CABO VERDE TERRA MINHA! - The Testimony of a Guest

CABO VERDE TERRA MINHA!  – THE TESTIMONY OF A GUEST

by Issah Hassan Tikumah

August 27, 2014, will be four years since I landed on the blessed land of Cape Verde, falling down from the middle of the sky of Praia. I had been chased out from Nigeria for publishing an unpalatable book. Having had my Ghana passport seized by the Nigerian authorities, and running for my dear life, I entered Cape Verde through the back-door. My nervous expectation to be mistreated by the Cape Verdean police for entering their country unethically was met with total disappointment. And that was my first taste of Cape Verdean magnanimity.  

The Cape Verdean authorities did not officially grant my request for asylum, but they did not expel me from the country either. However, having no previous contact with Cape Verde, nor an escudo inside my pocket, and being a Portuguese illiterate, the situation looked like the end of the world for me. For several months, I kept floating on the murky waters of precariousness. Then my eyes suddenly caught sight of a rescue ship sailing from a far distance. The ship could be recognized by the beaming rays of the benevolence of its captain – a big heart in a beautiful little body. Just before I could give up, thinking I was about to drown finally, I was lifted up onto the gracious ship. I looked on the hull of the vessel and saw its name – CNDHC.

As an alligator of knowledge, I could only feel comfortable in the deep waters of learning. As such, the CNDHC finally dropped me in the fresh ocean of UNICV, the citadel of intellectual excellence in the country. From the high tower of informed inquisitiveness of UNICV, I could now feed my hungry eyes on the splendor of the Cape Verdean entity – its landscape, and its people. 

Cape Verde - the land of absolute absence of presence of monotony. Rich in mountains and valleys, hills and slopes, colours and complexions, tastes and impressions, the land constantly keeps the seeker’s appetite alive. The walker, for example, is readily presented with descent before one is bored with ascent; and ascent before one is tired of descent. Each day of the year, the generous waves of the land’s sun-bearing sea throw out more than fifty different species of healthy tasty fish – of which Cavala, Catchoreta and Barbeiro are my favourites. And so are the beautiful people of the land: completely black – almost black – almost white – completely white.

Cape Verdeans may not have millions in cash, but they have trillions in patience and forbearance. Just for instance, in all my experience around the world - not just in Africa - Cape Verde is the only place where a motorist would suddenly stop his/her car in the middle of a busy road for a minute-chatter with a passing friend while a dozen other motorists stop waiting behind quietly. In another place this will not be attempted, for the offender will be spontaneously pelted with merciless curses and crude insults from the erupting volcanos in the bosoms of comrades.

In a 2006 study, Bruce Baker from Oxford referred to Cape Verde as ‘the most democratic country in Africa’. I want to rejoin by saying that Cape Verde is not only the most democratic country in Africa but also the only genuine democracy in Africa, for Cape Verde is about the only country in Africa where democracy is not a gamble of ethnic bigotry. Cape Verde owes its enviable peace and stability to the absence of the burden of tribalism which has kept the rest of Africa boiling since political independence from Europe more than half a century ago. As I usually say to my Cape Verdean students and colleagues, to the extent that Cape Verde is free from the poisonous sentiment of tribalism, Cape Verde is a perfect model of the Africa we aspire for. I should note, however, that the greatest challenge facing the Cape Verdean leadership is to ensure that provincial fanaticism (Badio-Sampadjudo prejuce) does not gradually transform into an alternative tribalism for Cape Verde in the long-run. This is what, in my belief, the leadership most essentially owes to history and posterity of this great nation. 

I disagree totally with those who usually juxtapose Cape Verde with her neighbours and pronounce Cape Verde a poor nation, lacking in natural resources – unless such analysts can explain to me that natural wealth without natural peace has any meaningful meaning. If I must agree with them at all, then I will have to refer to Cape Verde as a bright poor dwarf surrounded by dark wealthy giants. Here, the light of humanity and integrity contrasts with the gloom of greed and corruption. It is better to be poor in oil and gas but rich in integrity, than to be the other way around.

Cape Verde may not be rich in gold and diamond, but it is rich in leadership. Cape Verde is the only country in Africa where you would enter a common bakery and find a minister of state – Antonio Correia e Silva - queue up along with common citizens to buy common bread. Cape Verde is the only country in Africa where the President would share a simple house as a co-tenant with common people in a common apartment-block. Cape Verde is the only country in Africa where the Head of State would scramble with ordinary folk inside an ordinary bar for an ordinary cup of coffee. The first time I saw Jorge Carlos de Almeida Fonseca enter Pão Quente at Varzea two years ago, I was stunned. As if to confirm that my eyes were not deceiving me, I went up to him and shouted into his face ‘O Presidente!’ ‘Tudo Bom?’ the President responded with a handshake. Too mesmerized to say anything, I went out without answering the President’s greeting.  But my fascination only heightened further when I went outside and found that the scene was as ordinary as salt and water, with no indication whatsoever that there was an important person nearby. In another African country all four directions to the bar will be blocked to both human and motor traffic hours before the president’s arrival there, and the scene will be too heavily policed for the comfort of an ordinary soul. (The question is even this: In another African country, what will the almighty President be doing in such an “ignoble place” in the first place?)  

 In a nutshell, Cape Verde is the only country in Africa where nobody is anybody, but at the same everybody is somebody. I love this country called Cabo Verde, the land of natural beauty, the land of human compassion, the land of endless variety. Indeed,

  CABO VERDE, TERRA MINHA

              EU TE AMO COMO A MINHA MÃE!

Note: Issah Hassan Tikumah, a citizen of Ghana, is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Cape Verde.