April 25, 2004
Notes from the Equator
My parents live on Bioko Island, near Malabo in Equatorial Guinea--a tiny country with a gigantic (but secret) GDP due to its recently-discovered oil and natural gas reserves. Because they just had their elections, I thought I would share an email I recently got from my mother:
19 April 2004Good Morning,
We spent a hot, steamy night in our room last night. The power went out about 7:30pm and although having no light wasn’t a problem, no air conditioning makes for some very uncomfortable sleeping. We stayed outside as long as possible since the room was like a sweatbox. The two windows are on the same side of the building and naturally, the slight breeze was coming from the opposite direction. The men worked for several hours on the generator and were unable to get it going. They are still working this morning and it looks like it will be several more hours. The kitchen couldn’t open for breakfast and may not be open for lunch either. The freezer and chillers need to stay closed to maintain temp as long as possible. It will be a real shame if all that food is spoiled before we get power again. The offices are on a different power source for now, so we can work and make coffee. With all the good food we’ve been having, missing a meal or two won’t hurt. I do wonder what is being done for the men who work in the field – they need the calories.
Sunday was a good day. Your Dad and [name excised] and I took a drive along the east coast of the island. We were headed for Riaba, but the roads were so bad that we only covered 40 kilometers in 4 ½ hours. We visited several villages and although all of them were very poor, some were much worse than others. We received a friendly welcome in most villages, but the poorest village had the most dispirited people who seemed to lack the energy for even a wave of the hand. This village also had what we think may be an orphanage near a church, but there were no adults around so we were not sure. We will probably go back another time and see what we can find out. Many of the houses are built of scrap wood and tin and most had dirt floors. Those that are cement or concrete are very old and in such disrepair that they appear unsafe. There are no glass or doors so there is no protection from mosquitoes, flies or other pests.We had hoped to get down to the beach, but had no success finding a road through and were reluctant to leave the vehicle unattended in order to hike the paths. We stopped to watch some small children playing in one village and I gave them a ball we happened to have in the truck. They were excited to have it and gathered around to see what we were about. We counted about 7 kids and since we had a bag of suckers in the car we gave them each some candy –suddenly there were children coming from every direction. We must have passed out 30 suckers and received lots of smiles from the kids and their parents. Then they began bringing us baskets of mangoes – we accepted some and with a smile waved off many more. I think they would have loaded the truck with fruit. One man came to me and all I could understand was that we were a “blessing.” He had more to say and was so earnest I asked [name], who is from Mexico to translate. There was so much commotion that we left before I heard what the man wanted. It turns out his wife is pregnant and ill and he wanted us to help her. I felt so bad that I couldn’t understand him in the first place, and then was unable to help. I hope we can be a blessing to these people in some way – I just need to figure out how. A few pieces of candy to the children is a nice gesture, but it won’t fix the roads, bring fresh water, jobs, education or healthcare.
It is ironic that on our drive we happened to cross paths with several election campaign vehicles. The candidates were passing from village to village with electric bullhorns exhorting the people to vote next week. They were plastering walls with posters and handing our t-shirts and other campaign materials. Each promises to make EG a better place, but all but one of the 13 ‘approved’ parties is paid by the current government, and only rubber stamp its policies. The one man who is brave enough to oppose the status quo has been jailed, tortured and beaten, but still speaks out. I’m surprised he hasn’t ‘disappeared’ as so many others have over the years.
We are still having mostly sunny weather; rains come in the afternoon, but have only slowed work a couple of times. We see plenty of lightening nearly every night, but the rains must be falling elsewhere.
Incidentally, as with my other posts, I would prefer that their names and my name remains anonymous. Cheers.
Umm . . . not sure where Scott's comment came from. Anyway, D, what are your parents doing down there? Sounds like a hell of an adventure.
They're the enemy, snw. They work for (darkening sky and threatening music) [an oil company]* (DA DA DA) :)
*name of company excised by The Editors
Well, its an engineering and design firm, but that's not what makes them evil. They are the enemy because they are free-trade capitalists who are anti-environment, pro-SUVs, anti-dreadlock, pro-assault rifle, and anti-hippie.
Well, from what your mom wrote, it sound like they defy all known forms of logic by being good people despite their politics.
For the record, I am anti-dreadlock (it's like being a recovering alcoholic), and my dad builds fighter planes. My entire upbringing was funded by the blood of innocents.
If you believed me that my parents are pro-assault rifle or any of those other things, I'll need to go back to sarcasm school.
I especially liked "anti-environment". :)
The problem with reading sarcasm into the description is that it was a mix of the reasonable and the outre. "Free-trade capitalist" doesn't exactly read like comical exaggeration, and when you're talking about our parents' generation (or, for that matter, our own) neither does anti-hippie. There's a bit of an absurdist ring to "pro-SUV", but it's like the Onion - so real it's silly.
SNW,
Does your father also work for Lockheed? It is really interesting how similar all our socioeconomic histories are. I believe all 5 regular posters here have fathers employed in the math/computers/engineering sector, whose careers were made possible by lavish defense spending (my dad recieved his early computer training as an enlisted guy in Vietnam) and the early 60s focus on math and science. We all went to high school in the same upper-middle class neighborhood, with practically the same-size houses all around. And with Mallarme now entering grad school, we are all not doing anything remotely similar to our parents professions.
Jesus, no wonder we all talk alike.
My father recieved his training during Vietnam, that is, within the safe confines of the Pentagon. Sadly, kamakazee bad ass genes do not run in my veins.
My dad works for Halliburton, but not in one of the divisions that has anything to do with defense contracts.
Yeah, FW is crazy with that stuff - there's actually a real live mercenary company that runs out of there, though I forget the name.
I think the greatest thing most people can do for the world is offer up, in all of their life choices, utter disrespect for every one that their parents ever made.
Mission accomplished, boys.
Halliburton! Sweet. Maybe someday they'll be this big merger, and Boeing, Lockheed, Halliburton, and Bechtel will all be the same company. We'll have Halliburton fitness centers and boy scout troops.
Last I heard, my dad is working on a specialized F-16 project for the UAE. Apparently they're needed for some sort of Persian Gulf border dispute with Iran. They actually have a special Islamic wing where the represenatives from UAE can feel comfortable--you know, pray and praise Allah, and sit on the floor and smoke out of a hooka and shit like that.
Actually I think my dad and ludwig's work on the same project at Lockheed. Pretty funny.
Would you really call Southwest *upper* middle class? There certainly were more minorities there than at the high schools of many of my friends in college.
You're right, the school itself is hardly "upper middle class". But I think the area where we just about all of us lived (the border between Candleridge and Wedgewood) could fairly be called an upper middle class neighborhood, though barely. However, I would argue that the educational level of our parents suggests they were upper middle class, when you consider the percentage of people with college degrees and professional jobs from their generation.
Besides, the contact I had with minorities at Southwest were largely exceptional cases, who tended to have mostly white friends. I should have had even less contact, but my parents and me were too lazy to insist I should be put in honors classes (they were used to the situation at Fallston, where everyone was white and upper middle class).