Terra

June 26, 2007

In Cape Verde, the word “terra” means a lot. “Nha terra” literally means “my land.” People often express pride for their country by proclaiming that Cabo Verde is their terra. It’s a word that can mean dirt, but is also a word that holds a much more highly regarded connotation – home. Here, in an agricultural community, land is everything. Despite the fact that Cape Verde’s 9-month drought every year only allows for Cape Verdeans to produce 20% of the food they live off of (the other 80% is received through international aid) the rocky hillside terrain is both a blessing and a burden. It produces cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers, beans, squash, and most importantly, corn, which is dried and stored in barrels to last throughout the dry season. Terra is about survival, but despite its short-lived season of harvest, the burden of survival is more dictated by its longer lasting hardships. This time of year, at its peak of dryness just before the first fat drops of the rainy season quench the thirst of this devastated land, whirlwinds of dust fill the air and cover the lives of those who live here in a layer of muted brown.

To make matters a bit dustier, there has been quite a bit of construction going on around my house - a crude, antiquated process that amounts to old men with creaking joints who feebly make their way to my house each early morning to shovel dirt, haul rocks and make cement in order to fulfill the inexhaustible demands of my visiting Cape Verdean-American landlord. The result of their efforts is that I sweep my bedroom about three times a day; each time a layer of terra (dirt) fills the dustpan. During the dry season, nothing ever seems to get clean. “So terra!” (just dirt/land!) I have more than once overheard exasperated Cape Veredans gasp as they attack the layer of dirt invading their homes like a persistent and unwanted visitor.

My home in California, although a desert, didn’t have dirt like this. (Yes…the warm baths, carpeted flooring, dishwashers and wash machines dance hygienically around in my head at night. Here, you wouldn’t imagine thinking dirty thoughts – you think clean ones). I have about a year of Cape Verde behind me, 34 days until I board the TACV flight that will take me to Los Angeles. There have been countless Cape Verdean-Americans visiting Fogo for the summer, many of them first-generation Americans whose parents have convinced them to visit the “old land” and get in touch with their roots. Most arrive in designer jeans and shades, with thick Boston accents and attitude. Without exception, those visiting for the first time express to me the desire to return to the States immediately. One girl, in the back of a rickety car ride from bila claimed her return flight was originally in September, but that after a week here she changed her ticket to leave next week. As she was dropped off at her stop, she said goodbye and as the car drove away shouted, with a hip jutted to the side and acrylic finger pointed affirmatively in the air, “Next week, I’m OUT this bitch!” It seemed fitting that her image was drowned out in a cloud of dust behind the retreating vehicle.

I can see why these fresh American eyes so easily close to this dusty land. At first glance from a descending plane, Fogo, with half of the island covered in black molten lava that drops in sharp cliffs straight into a rough ocean, does not even appear livable. A fellow PCV on my island often makes the sarcastic comment that had the Portuguese colonists who originally brought African slaves here not performed this horrendous task, no one would have ever chosen to live here on their own free will – the resources and conditions are simply do not exist to sustain the population. A history of famine and drought further supports the difficulties of living on the volcanic soil of Cape Verde. With its rough winds, long dry season, violent surf and lack of water sources, it is no doubt why writers often refer to this country as “the forgotten islands.” A well-known creation myth states that in the “beginning,” after the Creator had finished shaping the universe and was putting his final touches on the planet he wiped his dirty hands and the dirt that fell into the ocean became Cape Verde. Or so the saying goes…

But I love this land. I love the people who have discovered ways to cope with the love affair they have for a place that has created such a need for survival. I admire the creativity with which corn is pounded at a feverish pace, fueled by the beating of drums, clapping of calloused hands and waving of flags that proclaim pride. I consistently see the resilience and resourcefulness of even the children here, who often come to my house asking for water bottles, empty cardboard boxes that family members have mailed me, vegetable skins and fruit peels to give to their animals – it all goes to necessary use, whereas I would have just thrown them away. The culture here is a blend of the historical events of the past and the more recent commercial endeavors of other countries. Portugal, Africa, Brazil, America, from so far away bits of each land has found its way to Cape Verde.

