Last weekend was the festa of São Francisco in Tarrafal. Jarrod and Alex met me at Nelsons Tarrafal beach house. Felis joined us, as did a couple of neighborhood kids who wanted to hang out with the American dudes. (Who wouldn’t?) Xanda passed by with Maria, her niece (who is older than her,) and her neighbor Antonita. All three of these women live in the small zone called Ribeira Alta (High Valley) of Cachaço. They have it pretty rough even for Cachaço standards. There is no electricity and no running water up there. Only a long, very rocky and steep path leads to their homes, which they must walk daily to get into town for groceries and errands. They also have to fetch water daily at the local water tank, and carry the jerry cans on their heads back up the mountain to their homes. They do this several times each day. Hard living. They are also very poor and their family has very little or no work. They are tough ladies.

Xanda was my girlfriend at one point, but we recently broke up. She is still rather sore about it. The other day she came by my house and started raising her voice over things women in our town had been telling her. I knew the women of Cachaço would start spreading their rumors, they always do, and I was surprised she had taken them seriously. I told her I wanted to be friends and when she was ready for that she could let me know. But she’s a proud, feisty girl and our break up left her a bit shaken. So she was sassy. But I think that things are cool.

Nelson and I attended the Mass of St. Francis of Assisi (São Francisco de Assisi) on Saturday evening. It was very nice: held outside the church it was lit up by lights strung in the trees. A statue of St. Francis was up on a small platform. Strings of colorful flags hung between Tarrafal homes. After Mass, the congregation went on a parade throughout the town, singing and praying. The altar boys held lamps, and four men carried the statue of St. Francis on its platform. Nelson and I relieved them a couple of times, and joined in singing what songs we could and praying the Ave Maria in Portuguese. People hung from their windows and watched from their porches as we passed by. It was beautiful.

Unfortunately, the beauty of the ceremony was tempered when we neared the church as the parade ended. I saw a young man from Tarrafal I knew, José, walk out from the church and to the street. I knew José because he had visited the church in my town a couple times, and was very involved with church activities. He looked about my age and I thought he was a pretty good guy: very nice, funny, and helpful.

Nelson and I reached the church, but then noticed that the most of the congregation had stopped behind us and was bunched up together. There looked to be some sort of commotion going on. Apparently what happened is José had walked up to the presiding priest, who was also from Tarrafal, and stabbed him with a knife. Thanks be to God, he ended up merely pricking him in the neck. Other men immediately grabbed José, and the priest went directly to the police station, which happened to be about 10 yards from the incident. Two police officers followed the priest out and grabbed José. They took him to the police station, and the priest gathered the rest of the congregation and led them to the church. He didn’t mention the incident, and finished the rest of the Mass. I think he handled the situation wonderfully. I was just left wondering, why?

According to some bystanders, and other people from Tarrafal, José just isn’t quite right in the head. I hadn’t noticed anything but I had seen that he liked to drink. Well, just one of those weird things that go on in the town of Tarrafal. A couple of years ago, a past São Nicolau volunteer Brett Slezak had said, “I think Ribeira Brava (the capitol town) is like your mother, and Tarrafal is like your uncle who still wants you to sit on his lap even though your 20 years old.” That about sums it up.

Later that night, we went to the “Miss São Nicolau” event. People called it “Miss,” from the English word, Miss. Groups came out and danced, and the contestants strolled out in different outfits. It was actually very boring, but for us on São Nicolau, it was the event of the month. It would have been better if we didn’t have to wait 30 minutes between groups while listening to bad electronic music and Akon songs played much too loud next to us. That, and the girls all looked about 17. Not much more to say about Miss.

Went out camping again a couple of weekends ago at Baixo de Rocha, my favorite beach camping spot on São Nicolau (that’s the name of my island.) The two new volunteers here, Jarrod and Alex, English teachers in the capitol town of Ribeira Brava, joined myself, my roommate Brendan, Nelson, who is another T.E.F.L. (P.C. lingo for Teaching English as a Foreign Language,) Felis, our rough and tough fisherman buddy, Teet, a farm boy from my town of Cachaço, some random Serbian girl Nelson got in contact with through CouchSurfer.com, and her boyfriend from Holland. Quite the varied bunch.

It was hell hiking out there, a couple of us almost passed out in the heat, even though the hike was only 90 minutes long. Because the sun was dropping fast, we immediately jumped into the water and started spearfishing. However the waves were very rough and visibility was terrible. So only Felis caught anything, and only two small fish. Luckily we had brought some chicken and, big treat!, BBQ sauce! We had a good time eating and drinking, and waited until 11 p.m. when the full mood rose over the mountains and lit up the beach. Then all of us went body surfing. The bright light and nice waves made for a good time. I went to sleep shortly after because I wasn’t feeling so well. In the middle of the night, Brendan woke me up to tell me he had spotted a turtle.

He had been sitting under the cliffs in the sand where our campsite was having a drink with Nelson when they saw something large throw itself out of the waves. They asked each other, “Do you see that? What is that?” and thought, “Maybe it’s a rock, or a log. Maybe these drinks are really good.” But the shape kept creeping closer and soon enough they made out the rounded shell and fat flippers. They quickly went around and woke everyone up, except for Felis, who we know has eaten sea turtles and their eggs in the past. (To Felis’s credit, he definitely would not harm a turtle in our presence, and says that he only kills them sometimes now, instead of every chance he gets. Good job Felis.) Teet however had had too much to drink and wouldn’t wake up. The next day he chided us for not waking him, not remembering the moments where we were slapping his face and yanking on his arms the night before.

The high tide and large waves had sucked much of the sand out to sea, so our campsite was a bit elevated. The turtle went straight for it, so we quietly circled around the site to let it try to climb up onto the shelf. It made a couple attempts at different locations, and was finally able to breach a spot with a more shallow grade. She approached the area where Felis and Teet were sleeping and we were worried they would wake, see this massive turtle snooping around next to them, freak out and scare the turtle back to the sea. Fortunately, she decided to make her nest before reaching them, and we were able to watch her lay her eggs in peace. We took some cameo shots after she had laid the eggs and filled in the nest with sand. It took her a while to get out of the depression she had made while laying. The flashes of the cameras we used after she had laid her eggs probably annoyed her. I sort of wish we hadn’t used flashes, however it couldn’t have been more annoying to her than slicing off bits of her flipper for DNA sampling, tagging her, or pumping her stomach to study its contents, as many turtle researchers do (with good cause!)

The next day, I woke with a horribly sore throat, a bad cough, runny nose, and pounding headache. I went over to the group and saw a Jarrod and Alex both bent over holding their heads. We compared symptoms and theirs were the same. Brendan woke up. “Ohh I feel terrible.” I said, “Running nose, headache, cough, and sore throat?” “Yeah…” Everyone, even Felis, who must had an incredibly strong immune system being a Tarrafal native, had the cold. According to him, it was the ocean. The rains had just come through and washed everything on land out to sea. The big waves stir up the sand and sediment and the resulting stew got into our systems. The walk back to Tarrafal was rough.

About the nest: we contemplated relocating it, because she laid the eggs right in the spot of heaviest people traffic. Worse than that was that we noticed tons of baby turtle bones scattered about in the sand. The crabs dig into the nests and eat them. So it wasn’t a good spot. However I wasn’t sure on the technique for relocation and didn’t know if the crabs would go for them in whatever other spot we placed. I hope at least some of them make it out to sea…..

I'll post a pic when I get them

On 10/10/10 almost every country around the world will be represented by the “350” movement, a non-profit environmental organization with the goal of reducing the causes of global warming. The org is called 350 because most atmospheric scientists agree that for major climate problems to be avoided, the ppm count of carbon dioxide must be lower than 350. So people around the world will be organizing events to promote less-impactful ways of living, such as installing solar panels in the Sahara and riding bikes to sumo wrestling practice in Tokyo. I don’t know if we’ll do anything here, I heard about this on kind of short notice. Maybe we’ll be organizing a bicycle event, or just planting some trees in our park (while spreading awareness about global warming. Not that Cape Verde has made any sort of contribution to it. But trees do soak up CO2.)

Well, in light of this world wide effort to live more sustainably, I thought I would pass this bit of knowledge on.

Everything plugged into an outlet uses energy. The appliance does not need to be turned on. Cell phone chargers, computers not-in-use, coffee machines, televisions, DVD players, modems, lamps, toasters, washing machines, dryers, microwave ovens, anything plugged in is draining energy that is not be used. Yep, you are paying for energy that you’re not using. Of course, the amount of this “phantom energy,” as I believe it’s called, being lost at one home is small. But added up with the millions of other homes in the United States, and millions around the world, it makes a quite a difference. Don’t believe me? Pull the plug to an appliance out a little, leaving it still connected to the outlet, and put your finger to the metal connector. No, don’t actually do this. Because you might get electrocuted, because power is constantly running into that machine while it’s plugged in. So here’s the message:

TAKE OUT THE PLUG!

Hey, so I just finished a little background information for the proposal I am writing together with two other volunteers on my island and a co-worker of mine at the park. It is for an efficient stove project, and we need money to do it, so we are sending this proposal to some organization, government or not, for funding. Trying to keep the funding local. We'll write to proposal and our co-worker, Nelson Ramos, will translate it into Portuguese. The project should look something like this:

We invite five women from four or five communities on our island to a week long seminar. These participants must be women who always, or almost always, cook food over an open fire, and cannot afford to purchase gas that often. For three or four days we will organize lessons on efficient cooking methods (chopping up vegetables instead of putting them in the pot whole, which allows them to cook quicker,) how to find and use different types of fuel for cooking, and most importantly, how to use the efficient stoves we will provide the participants. These stoves are relatively cheap, and many models have been and are currently being designed around the world. They emit less noxious fumes and use firewood much more efficiently. Hopefully, at the end of the seminar, the women will choose to use the stoves, and then convince other women in the community to purchase them as well. The stoves will be made and installed by Cape Verdeans. We might build a couple ourselves first, give them to some trusted women in the community to try out, and have them talk them up and teach about them during the seminar. Well, here is that background for the proposal, which might give you some more information.

Background

Cape Verde is a country typical to the region of West Africa in that local lifestyle is characterized by a combination of modern appliances and traditional modes of living. Most Cape Verdean families own televisions and cell phones. Some possess mp3 players and hair dryers. Yet these tools are merely superficialities, bought cheap or sent by family members living abroad in developed countries. The reality of Cape Verdean life is that people live in poverty and do not have access to the comforts that are so common and expected in developed countries. Homes of small and large families may not have bathrooms. A large percentage of people do not own refrigerators. These are things that not only contribute to an easier life, but a healthier one as well. However, although these items are highly desirable, even necessary to an acceptable standard of living, there is one which may be even more important.

An easy and healthy method of cooking food is essential to the physical and psychological well-being of the food preparer. However this is not available to a surprising number of people in Cape Verde, specifically on the island of São Nicolau. Portable gas stoves, canisters of which can be purchased at local markets, are ideal. They are clean and easy to use, emit virtually no odor or fumes, and cook food relatively quickly. But gas is expensive. It is purchased abroad and shipped to the main island of Santiago. From there it is transported to the smaller islands. This process adds heavy costs to an already pricey product. Most Cape Verdeans must resort to the traditional mode of cooking food: by using fire fueled with wood or wood products.

Most food prepared in Cape Verdean homes is cooked over an open fire. The “three-rock” method is typically utilized: three large rocks are placed on the ground or on a ledge inside a cooking shelter. These rocks are organized in a triangular design, and a small fire is started within the center of the triangle. Pots and pans of food can then be placed over the fire, supported by the edges of the three rocks. This style of cooking has been utilized by Cape Verdeans for hundreds of years. Although simple, and cheap in the short term, the “three-rock” method is flawed in many significant ways.

The first of these flaws is the amount of smoke which is emitted by the fires. Because there is no container to keep the smoke under control, and no chimney to direct the smoke up and away, noxious fumes from the fire fill the cooking shelter where the food is being prepared. This is more than an annoyance, it is positively dangerous. Inhaling any amount of smoke from a fire is harmful to one’s health. But because of the lengthy amount of time needed to cook food on an open flame, the food preparer is subjected to fumes for extreme lengths of time. If one or two people are the primary cooks, which is often the case, this duration is compounded over days, weeks, months, and years of exposure.

The cooking shelters in which the food is prepared are often small, with low ceilings and few, if any, windows. Smoke easily builds up in this cramped space. The walls of the shelters do not allow the fumes to quickly escape. So the cooking shelters become rooms of thick, acrid smoke which the food preparers inhale as they cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The harmful effects of this consistent smoke inhalation have been documented in numerous scientific studies.

Various health conditions have shown to result from the over-exposure to smoke emitted by fires, specifically lung cancer. Children who are not yet of school age are often present with the food preparer. They too are exposed to the fumes. Because of their young age, and the less-than-ideal conditions in which they are typically living, they are especially susceptible to health complications. Of course, the person cooking the food is most at risk. In almost every instance, these food preparers are women.

In Cape Verde, women, without very few exceptions, cook meals for the family. Cape Verdean families are normally large, so the women need to cook for many people, every day. They also may not possess refrigerators, and so heating up leftovers is not typically an option; food must be made fresh daily. Women perform every task related to meals. They buy, prepare, cook, and serve food to everyone in the family. Much of their time, in some cases most of their time, is spent cooking. This is significant because of the important role women tend to have in Cape Verdeans households.

