{maique}

Still in Principe. SOOO much rain these days. Hours on end. Torrential. Makes things much harder. And frequent power outages, more than usual.

🏝️ National Holiday on Friday, then came the weekend. That means extra loud music in the evening. Now that we’re living in the city, right behind the church, this is something we have to deal with. The hotel was too quiet, this is a tad loud. Still prefer the city.

We finally visited family, my godmother, and extended gang. Girls were at summer camp, but they came over for the afternoon. They, as they do, became regulars at our place, whenever we’re in town. Playing with tinyMovieStar, keeping us company, taking care of us. One is about to turn 18, the other is 8.

Just going around town, lazily shooting stuff.

There’s ~a new~ one pizza place in town, and it’s right next to our place. Not brilliant pizza, but edible. Also does burgers.

We’ve been eating a lot of fish. Brilliant at the hotels, of course, but the best one is found at Juditinha, in the city. Best fish I ever had. With banana crisps, crunchy, dry.

The city feels a lot different this time. More like São Tomé. And that is not a good thing. A lot of people moving in from the bigger island. That is also not a good thing.

Things must move forward, of course. But this is destroying its charm, in a way. Too many cars. Lots of speeding. It’s always stupid, obviously, but even crazier on such a small town, with so many kids just running around with no parental supervision.

We’re experiencing a higher number of power outages. Instead of it coming back at 6AM/7AM, as usual, sometimes it does not. Or we get it for a couple of hours, and then it’s gone again.

We had a whole day without it. Having lunch (and dinner) at Rosita’s Rosa Pāo, without light during both meals.

Rosita. This was the first place I had a meal on the island, 10 years ago. She would later become my godmother. Grandma of a ton of kids, including both girls I mentioned earlier. Had dinner without electricity as well.

Sunday was hard. Most of the day spent at home. No car means no beach, and everything is closed. Not that there’s a lot during the week, of course, but “nothing” is hard.

We went out for a little while, but the humidity is UP THERE, and it’s a pain to be out and about. Thankfully there’s air con at home, and the power was on the whole day.

Bakers are fun here. I had to wait an hour for bread. They told us they’d have it ready at noon, but took them an extra hour to have it. Painful, the waiting outside, but bread is very good when you finally get your hands on it.

We even found out about a (much better) bread, but it’s closer to the airport. I’ll go there when we’re picking someone up, or dropping them off. Still hot, made on a classic, wood-powered oven.

We went back to Roça (multiple times), the place where we were married. The place where our friends lived. I say lived because, after many many years, they have finally been relocated to Terra Prometida (Promised Land).

The hotel feels empty. And sad. And silent.

The chapel is crumbling, falling apart.

The hotel, physically, as lovely as ever. I just think it lost its soul.

Then Melgas. Blood sucking bastards! tinyMovieStar had dozens of bites. We had to visit the hospital, get a pill, and some drops the following day,

That’s when we visited the new place the nurse is building (airbnb, restaurant, disco), and went with him to the day care center. We walked home.

Afternoon at home, with torrential rain outside. It’s hard to keep tinyMovieStar entertained over here. Not a lot to do, visit, enjoy. If we’re at the hotels, easy. But outside that, it’s just a very poor place, she doesn’t love it as much as we do. We got a visit from the girls, who spent the afternoon with us, she had a play date.

Also, finally, visited Terra Prometida (The Promised Land). On the day our musician friends arrived. Airport, Roça.

People seem happy with the new place. It’s huge! Instead of being all together under a couple of roofs, in the old Roça grounds, each family has its own house now, with a little land to grow something. I’ll have to go again, of course, and get some photos.

Saw trees. Surprising, right?

We listened to a performance by the batuqueiras. And that was that, power was out again. There’s no diesel on the island for full days with electricity.

The musicians that are now on the island are making this a very cool couple of days. Going around meeting the local talent, hearing them play and sing. Fun project, fun people.

Fun fact: one of them is the father of one of tinyMovieStar’s best little friends from kindergarten. That’s how the bigger movieStar thought about the whole project.

Shooting a lot of video (with phone) for this one.

🤦🏻‍♂️ Lost a watch. Totally my fault. One of the 2100 series G-Shock. I liked it. Might have to get a new one.

🎙️ Voicenotes still going. Strong. Recording every single day.

📺 Slow Horses. Forgot to add this to the previous edition. Boy, am I happy this one is back. Cowboy Cartel. Maybe I’ll even watch episode 2, the first one left me wondering how good this story will turn out to be.

🍿 The Instigators. Enjoyed the movie. That’s pretty good these days.

📚 I’ve added Spook Street, part of the Slow Horses series, by Mick Herron, to the list of books I’m reading. I just couldn’t wait for the weekly episodes. Almost done with the books.

📢 Cleaned up my Shoutouts account. Added a couple of new suggestions, and deleted a handful. This is a very cool service, another great idea by Vincent Ritter. Check it out if you’re not familiar with it, and you can see it in action at the bottom of every page/post on maique.eu.

🎙️ Must take a look at Spake. Another service from the good folks at Neatnik (hey, Adam!), makers of fun software, and delicious services. For now it’s free for anyone holding an omg.lol account. If you don’t have one, you’re missing out.