So this weekend there was a big festa up at the town near the park where I work. It was a very good time. Day two of the festival we spent going to different peoples houses eating goat stew. I was so full it was like Thanksgiving. At one home they served this brown chocolate cake looking substance. It was not chocolate and it was not cake, it was I think the exact opposite of chocolate cake. It was a crunchy “bread” made by using the collected blood of a cow, pig, or goat and mixing it with cornmeal. This is then stuffed into the animals stomach and baked. They must have lost a bet with the Irish at some point. That being said though the little cakes were not to bad once you got over that initial shock of realizing you were not eating a sweet dessert but rather a culinary scab. It was especially good when you let it soak up some goat stew.

Well looks like my flight has been changed. Now I will be leaving for the USA on the 11th of June. I prefer this because it means I will be traveling on a weekday rather than the weekend. Now I am trying to change my flight back to Cape Verde to a later date. I definitely want to spend at least a month in the States.

Just wanted to update with some news and information.

1. I have just put version 2.0 of the website I have been working on online. It has a new look and has been rebuilt from the ground up.

www.ecosaonicolau.com

2. I am coming home for the month of June. Wanted to travel Europe for some vacation but a weak dollar ended that. Thought about going to mainland Africa, but decided I would rather relax with good beer, hot showers, and greasy cheeseburgers.

All for now

Ciao

The other day I had a nice surprise. When I checked my mailbox I had not one, but two packages waiting for me. The first one was from my father and had some much needed supplies such as seasonings, as well as some new headphones. It is almost impossible to get good headphones here. One of the only places you can get these sorts of things is at one of the many Chinese markets. There are scores of them. Apparently the Chinese government and Cape Verde made some sort of agreement where Cape Verde got a lot of money and the Chinese markets don’t have to pay taxes. Hence we now have loads of Chinese markets. The headphones sold by the Chinese markets are incredibly cheap, sound horrible, and hurt your ears. It is also somewhat annoying to shop in any of the markets at times. You are tailed the entire time by one of the Cape Verdean girls who works at the store. They are not watching to make sure you don’t steal; they just hover pressuring you with their presence to buy something. Sometimes they can be rude. They don’t try to be; it is just a cultural difference that can be a bit frustrating for an American who likes to browse at his leisure.

The second package was from my friends back in KC. At first when I saw the package I was alarmed. The side had a gash in it and there was a large orange stain that could only be BBQ sauce. My heart sunk to the floor and I instantly swore vengeance upon the cur who had been so careless with my precious cargo. When I got back to my house I inspected the damage, and was overjoyed to see that my buddies had sent not one but three bottles of sauce, and two had survived! A bottle of Gates BBQ and a bottle of Jack Stack BBQ sat safely in their bed of packing peanuts. I tried to perform an autopsy on the third bottle but was unable to identify the brand. Then in a ceremony as solemn as flushing a cherished goldfish that has passed over to the other side, I disposed of my lost little friend in the trash. They sent the essentials: chocolates, four bottles of Tabasco Sauce, three bags of jerky. The sun actually did shine a bit brighter that day.

Up at the park my buddy Tali and I have put together our prototype hydroponics system. It is fairly simple and was not too expensive, but after we get to growing some stuff, I want to try and refine the system so it does not use a water pump and try to use recycled items for building materials. I would also like to install fog traps that collect moisture from the clouds near the peak and then use that water to grow in. I figure the more efficient, cheap, and lower the ecological footprint, the better.

On Wednesday night a woman died in my town. I didn’t know the lady or the manner in which it happened, but apparently she was the sister of a woman whose restaurant I frequent in my neighborhood. It happened while I was sleeping, but my friend Jon was there when she found out. He was sitting in the front of the restaurant and was the only one in the room. Suddenly she comes bursting through the door tearing at her clothes and wailing and then proceeds to roll around the floor. The next morning when I was going to work out I noticed there were a ton of people at the deceased ladies house. Inside women were wailing and tearing at their clothes. It is called cachora. Later when I was in the town plaza I saw them bringing the casket down to start the funeral. One night in Santiago for in-service training, I was woken up by the sound of cachoring in the middle of the night. It was extremely unsettling to hear an entire village wailing like they were in pain. My roommate and I lay in our beds; fully aware the other was awake, but trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Scott broke the silence ten minutes later with a timely “What the !@#$% is that?” Eventually we realized what was going on, and while comprehension made it a bit less eerie, it was still hard to go back to sleep. I try not to be too analytical of these things because a person had died, but it was interesting to see how different it was compared to how people react to death in the States. In the States it seems like everyone is shouldering their grief on their own trying to give the impression of stability for the benefit of being that rock for everyone else. Stiff upper lip and all that I suppose.

It made me think about when the time comes to put me in the ground, which I hope is a long way off. Instead of a dignified picture of me sitting for a portrait, I would like a picture of me wearing a rhinestone Elvis jumpsuit and sporting the big black hair and big ass sideburns. For the viewing of the body, rather then have my arms resting at my sides or across my chest, I would like my hands placed behind my head as if I am taking a nap. I’m not trying to be insensitive to anyone, I just hope somebody laughs when they peek inside.

