Chapter 4

[EN]

"Bravery is a team sport" – Part 1

◼️As I mentioned before, I grew up in Africa. I could’ve easily been born in Cape Verde since my father was working there at the time, but I ended up being born in Lisbon for various reasons. However, as soon as I turned 3 months and was able to get on a plane, my family moved to Cape Verde so we could all be together. Legally, new-borns can travel from two weeks onwards but it is recommended that you wait until it reaches two/three months old. Nonetheless, this chapter is not about that island but a similar one on the Equator line.

When I was 10 years old my dad was assigned a new position in Sao Tome and Principe. What initially looked like a two-year long contract, transformed into fourteen years apart. I remember being in my living room receiving the news and analysing my mother’s facial expression. She knew something I didn’t, was clearly more panicked than I was, but after my dad had a heartfelt 1-on-1 conversation with me, I could tell that it was the best course of action for the family as a whole.

Sao Tome is a small & beautifully nature-surrounded island whose weather is on the warmer side year-round (which I blame for not being able to enter Portuguese waters ever since). Its people are some of the most bona fide I’ll ever meet, who like to help the one next to them even when they don’t have much to offer. A clear example where the thought alone is what counts and materialistic power is thrown out of the window. ‘Till today there are people who I’ll forever be grateful to have crossed paths with, if not for the fact that they were there for my dad when I couldn’t be.

In my life and as I got older, my friends and acquaintances would often find it strange how I was offering them opportunities left and right. Sometimes I would explain myself so they wouldn’t misinterpret my actions, sometimes I could tell there wasn’t a point in even trying. That came from knowing I was in a privileged position to be someone who could provide an access to a different reality, otherwise hardly possible to grasp. I’ve always believed that if you are given something, it is a blessing and the privilege just means you have something to give back. However, it is impossible to help those who don’t want to be helped, so choosing wisely can avoid heartbreak.

Living in a country in which selling a wooden bracelet at 40 thousand dobras rather than 30 thousand could be the sole difference between being able to provide dinner for their family or not at the end of the day (to note that 100 thousand dobras is around 4€ / £3,30), hearing a classmate of mine, back in Portugal, proudly claim how she had bought 2 to 3 cell phones in advance since she already knew she was going to lose her current one… was extremely tough to digest. That was a direct reflection of the value she gave to money, as well as her parents’, and damn was it ridiculous in my eyes.

The island’s motto “everything is leve-leve” mainly encourages to live life at a slow pace and enjoy what you have, rather than what you could have. What you do matters and at the same time it doesn’t; If someone asks you "How are you doing today?" The answer will always be "leve-leve", meaning neither good nor bad. There is no rush to meet any specific objectives as the land is fertile, the nature is welcoming and the sea is vast. Schedules are often overlooked as long as you get the job done at the end of the day, the dedication to a higher belief serves as group meditation (along with singing) and nutritional choices are comprised of what is accessible/within reach: fresh baby fish, 'banana-pão', 'matabala', star fruit, papaya, beans, corn and palm oil.

Now, here’s the paragraph where I contradict myself and get critical. I am all about practicing mindfulness and I do try to implement some slow living lifestyle choices in my own life, as I believe that we live in a world that moves way too fast for our own good. However, I see how this movement has been gaining traction by becoming wildly popular online and transforming what was once a genuine holistic approach into a consumer trend. In my eyes, it has been spun into a product-selling-strategy and that is extremely disappointing. Only by experiencing first-hand what it is like to live among people who live under those circumstances can one fully understand the main components of the term.

In Sao Tome there isn't much to do or to occupy the mind with. Maybe that is one of the reasons why "leve-leve" is so present in all generations. There are days where time passes by at the speed of a sloth munching on banana leaves and weekends can be particularly painful, if one is used to a more active routine. Thus, I must leave a shoutout to my dad for enduring it for more than a decade on his own, and for my mom who kept the boat afloat out of love and compassion.

Skype was the main tool my family and I would use to communicate daily and keep each other company 4500+ kilometres away. Looking back, it was only possible to hold on to each other throughout the distance and the years, because we each had a role to fulfil. My dad’s objective was to make a living in order to provide for the family, my mother was entrusted with the logistics, emotional support and raising me, and I had to prove that the family being apart was justified through keeping my good grades in school – since that was the principal restriction shielding us from moving abroad again. Education in the African continent is unfortunately still lacking in some areas compared to the one available in Europe, which could be seen as a disadvantage in the future paths I’d choose to chase, unless we made such a sacrifice.

Life is not a sprint; From my point of view, it is a tag marathon where you pass the baton to the person you choose and the difficulty is finding people who can be trusted and don’t shy away from such responsibilities. Not that one can’t achieve something purely by themselves, but it becomes 5 million times harder, and in the end, once the adrenaline and the dopamine rush passes by, you are left with a feeling of emptiness. The joy in achieving something doesn’t come from the end goal, it comes from the journey and the people who are in it by your side through it all.

Whenever I hear a parent complain how their kid doesn’t listen to what they tell them to do, I ask if the parent is aware of his/her own actions in the first place. Children learn by an adult’s example, not by their words. If my parents would’ve told me the importance of treating everyone with the same level of respect, yet they would act in front of me in a way that went against that, I’m not sure if I would have become someone with the same values I hold today. In Sao Tome there were plenty of opportunities for that, but instead what I saw was how well-liked they were regardless of the country and culture they were living in or coming from, and that was because they treated everyone in an equal manner. “Treat others as you wish to be treated” is the golden rule I live by and I have them to thank for it all.◻️