URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT: We're under attack! Okay, so maybe that blows it a bit out of proportion; STP is too laissez-faire of a society for any real major crises. The "leve-leve" approach to life here and the relative abundance of physical comforts (plenty of water, nature's free food, pleasant climate, etc.) makes the Saotomean populace much less restive than the hooligans you hear about on the continent from time to time in the news. You won't find brutal massacres, tribal vengeance, or mass raping and pillaging here like you do elsewhere, but you do find the occasional exciting newsworthy tidbit. The latest saga is as follows.

ADRA was invited as an observer to the regional summit on malaria prevention, held in STP this year (the meeting site rotates between countries in the region each year). I was asked to attend and represent ADRA, and was having a good time hobnobbing with dignitaries in dark suits and heavy credentials in the four-star Hotel Miramar conference room. Speeches were pouring forth in eloquent language from the podium, building hype for the crowning orations of the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister of STP. All of a sudden, in the middle of somebody's rambling speech, I heard the Prime Minister's assistant take a cell phone call, and then go up on the platform and whisper something into his ear. The Prime Minister immediately made a call on his cell phone, and then covered his mouth while he talked, either to foil lip-readers, keep his voice to a minimum, or both. After the call, he mounted the podium for his speech, which was a great deal more restrained and blasé than I had anticipated. His mind seemed elsewhere.

As I found out later, a group of young commandos called the "Ninjas" took the entire top brass of the national police force hostage. São Tomé e Príncipe has a history of sending soldiers off to other countries on the continent to get better training than is available at home. The problem is, the trainees come back so well-trained that they easily intimidate the national forces. They know they're the best, and thus they make unreasonable demands with relative impunity. This has been the driving force behind this nation's past coups; they were driven by overwhelmingly well-trained commandos (Ninjas or Buffaloes, another group I've already talked about that was trained in South Africa), yet no blood was shed because no one dared to stand up to them. Or maybe it was because the prevailing attitude of leve-leve tempers even the savagery of elite commandos.

In this particular case, it appears that the Captain of the National Police Forces arranged for the one-year training of an elite SWAT-team-like unit in Angola (Ninjas). While serving in Angola during their training, the young men were to receive a training subsidy. Worried that the newly-trained commandos would not come back to serve in STP, it was arranged that Angola would send the subsidies to STP, to be paid out here once the trainees returned home. When the Ninjas returned to STP, their subsidy was not paid. Furthermore, the government had changed hands, and the new political party in control was saddled with trying to fulfill promises it had not made. The government said it never received the money from Angola, and thus could not pay the subsidies. An investigation into the police captain uncovered the likelihood that he had received the subsidies and secretly spent them all personally. He was dismissed from office, but the promises still remained, and the new government said it was not in a position to pay some $3000 each to the 50 Ninjas (must be a pretty small national budget not to be able to pay out $150,000!). Instead, the government tried to satisfy them by giving them prominent positions in the police and military.

The Ninjas were not satisfied. So a few weeks ago, when the entire top police brass of the country showed up to work first thing in the morning, the gun-wielding Ninjas who were integrated into the police force simply closed the doors, locked them, and demanded the value of their subsidies as a ransom. In addition, the Ninjas went a step further, demanding their own private headquarters, as well as other forms of special treatment. The government was hesitant to call the military in to end the standoff, as there are Ninjas and Ninja sympathizers in the army, as well. But they also wanted to send the clear message that this is not an appropriate way to address grievances. What to do? At first, they tried negotiations, but that didn't work. So the government took a firmer stance, declaring that negotiations were over and no further negotiations would occur until the Ninjas released their hostages -- no exceptions. The Ninjas replied that they would not release their hostages under any circumstances until they were paid.