Pretty soon it will be festa time over at the Casa de Sr. Hooper. Carnival is swiftly approaching and I have invited any volunteer that is so inclined to come and party in Sao Nicolau and crash at my place during the day. Carnival is basically the CV equivalent of Mardi Gra in the US. Four days of partying and parades. Here is how crazy people get: in early December we had Municipal Day and actually had one of the top five Cape Verdean singers perform at the festival. There was much dancing, partying, and swooning of the womenfolk. After he was done at between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning, they started playing a CD of last years Carnival song over the speakers. People were going nuts, and not just when the song came on, it was like they could go for another four hours.

This years parade however will resemble a skunk, because as of last count there were seven American branco’s dancing in the parade. You have to go about three to four weeks before Carnival and get measured for you costume. They don’t let you see it till the first day of Carnival. They are so secretive that when they are trying it on you to make sure that it fits, they blindfold you first. Judging by last years costumes, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to parade down the street in sequined black bell bottoms and a silver vest complete with matching bracers and headpiece accented by a humongous feather that looks like it fell out of a pimps hat. I thought about wearing it home and just telling all my friends that this is what people in Cape Verde wear at all times, but I am pretty sure that I would get special attention when trying to get through airport security.

Till next time.

I’ve been back on Sao Nicolau for a little over two weeks and things have pretty much returned to normal. I guess this is good and bad. Being back in a routine after two weeks on the road is kind of nice. The traveling had gotten to a point where it was a bit nerve wracking. This is only exacerbated by the chaotic nature of the countries transportation services. There never are any sure things when traveling in Cape Verde. You don’t know if you are actually going to make your flight until you have actually landed at your destination.

One good thing that emerged from my stay on Santiago was steps were made to rectify the current situation between myself and my counterpart at the youth center. The head of the community development sector and I went and spoke with my counterparts boss in Praia. He seemed to side with us on some of our grievances and at other times he seemed to side with my counterpart. What was really nice is the amount of support I received from my boss in the Peace Corps. He did not budge on any of the issues and made our position very clear. After the meeting he told me that if we are unable to come up with a solution that was acceptable to both parties, he would switch me to a different site while trying to keep in my current location. We would just find another group for me to work with. Sigh of relief.

To fill my time here I have set down my keyboard and am currently trying my hand at farming. I am trying to implement hydroponics here on the island. Now I have never grown anything in my life unless there is some plant from my childhood that I raised, killed, and subsequently erased it from my memory. Luckily I have made some contacts who can help me learn what I need to know, and in February my boss is talking about flying me down to Santiago again to get some training from an expert who lives there. In the mean time I am learning as much as I can by building a prototype system with Tali, my friend from the UN. We are hoping on growing a variety of plants with it and then showing it to some interested parties. If we are able to get enough people interested and willing to invest in hydroponics, I am hoping we can start producing strawberries and other cash crops that will sell for a premium on the tourist islands like Sal and Boa Vista. With that money we can then invest in more equipment and grow the business.

Yikes! I had not realized how long it had been since I made a post. In my defense I have not been home but have been traveling the islands. My first week I spent on Santiago as part of some Peace Corps training. Good to see everybody. My second week I spent on Fogo which is an active volcano. I spent Christmas Eve in the islands crater less than a mile from the giant earth zit itself. On Christmas we hiked down from the crater and my legs are still killing me. Good times.

Want to give a shout out to my mates back in Kansas City who have sent a care package out my way. Thanks to all and I really miss being back in KC. Here a bunch of us are having a pint.

The rainy season is over and now the mountains are slowly turning brown again. It happens so subtly and slowly that you almost don’t notice it. It has been at least a month since it last rained. One of the things that really strikes me about Vila Brava is the strong sense of community that is present. I think this is especially apparent in the way that children are taken care of by the community. Many are allowed to roam about at an age that would normally be too young in the US. They don’t wander far, but it seems as if the community takes a much stronger hand in raising them. Also you have parents that bring their kids to work with them. For instance there is a bar that I frequent quite often and the woman who runs bar brings her son who could not be more than three or five. Yet this is not a bad environment like you think it might be in the States. It is simply a place where people go in the evening to get a few drinks and at no point does it get out of hand. The woman who owns the bar does not seem to mind and even seems to take a hand in raising the boy. This sense of community is also evident in a couple of the crazy people we have in town. They have no jobs and spend most of the day wandering around being crazy. Yet they always seem to have clothes and none of them are starving.

