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…