In the meantime, the brother of one of our ADRA workers (also a top police official) was not amongst the hostages. He had been at a funeral the morning of the seizure, and so had missed being taken into custody along with his colleagues. Consequently, he had been appointed to deliver food and water to the hostages, being granted free passage every day. When he heard that the Ninjas and the government were at loggerheads, he declared that he was through with helping out. He figured that lack of food and water would probably spur things along. Indeed, it did. One police official, recognizing the impasse in negotiations and having studied the temperament of his captors for several days, decided that they were not bloodthirsty and it was worth a shot taking matters into his own hands. He abruptly stood up, declared, "I've had it! I'm leaving! You can shoot me if you want, but I'm not spending another night here!", and walked out the door! His gamble turned out to be right. His astounded captors just watched him leave, and didn't pursue him. This gave courage to the others, and soon all of the police officials were standing up one by one and walking out the door! Not a shot was fired!

Well, as you can imagine, this certainly squashed any credibility the Ninjas might have had up until that point. Nobody took them very seriously after that. Shortly thereafter, realizing they'd been had and that they had lost face, they seized another round of police officials as captives to resume their demands. That was last week. The government finally decided that they'd had enough. This morning at about 4:00 under cover of darkness and rain, the military quietly roadblocked the downtown area, surrounded the police headquarters, and stormed the building. Some shots rang out, and it is not clear if the two Ninjas rushed to the hospital were injured or dead (reports vary on the street), but the situation was over relatively quickly and the military had control of the police headquarters. After daybreak, the government announced that it is disbanding the Ninjas altogether (most people are asking what tiny STP needs a commando-style special police for anyway) with no recompense whatsoever and no further positions in the police or military as punishment for their disorderly conduct. The Ninjas are to come to the national soccer stadium by 3:00 p.m. today to surrender their weapons, uniforms, and any other gadgets of the trade or else they will be hunted down and disarmed by force one by one. It is just after 3:00 p.m. as I am writing this, and word-of-mouth reports are that nobody came forward to surrender. Some are saying that the government should just pay the subsidies and be done with it (the government announced recently that they finally do have the money in hand), but maybe they're trying to make a statement that this is not the way to get things done. I don't know. There could be some very interesting developments in the next few days, so I'll keep you posted on that.

A gaggle of Portuguese volunteers descended on STP for two weeks recently on a short-term mission trip. Such events are loads of fun for the participants (I know, having been on two myself), and they are a great way to get one's feet wet working cross-culturally. My short-term mission experiences whetted my appetite for more cross-cultural work, and look where it landed me today! But it is important to have realistic expectations of what can be accomplished, too. Some people think they can change the world in two weeks, while others are overly pessimistic that any good will come of unleashing inexperienced young people on an unsuspecting innocent bystander culture. With clear goals, focused objectives (we will build one school, we will treat 100 dental patients, etc.), and good organization, a lot of benefits can arise from a short-term mission trip. But with poor planning, a simplistic view of the challenges ahead, and cultural insensitivity (the worst form of which is condescension), only a miracle can bring any good out of such a trip.

This Portuguese team was a mixed bag somewhere between these two extremes, so they achieved mixed results. The health clinics (basic physicals and health consultations) were a resounding success -- it was jam-packed every day as thousands of people poured in to be checked out. The evangelistic meetings were an intermediate success -- challenges included PowerPoint slides illustrating various aspects of the lessons showing almost exclusively white people (hard for Saotomeans to identify with), and introducing all new Western songs (instead of mixing with hymns already familiar to the local people). The construction of the church school flopped completely -- logistical issues meant that the construction site was unprepared for an influx of workers at that time (though local church members have taken up the flag since the Portuguese's departure and are lurching forward on the construction in bands of volunteers). ADRA was not directly involved in the Portuguese volunteers' work, but several ADRA administrators on the consulting board for charting the future direction of the school, so the Portuguese volunteers' work was observed with a keen interest. Hopefully future short-term volunteer missions can avoid the pitfalls of previous ones and do even more good than the last! Anyone interested in organizing a mission trip over here to help with the school construction?