Nothing has happened in regards to my counterpart at the youth center. I have not been there for two weeks now, but have been keeping myself busy with other projects. I am still working at the park two days of the week, trying to get started on the website again. I really need to find a website creation tool that I can use at home on my mac. The search continues. I am also working on some other projects closer to where I live. Right now I am exploring the feasibility of creating a carpentry co-op. We have an unusually high number of carpentry shops in Vila, and I think if they were to coordinate their efforts they might be able to cut costs, plan for wood shortages, and possibly even sell their wares overseas. I am still investigating, and right now I am going around town to the various shops attempting to get pictures so I can have their products appraised.

Other projects I am also working on:

Starting a Scout troop here in Vila.

Introducing hydroponics.

Getting speed bumps installed on some of the streets here. The streets are narrow and sometimes the drivers speed down at a pretty dangerous speed.

I am also working on developing a plan to implement some tech recommendations I made for the park, as well as training the park in computer use in an office environment and finding someone to train who can update the website after I am gone.

Busy busy.

I have also joined the small gym that we have here and I am now going to the gym five days a week. It feels good to get in shape and it is a good place to meet different people in the community.

I feel that I have sacrificed a lot to be here. There was an incredible amount of work involved in getting accepted into the Peace Corps and preparing to leave for Cape Verde. I miss my friends and family in the States a great deal. I was always comfortable with making these sacrifices because I felt I was contributing to something that was greater than myself. I don’t feel like I ever had any illusions about how difficult it would be over here. I knew I would be stepping into a completely foreign environment and working with people whose perception of the world varied greatly from my own.

One thing I did expect though was that the people that Peace Corps assigned me to work with would understand the goals of Peace Corps and try to foster a cooperative environment. I have talked before on this blog about how frustrating working with my counterpart at the youth center has been. I have made every attempt to work with him. Well apparently our relationship has deteriorated to the point where he feels he can be outright disrespectful and insulting to me. One thing I cannot abide is a lack of basic respect. I have had enough. I wrote my supervisor in the Peace Corps and told him that either I am moved out of working in that youth center or I am going to return home to the States. I really like Cape Verde and everything about the island that I am on, but I did not fly halfway around the world so my counterpart could get his jollies abusing the American. I’ll keep you updated.

That was kind of a downer so here is a picture of a kitten.

Spent most of the weekend sleeping. Saturday night my fellow volunteer John calls me up because the woodshop/ bar across the street from him is having a bit of a fish fry. Sounds good. Apparently the owner of the bar and his buddies had gone out with a net and caught a bunch of these little fish called charro. They are about 2 – 3 inches long. You gut them, bread them, fry them, and then just eat the whole thing bones and all. Not as bad as it sounds – best to think of it as one big crunchy french-fry. It was pretty tasty too.

Later that night we went to a party at a nearby club. When I say club I mean the bottom floor someone’s house that had been converted to serve as a nightclub. It had a DJ booth, bar, tables and chairs, and a 10ft x 15 ft dance floor. It is not open regularly. One of the best things about it is that it was air-conditioned. After getting a beer I quickly made my way to the front of the air conditioner and staked out a four square section of tile that I dubbed “New Missouri.” It was a wonderful land and I was a bit sad to see it go.

This week since I am not going into the youth center I have a lot more time to spend working on my secondary projects and working up at the park. Between the two I should have plenty of work.

Ciao

I am by no means a computer genius. Would I say that I know more than most people in the United States? Yes. Do I know much compared to the majority of people who do work in computers as a profession? No, not even close. Here on Cape Verde, my limited knowledge of computers gives me the same gravitas as someone who has earned a PhD for computer science in the States. This can make for some uncomfortable situations, mainly because they want you to do things that are outside the scope of what you know. It would be similar to a certified nurse coming to Cape Verde, and is then handed a scalpel and expected to perform open-heart surgery. I wonder if the Professor from Gilligan’s Island was actually a professor, or if he just had a high school degree and knew his multiplication tables. My limited knowledge of computers makes me an expert in other fields as well. I am now a TV/VCR repairman, a Digital Camera Whisperer, and a general electronics guru. There are heartbreaking moments too. Sometimes they bring you their devices, carrying them like a small child might carry a dead bird, just hoping this person who understands the mysterious language of technology might be able to breathe new life into it. I take a look and sometimes I can make a small tweak, thereby restoring it to life, other times I am forced to deliver some bad news and explain that their knockoff Chinese Ipod is now in knockoff Chinese Ipod heaven. Those are the hard days.

That being said, the website I have been working on is now up. The address is at www.ecosaonicolau.com. It is by no means finished, we just felt their was enough content for it to be useful to potential tourists. As of now there are still a lot of pages bearing the words “page under construction.” By no means is it perfect either, the homepage does not display correctly, the trails page has spacing issues, and any number of other bugs that need to be ironed out. You want a perfect product from the get go, pay the $3000.00 for the real deal web designer rather than using the Professor from Gilligan’s Island for free. Fixing it will take time, because as of now I have no copy of Dreamweaver to work with. The copy I was using was only a 30-day trial, and that trial has now run out, so I now need to figure out how to get this ball rolling again. I also need to make a radio out of coconuts.

