Upon returning to the United States, and doing a little bit of research, I learned much about Equatorial Guinea that helped me put the experience I got first-hand into a larger context. The essays that follow relate some of my experiences in Equatorial Guinea as well as the history that helped me put them into some sort of perspective.

Colonialism in Spanish Guinea

Fernando Po (now Bioko Island) was first discovered off the west coast of Africa and claimed in 1472 by the Portuguese, but it was the Spanish that first colonized the island and the rest of what now makes up present day Equatorial Guinea. Spain took possession of Fernando Po, the mainland area of Rio Muni, and the island of Annobon in 1778 as part of a treaty exchanging territories with Portugal. Still, it was some time before the territories, collectively called Spanish Guinea, would feel the European influence. After a brief English presence on Fernando Po, the Spanish reasserted claim over their African possessions in 1843, and slowly but surely, the Spanish colony began to develop. By the time of Independence in 1968, the Spanish had so firmly established themselves in their colony that many aspects of their culture remain intact in the present day Equatorial Guinea that I recently visited.

Just after our arrival in EG, we began the process of traveling around and getting to know Bioko Island. It was not long before we began to encounter physical remnants of the origins of the Spain-Equatorial Guinea relationship. One of the very first places we visited was the Bubi village of Batéte. The village's landmark, and one of the reasons for our visit, was an old, wooden church. After arriving and introducing ourselves to the village president, we began walking up the road and after a short distance we found ourselves in front of the church. It was really a charming structure, built entirely of wood (except for the floor and the stained glass windows), but now somewhat lopsided and dilapidated from years of neglect. I took a few pictures, this one among them. We stayed awhile, admiring the woodwork, still impressive after all these years. I stood imagining what it would have looked like when it was built, before independence, in the times of the Spanish.

As in all of its other colonies, the Catholic Church played a significant role in Spain's colonization of Equatorial Guinea. When the first truly Spanish governor arrived on Fernando Po in 1858, he began by expelling the Baptist missions that had arrived earlier and imposing Catholicism as the official religion. The first Spanish priests had arrived even earlier, in 1843, and were soon followed by more priests, nuns, and teachers. A group of Jesuits arrived not long after. Diseases such as malaria, however, usually crippled these missionaries not long after their arrival, so they ended up accomplishing little. Disease was one of Spain's largest obstacles to colonizing in general and one of the reasons for its late start in doing so. It was not until the 1880's that two more lasting and influential missions arrived on Fernando Po: the Claretians and the Conceptionists. Together, they came to control virtually all of the education, welfare, and hospitals, among other things, in the colony. It was the Claretians that established the mission along with a boarding school in the village of Batéte in 1887, though I had not been aware of that at the time of my visit.

The Bubi population of Fernando Po were extremely resistant to the influence of the missionaries, who for awhile contented themselves with introducing the more easily influenced Fernandinos (the name given to the rescued and freed slaves left behind by the British, as well as various other immigrants to the island) to Christianity, but the missionaries would not be defeated forever. They, and the colonial authorities pressuring them, refused to leave the Bubis to themselves, as they wished to be left, or to understand and respect their traditional beliefs, so instead they persisted. The struggle faced by the missionaries was described by Mary Kingsley, who visited Fernando Po in 1893, in her retelling of a story she had heard that went as follows: " A priest had enterprisingly settled himself one night in the middle of a Bubi village with intent to devote the remainder of his life to quietly but thoroughly converting it. Next morning, when he rose up, he found himself alone, the people having taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another village elsewhere."1 Slowly the struggle lessened as the missionaries gained the friendship of the Bubis and as the authority of the Bubi kings fell apart under the stronger Spanish authority. By the mid 20th century, the Bubis were Roman Catholic. Traditional practices were not eliminated, however, as the Spanish liked to think, rather they were kept out of sight.

It was not until much later, in 1926, that Spanish missionaries even began to seriously tackle Rio Muni and the Fang clans that occupied it. Still, there too, Christianity slowly began to prevail, although somewhat less successfully (cults resulted in some remote areas). As of 1998, 93% of Equatoguineans were Catholic2. Indeed, the church I visited in Batéte was the first and perhaps most unique church I encountered during my time in Equatorial Guinea, but it was certainly not unusual to encounter churches. In that way, it reminded me a lot of Mexico, another former Spanish colony I know well, only Equatorial Guinea's churches were generally somewhat less elaborate and decorative.