I had the privilege of being called before a magistrate recently for dispute arbitration. I had interviewed some consultants to conduct some trainings for the project a while back. One aggressive young man had tried to seal his candidacy by presenting a contract, even though we were not quite ready to sign one yet (and we are supposed to furnish the contracts ourselves, anyway!). But a clear stipulation of his proposed contract was that either party could annul the contract for any reason up until 4 days before it went into effect. He was our best candidate at the time, so we signed the provisional contract to "lock him in". As it happened, we had to postpone our training date, so I annulled the contract before the stipulated 4 days prior. Besides, the original contract was found to have some important errors, so we were drafting a better contract and rescheduling the training date when out of the blue, I got called to come in for dispute arbitration! Sure enough, it was him, demanding payment for services he hadn't provided yet. He claimed we had breached our contract, and had caused him emotional distress because of it. Boy! That's the kind of advanced lunacy you'd expect in the States, but I never expected to encounter it here! We had a watertight case -- we had followed all stipulations to the letter of the law -- so we were confident of success. However, we did not know for sure the topic of the arbitration until we walked into the magistrate's office, though we requested information multiple times in order to prepare our defense (not exactly best practice in the interest of justice). In the magistrate's office, it quickly became clear that he had not read the contract clearly, because he was making all kinds of uninformed statements and blaming my elementary Portuguese for what he claimed was an ambiguous annulment. It was evident, however, that no matter how ambiguous the annulment may have seemed to the magistrate, it was not ambiguous to the consultant, for he had written a response letter clearly indicating that he understood the meaning of my annulment. It gradually became apparent to us, however, that right or wrong didn't matter to the magistrate. He was too busy (doing what?) to do his job thoroughly, and we were just an annoyance that wouldn't go away. His leaning was clearly that ADRA was in the wrong, apparently for no other reason than that we are the big strong guys and the defendant was a poor, hapless victim. In other words, we are always wrong simply by virtue of the fact that we are a large and "wealthy" organization. In any case, as a dispute arbitrator, the magistrate was not supposed to hand down a verdict -- only preside over negotiations and see if he can lead the parties to a mutually acceptable solution. He declared our case unsolvable by himself, and told us we'd have to resolve it out of court ourselves or go before the judge. He instituted a mandatory one-week stay before either party could take the case to court (to provide opportunity to resolve it first), and dismissed us from his office. I was naturally peeved, and wondered to Emanuel what would happen if we simply ignored the ludicrous case. He was pretty sure the consultant would take it to court, which would be far more costly to us in terms of legal counsel, hours lost from work, and bad publicity than simply paying the salary stipulated in the contract and having the consultant sign a statement that he relinquished his right to any further legal proceedings on this matter. And so, I was introduced to a justice system that I don't know how to win in, notwithstanding a watertight case. That's a little unnerving, but you can't lose sleep over it or you'll never have enough mental bandwidth for the productive work you've been called over here to do in the first place. You just hope and pray and try to be even more careful for the future.

Imagine our surprise recently to see two battleships moored just off the tip of São Tomé harbor! STP has no navy, but these were definitely state-of-the-art vessels, not some castoffs dredged from other navies the world over in order to establish one here. It turns out that one was a French Navy vessel and the other was a United States Navy vessel. We also saw an increase in uniformed military personnel in town for the month that the ships were here, and were able to engage several in conversation. It was partly just a friendly stop on the endless job of patrolling the world's oceans that world superpowers take upon themselves, but it was also partly to lend support to the team of American seabees dredging the harbor and building a deepwater port and boat ramp. There is a lot of foreign investment here in STP, and it only seems to be increasing over time. The smell of oil and nascent tourism is in the air, and STP seems to be on the up and up as far as development is concerned. It's an exciting time to be here and to play a part in that growth. Apparently, this is the stage that Malabo, Equatorial Guinea was at only 5 years ago, and now people say that if you were there back then and you haven't returned since, you wouldn't recognize the city at all today. Indeed, look at what Dubai has accomplished in some 15 years, and you realize just how quickly things can change with the forces of globalization. We only hope and pray that "development" won't destroy STP, but will be equitable and sustainable and in harmony with the goals and wishes and values of this culture.