The rest of the week was pretty eventful as well. Wednesday night we went to Faja, a small town here on the island. The next day was All Saints Day, and there is always a big party the night before a big festival day. There was also the Ms. Faja Beauty Pageant. The pageant was a pretty interesting experience. They have three categories: athletic wear, formal wear, and bathing suit. There is no question and answer session. The contestants are mainly high school students, which could make the bathing suit competition a little uncomfortable, but you have to remember that the age of high school students is generally 11 – 22. Seeing as how there were two high school teachers with our group we started playing a game called “Guess her real age.” After the pageant there were plenty of parties to go to and I ended up going dancing at a local club. I had a choice between two.

The next day I returned to Faja to hear a presentation on hydroponics by my buddy Richard. The presentation was supposed too begin at 10:00AM but did not actually start until 1:00PM. The presentation went well, but afterwards we were hanging out, getting ready to leave, when a fight broke out between two brothers in law. They started out arguing through the windows, but suddenly the one outside rushed in and started throwing punches. One of them got hit in the head with a rock and the other busted his head on a table. We managed to separate them and throw one of them outside. Unfortunately this trapped us inside the building since the one outside refused to leave and kept hitting the door. We braced the door, got a cell phone and called the police, but had to wait for nearly an hour and a half. One thing that was funny about the whole thing was about 45 minutes into the “hostage crisis” a group of Portuguese tourists showed up and were allowed inside and then later allowed to leave without incident. It was as if someone had mentally yelled “Time Out.” We were a little apprehensive to leave with him still out there and possibly mad at us for breaking up the fight. I should probably mention he was built like a brick shit house. Why is it that it is always the people who are part bison that start the fights? Oh yeah, because they generally win. Eventually the police showed up and carted him off and we were able to leave without further incident.

After the standoff at the Alamo, we went up the road to a restaurant that was playing music and was giving away free food. We were able to fill our stomachs on goat stew and stewed tuna steaks. We hung out for a while there drinking grog and grog with honey in it and mixing with the locals. Good times. Eventually we wondered down the road and found another discothèque and danced until the wee hours of the morning. Not a bad way to spend a Wednesday and Thursday night.

Over the weekend we had a send off for my buddy Richard by having a BBQ on his roof. It sucks that he has to go, but he has run out of money and needs to go back to the UK. He is hoping on returning after the New Year, once he has had a chance to save some money back up. There is also the possibility that the park would hire him to come out and set up some hydroponics. I am going to try and procure some funds and set up a hydroponics display just to show how it is done and the benefits. I think it would be a good thing for an island with little rain to try and adopt more water efficient methods of growing. I think once they can see for themselves the advantages they will want to bring in somebody to teach them.

That’s all for now,

Ciao.

They say that stop and go driving is hardest on your engine and burns the most gas. That is how I feel things are going here. I am still working on the website, and it is down to the last week that I will be able to use the copy of Dreamweaver I have on my computer. So I am working as furiously as possible trying to get as much done before it becomes much more inconvenient to work on the website. The whole process has been a mixture of elation some days while other days have been characterized by bitter disappointment and frustration. There are days where I accomplish something and it feels like such a victory. The magnitude of the accomplishment has to be kept in perspective. If I were in the States it would be a very minor achievement that should have taken a fifth of the time it really took, but here it is on par with tackling Everest or building a slingshot that actually could land cats on the moon.

The good would not be nearly as good if there was not the pissing in my Cheerios, kick to the stomach, utterly demoralizing disappointments. Without the yin you can’t have the yang, or is it the other way around? The disappointments are made worse because they are little things. It is generally something that if you were in the States would be so easy to reconcile that it is utterly maddening when you can’t get it done. It also happens to be something that completely snags up the entire project.

I’ll give you an example: I get a big stack of content that is going to be used on the website. Now I have no idea what this content says because it is all in Portuguese. So I give this to one of the other volunteers on the island, Yasmin, who is fairly good in the language and can translate it into English, doesn’t need to be perfect, I can clean it up later. I give it to her because I know she will get it done, and get it done quickly. I would like to take this moment to acknowledge her contribution, and that with out her there would probably be no website, and I would have gone crazy.

So I get the material back from Yasmin, and unfortunately most of it is rubbish. Yasmin is also concerned because the Portuguese read a little strange and she thinks it needs to be proofread. I glean the little nuggets that are actually useful and take them to a member of the park who speaks a little English and ask her if she can proofread this for me. This is a 10-minute process of me trying to get across exactly what I need, and eventually we seem to reach an understanding. Ten minutes later she comes back to me to inform me that she did not write this and who told me that she did write it. We go back and forth for another ten minutes of me telling her that I know she did not write it and that really I don’t care who wrote it. This could be a never before heard, long lost Beatles track, but as long as it talks about tourism at the park, and in grammatically correct Portuguese, I really don’t care. Once again we seem to reach an understanding. I sit back down and continue working. I am at one with the universe. I am at one with the universe. I am at one with the universe.