Women in Cape Verde are absolutely vital to family life. They are the primary caretakers of children: raising them from birth, putting them through school, and continuing to provide a home for them long after they are adults. They ensure that if these children go to high school or college, they are provided for financially. The women deal with the daily chores, including cleaning the house, taking care of the livestock, tending to the family crops, washing clothes and dishes, collecting firewood, and home improvements or repairs. In some cases, they need to fill up water containers at a community water tank to supply the family with its daily water consumption. Many times, but not always, women are the primary wage earners as well. They will accept whatever small job is available, from working in the national park removing invasive plants, to selling jam, produce, snacks, or beverages. It is uncontestable that the average Cape Verdean family would be at a serious disadvantage without women. So it is apparent that solutions to any hardship women must endure, including spending many hours a day cooking over an open fire inside a small hut, should be sought out. Unfortunately, the “three-rock” method continues to take up precious time that Cape Verdean women could be spending on other important duties.

The second major flaw of the “three-rock” method is its inefficiency. An enormous amount of heat energy is lost during the cooking process. This is because the fire is not enclosed. Most of the heat emitted is lost to the ground which the fire is built on, the rocks which circle it, and the surrounding air. A relatively small amount heats the pot or pan. More time is needed for cooking, which means more fuel is needed to feed the fire. The greatest problem with this inefficiency is the lack of available firewood in Cape Verde.

According to Plantas Endémicas e Avores Indígenas de Cabo Verde, the archipelago of Cape Verde probably never had a canopied forest. Trees were dispersed intermittently between low-lying shrub and grasses, forming a savannah type landscape. Even so, the vegetation was much denser when colonizers first arrived in the 13th century than it is today. Unsustainable forestry techniques, or a lack of them, have contributed to high levels of desertification on the archipelago. As people cut down large numbers of trees for home and boat construction, fields of corn and beans were planted in their place. This has resulted in a general lack of vegetation on the islands. The Portuguese were able to successfully plant a few introduced species of trees, which have now grown into small forests on some of the islands, including São Nicolau. These miniature woodlands supply much of the available firewood in Cape Verde. However, these forests also lay within the boundaries of national parks, which restrict the collection of firewood for the sake of preserving the archipelago’s last wild places. Thus the collection of available wood, which already is difficult to find, is limited even further. This makes it increasingly challenging for people to collect it.

As with the role of food preparer, women are the primary firewood gatherers. They have to spend their time, which could be spent doing other activities, walking up hill or mountainsides in search of firewood. Most of the wood they find is small and thin, and so they must collect many bundles of these sticks to have enough fuel to cook a few meals (these thin sticks burn rapidly, contributing to the inefficiency of the “three-rock” method.) The steep mountain slopes can be treacherous, so a certain amount of risk is involved in the collection of wood. The women must carry the bundles of sticks on their heads back to their homes.

This scarcity of firewood, coupled with the copious amount of harmful smoke emitted by the open fires, reveal the “three-rock” cooking method to be inherently flawed and undesirable. Because women are almost always the food preparer and firewood collector, they are most affected by these negative aspects. Their role in raising children and supporting the family is thus made more difficult, in that greater effort must be exerted to balance their many responsibilities. Also, it is primarily the health of the women that is most at risk, because of their extended exposure to smoke from the fires. Gas is too expensive for many families to purchase regularly, so wood and wood products may continue to be used as fuel. A different method, one in which utilizes wood as its fuel source, yet emits less noxious fumes and burns wood more efficiently, must be adopted.

Oh Adriano. I first met him about three months ago, when he moved back to Cachaço. I was on my way home from a recently opened “bar” at a friend’s house, when he approached me. It was dark, but I could still make out his long dreadlocks and wrinkled face. He probably isn’t that old, maybe only 35, but because of alcohol and maybe drugs, he has aged horribly. His father is an old man named Toi, who lives by himself in a tiny house near the primary school.

The first time I visited Toi, he gave me the tour of his house. One large room with nothing in it, a small “bathroom,” which only had a drain in the middle of the floor, and his bedroom, which had a couple of wooden chairs and his bed: an old, thin piece of foam on a flimsy frame. I didn’t see many clothes, so I figured that he wore most of what he owned. I heard the government built the home, which although small and empty, is relatively well-built.

Toi has it pretty rough: he has to be at least 70, and is still going out to his fields almost daily to try and grow corn, beans, manioc, potatoes, and the like. He is always dressed in layers of old, ratty clothing which smell terribly. His remaining teeth are stained yellow; the others are in various stages of rot. He is as skinny as a pole and hunches over when he walks, always followed closely behind by his little black dog. The dog is forever faithful to Toi. Whenever he’s passed out on the side of the road, his dog is curled up next to him, viciously eyeing passer-bys. If you try to get near him the dog will run up, bark, and nip at you. Toi always holds his eyes wide open, and he blinks repeatedly, somehow using his entire face. One night Brendan and I had a festa, and he slept upstairs on our unfinished second story. He spent the night coughing up something nasty. My friend Brett Beach was sleeping on our moldy cushion on the story below him, and was woken to harsh, loud coughing the whole night. I heard, it sounded terrible. The next I went up there and a little puddle of phlegm, speckled with spots of blood, sat where he had slept.

But Toi’s a nice guy; he always seems cheerful and greets me loudly. Unfortunately, many people in my village don’t show him much respect. Boys especially, and even some men, shout out “Clik clik! Clik clik!” their nickname for him (it doesn’t mean anything.) He hates it: I’ve seen him pick up rocks and act like he’s about to throw them at the perpetrators. But the women are generally kind to him. He got very sick recently, and because he never had any daughters, he has no one to take care of him. Which brings me back to Adriano.

Adriano, in the street at night, approached me and told me,

“I’m Toi’s son. I came here and cleaned his house. It’s all clean now. You can go. All clean. I cleaned it. You go tomorrow. Tomorrow you go. It’s clean, I cleaned it. Toi is sick, you go visit him tomorrow. The house is clean.”

I was a little overcome by this seemingly kind gesture. Apparently Toi was sick, he has no one to take care of him, so his son came and cleaned his house. His son thinks people don’t visit Toi because his house his dirty, so now that it’s clean he wants people to come and visit. I suddenly felt bad I hadn’t visited Toi in a while and made it a point to visit him the next day.

When I went by Toi’s house the next day, it did look a little cleaner. Toi was wrapped up in a few blankets in his bed, even though it was hot out. Scores of flies hovered around his room, his body, and his face. Cold plates of food rested under a dirty towel on a small table against the wall. We talked, and even though he must have felt terribly, he still managed to seem cheerful, and expressed that he just wanted to go out to his fields the next day.

When I went home, I stopped by my neighbor Arlinda’s home. I asked about Toi and she said yes, he’s sick, and we’ve been taking care of him. “We?” I asked. She said that she and a few women in the community had been delivering food and bathing Toi daily every day. I was touched. That is awesome, I said, y’all are great!

“Well of course. He’s sick, Steven. He can’t take care of himself.”

Another lady, Maria, said “If you have any clothes you don’t need, you should bring those to him, or if you have food you’re not going to eat, bring that. Or you can just bring a bottle of milk or juice.”

I said, “Okay, I can do that.” Maria then said, “Just make sure you watch him eat or drink whatever you bring.” I thought that was kind of strange. I mean surely he can eat or drink on his own, right?

So a few days later I went by again. I brought some coffee and cookies and we shared a cup before I went to English class. Over the next couple of weeks, I stopped by every once in a while, sometimes bringing coffee or juice. Adriano was always there, but didn’t say much. Then one day I brought a bottle of juice over and Toi’s nephew, Max, who is always pestering me to make chili for him, was there as well. After chatting a bit, I started to leave, and Max said to Adriano, “Make sure Toi drinks that juice Adriano.” And Adriano said, “Yeah, yeah.” When I left with Max, I asked him, “Can’t Toi drink by himself?” And Max said, “No it’s not that. If you’re not careful, Adriano will take whatever you bring Toi.” I was shocked: this is what Maria was talking about. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah, Adriano is a devil. People bring Toi food and drinks and he takes them.” Suddenly my view of Adriano as Toi’s helpful, loving son was turned on his head. Maybe he wasn’t the nice guy I thought he was.

Soon enough, I noticed Adriano hanging out more and more by the stores in the village center, drinking grog. He wouldn’t just sit and get drunk either, like most of the drunks. He would stumble around, throwing out his feet and fists. Once he’s drunk, he thinks he knows karate, and will start showing off his “moves.” Arms bent like Jackie Chan, he’ll clumsily kick his foot in the air, making a show of himself.

It began when he showed up at our house after dinner one night with a yellow squash. I opened the door and he shoved the squash in my hands. He said,

“Squash. Vitamins. You put in fish soup. Vitamins. Put in fish soup. Squash. It has lots of vitamins. Put it in fish soup. Vitamins. Fish soup. This is for you. Put it in fish soup. It has vitamins.”

I think he would have continued to ramble on like that if I hadn’t cut him off, thanking him. He left then, and as he walked off my front porch he went on,

“Vitamins, put it in fish soup…..For you…..Squash.”

At this point, I still liked him. I mean he had just bought me fresh produce, and delivered it into my hands for free! But it wasn’t long until he started to really get on my nerves.

Adriano would corner me, and drone on about nothing. He would have a few lines to say, and would repeat them over and over, as if I didn’t hear the first time. It became obvious to me that his mind wasn’t all there, and his drinking made it worse. He would always ask me for a cigarette, and started asking for drinks as well. He had given me that squash, so I would usually give in and buy him one. But he became increasingly annoying, and I found myself actively avoiding him. If I saw him walking by in the street when I was at Arlinda’s, I would duck and hide. He started coming over to our house and dropping off more produce. But now, instead of just giving us the things and leaving, he would say, “Ok, now I’ll just go over to Arlinda’s and have a grog. You’ll pay for it later.”

He dropped off a sack of potatoes with Brendan and Brendan, unaware at the time, ended up buying him a shot later. In my eyes, some free produce was well worth the 40 cents worth of alcohol we ended up paying him. Arlinda informed us however that there was a good chance he was stealing these things from other people’s fields and coming to us so he could get some grog in exchange for the stolen goods. I did wonder why he didn’t just sell this produce, for more money than he was getting out of the free grog. I also didn’t feel very good about contributing to his destructive drinking habit.

So we refused to buy him any more alcohol. He would walk by Brendan, talk to him a bit, and then say, “Ok I’m going to go have a grog at Monteiro’s, you pay after.” And Brendan would have to walk over there and say, “Look Monteiro, anything he drinks, I’m not paying for.”

While I was out-of-island, he came over late one night and presented Brendan with a sack of lettuce. He said,

“Look, I brought you this lettuce. You take, eat salad. Lettuce. Has vitamins. Use for salad. I brought this for you. Vitamins”

“No, no, I don’t want any lettuce. I already have some lettuce. Thank you anyway.”

“You take this lettuce. Take it. Vitamins. Salad. Has Vitamins. You take this, I bring this for you.”

Brendan just looked at him, kept his arms to his sides, and didn’t say anything.

Adriano took pieces of the lettuce out of the bag, and laid them on Brendan’s feet. He continued to do this while saying,

“Lettuce. Take it. It has vitamins.”

He placed the bag in our house, backed away from the door and said,

“Ok, now I’m going to Arlinda’s for a drink. You’ll pay later.”

Brendan collected the lettuce, put it back in the bag, and went over to Arlinda’s. He handed Adriano the bag and said,

“This is yours. I don’t want it. And I’m not paying for your drink.”

So Brendan got a little upset when I told him I had accepted a bag of guavas from Adriano recently. But it was a huge bag! I had free fruit for a week, and was able to pass some out to people too. He asked for grog, but some of the stores in town have stopped selling him alcohol anyway. I gave him 50 Escudos, or about 60 cents. He said he would buy rice with it. Right.

One night, before I party, I saw him at Arlinda’s. I immediately ducked and went around a corner. He followed me, and gave me quite a fright when he looked at me with his pair of intense eyes and said, “I saw you. You’re hiding from me.” He took out the knife he kept tucked inside his pants.

“Look, I just got back from my field. This is my knife. I was in my field.”

Then he showed me a faded gold ring he had grasped in the palm of his hands.

“I found this in a field. I was working in the field. I didn’t steal this. I found this ring. In the dirt. In a field. I was working in the field and I saw it. In the dirt. I grabbed it. It’s mine. This ring is mine. I found it.”

He held it out to me and I took it to look it over. I barely had touched when he eyes filled with jealously and he yanked it back.

“It’s mine! I found it. It was in a field. I didn’t steal it. The ring is mine!”

Ok, surely by now you must be thinking the same thing I was. Gollum! a.k.a. Smeagol. If he had been speaking English, he probably would have been saying, “My precious…..my precious….MINE!”

Just now, I was writing the background for our efficient stove project Adriano came by again, knocking on our windows. I was in the bathroom, and heard someone saying “Oi! Oi! Brenda? Alo!” (Cape Verdeans can’t say my roommate’s name, Brendan.) This is typical here, people randomly stopping by to say hello or talk about this or that, so it could have been anyone. But it wasn’t just anyone, it was Adriano. He had chopped off his dreadlocks and was outside with another town drunk. And, as usual, he had a sack of something in his hands. It was an old, blue, dirty potato sack with its top all tied up. I was a little hesitant: there’s a torrential downpour and high winds outside and I didn’t really want to be hanging out in the doorway. But he was insistent, as usual.

