A random list of some of things that could only happen in Cape Verde (and are reasons why I love this place!):
1. You can walk into a store with a cup from home to purchase just one cup of wine (to either drink there or take back home with you). This applies to other things as well – you can buy a whole pack of printer paper, or you can ask them to open the pack to just buy by the page.
2. Every conversation begins with a back and forth of asking “How are you?” in almost every way this language allows:
• “How are you?”
• “Are you fine?”
• “Are you super?”
• “Is everything good?”
• “How is life?”
Even after the conversation gets going, if there is ever a lull it is almost always filled by someone asking, “So, everything’s good?” and the back and forth begins all over again.
3. You can blast Michael Bolton or Celine Dion in a public space and not get weird looks.
4. When asking for/giving directions, a perfectly acceptable answer to, for example, “Where is the bakery?” is “La (there).” The amount of stress placed on the word, la, indicates the exact distance – La (just there) or Llllllllllllllllllla (wayyy over there).
5. When you visit someone at their home they will always offer you food or drink, even if they have close to nothing and are living in a shack made of corrugated metal and shipping crates.
6. Criteria for something to be considered a real meal:
• There must be at least one serving of rice and/or beans on your plate
• You must use a spoon or fork to eat it
• To make something fancy, just put a fried egg on top (yum!)
7. Going to pay your electric or telephone bill is an all-day event. But nobody seems to mind (maybe because they are the only air conditioned buildings in town).
8. The most popular activity is to stroll around the block to see what other people are up to and stopping to chat with everyone you run into. Or you can just park yourself somewhere on the side of the street and yell to everyone who walks by.
9. EVERYONE (and I seriously mean everyone) watches and loves Brazilian soap operas.
10. When meeting somebody for the first time the line of questioning is often:
(after the series of “how are you?” questions, of course)
• “What is your name?”
• “Where are you from?”
• “Do you have kids?”
• “Do you want a Capeverdian boyfriend?”
(the order of these questions can vary)
11. Everything shuts down when it rains.
12. Justin Beiber and Eminem are national obsessions. And James Blunt is the karaoke artist of choice.
13. From breakfast to midnight snack, anytime is a good time to eat fish.
14. It is possible to hear Christmas songs randomly played in restaurants, year-round.
15. I have thoroughly confused everyone here about my nationality. I’ve gotten everything from Chinese to Mexican, but never American. I can have a 5 minute conversation with someone trying to explain that I am from America and they will still leave unconvinced.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Its December, why am I still sweating?
Its December and people are starting to get into the Christmas spirit! Store windows are decked out with lights and Christmas trees and they’ve put lights shaped like stars, bells, reindeer and bows on the street lights throughout town. Its all very festive. But there is something about sweating uncontrollably on a daily basis that makes it hard to believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away. Every morning I wake up and open our kitchen window to find the same thing: blinding sun (seriously the sun feels stronger here; and combined with all the light reflecting off white tiled buildings and sidewalks it sometimes feels like my corneas are being burned), clear sky, blue ocean, wind, dust and dryness. Then I step outside and immediately start sweating. Don’t get me wrong, I would gladly choose being hot over being cold and there is nothing like going to the beach in December, but hearing people from home talk about the changing colors of the leaves and wearing sweatshirts does make me miss the different seasons. But I can’t change the weather here so I am prepared for a hot, white (sand) Christmas.
With the turtle season over, I’ve picked up a couple English classes to keep myself busy. Three times a week I go to one of the youth centers in Espargos to teach English and help out with activities and then twice a week I teach English at a youth center for homeless kids and kids from less fortunate families in Santa Maria. The kids are all really excited and enthusiastic about learning English and its very rewarding to run into my students on the street and hear them say, “Sara! Good morning!” Even if his response to my asking, “How are you?” is, “My name is fine.” At least it’s a start.
Before coming to the youth center in Espargos, I had never met a group of kids more excited for Christmas. Everyday for the past 3 weeks they have been drawing pictures of Christmas trees, Santa Claus (Pai Natal), candles and wreaths and making decorations for their classroom. Today we made a Christmas countdown by making a paper chain with each link representing a day until Christmas. Each kid decorated a couple links and they are all excited for their day to cut their link. There was a small brawl over who would get to decorate the Dec, 25th link, but in the end all was resolved with the decision to have everyone draw a small picture on the link. They also taught me a Christmas song – its to the tune of Jingle Bells and roughly translates to:
On Christmas, On Christmas
Just toys made in China
Play with them today
Play with them tomorrow
And after tomorrow they are broken.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Helping our neighbor's kids put up their Christmas tree!
The "road" to our house.
Santa Cruz - the poorest zone in Espargos. They have no water and electricity only after 5pm. 
Monday, November 1, 2010
Dia das Bruxas
Halloween (Dia das Bruxas) was a couple days ago – our first American holiday away from the good ol’ US of A. There were quite a few Halloween parties happening at some of the bars and discotecas on Sal, but Holly and I decided we would have a little Halloween festa of our own. We invited some of our neighbors, our landlords and their kids over for some chili (which we told them was American cachupa), caramel apples (which were actually apple slices just soaked in hot sugar water, but tasted delicious) and, drum roll please, S’MORES (Cape Verde style)!!! One of my friends from SOS Tartarugas had gone back home to Ireland for a week and brought me back some marshmallows (bless her). Then using graham cracker-like graham crackers and nutella-like chocolate spread we made S’mores. It tasted like home.
I think that the Cape Verdeans liked the food, or at least they said they did. Holly and I were a little aggressive in our pressuring them to eat more – I think we felt like it was payback for all the times during homestay we were told that we kume poku (eat so little) and need to kume mas (eat more). Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and definitely ate s’mores like the months I’ve been away from s’mores and America was lost time that needed to be made up for. After some good conversation, our kriolu vocabulary was eventually exhausted and we played Uno. For two hours. Afterwards our neighbor asked if we wanted to borrow a scary movie to watch, we said sure and he ran over to his house to look through his DVD collection. He came back with Mr. Brooks (starring Kevin Costner as a serial killer, as well as Demi Moore and Dane Cooke – don’t know what that casting director was thinking). We decided to pass on that one and ended up watching an episode of Glee instead. Don’t judge.
Oh, and Holly and I had our faces painted like cats the whole time. Nobody else dressed up L
Halloween on Sal with our best friend:
Monday, October 11, 2010
Some Photos
The EE picture - Cape Verde style (aka no smiles/looking uninterested)
Me and my fam on my last morning in Achada Liton
The end of our hike through Tabugal
Nature hike through Tabugal
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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.
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.
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