Less than ten minutes go by and she is back at my desk. She wants to know who wrote this. I don’t know, it was given to me. She thinks this was taken from a book and we cannot use it. It is at this point that I nearly lose it. First, the information I gave her was factual information, which is public domain. You cannot copyright the written fact that Monte Gordo is X meters high at its peak. There was not one original idea in any of the material I gave her. Second, Cape Verde has no copyright laws, just about every piece of software used here is pirated, we could upload Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and nothing would happen, we may even get more web traffic. Thirdly, and most importantly, if she rewrites the fucking thing like I asked her then it is no longer plagiarism!!! I refrain from saying any of this and simply say, “OK, forget it.” This whole encounter is so frustrating I can actually feel it taking years off the end of my life. I will leave Cape Verde when I am 31 years old but will have the heart and liver of a man in his late 40’s. I left work that day having put expended an incredible amount of energy yet having accomplished almost nothing, and having found out that I am actually further behind on the project than I originally thought. F_cking universe.

Anyway I haven’t taken any new photos, so here is a picture of Mr. T.

Enjoy!

The people of Cape Verde would probably consider soccer to be their national past time. I disagree. I think that their national pastime is just hanging out. These guys do not mess around, they are capable of sitting on a stoop for hours on end, doing nothing, just chilling out and probably drinking grog. Jay and Silent Bob have nothing on them. If this was New York we could give them signs to hold, at least then they could make a buck while they were just hanging out. Of course that would mean that they are working, which might just ruin the entire mojo. They might decide that standing with a sign is too tiring and go off to stand in another location, still hanging out, but without the sign.

I am not saying people here are lazy; there just is not much to do. In the evenings you have two choices as to what kind of activities you will be involved in. You can either watch the Portuguese and Brazilian novellas, aka soap operas, or sit outside the local mini market and drink till you are stupid, just hanging out. There are even some markets where you can do both, that way you can get bored with life twice as fast. Seeing as how I don’t know Portuguese I generally opt for drinking. I stand behind my decision.

Two weekends ago a bunch of us went to Ribeira Prata for a festival. On Saturday we left at about 9:30PM, taking a Hiace or van, down a winding cobblestone path. About 45 minutes later we arrived at our stop and had to hike the rest of the way to the festival through mountain trails. Not an easy task at night when you only have a couple of lights, but we made it there with no problems. It is important to note that just about any Cape Verdean festival of note will not begin any earlier than 11:00PM and have the potential of carrying on all weekend.

The festival was a lot of fun. By the time we got there things were just starting to pick up. There was drinking and dancing, a live band, more drinking, increasingly worse and worse dancing. We ended up leaving at about 4:00AM. If the trail was mildly inconvenient to walk on earlier in the evening, it was a nightmare to travel down while being navigated by a convoy of people who were in various states of intoxication. I myself was not in bad shape, the person who I was helping walk was 3 sheets to the wind and had a bad habit of not only falling a lot but also pulling me down with her. For those taking notes at home, write this one down: flip-flops are probably not the best footwear for navigating a mountain path while helping a drunk girl walk.

I need to give a special shout out to, Katie, a very special lady who displayed the very essence of Peace Corps restraint and understanding.

In her own words:

I am proud to say that I have survived my first hiace ride in which multiple people have vomited. Yeah Africa! It was a wretched site. So a woman sitting on the front bench behind the driver tried to puke out the window as we sped down the mountain road at an alarming speed. Unfortunately, the force of the wind projected the foul liquid over her head, successfully drenching 4 other passengers! I mean, she smothered them in regurgitated cachupa and bile. It was all over this one lady’s face and hair. Needless to say, the stench of it all started to make other people feel nauseous, and two other people ended up throwing up! Yet not one person complained. Can you imagine if this same scenario took place in the States? Yikes! There would be some very angry people.

Some people have all the luck.

Cheers!

PS: Here is some pictures from inside the park. Enjoy!

These are from the same set as below but my internet connection got cut off.

Enjoy!

Not much really to update everybody on. I finally got a trial version of Dreamweaver and I am working like mad to get the bare bones of the website up and running before the trial runs out. This effort is somewhat dampened by the fact I have never worked on a website before in my life. We’ll keep you updated as this story develops.

Sent my director in Peace Corps about seven pages detailing the difficulties I have had with my counterpart at the CEJ. I also named a lot of ways that this situation could be improved or changed. We’ll see what happens.

Really I just wanted to throw some pictures up of the valley. I was walking down from Monte Gordo to my town of Ribeira Brava and just so happened to have my camera with me. It is a pretty steep hike, and the switchbacks at the top make it impossible for traffic to get up this way. I would say it took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to makeit all the way to town.

Anyway enjoy!