“Take this! Open it. Here inside the door. With fish. Open it. Take this. I brought this for you.”

So I took the bag just inside the door and untied the knot. Inside was a bunch of dirty green bananas and guavas.

“No, I don’t need any more guavas. You gave me that huge bag recently and I still have some. And we have bananas.”

“Take this. You put the bananas in fish stew. See, peel the bananas, cut them, put in fish stew. Take this. Okay, I’m going to go get some grog, to remove the cold, you’ll pay for it later”

“No thanks. Look, Maria, my neighbor, is poor, she doesn’t have much food. You should give her this bag.”

“I have nothing to do with her. Take this. I need a grog to remove the cold.”

“No, I don’t want it. I’ll take it if you don’t want it and give it to Maria.”

“You’ll take it? Then I’ll get a grog.”

“No, not for grog.”

“Then what is it good for!? I’m just going to throw it in the trash.”

“No, no, don’t do that! It’s good food. I’ll give it to Maria.”

“No, I’m going to throw it in the trash. You won’t give me a grog.”

Then he walked to the side of my house and tossed the bag into an open field. He gave me a look of disgust and anger, shook his fist, and stormed off. Well I wasn’t about to let that food go to waste so I got my boots on and opened the front door to find that bag. But he had already gone back and grabbed it, and was walking away toward one of our village’s bars, where I think they still sell him grog. I just talked to Brendan about this story, and he says DON’T ACCEPT THINGS FROM HIM EVER. According to a store owner, Tiadora, he’s not that crazy. He’s not even mean, he’s actually usually nice. He’s just a possibly thieving, scheming, drunk. Oh Adriano.

Alright! Another Blog! I’m sitting down at my white plastic table to type while my roommate Brendan makes pasta. After dinner we are going to buy a bottle of ponch and play “Ching-Chong” a popular card game here with a few buddies.

I haven’t written one of these in a while. I think blogs are supposed to be frequent and short right? Mine seem to be long and infrequent. If you do read this next one, you can read it in chapters.

It will be interesting to read these blogs in 20 years. Even now, I’ll read something I wrote 4 months ago and think, “What? Did I really write that? Man that was stupid.”

Anyway. Something very memorable happened recently and it prompted me to write it down. This is the story of my visit to Carriçal, the strangest place I have been in Cabo Verde.

Chapter 1: Getting There

Written on one of my “to-do” lists was: “Get involved with sea turtle conservation efforts.” I am concerned about sea turtles as an endangered species, and want to help out, but mostly I wanted to see a sea turtle lay her eggs on the beach. If you have never seen a sea turtle, you’re missing out: they are so cool. I had only seen one once before, when I was spear-fishing and spotted one on the ocean floor. My friend dove down and grabbed it and brought it to the surface for us to look at. The turtle probably didn’t enjoy this. But at least he didn’t kill it for food, which he may have done if we hadn’t been there. But I really wanted to see a turtle come to the beach and lay her eggs. See, Cabo Verde is a major stop for the loggerhead turtle, they come here to nest. The islands are the second most important nesting site for the loggerhead in the world. Tons of these endangered species migrate here to lay their eggs. Conservationists from Western countries such as America, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, ect.., have been motivating Cabo Verde to protect this species, especially because certain Cabo Verdeans tend to eat them. Sometimes they’ll flip them on their back, leave them there to helplessly wriggle their fins, go grab a knife and bucket, and come back to chop ‘em up. This doesn’t bode well for the population. So conservation groups from these countries train and work with Cabo Verdean “turtle rangers,” who patrol beaches, looking for poachers. I wanted to hook up with one of these groups on my island and get my chance to watch a sea turtle lay her eggs. I e-mailed a turtle organization, based on the island of Sal, and expressed my interest in volunteering. I received an e-mail in return saying that someone would contact me shortly.

I had prayed to God to help me complete this particular “to-do” list, and was surprised at how quickly He helped me out. I was walking down the street with my friend and fellow volunteer Joe Dolginow, when a car, driven by a Cape Verdean guy that I know, stopped next to us. The guy, Archaland, said hello, and I noticed there where two white people in his car: a young guy and girl. Foreigners! Somehow I knew they were the people I wanted to talk to, and sure enough, as soon as I asked if they were involved with sea turtle conservation, the guy spoke up in American English. His named was Jeff, and he was from Kansas, although he has been living abroad working for turtle conservation organizations in places like Taiwan and Costa Rica for the last 6 years. He was here to help train Cabo Verdean turtle rangers. The girl, who was from Italy, was named was Katarina. She is studying sea turtle genetic resistance to parasites between islands in Cabo Verde. Far out, eh!

All of a sudden, Jeff was asking me if I wanted to go with them the next day to camp out on a beach and wait for a turtle. They were driving to the town of Preguiça, taking a boat to some random beach, staying the night and returning Monday. Unfortunately, Anna Maria, the 4 year old daughter of my neighbor and good friend Arlinda, was being baptized the next day, on Sunday. Baptisms are a huge deal here: the parents make tons of food and provide lots of free beverages and it’s a big festa open to the community. (I’m actually not so cool with this, because parents will hold off getting their kids baptized until they feel they have a bunch of money stored up to throw the festa. In my opinion, being baptized as soon as possible is more important than showing off a big festa, but hey, it’s a cultural thing. Same dealio for weddings. People won’t get married until they have a bunch of available money to throw a week long festa, free and open to the community. Of course, most people are poor, so weddings often get put off indefinitely.) Woops, was that a rant? Anyway, Arlinda is one of the best cooks I know in Cape Verde, so I knew it would be great. Plus, it was her birthday! And I didn’t want to miss Mass. Fortunately, they were also going out Monday, as soon as they returned from that beach. So I said I would go then.

Monday comes around and I head to Ribeira Brava to meet up with the turtle crew. The local government bought us a few boxes of food and lent us a pick-up to take out to Carriçal, where we would be spending the next three days. Carriçal is the most remote village on Sao Nicolau, located on the southern coast way out on the eastern tip of the island. One extremely bumpy road winds between rocky fields and towering cliffs to finally end at this dusty village in the middle of nowhere. It took us about 80 minutes to reach Carriçal: a long drive for such a small island. The condition of the road, not the distance, is what slowed us down.

Chapter Two: Looking Around

Once we arrived, a bunch of children swarmed the truck. Apparently cars only come in from town (Ribeira Brava, the capital) twice a week, so a vehicle is something to see, especially if the car is carrying three white people. I was curious to explore the village, but first we set up “camp” in the local elementary school. This one-roomed schoolhouse was where the turtle crew had been staying lately. Two sleeping cushions leaned against the wall. I counted four of us. Small desks and chairs were scattered around the room. Artwork the students had made in the past decorated the walls and hung from the ceiling by string, each piece covered in a thin layer of dust. Children peeked their heads through the low windows of the school. A tiny, separate room next door was used as a kitchen.

I stepped outside and greeted a group of children sitting on some large rocks.

“Comment tu t’appelle?” a little girl asked me. In Kriolu, I replied,

“I don’t speak French, I speak English.”

“So you are from Spain?”

“No.”

“Portugal?”

“No.”

“Germany?”

“No.”

“Holland? Italy? England?”

“No. No. No. I’m from the United States.”

“Where’s that?”

I started meandering around to get a feel for the town. Carriçal sits on a short bluff above the ocean. A few dirt paths divide three rows of concrete block houses. The front walls of some of these homes are a dull pink, blue, or green, but most of them were left unpainted. A handful of other homes sit a short distance away, dotting the rocky terrain surrounding the town. Three small stores offer limited products such as pasta, tomato concentrate, cans of peas and carrots, and rice. An old, broken windmill sits atop a hill on the opposite side of the village from the ocean. A set of stairs a short walk away from the school leads to a small concrete dock, where fishermen bring in their daily catch of tuna, dorado, and other fish. Near this dock is the village beach: a small stretch of black sand littered with shards of glass and rocks. Not much of a beach, but it’s better than the shores of rock which dominate the island’s coasts. A few small fishing boats are beached high up in the sand. Behind this beach stretches a valley full of a thorny tree called the spineira. It’s the only coastal woodland I’ve seen on São Nicolau. An occasional palm tree thrusts up its fronds amidst the small forest of spineira. The woods look spooky: dark and quase foreboding under the hot sun. I return to the school.

In the early evening, a group of Austrian tourists sailed their yacht into Carriçal’s small bay and stopped to check out the village. While I was walking around, people tried to tell me that my friends (the tourists) were over at a certain house. I had to explain that, yes, I’m white like them, but I’m not with them. When I went to the store to look for a cigarette, the Austrians were there and said hello. They were curious at what I was doing in Cabo Verde, and I told them about the turtle project. They said that their guide book stated there was a bathhouse in Carriçal and wondered if I knew where it was. I saw it next to us: a small concrete building with two metal gates for doors. I asked an elderly man who happened to be sitting nearby if he knew where the keys were, and ended up going on a mission throughout the village with him searching for the person who had them. Finally I returned with the keys, however when I showed the large man who looked liked the leader of the group the shower room, his face wrinkled in disgust and he shook his head. One of the younger guys in the group spoke English and said, “No thanks, we go back to boat.” No worries, I had the keys so I took my shower there. Sure the place was filthy, but T.I.A. (This Is Africa.) The water was hot from sitting in the pipes, which I didn’t enjoy too much because the town itself was already baking. I did find a cool gecko on the wall though.

We had eaten a large lunch, and so we just had a few pieces of bread with guava jam for dinner. We planned on staying awake for a while, and so we made coffee in a pot. It was terrible and watery. The problem was we boiled water first and then added it to cups with coffee grounds in them. It’s better to put the grounds in the water first and then bring the water to a boil, removing it from heat right before it boils over. We were enjoying this “chafee,” as Katarina called it (tea coffee,) when Maria approached us.

Maria was a Carriçal native: strong, but mentally-handicapped. There are a number of people born with physical defects and/or mental retardation in Carriçal. Much too high of a ratio to be called normal. See, Carriçal is a tiny, isolated village of about 200 mostly uneducated people. And what often happens in tiny, isolated, villages of mostly uneducated people? Inbreeding. When I first arrived in Carriçal, I jokingly asked a man if there would be a festa that night. He said, “No, not now. A man die here, and so we’re all in mourning. Everyone is family here.” I don’t think he said this figuratively.

Back to Maria. Jeff had met her previously in Carriçal. He doesn’t speak Kriolu very well, but speaks Portuguese okay. Maria had been trying to tell him something a few nights before, but he didn’t understand at first what she wanted. She kept making hand motions and gesturing toward him. Then she said, “I want this,” and tried to grab his scrotum. Humorous in a sort of dark way, but mostly sad. It made me wonder what kind of treatment Maria received in Carriçal. Mental retarded people in Cape Verde obviously don’t get the proper attention that people in American receive. Many times the family will just keep them shut up in the house, never fully understanding what is wrong with their loved one. She came and sat with us as we drank our coffee, making unintelligible remarks and gestures. If we made eye contact she would burst out laughing and furiously nod her head.

Chapter Three: First Night

It was about time to hit the beach. Me and Jeff had the first watch: from 21:00 – 1:30 we would patrol the beach and wait for a turtle to come in. It was nice to talk to another American, besides the six other volunteers, I never see any here. Jeff has a totally “surfer-dude” accent that he must have picked up during his college years in Hawaii. He has long sun-bleached blonde hair and a reddish blonde beard. He’s also a vegan, and totally psyched about protecting marine life.

Katarina and a Cape Verdean guy from Ribeira Brava involved in turtle conservation, Lelé (pronounced Lela) would have the second patrol, from 1:30 – sunrise. This seemed to work out in their favor because they obviously had some sort of romantic fling going on. Katarina spoke bad English and seemed very European. It was her style, her accent, and her way of pouting her lips and shrugging her shoulders with her hands in the hair that just seemed so damn Euro. She had short hair and one long dreadlock. But even with the dreadlock, she was very pretty. Lelé smoked a lot of cigarettes and seemed cool. He had a couple of years experience working with turtles.

The group not on patrol would sleep on the beach and would be woken up by the active group if a turtle came in. When Jeff and I started the first patrol at 21:00, he showed me how it was done. Apparently it is much easier to look for the tracks the turtle leaves in the sand, and follow them to the turtle, instead of looking for the turtle itself. So we walked along the water line (so any turtles already on the beach wouldn’t see us: they tend to only look forward) looking for the tell-tale slashes in the sand that signify a turtle has returned to its nesting grounds (sea turtles will many times return to the exact same nesting grounds where they were born to lay their own eggs. They traverse the world and end up at the same spot they started their lives. This is especially amazing because sea turtles take 15 – 40 years to become sexual mature, and so are absent from these beaches during all those years of eating jellyfish, mollusks, small fish, and/or sea plants as they build up reserves of energy necessary for breeding.) Because the moon hadn’t come up yet, we had to use flashlights. But we used red shades on our lights: the red glow doesn’t bother the sea turtle as much as a typical white light. This is also why people cannot take pictures with flashes: it tends to frighten the turtles off, and they return to the ocean instead of laying their eggs. Females only come ashore to lay eggs twice every two years.

