There are encounters that happen only once in a lifetime and are destined to thrive only during the time that they last for. They are unique and unrepeatable when they occur. They are ephemeral by nature and they are, because we feel it that way. Similarly, other encounters initially arise with that same nature of being unique, until they change something that leads us to believe that they deserve to be repeated. It was in a tiny and forgotten African country in the equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean, São Tomé e Príncipe, where I traveled to take a break and meet her again.
The humidity of the torrid tropical heat sticks to your body at the very first moment you disembark in São Tomé, the capital city of this country whose name designates the two small islands that compose it. Only its status as a capital city can grant it the optimistic title of “city”, because the truth is that “town” would probably be a more adjusted denomination for it. São Tomé is something like a decaying museum that exhibits ruined Portuguese colonial architecture mixed with fragments of everyday life typical of any country in sub-Saharan Africa.
Geographically difficult to access, lagging behind significantly with respect to the rest of the world and materially very poor, this country seems to have been stopped in time. ATMs, debit and credit cards, internet, smartphones with their multiple applications and others are nothing more than distant images that live in far away world of science fiction. None of it really works here. The economy runs 99.5% on cash. ATM’s and the only Bank are limited to only the small handful of local people with greater resources. In real life, transactions occur on the street and dobras gain value only when they turn into the dollars or euros that come from the pockets of the few tourists who make it here.
Outside the city of São Tomé, the entire island is nothing more than a collection of precarious slow-paced small towns and villages where children play happily and dirty and adults sit and watch life pass by in slow motion. It has a mountainous heart of lush green and shores of white or black sand beaches, flanked by endless rows of coconut trees, bathed by warm crystalline equatorial waters. It is the ideal paradise to forget about the world, the intense pain that I keep trying to deny for having lost Julia, and to allow myself for the first time in several months the opportunity of giving a shot to something different.
There we spent 10 days given in to the earthly pleasures of the body. Days of solitary beaches and steamy tropical heat where the coconut trees sway gently with the wind while we give free rein to our deepest sexual desires. We wallow in the sand playing with childish spontaneity and swim naked in the crystalline waters of a warm and affable sea that exacerbates our adult desires. At sunset, the millions of stars that now populate the sky are the only light that dimly illuminates the deep darkness of this lost paradise. At night, it is the rustling of the palm trees and the singing of thousands of bugs and frogs that fill our space with their sweet melody and absorb the ever-increasing sound of our moans. The gentle breeze that enters through the windows of our cozy corner is oxygen with a scent of wet earth and at the same time refreshing for our bodies impregnated with sweat and the smell of sex. There's only she and I surrendered in submission to the impulses of our stimuli. Nothing else exists.
Neither of us knows if we will see each other again. We only know that this was about living the present in its purest intensity, trying as much as possible to avoid inquiring in the past and the future. Once we reach the end of this wonderful interlude, it is time for both of us to reconnect with reality and get back on the tracks of the different paths we have.
