Boa Vista Island.
BThe island of Boa Vista, a former Portuguese colony, known and chosen as an international tourist destination, famous for its spectacular beaches caressed by the trade winds and relaxed lifestyle, retains pockets of widespread poverty, and Bairro de Boa Esperanza is the neighborhood where the most destitution is concentrated. Bairro de Boa Esperanza is a neighborhood northeast of Sal Rei, the capital of the island of Boa Vista in the Cape Verde archipelago. Also known as the “shacks” area, it is a kind of city within a city, where residents still live in precarious conditions.
My hotel in Sal Rei, the capital of Boa Vista, faces a wide street bordered by a row of low houses. Walking down it in about half an hour, one arrives in a neighborhood, Bairro de Boa Esperanza, which everyone here calls “of the shacks” a sort of city within a city, where the inhabitants still live in precarious housing and social conditions. Every morning around 6 a.m., from the bottom of this narrow street still shrouded in the dim light of morning, small groups of people, mostly women from Bairro de Boa Esperanza make their way to the bus station, adjacent to the hotel. They are wearing the uniform of a well-known resort on the island, one of the most luxurious, a few kilometers from Sal Rei. Here most of the population lives off the hotels and tourism, which has seen some increase in recent years.
The reputation of the area called “the shacks” is that of a place that is not very safe, especially for people like me, who are not from Boa Vista. Rare are the tourists who go this far, especially at night. Therefore, I decide to have Neydin, a Cape Verdean friend, accompany me. He, too, confirms to me that the situation has improved a lot over time and that now the sheet metal buildings no longer exist, but looking around many houses still seem to be under construction, many the remains of the old shacks now no longer inhabited, the roads are certainly not well paved or not at all, and children play among the debris.
We across what appears to be the main square, and on the opposite side I cross the gazes of two policemen. After a few minutes I see them again making their rounds. Neydin notices them and tells me, “they used to shoot each other here, now it doesn't happen anymore.”
Just in the days of my stay in Cape Verde, the minister of tourism and transport opened a tourism office. In an interview, when asked what they intended to do to improve the lives of the inhabitants of the shack area, he said that there are plans to increase entry fees for tourists designed to be donated to the reconstruction of the neighborhood. They want to relocate the residents to public housing. Houses similar to others that surround the area and where in recent years many former shack dwellers have moved to.Despite all this, walking through the streets of Bairro de Boa Esperanza I saw serene and even smiling faces, families and neighbors helping each other and, at least apparently, there is no perception of any kind of hardship or sadness. Surely it is also thanks to the great ability of Cape Verdeans to adapt, to enjoy the very small things in life. However, Bairro de Boa Esperanza cannot help but appear to me as a deep wound in this little paradise that is the island of Boa Vista.