No turtles were in site, so we sat higher up on the beach and waited. Every 20 minutes one of us would get up and patrol the edge of the water. I admit, I fell asleep. Try sitting on a towel at a beach in the middle of the night, listening to the calming sound of the waves, waiting for turtles, and not fall asleep. It’s difficult. Sand isn’t nearly as comfortable as a bed, but it’s much more comfortable that hard floor or ground. Same results for the next shift: Katarina and Lelé didn’t see a thing. At first light we headed back to the school to try to sleep a little more on the cushions that were there.

Chapter Four: The Beach

As usual, as soon as it was properly daytime: 8:00 or so, the flies started their pestering. It’s so damn hot here, so you have to keep the windows, which of course don’t have screens, open. This allows gangs, no armies, of flies to swarm over your body, flitting to and fro, and landing on the most sensitive spots of your body as soon as you’re almost asleep. I’ve learned to cover myself with a thin sheet, but in the Carriçal heat this is too much for a boy accustomed to Colorado and Nebraska winters, so I had to get out of there.

I opened the door and Maria was waiting. I said bon dia and she laughed and nodded. Then she went inside the school. Everyone else was asleep, so she just stood there, looking at them. I waited to see if she would leave with me, but she seemed content to watch them sleep.

The school didn’t offer a bathroom, so us turtle rangers had to find some semi-private area in the rocky fields surrounding Carriçal to relieve ourselves. I hadn’t brought much toilet paper, incorrectly believing more would be provided, so for many of my bathrooms trips I used the rock method. I had first heard about the rock method when I asked people in my town if they always brought toilet paper with them when they went to the bathroom in the fields next to their homes, to which they replied, “Klaru no. So panya pedra.” (Of course not. Just grab a rock.) This didn’t sound especially like an especially pleasant way of cleaning up and it’s not. Sometimes the only rocks nearby are all sharp and you can’t find a nice round one, and many times they’re covered in dirt or insects. But hey, T.I.A., right? My butt was rather chapped by the end of this trip.

One of Jeff’s main objectives during this trip was to train a local turtle ranger. Sydney was a man from Carriçal and he would be prepared to assume responsibility for Caraçal’s beach indefinitely. Sydney my favorite person I met in Carriçal: really nice, always smiling, never drinks or smokes, and totally interested in turtles and conservation. He seemed very intelligent and was always helpful: he patrolled the beach alone for many hours. What was interesting was that Sydney is deaf, and so Jeff had to train him using a series of symbols that Sydney had created to “talk” about turtles. It was really cool: They had hand symbols for sea turtle, eggs, the laying of eggs, looking for turtles and looking for tracks, passing day and night. They spent much of their day talking to each other. Katarina was visited by a friend of hers that was often present at the school during our time there. Her name was Nilsa, she had a lazy eye and was deaf as well. They all hung out, I hit the beach.

Because it had rained recently (quite a rarity in Cape Verde, especially in Carriçal,) the water close to shore was very dirty. Still, a group of locals were swimming off the dock and near the beach. I jumped in to join them, snorkel in hand. I felt like playing with some of the little kids on the beach (integration!), so I made my way over. However once I reached the group of youth hanging out, I felt strangely out of place. Well, obviously I was out of place, being the only white and American person. But for some reason I felt more singular than usual, like I wouldn’t be able to get past the cultural/racial barrier like I do in my community and in almost every other place I’ve visited in Cape Verde. For the past two days I felt less welcome in Carriçal than I’ve felt in most other communities. Usually people have so much morabeza and invite strangers into their homes, feed them, or at least make an effort to know them. Here however I had the impression, imagined or not, that my presence wasn’t quite wanted. As if outsiders, especially foreign ones, weren’t appreciated. I couldn’t help thinking of that cliché line you hear in movies featuring the strange small town in Nowhere, America: The main character of the film strolls into town, usually with a small group of unsuspecting travelers, and are approached by a creepy man who says in a deep Southern accent, “We dun’t git many outsiders her. We don’t like strangers around des parts.” I felt like the main character in that movie, stuck in a town where outsiders aren’t so much appreeeciated.

This feeling was heightened as I noticed two boys, about 16 years old, staring at me. We were standing in waist deep water, and I was planning on making my way over to the shore and building a sand castle or something with the kids. But these two boys were giving me the stink eye and it stopped me in my tracks. Just then a girl of about 14 yelled out to me, “Hey! That girl in the red is a fool for you!” One thing about being an outsider is that the opposite sex gives you a lot of attention, because you’re new and different, especially in small towns. “Hmmm, I thought. Maybe some cute 21 year old Carriçal girl has the hots for me.” So I looked over and instead of seeing a women near my age, I saw a girl of about 12 years old in a red bathing suit. I immediately thought: If that little girl thinks it’s appropriate to be telling people she likes me, who is obviously much older than her, what does that say about what’s going on here? Is age ever a factor in relationships in Carriçal? One of the boys staring at me motioned with his hands that she was very young. At least he recognized that. But then I realized something, the probable reason for why these boys were looking at me so coldly. I was an outsider, and white, and thus obviously rich and able to do whatever I want. These boys were concerned that I would take, or at least hook up with, one of the females in their town, specifically one of the girls in the water with us. The taller of the two, a lean guy with bloodshot red eyes, approached me and said,

“Go to the dock.” I thought maybe I misunderstood and said,

“What? You want to go to the dock?”

“Yes. Let’s go to the dock.”

“Well, okay, maybe in a bit.”

“Now. Let’s go now.”

I wasn’t about to let this townie tell me what to do, so I made a point of not going anywhere. However I had lost any desire to go play with the little kids on the beach, and did want to go back to the dock and then get out of there. But I waited a bit, just to show him I didn’t take orders from passive aggressive Carriçal weirdoes. Then I slowly started swimming back to the dock. He stayed close behind me, keeping stroke as we made our way back. I scrambled up on the dock and stood there, letting the sun dry me off. He continued to stare at me on his feet. I raised my eyebrows in acknowledgement, he gave no response. I meandered over to a tide pool and checked out the marine life: shrimp and hermit crabs crawling along, sea anemones waving their tentacles. A small eel wriggled its ways among the rocks. I felt his eyes boring into me as I squatted down to tie my shoes. Finally I made my way to the stairs that led back to the school. At some point he split off from my trail. For the rest of my stay in that village, although I occasionally tried to greet him, all I got in return was that icy stare with those burning red eyes.

Chapter 5: The Forest

I decided I needed some time alone, and I wanted to check out the forest behind the beach. So I grabbed my shoes and headed down there by a different set of stairs. As I entered the woods the sun, which was beating down with the immense force and heat that is common this close to the equator, suddenly disappeared and I found myself in filtered twilight. It was cool and quiet, and I really liked it. Just inside the woods, a horse was tied to a tree on a short cord of rope. As I made my way into the trees, away from the ocean, I noticed that although the ground I was walking on stayed level, walls of rock rose on each side of me. The forest was cupped in a valley and cliffs of sandstone towered above the green trees. I noticed some sort of structure partially hidden ahead of me, and came upon an old concrete water tank. Five bins were formed of concrete at its base, with built-in washing boards, for washing clothes. I climbed the steps to the top of the water tank and looked in its open top. A thin layer of murky water covered the bottom.

I found a narrow dirt road and continued into the valley. Huge, sparrow sized grasshoppers launched themselves away from me as I disturbed them on the road. I became aware of a constant drone, a persistent buzzing sound which seemed to come from everywhere at once. Then I noticed the swarms of huge, fat bumblebees flying lazily among the canopy of the forest. They paused for a moment at each of the flowers which grew on the trees’ top branches. In the distance I saw someone approaching me on road ahead. As he grew nearer, I noticed he was limping with his right leg. We passed each other: “Boa tarde…” “Boa tarde.”

After about 10 minutes of walking I came to a small clearing. The ground was covered in large white rocks. I saw that a few of the rocks were scarred black, almost as if they were charred. On closer inspection I discovered that these blackened rocks were not rocks at all, but bones. Half of a jawbone jutted out of the earth, a crust of soot covering it. Then I noticed the body, or what was left of it. Most of the pieces were lying in disarray inside a circle of rocks which had obviously been created to set the creature on fire. By the size of the bones, and the horns I saw, I knew it was a cow. I didn’t understand why they decided to burn. And did they set the animal ablaze while it was still living, or after it had died? I knew it was relatively fresh because of the smell, which was horrible, and the thousands of flies which covered it. Thoughts of satanic rituals and bloody sacrifices surfaced in my mind. What was going on in this town? I continued on.

A fence appeared through the trees ahead of me. No one was in sight, so I approached it and stood at the perimeter. It surrounded a large garden. Sugarcane was the dominant crop, although I also saw corn and beans. The sugarcane is of course grown to make grog, the local Cape Verdean moonshine. Some of it is very good, but the majority is terrible. Most people can’t afford the good grog, known as grog Kana Kana or grog de terra, so they drink the cheap stuff. Banana and palm trees rose up out of the garden. Suddenly I noticed a large hole in the ground next to me. It was obviously man-made, because it was the shape of a perfect rectangle. Actually, it was just slightly larger than the size of a coffin, and about four feet deep. By this point I was officially creeped out.

I stopped walking when I reached the other side of the garden, which the road ran next to. From the fence I could see a small screen hut in the middle of the garden, under the shade of some banana trees. Something seemed to be hanging from the ceiling by hooks, but because of the dim light all I make out was a silhouette. I couldn’t quite distinguish what it was. I won’t say it looked like a human body, but I won’t say that it didn’t either. I could have jumped the fence and investigated the matter to a conclusion, but I decided that I was done with my nice hike in the woods. I headed back to the beach, my pace a bit quicker.

Chapter 6: Back at Homebase

Katarina and Lelé made dinner. At lunch, while I made pasta, Jeff had told me that Katarina couldn’t cook, but I couldn’t believe him. I mean, she’s Italian. But he was right, the plain rice with bits of potatoes and carrots mixed in with it wasn’t too appetizing. She did fry up some faux SPAM however. Four young local girls were hanging out inside the school. I asked them where their parents were. One said Tarrafal (a town on the opposite side of the island,) another said Juncalinho (a town about a 40 min. drive away) another said Sao Vincente (another island) and the last said Portugal (that’s a country.) So basically these parents were leaving their kids at one of the most remote places in the country with their grandparents or whatever other family member while they (hopefully) were working. “Far out: Whew I’m chillin’ in Carriçal! Thanks Mom!” According to Lelé, their parents must not have time to take care of them. Maybe, maybe not. But I couldn’t help but thinking of the my many aunts and uncles who are just as busy if not busier than the typical Cape Verdean parents, and still find time to raise their own children. Responsibility for raising your children isn’t as valued here as it is in the States.

I was sitting at a desk near a window, writing down notes about the day so I could write this blog, which a girl peeked her head in. She asked what I was doing:

“Writing down what happened today so I won’t forget later.”

“That’s stupid. Stop.”

“No. Are you from Carriçal?”

“No way, I’m from Juncalinho. Juncalinho is great, Carriçal sucks. Do you like Carriçal?”

“It’s very interesting.”

I started writing again, but she kept stopping me to chit chat about this or that. She wrote her name on my sheet of paper: Biar Monica. She had the handwriting of a 10 year old.

“How old are you Biar Monica?”

“21.” (She looked way younger.)

“Merda you’re 21, tell me the truth. You look about 16.”

“I’m serious! Ask anyone.” (I asked a guy nearby, who said Yes, she’s 21.)

“What year were you born.”

“1989.”

Either she was prepared for that question, or she really was 21. Her face looked young, her body was very developed: large breasts and wide hips, quite curvy. But honestly, I wasn’t attracted. Something about her was a little……off. Plus, she obviously wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box.

“Are you in school?”

“School? I haven’t been in school in years.”

“When did you stop?”

“After 9th grade.”

“You need to go to school, it’s very important.”

“Well my parents couldn’t pay for it.”

Hmm not much to say in response to that. Eventually she wandered off and I got ready to go take a bath. Before I left for the bathhouse, two young girls entered the room and told me that Biar Monica wanted to see me near the store. I told them I didn’t want to. They left, and I went to the bathhouse. There wasn’t any electricity, so I bathed in the light of a faint flashlight placed on top of the concrete stall. As I showered, I kept expecting Biar Monica to come up behind me out of the shadows.

She didn’t.

I went back to the school and dried off. A few minutes later, the two young girls returned and told me that Biar Monica was waiting for me at her house. They said they could show me where it was. I told them I didn’t want to go. They didn’t leave right away this time; they were a little upset I didn’t want to go with them. A couple of men were at the school, including the teacher, and they asked the girls what the matter was. After they told the men that Biar Monica wanted me they both smiled.

“Go ahead, you can go talk to her.”

“Really, I’m not interested.”

Me and Jeff had the second shift that night, and I wanted to be able to get to sleep right away at 21:00, so I could get some shut-eye before our shift at 1:30. I headed up to the store to grab a couple of beers (healthier versions of sleeping medication.) When I passed behind the school, someone was waiting in the dark. Biar Monica motioned for me to come to her. She wearing short shorts and a tight-fitting tank top. I decided to humor her little game and asked her what she wanted.

“What do you want?”

“I want you, now come here next to me.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know you.”

“Come here cutie, I want you.”

She grabbed my wrist and I tried to pull it away. She held on with surprising strength, obviously very upset I didn’t want to get with her. It’s not that I am scared of the opposite sex, it’s just that hooking up with random, strange girls in dark alleys in the middle of the night in crazy little towns isn’t my thing. I said sorry, but I don’t want that. I went to the store, grabbed my two beers to go, and headed down to the beach. Biar Monica left me alone after that.

