Peace. . .To The Corps!

A Year of Catch-Up

2008-08-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

November 10, 2007

A while ago I got grepe (sick) and missed a week of classes. The following day I was feeling better and decided to take my colleagues up on an invitation to visit the islets – two tiny abandoned islands – that are visible in the ocean from my front porch between Fogo and the island of Brava. Since I had always thought of those uninhibited slivers of land within the lonely Atlantic, I decided to accompany them. I had, many an afternoon, made up stories in my mind about becoming shipwrecked there on a strip of sand, so far from life. The offspring of Fogo and its bride. I had always romanticized the demise of those destined to perish there along the pale shore.

These silly daydream meanderings took their revenge last weekend when the “chartered yacht” with a “maritime official” ended up being a rather small fishing boat manned by a humorous Cape Verdean who appeared rather unofficial in his weekend swim trunks and flip flops. Off we went amidst the roaring Atlantic, known in these parts for its brava (rough) winds and ocean swells. The trip there was rather uneventful, with the exception of some dolphins, flying fish and vomiting over the side of the boat. When we arrived, we anchored and were rowed ashore. The first few hours were spent exploring the wind-swept bluffs and sun-bleached bones of fish and birds. Sinkholes were scattered about the soft earth and there was a sense that nothing flourished there. The rocky cliffs were excepted only by a handful of beaches. Black sand mixed with white as the waves lapped ashore in calmer areas. Each kiss of ocean to shoreline mixed the black and white together. When the sun struck it just right it glittered and reflected a quiet kaleidoscope across its grainy, slick surface.

Some Cape Verdean men who had come in the boat with us fished with strings of wire and hooks that they threw into the waves from along the shore. The long silver peixe they caught were thrown onto a rock fire and then served to us in the shade of a cliff. It was all rather enjoyable until when about seven hours into it, my sickness decided to worsen. I was ready to get back to Fogo, but the rest of the group seemed content to sit in the sand and enjoy the day. Some went snorkeling in the deep cove and others climbed the bluffs to explore the various shells and scattered bones. I took a dip in the ocean, hoping the salt water would wash away the oncoming cold.

Hours later we decided to make our way back among the daunting swells. Those who took shelter in the front belly of the boat to avoid oncoming waves began throwing up into plastic bags. The constant rocking cradled my stomach and then smacked it with such force that I opted to remain on deck. The result was I took quite a lashing from each oncoming peak of water along the way. Between the seasickness, water and rocking, Fogo appeared to loom mysteriously ahead for what seemed like hours, just beyond the Bermuda triangle I was sure we had found ourselves in. When the adventure was finally over, I arrived home wet, chilled and with a fever that would turn into bronchitis.

Simply put, it was not the chartered yacht trip I had been told to expect.

November 10, 2007

There is something magnificent about the renewing sense of health and freedom after being trapped within the confining walls of a room for a week. Once I had finally recovered from bed rest, I awoke to a new world. Along the paths, the countryside that was once green has begun to dry. The hills have taken on a golden light, mixed with soft greens, ambers, and rusty red. A world at its peak.

November 11, 2007

It is a terrible feeling to know you could do more. There are times when everything you have to give isn’t enough. When the walls of comfort appear an obscene inconvenience to the world around. In these moments of clarity all that my life has provided me – a loving family, a country of opportunity, a future of promise and potential – strikes a chord of imbalance within the scheme of nature. Such inconsistencies should not be wrought within a world. And yet there is a misdistribution of everything life has to offer. Those who have more than enough refuse to give even a bit away while those with nothing give out plentifully.

I give my leftover food to a poor family that lives next door. Scraps, leftovers, pieces of fruit and vegetables that are about to go bad. To me, it’s convenient. This way I don’t have to worry about throwing out rotten food. To them it is a rung higher on the social ladder. They say they have never eaten so well. It brought tears to my eyes. Such a small gift, and so effortless. Less than saints could do more.

What world do we live in that my leftover food bought on a Peace Corps volunteer’s budget could nourish a family of ten? There is not only a need, but an obligation to inconvenience our privileged lives in order to give a little more. And it strikes me that this should be considered kindness. It should be our duty as human beings to share what this world has to offer, and not keep it all. The ugliest and most discontent people I know are the ones who live for themselves.

November 22, 2007

I am thankful for:

My family who believes in dreams,
people who look straight at me and smile,
the alcohol in pontche
swift, refreshing delivery of no-nonsense opinionated truth
soft fragrance of orchid sweet peas that grow outside my window,
challengers
eager raised hands of my students,
north star that glows softly and illuminates early morning paths,
calloused hands
masterful canvas of hues spread across the sky at sunset,
pumice stone
little giggles on my front porch,
wilted meager plants, but planted with love
determination
shared secrets whispered behind a veil of hands,
swoosh, swoosh of milk churned to butter,
evening calm looking out over glass ocean spread like a plate,
blood-red sunsets
meditative, reliable process of shelling beans
wind rushing through dried cornstalks
time stretching out and curling up like a hip
isolation that becomes a companion
resting in contentment like a chair
tudu dreto and maishe bom?
supreza.

Yes, for these things, thanks.

December 1, 2007

Sometimes there is nothing. No emotion, no hindrance, no pleasure in existence. It becomes a mask in which self-reflection displays no recollection of who you were, are, are meant to be. It is simply this numbness, followed by a missing sense of awkward self-anonymity, which pulls one into the depths of the unknown, uncharted, unreached. Here there is a battleground of wits. The misstep of foreign path lies between the map and the guide. Only one way and that simple abstract thought brings the experience down a few notches. My life, my living, my existence is what, exactly, if I do not step out the front door today? What happens to the world outside and my suffering, if there ever is any. How can it be traced to those who don’t know? Why are there are innumerable paths and only one way out? Let me seize the knowledge from the hands who have taken it, and spread out the crumpled mess into a legible, tolerable tone of markings. Allow the symbolic aspects of my search to form into a thorough, straight and defined line of escape, because I want to be there now. Are we there yet? Patience, my dear, it’s ahead.

And yet all these egotistical ramblings help to exacerbate the unnecessary. Free it, bring it out of its cage, and it’s gone to the page.

December 2, 2007

Happy Birthday Teej! Have a feliz anniversario, you incredible, rapidly aging boy.

December 3, 2007

Every morning in the darkness, I wake her up. I call her name through the iron gate of her window where she sleeps, nestled in the early hours. There is her mumble, a sleep-choked response and a flicker of candlelight as the match strikes. After a moment of stretching my legs, she greets me in shorts and a bandana covering her hair, always the same: Maesche dretu? (Did you wake up well?) Sim, maesche bom.

We do this every day. Have been for around five months or so, when I decided to take up running and she expressed immediate and uncharacteristic interest. (I had never before seen expression in her face.) So after that amount of time you would imagine I know her well. True, I know her pace and could follow with my eyes shut. I know exactly what turns are more challenging for her by the familiar and steady rhythm of her breaths. If I suddenly lost all senses, I would still feel her near. And yet I know nothing of this beauty, this woman companion who daily displays her strength and endurance silently at my side.

She is known to me only as she is in the dream-like quality of early morning. Had I not heard things from a close friend (that she has a five-year-old son, is a natural athlete and was once stabbed by her past lover) I would know nothing of her at all. She is all shadows; only her form is illuminated by moonlight. A silent, steady loveliness of void. She is sorrow and she runs by my side in the mornings.

December 4, 2007

I witnessed a miracle today. The driver of the packed car I was in asked people to close the windows, leaned over and turned on air conditioning, something I have NEVER seen in Cape Verde. While the sweaty arm of the passenger smashed against me began to dry, I pondered the luxury. What I quickly discovered is that it just isn’t feasible in Cape Verde. The sliding door opened and closed repeatedly as passengers got in, got out, passed babies, live chickens and smelly fish through the windows. One woman began to scream to someone on the street, as she normally was accustomed to doing when she ran errands. She hollered and gestured and yelled at the boy on the stoop of the corn-grinding store, but failed to realize that if the air conditioning was on, she could not be heard through closed windows. And yet she continued to bellow and shriek, as though glass was as penetrable as it was imperceptible. It was her raw will shoved up against the barter of technology. I watched, absorbed, to see who would win.