Life here in Cape Verde is a rollercoaster of being incredibly busy and not doing much at all. Most days it seems like I have so much to do it is overwhelming. The most frustrating thing is that no matter how much you want to get those things done, there are several obstacles. One obstacle here is just the pace of life. No one is ever really in a hurry. It is almost never an emergency. Related to this is the fact that very few Cape Verdeans endeavor to be punctual. I’ve had girlfriends like this. If you want something to start at 12:00, you better tell people it starts at 10:30 or 11:00 and it might start when you want it to. Probably not though.

The language is another barrier too. I know enough of the local Kriolu to get around, but not enough to get too complex. Throw in the occasional Portuguese and it can be quite troubling. Take for instance adding an email account to Microsoft Outlook. Normally this would only take about 2 minutes except the prominent version of Windows is Portuguese. There goes a half hour of my life as I stumble my way through it. You really have to lower your expectations for how much you can get done in a day. That being said, as easy as it is to work real hard and get very little done, it also means there is always work to be done.

When things are busy it goes by fast, and then screeches to a slow crawl when there is not much to do. There comes a point where you can’t do anymore work, you can’t read any more books, even watching a movie on the laptop gets old. You find yourself looking for anything to occupy your time. My apartment here is much less cluttered than any other apartment I have lived in, cleaning it passes the time. My laundry is now carefully folded and cooking has become something to look forward to. I am going have my paints and miniatures shipped over from the US. I need some kind of recreational activity to keep me busy.

Speaking of cooking, I have in many ways become a vegetarian while over here. I can make a huge pot of noodles, tomatoes, beans, chic peas, green peppers, onions, and seasonings and it lasts for about 3 lunches and 3 dinners. Adding meat would make it spoil quicker I think. I’ll get meat every once in a while from the local markets/ bars that grill pork or chicken over an open fire on skewers. It is tastee and relatively inexpensive.

Currently I am splitting my time between working at a youth center and working at a national park that is being developed for eco-tourism by the United Nations. They are like night and day. At the park I feel like I am really contributing to something that will have lasting impact. The people there are friendly and it even has wireless high speed Internet. Well as high speed as you can get here. I have already written a four page list of IT recommendations for the park, drawn up a plan for overhauling their network, and made various repairs to the parks computers. Once we can get a copy of Dreamweaver for my MAC I will be developing a website for the park. It is kind of strange. I would say I know more about computers than most people in the US. However compared to most people who work in computers I feel like I know very little. Here though I am like a cross between a rocket scientist and a high priest. I remind myself that I am merely the best of what is left.

My other job is working at a youth center. It is horrible. My counterpart there was under the impression that I was supposed to work in the youth center 40 hours a week. I was the free American labor that he could use to make money by teaching classes. (The students have to pay) Brilliant! Yes I traveled all the way from my cushy life in America just so I could punch a clock in Africa and get a stipend that is the equivalent of less than a tenth of what I was earning in the US. I mean sure I joined Peace Corps for the money. I had to have my boss in Peace Corps set him straight, but it is still a strained relationship to say the least. For a youth center, there are remarkably few youth that use it’s facilities. It is always empty. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that there is another youth center less than 100 ft away that is run by the city rather than the federal government. It might also be due to the fact that my counterpart is tolerable for approximately 38 seconds. Then you have taste of bile distracting you. Hopefully though I will be able to leave this place. I am shopping around trying to find some new counterparts so I can leave the CEJ. It may create some waves but there are some things that I always keep in mind: It is two years of my life that I will never get back, I am going to spend it the way I want to spend it. The worst that can ever happen is that I get sent home to the United States. Gasp! I want to be here, but if something was to happen and I was let go, it is not like they would be sending me to Antarctica or Greenland. I really don’t see this happening though.

My main contact at the park is a man named Taly who hails from Scotland. He lives in the beach front town of Tarrafal. Lately I have been spending my weekends at his house swimming in the ocean and then barbequeing in the evenings. Right now Taly is teaching me how to surf, but it is slow going. Even the things that look relatively easy are actually hard. Just sitting on the board requires muscle groups to work in new ways. It has been fun though.

Well that’s all for now.

Here are some pictures of the Monte Gordo Park.

It has been an extremely busy past couple of weeks.

I am now a full-fledged volunteer in the Peace Corps. On September 1, 2007 myself, and the rest of my group, were sworn in by the US ambassador. I’m not one who really gets excited about ceremonies, but it was nice to feel nine weeks of hard work pay off. Now the real hard work begins.

After swear in, most of us went to the capital Praia to wait for our flight to our respective islands. That night we got to hang out as a group for the first time since we all met in Atlanta without worrying about being home at a certain time or any other nonsense. It felt good to be an adult again. One sore point: the volunteers who live on Santiago were not able to attend because they had to go directly to there sites. It was a bummer that the rest of us got to have an after graduation party but they had to go straight to work.

Now I am on my new home of Sau Nicolau, and things are going pretty good. I have to say that it feels like leaving all over again. I am back in another unfamiliar place, only this time I don’t have any of my other Peace Corps friends around me. There are two other volunteers who live in my town, but they are away on vacation in Morrocco and won’t be back for another week. I have to confess it does get kinda lonely on the weekends, and I really missed just hanging out up at the shop.

