Boas Festas

Monday, January 8, 2007

In Cape Verde the stretch of ferias (vacation) that marks the holiday season is defined in the phrase “Boas Festas,” which (so my female friends in Ponta Verde tell me) more or less translates into “Women, enjoy the parties and socially acceptable behavior while it lasts because it won’t return until next year.” The last few weeks have been a blur of social events amidst a normally calm community. The young girls who are forced to stay inside all day to wash, clean up after and cook threw down their hair scarves, brooms and laundry to exit the daily domestic grind wearing bizofa (hot) outfits. For days before the festas took place, women were walking around the streets with heads full of rollers. Excitement and anticipation was thick in the air as both the single young men and women of the community prepared to arranga (“arrange”) a namorado (boyfriend) or namorada (girlfriend). More than a few people asked me who I had my eye on and the subject of having a better half for the New Year was the talk of the town. When I told the members of the community that I was not interested in arranging anyone, their eyes widened in disbelief as they asked incredulously, “But who is going to keep you warm during the cold season?!” They’re serious.

And so in a whirlwind of house gatherings, dancing Zuki and Funana, weddings and late night mass services (yes, I attend the Catholic church here, which is the only community meeting center in Ponta Verde) I ended the year of 2006 and have now stepped onto the platform of a new year – one I will always remember to have lived in Cape Verde.

My New Year’s resolutions:

1) Remember to wash clothes at least once a week instead of being lazy and waiting until there are none left, which without fail results in a four-hour cram session with the washboard. Side effect: sore back and bleeding knuckles for days.

2) Learn not to stub and deeply cut my left toe on cobblestone, which has now, to tribute my grace as an individual, occurred three times.

3) Get over my fear of Cape Verdean dogs.

4) Realize that Super Bock beer tastes exactly like water and I should just save my money.

5) Limit my consumption of canned tuna to six days a week.

6) Kill a pig (or at least a chicken)…not because I’m morbid, but because it’s a daily occurrence here and darn it, if my tiny 7th grade female students can do it, so can I (humph).

7) Avoid parasites, skin diseases, ringworm, etc.

8) Take the time to enjoy the beauty of this place and the undeniable strength of its people.

9) Get over the fact that I am in the church choir (we’re pretty awful).

10) Keep enjoying those sunsets that set over the neighboring island of Brava in the evenings as I lean back against the wall of my front porch.

11) Come to terms with the fact that I can no longer congratulate myself (and feministic ideals) for being “domestically challenged” and have fully transcended into the realm of the “domestically inclined.”

12) Continuation of community work and carrying out of future development plans (this may or may not be interesting to read but it will give you an idea of what I’ve been up to):

-Teaching
7th and 8th grade English
6th grade English prep classes (Fridays)
Tutoring/teaching adults

-Jardim - Volunteering at kindergarten, assisting monitorias (Wednesdays)

-Soccer Games for students at polivalentes in Galinheiro and Sao Lorenco (Saturdays)

-Family Visits (families of students) in neighboring zones

-Coordination meetings at the liceo in Sao Felipe (Mondays)

-Choral Practice (Tuesdays)

-World Map Project (determine location, project for jovens?)

-Sala de Informatica/Computer Lab
weekly hours
classes?
Computer skills assistance

-Trash Pick Up (clean up ribeiras in Ponta Verde)

-English Club
after-school optional tutoring
activities
films

-Educational Community Activities
Speakers about HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, alcoholism, women’s rights, pregnancy,
general health, hygiene, sanitation, etc.

-Women’s Group (contact women with Co-operativa in villa)

-Cultural Tourism Draws
promote local musical acts (traditional artists from Cha)
speakers to share history, culture of Fogo
traditional dances taught by elders (group from S. Felipe)

-Youth Group
community projects – trash pickup, speakers, historical exchange, sharing culture,
music, etc. with elders
field trips to Cha das Calderas


Tuesday, January 16, 2007

I think for every Kriolu word that is finally beginning to stick in my mind and flow naturally from my mouth, an English word drops off the platform of memory and is irrevocably lost. I speak a strange mixture of Kringlish with my roommate and the words that I cannot grasp in my foreign tongue I replace masterfully with sobres, kenyas and talvezes. Which on one hand is exciting. I am learning a language, integrating, and things are getting easier for me. Yet my former mode of expression has dropped to the level of a fourth grader and I fear for the journalistic endeavors that await my ten-year-old mind once I reenter the world of writing.

I suppose it is a rather small price to pay. After all, two years of stumbling through the grammatical points of both English and Kriolu will pale in comparison to the rest of the sixty-something years I would hope to have ahead to relearn all that I was able to express in my elementary days. Yes, the language will go away, and then it will come back. But for now speaking is like fishing. You have to find the right bait, the right hook, and the right time to drop it into the abyss. You throw it out there, wait an awkward moment or two and hope someone bites hard enough to catch the significance. (I assure you, I have many lost attempts that are probably still floating somewhere among the surface of the Atlantic, never fully grasped by another being and wholly lacking in translatable worth.)

Language has its ups and downs – its misconceptions and its frustrations for me. I prefer culture - that vague, beautiful, colorful and entirely effecting construction of reality as we see it. Our view of the world, our place in it and our meaning. Yet never have two things been as intricately woven, symbiotic and simultaneously effacing as a combined and constructed perspective of life (culture) and the method by which it is expressed (language).

I have discovered a beautiful union in the project of another volunteer on the island of Fogo. In order to teach Cape Verdean-Americans about the culture they never knew, she went into the fora (country) of the island and began interviewing older members of the villages in order to learn fundo (deep) Kriolu and expressions that are no longer popular among the Boston jersey-wearing, hip hop video-loving youth of Cape Verde. She compiled the Kriolu into notebooks and sent them to interested Americans whose ties to Cape Verde are through their parents. The miraculous outcome was that she learned traditional Kriolu, older villagers were able to share about their past, Cape Verdean-Americans were enlightened, and you are able to read it on the all-encompassing universe that is the Internet.