December 8, 2007

I wrote the following article for the Communique Newsletter at my college:

My palms were sweating as I tore open the much-anticipated information packet sent from Peace Corps Headquarters. It was all very official, the letterhead with my name on it, the prominent logo. As I quickly scanned the invitation for the name of the country where I would serve as a volunteer for two years, my eyes landed on the name of a country I did not recognize: Cape Verde.

Chances are, if you live anywhere other than Boston, where a majority of Cape Verdeans live, you’ve never heard of it either. After all, the country’s creation myth claims that on the seventh day when God finished creating the world and wiped his hands clean, the crumbs that fell into the ocean became Cape Verde, otherwise known as the Forgotten Islands.

The country I serve in is an elusive mix of everything. A blend of Portugal, Brazil, America and Africa, the archipelago consists of ten unique islands that offer everything from isolated windswept beaches, mountainous misty forests, giant salt flats and black volcanic lava flows. Each island has a different dialect of Kriolu, special traditional dishes, a unique cultural dance that defines that region. There are top-of-the-line luxury hotels a block from dusty ghettos. It is as much an assortment of drumbeats and rural agricultural subsistence as it is 50 Cent beats and technological development. I am still getting used to seeing teenagers walk out of shacks who look dressed to perform in the latest hip-hop videos. Such is life in a country going through the growing pains of graduating from third world to developing status.

My home is the volcanic island of Fogo, which means “fire.” I am an English teacher to seventh and eighth graders in a rural community that is located on the slope of the volcano’s crater. I bring in water from a well in buckets on top of my head. The electricity is unreliable. Mosquito nets are a must.

When I was ten I decided I wanted to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. It was a dream that always appeared visible just beyond the horizon. Now that I am 17 months into service, I can say it was the best decision I ever made. There are daily struggles. Living without running water and electricity are challenges that do not compare to the cultural adjustments necessary to thriving in community development work. Yet, Peace Corps, above all, is about relationships. It is about finding yourself living in a place completely foreign to you, maybe even a place you could not have imagined or didn’t know existed, and watching in amazement as it becomes home.

If you are interested in becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer and serving 27 months in an underdeveloped country, check out the website at: peacecorps.gov

Brittany Kuhn
CSUF Graduate, 2005
American Studies and Print Journalism Majors

December 11, 2007

The Downsides of Development…

I became interested in the issue of sex tourism when a Women’s Studies professor assigned a semester project on global issues. After getting my hands on candid documentaries and other useful information, my young 18-year-old mind was filled with the shocking horrors of sex slave trafficking in Southeast Asia. I watched interview upon interview of girls who had been - due to a variety of societal issues, cultural practices and familial desperation - pulled into the world of selling sex. About three years later I worked closely with 65 children in an orphanage in Brazil. After the tsunami hit Southeast Asia, the sex-slave capital became Fortaleza, where the orphanage was located. A majority of the children I worked closely with for months were street kids or victims of sexual abuse and prostitution. There is nothing as unjust as a child’s life that has been marred by such abuse.

This all ties in, unfortunately, with Cape Verde. Two years has already been long enough to sense the rapid changes in this country. The ten quiet islands have recently graduated from Third World to Developing status, and that development, without the infrastructure, comes with severe consequences. I have already watched my tiny sleepy community get a little more dangerous. Youth from Praia (a city that is known as the rather crime-ridden capital) have been arriving and drastically changing the atmosphere of the small-town kindness I knew and loved my first year of service. Even my old roommate who now lives in another zone can sense the difference. The police are not quick to respond to calls unless there is an order sent from a judge, and there is a plethora of social concerns I can predict that lie just beyond the horizon.

One consequence of the rapid expansion that’s seized Cape Verde is sex tourism. Prostitution is not illegal here and while Fogo and its escalating issue with deportees rises, the article below demonstrates how the northern islands are suffering as well:

CAPE VERDE: Sex tourism on the rise?
Photo: Escape to Cape Verde
Santa Maria, a town in the isaland of Sal in Cape Verde, is a new centre for tourism development. However, sexual tourism and the HIV risks it brings has emerged as one of the downsides of such growth.
SANTA MARIA, 8 August 2007 (PlusNews) - It is around midnight and the main tourist drag in the pretty beachside town of Santa Maria, on the island of Sal is starting to fill up for a long night of partying. In one of the bars that line the cobbled street a young woman in a miniskirt dances alone to blaring music while men watch her from their barstools. Out on the terrace, a group of Italian men drink and chat with local women. Once a quiet town, Santa Maria is now at the heart of a tourism boom, which is fuelling the economies of this tiny archipelago and of Cape Verde as a whole. Sal now attracts 160,000 holidaymakers annually, but this growth has brought concerns that Cape Verde is also becoming a destination for sex tourists. While there is no official data on sex tourism, there is also no shortage of anecdotal evidence that it is happening, and officials and residents agree it could grow if left unchecked. Earlier this year, the brutal stoning to death of two female Italian tourists - a third survived by feigning death - shocked these peaceful islands. The murderers were three local young men, one of them the former boyfriend of one of the slain tourists. The local press hinted at a love affair gone horribly awry and a botched cocaine deal but, whatever the motive, the murders put the spotlight on the phenomenon of rich foreigners having sexual relationships with impoverished locals. A joint study, published in 2005 by the Cape Verdian Institute for Minors and the Committee for Coordination and Combating AIDS (CCS), related several incidents in which minors had been abused by male tourists in Santa Maria, the Cape Verdian capital, Praia, and Mindelo, on the island of Sao Vicente. In some cases, tourists had asked children to find them under-age girls for sex. Artur Correia, executive secretary of the CCS in Praia, is reluctant to ring alarm bells about the extent to which sexual tourism is becoming big business in Cape Verde, but he is worried. "Tourism is growing very quickly, and we need to be prepared so we can prevent an increase in HIV/AIDS," he told IRIN/PlusNews. CCS is already helping tourism training institutions to include HIV prevention in their courses. Making ends meet Cape Verde legislation does not penalise prostitution, and the numbers of sex workers operating covertly and overtly in Sal indicates there is a demand for their services. Although she does not say so, Carla, the young woman in the miniskirt, is a sex worker looking for clients and has spent the last few hours going between Santa Maria's numerous bars and discos. Carla, 29, and a mother of three, from Sao Vicente Island, initially says she works in a restaurant, but after a few beers sipped through a straw she becomes more candid: "Business has got better for us Cape Verdian girls because the police got rid of all the Nigerian and Senegalese girls recently; there's less competition now." Many of Sal's more than 17,000 inhabitants have migrated from other islands, as well as mainland Africa, attracted by the tourism and construction boom around Santa Maria. But making a living is often harder than they expected, and some turn to prostitution to make ends meet. Cape Verdians involved in the sex trade tend to be more discreet about their line of work than foreigners. "We see women from the African coast going onto the streets, working as prostitutes," said Jorge Figuereido, president of Sal's local government administration. "Cape Verdians go to discos, restaurants, and live with foreigners, and it's hard to tell if a relationship is one of prostitution or not." Sergio Rodrigues, secretary of the Municipal Committee for the Fight against AIDS in Sal, agrees: "You find both Cape Verdian and foreign prostitutes here, mainly in Santa Maria. But, as people from here all know each other, Cape Verdian prostitutes are usually much more hidden about what they do." By day, Santa Maria is a very different place, with families on package tours enjoying the long, white sandy beaches. As another charter plane lands in Sal's international airport and the tourists queue up at immigration, worries about the potentially negative impact of the tourism industry are the last thing on the minds of holidaymakers. ze/ks/he See also: CAPE VERDE: Tourism boom carries hidden cost of increasing HIV

December 13, 2007

I met him in Costa Rica three years ago. We were both working as volunteers for a conservation study in a cloud forest reserve. He was just a small-town guy from Nebraska who wanted to get out and see the world. I was just a big-city girl from LA wanting a slow-pace life. We connected somewhere in the middle. Our days were spent hiking into the dense foliage of the forest, putting up mist nets and marking and weighing the species of birds that passed. When we weren’t doing fieldwork or demonstrating our coolest hackey sack tricks, we traveled the country on a bus. I can still picture us listening to music on his CD player together. He with a bandana on his head, enthusiastically mouthing the lyrics to whatever hip hop album we were listening to; and me staring out the window and taking in the glory of the open road.