Another category of reminders left behind from the foundations of Spanish colonialism that I often encountered in Equatorial Guinea was commercial and economic in nature, rather than religious, and it centered around cacao production. Cacao, or cocoa, the key ingredient in chocolate, was first imported to Spanish Guinea in 1850 after similarities were noted between the climates of West Africa and South America, where cacao originated. Sure enough, the cacao thrived, and within 10 years of its introduction, plantations arose, and production began in 1888. It soon became the staple of the colonial economy, and a profitable one at that since world demand at the time was rising. The only problem plaguing cacao production from the start was one of labor. Though the Spanish occasionally tried forcing or coercing the Bubi into working on the plantations, they could not ever have filled the labor needs of the plantations, so most of the labor force was imported first from other surrounding countries, but in the end mostly from Nigeria. As time went on and plantations grew, Nigerian laborers actually came to outnumber all of the other ethnic groups on Fernando Po. By the end of the colonial era, Spanish Guinea was producing 35,000 tons of cacao per year3, cacao plantations owned primarily by Europeans but also some Fernandinos and Bubi covered some 29% of Fernando Po's surface4, and there were around 70,000 Nigerian workers that kept the plantations running. 5

Almost immediately upon my arrival in Equatorial Guinea I had come into contact with remnants of the cacao industry as it had once been before Independence. Though I did not realize it for some time, the Atlantic Methanol Production Company (AMPCO) that provided our housing, among other things, had been built over an old plantation. I had on many occasions wondered the significance of the name given to AMPCO's expatriate housing: Cacahual Village. Cacahual, as it turned out, was the name of the plantation. I soon learned to recognize abandoned cacao plantations since we would drive through them almost daily on the way from AMPCO to Malabo. They could be distinguished by their evenly spaced tall canopy trees that once shaded the cacao plants, and a thick mass of lower, denser vegetation where the cacao would have been. The buildings of Malabo were also an everyday reminder of the wealth brought mostly by cacao. Now not in the best of shape, like nearly every other structure from the colonial days, the buildings gave Malabo a distinctly old, almost sad Spanish feel. One building, now restored and functioning as AMPCO's training center, was where my morning classes took place. It was still referred to not just as 'the training center,' but also as Casa Mallo, its prior name. Casa Mallo was at one time the largest of Fernando Po's cacao producers, owning several of the island's plantations. The building by that name used to be Casa Mallo's headquarters.

My first conscious encounter with cacao also came very early on in my stay on Bioko, even before my visit to Batéte's church, when my group and I were taken to see the Sampaka cacao plantation, just outside of Malabo. It is one of the few plantations owned by Casa Mallo that is still in operation. The main buildings of the plantation showed definite signs of age, but were still impressive, very Spanish, and not lacking in charm. As we toured the plantation and learned the ins and outs of harvesting, processing, and selling cacao, I felt almost as though we had gone back in time. And everything about the place really was just as traditional as it looked. Even the engines that moved rakes through the cacao seeds to dry them were the very same engines that had done so in the colonial days. On another occasion, we met some of the managers of Casa Mallo. One, who had lived nearly all his life in Equatorial Guinea (he looked older, around 70, perhaps) working for the plantation gave us a talk about his company, its history, and the history of cacao in general. It was clear that cacao was his life, and I thought there was something sad about listening to the story of his struggle to keep things going in the years following independence. On the other hand, at least what was originally forest on Fernando Po was returning to that state where the old cacao plantations had been. It's never a bad thing from an ecological point of view when an area has more forest than it did 50 years ago.

There was much more to Spanish colonialism than cacao and Catholicism, however, though these two things played key roles from the very beginning until independence. Believing itself to be superior, Spain's goal for its colony, was hispanicization: to spread the Spanish language, culture, values and beliefs to everyone it could reach, to gain loyalty, and hopefully profit from it all at the same time. Missions and plantations were critical to that achievement, along with the colonial administration. Administration, however, was not a strong point in Spanish Guinea. Good administrators were too few and far between to be successful overall, but with the start of the 20th century things began to come together for the Spanish. The colony began to develop and take shape, though the development that took place was always one sided for the benefit of the Europeans. The Spanish reasoning being that Africans were inferior, they created institutions such as the Curaduria Colonial, founded in 1901, to supposedly protect the natives. In reality, it existed to exploit the Africans, mostly for labor purposes. Another even more powerful and important organization founded 3 years later in 1904, was the Patronato de Indígenas (Native Patronage Organization), originally intended to protect the Bubi. Headed by the bishop of Santa Isabel (present day Malabo), it was not technically a government organization, but came to control nearly every facet of life in the colony, with help from the missions. Education, for example, was a key aspect of colonial society controlled exclusively by the Patronato, in conjunction with the Claretians and Conceptionists. Primary school was provided for everyone at no cost, but virtually no secondary schooling was made available in the colony for natives, at least not until later on when 2 secondary schools took on some importance. Still, for the most part secondary education was only given to the brightest students who were sent to schools in Spain to ensure their loyalty and to increase dependence on Spain.

