This past weekend was spent in Tarrafal where I was shadowing a current Environmental Ed PCV – also named Sara. The whole weekend was very confusing because people kept calling out, “Sara!” and every time I thought, “Oh crap, who is that? Should I know that person?” and then realize that they were not talking to me. Anyways, it was a very relaxing weekend and was definitely enlightening to see how an actual volunteer lives. She works with an Ag Association and we visited her office and walked around some planted fields. We visited the site where they raise/breed animals and I saw the biggest pigs I have ever seen in my life. They were massive and would stand on their hind legs with their front legs propped over the edge of their pen so they were eye level with you. It was actually very frightening.

There was a lot of waiting around and life seemed to move very slow. Sara said that one of the things she’s learned is how to be okay with just sitting and doing nothing. I was really impressed by how integrated into her community she was. We went out to dinner with some of her CV friends and it was really nice to see the genuine relationships she had been able to form with these people during her year in Tarrafal.

Other random and entertaining stories from the past few days:

We were waiting for a Hilux from Rochelle’s site back to Tarrafal. Across the street there was a raised terrace with a wall and then about 3 feet of space between the wall and the edge of the terrace. On one side of the wall there was this cow and he was tied to a rope that a guy was pulling on from the opposite side of the wall in an attempt to get the cow to walk around the wall. He was pulling and pulling, but the cow was not moving. This old man who was waiting for the Hilux with us decided to go help so he jumped up on the terrace and starts slapping the cow, which did not react at all. So the man, without hesitating, grabbed the cow’s tail and bit it – obviously, the next logical step after slapping the cow. The cow turned and looked at him like, whoa! What the heck are you doing? Eventually they used a stick to whack the cow and got him to move around the wall. It was a hilarious process to watch; however, out of about 10 others waiting for the Hilux, us Americans were the only ones who found it funny. I suppose biting cows is not uncommon here.

Our Hiace ride back from Tarrafal was packed. At one point there were 25 people in this car that is the size of an AstroVan. Kids were sitting on the laps of strangers, I was sitting on the subwoofer, a dude was standing bent over with his ass hanging out the open window, groceries were crammed in the non-existent trunk and I’m pretty certain that the trunk door was not closed all the way. It was actually pretty impressive how many people fit in there. Most shocking was that everyone seemed to be very good-humored about it all. I can’t even imagine something like that happening in the states and not having everyone in the car in an uproar about what was going on. So we were just about to get into Assomada when our driver sees a police checkpoint ahead. He yells, “Oi! Policia!!” and swerves into the gas station on the side of the road. He opens the door and starts yelling for people to get out of the car. We unloaded about 10 people and were left with 15 people in the car. We pulled back onto the road, stopped at the police check, the police woman looked in the car, counted all of us while she had a smirk on her face and let us go on. There was no way she didn’t realize what just happened – how else could you explain a mass exodus of pedestrians from a gas station?

In Tarrafal we met an American whose goal was to visit every country in the world. Cape Verde was going to be #124.

As I am applying half a tube of anti-itch cream to my mosquito-bite covered body, I think I prefer the flies of Achada Liton to the mosquitoes of Tarrafal. I never thought I would say such things…

Site Placement!!!!!

Today was the heavily anticipated day of site announcements and I found out that I’m going to be spending my next 2 years living on the island of Sal!!!!!!!! They are opening a new national coastal area park and I will be part of the team that gets it going! I am so so sooooo excited! I could not have asked for a better situation! So everyone go Google Sal, Cape Verde and then start planning your vacation out to see me :)

!!!!

I am so incredibly excited and happy and ecstatic and relieved and motivated right now that I can’t even describe it. We found out our site locations today and I am going to be in Sal!!!! I had a feeling that I was going to be placed there, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but being officially told that I would be living there for the next 2 years was awesome (see above description of emotions). My job is going to be working with the new National Park being created on the island. Cape Verde is opening 3 new parks: Boa Vista, Santo Antao and Sal; each of us EEs got placed with a new park. Sal and Boa Vista are going to be part marine/coastal park – how perfect!? The project is still in its very early stages – they are still assembling the team, and I don’t have housing yet. It is going to be quite the experience starting up a national park! I’m sure things will be chaotic and uncoordinated, but how many people can say they helped establish a national park? What a crazy and unreal assignment! I can honestly say that I never imagined that my post for the Peace Corps would be on a white-sand beach and creating a national park. N sta txeu txeu kontenti!!

