African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1401: Chapter 1: Bolna, Director_2

The Customs and Quarantine Bureau of Cabinda City is located in the port area of Cabinda.

Director Bolna stood by the window, admiring the scenery of Cabinda City.

Bolna gazed at the sea view of Cabinda, leisurely saying, ”Standing in this position allows for a great view of the bustling Cabinda port, yet who could have imagined that this thriving metropolis was merely a small, undeveloped Portuguese stronghold thirty years ago!”

Deputy Director Lischer, sitting on the sofa sipping tea, said, ”This precisely illustrates the remarkable achievements in the economic field by East Africa over the past thirty years. Before the 1970s, we were still a poverty-stricken colony.”

”However, now, East Africa has become a significant world power, with cities like Cabinda experiencing rapid development.”

Bolna agreed, saying, ”Indeed, when I was young, the economic environment in East Africa was quite poor. Apart from its large size, it was not much different from ordinary backward countries. Looking even further back, East Africa’s economy was even more underdeveloped.”

”My father was a graduate of the fourth class of Heixinggen Military Academy and came to Africa for pioneering work at not yet nineteen, alongside others.”

”Later he married my mother in what’s now known as Soron Lake Province, then part of Highland Province, and I was born the following year.”

”However, my father was in military service for long periods and seldom had time to take care of the family. The small village where my mother and I lived is still vivid in my memory, as it was a border area at the time.”

”Yet now it has become an inland heartland of the Empire, a remarkable turn of events. Who could have imagined that a colony that started on the East African coast could evolve into such an influential world power in less than half a century.”

”Living in such a great power allows me, looking at my father’s achievements, to reach my current position.”

”As a meritorious figure of the Empire, my father accumulated a rich network in the army. Although he was not particularly outstanding in military talent, he knew many people, and quite a few of his classmates are now in high-ranking positions in the Empire’s military and government, including some above the provincial level.”

”My life is pretty good now, but I still reminisce about the days of my childhood living with my mother in the East. It’s where I went to school and eventually got into high school.”

”In that era, the Empire’s educational spread was not yet mature, and opportunities to enter high school were very limited. My grades were not outstanding, but through my father’s status, I managed to get into high school.”

”Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to cherish it then, and ultimately failed the national unified exam. Otherwise, if I had become a university student, I might not have ended up merely being a small-time director now.”

Director Bolna of the Cabinda City Customs and Quarantine Bureau is a true-blue first-generation native, referring to the first generation of descendants born to the initial wave of immigrants in East Africa.

After all, East Africa itself is a country developed from a colony, and if you trace back, the population within East Africa mainly consists of settlers, except for the extremely sparse San people in regions like Southwest Province (Namibia).

In this regard, the Bantu people, who were entirely cleared out of East Africa, are also settlers, though they arrived about a thousand years earlier than today’s East Africans.

Even further south, this time gap lessens, as East Africa arrived almost two hundred years after Bantu people like the Zulu.

According to records, Zulu tribal settlements were established around the early 18th century, as a branch of Bantu black people moving southward. They arrived in South Africa even after colonialists from countries like Portugal and the Netherlands.

In this light, while East Africa seized the land from black people, the blacks originally seized the land from groups like the San.

The San, or Bushmen as the Dutch call them, despite their dark skin influenced by the environment, bear other characteristics more aligned with East Asian people, but genetically they are an ancient independent race.

Currently, a small number of San live in East Africa, not because East Africans are more benevolent than the Bantu and spared them, but because the regions they inhabit are too harsh and secluded from human presence.

The East African Government estimates that a number of San survivors may reside in the southwestern desert areas. Due to the harsh environment in regions like the Kalahari Desert, it allowed them to evade the great cleansings by the Bantu and East Africans.

As for why the East African Government hasn’t searched them out, there simply isn’t a need. The Kalahari Desert alone spans over 600,000 square kilometers, with southern East Africa having numerous mountains, highlands, and complex terrains like gorges and ravines.

Exploring and finding these San tribes is as difficult as climbing the heavens, with the only feasible approach being continuous aerial surveillance over regions like the Kalahari Desert.

However, since airplanes have only recently emerged and their range and technology are still significant issues, the East African Government clearly lacks the time and interest for such a hide-and-seek game.

Furthermore, the East African Government has no reason to seek out these San, rarer than some rare wild animals. According to government estimates, there may be fewer than ten thousand San within East Africa, and compared to a population of over a billion, the San are less than a drop in the bucket.