Another key element of society controlled by the Patronato and the missions was a colonial policy of sorts known as Emancipation. Those members of society who were not emancipated, namely the African natives, were referred to as menores (juveniles) and could not advance or participate in much in the colonial society that was nevertheless imposed on them. They could be forced to work on plantations, were denied Spanish legal privileges, and they could not make large monetary transactions with the emancipated, holding them back even further. To achieve emancipation status, which only the Patronato and the missions could grant, and all the privileges that came with it, Catholicism was a requirement, as well as having some sort of higher education, earning a certain amount of money, and/or holding a civil service position. It was the object of the Patronato to eventually emancipate all of the menores, and after years of persistence and paternalism from all sides (missionaries, plantation owners, administration), this goal was mostly accomplished, at least on Fernando Po. Although everything was still European dominated, the Bubis and Fernandinos became fairly prosperous and loyal members of colonial society, with some even running their own cacao plantations.

Rio Muni, however, was a different story. Spain had neglected it for some time, never really developing it at the same pace as Fernando Po. Education was poorer, the economy weaker, and colonial rule more harsh and military. To make matters worse, the Spanish and the Fang, Rio Muni's most prominent ethnic group, did not particularly get along and were constantly suspicious of one another, and not entirely without reason. Evidently, "misunderstandings on the part of both the Spanish and the Fang were the rule rather than the exception."6 Rather than attempting to understand and improve the situation, the Spanish often denied the Fang employment on the prosperous Fernando Po, and few were granted emancipation until the later years of colonization. Even as the Fang united all of their clans and began to develop a strong sense of African nationalism, the Spanish paid little attention. On the surface, they had already succeeded in creating a highly successful and prosperous colony.

The relationship between Spain and its colony was a complex one, and from before even arriving in Equatorial Guinea, I began learning first hand about just a few aspects of it during the 4 days my group spent in Spain at the University of Alcalá for an orientation of sorts. We learned, for example, that the Rector of the University had been born on Fernando Po at a house that is still around today in Malabo, that the University of Alcalá had helped to found Equatorial Guinea's University in 1995, and about how the two institutions continue to work together. We also visited the Natural History Museum in Madrid where we looked at their collections and specimens from Equatorial Guinea and the work they had done there towards the end of the colonial era. All of this was interesting, but I think the experience from which I learned the most in Spain was simply arriving at the check-in for our Iberia flight to Malabo. I had expected a fairly quiet, small, midnight flight that we would share mostly with expatriates and perhaps a few Equatoguineans, but when we got to the check out counter, it did not appear that I could have been more wrong. The line was huge and noisy, carts were piled high with luggage or goods, and there was hardly an ex-pat in site. Everyone was Equatoguinean. I don't know why, but I had not realized before how and why many traveled back and forth to Spain, or that there are so many who live or have family living there. I have since learned that there are also many Equatoguineans who are exiled in Spain, and that several Equatoguinean political parties are actually based there. For better or worse, it seems at least some of the ties built between colonist and colony remain intact, even today.

In 1956, Spain joined the United Nations, a move which brought about pressure to change its colonial relationship with Spanish Guinea, so in 1959, Fernando Po and Rio Muni were declared provinces. The idea of African inferiority was abandoned, as was the Patronato de Indígenas. At the same time, discontent in Rio Muni came to the surface with the formation of nationalist parties, even though they remained unrecognized by Spain. The parties were finally legalized in preparation for autonomy that was granted to the provinces in 1963 allowing them self-administration. Tensions between Fernando Po and Rio Muni increased, largely due to the vast social and economic gaps Spain had created between them.