My CV mom was really sad when I told her I was going to Sal – she cried. She always talks about me staying in CV after PC so I expected her to be sad, but I was not expecting the crying. Then she said, “Oh my God, do you know how to cook? You are going to starve!” and proceeded to explain to me how to cook fish, rice and chicken. It would be awesome if my CV family could come visit me at site, but I think it’s a pretty expensive trip.

Also, got my first care package – vball, floss, toothpicks, power cord for my external hard drive, a BIC lighter (which I gave to my mom, but she seemed uninterested) mints, mac & cheese and RANCH DRESSING!!!! Way to go mom!!

Big Tree

Today was our second day of On-the-Job Training and me and the other EE trainees led a nature hike to the see the biggest tree in CV. We met with an LCF and current EE volunteer at an orphanage in Assomada. From there we rounded up 9 kids ages 10-15 and started walking. The tree was a 40 min or so hike from the orphanage – its located in Boa Entrada, a town just outside Assomada. We hiked down into the valley where everything was incredibly green! It’s the rainy season and planting is in full swing. We saw tomatoes, mangoes, papayas, figs, avocado trees, carrots, kale, manioc, bananas, etc. I felt like I was in some tropical place walking through the jungle.

The tree we went to visit is the biggest tree in all of CV and it was HUGE!! It’s trunk was really wide and was definitely the biggest tree I have ever seen. All the boys climbed up the tree and the girls stood around and watched and threw slugs at each other.

After our visit with the tree, we had a little discussion with the kids about the importance of trees, biodiversity and environmental protection. I was really impressed by how much the kids knew – they were explaining photosynthesis and erosion! It seems that they are learning a lot in school, but its just not carrying over to daily life. For example, they all knew that trash should go into the trashcan; however, just on our walk I saw a girl throw her candy wrapper on the ground. I feel like this isn’t that different from what’s happening in the states – people understand the importance of environmental conservation; yet they continue to do things like consume fossil fuels. The knowledge is there, but the action is not. Anyways, it was encouraging to see that the kids were excited about nature.

Random story: As I said before, to txiga is one of the most common activities in CV and people yell for others to txiga all the time. All the time. Even when it just seems ridiculous. For example, the other day I was at the house of another trainee. Her dad was standing in their front patio when a car started backing into their driveway to turn around. Her dad yells, “Bon Dia! Txiga! Txiga!” Seriously? The dude is in his car! I told my LCF this story, and apparently, it is not uncommon.

The Biggest Tree in Cape Verde!

:)

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for reading my blog and leaving me such lovely comments! I hope my posts are painting a good picture of CV for you all and keeping you entertained (or at least providing good procrastination at work!). I’ve decided that I am going to try to stay on top of my email, so write me!! I want to know what you’re up to back in the US!

Me and Holly after preparing our Cape Verdean lunch - chicken, cabbage, rice, fruit salad and french fries.

Our field trip to Ciudad Velha - one of the first Portuguese colonies in CV

One of the biggest trees in CV

Txeu Txube Txuba (Raining lots of rain)

It finally txube’d today! And torrential txuba at that. The rain clouds were teasing us all weekend – sprinkling a little bit and then disappearing. Its pretty late into August for our first big rain of the season and I think a lot of CVans were relieved to see rain. It was unbelievable how much it rained – heavy rain for probably 30 - 45 min. People were out collecting water in barrels; houses have gutters on their roofs that funnel into barrels; people were sweeping water off the roofs; kids were taking baths; it was general mayhem and a ridiculous amount of outdoor activity for how hard it was raining. My house has a pipe that leads from the roof to the water tank under the house – its pretty neat and it was incredible the amount of water that was coming through the pipe! On top of that, the terra roads did not fair so well and no cars could get through, hence, no school! Woop woop!

The biggest downside of the rainy season (so far) has been the amount of flies around. It is disgusting how many there are. My mom will use a towel to herd a cloud of flies out of the house and literally within seconds they will be crawling all over the table again. Even my mosquito net has caught about 6 flies. My LCF (language teacher) was telling me about an electric fly swatter he saw in Assomada the other day. I am going to get one and have a field day. I think it would be a good stress relieving activity.

My Room.

My kaza.

My ride. The PC Landrover got stuck in the mud on the way to class. Luckily there is a construction site right nearby and so we got a little help. There were about 30 people watching us.

