Estancia Roque

My name is Maria Nunes Vieira, I’m seventy years old. I have been treating people for almost sixty years. I am a healer and I cure evils. They come from far away asking for me. I even took care of a nurse once, you know? I treat a lot of thrombosis, fevers, heart attacks and strokes. People often can't get to the hospital, so they come to me. They tell me they have a lot of stomach pain or feminine pain. I offer you my compounds. You see, I grow medicinal plants all year round and when the time comes I choose them for my recipes: garlic, rosemary, vinegar, perfume, mint, mugwort, rue, euphorbia, aloe vera, purgueira.

To cure a thrombosis, for example, just cover yourself with this ointment before bathing your legs, arms, torso, everything. A few minutes, as long as you can, and then you wash the garlic, rosemary, rue. There are a lot of people who knock on my door to buy my bottles. I make invigorating herbal teas with fennel, while cow's tongue is good for inflammation, stomach pain and ulcers. Tortolho is used to treat diabetes, intestinal inflammation, to keep blood sugar under control and also as a natural pesticide. We have many endemic plants here in Fogo, knowing them is my wealth and I make them available to others.

I learned this craft from my mother and my mother from her mother. I am teaching my daughter-in-law how to grow medicinal plants and how to treat them, what they are for, what they can cure. My granddaughters are curious, but they are still very young and above all they have to go to school. My life is peaceful, everyone knows where my house is. Tourists? It will be open to them too.

I believe that meeting tourists, welcoming them and getting to know them, experiencing things together: this is the true wealth of Estância Roque.

My name is Nhanha , I am thirty-seven years old and I am president of the Estância Roque Community Association. What do I like most? Simple, help others. Join hands , we say here. One day some baskets of food arrived from a store in the city. The baskets weren't enough for everyone, so I took them, emptied them and redistributed the contents, now that's it. That, to me, means being a community. It happened like this, they voted for me and I accepted. There are many things hidden here, things that people don't know about. Our cave for example, you can go inside, take photos, it is a historic place. Cova Gil is a clearing, where there were tall, ancient fruit trees and fertile soil. Then there are the beans, the ones from Fogo Island are the best, small and crunchy. We make an excellent soup that I will prepare if you stay for dinner. Remember, Congo beans of Fogo.

Our community is supportive, the people are lovely. We live from livestock and agriculture, if someone goes to get the beans tomorrow, whoever helps at the end of the day will have half of the harvest. There is always a cachupa dish for everyone.

Walking the path that from Curral de Asno, at the entrance to the park, leads to Estância Roque, and then going up to Cova Figueira, retracing the Caminho Bedjo, the only one possible before the construction of the road, means finding, getting to know, touching a living place and pulsating like the volcano that gives the island its name.