Week highlights:
Saturday spent the day with Elsa (director of finances at the airport), Deodato, their daughter, and a few other friends at Deodato’s roça, a 45 minute drive into the center of the island. A much-needed day in the country. The terrain and flora were breathtaking. The food from my hosts was excellent. The poverty of the roça inhabitants was equally shocking and I realized that the standards of health, sanitation, nutrition, and education are drastically different in the city and on the roças. The inhabitants of the old plantation buildings were thrilled to welcome an American, probably aided in part by the fact that at noon on Saturday they were drunk on palm wine.
Monday presented my design to the manager of TAP in Sao Tome, to the director of tourism in Sao Tome, and to the director of Mistral Voyages, a tourism agency in Sao Tome.
Tuesday met a builder and turned over the design of the doctor’s house to him to begin construction.
Wednesday through Friday spent a considerable amount of time at dinner and in meetings with a group from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, as well as the interim U.S. ambassador and . The group’s primary purpose on this trip is to plan a border security improvement program, which they will begin enacting in October. They were very interested in the airport project for reasons of security, immigration and customs control and were anxious to help guide the airport toward U.S. development funding channels.
Thursday met U.S. Senator Russ Feingolf (D-WI), Chair of the Subcommittee on Africa in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The Senator was stopping over in Sao Tome for one night, en route to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Yves invited me to be part of a small welcoming committee at the airport.
