We were in "gravana", the temperature was mild — 26 degrees — and the sky was cloudy. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when we saw a green spot in the ocean. Palm trees — a lot of palm trees in a mountainous land with small beaches. Almost no houses, except for a small village that we could see at the end of a lovely bay. We were flying over the island of Príncipe.
 
This small island occupies an area of about a hundred square kilometres and has around five million inhabitants, who are almost all black. Nice people, welcoming, simple, humble.
 
In Príncipe, the tropical forest reveals all its magnificence. Coffee and cocoa plants, coconut trees, banana trees, palm trees and many others trees and different plants grow everywhere.
 
The beaches are paradisiacal: thin and white sand, transparent and warm water; the coconut trees offer some shade, which is indispensable when clouds disappear, since the rays of the sun really burn.
The houses, the roads, the airport runaway, they were all left there by the Portuguese in 1975, when S.Tomé e Príncipe became independent.
 
The living conditions of the people are depressing. The plantations don't function well. A large part of the crops is lost. Agricultural development is precarious. Industry is something that doesn't exist and commercial life is extremely weak. Nothing is exported and few things are imported.
 
At least they have a climate in which everything thrives — you just have to raise your arm to pick a banana (they are free), or you just have to hit a coconut with a cutlass to drink its juice and eat its kernel (everything free, too).
 
Among all these contrasts we think  — once more — about the kind of Portuguese colonization and post decolonization. It is remarkable that in Príncipe, as well as in S.Tomé, or in any other Portuguese-speaking country, the people are so nice and welcoming. People show a reasonable moral development, in spite of having a low cultural level, they aren't racist, in general, and they are a little subservient with foreigners.
 
But the search for efficiency, the concern about work, organization, quality, or fulfilment of the schedule is weak or almost non-existent. We question whether the Portuguese colonization might have been more humane as far as relationship is concerned, but less humane as far as training, survival, freedom and independence are concerned. The colonization and /or the decolonization.
This group of people, this country and others weren't prepared to survive truly independently. And what they are learning now is sometimes painful.
 
The Portuguese need to know they are wanted here, because they have a lot to do in this land. And they have a great potential to help, with mutual benefit, these people grow on the international level. That's why some Portuguese (yet just some) are returning to Africa.
 
We understand and agree with the Portuguese Ambassador in S. Tomé e Príncipe, when he told us that now we are really beginning a model decolonization.
 
 

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