(Download) "Letter from Praia, 1978" by American Diplomacy # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Letter from Praia, 1978
- Author : American Diplomacy
- Release Date : January 21, 2011
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 47 KB
Description
The visitor who arrives in Cape Verde is struck first of all by the barrenness: ten years of drought have reduced the islands to a state of nature strongly resembling pictures of the moon. Brown is everywhere the dominant color and the isolated spots of green are almost shocking in their vividness. Most visitors react with a feeling of depression, followed by a real sense of pity and admiration for the inhabitants of the islands. The inevitable question is: but how do they survive? The answer is barely, and largely with the help from abroad: from the expatriate Cape Verdean communities and from foreign aid. Next one is struck by the realization that except in a geographic sense Cape Verde is not an African country. It is a small, poor, Portuguese province, adrift off the coast of Africa. The Cape Verdean peasant may be no better educated nor in any sense richer that his counterpart on the coast of Africa, but he is not an African, he does not belong to the cultural and tribal culture which, with local variations, exists from one end of Africa to the other.