Enjoy (and for those who are fluent in Kriolu: desculpe sobre nha lingua y si e ka tudo certo … n sa ta aprendi):

~Ma ora ki mi odja abo ta parsi mas es mundo de mi ku bo.

When I look at you, it appears that all that exists in the world is me with you.

~Kenha ki subi mas alto mas baixo el ta kai.

Whoever goes further up has further down to fall.

~Entre spinho ta nasi um rosa.

Within the bone is born a rose.

~Quel ki bu fazi de noite pal manha ta monstra.

What you do at night in the morning will come to light.

~Conberso na hora e sabi na boka.

Conversation at the right time is good in the mouth.

~Kenha ki ka ta obi ka ta odja. –Sonia, age 23

Those who do not hear will not see.

~Nha kretxeu mi sa ta bai, lavanta bu dispididi es ora e tristi e ta maguado, Ka bu poi ningen na nha lugar.

My love I am leaving, though to stand up and say goodbye is sad and painful, do not put anyone in my place.

~Nhos e neba detado. –Manuel, age 59

You are the fog laying down. (It is a way of saying that people are really close, good friends, or always together.)

~Bu e kor de rosa na mare de tarde. –Manuel, age 51

You are the pink color of the beach in the afternoon.

~Joia na nha vida = jewel in my life

~Nos coracao papia de nos ku lingua ki ta ultra passa tal como misterio da vida ki ta oferece. –Rhilda, age 10

Our hearts speak in a language that passes all with a mystery only life offers.


And, my favorite:

~Ta bai e triste bem e maguadu.

To go is sad, to come (return) is painful.


My friend who interviewed and compiled these traditional expressions in Kriolu explained the meaning of this quote to me in a way that touched me. The quote, which states that leaving is sad but coming back is painful, did not make sense to her (or me) without explanation. I made the common assumption that leaving was sad and that returning to the place that was left would bring happiness. Yet, an older Cape Verdean explained, “To leave is sad, but you end up returning to the place you left. When you leave to return, you are once again leaving loved ones to return from where you left.” In essence, for me, it was sad to leave my home and my loved ones in America. Yet I know I will one day return. The day I return to the States I will be leaving Cape Verde for good. That is what the old expression refers to - maguadu (pain).

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Witnessing the death of a cow is nothing like witnessing the death of a pig. In a country where nothing is packaged and sent to the meat section of your local market, what is one day a predictable companion in your backyard the next is laid across the cement and split wide open. Your domestic friend becomes a pile of organs whose only resemblance to the cute cow with fluffy ears is evident in the form of a lifeless stare from its decapitated head. Morbid or not, the killing of an animal in Ponta Verde signals the preparation for a festa, a saints day or a celebration. For me, it represented witnessing an animal being killed for the second time.

Let me get this straight before those who remember me as the animal-loving peace advocate wonder where exactly my sanity wandered off to and why I am apparently so obsessed with the bleeding carcasses of animals. I have been speculating about this as I catch myself asking my female friends just how to snap the neck of a chicken or requesting that they please inform me before they kill their next goat so I can watch. I don’t think it is so much a twisted hobby as it is the fascination with a world in which reality exists so openly. I just received the Peace Corps Newsletter from the office in Praia and one of my friends, a fellow volunteer on a neighboring island, wrote an article about Cape Verdean funeral practices. What he mentioned about the culture was that its openness disturbed him. The barefaced black that family members wear, the mourners’ wails at the wake, the shrieking, the screaming, the open doors. In America, doors are closed, although possibly only metaphorically. Death exists, yet it exists beyond our sight, our ears, and sometimes even beyond the reaches of our minds. As an American, I have often found myself shoving that which shocks or repulses me and throwing it beneath the layer of consciousness. Yet, it is still there, whether I am willing to accept it or not.

What I am learning from Cape Verdean culture is the ability to deal with what is happening – to literally stare death in the face, and to be both close and okay with it enough to observe, analyze, and understand. In my community, people who are sometimes ostracized in other cultures - the town drunk, those with birth defects or learning disabilities, people who are mentally unstable, poor or sick – they all have a very visible role in Ponta Verde. They do not appear to be hidden or ignored. They may be often harassed or verbally differentiated (there is a man who is mute and the children often laugh at him) but they are not behind closed doors, and the pestering appears, to my foreign eyes, to be more out of familiarity than fear.

This “in-your-face” approach to living life has often caught me off guard. I am always shocked when I hear someone call another person fastento (annoying), burro (stupid), or preto (black) with disgust in their voice. What’s more, I am not sure how to feel about the fact that the more I hear it, the less and less shocked I become. I don’t know if it is a desensitizing, or rather, a rearranging of what affects me. Yet, daily being exposed to that which is socially taboo or rejected in the States is becoming as normal to me as hearing the daily beating of drums, dancing zuki, taking cup baths, eating corn three times a day or speaking Creole.

For now, I am just beginning to learn, and still far from understanding many aspects of culture here. In some ways I would call it desensitization; in others, I would say I am beginning to feel life more. But whether it is the screaming, writhing pain of a pig being killed, or the slow, silent surrender of the cow, I find myself realizing that no two experiences are alike. Each day I wake up and enter a world I don’t quite understand – I walk down the same path and it always keeps me guessing. What once happened at night or behind closed doors now takes place in the harsh revealing light of day.

Quel ki bu fazi de noite pal manha ta monstra.