At the determination of the UN, Independence was to be granted in 1968. At the constitutional conferences preceding it, the nationalist parties of Rio Muni dominated, lead by a harsh and unstable Spanish critic by the name of Macias Nguema. Elections were held, and the new government and constitution took effect on October 12, 1968 with Macias Nguema as President and much of Rio Muni, disgruntled by their encounters with Spanish colonialism, supporting him. With that, Equatorial Guinea gained its freedom from Spanish rule, but freedom itself would not last long at all under Macias.

Macias

Macias Nguema, the first elected president of Equatorial Guinea as a free republic, rather than a Spanish colony or province, remained in power for the next eleven years. He was strongly anti-Spanish, commonly described as a cruel, sadistic, psychotic, paranoid, megalomaniac, and he ruled his tiny country as one of the worst, but least recognized, dictators that Africa, and perhaps the world, has ever known. By the time of his overthrow and execution in 1979, one third of Equatorial Guinea's population was in exile, and around ten percent had been murdered. Although the brief but horrific reign of Macias occurred before my time, it is still the very recent past and is probably still contained in the memories of virtually all Equatoguineans over 30. Needless to say, it is also a very sensitive subject for Equatorial Guinea, and thankfully I was not allowed to travel there in total ignorance of the Macias era. I was told, very generally, that there had been a terrible dictator in the recent past, that many had been killed or exiled, and that I should be sensitive to that in my encounters with people there, particularly those older than myself. It was not a subject I could bring up or inquire about, so while I was there I learned little in the way of facts or stories, but I did pay attention, and found that it was not hard at all to find other bits of evidence that Equatorial Guinea had suffered and is still suffering from something that will probably always remain beyond my understanding no matter how much time I spend there or how much research I do.

The atmosphere of Equatorial Guinea itself reminded me of Macias regularly. There was an overall state of neglect and decay, particularly of all things Spanish such as the churches and plantations. Even though the neglect often continues today, it most definitely began with Macias. There were a few images in particular that stayed with me: Three large, conveyor belt-like pieces of equipment for processing and packaging cacao standing alone, rusted and overgrown with weeds, on a hillside near Luba (pictured above), a small closet of a room piled with copies of old books from the 1950s and 60s that no one touched, and the many skeletons of what were once ships still protruding from the shallow waters near several of Equatorial Guinea's ports. This shipwreck is one of three that greeted me at this harbor that we visited to explore its natural assets: mangrove forests. The entire road to the harbor was also lined with abandoned industrial materials being overtaken by the thick tropical vegetation.

The mood of the people in the villages and cities of Equatorial Guinea reflected their environment and struck me right away as somehow different. Though I can only speculate as to why, one logical explanation that came to mind was the previous dictatorship. There was often a general sense of sadness, sometimes anger or frustration in the air, and the faces of many adults in particular seemed full of worry, and resignation. The looks I sometimes got from the older generations of local people just walking down the street made me feel as though I knew nothing, and perhaps I should mind my own business. The younger generation, on the other hand, always seemed interested and friendly when I passed by. Another thing that struck me was a comment that my friend David made during one of our earlier conversations. David was from Spain and had been working on Equatorial Guinea for several months for a branch of the same program I was there for. He was telling me how it was getting lonely being on Bioko for so long, despite having several friends among the Equatoguineans. When I asked why, he told me that although he had so many friends, it was not the same. You could never really get to know each other to the point of being able to share secrets or understand how the other was thinking or feeling. He said that the barrier was not linguistic, as I would have guessed since for me language was somewhat of an obstacle, but rather something to do with the drastic differences in culture and experience. There were some things that the Equatoguineans would just not discuss with us foreigners. I understood what he meant in a way since I did often get the feeling that things were being left unsaid, but it surprised me to hear him explain it in this way. I wondered if experiencing and surviving Macias might have been part of what was behind why friendship with natives of Equatorial Guinea was such a challenge. I could see such shared experiences bringing their community closer to each other, but farther from the rest of the world. Occasionally, however, things were not left entirely unsaid. There were subtle references to how things are better than 'before' that would sometimes come up in conversations, and it was always understood that 'before' meant the time of Macias. As the elections were approaching, that was the most common reason I heard for supporting Obiang Nguema, the current president; at least things are stable and people don't get killed now as they did before. Everyone was clearly still afraid that if the current political climate were to be disrupted, things might revert back to how they were before 1979, and sadly, their fears are probably justified.