Chapter 7: TURTLE POWER

Me and Jeff laid our towels on the sand and chatted a bit. He’s a turtle expert, and I love learning about wildlife, so I listened to all the cool stuff he knew about these endangered sea reptiles. After a while, he nodded off and I went to the woods to defecate. As I was walking through the trees, I heard some sort of scurrying sound on the ground. I shined my flashlight but couldn’t find what had made the noise. I kept walking, and more of the scurrying noises started up around me. I shined my flashlight again and saw a huge, red crab frozen in its tracks right in front of me. A handful of its buddies hid themselves behind trees and in the leaves. I had seen lots of crabs on the island before, but these forest crabs were enormous! And so were their pinchers. But I had to use the restroom. So I found a spot that seemed devoid of crabs and squatted down in the dark. The scurrying continued around me, and I kept thinking one of the crabs was going to waddle over and pinch my butt, just like in a cartoon. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I returned to the beach and went to sleep.

It seemed like I was only asleep for a few minutes when someone was shaking me awake. I couldn’t make out who it was and for a brief, panicked moment, I thought it was Briar Monica, or the red-eyed boy. But it was Lelé, and he whispered “Tataruga!” I woke up Jeff and told him.

We followed Lelé down to the shore, and then slowly, silently crept back up the beach. Lelé lay down in the sand and pointed to a dark shape ahead of us. I could just hear it slowly shuffling around. We needed to wait until it started laying its eggs. While it does, it goes into a lethargic state and is less aware of its surroundings. Until it does however, it’s wide awake and easily disturbed. Jeff said it can take 45 – 90 minutes for a sea turtle to come to shore, lay its eggs, and return to the ocean. The five of us, (Sydney was there as well,) waited in the sand behind the turtle.

Soon enough, Katarina and Lelé fell asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. I sat and watched the waves. Tiny shrimp, a.k.a. zooplankton, which emit a bluish light when disturbed in the water, were illuminating the water as the waves crashed. The effect of their collective flashing made the roaring water look just like thunderheads strewn with lightning.

I was about to fall asleep when Jeff came and told us she was laying. He had been following her, creeping along on all fours. He showed us where she was: right next to a small fishing boat. That showed how dangerous it was for the fishermen to leave their boats there: as they drag them through the sand they could destroy a nest, if the babies hatched and the boat was above them they couldn’t emerge, and it diminished prime sand space the turtles need to lay their eggs. But the fisherman say it’s the only spot they can pull in their boats without worrying about damaging them on rocks which cover the rest of the beach. Gotta find a mediated answer which satisfies everyone.

Jeff led us behind the turtle and told me to make sure I didn’t get in front of her. I crouched down and shined my flashlight, with its red piece of paper taped over it, at her. She was a magnificent specimen: huge and gorgeous. I could see why they called them loggerheads, her head looked at big as mine. The shell was enormous and thick. I couldn’t believe that this massive animal had just beached itself out of the ocean onto the sand in front of us. The flippers were leathery and had a beautiful, yellow and green design on them. She used her back flippers to dig the nest. She had shaped it like a lightbulb: large and wide on top, and then narrow and deep toward the bottom. The sides of the nest were perfect. It was amazing: she had used her flippers to scoop up sand just like a human hand would, all without turning her head around. Her cloacae hung down from the back of body and I saw her tense up as an egg shot out into the nest below. The eggs were a brilliant white, the shape and size of ping-pong balls. Her body tensed and relaxed as each egg dropped out. A thick fluid was being released with the eggs, which Jeff informed me was an anti-bacterial/anti-fungal excretion which protected the nest from mold and infection. So cool.

I was livid; it was one of the coolest things I had seen. We all had stupid, big smiles on our faces. As soon as she was finished, the turtle rangers got down to business. While she started filling in the nest, Sydney threw down a cord so they would know exactly where the eggs were. They measured the length (86 cm) and width (77 cm) of the shell. She was a meter long. Then Jeff showed Sydney how to tag the turtle: they used something that looked like a stapler to pinch a metal tag on the back of each of her flippers. The tags had Jeff’s organization’s information on them. Their hope is that they, or others, will find this turtle again somewhere, and they will be able to map out its migration patterns. Katarina got out a scalpel and cut off a tiny, pencil-lead sized piece of skin from one of the turtles flippers. She put it in a vial with alcohol, and will use it later for DNA testing. I touched her flippers, and ran my hands across her shell. She struggled for a while to remove herself from the nesting area, waving her flippers as it she was swimming in water. Finally she was out, and shuffling along in the sand back to the ocean. Sydney and I followed her, and watched as she reached the waves. One, two, three waves covered her as she shuffled farther out, and suddenly she was gone, under the water and swimming out into that great blue expanse she calls home, and we call the sea.

THE END

Afterword

So I got my chance to see a sea turtle lay her eggs. I thank the Lord for that; I did ask Him for that favor and he gave it to me. The next day I got the heck out of Carriçal. Fortunately there was a car heading back to Ribeira Brava with some tuna the fishermen had caught. The rest of the rangers stayed behind. I don’t envy them. It was very nice to get back to my nice, cool village in the mountains where I know everybody and inbreeding is kept to a minimum. I would love to be involved in future turtle conservation efforts and may make the attempt to camp out on the beach again soon. And hey, in a couple months there will be another sight to catch: the baby hatchlings emerging from the sand!

What is a bot fly? Well, there may be several species, but the one we got basically looks like a regular house fly, only larger, hairier, and more sinister. The females have a large, red, disgusting looking abdomen which they use to deposit their larvae on other unsuspecting living creatures. This is the adult form: their spawn look much different, but we’ll get to that. I think they are smarter than regular house flies too, because they always seem to know when I am coming in to kill them, even when I’m not very close, and fly away. If you are able to smash one, their larvae come squiggling out of their abdomen. It’s terrifying. For those not familiar with my first run in with bot flies, let me review.

During Pre-Service Training, or PST as it’s called, we were warned about the dangers of bot fly. These nefarious invertebrates can deposit their eggs on the skin of other animals. The larvae then hatch and burrow into the tissue of the host. They feed on the flesh of their host, growing bigger and stronger each day. After 2-3 months, they hatch and fly away. The tricky thing about this bot fly is that it tends to lay its eggs on wet laundry drying outside. Then if the owner of the clothes wears them, the larvae may hatch and burrow into their skin.

This did not sound very appealing. I was already sweating constantly, smelling horrible, living with a family I didn’t know and couldn’t speak to, and wracked by diarrhea. Plus those PST sessions were the longest, most boring seminars I have sat through since “grass month” in Plant Identification class during college. And then we’re told that insects may grow in our flesh? What if a bot fly laid eggs on my pillow sheet? Or my boxers!?!?

According to those familiar with the bot fly, you can (hopefully) kill the eggs which are laid on your laundry if you iron your clothes after washing them. The theory being the heat kills them off. So at first I did this. I washed my clothes by hand, let them dry, and ironed them. But after a few weeks I got pretty bored of ironing every piece of clothing I washed. So I mainly focused on my boxers, where I most feared the bot fly.

It was a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday because I was at the technical school in Assomada for a group session. Every other week day trainees were split up into small groups with a language/cultural instructor. But on Wednesday all trainees came together for all-day sessions on health, safety and security, gender development, and other topics. This particular Wednesday was rather hot. I was sweating through my clothes, as usual, and started to feel a bit itchy. I scratched around my left shoulder and back and felt a few bumps. I took a peak down my shirt and saw a number of red spots that sort of looked like pimples. I then got a bad feeling in my stomach.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom. In the bathroom, I took off my shirt, and saw over twenty red bumps covering my left shoulder, back, arm, and chest. The bad feeling in my stomach got worse. I approached the mirror for a better view. Then, taking a deep breath, I squeezed one of the large bumps. Almost immediately, an ugly, white, squirming, maggot popped out onto my finger. Its black head swung back and forth. It seemed ticked off to have been prematurely thrust out of the warm, moist, and dark world of my flesh into this bright place.

I started hyperventilating. I smashed the larvae on the counter and squeezed another bump. This one was more reluctant to come out. It died next to its brother on the bathroom counter. I put my shirt back on and decided that if I was going to tackle these guys, I needed to do it at my house, alone. I felt dirty and embarrassed. I didn’t want someone walking in to see me removing maggots from my skin. Before I left, I went to the nurse’s office and asked if I could see her. Other trainees were already with her, and she said she was too busy to see me just then. I thought “Their headaches or stomachaches can wait damnit! Can’t you see I’ve got freakin’ worms in my flesh!” Fine, I decided, I would do this myself. I left the school before the session ended.

I had heard that if you put Vaseline on the bumps, the larvae cannot breathe. They move closer to the surface and are easier to remove. So I went to a Chinese loja, bought a tube of Vaseline, and caught the next Hiace going toward my town of Achada Lem. At my house, I quickly greeted my host family and went to the roof, where my room was. I had heard that the maggots are not dangerous, that most injuries occur when people try to extract the maggots incorrectly, and infections grow at the wound site. I had also heard stories of other people who let the maggots grow in their skin for weeks, just to see what would happen. But according to the stories, the pain can grow unbearable as you feel them feeding on your flesh. In any case, I was dead set on getting those damn worms out of my body as soon as possible.

I had a tiny mirror in my room, and used this to help me pop out a few that were living on my chest. This seemed to work fine, however we didn’t have electricity that day and the sun was setting rápido. It became increasingly difficult to see the bumps. It was also hard to reach the bumps on my back. The Vaseline didn’t seem to be working either. I fortunately found some plastic tweezers in my med-kit, and these were very useful. I spent two hours up there in the fading light with my tiny mirror, praying to God to help me, trying to remove bot fly larvae from my skin.

Besides a few sores which healed surprisingly quickly, I ended up alright. A little more cautious, and a little wiser. I also believe that I didn’t get the bot flies from my clothes, but from my sheets, which my host mom washed, and I never thought to iron. See, the maggots were concentrated on the left side of my body, and I sleep on my side at night. So that night, I ironed my sheets, which is a difficult task in itself. Not having electricity made it even more difficult. I had to use an old iron my family had which was made out of, well, iron. I would place it on hot coals until it warmed up, iron a bit of the sheets, place it back on the coals, repeat. It was a fun day. But I swore I wouldn’t get bot fly again. And I didn’t. Until today.

You really only need to worry about bot fly after the rainy season, because that is when they come out in force. So after the weather dried up and insects died off, I stopped ironing my clothes again. Today I got done taking my bath and felt a small bump on my back when I was drying off. It felt sort of tender, and I thought it was pimple. I gently tried to pop it, but nothing happened. Then I got a bad feeling in my stomach. What if it was a cancerous mole! I always try to remember sunscreen, but I have definitely let myself get very burned here a number of times. For some reason, this African sun doesn’t tan me; it burns me to a crisp. So maybe a mole on my back, of which I have many, had grown cancerous. My mom is going to kill me. And where the heck am I going to get this mole removed?

I put on some shorts and went out my front door, knowing someone I knew would be hanging around and could give me a second opinion. Sure enough, Bia, my neighbor and mother of four, was passing by. I called her over to check out the bump. At first she said “Oh that’s a pimple.” Then she paused and said “Hmmmm….” I didn’t like that. She said “Wait no…yep that’s a largarta.” Largarta means caterpillar, or….maggot. I started hyperventilating.

Bia called over Titinio, an older man who has countless children in Cachaço with several different women. He is a very friendly, talkative guy and seems to know a great deal. His opinion about a common Cape Verdean ailment would be accepted as a certainty. He came over and fingered the bump and said, “Hmmmm….yep that’s a largarta.” He took a look at my astounded, fearful face and started laughing heartily. “Don’t worry,” he said, “This is nothing. We can take that guy right out.” I said, “Ok so what are you waiting for, get this out of me!” But they said “No! No! It’s too early, that could do bad for your skin. You need to let it mature. The day after tomorrow we’ll take it out.”

Just then Tanya, my girlfriend’s sister, walked by and asked what was going on. I didn’t want her to know; because I didn’t want Xanda finding out her boyfriend had a worm living in his skin. I just didn’t think she would find it that appealing. But they immediately told her, and she laughed at me and said “Steven! Dogs get largartas! You’re a dog!” Thanks Tanya. Then she showed me a scar on her forehead. “See this? I got this from a largarta when I was just a baby.” This didn’t make me feel better. By this time a few people passing by had stopped to see what was going on. I moved to return to my house. Before I left, Titinio said “Don’t worry Steven. If you let that guy grow, he would just hatch on his own after 2 or 3 months.” I said, “Titinio, there’s no way I am waiting 3 months for this largarta to get out of me.”

But I will wait a couple days. Then I’ll ask Bia to pop him out. For now, it’s almost like I have a little friend hanging out with me. Just chilling in my back. Eating me.

My house is right on the main road that runs through my town. Last year the road was paved with concrete: before that it was cobblestone. All other paths in my town are dirt and rock. I have a pair of flip flips I wear inside my house and a pair for outside, because any footwear worn outside on the paths of Cachaço quickly become covered in orange dirt. So if you wear sandals after you take a shower at night, you need to wash your feet before you go to bed, or your dirty feet cover your sheets with orange soil.

