SAO TOME -- The women at the public wash basins in Sao Marcal would gladly trade all the oil in the Gulf of Guinea for running water in their towns on impoverished Sao Tome and Principe's coast.

They have little time for news of last week's coup on the tiny West African island nation, and even less for dreams of oil wealth -- dreams that some analysts say fueled the bloodless military takeover.

"What do I think of the coup? I think I walk three hours every day to wash clothes and fill up all the buckets and bottles I can carry with water and then walk back home. The coup isn't going to change any of that," said Elisa, 23, a mother of two who says she was never given a surname.

Soldiers seized the country in a pre-dawn putsch last Wednesday, drawing condemnation from Africa and the United States, which sees West African crude as a way to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern supplies.

For many of the 170,000 people on this potentially oil-rich archipelago, the coup is just a bulletin on the radio and little notice is given as the military junta and mediators struggle to bring a quick end to the takeover, Reuters reported.

With an average annual income of $280 a year, less than $1 a day, the small former Portuguese colony is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Some hope that a potential oil boom could drag the islands from obscure poverty into the elite club of oil nations. But in hard-to-reach villages in the countryside, this seems like a pipe dream -- coup or no coup. ----------Oil No Good for the Poor--------

Just a few kilometers past the colonial-era houses and broad leafy streets of the capital, the road disintegrates into broken gravel and running water dries up.

In Sao Marcal, Elisa washes clothes in ribbed cement basins with other women, babies tied to their backs, who hoist full buckets on their heads.

The women are from the coastal towns of Pantufo and Praia Melao, reached by crumbling roads without lighting or public transport.

There are four kinds of malaria and not a single health clinic in Praia Melao, a small town populated by Angolares, descendants of slaves from Angola who reputedly survived a shipwreck in the 16th century and are now fishermen.

They have little faith in the government or the military, or the potentially large oil reserves firing the imagination of many inside and outside of Sao Tome.

Oil industry officials hope to find six to 11 billion barrels of crude and produce up to a million barrels a day in a decade from waters shared by Nigeria and Sao Tome.

But in Praia Melao where dozens of hand-carved fishing canoes are pulled up on the beach, some think the oil has only made the plight of poor people even worse.

"Sao Tome has been talking about oil for a long time, what has it brought us? Water or jobs or a health clinic? No, just war on top of the misery we already had," said Nando, a wrinkled fisherman with just a few teeth.

Coup leaders have demanded a new government to combat poverty on Sao Tome and ensure that when the oil profits start rolling in everyone benefits.

But Nando, for one, does not believe the promises.

"We are very bad off in Sao Tome. Everyone is looking out for themselves. I guarantee you, no matter who wins in this coup, or how much oil they find, Praia Melao will be exactly the same in 10 years," Nando said.