Festas: fun for people, bad for animals

It has been quite the day of cultural immersion and community integration. There were several baptisms happening today (I didn’t go to the actual church event, but I heard that 10 people were baptized at the same time) and for every newly baptized kid there was a festa! One of the girls is my neighbor and another lives a couple houses down the road. As a result, Achada Liton Baixo was bumpin’ today. My neighbors have been preparing for this party for the past couple of days. Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple hours there baking cakes and making mini-donuts (yes, donuts!!!) with my sisters and neighbors. Then, this morning as I was eating breakfast, Matt ran over to my house to inform me that a goat was about to be killed and cooked for the festa. Since week 1 other trainees have been talking about their experiences seeing their families kill animals. I knew I would see it happen eventually and the killing of an animal was something that I was sort of dreading, but also curious about/interested in seeing. So this morning I ran outside to see a big goat being pinned down to the ground by 2 guys and surrounded by a group of kids. Apparently, they had already fed the goat 2 large cups of grog (the extremely potent Cape Verdean alcoholic beverage of choice) and he was surprisingly calm. When killing animals they cut a small hole in the neck and let the animal bleed to death – the blood is used for blood soup and it also makes the slicing and dicing process less bloody. The goat was surprisingly docile during the whole thing. He only squirmed once in the middle. I will spare you the details on what happened because it was pretty sad to watch. Once the goat was dead, they hung it off a tree, skinned it and cut it up. It was quite the morning. The bleeding of the goat was very intense and I had a hard time looking, but watching them skin and cut it up was kind of interesting – they were definitely practiced and they made pretty quick work of it all.

Once I had recovered from that interesting experience, Matt and I went to meet a current PCV at the Centro di Juvenil (Boy’s Home) that’s located a little ways down the road. We hung out there for awhile talking and playing cards. It’s a nice resource to have nearby and could be a potential focus group/connection for my community project. Who knows.

After that we festa’d it up for the rest of the day. We basically hopped back and forth between the two parties. And they were two completely different parties. The one in lower Achada Liton seemed like a local, house party. An older crowd, mostly local neighbors, house was very basic (no bathroom), 1 pot of food. The party next to my house was very posh. The family usually lives in France, but they are CVean and are back for the summer. Everyone was dressed very sharp, the house is really nice and new (running water), younger crowd, 4 giant pots of food (the entire goat was stewing in 1 pot), top-shelf beverages, etc. it was very interesting to see how 2 so very different parties could be in the same small town.

Party 1 (lower Liton) Highlight: I was talking to some people when my mom runs over and says, “Quick, come look there’s a drunk woman in the house!” This older woman had apparently been taking shots of grog all day and she was tearing it up on the dance floor. There is a lot of hip movement in Funana, the popular CVean dance/music, and this lady was not holding back. Every time she bent over all the other women, including my mother, would slap her butt. It was absurd. Eventually she stumbled outside where she proceeded to lie down on the ground and the other women started dousing her with buckets of water.

Party 2 (next door) Highlight: Festa food is the best. While I was very, very sad to see the goat killed this morning, oh my god was it delicious. Goat and manioc stew, pork, a chicken and bean dish and rice = yum. And then there was the cake and donuts and cookies for dessert. I don’t think there was a moment I didn’t have food in my hands (ha).

Serra Malagueta

Had our first day of On-the-Job Training and I am sooooo excited to start working!! I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think that as an environmental volunteer I’m going to get a pretty sick hook-up. Most of the EE volunteers are working in National Parks – there is talk of Sao Vicente, Santo Antao, Boa Vista and Sal. I’m trying not to think about it too much because I don’t want to create any expectations for myself, but its really hard to not speculate. The anticipation is killing me!!

So for our training we went to the park on Santiago, Serra Malagueta, and visited with the 2 current PCers working there. The park is so green and mountainous and beautiful. We talked briefly with the eco-tourism dept there and learned a bit about some of the activities they do at the park and how business goes. They average a little less than 500 foreign visitors a year. That’s less than 2 per day. Not so great. But there are multiple entrances to the park and it seems highly plausible that there are more people coming and going, they just aren’t going to the visitor’s center/paying. I was interested to learn that people actually live in the parks – there is even an elementary school there. The park controls their water usage and dictates how they can use the land; however, many of the park residents are employed by the park/sell their products through the park so it sounds like they are okay with the trade-offs. We met some women who are hired to remove invasive plant species. They get paid 300$00 a day. That is less than $4 USD... The EE who works at the park’s main job is working in the nursery growing endemic plant species that he eventually transplants throughout the park. There are several village women who work in the nursery with him and they also get space in the nursery to grow plants for their own personal use/to sell. It seemed like the park was doing a pretty decent job with encouraging community involvement and keeping the money within the community. However, their lack of paying visitors seems to be a major hindrance.

