April 2011 – Island Biodiversity Race

The Race: A Tale of Two Ties

The Hon. Toze Cassandra is the Regional President of Principe. This older of the two islands is semi-autonomous within the Republic of Sao Tome and Principe. President Cassandra is unforgettable; rather tall for these islands, he has a palpable aura of dignified authority but it is strongly laced with kindness and humor. The first time we met was during GG II when we were summoned to the presidential offices to pay our respects. For obvious reasons, not one of us had a tie, which I learned later was required protocol inherited from Portuguese colonial times. Since I could not officially enter his offices, Toze actually came out into the high-ceilinged hallway and met with us for half an hour; as I recall we ultimately ended up sitting on the floor.

The second formal meeting was last year during GG IV, and I made a major point of bringing a tie and a major point of letting him know that I had brought the damned thing all the way from the States just to meet with him! As I said he is a man of great humor. Last year at this time, I described our summons, a couple of days later, to a beer party with his entire cabinet on a remote beach.

Yesterday we were due in his “chambers” at 3PM- we did not learn this until about 12:30 which is not a lot of leeway. But, I was ready; a hand-painted frog tie (my sister-in-law does them). The picture below is of tropical bioformal attire.

Velma our poster project coordinator cleans up just fine, but I had forgotten to bring a tie for our photographer, Andrew (who, by the way, is my nephew). Trying to find a tie on Principe Island within an hour is just a skosh difficult. The new manager of Bom Bom Lodge, is a Frenchman, Francois Chapuis, so I figgered there was a chance… I got a long, languid, mildly amused look followed by, “Peut-etre, vous desirez un Hermes?” No joy. Now late, we roared up past the newly refurbished airport, stopped in front of a little wooden house on stilts, and our driver Joao, ran inside…we heard muffled exclamations.. he then emerged with a rather elegant, tasteful Brooks Brothers-ian blue tie!!

Down we raced to the central plaza. As we prepared to enter the palatial abode, I noticed a tall man on the street corner in shirt-sleeves, speaking ardently into a cell phone. I caught his eye, and waved the bottom of my tie at him…a very broad grin in return.. it was of course, His Excellency President Toze Cassandra, totally tie-less!

The rest of our audience was delightful, as they always have been. It is probably best described in Andrew’s pictures below.. our posters and biodiversity message have been as warmly received here on Principe as they have been on the big island.

On the way past the airport we stopped at the little blue house on stilts… the gentleman within turned out to be the driver Joao’s brother. What he is doing with a tie of that quality on Principe I will probably never know, but now he also owns a unique hand-painted frog tie by Linda Raffel. And Linda is undoubtedly the only Bay Artist with one of her pieces in the Gulf of Guinea Islands.

Here’s the parting shot.

See you soon!

all images © Andrew Stanbridge

PARTNERS
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the G. Lindsay Field Research Fund (GG I), Hagey Research Venture Fund (GG II) of the California Academy of Sciences, the Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) and Africa’s Eden for logistics, ground transportation and lodging (GG III-V), STePUP of Sao Tome http://www.stepup.st/., Arlindo de Ceita Carvalho, Director General, and Victor Bonfim, Salvador Sousa Pontes and Danilo Barbero of the Ministry of Environment, Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe for permission to export specimens for study, the continued support of Bastien Loloumb of Zuntabawe and Faustino Oliviera, Director of the botanical garden at Bom Sucesso. Special thanks for the generosity of private individuals, George G. Breed, Gerry F. Ohrstrom, Timothy M. Muller, Mrs. W. H. V. Brooke, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Murakami, Hon. Richard C. Livermore, Prof. & Mrs. Evan C. Evans III, Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Taylor, and Mrs. Sheila Farr Nielsen for helping make these expeditions possible. Tax-deductable donations in support of this work can be made to “CAS-Gulf of Guinea Fund.”

The Race: Lunch on the Front Lines

The end of our first full week and today we had an alfresco lunch with Francisca. Francisca is the Director of the largest primary school on Sao Tome—she has over 2,000 students, and 57 teachers who work either a morning or an afternoon shift. Very few supplies.. a big job. Lunch was set up in her front yard and despite the beginnings of rainstorm, we were protected (for a while) by huge trees overhead.

The menu began with an enormous bottle of White Horse scotch, and included sea snails, manioc, grilled fish of uncertain origin and other wondrous things.

The rain soon became untenable and we retired inside to discuss the use of images, posters, etc in her living room. We gave her some images and some videos of local endemic critters to use in her school and anywhere else she wanted. A delightful person and a typical representative of the devotion and enthusiasm of the Sao Tomean teachers we have met. By later this afternoon the rain had flooded parts of the city; we drove past guys standing ankle-deep in the streets.

Tomorrow, we fly to the older island, Principe. We greatly underestimated the number of biodiversity posters we would need here on the big island, so we have had to do some rationing. In the meantime Andrew, our photographer, came up with a fabulous idea. Here in town, we can cheaply print postcard-sized image collages to hand out to the kids.. about $60 for one hundred.. while these are not as flashy as the posters, the kids absolutely love them and it keeps our momentum going.. The ones we have done here say “Only on Sao Tome” in Portuguese, and this morning we printed another hundred for Principe with a similar message.

The Race: The Sharing Begins

This is our seventh day.. and we have been to all the schools, ministries, health centers and public places we can find, giving our biodiversity posters to head masters, principals, ministers. etc. . We started at the southern end of Sao Tome on one side, the town of Santa Catarina and worked north; then Porto Alegre on the east coast, working toward the city. This morning we delivered posters to a number of the bigger town schools but then spent the afternoon hunting spiders in the garden of Henrique da Costa, former Minister of Agriculture and a dear friend and wise counselor. As to our main mission, how have our posters been received? I thought I would just post a number of images of our poster adventures, and you can decide for yourself!