And so, I will continue to keep all this in mind as I make a jolting cultural transition from my dusty village to the extravagance of the Las Vegas strip. That I have the ability to experience such different lives touches me. There are many people here who will never see the other side of this tiny island. I am afforded the opportunity to jet set across the world – what a powerful thing. My friend from the States recently asked me to bring him sand from the island of Cape Verde. It is something he asks of his friends when they return from journeys abroad. He puts the sand in glass jars, each complete with a label where he devotedly writes the name of each country in clear letters across the front. I suppose he enjoys collecting bits of places. Although I do not have a tangible collection of these treasures, I imagine I do the same – it’s my hope to keep bits of the world with me as well. This sand may be “so terra,” but it’s an integral part of my collection.

Around the Bend

June 7, 2007

Today is 11 months in Cape Verde.

June 9, 2007

I haven’t been able to write a word in a good amount of time. Instead, I have been devouring the words of others as though my life depends on it. Lately I’ve read about a novel a day, the newest incoming stack of Newsweeks from the Peace Corps office in Praia, the 20-page letter my grandfather and his wife wrote me, the cards that have been coming in for my birthday.

I notice I have been looking at the photos sent close up, inspecting every detail of the captured images, expecting to find this or that familiar scene somehow changed. I trace the recognizable curves of my mom’s handwriting – the handwriting that I used to find under my pillow those mornings I awoke to gold dust and felt with the edge of my curious tongue a gummy gap in my mouth – the same letters that the cookie-loving December visitor would leave on magical mornings, covered with crumbs. I inspect the lovingly drawn lines as though not the words but the actual shifts and tilts of the hand itself will reveal the mood of the room in which it was written.

Did she write this in the morning? I wonder. Was she drinking coffee on the patio and listening to the birds at the fountain and roses she has no doubt planted in her new yard? Or did she write this at night from her bed as she wore her reading glasses and a soft robe that smells like face cream? Was she in a rush and grabbing her rollaway suitcase on her way to the LAX airport or was she lounging in the long afternoon hours as she sipped iced tea? Letters can reveal any number of details, but these are the ones always left unwritten.

And so I dive into the stories of others.The strokes of imagination massage my mind and I find parallels between everything I read. The last novel sent was written by the same author I had just read. I’d never heard of her before last week – now two of her greatest works have been digested in my mind. They were made of the same substance of the countless other books I have read in the past couple weeks. Are there really so many hauntingly resonant topics that echo in the chambers of my soul? Is life, in fact, very limiting in this way, or is it limitless beyond measure? One author uses science as a way to describe the complexity of the universe, and how small we are in it, while simultaneously I discover lines on another page from another book, describing the infinite amounts of cells and activities going on simultaneously within the universe of our bodies. I swear, a girl could drown in this kind of relativity.

So in the “big” picture (however big that may be) I suppose speculating on the quickly passing moments of my mother’s letter and the environment in which it was written seems a bit obsessive, but dammit, those tiny teeth that were replaced with loops on a paper and splashes of stardust stuck with me, however minute the detail. The way my mother’s robe smells when I hug her appears to have had the ability to shift the tides of the ocean in my heart. And relatively, I just can’t accept the fact that these photos I am receiving aren’t holding hidden messages about a life still existing from the other side. What arrives in envelopes and packages reveal a double-sided mirror for me to look through. I see the reflection of the past, but it is tinted always with future. A future that is breathing, and with each breath life becomes more precious than the second before. In the absence of a year, it all amounts to a pretty big pile of precious seconds. Too many to count, so I don’t.

“There is only one moment, and the moment is now, and it is eternity,” right Teej? I’m beginning to believe it.

June 10, 2007

Wonders (again, not a poem)

I sometimes wonder if -
As time moves along
As it rests its weighted heap,
Shove by shove,
Along the endless concrete walk -
The snag of the expedition
Will spoil my mind’s rendition.

I sometimes wonder if –
As inconsistencies of thought
Melt away,
Strand by fragile strand,
An intertwined piece of fate –
The numbness of century’s bend
Might harp on the battered end.

I sometimes wonder if –
The brilliant, excavated sun
Harrowed of its purpose,
Damaging the earth,
And my skin –
Might say goodbye one day
And be on its way.

I sometimes wonder if –
As the generations amount to numbers
A long, decimal point of fact,
Daunting in its magnitude
Spinning along an axis of endlessness –
I may piece together again
The significance of what I am.

I sometimes wonder if -
Always have wondered really
Despite rational, uncomplicated thought,
Years of learned pace,
Innocuous precision –
I am making it all up as I go
And if that’s truly the direction to blow.