Anyways, we basically got to hike around the park today. It was awesome. Then we had lunch at the park cantina – rice, French fries and octopus. The octopus was pretty good (although I kept thinking about that World Cup octopus). Tasted kind of like calamari. They whole day just felt like I was on vacation. I could definitely get used a job like that.

Internet!!!

Bon dia everyone! I know its been awhile and I’m really sorry, but since leaving the US my internet access has been quite limited (bordering on none). However, there has been an exciting change of events in which one of the trainees now has internet in their homestay!!! Which means I will be able to get online every once in awhile and post what I've been writing. So there will probably be a couple posts at a time with a time lag, but at least you’ll know what I’ve been up to!

So here we go: the next couple posts are starting from leaving Praia on July 20. Enjoy!

Hope all is well with everyone! Miss and love you all! Mwah!

Mid-PST

Got to use the internet at Pedro Grande’s house today and it was just what I needed. It had been a good 3 weeks since I was last online. While it is nice to not be on the computer all the time, I almost forgot that life was continuing outside of PC and CV. I had over 100 unread emails – it was slightly overwhelming. I have yet to decide whether or not to try and regain control over my mailbox or just let it go.

I am temporarily sans electricity right now – third day in a row. The power will just randomly go out for a couple hours here. I am still not sure why and I don’t have the kriolu vocab to understand what my mom or sisters say when I ask why the power keeps going out. My headlamp has been getting a lot of good use. It can get scary dark here. As our PC safety director says, “when the sun goes down in CV, it gets dark.” <- possibly my favorite piece of advice yet.

People have asked what I do all day, so here’s a typical day for me during PST:

7 am: wake up, brush teeth, make bed (my mom gets very upset when I don’t), eat breakfast, get ready to go

7:45: get picked up by the PC car/hop on a Hilux

8 am – 12:30: Language class in Achada Igreja with Matt, Holly and Africano (language teacher)

12:30: head back home for lunch with my fam

2:00: Hilux it back to Achada Igreja for Technical Training with all the SED trainees (discussing community development techniques)

5:00 pm: get home, txiga with neighbors, hang out with my sisters, braid hair, play scatch and uno, visit with Matt’s family, homework, etc.

7:30/8 pm: eat dinner

9 pm: watch Portuguese novella (soap opera) with my family – It is by far the most dramatic piece of television I have ever seen. For not understanding the language, it is still very entertaining.

9:30 pm: bucket bath

10 pm: bedtime

The days here are pretty long and exhausting.

Working Hard in Africa...

If someone had told me last August that in 1 year I would be sitting in the back of a pick up truck with 10 other people barreling down a mountainside, pitch-black, cobblestone road I would have never believed it. And yet, here I am! This weekend was like a vacation with 2 trips to the beach! On Saturday, Peace Corps organized a field trip for all the trainees and staff to go to the beach in Terrafal for a little R&R and it was the perfect way to relax. Terrafal is at the northernmost point of the island (about an hour drive) and while the vast majority of the people there were locals, there seemed to be some tourists hanging around too – definitely more tourists than I’ve seen anywhere else in CV so far. The water here is unbelievably blue and clear and warm and perfect. It was a day of good company, swimming, lounging, eating, card playing and kite flying. All in all, an awesome day. When I got home I found out that my sisters and Matt’s family were talking about going to Terrafal the next day. They heard how much we enjoyed it there; invited us along and since I am not one to turn down a trip to the beach I ended up at the same beach again today. Even though it was the same place, it was a totally different time. Since Matt’s dad owns a Hilux we had a free ride there and we crammed in ~12 people, granted the majority of them were small children, but it was still tight. There was probably double the amount of people at the beach on Sunday (this sounds like a lot, but it was only crowded comparatively – there was still plenty of room) and they all looked like locals. There were people selling plates of rice, drinks and chicken and fish fresh off the grill. It was delicious. I spent most of Sunday in the water snorkeling around (saw a lot of small fish), tossing my deflated vball around and playing with my little sisters. The snorkel was a hit. I think everyone that came in our Hilux had it on at some point…

Arrived home to find that my mom had killed and stewed and duck. It was delish. I was in the middle of enjoying it with a nice glass of wine and the power randomly went out. Whipped out my headlamp (which everyone really likes. They laugh when I put it on and they tell me that I look ridiculous, but then as soon as I put it down on the table everyone jumps to grab it and try it out.) finished my dinna and then talked with ma rents na merka. Its been a good weekend!