Everyone here wears flip flops, or cheap plastic sandals, all of the time. So people’s feet are usually filthy during the day, especially children. It’s just dirt though, and dirt don’t hurt, right? Cape Verdeans bathe regularly, sometimes twice a day, and fully half of each bath is devoted to cleaning the feet. Baths are generally taken outside, while wearing underwear. First they scrub their feet on whatever rock or bit of concrete is nearby: really scrub ’em. Then they pick up whatever stone they use for washing their feet and scrub them with that. Then they use a brush and soap to scrub ’em some more. I recently found a nice volcanic stone to wash my feet with.

I have gotten used to the cold showers. For the first few months they were shocking, and sometimes I heated up water and took bucket baths. Now I enjoy them, especially if it’s hot out. I shower in a plastic tub, and have learned to wash my boxers each time after I shower in the water I used, and hang them up to dry. This is because Xanda made fun of me for not doing so. We pour our shower water in a bucket and use it to flush the toilet. If my roommates or wife don’t mind too much, I may continue this in the States.

My house is right on the road. Let me take you through a day at my house. If you were in my living room for 24 hours, these are the things you would hear and see. Mostly you would hear things. At 7 a.m. Mulgalda, also known as Antonia, starts barking. She is the 60 something year old women who lives behind me with her husband Frank and adopted daughter Inicia. She must have been a pretty lady in her youth, now she is as wrinkly, worn, and fragrant as old newspaper. She smokes a pipe and cooks food in a smoky hut, so her voice is very hoarse. Somehow, every morning at 7 a.m. she finds something to yell about. Usually she’s yelling at Inicia. She paces by the side of my house barking up the neighborhood. Once the morning is over, she is quiet for the rest of the day. It’s only during this hour that she feels the need to let Cachaço know she is still capable of pushing her vocal cords to the limit.

Her competitor for screeching shows up around 7:10: Lydia, the fish lady. Lydia rolls into town on whatever pickup truck brings her in from Tarrafal, the port town where the fish are brought in. She stops right in front of my house and starts belting out “Peixe! Peixe! Peixe!” She really only sells to my immediate neighbors, so she yells out their names as well: “Anna Mariiiiiaaaa PEEEEEIXE! Mulgaaaaada PEEEEEIXE! Georgia! OOOOOH Georgiaaaaa! PEIXE!” These ladies come to her with their baggies and buy their fish for the day. They don’t live far from me, so Lydia could easily walk over to their homes and say their names, however I believe she enjoys contributing to the uncontrolled racket characteristic of every Cachaço morning. Just about the time Lydia has sold her last fish, the fish truck rolls in.

You know the fish truck is coming because the driver blares his horn as he drives. This is so all of the women know to come running with their fish bags. The truck always stop directly in front my house, sometime between 7:00 and 7:30. Then the driver slams his hand on the horn and doesn’t let up for a good five minutes. Now, if you have ever been caught in Los Angeles traffic, you may know how annoying a loud car horn can become after 5 minutes of constant blaring. The people in the bed of the truck sell their fish, and move on.

By this time, all of the children are up and trying to make as much noise as possible before they need to get to school, if it is a weekday. They scamper around the path and road in front of my house, and many times climb my stairs, which are outside, to the unfinished second story. Up there, they continue to scamper around doing Lord knows what at 7:30 a.m. above my head.

Maybe it’s because their older siblings are leaving for school, but around this time all of the babies start crying. Every house in Cachaço has babies, and Laura, the daughter of my neighbor Marlene, loves to cry in the morning. She sits in the dirt in front of her house next to mine and cries as I brush my teeth.

During all of this mayhem Hiaces are stopping in front of my house. A Hiace is van, also known as African buses, and is what people, including myself, use to get around. As you might have been able to tell, my house is located in a hot spot of Cachaço, right where the main concrete road connects with a main dirt road. So people are always waiting around for a Hiace right outside. When they roll up, the drivers are usually blaring loud zouk or funana or Akon songs. All of these Hiaces stopping and going are like a bad mixed tape.

While all of this is going on, every rooster in Cachaço, in São Nicolau, and in Cape Verde is crowing its head off. And there are a lot of damn roosters in Cape Verde.

The foot traffic for the water tank starts up at about 8:00, and although the women carrying their water vessels don’t make much noise, their donkeys certainly do. Donkeys can really belt it out if they feel like it.

Everyone in Cachaço has at least one dog. Some of them are left to wander as they like, others are left attached to 3-foot long leashes, where they will remain the rest of their lives. People have them so they will bark. Apparently, the dogs will alert them if someone is coming to steal from their house. First of all, I say, Cachaço has almost no crime, and if there is a thief aloof it will be someone you know, who knows how to get what they want without worrying about a barking dog. Second of all, if the dogs are always barking, how will you ever know if they are just barking for the hell of it or because a vicious intruder is nearby? And third, you are all used to the sounds of barking dogs, so you just sleep right through it at night. Well, “Its tradition,” they say. So nobody ever tells there dog to shut up, and there’s no bringing them inside. So at this time of morning, and all night, all of the dogs are barking too, probably because they think it’s funny. I just think it’s ridiculous.

My roommate Brendan combats this racket by doing yoga every morning with headphones blaring music in his ears. I haven’t found a solution yet, so I just go about my mornings fuming or laughing.

Don’t let this picture of sound dismay you from visiting me. At 9:00 every day all of this noise magically stops. I don’t understand it. It just turns off. I go to work at 8:30, and on the rare occasion I return home to get something, I find my house dead quiet. You could theorize that everyone and every animal is conspiring to create this racket so that people will get out of the beds and off to work early. However everyone else here is used to the noise and can sleep right through it. It’s just Americanos such as myself who grew up waking to little birds chirping outside the window or the sounds of bacon frying in the kitchen who can’t handle the sounds of Cachaço mornings.

Before I make breakfast, I often times send Zelito, the 7 year old boy who is the son of my neighbor Arlinda, off for groceries. Usually he buys bread for me, but sometimes I need milk or butter or something else. I give him a bag, tell him how many rolls I need (sliced bread is hard to come by), and go about my morning until he returns from the small store up the street. He’s a smart kid, and knows to charge me 20 Escudos or a bowl of cereal for each errand.

For a while, we were delivered a liter of milk each morning. A neighbor would milk their goat and sell it in a wine bottle. I learned to milk a goat into wine bottle, and almost bought a goat. But then I found out I would have to collect grass and weeds for it daily, give it water, and milk it every morning. I don’t have a field either, so collecting the grass would have been difficult every day.

If I want fish, I just have to step outside and buy from the noisy truck, although they only have mackerel. Every now and then another, quieter, lady comes by with good fresh fish like grouper and tuna on her head. Also we get fresh meat delivered the day they kill and butcher it. The butcher, or friend of the butcher, comes around asking people how many kilos they want of goat, or pig, or cow, and when they think they have sold most of it, they kill it (at night if it’s a cow, early morning if it’s a pig,) and deliver the bloody bags to each home. Pig is the cheapest, and everyone’s favorite here, but very fatty. Hey, totally organic, hormone-free, never frozen meat! Most other volunteers don’t have as good of access to meat, but for us it’s no problem.

Every now and then the produce truck rolls by, and we grab a few kilos of apples, oranges, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, ect. It doesn’t come often though, so we usually need to make a trip to Ribeira Brava or Tarrafal for produce.

So on any given morning, I can have fresh bread, milk, fish, fruit, vegetables, or meat come right to my door.

For drinking water I have two choices. I can use the water which comes from the concrete tanks on the second story, and filter and bleach it. But that water is a bit dirty, and untreated it only good for cooking, bathing, and cleaning. I have fished dead cockroaches, lizards, and geckos from this water, and I can see the drippings of cockroach feces along the tank walls. Most people’s tanks have tiny fish in them, which come from wherever they gather the water to deliver to homes. The other choice is to make a trip to the town water station, or have someone make the trip for you, with a water container. The water station is open from 8:30 – 10:00 every day except Sundays, and run by someone from Cachaço who works for the government. You pay 3 Escudos, or like two cents, each water container. Anyone from Cachaço who doesn’t have piped water needs to go here every day for water. Everyone uses large yellow or white 25-Liter containers, which once were full of vegetable oil. You can get them at the tuna canning factory in Tarrafal. I recently read a National Geographic all about WATER, and I noticed in the pictures that women around the world from India to Kenya are using the same plastic cooking oil containers I am. Well the water at the water station comes from the mountains above Cachaço and is delicious and clean. When at other homes in Cachaço I drink this water straight, but at home I just let it run through our sitting filter. It definitely tastes better then super-treated pesticide-rich Heartland water, and is comparable to Colorado water.

For breakfast, I usually make toast. I use a frying pan for this: slice the rolls up and let them toast there. I tried roasting them over the gas burners, but this doesn’t work as well. We have a type of metal kettle to make coffee. You put the water in the bottom of the kettle, a couple spoonfuls of grounds in the filter above this, and then screw on the top compartment. The water boils and rises through the filter, up into the top compartment. But I’ve also learned that coffee can easily be made just using a pot. Everyone merely boils some water with coffee grounds for a while, and then pours a bit of cold water on top. The grounds all settle on the bottom and you are left with fresh coffee. Who needs a French-press for backpacking?

By breakfast time, the flies have awakened and are ready for another fun-filled day of annoying the heck out of me. We recently had screens put on our windows, but tons of flies manage to get it. Actually, I am sure they wait right outside our front doors. I’m not joking: you can see them there. They hover around, waiting for someone to open the door, and then pour in without hesitation. Of course once they’re inside, they can´t get out. So our living/dining room always has between 4 and 15 flies searching for food or bodies to land on during the day. To get rid of them, I either hunt each fly down with a rolled up magazine and smash them, or if there are many, I open the front door and wave a shirt towards it to try to herd the majority out. But they remain. If you try to take a nap during the day in the living room, flies enjoy to land on the same spot on your body over and over just to annoy you. They always wait until you are about to fall asleep. Faces are a favorite. It’s terrible. They have stopped landing on our fly tape too. I think that some of them figured out that once you land on the tape you can’t get off, told their buddies, and now they pass the information on to their kids when they’re just little maggots. The lives of flies take up a lot of our thinking time. Fortunately flies go to sleep in the evening.

At 8:20 I go to work. As soon as I step outside my door I have to start greeting and talking to people, because my neighbors and fellow townspeople are always hanging around outside my house. “Bon dia! Tude dret? Bo durmi dret? Gents na casa sta tude bon? Ta bai pa trabadju? Anton sta dret.” (Good morning! Everything alright? You sleep well? Everyone in the house is good? Going to work? Well that’s just swell.) These greetings are exchanged numerous times before I reach the town plaza. Then I turn up the path to the Casa do Ambiente, where I work. At this time, Xanda is usually coming down the mountain with Besta, her donkey, and her containers of water, so I am able to say bon dia before work.

At 12:30 I return home for lunch and at 3:30 work ends. We wash dishes in large bowls, and use the leftover water to flush the toilet or water our malagueta (hot pepper) plant and goiva tree. Dinner is usually some sort of fish or meat with rice. Potatoes, squash, and sweet potatoes are often eaten with dinner. I have learned how to cook squash here. Usually I boil it along with potatoes and meat, and it’s great. But you can also go one step further after it is boiled and blend it with a hand-held blender. If you added other vegetables, this makes great vegetable soup. You can also grill squash, either on a grill or frying pan. Friday night I fried it, slicing it up like thick fries and putting the pieces in hot oil. It was delicious, although as my friend pointed out, most things are tasty fried. If rice isn´t on the menu, pasta usually is. Every now and then I make tortillas, which go quickly because I love them so much. Sometimes, like last weekend, I make salsa.

Speaking of which, for the first U.S.A. match in the World Cup against England this weekend, us Americans got together to watch the game. We made hamburgers out of real ground beef (brought in special from a different island,) homemade chips and salsa, and brownies (the mix brought in from America). It was delicious and a real special treat. Actually, my stomach got a little upset: it´s not used to all of that rich food. I´ve been low on cash lately and have been eating mostly beans and rice and bread. We went to a festa after the game and I had to make an emergency trip to a dark alley. I know it sounds disgusting, but there were no public bathrooms, even at the dance halls, and I was in a town I had never been to before, and so couldn´t drop by a friend´s house.

Back to my house. In the evening, all of the men enjoy hanging out in the alley and street outside my house. My neighbor Arlinda´s house is a local watering hole, and a second bar is up the path room my house, so my house sits right in between these two grog spots. Until about 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. guys are hanging around in the street. It is about this time the dogs start barking. They keep barking until morning.

At night, if I haven´t gone to Xanda´s house for dinner, I visit neighbor´s homes or stop by for a ponchi at one of the bars. Sometimes I stay in and watch a movie on my laptop or read a book.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, my neighbor Marlene comes by to do a cleaning of the house. She does the dishes, sweeps and mops, cleans up the front porch, cleans the bathroom and kitchen, and generally organizes the house. I love Marlene. We pay her 2000 Escudos a month.

Once a week I drop my clothes off at our neighbor’s house. We pay for this service too. Although recently Xanda has helped my wash my clothes. By helping me I mean she washes my clothes. This is an unexpected perk of having a girlfriend in Cachaço. Girlfriends normally wash their boyfriend’s clothes. If I don´t have to go to work, I help her out. She puts Hudson on her back and wraps him up there with a blanket or towel. That's how most women here do their work if they have a baby.

Right now invertebrate and rodent levels are at a minimum. This is because it has been dry since October. The rains will be starting soon, and life will reawaken. It will become green again, and all of the botfly, house fly, fruit fly, mosquito, mouse, lizard, gecko, cockroach, centipede, spider, and ant populations will explode.