I struggle to think of many friendships that are as effortlessly formed as ours. Yet at the end of the summer we went our separate ways. It has been five years since our days of pura vida, yet we continue to write from varying parts of the world, sharing our travels, our dreams, our hopes. What began as a brief and close friendship in the midst of our developing youth has continued to grow into a sense of companionship, despite the distance between us. Last week I checked my mail and he had sent me his latest album, “Where the Gravel Begins,” postmarked from Spain where he is living. He says it represents what we were about, those days we went rolling down the roads of Costa Rica:

I’ve Got 2 Roll
By Curtis G

I walked up to the window and I said, “Hello, there’s some place I’d rather be.”
I pulled out what I had from my pockets and asked, “How far this can take me?”
They handed me a ticket and said, “The next one leaves in fifteen minutes.”
I’m sittin’ at the bus stop, painful of God and time, it seems infinite.

And I’ve got to roll
I’ve gotta get up off of my feet
And I’ve got to show
This world the best of me
And I’ve got to go
I’ve gotta get up off of these streets
And I’ve got to know
What else there is to see

She was staring out the window, and I said, “Hello, I think you’re sitting in my seat.”
“But hey, that’s ok you can stay, I’m getting kind of tired Imma try to sleep.”
She looked at me with those green eyes
Her face filled with curiosity
She asked me where I’m going I said we’re on the same bus looks like you’re going the same place as me

And I’ve got to roll
I’ve gotta get up off of my feet
And I’ve got to show
This world the best of me
And I’ve got to go
I’ve gotta get up off of these streets
And I’ve got to know
What else there is to see

We pulled up to the bus stop it was the last drop off in a city I’ve never seen
Driver says stay seated till we park and don’t forget your items from the overhead compartments
Cuz you got to roll, you’ve got to ride
You’ve got to get up off of your seat
You’ve got to go, I’ve got to drive, and no you can’t come with me
You’ve got to roll, so clear the aisles, cuz there’s no more receipts
You’ve got to go, so say goodbye, and thanks for rolling

I’ve got to roll…x3

I’ve gotta get up off of my feet
And I’ve got to show this world the best of me
And I’ve got to roll
I’ve got to get up off of these streets
I’ve got to roll
what else there is to see?
Roll…
I’ve got to
Roll…
Gotta get up off of my feet
I’ve got to show this world the best of me
And I’ve got to go, I’ve gotta get up off of these streets,
And I’ve got to know what else there is to see

December 17, 2007

I am a jumbled clutter of disarray amidst piles of uncorrected tests. Coffee cup as my witness, I will finish this grading tonight, I resolve. My content cat purrs sleepily in my lap, and his comatose state makes it awkward to reach for the second – yes, I said second – red pen. In this moment I resemble a student during those college final cram sessions in a “time is money” culture, rather than an English teacher in a slow-paced culture living a small-town life. It feels as though I’ve regressed. Neighbors are knocking on my front door and the children are screaming and playing with my soccer ball on the front porch. Why can’t everyone just leave me in peace?! I scream inside. Why does everyone have to bug me today??

These are moments when I have to check myself. It is easy, as an American, to fall victim to the ticking of the minute hand and the power it wields over our lives. Even here, in a country where nothing starts on time and always takes forever, I still – even after a year and a half – find myself rushing past the important on my way to the necessary. How many times have I passed up sitting on the porch with friends to go prepare for my next lesson or meeting? I am embarrassed to admit, more than I can count. That doesn’t go over well in an inda sta cedo (now is early) culture.

The way we spend time defines how we live. In comparison, I grew up in a get-it-fast, go-there-now, mark-it-off-the-to-do-list culture. Teenagers are encouraged to get out and get on with their lives by the age of 18. Grandparents are sent to care facilities, let’s face it, because we don’t have the time to care for them. Whether out of necessity and/or desire, people in America work. And work. And work. While I have been here I have even noticed a lack of communication from friends back home. My best friend has sent me one letter in 18 months. Even taking the time to send an email, for many, is effort. I don’t say this with sadness or regret, but I point it out in understanding as proof that we lead fast-paced lives. If you are taking the time to read this now, you are a beautiful exception, or you have set aside valuable moments to read these thoughts. How we spend our time is a choice.

And so, as I scramble furiously to grade 200 tests in a matter of hours, I attempt to ignore the outside lure of the gorgeous sunset, child-like giggles and evening chatter on my front porch. I calculate one more number and put it in the pile. And another. And another. And a thought pushes itself resolutely into my task-based head. Why am I here? Why have I decided to spend two years of my life in a foreign country in the first place? Was it to sit inside this cement of a house and labor away at a calculator, or is it about the relationships waiting for me outside? I hope in the future, in my life, I do what I did today. I left those numbers on the table and went out to watch a sunset. It was just in time to watch a group of children trudge up the cobblestone path singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs.

The grades can wait. Living can’t.

December 25, 2008

Noite Feliz

Packages have not yet arrived, so there is no holiday music or movies to create the ambience of Natal, yet there is a small fake tree in my window, and a cord of lights that glow and flash, green, red, yellow. There are four tiny shadows eating cake and drinking café. There is a feeling of giving, of understanding the season. It is like thick, warm syrup soothing the back of a sore throat. This is Christmas.

January 1, 2008

Felíz Ano Novo

These are things I want to remember this year. I have acquired them from qualities those closest to me here have demonstrated…

Cal, my twin from a contrary universe: see the humor in life. Sometimes what’s most depressing can be transformed into laughter in a bottle.

Ya, my best friend and co-conspirator in P. Verde: a good heart and a little patience can make anything beautiful.

Jó, my guidance and love: there are always exceptions to the rules of humanity. Language, culture, expression - these are bridges we walk upon.

Jose, the town drunk and my stalker-turned-buddy: the lost souls of this world have found things; they just need help remembering where.

My shadows, the children who have adopted me: life is moment to moment. Tears wash away pain and smiles are band-aids.

My community, those who have both kept me sane and driven me insane at the same time: people are people everywhere. They hunger, they hate, they accept, they love. The differences are superficial excuses for discrimination. Those who manage to see past these distractions will find a well of understanding. This is the well that sustains life.

My resolution is to remember what I have learned. And to never forget the people who taught me. Boas entradas.

January 3, 2008

At the far reaches of the mountain I see him, above, a lone tiny figure. The glorious light behind makes him nothing but a silhouette on top of the world, looking down at the earth below. I see him always in the evenings, when the sky shifts to a reddened hue and the silence of night descends on the land in a methodical hush. There he stands, silent. His lean frame held still. One eye shut, one open wide. Looking through the tiny makeshift telescope, he peers at the life below from a silent hidden point far away and above. The worries of home, of school taunting and familial mishaps slide away. His life exists where his gaze lands and he is always there, on the mountaintop - brother of an ancient sun - living steadily, intensely, from a distance.