It’s a rollercoaster. Buy the ticket. Take the ride.

It's a short post this time - but here are some pictures of Sau Nicolau. My house and the town of Vibeira Brava.

…Freedom that is. I have a week and a half of training left and then I get on a plane and head to my new home for two years, an island in the north named Sau Nicolau. Not that training has been a complete drag; I’m just ready to get on with the task at hand. I visited Sau Nicolau earlier in training and really liked it. It does not have the best beaches or mountains in Cape Verde, but it is considered to have the second best. It also has one of the best carnivals in Cape Verde. Think of Mardi Gras. It is too cost prohibitive to do any drunk dialing, so maybe drunk blogging will be an acceptable substitute. Ex girlfriends beware; you might just be getting a completely unintelligible email from me come Carnival. The management would like to apologize in advance and remind you that the thoughts and opinions of me when drunk are not necessarily the thoughts and opinions of me when sober.

Last week my Peace Corp friends and I all made BBQ courtesy of the bottle of Gates BBQ sauce sent by my parents. It was the best meal I have had in weeks. Some members of my household liked it and others hated it, which was fine with me because they didn’t want any seconds. I am also fairly confident, considering the cost of shipping, that this was the single most expensive meal my family has ever eaten. Now the bad news: I am almost out of BBQ sauce. Do you think if I sent a picture of us making the dinner Gates BBQ might send a case of sauce over to the needy Peace Corps volunteers in Cape Verde?

This week we are teaching our model school. It is basically a test run of what we will be doing when we get to site. Teaching computers here is much harder than in the states. Language difficulties aside, we have all grown up in a culture that uses computers and this gives even the most remedial computer user in the US a huge advantage. Teaching concepts such as double clicking with the mouse and how to copy and paste become challenges of monumental proportions. Model school has also been a challenge because of where I am staying during training. Peace Corps in their infinite wisdom decided to place the IT trainees in a farm community that has only a few computers and is far enough from the nearest city to prohibit going there for class. Brilliant! We have been able to cobble something together, and it is working for the most part, but I am definitely working for the US Government.

My language is getting better all the time. I’m not able to discuss anything as complex as Marxism, and I doubt they would really want to, but I can get around pretty easily for the most part. I am finding myself thinking in Kreol now, which is kind of weird. Instead of thinking “I want a beer,” I find myself thinking “ Ami n kre bebe cerveja.” It will be interesting in two years time when I return to the US. I wonder if I will be sitting with my friends, shootin the shit, and suddenly switch over to Kreol with out realizing it.

Public Service Announcement: My Hotmail account has been having problems, so if people could email my yahoo account. The address is vash_1313@yahoo.com. Keep sending me emails, no matter how trivial, it just feels good to have some connection back home. I try to answer all of them, but it can take time, Internet cafés charge by the minute and I don’t always have the funds available to knock out a chunk of mail. Things should get better once I get to site, I will be able to get a dial up account. Yeah, Peace Corps can be rough. I was looking forward to pooping into a hole I had dug into the ground, but instead I got Internet cafés and sunny beaches. We also don’t have any snakes here.

Seriously though, Cape Verde is the number one post in Africa that volunteers early terminate from. I think part of the reason is because there are enough things here to remind you of what you are missing. If you are deployed to the bush in Africa on the mainland I think you go through an intense initial culture shock but eventually you become absorbed in such a radically different place. You can kind of lose yourself there. Here there are enough things that remind you of home, I think it makes it harder to lose yourself.

Apparently my haircut was not one of the sustainable projects over here. I went to the barber and did my best to explain how I wanted my haircut, and to be honest I thought he understood. It took about two seconds to realize that I was wrong. Apparently he had his own ideas as to how my head should look, and to be honest who am I to argue? The man is an artist… let him work. I paid my 200 escudos, walked home as dignified as I could manage, and proceeded to cry in a shower that has no running water. It just doesn’t feel the same: the haircut or the crying in the inoperable shower. But with every death comes new life. I am told hair grows almost constantly so hopefully in a few months the hair do shall rise again, like a mighty phoenix, only covered in blonde hair instead of painful flames.

Well that is all I got for now. It was a biggun. I am going to load some pictures of the model school up. Enjoy, and have a cold one for me!

I spent the entire month of July in Africa, but it feels like so much longer. I am finally halfway done with training. We have to put together a model school before we finish. It is basically a dry run of what we will be doing in the field. Looks like I will be posted on the northern island of Sau Nicolau, which is not known for having the best of anything, but fortunately it is known for having the second best of everything. It has beaches and mountains and I hear the water there makes your hair smell like cinnemon. I´m really looking forward to it. I spent four days there shadowing somebody and I really liked the volunteers from that island. I might try and learn how to surf.I am now considered to be at an intermediate level in speaking the language but I want to know more and reach a conversational level. Many of the locals have suggested that I get a girlfriend to help me learn the language. Brilliant!Here is an interesting side note about Cape Verde: Despite living on an island very few people know how to swim here. They actually look at you strangely at the beach when you smin out to deep water. On the other hand is is emensly funny to watch grown Cape Verdian men clutching desperately for dear life to an inner tube in four feet of water.