Exactly what happened under the rule of Macias to leave such scars on the landscapes and people of Equatorial Guinea was not something I could learn much about while I was over there, and information is hard to come by even here, but I have been able to gather some of the basics and some stories that probably just begin to paint a picture of what happened during those eleven years. Macias, first of all, was a Fang from Mongomo, in eastern Rio Muni, born in 1924. Early on it was apparent that he felt inferior to foreigners and anyone with an education, but was arrogant towards everyone else. In 1944 he got a job as a clerk in the colonial administration, and was emancipated in 1950. He became known politically in 1963 when he joined the political parties just legalized in preparation for autonomy. He opposed the autonomous government, but was named its vice president in 1963; Bonifacio Ondó Edu was named the president. Macias also opposed the constitution decided upon for the soon to be independent Equatorial Guinea. In July of 1967, he received treatment for mental illness marked by psychotic and violent tendencies. The following year he ran for president against Bonifacio Ondó Edu, with a campaign based on promises of returning to traditional Fang values, and won having gained all of his votes from the large Fang rural population of Rio Muni. Francisco Macias Nguema took office on October 12, 1968, and the nightmare began almost immediately.

Before the end of October, Macias' opponent in the elections, Ondó Edu, fled to Gabon, fearing for his life. By the end of the year, arrests of Ondó Edu's supporters had begun, and tensions between the Spanish and the Guineans were rising. 1969 began with Macias denouncing the Constitution of his country as an imposition of the Spanish, stirring up hatred of the Spanish, and publicly announcing his admiration for Hitler, claiming that "Africa is free thanks to Hitler."7 In February, Ondó Edu was found, brought back to Equatorial Guinea and placed under house arrest. Aggression and violence toward colonists, Nigerians, and supporters of Ondó Edu escalated. Flights to Spain were said to be full of people with visible wounds. Macias was quoted as saying "Que nadie ayude al blanco, que ningún negro tenga miedo del blanco" ("No one help the whites, no black have fear of the whites").8 February came to a close with Spanish troops taking up strategic positions in Equatorial Guinea's main cities, Macias declaring a state of emergency, Spain ordering the evacuation of it's white citizens, and the murder of a young Spanish logging company employee.

On March 4th, Macias' Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ndongo Miyone, attempted a Coup d'etat, but failed and provoked the first wave of assasinations of himself, Ondó Edu, and others by the Macias government. In an interview, Macias revealed that he had taken photos of Ndongo Miyone being tortured before his death. Days later, Macias promised to outlaw political parties, and implement his own party as the only legal one. Political murders become commonplace. By the end of March, thousands of Nigerians had been imprisoned, and some 7,000 out of 8,000 Spaniards present on Equatorial Guinea at independence had fled the country. With the exodus of the Spanish, Equatorial Guinea's economy began to crumble, but a Central Bank was founded with help from Spain and the Equatorial Guinea was admitted to the IMF. In 1970, Macias founded the Partido Único Nacional de los Trabajadores (PUNT) (Unique National Workers Party) and officially abandoned the Constitution. At seven years old, children were required to join the party, and membership was required for everything including attending school and finding jobs. Children of anyone who had been executed of jailed were prohibited from attending school, Macias declared the word 'intellectual' to be forbidden, and some prominent Catholic missions are expelled, including the one where Macias had been educated. The death penalty is formally legalized for crimes against the president in 1971, and Spain begins censoring information on Equatorial Guinea.

In 1972, Macias renewed his campaign against the Spanish, and the few left in the country are often subjected to public torture and humiliation arranged by the government. A Catholic mission possessing copies of a book on the geography and history of Equatorial Guinea was assaulted and robbed and future possession of that and other prohibited books was made punishable by death. In March, typed pamphlets appear escalling Macias an assassin, so he confiscated all of the country's typewriters. In April Macias made it mandatory that all men, women, and children receive military training every afternoon from 4 until 6 with wooden guns that they are required to purchase. Also in April, a portrait of Macias was found slashed in a classroom. Several teachers, parents, and students were assassinated, along with the minister of education. With May came the "week of terror," when the few functioning hospitals in Equatorial Guinea alone recorded around 10 deaths per day. Most of those who had participated in the Constitutional Convention just before independence were eliminated. Guinean students studying abroad on scholarships were also forced to return home for the summer. Many who did lost their lives, and those who refused were denied their scholarships. Prison assassinations rose after a visit by Macias who commented that the prisoners were treated too well. Families of victims were often given only the victim's bloodstained clothes rather than bodies to testify to the violence that they suffered. In June, Macias declared himself President for Life, and gave himself the honorary title of "The Unique Miracle." He also ordered the burning of all books in Equatorial Guinea, causing the loss of entire libraries and archives, and advised the military to beat anyone they come across, separatists in particular, since there would be no consequences.