I sometimes wonder if –
I too am lost in my personality
Amidst the gates of kingdom,
Cunning and correctness,
The scattered assumptions of possibility –
Not knowing the answers is a death sentence
Or rather a ticket to mercy’s expense.

I sometimes wonder if –
Oh my God, do I wonder,
Do I pace
And pulsate
And sneer in my wondering,
Just beyond the jagged upturn of doubt –
If this is a journey of time that sank
Or an investment in eternity’s bank.

I hear my thoughts fall like coins
And they echo and clank in perplexity
Into the abyss of the unknown;
Into the heart of the innermost chord of worth
Of functioning
The brain of matter itself
The colossal engagement of it all
The master of the unguided,
Unformed,
Unsure.

And Uncertainty’s closest companion is Questioning,
Who is a distant cousin of Curiosity,
Who I heard one day became engaged to the family of Wonder.
And to this day they live
Together in a house made of fragments of reality
Which they have strung together in order to survive.

Their children are a perfect blend of Interest and Awe
Yet Cynicism and Doubt live there too,
In a sweet little house of truth and lies -
And no one can tell the difference between the two.

June 21, 2007

Time is now an intangible thing. It is measured only by the days on my calendar, yet even that remains strangely misleading as the numbers fly; firm numbers written in a bold print and separated distinctly by fixed, solid lines. It makes it all look so official and permanent, but I know better. I understand that June 21, 2007 is not really anything to me now, nor was it anything to me yesterday, and it will likely dissipate into the future. What stays with me is this disjointed concept of time passing. If it were not for the smile lines forming along the edges of my eyes, I may liken the concept of time to an imaginary friend. It lives only within my mind.

And so I have been a teacher here for an entire school term. Three semesters, 87 students, about 384 50-minute classes. Last year I didn’t speak Kriolu. I did not know the child leading his donkey to the community well was in my universe. At the beginning of January, it is safe to say the person I was then may have never known the country of Cape Verde existed. I would not have my cat curled up and nestled into my lap as I write this entry. My roommate would still be another unknown individual living on the outskirts of Boston. Time and choice – these seem to be the most valuable things I know. The direction of life depends upon them, and yet control over them is limited.

So at the end of my first year here, I feel like throwing it all up into the air, just like the first day I arrived in Ponta Verde, when a neighborhood boy (who is now another year older) hid behind some plants as I was walking along a green hillside overlooking the ocean. Jumping out in front of me, he threw two handfuls of brilliant red and orange flower petals high into the sky, and the colors danced about as though on fire and fell into my hair. I resolve to see time like that one moment, a lifetime thrown into the air in a giant heap of wonder. The petals in my hair are the memories kept, like loving keepsakes of time past.

June 22, 2007

Today was Canizade. It is what I would compare to Halloween in the States, and everyone dresses up in costumes with masks, so people don’t know who is hiding beneath the facade of anonymity as they dance, jump out at people on the streets and ask for money from strangers. Walking down the dark cobblestone streets of a back neighborhood, my friends and I huddled together preparing for what reminds me of Knott’s Scary Farm’s costumed employees. They jumped out at us, danced about wildly, played jokes on unsuspecting community members, and harassed people for money. If they were given an American dollar, they would grab the closest costumed monstrosity and dance about in a forced and awkwardly comic way. Most canizades were men, and they wore old women’s dresses with “Scream” masks or hairy wigs. I asked many Cape Verdeans what the point of Canizade is. Does it have a historical origin? Is it related to the upcoming planting season? “It’s a festa,” they say. Yes, but why, I press. “It’s a festa,” they reiterate, stressing the word festa. It is the explanation for any random happening that occurs in my isolated community. With the amount of hard work coupled with lack of entertainment on this island, I am left to assume the whole ordeal was birthed one boring evening as a group of restless Cape Verdeans sat watching flies leap across the walls. “That looks fun, why don’t we do that?” They must have said. So they did.

