Addiction 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

Journey to the Noble Retreat of Príncipe Island

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.
Roca Sundy, Príncipe Island, São Tomé and Principe

The Certainty of Relativity

In 1919, Arthur Eddington, a British astrophysicist, chose the Roça Sundy to prove Albert Einstein's famous theory. More than a century later, the island of Príncipe that welcomed him is still among the most stunning places in the Universe.
Believers greet each other in the Bukhara region.
City
Bukhara, Uzbequistan

Among the Minarets of Old Turkestan

Situated on the ancient Silk Road, Bukhara has developed for at least two thousand years as an essential commercial, cultural and religious hub in Central Asia. It was Buddhist and then Muslim. It was part of the great Arab empire and that of Genghis Khan, the Turko-Mongol kingdoms and the Soviet Union, until it settled in the still young and peculiar Uzbekistan.
Host Wezi points out something in the distance
Beach
Cobue; Nkwichi Lodge, Mozambique

The Hidden Mozambique of the Creaking Sands

During a tour from the bottom to the top of Lake Malawi, we find ourselves on the island of Likoma, an hour by boat from Nkwichi Lodge, the solitary base of this inland coast of Mozambique. On the Mozambican side, the lake is known as Niassa. Whatever its name, there we discover some of the most stunning and unspoilt scenery in south-east Africa.
A campfire lights up and warms the night, next to Reilly's Rock Hilltop Lodge,
safari
Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, eSwatini

The Fire That Revived eSwatini's Wildlife

By the middle of the last century, overhunting was wiping out much of the kingdom of Swaziland’s wildlife. Ted Reilly, the son of the pioneer settler who owned Mlilwane, took action. In 1961, he created the first protected area of ​​the Big Game Parks he later founded. He also preserved the Swazi term for the small fires that lightning has long caused.
Thorong La, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal, photo for posterity
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 13th - High camp a Thorong La to Muktinath, Nepal

At the height of the Annapurnas Circuit

At 5416m of altitude, the Thorong La Gorge is the great challenge and the main cause of anxiety on the itinerary. After having killed 2014 climbers in October 29, crossing it safely generates a relief worthy of double celebration.
Architecture & Design
Cemeteries

the last address

From the grandiose tombs of Novodevichy, in Moscow, to the boxed Mayan bones of Pomuch, in the Mexican province of Campeche, each people flaunts its own way of life. Even in death.
Boats on ice, Hailuoto Island, Finland.
Aventura
Hailuoto, Finland

A Refuge in the Gulf of Bothnia

During winter, the island of Hailuoto is connected to the rest of Finland by the country's longest ice road. Most of its 986 inhabitants esteem, above all, the distance that the island grants them.
Correspondence verification
Ceremonies and Festivities
Rovaniemi, Finland

From the Finnish Lapland to the Arctic. A Visit to the Land of Santa

Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Christmas scene, Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Cities
Shillong, India

A Christmas Selfiestan at an India Christian Stronghold

December arrives. With a largely Christian population, the state of Meghalaya synchronizes its Nativity with that of the West and clashes with the overcrowded Hindu and Muslim subcontinent. Shillong, the capital, shines with faith, happiness, jingle bells and bright lighting. To dazzle Indian holidaymakers from other parts and creeds.
Beverage Machines, Japan
Lunch time
Japan

The Beverage Machines Empire

There are more than 5 million ultra-tech light boxes spread across the country and many more exuberant cans and bottles of appealing drinks. The Japanese have long since stopped resisting them.
Parra Sea
Culture
Mendoza, Argentina

Journey through Mendoza, the Great Argentine Winemaking Province

In the XNUMXth century, Spanish missionaries realized that the area was designed for the production of the “Blood of Christ”. Today, the province of Mendoza is at the center of the largest winemaking region in Latin America.
Bungee jumping, Queenstown, New Zealand
Sport
Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown, the Queen of Extreme Sports

In the century. XVIII, the Kiwi government proclaimed a mining village on the South Island "fit for a queen".Today's extreme scenery and activities reinforce the majestic status of ever-challenging Queenstown.
Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia
Traveling
Great Ocean Road, Australia

Ocean Out, along the Great Australian South

One of the favorite escapes of the Australian state of Victoria, via B100 unveils a sublime coastline that the ocean has shaped. We only needed a few kilometers to understand why it was named The Great Ocean Road.
Promise?
Ethnic
Goa, India

To Goa, Quickly and in Strength

A sudden longing for Indo-Portuguese tropical heritage makes us travel in various transports but almost non-stop, from Lisbon to the famous Anjuna beach. Only there, at great cost, were we able to rest.
sunlight photography, sun, lights
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Natural Light (Part 2)

One Sun, So Many Lights

Most travel photos are taken in sunlight. Sunlight and weather form a capricious interaction. Learn how to predict, detect and use at its best.
Robben Island Island, Apartheid, South Africa, Portico
History
Robben Island, South Africa

The Island off the Apartheid

Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to glimpse Robben Island, when crossing the Cape of Storms. Over the centuries, the colonists turned it into an asylum and prison. Nelson Mandela left in 1982 after eighteen years in prison. Twelve years later, he became South Africa's first black president.
Visitor risks his life atop the basalt columns of Reynisfjara.
Islands
South of Iceland