January 4, 2008

I arrived early in the morning when a car dropped me off from Mosteiros, a fishing village where I had been visiting other volunteers for a couple days. I received a phone call from a friend just days before. When I picked up she said her brother had died, and then broke out in a wail of mourning, called chora, on the phone. I offered conçolaçao (my sympathies) and she hung up, though the agonized cries echoed in my head long after.

Today I went up to visit and pay my respects for the man who died, my friend’s brother. On the way I learned from neighbors that he had mata cabeça (killed himself). This was a man my old roommate and I dubbed as Internal Monologue, as he never spoke, but held a bottle of alcohol under his arm like a crutch. He had a way of looking about in a confused and displaced state. So much so that my friend and I would recite the monologue of what we imagined he was thinking. His brother is a man with no legs who I often push in a rickety wheelchair up the rocky cobblestone path. His other brother is the student of mine in the diary entry above, the one who carries a telescope.

There is a sadness that permeates around the neighborhood just up the road where they live. There is still no electricity there and the people who live up the paths of the crater are visibly less well-off than those on the main road. They walk the furthest to the well for water (about a 30-minute walk), to carry bucket-by-bucket back to their homes. Once when I visited a student and her 8 siblings they were all crowded around a single candle studying together. Alcoholism is prevalent and the young beautiful girls who walk around the hole-in-the-wall bars there are constantly harassed. I fear for rape and domestic violence that no one will ever hear about. This is the Cape Verde that is struggling, the neighborhoods that exist in a state of suspension, where opportunities, education and wealth are not plentiful and life is about survival. Many days I am optimistic, yet days like today remind me that not all make it.

I went to the visit, embraced each mourning man and shook the hand of each wailing woman, as is customary. The man who died was found with a cord wrapped around his neck, as is a well-known tactic of suicide on Fogo in particular. When my friend saw me she fell into my arms in a wailing, crying out the name of her brother and convulsing, barely able to stand.

Oh, nha irmo! Amigu di ningen! she cried.

Oh, my brother. Friend of no one.

January 5, 2008

When I received the Peace Corps invitation to serve in Cape Verde, I remember looking at the completion of service date and thinking 2008 was a long way off. Now I am in my 18th month of service and 2008 has arrived. As though turning a corner, the end of my time here looms ahead, unexpectedly closer than I imagined. The people I know and the qualities of life here are increasingly magnified. The beautiful is illuminated by the understanding that it will not been seen again. The horrific is overstated by an unfounded fear that leaving this place will unravel the thread of things. Of course I know better than to imagine for an instant this place needs me, yet there is a half hope that my invested love for my community resembles some bit of order in the scheme of things. I can’t help but straddle the fence on that one.

Regardless of the positive or negative impact I have had on Ponta Verde during my time here, I need not dig deep to discover the treasure that has been given to me. Adapting to another culture, and being able to do so in a way that is healthy and productive, leaves any human being with a greater understanding of people in the world, and a mind and heart that remain open enough to let ingenuity in, guarded enough to keep malevolence out. Either way, the exposure to both is a tactile thing, one that reconstructs the utter core of human behavior and the manner of assessment. I am forever changed by my time here, and as time continues to drag me ahead by the hand, I bask in the wondrous fury of it all.

Run.

January 6, 2008

Today is 18 months in Cape Verde.

January 11, 2008

This week was a teaching dream. With only a short period of time left here, the stresses of lesson planning, or making the grammar point, and keeping classes of 50 children in their seats became secondary to just getting to know them. I have now known my eighth graders for a year and a half, and during a very developmental period of growth - for both them and myself. These little individuals who were astonished to see a white American walk into the classroom so long ago are now young adults, and many are my close friends. The novelty we felt for each other in the beginning wore off quickly, and in no time we were in the typical student-teacher relationship, full of everyday hassles, fighting boredom, seeking to keep things on schedule, commanding respect, etc.

…So for a while, I think I wanted to just ring their ungrateful necks. After all, I wanted to scream some days, I came half way across the world, left my friends and family and all I know behind for YOU, and this is how you repay me?? They could have cared less. I would have been met with many “teacher’s lost it” gazes.

For many, many months I wondered how I was doing. Typical insecurities: Am I a bad teacher? Do they care? Are they learning anything? Am I getting through to them? It was unsteady ground to walk upon. Day after day I questioned myself. When I flubbed up a simple sentence in Kriolu and the room erupted in laughter; when my colleagues (perhaps unknowingly) excluded me from conversations because I couldn’t follow; when I got home exhausted and still had to hand wash clothes, bring in water from the well, go on a visit, make dinner, lesson plan….yes, I questioned if it was all worth it.

At moments I still do. But things are starting to come together. This week something clicked. My purpose for being here just snapped into place, caught like a zipper that has refused to zip up. And finally I am enveloped in an understanding. I took the pressure off myself this week. I made lesson plans that I would want to learn. I made visits out of friendship, not obligation. I stopped seeing this experience as an uphill battle and slowed down a bit. I saw results.

Yesterday I taught my kids a popular Cape Verdean song (Mourna) about sodade (longing, missing). I wrote it in Kriolu and we translated it line by line into English. We debated gender roles and expectations. They wrote letters to friends or family members who live abroad in other countries. Eyes glazed over in boredom had a spark of light in them this week. They recognized that I cared about what was going on in their lives. That I would divert from a lesson plan if it meant something may sink in for more than a day. If it meant maybe they could apply it to their lives.

My time here is so short. I will not be here forever. In fact, in many ways I feel gone already. My focus has shifted to the future and I am forced to begin thinking about what I want to do with my life after Peace Corps. But while I am here, I want to bask in the lessons this place has to teach me. And I want to be a mentor to these kids who have frustrated, angered, inspired and encouraged me. I want a part of me to remain here after I am gone. God knows a part of this place will stay with me. Life is so perfect in its imperfection.

January 12, 2008

Chemistry

I am creative by nature, but I appreciate the sciences and mechanical workings of this world. I would be a fool to ignore the very rules that sustain life and make my eccentric meanderings possible. So for this, I will put on my white starched lab coat for a moment and make general assumptions involving complicated theories I know absolutely nothing about in order to demonstrate my view on life and our purpose within it. If nothing else, I offer this as experimental proof that I’m a nut. For those rational-minded human beings, entertainment is my gift to you.

This world is made up of chemicals. The microscopic, the unseen, the intricately functional systems that provide the possibility of our existence. Without these tiny molecules, bacteria, microplasms and whatever other organisms that we see dancing and squirming around the miniscule orbs of petri dishes, we would not be. So the essential is minute. And chemicals. The basic elements that sustain life and create the foundational balance of the nature of things, are also quite delicate and tiny. Throw together a couple bland elemental peacemakers and you get a war of reaction. This is fact. This is life.

And so, now that I have explained what just about every knowledgeable third-grader who has diligently completed their homework knows, I will take this only slightly further. Right, to the applicable part - We are human beings. We are organisms. We are chemicals. Let us learn from that which we cannot see about ourselves and discover our full potential. That we are tiny, visibly insignificant life forms into our pocket book schedules and to-do lists and whirlwind calendars. But we are essential. We live, we create, we breathe, we react. We were generated for a purpose. The point of living is discovering in what ways our functions contribute to the world. Even the tiniest phytoplankton lives to realize its purpose. So why do we get so caught up in the nonsense and distraction? Why do we swim around in our little petri dishes like lost amoebas, blobs of substance, imprisoned by the round orbit of a constricting dish? Our reactions, our experiences, random as they are, are realities:

Some of us are poor. Some of us have no education to speak of. Some of us live in fear. Some of us suffer the crippling illness of comparison. Some of our bodies or minds don’t quite work right. Some of us cannot communicate. Some of us can’t love. Some of us can’t learn. Some of us are tired. Some of us are like daybreak on a dark morning. Some of us apply the chemicals. Some of us see the damn silver lining, without worrying about that being cliché. And some of us react.

That’s what chemicals do.

