Fish Eyes and African Dogs

Today three more Americans arrived on island from Illinois: Judy Tolliver, my informatics advisor, as well as two Illinois faculty also working for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications doing research about malaria modeling. To somewhat celebrate their arrival we went to a restaurant near the airport which is situated beneath the wings and tail of an old plane.

We ordered fish and although I had heard that the eyeball is considered the best part of a fish in Sao Tome, I had yet to try it. There was one redfish with the eyes still in their sockets on the fish on the table. Chika and I took the challenge and each scooped out an eyeball.

Now I expected an eyeball to be soft and mushy but television has never deceived me this much. I put the eyeball in my mouth and felt the chewy fleshy part but I also encountered something very hard. I played with it for a second between my teeth and with my tongue before I asked James, our local contact, if it should be this hard and what to do with it; he said you just need to chew hard. I bit down into the consistency of a rock solid Skittle. The ball did not crunch, but slowly smashed between my teeth compressing into the crevices on my molars and finally sticking to my teeth. After a minute I had worked out all of the bits from my teeth and we went on with dinner but it left a taste in my mouth that, although not bad, was not good. Water could do little to wash away the new taste.

At the end of dinner we all had bones scattered with small scraps of fish meat on our plates and two stray dogs and a small cat had been wandering around our outdoor table. James grabbed a fish carcass and was about to throw it to the dogs when many of us Americans stopped him because we worried the dog would choke on the bones. Looking back this city could do with a few hundred less stray dogs but we tried to save these two. James’ response was, “African dogs are very strong,” and he threw down the carcass to waiting mouths. Sure enough the dogs ate it up and looked back at us waiting for more. African dogs are very strong indeed.

Music (Re-updated with songs working)

I really like the music here and I’d like to share two items with you.

This is some Cape Verde music that Dany, STeP UP’s director’s driver and employee, shared with us. The artist is Bana and the album is Livro Infinito. The songs are pretty slow but talented and beautiful.



This song is more of a club song but it get’s everyone moving. There is a part where he says something to the effect of, “guys make noise” and then tells the girls to clap three times. It’s really fun to hear this in more of a party environment. The artist is Afroman and I can’t recommend anything else by him. It’s probably best that I don’t know what he’s saying.

Fourth of July Weekend

Corey and our cake

Yesterday we celebrated the 4th of July in Sao Tome City. We planned a party and invited somewhere around 80 guests plus their friends. We expected the Prime Minister to come to the party; however he missed his flight and could not make it.

Two feet of Barracuda

Without the Prime Minister we still had a lot of fun. We had the back half of a four foot barracuda, tons of rice, calalou (the Sao Tomean national dish) and a few improvised hot dogs. There was plenty of beer (Paul planned most of the party and this was top priority), as well as wine and sodas. I would guess we had around 60 guests throughout the day and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, including ourselves, the hosts.

Our group with some local friends.

That night we were invited to a big party at the Beach Club, a very upscale discotheque. We got to the party around 11 and by 11:45 the dance floor started to heat up. Sao Tomean dancing is much more fun than American dancing because people actually dance! Danielle and I hit the floor throughout the night and it was a great time. The one complaint I have about their dancing is that their slow dances turn everyone into napping zombies on the floor. People don’t move and they rest their heads on each other while tens of couples stand nearly motionless for two or three songs in a row.

A view of the full beach from our almost private beach.

We left the club very late and during our party we had agreed to go snorkeling with the Taiwanese doctors on island at 9am. That hour came far too soon but we drove to a beach on the north end of the island near the blue lagoon. We drove to a beach that could only be reached by a 4x4 and it felt like we arrived at our own personal beach. The sand was soft and had about 40 feet of ocean between two high rocky outcrops. Chika, Ashley and I went with Dr. Wang and another physician although only Dr. Wang had a snorkel even though he failed to find any fish. The water was cool and I spent a while out swimming while Chika practiced using my camera and Ashley looked at the water from the safety of the sand because she fears sharks. There are only hammerhead sharks (won’t attack humans) near the island and there have been no shark attacks according to locals. We headed back after a while and later went to Ned’s to spend the afternoon reading, blogging, or like me: listening to music while drifting in a hammock at the end of his pier.

Myself playing with Ashley's underwater camera.

It was a bit cold that early in the morning.

-XO Mike

School Setup

Tuesday morning we had our meeting with the teachers scheduled however it didn’t go as planned. Our understanding was that we would be working with two classrooms and therefore two teachers. At this school the teachers are specialized to a subject and rotate between the classrooms. We went from working with two teachers to working with 6 which also required us to decrease our class sizes by two each to free up four extra laptops.

In the afternoon we had sorted out the problem and arranged to meet the teachers. It became very difficult because the teachers will now need lesson plans which will work for the 3 non-XO classrooms and a separate plan to incorporate the XOs in the two XO classrooms. The teachers did not seem motivated to learn the new system but after we showed a few ways of how it can be incorporated into classroom environments some started to warm up to the idea.