Anyway… here are the pictures, it takes an eternity to upload so I can´t promise too much.

PS: That handsome devil at the bottom with his uneven tan and ever-present shiny sheen of sweat has just celebrated his first of three birthdays in Africa and is now 29 years old.

He would also like to say hi to his mother.

Things have really gotten busy here and it has been hard for me to find the time to get to the internet cafe and make a substancial posting. Pictures will be coming soon.

The honeymoon is officially over. After being here for a week, adjusting to time change, getting vaccinated, change in diet, and the odd domesticated farm animal waking you up in the middle of the night, Africa is a bit less sparkly than it was at the beginning of the week. All in all the vaccines are the worst - they kick my ass. I slept 11 hours last night and still woke up feeling like ass.

Not that everything is bad. I spent today taking a tour of an old Portuguese fort and then the rest of the day sitting on the beach drinking beer and swimming in the ocean. It is a rough life but I need to remind myself that I am actually sort of being paid for this.

Seriously though, it has been a rough week of adjustment characterized by massive exhaustion. Today was a much needed respite for a very hectic schedule.

I am still learning more and more Kriolu and am able to joke around with the members of my family.

More good news: I have finally found an internet cafe in Asomada that has a decent enough connection for me to upload pictures, so hopefully I will be uploading all those 3rd world pictures I know you crave.

Well I´ve got to go but hopefully next time I will have more content.

Bo Noite

and remember... goats re really really dumb.

Day one of living with the host family I will be with for the next 9 weeks. Today was a mixture of emotions. Excitement and a little trepidation and at the end of the day relief as well as a little bit of frustration. I arrived at my new village at about 2:30pm and met my new host mother. I understand so little of what she says but I can tell she has a good heart and is trying just as hard as I am. From there, me and some other Peace Corps members were taken to the outlying village where we would be staying. The five of us arrived at the village school where the entire village was waiting to greet us. There was music and dancing and everyone seemed to be real excited to have us there. After the festivities were finished I went back to my host mothers house and met her family. She is married and currently has 5 children in her house. The children are especially curious about the strange newcomer but are also a bit scared I think. Apparently I am also capable of inadvertently doing some very funny things. Her husband is a very generous man who knows a little bit of English, but is determined to make me learn the national language Kriolu. I cannot begin to explain how patient they have been and how grateful I am for it. I hope I can learn the language fast.

I finally arived in Cape Verde yesterday late in the afternoon. Right now I am sitting in an internet cafe in Praia. We have gone on small excursions into the city, but not too far since we really don´t know the area or the language. It is definately a new experience but many of the people are extremely nice. We will be here for about another day and a half and then we leave for another town. I will be staying in a small village for the next 9 weeks just outside the city with a sort of foster family.

I am running out of time but I hope everyone is doing well.~

Take care and next time I will try to put up some of the pictures I have taken.

PS: Let me go ahead and put out an APB. If some one can send me copies of John from Cincinatti and Flight of the Conchords on HBO it would be greatly appreciated.

My first post. Things are getting pretty exciting. Today was my last day of work at the Hartford. After my time spent at the Hartford I have stumbled upon two critical realizations.

First: I don't want to work in insurance. It is this entirely imaginary product. I cannot admire the freshly bought insurance sitting in my living room nor can I admire that new insurance smell. I understand it is that security blanket that is supposed to pick me up when my legs get knocked out from under me, but it feels more like I am paying the mob protection money.

Secondly: I don't want to work in a cubicle or even for a corporation. Not that I am a hard man who has spent some time in the joint, but working at the Hartford reminded me a lot of prison, only it was my dignity that had a bad experience in the shower. Corporate mentality has reduced the role of the American worker to nothing more than a cog in the machine. You are not a person, you are an asset, to be used and disposed of as the company sees fit. I have a hard time working in an environment that is dehumanizing.

It was not all bad though. There were a lot of people at the Hartford that I really enjoyed working with and that made my short time there much better than it could have been.

I guess one of the things that appeals most to me about going to Cape Verde is that is a two year break from the rat race. I feel as if what I will be doing will have a meaningful impact on peoples lives. I will be helping people who are struggling to make it, not just struggling to get an Ipod.

I have been spending most of my time packing and getting ready to go. It is kind of an odd task to make a list of everything you are going to need for the next two years. It really puts things in perspective and makes you realize what things in your life are necessities and what things are merely luxuries.

Just thought I would supply some pictures so that people know where I'm going. Here is Cape Verde, a collection of islands on the western tip of Africa.

... And here is a picture of the islands themselves. I won't know where I am going to be assigned on the islands until after training, which will last until some time in September.

I just hope Starbucks can't find me where I'm going.