So step outside. Discover what even a microscopic organism is in search of – a route for life. Because if you don’t begin to search for it, I guarantee you won’t find it there in that tiny petri dish of yours.

January 14, 2008

The Lives of Shadows

Their high-pitched yelps of glee reach my doorstep the moment they return home from school. The evening sunset casts brilliant yellows, pinks and deep reds across their sunlit faces. The oldest walks quickly, her face, though that of a ten-year-old, already resembles the wisdom and work of a much older woman. Most days she will likely be holding a letter, explaining that I am her best friend and bordered with flowers and stick figures. Trailing behind her are her two younger sisters. Both are about the same size, though one is considerably older. The thinner and wilder one gaits on ahead, the deformation in her back a large shoulder blade of an anchor, weighting down her otherwise energetic frolic up the road. Her head nods visibly with each stride, demonstrating the effort it takes for her to walk. She is nonetheless managing a bobbling skip on her light feet as the youngest - chipmunk cheeks and almond eyes - marches comically on up, her head down like on a mission, shy yet bold. The boys stay home, but these three companions are by my side without fail, like the sunset.

Observations about my shadows:

It is cold but they have no jackets. When I sent them home to grab some, they came back with dirty excuses for rags that did not even cover their little arms.

One is severely physically deformed. I was told a foreign nurse had her sent to Praia for medical attention, and somehow the follow-up trip to Portugal never happened.

The small children carry cement blocks on weekends to help build a bathroom. This will be the first bathroom they have ever had.

I give their family my leftovers. Since it’s just me in the house, and we rarely have electricity, my food goes bad quickly. They are scraps left over from a Peace Corps volunteer’s budget, but the kids say they have never eaten so well.

The 8-year-old does not know how to count.

They don’t know their birthdays.

I believe their ages are not correct because they have all been the same “age” since I arrived here almost two years ago.

When they are not in the required school uniforms, they wear the same unwashed clothes every day.

The last three dogs they have had have died, possibly out of neglect.

The mother is in her 20’s and has six children.

They are the shadows of the world, living in poverty in the forgotten islands of Cape Verde.

They are at my house every day.

I have discovered they are hard workers, inventive, brilliant, starving for attention and love, and have hugs ready and waiting every time I need them.

…

Two more observations:

Life is not fair.

Sometimes I cannot believe this world.

January 19, 2008

My soul is a mix.

January 27, 2008

Changes

Recently I have attended a series of annual festas. When you live in a foreign place for an extended period of time, in the beginning you tend to develop a fixation with the impressions the new place has imprinted upon you. But at some point, perhaps at the very peak of considerable transition, that obsession falls away and you begin to live, continuing as yourself, but also as someone else – the part of you that would have been, had you been born and raised in the difference of the new environment, merges with your former self to create a more justified whole. This preoccupation with self-identification becomes a subtle occurrence, one that sinks slowly into the depths of perception and only resurfaces in jolting moments of clarity or recognition.

Now that I have been here for almost two years, I have begun to sense the more drastic changes that have occurred within me during my time in Cape Verde, most considerably in comparing my experiences with festas that I attended last year …

I walked the same dust-filled rocky paths up the side of the crater with capable feet (last year I was tripping, falling and panting the entire way). I casually greeted my close friends with accustomed familiarity and began working in the firewood hut in preparation for the festa. Last year they were exotic strangers who treated me like royalty, and I was not allowed to dirty my mão fino (fine hands) unless it was just a touristy show for laughter’s sake at my fumbling performance. I remember taking dozens of pictures of the corn pounding and the killing of the cow – strange rituals for an American girl from LA. This year, I forgot to bring my camera and took part in the killings. The grossed-out faces I made last year when the women emptied out the intestines and stuffed them with rice and blood were replaced by a normal understanding and participation in the act.

Yet of all the ways in which I realize I have become a part of this place, the most obvious confirmation is recognized through relationships. I noticed I was treated entirely different this year. My capable hands and accustomed cultural reactions are secondary to the fact that when I attended festas this year I was greeted not as a special guest with imperial treatment, but barely waved at and smacked playfully on the butt by female friends with smirks on their faces from inside jokes of the past. I was barely noticed when I came in, and handed a task immediately to work in a sphere of women who I have come to admire for their strength of character and resolve. At the end of the day, when I sat in a candle-lit room with them kaska mandioch (stripping an edible root with a knife for the next day’s festa), I found I was among a sacred circle of friends. They told dirty jokes and spoke of things that are not spoken about in the presence of men or foreigners. I was in a room of women and surrounded by friends, struck with the realization that I was no longer trying to belong – I was simply at home.

And so now the whole “integration” mentality has been thrown to the wayside and I am contentedly living a life in a community that has become my own. In this way, I am now beginning to see the enormous changes within myself that I was searching so intensely for during my first year of service. The realization of adjustment crept up on me slowly and is now evident only as my surroundings transform from the absurd to the understood. My sentences in English have taken on the grammatical structure of Kriolu. My ideas and thoughts are permeated with cultural distinction. My overall approach to life has been thrown off its axis.

A final comparison of change:

At the drum festa last week, a promise ritual in remembrance of my friend’s mother who passed away, the drums beat in rhythmic strikes, people danced about with flags, and the atmosphere was one of companionship and good humor. Last year during the cola (the moment people begin chanting verses off the top of their heads in order to speak to the crowd and win offerings for their glorified saints), I was singled out and called Merkana (American) in exchange for money:

Ay, Merkana! Oh, American!
Le lay, le lay,
Dam dinheiro! Give me money!
Le lay, le lay,
Lebam pa bu terra! Take me to your country!
Le lay, le lay,
Ay mulher branca! Oh, white woman!
Le lay, le lay…

This year, I was shocked to see that no one asked me for anything, and treated me as an equal. Then the cola began and I feared the worst. I expected the typical chants where the singer would yell out my differences and people would point and take delight in my white skin. But as I listened to the words of the man who sang, my eyes welled up with tears of gratitude:

Ay, Kriola! Oh, Kriola!
Le lay, le lay,
Amiga de tudu! Friend to us all!
Le lay, le lay,
Fika ku nos pa sempri! Stay with us for always!
Le lay, le lay,
Mulher de nos coração! Woman of our heart!
Le lay, le lay…

There is no greater gift in life.

February 3, 2008

The Roots of Language

He and I sit in the shade. When he looks at me with his open, brown eyes, I am seen clearly. If his smile turns up in a sarcastic hint, I catch it. The lines on his forehead are pensive, and yet his mouth remains relaxed and closed. Our fingers stretching in movement, a dance of exaggerated emotion playing across our faces. Occasional nods of agreement or hums of approval fill in the empty, silent spaces and we communicate without language like old friends who have lived long past the significance of words.

I have often wondered what it would be like to be born deaf. As a child I would sit in a noisy restaurant or street corner and shove my hands against my ears, hoping the pressure would tune out the commotion and cluttered banter of life all around. In my mind the world would become an aquarium of sorts - a softly muted, floating channel that allowed me to hover along the rippling current. About two minutes into this kind of experiment my inquisitive 5-year-old mind would assume the character of an exotic foreigner, unable to speak or understand those around me. I often insisted on watching Spanish language channels, convinced that if I strained hard enough I would become fluent. And when my grandfather introduced the idea of Pig Latin, it became an outright obsession and burden to those around me. These were natural and innocent experiments, yet at a young age it became clear that I enjoyed toying with communication and its many barriers. It was my garden.

My closest recaptured experience to this childhood curiosity was when I first arrived on Fogo and was unable to decipher what people were saying. Nor was I able to accurately express what it was I was feeling or thinking. The one person I could truly communicate with was an older Cape Verdean man who can not hear, but understands better than most. His education, like most people living in the rural countryside, is limited. On this tiny island, a handicap such as his is considered debilitating, as resources and job opportunities are scarce. Yet he makes a modest living working with plants. He has a particular talent for making crops flourish, pays special attention to detail. I don’t think I have to explain that sign language doesn’t exist here. Therefore what he expresses is communicated more through emotions than a variety of learned symbolic gestures. Communication with him, therefore, is a bridge – not a barrier.