Corey, Danielle, Ashley and Chika worked through the operating system and some basic concepts after I gave a quick lesson on handling and care of the laptop and an introduction to the hardware. While the rest of the group began training I started testing how the wireless would work around the school, which should be fine. I have designed a box which we will have made to hold and secure the server, switches, access points and their associated power bricks.

Tomorrow we will continue working with the teachers and Dany will bring the plans to a carpenter to get the un-white-American-taxed price. The plan is that he will provide the boards that we need as well as the screws (if only there were a Home Depot) and I can assemble it this weekend. Hopefully nothing is lost in translation.

-XO Mike

More Pictures

Next door to James' Aunt's house where we had lunch some kids had an impromptu dance performance.

More impromptu dance pictures.

Walking on water... that's how I roll.

Training the computer repair class from STeP UP. They wanted to learn about the project.

At our deployment school. We brought a soccer ball as a gift for the headmaster.

Dinner at our house. This is our screened in porch.

Exciting Weekend

We had a very exciting weekend filled with trips to the Blue Lagoon, Neves (Nevish), the beach, and STeP UP’s 5th birthday party. Friday night we went to Pestana, a luxury resort with nightclub and it cost way to much money. I wasn’t excited about going when I heard it was $10 to get in the door. Anyway, we went and it was empty because no locals can afford the entry fee while still having a good time. We want to go again as an end of the trip celebration but it’s just too expensive.

STeP UP's Birthday Cake

Saturday we started nice and easy at the beach before heading to STeP UP’s 5th anniversary party. The Minister of Education was in attendance and there was great food as well as cake. After we headed to a soccer game where security was tighter than the airport; army personnel with guns, police with riot gear and a barbed wire fence surrounding the entire field. The game was calm, thankfully, but it had a lot of energy and I found myself yelling at the officials with the rest of the crowd during a few bad calls.

Fun in the sand. OLPC.

Riot Gear: These Police appeared to be the officials personal guards

Sunday we started bright and early with a trip to Neves to eat crab. Neves is located at the north west end of the island, about an hours drive. We stopped at the Lagoa Azul for a quick photo opportunity. Driving through the country shows a completely different side of Sao Tome. Despite having a much lower quality of life, fish and fruit are abundant year round on the island so no one is going hungry. We ate fantastic fresh crab and took the trip with two other Americans from Seattle who are with the Mobility Project, an international NGO setup to provide wheelchairs to third world countries. Tuesday they will deploy 60 wheelchairs as a trial run for the 200-400 they would like to bring in the future. After eating we left to go to James’ (our local contact) aunt. We had another meal (again, fantastic) and met lots of his cousins and uncle. We were witness to an impromptu dance performance at the house next door and eventually returned home.

Old Tree near the Lagoa Azul

Crab in Neves

This week we will start working with the teachers to get the ready to teach lessons using the XO.


Lots of pictures! YAY!
-XO Mike

Paul 2, Corey 2, Ashley 1

We’ve had several accidents while here in Sao Tome. It all started with Paul at the grocery store trying to buy a few beers. Here, they stock their fridges with individual bottles well above the max capacity of the refrigerator. As Paul went to grab one, another started to fall which created a domino effect sending a few bottles to the floor; one of which broke. Paul 1.

We went shopping for a pitcher to make our water purification process easier. The best we could find was a carafe which has a glass core container surrounded by a plastic protective casing. As Ashley went to pick it up it fell to the floor shattering the glass core. Ashley 1.

Danielle is working on a mapping project and received about 20 large maps with together make up the entire island. To lay them out Corey, Danielle, Ashley and Chika cleared out our living room. As Corey went to pickup my XO he dropped it on the floor and broke the screen (these aren’t indestructible). I replaced the screen with one of the spare XOs as this is the administrator computer. Corey 1. Mike -1.

Paul owns a motorcycle on island and the other day he asked me if I wanted to take it for a spin. I went around the neighborhood and before long, Corey wanted to try his luck. I asked him if he knew how to drive and he said yes. I told him which lever was the clutch and he responded, ok that’s what changes the gear… I knew we were in for trouble. I showed him the pedal which actually changes the gear and after a few more minutes of training he wanted to go. We told him to give it a little gas as he slowly releases the clutch. Corey hit the gas and dropped that clutch, popped a small wheelie and rocketed away for about 10 feet before the bike tipped over and he hit the ground. Corey got up OK but the bike’s clutch lever snapped off. Within about 1 minute James had someone coming to repair the bike and it was fixed within the hour for a very small fee. Corey 2.

Corey with the broken parts from the moto. He'll try again this weekend.

Last night we wanted to make spaghetti for dinner. In Sao Tome you can’t buy pasta sauce so we got a small can of tomato paste as a base for our sauce. We forgot that we don’t have a traditional can opener so we had to use the triangular end of a bottle opener. As Paul dug into the can, the tightly packed paste shot out all over Paul’s white shirt, Chika’s white shirt and half the kitchen. Paul 2.

Hopefully the rest of our trip will be incident free although we have a long way to go.

-XO Mike