South Iceland vs North Atlantic: a Monumental Battle

Volcano slopes and lava flows, glaciers and immense rivers all hang and flow from the high interior of the Land of Fire and Ice to the frigid and often angry ocean. For all these and many other reasons of Nature, the Southland It is the most disputed region in Iceland.
Reindeer Racing, Kings Cup, Inari, Finland
Winter White
Inari, Finland

The Wackiest Race on the Top of the World

Finland's Lapps have been competing in the tow of their reindeer for centuries. In the final of the Kings Cup - Porokuninkuusajot - , they face each other at great speed, well above the Arctic Circle and well below zero.
Kukenam reward
Literature
Mount Roraima, Venezuela

Time Travel to the Lost World of Mount Roraima

At the top of Mount Roraima, there are extraterrestrial scenarios that have resisted millions of years of erosion. Conan Doyle created, in "The Lost World", a fiction inspired by the place but never got to step on it.
Chã das Caldeiras to Mosteiros, Fogo Island, Cape Verde
Nature
Chã das Caldeiras a Mosteiros, Fogo Island, Cape Verde

Chã das Caldeiras to Mosteiros: descent through the Ends of Fogo

With the Cape Verde summit conquered, we sleep and recover in Chã das Caldeiras, in communion with some of the lives at the mercy of the volcano. The next morning, we started the return to the capital São Filipe, 11 km down the road to Mosteiros.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Lake Manyara, National Park, Ernest Hemingway, Giraffes
Natural Parks
Lake Manyara NP, Tanzania

Hemingway's Favorite Africa

Situated on the western edge of the Rift Valley, Lake Manyara National Park is one of the smallest but charming and richest in Europe. wild life of Tanzania. In 1933, between hunting and literary discussions, Ernest Hemingway dedicated a month of his troubled life to him. He narrated those adventurous safari days in “The Green Hills of Africa".
Solovetsky, Islands, Archipelago, Russia, Autumn, UAZ, Autumn road
UNESCO World Heritage
Bolshoi Solovetsky, Russia

A Celebration of the Russian Autumn of Life

At the edge of the Arctic Ocean, in mid-September, the boreal foliage glows golden. Welcomed by generous cicerones, we praise the new human times of Bolshoi Solovetsky, famous for having hosted the first of the Soviet Gulag prison camps.
aggie gray, Samoa, South Pacific, Marlon Brando Fale
Characters
Apia, Western Samoa

The Host of the South Pacific

She sold burguês to GI's in World War II and opened a hotel that hosted Marlon Brando and Gary Cooper. Aggie Gray passed away in 2. Her legacy lives on in the South Pacific.
Tobago, Pigeon Point, Scarborough, Pontoon
Beaches
Scarborough a Pigeon Point, Tobago

Probing the Capital Tobago

From the walled heights of Fort King George, to the threshold of Pigeon Point, southwest Tobago around the capital Scarborough reveals unrivaled controversial tropics.
Miyajima Island, Shinto and Buddhism, Japan, Gateway to a Holy Island
Religion
Miyajima, Japan

Shintoism and Buddhism with the Tide

Visitors to the Tori of Itsukushima admire one of the three most revered scenery in Japan. On the island of Miyajima, Japanese religiosity blends with Nature and is renewed with the flow of the Seto Inland Sea.
The Toy Train story
On Rails
Siliguri a Darjeeling, India

The Himalayan Toy Train Still Running

Neither the steep slope of some stretches nor the modernity stop it. From Siliguri, in the tropical foothills of the great Asian mountain range, the Darjeeling, with its peaks in sight, the most famous of the Indian Toy Trains has ensured for 117 years, day after day, an arduous dream journey. Traveling through the area, we climb aboard and let ourselves be enchanted.
Executives sleep subway seat, sleep, sleep, subway, train, Tokyo, Japan
Society
Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo's Hypno-Passengers

Japan is served by millions of executives slaughtered with infernal work rates and sparse vacations. Every minute of respite on the way to work or home serves them for their inemuri, napping in public.
Busy intersection of Tokyo, Japan
Daily life
Tokyo, Japan

The Endless Night of the Rising Sun Capital

Say that Tokyo do not sleep is an understatement. In one of the largest and most sophisticated cities on the face of the Earth, twilight marks only the renewal of the frenetic daily life. And there are millions of souls that either find no place in the sun, or make more sense in the “dark” and obscure turns that follow.
savuti, botswana, elephant-eating lions
Wildlife
Savuti, Botswana

Savuti's Elephant-Eating Lions

A patch of the Kalahari Desert dries up or is irrigated depending on the region's tectonic whims. In Savuti, lions have become used to depending on themselves and prey on the largest animals in the savannah.
The Sounds, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Fiordland, New Zealand

The Fjords of the Antipodes

A geological quirk made the Fiordland region the rawest and most imposing in New Zealand. Year after year, many thousands of visitors worship the sub-domain slashed between Te Anau and Milford Sound.