

Through the Tropical Top of São Tomé

With the homonymous capital behind us, we set out to discover the reality of the Agostinho Neto farm. From there, we take the island's coastal road. When the asphalt finally yields to the jungle, São Tomé had confirmed itself at the top of the most dazzling African islands.
Sao Tome (city), São Tomé and Principe

The Capital of the Santomean Tropics

Founded by the Portuguese, in 1485, São Tomé prospered for centuries, like the city because of the goods in and out of the homonymous island. The archipelago's independence confirmed it as the busy capital that we trod, always sweating.
Saudade, São Tomé, São Tomé and Principe

Almada Negreiros: From Saudade to Eternity

Almada Negreiros was born in April 1893, on a farm in the interior of São Tomé. Upon discovering his origins, we believe that the luxuriant exuberance in which he began to grow oxygenated his fruitful creativity.
Rhinoceros, PN Kaziranga, Assam, India
Safari
PN Kaziranga, India

The Indian Monoceros Stronghold

Situated in the state of Assam, south of the great Brahmaputra river, PN Kaziranga occupies a vast area of ​​alluvial swamp. Two-thirds of the rhinocerus unicornis around the world, there are around 100 tigers, 1200 elephants and many other animals. Pressured by human proximity and the inevitable poaching, this precious park has not been able to protect itself from the hyperbolic floods of the monsoons and from some controversies.
Braga or Braka or Brakra in Nepal
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 6th – Braga, Nepal

The Ancient Nepal of Braga

Four days of walking later, we slept at 3.519 meters from Braga (Braka). Upon arrival, only the name is familiar to us. Faced with the mystical charm of the town, arranged around one of the oldest and most revered Buddhist monasteries on the Annapurna circuit, we continued our journey there. acclimatization with ascent to Ice Lake (4620m).
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Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
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Back to the 30s

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Santa Maria and the Atlantic Blessing of Sal

Santa Maria was founded in the first half of the XNUMXth century, as a salt export warehouse. Today, thanks to the providence of Santa Maria, Sal Ilha is worth much more than the raw material.
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The Beverage Machines Empire

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Dances
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Ryukyu Dances: Centuries old. In No Hurry.

The Ryukyu kingdom prospered until the XNUMXth century as a trading post for the China and Japan. From the cultural aesthetics developed by its courtly aristocracy, several styles of slow dance were counted.
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Philippines

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Homer, Alaska, Kachemak Bay
Traveling
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Early morning on the lake
Ethnic

Nantou, Taiwan

In the Heart of the Other China

Nantou is Taiwan's only province isolated from the Pacific Ocean. Those who discover the mountainous heart of this region today tend to agree with the Portuguese navigators who named Taiwan Formosa.

portfolio, Got2Globe, Travel photography, images, best photographs, travel photos, world, Earth
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Divine Melanesia

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Bright bus in Apia, Western Samoa
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The Wackiest Race on the Top of the World

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Ponta de Sao Lourenco, Madeira, Portugal
Nature
Ponta de Sao Lourenco, Madeira, Portugal

The Eastern, Somehow Extraterrestrial Madeira Tip

Unusual, with ocher tones and raw earth, Ponta de São Lourenço is often the first sight of Madeira. When we walk through it, we are fascinated, above all, with what the most tropical of the Portuguese islands is not.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

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El Cofete beach from the top of El Islote, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain
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Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain (España)

Fuerteventura's Atlantic Ventura

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Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, Christian churches, priest with insensate
UNESCO World Heritage
Holy Sepulcher Basilica, Jerusalem, Israel

The Supreme Temple of the Old Christian Churches

It was built by Emperor Constantine, on the site of Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection and an ancient temple of Venus. In its genesis, a Byzantine work, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher is, today, shared and disputed by various Christian denominations as the great unifying building of Christianity.
female and cub, grizzly footsteps, katmai national park, alaska
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PN Katmai, Alaska

In the Footsteps of the Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell spent summers on end with the bears of Katmai. Traveling through Alaska, we followed some of its trails, but unlike the species' crazy protector, we never went too far.
Tobago, Pigeon Point, Scarborough, Pontoon
Beaches
Scarborough a Pigeon Point, Tobago

Probing the Capital Tobago

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A Ride of Faith

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Chepe Express, Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railway
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Creel to Los Mochis, Mexico

The Barrancas del Cobre & the CHEPE Iron Horse

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Society
Little India, Singapore

The Sari Singapore of Little India

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Casario, uptown, Fianarantsoa, ​​Madagascar
Daily life
Fianarantsoa, Madagascar

The Malagasy City of Good Education

Fianarantsoa was founded in 1831 by Ranavalona Iª, a queen of the then predominant Merina ethnic group. Ranavalona Iª was seen by European contemporaries as isolationist, tyrant and cruel. The monarch's reputation aside, when we enter it, its old southern capital remains as the academic, intellectual and religious center of Madagascar.
Newborn turtle, PN Tortuguero, Costa Rica
Wildlife
PN Tortuguero, Costa Rica

A Night at the Nursery of Tortuguero

The name of the Tortuguero region has an obvious and ancient reason. Turtles from the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea have long flocked to the black sand beaches of its narrow coastline to spawn. On one of the nights we spent in Tortuguero we watched their frenzied births.
Full Dog Mushing
Scenic Flights
Seward, Alaska

The Alaskan Dog Mushing Summer

It's almost 30 degrees and the glaciers are melting. In Alaska, entrepreneurs have little time to get rich. Until the end of August, dog mushing cannot stop.