Persecution and murders continued in 1973, new commands to destroy any memories or remnants of the Spanish colonial years were introduced, and place names were changed (Santa Isabel becomes Malabo, Fernando Po becomes the Isla Macias Nguema). In 1974, a supposed failed coup attempt resulted in 118 public executions. Priests were forced to begin their sermons with "Nothing without Macias, everything for Macias." Macias' vice president committed suicide, private education was banned, and the finance minister was assassinated in the spring of 1975. In the summer, 100 were killed after Macias learned of some prisoners' attempted escape from jail. The prisoners had already committed suicide. A village was also burned to the ground after being accused of being subversive. As many as 319 more were killed in association with a plot that was uncovered in the fall. At the end of the year, Nigeria withdrew around 26,000 of its workers from Fernando Po after 11 Nigerians had been shot outside their embassy. Equatorial Guinea's cacao industry was left even further crippled than it had been after the Spanish departure. To replace the Nigerians the Macias government began to recruit forced labor in 1976: any Guinean citizen over 15 could be forced to work at the plantations without pay. Also in 1976, the historical leader of the Bubi, one of the most heavily persecuted ethnic groups, was assassinated, and over 100 Guinean officials were arrested after presenting a petition to the government. Most were executed. The person to carry out the arrests was Macias' nephew and current president of Equatorial Guinea, Obiang Nguema. At the time, Obiang was one of only 3 family members left at the top of Macias' government. There had been a fourth, Macias' secretary general and personal friend, but Macias had him assassinated as well. Macias himself was spending more and more time closed up in his well-guarded hometown of Mongomo.

One count found that by 1977 there were 5,000 political prisoners in Equatorial Guinea, 30,000 forced laborers, and around 50,000 dead or missing in a country that had only 260,000 people at Independence.9 Another 120,000 or more were in exile.10 In a late attempt to prevent more people from leaving, Macias ordered the destruction of all boats and ships in 1978. This also had the unfortunate consequence of crippling the fishing industry and thereby removing an important part of many Guineans' diets. Most Equatoguineans had probably gone back to subsistence agriculture, hunting, and fishing towards the beginning of the Macias years, since prices of food in the markets had skyrocketed and the country often went for months at a time without any bread, potatoes, or oil, among other things. I came across a letter while doing some research on the internet that caught my attention, written (in Spanish) by a priest in Equatorial Guinea during the Macias days, in which some of the things he mentions are the hunger that the country was experiencing, the lack of salt and oil, and the difficulty in finding paper to write the letter. But there was much more. He spoke of friends who had been killed, the tortures that he underwent every two months such as jailing, beating, and being forced to walk over hot tar. He also related a story of an incident that he witnessed at the school where he worked of a young girl who contradicted one of her professors. She was accused of betraying the Revolution (of the government), publicly beaten, and then the boys of the other grades were invited to abuse her in the presence of the General Director of Education. When the Minister of Justice protested the incident, he too was beaten, along with three nurses from the hospital where the girl's body had been taken. The nurses were beaten because they had cried upon seeing the girl's disfigured body.

Finally, on August 3, 1979, Macias was overthrown in a coup lead by his nephew Obiang Nguema and placed under house arrest. His trial began on September 24 at the Marfil Cinema in Malabo and ended on September 29 with the execution of Macias and five others by a Moroccan firing squad without witnesses. Apparently he still evoked so much fear in everyone, including those who overthrew him, that they refused to involve themselves directly in his death. Before he was executed he swore that his ghost would return to haunt those who had condemned him.11 It seems to me that Macias does still haunt Equatorial Guinea in a sense. It has been just over twenty years since his death, but the country is still far from recovery. Macias left the country with virtually nothing; no economy, no system of education, and hardly anyone educated enough to help rebuild it. The Equatorial Guinea I visited must have come a long way from what it had become in the eleven years before Obiang, but the reminders are still everywhere, side by side with every new development, and in everything from the people's faces to skeletons of the ships that probably haven't moved since 1978 when they were apparently wrecked by the orders of Macias.