September was a busy time of birthdays and farewells. Kristi and Raquel and David (the latter two being the ADRA country director's wife and son) all had birthdays in December, and we had a string of parties spread throughout the month. Shortly thereafter, Raquel and David left for Portugal to wait out the last month or two of Raquel's pregnancy and ensure that the baby will be born there with better medical care and familial support than is available here in country. Emanuel stayed behind to work until two weeks before the pregnancy becomes full-term, which meant a month of him being lonelier and scruffier than usual. He was scheduled to leave on Thursday, Nov. 8, but had to precipitously move his departure forward to Nov. 1 because the baby decided to start coming at week 37. So I'm interim country director for at least part of the time that Emanuel is gone. It's not fun having two major job descriptions -- I'd rather have one or the other! But I'm managing.

Besides, it's only for a week. The other two weeks that Emanuel will be gone, so will I. I'm coming to the States for two weeks (Nov. 8 through Nov. 22) for some meetings in Washington, D.C. at the ADRA International headquarters. I'll have a few extra days on either end of the meetings to visit family and friends in D.C. and Michigan, and then I'll head back home to STP. I'm going to miss Kristi and Zachary a lot -- I've only ever been away from Zachary for two days since he was born, and away from Kristi for three weeks since we were married -- but we'll manage somehow. If nothing changes, Emanuel will be returning on the same flight with me to STP. He has three weeks of vacation available, and the clock is now ticking since he left early. He had hoped to make the final cut and leave STP for good when he left for the birth of his second son, but as of this date, he still has no final word on his visa approval for Malawi. And we still have no additional news on my appointment to replace Emanuel as Country Director for ADRA STP when he leaves. So we remain in indefinite limbo as to our long-term security here. Not a fun place to be.

The donor for the AWARE project (USAID through the regional AWARE project) visited us in STP last week. Visits are rare, since they are busy people and it is difficult to coordinate so many schedules, but the event was the inauguration of the Ribeira Peixe Health Post. This is one of our crowning achievements for the project. It serves one of the three sub-districts of Caué where we are working. It is a regional health center, which means that many surrounding communities benefit from its mid-level services (above a community clinic, but below a hospital). We were honored to have the Minister of Health present, as well as the President of Caué district, US Embassy representatives, the Caué health delegate, and, of course, the regional AWARE representative (an OB/GYN from Mali) and her colleague from USAID-West Africa in Ghana. Because of poor planning and organization, the national television company did not attend the inauguration! Dr. Fanta (the AWARE representative) said, "If this were my country, the director of the television company would be in prison by now for not covering an event involving a government minister!" But STP is leve-leve, so nothing happened as a result. In any case, it is a good sense of achievement to have opened health services to a segment of the population that was out of reach of good care before.

Recently, the Taiwanese anti-malaria insecticide spraying service paid us a visit. I was at the office when it happened, but Kristi says they looked like astronauts in the hazmat suits, spraying a thick layer of alphacypermethrin on every square inch of exposed wall space. It left us with itching, burning eyes and skin for days afterward whenever we came into prolonged exposure with it, but it's apparently supposed to be perfectly harmless to humans and fetuses (believe me, we read up extensively on it and got medical opinions from every doctor we know on this island). For insects, however, it's doomsday. The carnage in the kitchen was the worst, as ants lay dead by the hundreds where they had only recently frolicked and gamboled amongst our victuals. Good riddance! It's a little eerie not to have their cheerful foraging presence around anymore -- I've almost come to start thinking of them as friends (am I suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, where prisoners start sympathizing with their captors?!), but we're much better off without them. Our house was getting excessively overrun by insects.

Anyway, I've posted more pictures on my website. Go to www.geocities.com/adamkis18 and click on the STP Pics link to see the latest photos in the "Newest Pictures" folder.

Until next tome,

Adam