The city built for 3 days: Sipopo

                We awoke early in the morning on our third day to get on a bus and see the city of Sipopo. This city was built entirely for the African summit, which is pretty ridiculous to me. Not only did they renovate the airport and the main road of Malabo, but they also built a whole city! It was interesting to see the contrast of the city of Malabo with Sipopo which was very modern. I wonder why the country’s money is not better allocated to other more pressing issues… The wealth in the country is extremely undistributed, with a giant gap between the poor and the rich. There are some people who have immense wealth, such as the president and his family. There are also a lot of fancy hotels (there is another Sofitel in Malabo, with a beautiful fountain and courtyard) where oil execs and foreign diplomats and other wealthy people stay. However, most live in extreme poverty with no running water and die of malaria - the image you may get when you think of an underdeveloped African country. There are very few middle class members of society. The house where we are staying is considered to be where an upper-middle class person would live, such as a bank worker.
                We went specifically to the hotel Sofitel, a French hotel chain equivalent to a Hilton, mostly to check out the beach there. The hotel has its own beach, artificially created, with a bridge to a little island. One of the employees took us on a tour of the whole hotel (randomly, it was unplanned), which included suites, a buffet, a spa, a gym, a pool with a bar, and of course the beach and the island (he was definitely just trying to get us to stay there). Again, it was weird to see a 5 star hotel in an underdeveloped country. The island was pretty cool; we saw it as baby steps to the jungles of Moka. I really want to post pictures of it, but unfortunately the internet is pretty spotty and very slow, so it’s extremely difficult to do so. We have little modems that plug into the USB port, but apparently the wireless is not much better. Internet is also not widely available. In fact, important figures such as the head of the environmental department at UNGE does not have internet in his office, or even his own printer.

The view from the bridge to the island.

The view from a room in the hotel - you can see how luxurious the resort was, which was strange to see in a country that is still very much developing.

The roots of a Ceiba tree on the island which I thought was really cool.

Ceiba trees have cool little spikes on 'em.

The view from a small bridge on the island.

The view of the shore and the hotel from the bridge, leaving the little island.