My house, from morning through the night. Recently my mother said to me “Well I guess when you return to America you will miss the quiet and calm you had in Africa.” I have never lived in a busier or noisier house than my current one in Cachaço. There was a lot of activity in the hippie house I lived at for 6 months in Fort Collins, but at least those parties were restricted to night hours when hippies are most active. But again, don’t worry, when you visit me it will all seem like a good time. We’ll laugh about it together over a cup of eucalyptus tea, the leaves of which I pluck from my tree.

Another festa! I know, it seems like that's all I do. At least I am learning to dance. But this festa was great, it was the biggest festa of the year for my town, and one of the biggest on the island. It celebrated our church's holiday, that of the ascension of Jesus. Because my town is right in the middle of the island, everyone is able to meet up with us for a couple days and nights to eat grilled kabobs of pig, drink ponchi, and of course dance. I went to church on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Sunday's Mass was very beautiful, people in my town have been preparing the church for over a month for the Mass. They gave it a paint job, did a bunch of landscaping, and put up strings of flags and poles. I helped wash the church windows, weeded a bit, and installed some of the pine branch wrapped poles. At the Mass, during the bearing of the gifts, people from my town brought up food from the land, such as potatoes, beans, bananas, manioc, papaya, and squash as well as bread and wine that would become the Body of Christ. Girls danced before the procession, and we have a great choir. There was no way everyone could fit inside of the church, so everyone was outside, and most people were standing. That afternoon, my friends and I went around to a number of houses to eat modj and sanfana. Sanfana is goat stomach mixed with corn meal and fried. It's an acquired taste. Modj is that traditional dish of stewed potatoes, manioc, green bananas, and goat. Every house served it that day to tons of friends and family members who visited them. It was great, I was stuffed. I have never experienced something like that before, being able to go house to house and be served plates of food. The closest we come to that in the States is on Halloween. I met one of Xanda's sisters, and went to her house with another volunteer on Saturday to bring them down to the festa. Fortunately, Xanda has been giving me zook lessons and I am really coming along in my dancing skills. We had organized a group of people to pick up trash along the main road in Cachaco before the festa, but it looks like we should have done it after. It was quite the party, and although the trash cans were overflowing (which is a good sign! people are using them!) there is still a lot of trash along the road. Overall, great time, excited for next year.

I am teaching English Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the elementary school in my town of Cachaço. I have 11 students total. My roommate teaches English for those who have no English experience, including my girlfriend who is in his class, while I offered class to those who already knew some English. This proved to be a bit complicated however, as my students vary extensively in their English speaking ability. Recently, I have split the class up into two groups. The less advanced group is required to come from 5:00 – 6:00 and the more advanced group is required to come from 6:00 – 7:00 Monday and Wednesday. Both groups are encouraged to stay for the additional hour if they can. Everyone comes together then at 5:30 until 7:00 Fridays for English word games. Today we are playing Jeopardy! All the students have to pay 350 Escudos ($5.00) at the beginning of each month. Classes will go on for three months. If they don’t have more than two unexcused absences, 200 Escudos is returned each month. We did this because other volunteers who have taught classes have found that unless a good amount of money is involved, people don’t come or stop coming. The remaining 150 Escudos is used for buying notebooks, pens, and pencils for all the students, and any printing expenses. We also will print off nice diplomas for all of the students, which are nice because they can show them to future employers. We keep attendance, so the amount of hours they completed will show on the diploma (another motivation to come to class.)

So, I have never taught English, have no training in doing so, and do not have a lesson book, or even a basic English grammar book. My youngest student is 18, my oldest is 45. I have never taught adults in consecutive classes, and have little experience teaching in Kriolu. I am not even that good (well?) at English. So it’s a bit stressful. I constantly worry that they aren’t learning anything, that I am going too fast or too slow, or teaching too far above or below their level. Then I worry that I am not teaching the language correctly, or class is boring, or I’m not teaching what they want to learn. I try to ask for feedback, but everyone says, “No, no teacher, class is fine.” Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much. My friend pointed out that they are getting English classes three times a week for about two bucks a month, so even if they are bad it’s a good deal. That’s comforting. Well, in any case, I’m learning myself!

My Kriola

My girlfriend’s name is Alixandra Maria Ramos. She goes by Xanda, which is pronounced Shanda. She lives in my town of Cachaço, which is where we met. I had dinner at her house a couple times; she had burritos for her first time at mine. Pretty quickly, she asked me if I was her girlfriend. I said, “Well I don’t know. “ She said, “You better know!” So then she was my girlfriend.

Xanda lives with her mom and dad, who are not married and do not speak to each other, in a very small, three room house higher up on the mountain, on the outskirts of Cachaço. They do not have electricity, which I kind of like. After dinner at night we sit around by the light of a kerosene lamp and have no choice but to talk to each other. I am so glad they don’t have a television to watch Brazilian soap operas at night like everyone else in Cape Verde, because I don’t understand Portuguese and wouldn’t like them anyway.

She works harder than most people I know. Five days out of the week she walks down the mountain side to the shaforis, where people who don’t have water piped or brought to their house in trucks fill up containers of water to bring back to their homes. She makes three trips to and from the shaforis, carrying 20 Liters of water on her head up the mountain to her home each time. I have done it with her a couple times, and it is not fun. My neck throbs with pain afterward. She also helps takes care of the family’s small fields of corn, potatoes, beans, and squash, as well as the goat, pig, and chickens they have. She cleans the house and “yard” every day, and cooks each of the meals. She collects firewood in the forest once a week to use for cooking, and carried her large bundle back to the house on her head. (People carry everything of weight on their heads, and it actually is a great way of carrying stuff! I’m surprised no one does it in the States. Really, anything heavy and awkward to carry in your hands would be best suited for your head. Next time I need to bring a keg of root beer into the house, I’m putting it on my head. You just need to wrap up a shirt or something for a cushion first.) On top of this, she takes care of her 7-month old son. Did I mention she had a son? His name is Rudson (pronounced Hoodsen) and is very cute. She is only 19, which seems very young to have a child, but according to my own observations, 80 - 90% of women over 18 have children here on Sao Nicolau, so it is quite normal by Cape Verdean standards. (Although obviously not ideal for young single women. That’s another blog though.)

She is a good mother. She also is a crack up, and continually makes fun of and messes around with me. I need someone that can put me in my place; my head gets pretty swollen sometimes. I also admire her work ethic; she always refuses my help (although I still give it.) For example, she couldn’t stay for a festa in another town because she had to come back to take care of her animals. I asked her why she didn’t just ask her sister, who would have willingly said yes, to feed them for her. She replied that there was no way she would have someone else do her chores. One day while I was struggling not to fall down the mountain side while balancing a bundle of wood on my head, she asked me to stop, because she doesn’t want my parents coming here and saying “Why did you put our son to all of this hard work!? Look at him, he’s exhausted!” I told her I can handle myself. Oh, plus she’s gorgeous, as you can see in all of the pictures. How I always seem to convince women much better looking than myself to date me I’ll never know.

Xanda calls me a “gato” which means cat in Portuguese. If you call someone a gato in Kriolu, it’s like calling them a “babe” in English. I only recently learned this, and it made me think back to another girl I had a short fling with. Her name was Suzanna, and she would call me a “gato” as well. But I don’t like cats, so I called her a dog. Little did I know she was giving me a compliment and I was insulting her for it. Lost in translation I guess.

Ever since I got to Cachaço, 8 months ago, every single person has been constantly asking my roommate and I when we would get with a Cape Verdean menina. Literally every day someone would ask us if we had found a Cape Verdean women to be with yet. It was pretty annoying. But now that I finally have that Kriola, it seems the opposite has happened. Although there are a number of good friends of mine, men and women, who say nothing but nice things to Xanda and I, like how happy they are that we are together and how they never want us to split up, many people have started passing around some disconcerting comments. People have told Xanda they saw me gathering firewood with her older sister, that I was hugging another girl, that I have a girlfriend in Tarrafal, that I just want to hang out for a while and leave her, that I am leaving for America in January, ect. According to several women I know, this is what people in Cachaço do, they make up lies and exaggerate in an attempt to stir up drama and/or break people up. There is no reason behind this, they just do it. Maybe out of boredom, and living in a small town must have much to do with it. As in most small towns, people love to gossip and get involved with the lives of their neighbors, especially when it is none of their business. As you might be able to tell, this upsets me. What also upsets me is the reaction some people give her when she reveals that she is seeing a white person. People have said that she is crazy to do this, or that she doesn’t like black people anymore. Men, people I considered friends, have told her that white people will just tell lies and leave her, and that white people don’t know how to be with a women. Yes, that white men don’t know how to be with women. I get mad. Some of it is merely in jest, I’m sure, but even so, the kernel of seriousness is there. Also, now that I think of it, I do not think that these sorts of comments would be restricted to only those with white skin. If Xanda was to date someone from Senegal or the Gambia, she might be somewhat chastised as well. It is just the Cachaço response to the intimate inclusion of outsiders. People from Cachaço generally “date” people from Cachaço. If you take any two random people in this town of about 400, they will almost certainly be related, in one way or another. Still, I can’t help but get angry that some people, albeit a minority, who are completely friendly to my face, say racist comments behind my back to my girlfriend. I think that in time things will settle down, and like I said, many people are excited we are together.

Festivals

Labor Day weekend in Sao Nicolau: May 1st. Most families go out for “passeus” or little trips to beaches and other area for recreation and picnics. I went to Praia Français, one of Sao Nicolau’s only white sand beaches, with the rest of the volunteers on the island.

At Praia Français, I wandered around a bit looking for someone I knew. To anyone who didn’t know me there, I looked like any other German or Italian or French tourist showing up at an island party on their vacation. It’s hard not to feel like you stand out when you are the only person with blonde hair and white (or pink, according to my coworkers) skin walking around in their swimsuit at a beach full of Africans. Finally I found someone I knew, my friend Davida, who seemed glad to see me. He suggested a swim and I accepted to we ran and dove into the water. Unfortunately, there are large rocks right at the water’s edge where we were, and although I was able to avoid them when I dived in, Davida smashed his forehead and shoulder right into them. He came up to the surface and was bleeding, but because he was a little tipsy and didn’t want to show he was hurt, said he was fine and proposed that we swim out to some anchored boats nearby. Once we arrived at the boats, he told me to climb up in. I asked him if they were his, and he said no, but not to worry about it. So we hung out on the edge of one of the boats and talked about how bleeding in the ocean is dangerous because of sharks, which according to my friend Felis, were common in that area.

Me and Davida returned to the beach and were greeted by Brett Slezak, Brett Beach, and Chase DuBois, an agricultural extension volunteer. Maria, Davida’s girlfriend, had give Davida their baby daughter Mikaela to hold, but we wanted to grab a beer so Davida dropped her off with some people he knew under a large tent. We got the beer and returned Davida’s tent, where Maria began asking Davida where Mikaela was. Davida, who again was a little drunk, got blank look on his face and it was obvious to all of us he had forgotten where he had put Mikaela. Maria flipped out and yelled at him, while he stood there looking confused. She stormed off, and I reminded Davida where he had put Mikaela. He was relieved and said “Of course! Now I remember.”

We went and found her, and I saw my girlfriend’s sister Tanya. She didn’t know where Xanda (pronounced Shanda) was, but we danced a little to the music that was playing. A man nearby, half-jokingly, said “Oh look that white person can’t dance!” (Certainly he was just saying this because I was white, if I was black and had been doing the same dance moves he wouldn’t have said anything. I think. I mean I’m not that bad of a dancer.) Tanya informed him that I was Xanda’s boyfriend, and because he happened to be Xanda and Tanya’s brother-in-law, we instantly became quasi family. He called his wife over and I met them and their children. Although the parents and one of their daughters were rather dark skinned, two of their children had lighter skin and much blonder hair than me. This is a common trait on Sao Nicolau, where many people’s ancestry is as strongly linked to Europe as it is to Africa.

Just above the beach, a stage had been set up and live music was being played, a rare thing on Sao Nicolau. We drank a draft beer, which is even rarer than live music, and danced to reggae music with the friends we found. For some reason, old drunk men seem to enjoy pestering foreigners, and this concert was no exception as a few smelly guys followed us around repeatedly shaking our hands, dancing with us, and trying to get free drinks. But besides these completely platonic advances, the festa turned out to be a great time. Even though I live on a tiny island, beach parties are hard to come by, so I enjoyed this night.

Festa de Santa Cruz: May 3rd.

