Chinese?!

Its been almost a full week in Sal and life is good. We’ve finally gotten our house cleaned and in order and its feeling quite home-y! The past few days have been spent walking around the city trying to get the lay of the land and talking to everyone that we see. People here are super friendly and are always entertained by us trying to speak kriolu. I think it will be a couple weeks before most people realize that we’re not tourists (although not many tourists venture up to this side of the island). Espargos is a great little place – definitely a city by Cape Verde standards, it has a lot of amenities (restaurants, stores, laundromat, markets, internet cafes, etc.), but is still pretty quiet and has a very relaxed feel to it.

My one complaint is that I wish I had a little bit more to do work-wise. While PC has drilled it into our heads that our primary jobs for the first 3 months is to “integrate” into the community, it would be nice to have a little structure. Currently, my days consist of walking up to the praca to check for internet (which usually isn’t working) and then cruising the streets of Espargos. Its starting to get a little boring. As I’ve mentioned before, I probably won’t be starting work on my official assignment for a couple months since they haven’t even found a local coordinator for the park start-up team. I’ve contacted the DGA (Env. Ministry) rep and met with her. She’s pretty much responsible for everything/anything environmental protection-related on this island – but she doesn’t even have an office, internet or a car so its hard for her to get things done. The main thing I got out of our meeting is that she feels overworked soooo hopefully I can help her out with some projects. She’s headed to Maio for a conference or something for 2 weeks, so I’ve still got some time to kill. I also have been in touch with S.O.S. Tartarugas (a turtle conservation NGO in Santa Maria – check out their website, www.sostartarugas.org and adopt a baby turtle!!) and I think I will try to get more involved with them during these first few months. (Keep reading to find out about my first turtle nest excavation!) Anyways, I’m a little jealous of Holly (my PCV roomie). She is working with the Camara (local gov) in Sal so she’s got a counterpart and an office to go to and a sort-of-job, even though she says she just sits and watches what’s happening around her. I think that the first few months of having a volunteer are very hard for an organization. We don’t speak the language very well, we meet so many new people everyday its impossible to keep them all straight, basically, we have no idea what the heck is going on most of the time, and as a result, people don’t know what to do with us. Oh well, can’t say that all of this was completely unexpected.

Anywhooo, even with a lack of work, there’s been plenty of things happening here in Sal. So here’s a rundown of some of the things that have been going on in my life:

-I don’t know if I’ve written about this before or not, but there is actually a good number of Chinese people here. The Chinese have a monopoly on all of the small shops. There are about 6 Chinese lojas (small stores) that I know of here in Espargos alone. All the stores are pretty much the same, they sell shoes, clothes, sheets, fans, radios, toiletries, kitchenware – really just a hodgepodge of cheap stuff. All are run by Chinese people (that are contracted to come over by the Chinese government). They don’t really interact with the CVans, the only kriolu they know are numbers and I hardly ever see Chinese people outside of the lojas – which makes no sense to me because they obviously live here and need to buy groceries at least. Anyways, the Chinese people in the store get very excited whenever I walk in because I’m the new Asian in town. As soon as I enter, I hear whispers of “oi, xines! Zhongguoren!” its very funny. I usually try to humor them a little bit with my very basic/the 2 phrases of Chinese that I remember from school. And then the conversation usually deteriorates and then they end up just following me around the store giggling. I feel like I need to learn Chinese so that I can stop letting down the loja owners.

-Our apartment has a window in the kitchen right above the sink that looks out to the front stoop of the store. We usually keep it open because it lets in a really nice (and sometimes violently strong) breeze. Also, its perfect for seeing what’s going on outside and trying to make friends with everyone that comes to the store. It has proven to be a very good tool for integration. Last night, I was cooking chicken and the guy who runs the store in the evening was giving me cooking lessons through the window. Given my limited kriolu, the conversation when something like this: "Are you making dinner?" "Trying to make chicken. Do you know how to make chicken? Can you help me make chicken?" "Ok. as;dlkfhaskldfasfashdfaslfhla;sgj;ajfaf." "What?" "al;skdfja;lshgoiewasfsafowen" "Uhhhh, you talk fast. I don't understand." Then accompanied with lots of pointing, "Cut that. Put that in that. Now cut that. Turn that on. Water. Boil. Do you have chicken bouillon cubes??" "No." "What!? Stop. Wait." He runs into the store and comes back with a cube. Dinner was the quite the event. I kind of felt like I was working in a drive-thru. (And dinner turned out pretty good!)

-Sal is one of the Cape Verde islands that is lucky enough to have turtle nesting on several of its beaches and the main NGO that works with turtle protection here is SOS Tartarugas. Seeing as I have a plethora of free time, I figured I would try to get involved with them and see what projects they’ve got going on. Currently, it’s the end of turtle season and the last of the eggs will be hatching between now and Nov/Dec. So the primary duty of the SOS volunteers is to monitor the turtle hatchery and excavate nests. They moved all the nests that were laid in areas that were unsuitable for baby turtle survival (i.e. near construction sites, too close to the water, etc) to a fenced off beach area near the Riu Resort (one of the big all-inclusive resorts in Santa Maria). Each nest is relocated and marked with the number of eggs inside. The volunteers or “rangers” as they are called, check the hatchery every 2 hours. Once a nest has 50%+ natural hatches, the rangers will excavate the nest to pull out shell fragments and unhatched eggs and help any last turtles that are stuck in the bottom of the nest. Lucky for me, the first day I called SOS I was told that they were going to excavate a nest later that afternoon and that I should join. The nest had a total of 80 eggs, 55 of which had hatched the night before. After about 30 minutes of careful digging we pulled out 14 more baby turtles. It was absolutely amazing to hold the little guys and watch them flap their flippers wildly as they scooted around in the sand. SOS also does a lot with environmental outreach and since the hatchery is located right near the resort, they take the opportunity to give a little talk about turtles and allow tourists to watch the nests get excavated. Everyone was oogling over the turtles (and rightfully so!), adopting turtles and nests and taking tons of pictures. It was really exciting to see.

-We finally found the cat that the previous volunteer left for us! He’s a tiny little gray and white cat, very friendly and loves attention. His name is Gizodu (a CV food dish), we’ve dubbed him Little Jizzy for short. We heard a cat meowing outside the building so we chased him down and brought him into our apt. After finally seeing Jizzy we then realized that our previous attempts to attract a gray and white cat were unsuccessful because we had been calling to the wrong cat. There are apparently several gray and white cats in this neighborhood. Anyways, the previous volunteer convinced us that he is a cockroach killing machine and so we were happy to take him in. And its nice to have someone to keep me company as I sit here in my house trying to think of something to do.