{"id":23245,"date":"2019-01-21T08:30:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T13:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/?p=23245"},"modified":"2020-09-01T07:22:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T11:22:42","slug":"the-cape-verde-escape-hatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/blog\/the-cape-verde-escape-hatch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cape Verde Escape Hatch"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is an experiment. The insanity engulfing Washington now is so overwhelming that I had to get far away from it. I wanted a place that very few people knew anything about. Then a challenge occurred to me.<\/span><\/p>\n What could I learn about such a lost unknown place that Escape Artists would find interesting?\u00a0Could I possibly write something that would intrigue them?\u00a0So here we go \u2013 let me know how this experiment works.\u00a0The place I picked is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean 400 miles off of Africa called\u2026 <\/span>Cape Verde<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Sorry about the German above, but it\u2019s the best map around. That\u2019s because hordes of Germans escape from their winter to lie on the beaches of Sal (non-stop flights from Frankfurt) and turn their skins bright pink.\u00a0That\u2019s all they do.\u00a0They don\u2019t go anywhere else or explore any other islands.\u00a0Their only movement all day is to turn over back-to-belly so both sides get equally lobster-roasted.<\/span><\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t the Germans who created Cape Verde, it was the Portuguese.\u00a0The Romans called the islands “Gorgades” \u2013 the land of the Gorgon monsters, the most famous being Medusa, killed by the Greek mythological hero Perseus \u2013 but never settled there.\u00a0No one else did either, so when ships sent by Portugal\u2019s Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) to explore the west coast of Africa reached them in 1456, they were uninhabited.<\/span><\/p>\n A dozen years earlier, Portuguese explorers rounded the westernmost point on the African continent, which they called Cape Green, or <\/span>Cabo Verde<\/span><\/i>, as it was densely covered in vegetation.\u00a0(Now called <\/span>Cap Vert<\/span><\/i> as it\u2019s in Senegal, which is a Francophone country.)<\/span><\/p>\n For some mysterious reason \u2013 maybe to attract settlers \u2013 Prince Henry decided to call these arid volcanic islands Cabo Verde as well.<\/span><\/p>\n The settlers came, the first in 1462 on an island they called S\u00e3o Tiago (Santiago).\u00a0Why they stayed once they quickly learned the place was the opposite of green \u2013 mostly a burned-out desert wasteland with some acacia thorn trees \u2013 is a good question.\u00a0The answer turned out to be slaves.<\/span><\/p>\n The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore Africa\u2019s west coast, and they soon learned that tribal chiefs were eager to sell captured members of other tribes into slavery.\u00a0 There was a market, although not large, for slaves in Europe \u2013 and the settlement on Santiago turned out to be a useful transshipment point from the places in Africa where slaves were sold to places in Europe where they were bought.<\/span><\/p>\n Then Portugal began its colonization of Brazil in 1500, sugar from sugar cane plantations became enormously profitable to export to Europe, the plantations required massive numbers of slave labor, and by the mid-1500s, the transatlantic slave trade had made Santiago rich.<\/span><\/p>\n More settlers came to found more settlements, slaves escaped into the mountains and farmed wherever there was a bit of water, Portuguese men and the prettiest African women connected, and the initial generations of <\/span>caf\u00e9 au lait<\/span><\/i> Cape Verdean creoles came to be.<\/span><\/p>\n Pirates and privateers came as well, to loot and pillage.\u00a0Sir Francis Drake, encouraged by Queen Elizabeth, sacked Santiago\u2019s main town of Cidade Velha in 1585.\u00a0Aside from these occasional annoyances, Santiago flourished from the slave trade for the next two hundred years.\u00a0 Then the Brits put an end to the slave trade, and by the early 1800s, Cape Verde\u2019s economy had collapsed.<\/span><\/p>\n And who should come to the islands\u2019 rescue but the Brits, who discovered that S\u00e3o Vicente had a fabulous harbor at Mindelo Bay perfect for a coaling station to supply the new steamships plying the Atlantic.