Our fisherman friends in Tarrafal have been talking about the festa of Santa Cruz for months. It’s a four day long festival in Altu Fontinha, a zone in Tarrafal. Altu Fontinha isn’t exactly the nice part of town, in fact many people will try to tell you that it’s dangerous and full of crime. However, I know many of the people who live there, and although yes, they are a bit rough around the edges, they’re nice people. I never go hungry around meal time when I’m hanging out there, and I am rarely the one buying drinks. They do not have much money and get by on what fish they can sell. You will usually find at least a couple people passed out on the side of one of the dirt roads running through the zone, and my friends are usually drinking, drunk, passed out, or recovering from a bad hangover when I visit them. But there never is a dull moment, and they would leap onto the back of a tiger shark for you. Basically, they like the grog in Altu Fontinha, so I knew a festa there wouldn’t be too tame. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

I arrived at Altu Fontinha at 2 in the afternoon. There were many people milling around the neighborhood, and several makeshift bars were set up selling food and drinks. Colorful flags hung across the streets from rooftops. I wanted to set my backpack down, so I booked it to the house of my friend Shamus before I could be pulled into a bar for a shot of grog. Shamus pretended to be angry with me for not coming earlier, and invited me inside for a plate of modj. Modj is a traditional dish served at most festas: it typically consists of potatoes, manioc, green bananas and goat. His wife Maria greeted me and gave me a plate of modj. (well, really Mariah is his girlfriend, he is not married but calls his girlfriend his wife as they have some children and have been living together for years. Why they don’t get married? Not sure, but I think he wants to keep his options open. This is the typical situation for many Cape Verdean families) Shamus looked over at her and smiled: “Maria is angry with me, because I have been drunk quite a bit recently.” Maria clucked her tongue, shook her head, and refused to look at him. I found it pretty funny, and refreshing to know that he at least recognized his “wife” didn’t like him being constantly drunk. I stashed my bag in a room: I felt secure leaving my things at his house, I knew nothing would happen to them. We went out into the street.

Outside, I started to run into all of the other men I knew. Everyone was, no surprise, wasted. My best friend there, Felis, put his arm around my shoulder and immediately led me to the closest bar to get a shot of ponchi. Ponchi is grog (the local moonshine made from sugarcane) and is mixed with countless different fruits and sugar. We took a few pictures together, and I was yanked from person to person, each one yelling in my ear about the festa. Felis took me on a tour of the neighborhood, showing me where each of the different activities would take place. Soon enough, the Altu Fontinha parade began. Pairs of men and women wore funky clothes and danced the “cola son pe,` in which the couple bangs their crotches and stomached together, separates, dances, and returns for another belly blast. There was a queen, king, princes and princesses all dressed up pretty like, and a bunch of guys banging big drums behind them. Actually, a buddy of mine was there banging his drum, which he made in his house. Very cool, he used two goat skins stretched out over wooden circles tied down together to make the drum, which looks and sounds great. I was really enjoying all of this until Nunu showed up.

I had met Nunu before, but briefly. He was good friends with everyone in Altu Fontinha. Nunu is 24, and was dressed like an East coast frat guy with plaid shorts and a Lacoste shirt with the collar popped. He was fairly drunk, and obviously had an interest in showing me around, because he immediately grabbed my arm and said “Now! Let’s go eat some modj.” We went to the house of one of his friends and had a plate of modj. From the start, Nunu was extremely annoying. He wouldn’t let me do anything by myself, if he could have put me on his back and carried me he would have. He insisted I eat much and tried to keep me constantly drinking. He would take me by the arm or hand (in Cape Verde, holding hands with another male is acceptable) and lead me where he wanted me to go. In a way it was flattering that someone was showing me so much attention, but for the most part I was pretty tired of this Nunu. We went to another couple of houses and ate additional plates of modj. Eventually we made it to the roof of a house overlooking the parade, and I was enjoying the view until Nunu called me aside in a low voice. We were next to a women washing dishes, but apparently he thought that she could hear whatever he had to say.

He was talking pretty quickly, so it was difficult at first to understand. All I heard was 500 Escudos and have sex. I tried to put the two together, but couldn’t quite make a connection between paying money and sex. I mean, what could we buy to have sex with? Then it hit me. Of course: he meant women. He went into more detail: “Steven look, I know this house, you will pay 500 Escudos, I will pay 500 Escudos, and we will both have sex with some girls! (500 Escudos is about $6.00) It will be great! Last night I went with some friends, I can show you the pictures! Do you have a condom?” Right then, I knew I needed to get the heck out of there, as far from Nunu as I could get. I wasn’t worried, I just didn’t want to be in the presence of such a person if they were trying to get me to see a prostitute with them. Outside in the street, I told Nunu I needed to make a phone call. He sat down on the curb and told me to hurry. I called a random friend on my cell phone and slowly started walking away. Once I got around the corner, I booked it down an alley and headed for the house of Brett Beach, the volunteer in Tarrafal. I told him the festa was great so he needed to go back with me.

I took a shower at his house and my roommate Brendan met us. We went to Altu Fontinhu and ate another plate of modj at Shamus’s house. We ate plenty of “spit” too. Spit are kabobs of grilled pork that people sell on the street: they are delicious and cheap. Nunu showed up again and decided that he would go around and try to find a girl for me, despite my protests that I had a girlfriend. I should have realized, telling a Cape Verdean male that you don’t want to hook up with another girl because you have a girlfriend is about the worst excuse you could think of. They respond with “So? She’s not here, so what’s the problem?” Fortunately, I didn’t see him again until the next morning.

Brendan, Felis, Brett, and I entered the dance area together. The dance area was a walled off polivalenti. A polivalenti is a concrete soccer field. It was a pretty nice place for a dance actually. So we danced, or tried to. With dancing zook, I am still mais ou menos. Later into the night, I had consumed enough beer, grog, and ponchi to think that I could dance hip hop, so I danced three or four songs in a row by myself in the middle of the dance floor. At the time, I was really feeling the beat and thought I was laying down the rhythm Jackson style. If I could see a video of myself though, I think I would cry. But really, what else could I do? At that point none of my friends were in sight. I don’t have the choice of going to a bar or concert and listening to good rock music. Basically it comes down to the old adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Yes, I was the only white person on the dance floor. No, I cannot dance well. But at that point I didn’t care.

The next morning was nice, for once it was cloudy in Tarrafal and a rare sprinkle of rain dripped down from the clouds. Brett’s house is close enough to the ocean that I could walk there with only mask and snorkel in hand and swimsuit on, so that is what I set out to do. I took a random street to get to the nearest beach so I wouldn’t be stopped by anyone I knew. But this is Cape Verde: it’s a small place, you can’t take a step out the door without half the neighborhood knowing. So who shouts at me from a doorway but Nunu himself. He wants to start drinking, but I say I am going to the beach, so he invites himself along. He laid down in the sand while I went for my swim. The water wasn’t perfect, but clear enough for me to spot some marine life. I messed around with a big octopus and caught sight of a moray eel chilling under a rock. When I got back to shore, Nunu was passed out. I took that opportunity to sneak off without saying goodbye. Sorry Nunu, I hope you didn’t think something happened to me. And for any of you, if you come visit me, plan on stopping by Altu Fontinha. I promise that Nunu won’t be around.

English Classes

I am teaching English Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the elementary school in my town of Cachaço. I have 11 students total. My roommate teaches English for those who have no English experience, including my girlfriend who is in his class, while I offered class to those who already knew some English. This proved to be a bit complicated however, as my students vary extensively in their English speaking ability. Recently, I have split the class up into two groups. The less advanced group is required to come from 5:00 – 6:00 and the more advanced group is required to come from 6:00 – 7:00 Monday and Wednesday. Both groups are encouraged to stay for the additional hour if they can. Everyone comes together then at 5:30 until 7:00 Fridays for English word games. Today we are playing Jeopardy! All the students have to pay 350 Escudos ($5.00) at the beginning of each month. Classes will go on for three months. If they don’t have more than two unexcused absences, 200 Escudos is returned each month. We did this because other volunteers who have taught classes have found that unless a good amount of money is involved, people don’t come or stop coming. The remaining 150 Escudos is used for buying notebooks, pens, and pencils for all the students, and any printing expenses. We also will print off nice diplomas for all of the students, which are nice because they can show them to future employers. We keep attendance, so the amount of hours they completed will show on the diploma (another motivation to come to class.)

So, I have never taught English, have no training in doing so, and do not have a lesson book, or even a basic English grammar book. My youngest student is 18, my oldest is 45. I have never taught adults in consecutive classes, and have little experience teaching in Kriolu. I am not even that good (well?) at English. So it’s a bit stressful. I constantly worry that they aren’t learning anything, that I am going too fast or too slow, or teaching too far above or below their level. Then I worry that I am not teaching the language correctly, or class is boring, or I’m not teaching what they want to learn. I try to ask for feedback, but everyone says, “No, no teacher, class is fine.” Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much. My friend pointed out that they are getting English classes three times a week for about two bucks a month, so even if they are bad it’s a good deal. That’s comforting. Well, in any case, I’m learning myself!

I gave another environmental education visit at the elementary school in my town recently. The teachers requested a topic relating to environmental health, so I chose to teach about trash. Cape Verdeans are not accustomed to using trash cans, especially so in rural areas, where litter covers the ground. Most people I know, after they are done unwrapping some candy, finishing a beer, or using a napkin, will casually toss it into the nearest field. Most people don't understand why I get so upset at this, or they make a big show about picking it up (although I know that they next time, when I am not with them, they will continue to throw their trash on the ground.) Really their question is, "why not?" Anyone who knows me knows how upset I get about littering. The concept of proper trash disposal needs to be introduced at a young age here, because otherwise it becomes difficult to change people's habits: behaviors they have learned by observing their friends and family. So, first I talked about what trash is, and what we do not want to throw it on the ground. I (tried) to explain decomposition, and how long it takes for an orange peel (2-5 weeks,) plastic bottles (200+ years,) glass bottles (20,000+ years,)and Styrofoam (never!) to break down. I then gave them ideas on how we can reduce, reuse, and recycle our waste. There are no recycling options on our island, but: Paper we can give to a group of young people who make artisan products out of recycled materials (which are for sale, I will post pictures sometime) in our town, wine bottles are used to sell goat and cow milk (I get goat's milk every day delivered to my door in this way) plastic bottles can be used for juice and bringing water to school, batteries are kept in another container for proper disposal at a landfill, and all organic matter is put in a bucket to give to the pigs. I gave an activity to reinforce these ideas: I put a bunch of random trash together in one big bag, including paper, plastic, bottles, batteries, orange peels, bags, ect., and then dumped it out on the floor outside. The kids then scrambled to put all the different pieces of trash in the proper box, bucket, or trash can that I provided. After, I went throw the containers with them and picked out the pieces which weren't in the correct spot (plastic in the paper container.) Although I am certain that many of those kids threw their candy wrappers on the ground on the way home, certainly one or two made the decision to try to keep Cachaco beautiful after this visit!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 22, 2010

CONTACT: Press Office 202.692.2230

Peace Corps Celebrates Earth Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Peace Corps volunteers around the world are commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day by working with local communities to implement sustainable grassroots projects that protect the environment and increase awareness of environmental issues. Nearly 20 percent of Peace Corps volunteers have primary assignments in the environment and agriculture sectors in 32 countries worldwide. Many other Peace Corps volunteers participate in environment-related secondary service projects in their host countries and will use Earth Day-related activities to engage youth in conjunction with this weekend's Global Youth Service Day.

“I am proud of the sustainable impact that Peace Corps volunteers create by promoting environmental stewardship.” said Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams. “From providing education that improves soil conservation, forestry and vegetable gardening practices to organizing local environmental youth clubs, Peace Corps volunteers not only work to protect the environment, but also to improve public health and support green economies.”

Peace Corps volunteers work in partnership with host communities to implement projects that address local environmental issues. Examples of these projects include reforestation, soil and water management, natural disaster planning, agricultural diversification, energy conservation, the implementation of efficient cook stoves, and the use of biodigesters and photovoltaics. You can see in this video that for Peace Corps Volunteers, every day is Earth Day.

The following are three examples of Peace Corps environmental projects:

Cape Verde

Volunteer Steven Easterby of Omaha, Neb., is working with a local Cape Verde organization on ecotourism management within Sao Nicolau’s Parque Natural Monte Gordo. He helps with visitor management, trail and signage maintenance efforts, and to promote the park as an international tourism destination. “Our hope is that by developing the park, we will be able to attract greater numbers of tourists to an attractive cultural and ecotourism destination, and generate money for the communities within and surrounding the park,” said Easterby.

Lesotho

Volunteer Phil Youngren of Ellensburg, Wash., is working with his local community’s Department of Rural Water Supply in Lesotho to build 250 water supply systems and implement an improved model of ventilated pit-latrines for every household that will gain access to a new water system. Youngren’s goal is to improve public health by improving access to clean water and sanitation facilities for an estimated 150,000 community members. These efforts will help reduce the amount of time collecting water and allow community members to spend more time on educational, economic and leisure activities.

Panama

Peace Corps volunteer Bethany Brandenburg of Frederick, Md., teaches environmental education to over 120 students in a small, rural community in Panama. Brandenburg also helped organize a community effort to plant over 1,200 mangrove trees in a deforested coastal region in her local community. Brandenburg’s other projects include trash management and the husbandry of a local endangered species known as el conejo pintado, a Central American forest rodent.

As Peace Corps approaches its 50th anniversary, its service legacy continues to promote peace and friendship around the world with 7,671 volunteers serving in 76 host countries. Historically, nearly 200,000 Americans have served with the Peace Corps to promote a better understanding between Americans and the people of 139 host countries. Peace Corps volunteers must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Peace Corps service is a 27-month commitment. To learn more about the Peace Corps, please visit our website: www.peacecorps.gov.

Ola!

Trying to send updates through email and Facebook to numerous different people as often as I can whenever I have access to Internet has become too difficult. My solution is to create this blog, hoping that my friends and family will easily be able to read and see what I am up to at their leisure. Also, I can write updates at home and throw them in here whenever I get Internet access. So, bookmark this page if you find yourself curious about what the Midwesterner in West Africa is doing these days. Drop me a message as well, because one of my favorite things is reading about what everyone is up to in the States. I may send out random reminder emails to check this site out, just in case you forget.

Ciao