Friendship is a loaded word. Often people throw it around uselessly, abuse it, or take it for granted. It is a multi-layered organism that responds only to light, tending to and a fertile environment. And so in the middle of a drought on a forgotten island off the coast of Africa, I met a person who demonstrates that indeed one can flourish with these elements. We silently explore and inquire each other’s thoughts and through him I am more enlightened.

We all know the signs, but we are often blind or deaf to them. A glisten in the eye when one relives a memory. The pain shown in the parted mouth of a suffering moment. The insistent furrowed brow when a person speaking wants desperately to be heard. The kind support of a knowing glance. This is a language that requires just as much practice and awareness as Portuguese, or Spanish or Kriolu. It requires a lifetime of study, yet many never grow to speak in this way. This is the language of my dear friend. It is a language I know.

My old roommate, a Lit major, once told me she likes to play with words. As a communications major and foreign language teacher, I understand this implies that language itself is amusing yet faulty. Any thesaurus could attest to the duplicity of definition, despite man’s attempts to make language blossom. Each petal expresses a different intent. My friend may not be able to speak, but he communicates a language of compassion.

There are many ways to connect with people, to intertwine paths that originated worlds away. Sometimes the roots of friendship take hold once you have learned another language and culture, when you can both stand firmly on a plot of shared soil. A witty remark plants the seed, common interests and shared experience allow it to grow.

But when you’re lucky it requires nothing more than the light and subtle language of a smile.

March 9, 2008

I should be writing in this more these days. I know I should. There are certain moments when I think, This is it, this moment. This is what I’m living for. I have to get this down. It is essential to share this. And then I don’t.

So now I am writing. I have made it a point to stop the daily activity and to just sit still and think. Yet my mind plays tricks on me. The fabric of these pure moments are frayed by the current of my thoughts, drowning in the fluttering wind of constant experience, emotion, evaluation, evasion. And there it lies within and curls up like a delicate, flowery bud, shy to the page.

But I want these moments to dance, to connect. I want the world to topple over so that the light of it is dark and the unexpected shift divulges the utter truth of it all. And I want confusion and will to subdivide into the molecules of existence so once drunk, water may feel like the fire of life. The air will turn to liquid and shapes will bleed into ink-like skeletons of trees printed across a paper canvass. And I could tell you all the ways in which I have failed to get down here what I must.

Otherwise. Otherwise how will you know the forgotten moments? That one moment my Estefa grabbed me around the neck and rested her dear head on my shoulder and I wondered at the intensity of love one can have for a child. The moment I looked out the window of a passing car as a man stepped off a ledge into the depths of a riverbed below, ending his life in front of me. A last conversation of yearning with a friend, watching the spark in her eyes grow dim. I can see the slender beauty walking away with her possessions: two feet, a ringless hand and a child in her womb. To where, I don’t know. They won’t tell me. But to her future, no.

Elusive future. Ahhhhh, it comes. And it is here. And gone.

So do with it what you may. Pay your bills and sweep the pavement and brush your teeth. It must be done again tomorrow. Monotony can be a price of living if you succumb to it. Prediction lies ahead with each alarm clock, dinner plan, folding of the sheets. I rest my weary head for a moment and grow restless, desire to alter that assumed moment with the peril of inward glow. I can feel it. Oh, can I feel that inner warmth. Pleading for action. Dying.

Dying desperately to live.

…

A Tumbling

I am exploding. A threat unknown to me is controlling the inner core of who I am. And I bleed within. I hear that is the more fatal of the two. When the blood inside is lost to you, and you can’t really even see it, understand its worth, know what the hell it is for and what color. If you don’t bleed, does that not mean you aren’t alive? Or does it mean you are about to die?

I frantically pull at the strings of a kite. I want it to soar high and free and unfettered, so that it may reach heaven. But it does not want to go. I tell it, but you must! It is where everyone I know wants to go. And consider the alternative! I mean, think, for god’s sake!

And the little kite teeters in the wind, and floats and smiles at me as it floats to the ground.

Oh, child, is that the only way? What’s the hurry and why go there now? Is there not something keeping you here? Are you, like me, attached to a myriad of strings, connected in ways unknown to you that control your every movement here on earth? But despite these strands, do I not myself need wind by which to fly? Without it I may not soar, and that is what I want most in this world.

I as well, dear kite. There is nothing I want more.

Well then, said the kite. Soar.

Okay.

…

Feeble, feeble process this is. Is there no other way to grasp that fountain? The water evades my hungry hands and I crave.

Crave what exactly? Count down for me. Do it backwards. If I could, would I reverse the process? Not a bad idea. I will start at the end and live my life to the beginning. As I grow young I will know less and be happier. As I dis-age, I will defy the laws of gravity and feel my body firm, tighten, jump, play, fly. Years of self-searching will be abandoned and I will forget about molding myself and return to the clay mound from which I was formed. I will have an infinite future and I can be what I want when I am five. What a marvelous thing to look forward to, don’t you agree? Yes, growing young will be wonderful. The summers will be long again and Christmas will feel like magic. Sadness will be a momentary distraction from a world of blissful adventure and I will catch butterflies and put them in a glass jar. I will dream big scary dreams that will fade once familiar arms embrace me in their love. My brother will be born again and he will unlearn to walk and then return to his infant state and I will marvel at his tiny hands and flower, puffed lips. Those growing old will once again be well and healthy and strong. And before me even, they will love each other as children and hold hands on a beach and be young too, free of worry and free of past. And it will continue on toward the beginning, as the world becomes less and less infected. Humans will become more savage and simple, all but drop from existence as the madness and fury and beauty of nature takes hold and grasps the world in a maternal, instinctual embrace. Mother of earth itself will sit and sigh, prepare for her birth and in golden origin, die of her own infinite, miraculous, generous accord.

March 11, 2008

Two quotations that, at this point in my life, speak to me. One is famous, the other obscure. Both equally significant.

Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And either would be severed from its brother.
The one holds fast with joyous earthly lust
Onto the world of man with organs clinging;
The other soars impassioned from the dust,
To realms of lofty forebears winging.

- Goethe’s Faust

And:

O dia mais importante não é o dia que conhecemos uma pessoa, mas sim quando ela passa a existir dentro de nós.

My friend wrote this for me. It means, more or less, in my inadequate Portuguese translation:

A day more important is not a day when we come to know a person, but rather the day she comes to exist within us.

- Jorandir (Jó) Claudino da Silva

It truly is a day to celebrate.

March 12, 2008

She can’t see me too well, but she knows I am coming. Patiently she waits, wooden stick in hand for support, eyes and ears tuned to full alert, ready because she hears my voice greeting others in the quintal and any moment I may appear around the corner. She sits expectantly on a stool. Two long black glossy braids brushed in wisps of white hang at her sides, her iron-will having driven the gray of 100 years away from her ancient head. As I step up into the stone kitchen to where she is, her face in the light of sunset looks confused yet radiant upon her Native-American looking face. She has a scowl of uncertainty for a moment, then gives a toothless smile in recognition. She stomps her feet excitedly and like a child opens her arms wide for an embrace saying, “Ahhhh! Seeet dooowwn! Seeet dowwwn!” Some of the few phrases she remembers from a three-month trip to America over 20 years back.

So I sit down and we talk. As usual, we go through the routine of why I have not visited earlier (work, I say), how she wishes she could come down the crater to see me (she would every day if she could, she says) and then she counts in English up to ten, just to demonstrate she may be 100 years old, but she does not yet have cobwebs for brains. I smile, take delight in her non-stop banter about random stories and events. She pulls them out of nowhere and for no particular reason other than to share moments of her past that may be trapped forever within the infinite abyss of the afterlife if she does not relay the information to me first. For the first time during our weekly visits since I arrived here 20 months ago, I realize I must be improving in Kriolu, because despite her gummy pronunciation and tendency to hack, mumble, glide and raise the octaves of her voice in a perplexing jumbled symphony of dialect, I actually understand everything she says. A few minutes into the excitement, however, she tires and slowly pulls herself up from the stool – “Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay!!!” – and is ready to rest.