June 23, 2007

Right now there are two volunteers visiting us from the island of Fogo. There are only five of us here now, as many have already completed their services, or moved onto extended services in other countries, etc. Four of us are in my home and three are in the kitchen sitting on the concrete floor, eating hummus made of chickpeas, discussing politics and drinking white wine out of old peanut butter jars. One is here typing this diary entry. It is interesting to hear the choices of my colleagues whom I have come to admire. They are discussing the workings of Peace Corps, the culture of the country we are experiencing intensely for a short period of time, and relating common stories about international affairs. I find myself silent and contemplating my lack of enthusiasm concerning the topics. After all, I am in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, on a volcanic island, and these fellow PCVs probably have more in common with me than any random individual situated in any part of the world at this moment. And yet I have nothing to say. I feel as though the debates have swum around in my own mind and I am drowning in them. Even as the topics merge from world issues to drugs, I am left amiss, sitting in another room, typing God knows what. I find myself desiring the company of my newly discovered Cape Verdean family. I make a phone call to a friend down the street, seek solace in this new language that brings me comfort. His family is visiting today from the States. His mother and siblings live in Massachusetts (the Cape Verdean Mecca) and he alone is left here. Now they (the PCVs in the next room) are talking about taxis. It reminds me of LA. Which further reminds me of the dona de kaza (the owner of my home) who has recently arrived from America to visit and has been doing construction on our house since she arrived before she returns to the States in July. At some point she will come to live in Cape Verde for good, in this palace-in-the-making. The first time I met this woman, I was sitting serenely on my floor, possibly stretching or doing sit-ups, and she stuck her head into the moonlit window of my bedroom. Unannounced, and quite intrudingly, she proceeded to take control of our lives here and announce that she was going to start working on our house. Large, loud and maddening, she arrives in a thunder every morning at 6 a.m. and the pounding begins. She decided to hire a man up the street to chop down the papaya tree right outside my bedroom window. As I was pulling a pail of water out of our well to bring into the house, down it fell into a cloud of dust below me. I left California’s concrete jungle for this papaya tree, this beautiful world where the land is appreciated for its value, and for the riches it produces. This woman, intruding in manner and impossible in reckoning, calls me Camilla (beyond my own understanding) and chops down the beauty of Cape Verde to insert a concrete walk along the greenery that would be this year during the rainy season. I cried, not only for the fallen tree, but for the contrast between what I have come to love here and for the difference of what is valued in other parts of the world. My everything was traded in for a concrete walk. I guess I am, as my brother has always claimed, a tree hugger.

Numbers

May 27, 2007

#s…

There are lives within lives that I will never know. An innumerable amount of living that would have been if I had walked one step to my right, had paused just one more moment before heading on into the endless, unknown future. There is an inconsistency that requires constant decision, evaluation, methods of pace – like a dance that could take you anywhere – could be any form of dance – and the partners are always changing. If I don’t know the steps, I pretend I do. If I don’t know the person I am dancing with, I will soon be as close to that stranger as though I’d been born to know them. Our bodies, unknowing and awkward at first, will ease with acquired taste, and the arms I am in will relax to a common embrace. Who would I be if I was not who I am now? What horrors and fantasies would have utterly engulfed the meaning and purpose of my life – and lives to come?

It was evening. The sun had just set and I was sitting on the front porch as I always do, washing my feet in a bucket of steaming water. The air was still and heavy, the shadows just beginning to form as a pregnant moon omitted a soft glow. As I scrubbed the rough, calloused heels of my feet and contemplated the quiet evening a certain agonized screaming in the road drowned out the silence. Two struggling figures stumbled up the hill toward my house. I could barely make out their frames, but one was waif-thin with a full tattered skirt and the other, the larger form of a male. As they reached my house, I stared dumbly as the woman screamed almost theatrically and the young man threw her a few steps ahead of him past my house. She stumbled and shrieked in rage as she fell to the cobblestone. He yelled above her and yanked her up with a mighty force. He was hoarsely shouting at her to the extent that he was almost sobbing; as though with each blow, he were actually injuring himself.

I recognized the woman immediately. Everyone in the community calls her doida (crazy) because she is mentally ill. In the past, I’ve witnessed her shed her blouse (with nothing beneath) and throw it happily to the wind. I have also unfortunately seen her crouching to do her business in my garden. She has a habit of wearing old broken high heels on this equally broken cobblestone road. Her mannerisms make it appear as though she’s on her way somewhere important and she wants to be sure she looks pretty. The lines on her bony face and dirty worn clothing reveal lifetimes of struggle, like the rings of an old tree that has been cut down. Sometimes she smiles shyly and gives a brief wave of the hand in response to my greetings; other times she does not respond. Many times I catch her in a heated conversation with herself and I often feel the pang of sorrow that there are no methods available to treat mental diseases in this country.