<\/span><\/p>\n Prior to 1838, the island was uninhabited and used only for cattle pasturage.\u00a0As one of the world\u2019s foremost trade posts for coal, Mindelo quickly became a flourishing cosmopolitan town filled with millionaires. Even more so after 1885, when it became the switching station for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.<\/span><\/p>\n Cape Verdeans, especially those who lived on the live volcanic island of Fogo, learned they had another resource \u2013 themselves.\u00a0They had a particular knack for the hard labor of whaling, and were sought after to crew on 19<\/span>th<\/span>-century American whaling ships.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Thus, started the Cape Verdean diaspora to America, particularly New England. Large communities of Cape Verdeans are found today in such places as Nantucket and Providence. <\/span><\/p>\n (There are now some 600,000 Cape Verdeans living abroad now, about half in the U.S. \u2013 more than the 500,000 who live in Cape Verde itself.)<\/span><\/p>\n The Cape Verde economy collapsed yet again when steamships switched from coal to diesel fuel after World War II.\u00a0 And to its rescue rode not the Brits but\u2026 the airplane.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n European airlines such as Alitalia built an airport on the deserted desert island of Sal for a refueling stop between Europe and South America.\u00a0Then South African Airlines began flying from the US direct to South Africa \u2013 with a necessary fuel stop in Sal.<\/span><\/p>\n This was a long flight.\u00a0My only memory of here prior to now was groggily getting off the plane from JFK on the way to Joburg years ago, looking out to some volcanic peaks in the distance without a shred of green, and getting back on the plane thinking there sure is nothing here. How wrong I was.<\/span><\/p>\n There are perfect beaches of perfect sand and perfect pure turquoise water with soft gentle waves on Sal, with perfect weather 350 days of the year.\u00a0The airport at Sal has brought a tourist boom.\u00a0You can fly here non-stop from Boston for $650 round-trip.<\/span><\/p>\n There are non-stop flights from Europe and the U.S. to Praia (the capital on Santiago) now \u2013 but that\u2019s brought a business, not a tourist, boom.\u00a0You only see the occasional tourist on any island except Sal.\u00a0Remember all those Germans.<\/span><\/p>\n The businessmen are here because Cape Verde has reinvented itself once again.\u00a0It has become <\/span>one of the best places to do business in Africa.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Now why is that?\u00a0Here the story starts to get interesting.\u00a0Not historically, but relevant to today.<\/span><\/p>\n You can see one thread \u2013 Cape Verde geographically positioned to prosper from the slave trade, then the coal trade, then the jetfuel trade, then the tourist and business trade.\u00a0But that\u2019s just geography, and there are factors far more important.<\/span><\/p>\n Those factors are human.\u00a0They are cultural.\u00a0What makes the difference between failure and success for a race, a society, a nation, is not genetic.\u00a0The average <\/span>IQ of Cape Verdeans<\/span><\/a> is 76, which is frighteningly more than one full standard deviation below the norm of 100.\u00a0The critical difference is not racial, it is not IQ, it is <\/span>cultural values<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Cape Verde has no natural resources. It is so dry and waterless there\u2019s not one single river flowing year-round on any of its islands.\u00a0Getting crops to grow out of its parched, rocky soil is really hard work.\u00a0The ocean has a lot of fish, but places to locate along its rocky shores are few.\u00a0Making a living here is not easy.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet, Cape Verde has survived and even thrived \u2013 because of its human resources, a mix of attributes comprising the Cape Verdean character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cape Verdeans are affable and easy-going; they love music and dancing and drinking their moonshine rum called “<\/span>grogue<\/span><\/i>“; they are peaceful with very little crime or violence;\u00a0they are dependable and reliably responsible as workers;\u00a0they are devout Christians (mostly Catholic);\u00a0and they are honest.\u00a0Their honesty is what most critically sets them apart from the rest of Africa.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n