I follow her to the adjoining bedroom and take black slippers from her tiny creased 100-year-old feet. She lies down and pulls herself shuffle by shuffle to the pillow where she lays her head and I lie in the darkness beside her. Above us is a high clay-tiled roof. There are places where the sun sends tiny shafts of light into the room and I watch as the dreary dust sparkles and comes to life, swirling through the radiant beams. Here is where I feel most at home; where I can lay next to my dearest friend, hold her hand and listen to her innermost thoughts.

She tells me of her dreams. How last night she dreamed she was carrying a cake in one arm and holding money in the other from those who were buying slices. She is not a mother, but one of the 9 children who lives with her, she says, started tickling her and biting her on the ear. In the deep subconscience of her century-old mind she screamed, making a bunch of noise and dropping all the money to the floor. Once she was able to regain control of her herself, the cake and the money, the people buying slices and the ear-biter were all gone. Such are the dreams of an old woman.

Once, when she went to America to stay in San Francisco with a nephew (at the tender age of 80), she rode this big thing in the air like a boat. And then you go through these white things in the sky that are scary. Then this German man gave her a cigarette to smoke and she put the ashes in this thing that opens and closes in the back of the seat. Then she had to pee, so she walked up to the American flight attendant, patted her catota (private area) with an exaggerated gesture and said, “Xi-xi!” (pee, in Kriolu) and the woman looked at her wide-eyed in understanding and said, “OK!” and she repeated, “Ok…!” and off they went. And when they got to New York the cars were going “blackety blackety blackety” all over like nonsense and then in California she played a game with money and pulled on this one thing with lights and lost all her money in a big place full of the levers…

And this is how the narration goes for hours. I lay there in contentment, listen to her rattle on in Kriolu and tally up the missing words like a Mad Libs puzzle. Airplane, clouds, ashtray, casino… It is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Yet the night becomes deep and I know I must head down the crater to make dinner and prepare for tomorrow’s lessons. Sensing the moment of departure is approaching, she becomes a pro at strategic distractions, animated topic changes and passionate, can’t-be-interrupted monologues. Yet once she sees my insistence, she becomes sullen and pouty and sighs in defeat. Even if I have stayed 7 hours, the plea is always the same, “Má inda sta cedo!” (But now is early!) I comfort her with, “N tá odja bo já” (I will see you soon.) Bo means “you.”

“OK!” she says, and we hug. She laughs, her good humor returning, and tells God to accompany me during my time away until the next visit. On my way out the door, she often shuffles after me as though she almost forgot to send her signature farewell my way:

“I Love You Bo!” she cries out in a heartfelt, high voice.

And I blow my dear old friend a kiss.

March 19, 2008

I am hiding out. A hermit in a shell, I seek refuge from the scary outside world. The comfort of the smooth, confining walls strokes my sides and I feel safe. But outside I hear the waves crashing. I can see the sunlight from my shade and ache for fresh, salty air. So I creep out, slowly, fearing the hand of curiosity will snatch me up and away at first glance. I tumble forward, and the white reflection envelops me in a rush. Looking back at my mighty fortress, it now appears so small. I am out, and scared, and lost, and free, ecstatic, beautiful, and alive.

March 23, 2008

I awoke early, before the morning light begins to pale the dark night sky and break over the crater above my house. My eyes fluttered, opened, closed. Stretch…the sleep fades. I breathe. In. Out. And another day takes the stage.

As I arise, my feet touch cold cement floor – a contrast from the soft, silky white of sleep-warm sheets. I pull back lace curtain and open wooden shutters. Outside are sounds of life stirring, awaking just like me. A chorus of roosters, donkey’s morning guffaw, heavy boots trudging along the path to construction or the fields. I drape my wrap around my shoulders for warmth and walk up a dirt road, cloth bag in hand, to get my morning bread. You can smell it baking in upon a wooden fire, it mixes with the floating aroma of coffee. Candles glow warmly in the doorways of stone houses.

Walking back to the house, warm bread in hand, the sun breaks over the crater and the glow showers over me. I breathe in the crisp goodness and know the contentment of peace.

Feliz Pascoa. (Happy Easter.)

April 13, 2008

Don’t cry, he says. It ruins your face.

And I smile.

April 15, 2008

Words from a year ago…
3/2/07

How the months rock away
Splendid moments lost in a trickle that runs down my forearms
And drips, drips into a puddle on the floor
In a moment it will dry up and be gone
Like heaving pain followed by miraculous recovery
The fate lies softly among the horizon
Somewhere far, far away.
There is a bit of worth beneath the exterior
A bit of hope beyond that papery edge that neglects what being human is all about
It helps a little to be free
From criticism, from judgment, from beauty
In order to see the strength that is forever waiting to be discovered
There are times when my eyes are raw and open to the world
When looking at life is like staring intently and stupidly at the sun
You look for too long and it hurts
Leaves a dull edge where sight once was.
This is where lines cross magically
Where the falling leaves hit a sharp ground and break like glass ornaments
Where the depth of eyes is brilliant even in comparison to the deep covering of air
The feeling emitted through those splendid portals is more necessary than air anyway.
I breathe in those eyes.
I see everything as desolate
And am deeply aware of the lack of space
Come closer because there is not enough room
And your closeness makes it bearable
Or go away, I can take it
You know the dissatisfaction the latter holds.
Could it get any better than this?
Would it help if I saw it in a different light?
One that was not so far from the shade you see now?
Then it could all intertwine and we could find a common value in it
And see the sea, the sky, the world for what it is
And not just what it is with us in it
Because I find it hard to think of one without the other
What the sky would be without those who look at it
What I would be without the sky
It all makes me kind of wonder about the painted beauty of failure
Makes even the collapse of it seem an overwhelming triumph in a way
And for that I am certain –
That there is not much in this world that could be without the other;
No sky that would not miss the aching heart below
And no life free of longing for the escape of plentiful abyss above

April 16, 2008

How can I tally up the marks of fate? It’s like casually throwing coins into the slot of a piggy bank. There is no way to determine the contents within unless you smash it to pieces. The value is adding up, day by day, waiting patiently to fill the exterior case. Look at an empty piggy bank, and it appears no different than the full one at its side. The weight of its worth is not detectable to the eye alone. I weigh it with my hands. The rest with my heart.

April 18, 2008

When did life become so complicated? Even as I write this I am imagining a simpler time, one when I would sit and type about the loveliness of void and the gentle embrace of an optimist’s fate. Covered lavishly in the lines of age I rant and dissect and complicate the mundane. I fume and spew complexities like a rotten soup. Where are the delectable layers of hope and passion? The silky crème that slides onto the tongue effortlessly. That guilt-free joy of indulgence, panic-free flight of one who knows nothing but hungers for the good that is imagined beyond what’s visible. I ache for knowledge but once obtained, flee. I am hunting a greater beast than I predicted. My arrows of truth may just awake the brutal dragon from its slumber, and the bow in hand, who else is there to blame once it breathes its fiery pants my direction?

April 19, 2008-04-18

I have to admit, I have become a bit of a cynic these days. Despite all the efforts, it is sometimes difficult to admit to yourself that you have not done enough to make yourself proud. With the close of service date looming in the near future, it is clear I have quite a pathetic cheerleader for myself. We all are, after all, our own toughest critics. And it seems my personal full-time critic has been working overtime these days. So to cheer me up my old roommate left a card in my mailbox. I found it when I went to the city expecting it to be empty. The front is a pasted magazine cutout of the world in a blue sky with a cutout type that reads: I want to be treated like a human being. Inside she wrote:

Just wanted to remind you that you are not just a human being, you are an incredible human being. Your experiences, compassion and insight are inspirational. A small mind cannot appreciate the extent of your selflessness and does not deserve to affect it. You are not just capable, you are exceptional.