I also recognized the man. He is young – an alter boy at the church. He goes to school in bila (the city), is always immaculately dressed and often smiles with a confident, happy bounce in his step. I remember walking to a meeting with him once as I listened to him talk enthusiastically about his dreams and all he had in store for his life. I remember being impressed, as people here do not often talk about dreams as though they can become reality. Now this sweet boy was beating this woman in the street, dragging her up the hill as though she were an animal, she screaming for her life. Once I came to my senses, I stood up in confusion, and knocked over the tub, sending water everywhere. I yelled for him to stop and leave her alone, but he screamed that I didn’t know what was going on. For a second, she spotted me, began shrieking louder, and made an attempt to climb my stairs to escape, but he yanked her back to the ground. Searching, I spotted a group of neighbors in the house up the hill from me. They waved and smiled politely, completely unfazed by the violent struggle below. “This is not right!” I yelled up to them, anger in my voice. Immediately, the man at the house (probably in an effort to appease the naïve and morally optimistic white girl) changed his collected mood and obligingly shouted a few words for them to stop. Then he told me to, “just let them be.”

So I let them be, in my head thinking back to the polestra (awareness-raising info session) I had just attended about domestic violence. What could I do? I watched as the arguing pair turned onto a dirt path. More screaming, and then the boy sat down, his head in his hands. The woman came back for more, and started cursing him loudly. He threw a rock at her, and they vanished out of sight. Feeling upset about what I had just witnessed, and angry about all the problems here I cannot solve on my own, I fell in a heap into the muddy puddle of water on the cement. But life here does not allow for the dwelling upon things, so I went inside, cleaned up and made a visit to the house above to speak with them about what had happened. As I was there the man told me the two fighting are mother and son.

When I returned home in the dark, and said goodnight to my student who had walked with me, I saw a figure sitting in the road in front of my house. It was the boy and he was looking out into the sky like a child lost within an enormous universe. I imagined he was talking to God, or maybe just searching for reason among the stars. As I sat down in front of him on the ground in the middle of the street, he looked at me, his eyes gleaming with tears, and we talked in the lamplight as people passed along the road. I know instinctively that he is a good person with a tragic life. He talked about what happened – told me that his mother was sick, that it was just the two of them to take care of each other, and that she had been drinking and he had gotten angry. I firmly stated that under no circumstances was it right to hit a woman, especially not the one woman in the world who had given him life.

That day at church his students had preformed their profession of faith. I had been there and had seen the smile on his face, how proud he was of his pupils, how much he cared to set an example for them. I asked him what kind of an example it would have set to see him hitting his mother like that in the street. I told him how dealing with his anger that way could live on into the lives of his future wife, children. I told him that there is right and there is wrong and that he is lucky enough to have been born with a healthy mind to determine the difference. I told him he could use his pain to reach out to his students who no doubt suffer pain in their own family lives. And I told him about the dreams he had for his life; that I hadn’t forgotten – that he shouldn’t. After I told him all of these things, he hugged me, sobbing. I was caught in a dance I did not know, in arms that were unfamiliar. Had I not been on the porch washing my feet that evening, would I be holding this boy now? I let him cry onto my shoulder and as he did this the sound of his tears falling echoed through the darkness and traveled upward, searching for a place among the stars.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard once wrote this about numbers:

“There are maybe nine galaxies for each of us – 80 billion galaxies. Each galaxy harbors at least 100 billion suns. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are 400 billion suns – or 69 suns for each person alive. The Hubble shows, said an early report, that the stars are, ‘not 12 but 13 billion years old.’ Two galaxies, nine galaxies … 100 billion suns, 400 billion suns … 12 billion years, 13 billion years … These astronomers are nickel-and-diming us to death.”

When talking about numbers, Joseph Stalin also writes, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.” How can an individual count?

The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles. Debris lifts land an average of 4.7 feet per century. We are only about 300 generations from 10,000 years ago. Sixty million of us die every year. Statistically speaking, we don’t count. Yet, in those moments as I held the body of a weeping boy who has a lot to learn, that moment was my universe – my galaxies, suns, deaths, years, grains of sand, and generations of living. In that moment, in the life of that lost person, I as an individual, counted.

I could have lived any number of lives.