day 27: loving what you never had
somewhere in my past, it is August. i don't know the exact year. the smell of the earth and the sound of rain outside are unforgettable. rain will always bring peace and happiness to any Cape Verdean.
it is not quite difficult to retain this memory because the rain in Cabo Verde is not something that common.
few days during an entire year, if the rain decides to pay us a visit on that year. which is a big if.
this is where my confusion lies. why the people of this country pray for the rain and believe that agriculture is what will provide food to us all?
ten islands, a lot of sea territory. somehow we decided that we had better chances growing our food with scarce rain and dry soil than by fishing it in the ocean.
while the EU, the Japanese, and the Chinese come with big boats and catch it all. we have a government that negotiates shitty deals with them.
and that same gov, is more worried about investing money in farm life than in the ocean.
being a libertarian i know for a fact that the state is incompetent but at this level?
if you think that this is one of those easier said than done types of situations, history says otherwise.
this country has been devasted by famine since 1580, a thing that repeated itself for centuries. the last one was “yesterday”, the decade of 1940.
10 years, 45k people dead. do you want a reference? the country has 500k people today.
if you sit with someone old that remembers what happened, you would never put so much faith in the rain as your savior.
Hanlon’s razor says:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
but at this stage, i must confess that Cabo Verde is engaged in malicious stupidity.