She wrote this on the back:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

-Emily Dickinson

I guess I should be cheering a little louder these days, with friends like this in my life.

April 27, 2008

This is a time of complication. When threads of fear and love and longing and excitement merge together and weave the state of my emotional awareness and approach to going home. There are days where I am living a daydream in my mind, envisioning my life when I return to the States. The fluffy, comfy, pool-filled life I can enjoy and indulge in. A world where things get done the day you want them to. Where, despite the cynicism of war and the superficiality of escape, there is the ability to pursue options, entertain dreams. I sit and fantasize about the comfort and beauty and accessibility...Then a dagger rips through my thoughts and I am stabbed by the heartbreaking fact I will no longer be here. No more holding hands with my shadows on the front porch. No more firewood kitchen whispers with female friends, no more traditional music and laughter with my students. No more Kriola. No more Cape Verde.

And I break.

April 28, 2007

An anniversary can mean all sorts of things in this world of ours. It can be a celebration of life, of togetherness, of destruction or loss. It can symbolize the passing of time between the moment your life was headed one sure, true direction, and the crashing realization that the path has been altered. For better or for worse, a year anniversary is the conscious recognition of a dramatic shift in the way things are, and the effort of remembering or forgetting that it will never be that way again. Happy Anniversary. Happy Forgetting. It’s up to you.

May 4, 2008

The rigidity of my movements astounds even me. I cannot fathom the correspondence of necessary tides, why they rise and fall beyond the movements of my limbs. The increasing heat and intensity of judgment within the comings and goings of this world twist and somersault and glide through me. There are ways in which water’s purity may be redeemed, but even the age of beginnings can no longer find the sources of its language. The constant breath of apathy takes hold and I choke on the thick, tough meat of a leathery hide we call time. Only in panic does it seem to stretch out and take form. Yet the feathery pulse of being remains veiled within the jacket pocket of my breast and my fist clings to the air along my skin; I wait for the pulsing, for the breathing, for the purification to begin.

Fear is a detonator. Once the match strikes and the chord catches flame, there is nothing to do but acknowledge the swift ticking and tocking of its strokes. Once, twice it calls and sings to me in a battered, weary voice. The baritone hum clings to the edges of fabric, and is felt like one struggling through a narrow cave, elbows against gravel and sweat trickling – drip, drip – along cowardly brow lined in panic.

Why is it then, the weak appear in the smoke as much larger than their true frames permit? Like a carnival mirror, stretched and elongated to the sky, a small meager man shoots to heaven and playfully plucks babies from wombs with a devilish grin. And those mortal mountains, from molten margin to ice-covered peaks, shudder at the apparition and remain fixed, tentative of what’s to come. The precious gems of living collect dust and disappear, and the maker mourns. It is a silent, haunting sound. Those left to wonder weep and cling to their loved ones as the tumors within rot their golden frames.

Traveling along these words, eyes grow heavy, and the heaviness seeps through red rivers into the heart. This infamous machine of balance and fury and lust is tainted. For even the strong-fisted lose grip on its harnessed power. In this way, these small beings, should they shun the illusion of manipulated light, may once again carry to birth those greatest hopes of stamina. The fleet, the fight and the glory of principle take shape. It slashes the strength of deception and abandons the prophecy of lies. There in its talons lie the victors, the weary glowing hues of morning. With renewing strength the forces of splendor rush on and fight, leaving a trail of meager, moaning skins in its path. The flags of promise wave and the sovereignty of radiance reign, for deception, despite size, is reflected in its true form, and there is no glory in light without the brutal discrepancies of gloom.

And so the victorious reign after all.

May 17, 2008

Time passes. And I jump into it. I dive into the early morning ocean and push myself downward with a might I did not know I had. I hold my breath, kick against the strength of current and open my eyes to this world. My hungry eyes search and admire and I frantically take it all in, running out of air. Temporary life, this is. Like a breath and below, the time it takes to plunge into the liquid world, and gasp, search for the answers, the beauty, the meaning, before shooting back up and crashing through the barrier from which you came.

May 22, 2008

I am reading the latest National Geographic that gets sent to me monthly from Europe. The cover says, in bold white letters upon a red background: China – Inside the Dragon. I imagine this edition went to print and was delivered before the catastrophic earthquakes that ripped through the large and populated country, killing thousands upon thousands. I have not seen the news in over two years, but I can envision the images of parents, retrieving their only children from the rubble like rag dolls. Just as fragile, just as silent in their deaths.

This edition covered the growth of China’s economy and detailed the environmental effects such entrepreneurial endeavors were reaping. Countless times authors of the various articles asked the question, “What’s next? What will happen to this country?” It breaks my heart to already know.

One accusation on behalf of the frantic development (in no way related to the natural disaster that occurred) was short-sightedness. There was emphasis to see the long term affects on our world society. I can only wonder - if a mirror was placed before our own country, what would be revealed?

June 16, 2008

This is the last week of classes at school in Ponta Verde where I have been teaching English for two years now. I have watched my students grow from little squirts who know little more than hello, into young adults more confident and adept at not only language, but in who they are. Over the years I have watched them energetically participate in the various activities we have planned together – a theater and dance group, soccer teams, various projects and events. I know where they live, what they like, how to handle them in the classroom. I know if they are wealthy or poor, spoiled or beaten at home. I know what makes them think, and what outright bores them. I know who has a boyfriend or girlfriend, and who is more interested in studying. I have watched as some became pregnant, moved to America to search for better lives, or slowly faded from the classroom. And over these two years I have seen these individuals build dreams. I can only hope the foundation I provided as a teacher, mentor, and friend remains as they go on to live their lives. Good luck, goodbye - I will miss you.

July 11, 2008

There is a saying in Cape Verde that is so popular it has been etched into the stone monument of the international airport in Praia.

It says, Si ka ta badu, ka ta biradu. (If you don’t leave you can’t come back.)

In such a country where emigration is a part of life and those born in Cape Verde often seek better opportunities in countries abroad, seperation and journey are key themes in the lives of families, lovers and friends. Children are left behind by single mothers who go to work long hours at the KFCs and McDonald’s of Brokton’s strip malls to support their loved ones left in poverty back home. In the rural areas of Fogo, where a strikingly high number of people have family in America, distance between people is a part of life. The glory of going abroad is matched only by the longing to return home and be reunited with those closest to heart.

In a way, during these two years abroad I have come to understand some aspects of what Cape Verdeans have to face when they set foot on new soil – the initial shock, readjustment, adaption to language, culture, beliefs, desire to change in order to fit in. I understand being seen as different.

July 15, 2008

Today was a day of reckoning. It was a moment set aside for goodbye. A time to reflect, admire, conquer and allow a part of myself to be set free. Today I climbed the volcano.

It’s something I have been teased about from the beginning. European tourists I ran into, arriving fresh off the plane in camo tank tops, short shorts and hiking boots, would ask, “So, how long have you lived on Fogo?” “Two years,” I would claim, to faces of admiration. Well, certainly, having been here for that amount of time, I must have climbed the volcano. What was it like? No, I would answer to disappointed expressions, I have not. A part of me always wanted to cringe, knowing that these newly arrived visitors from a continent away would return the next day having somehow known this island a bit more intimately. They would come back with stories of the four-hour climb, of the more challenging parts of the scale, the smoke within the peak and the freedom of gleefully sprinting down the sandy side to the bottom in minutes. What a trip, they would say, what a climb, what a rush.

And the teasing did not end with tourists. Other volunteers on the island would often venture to ask, “How many times have you been to Cha? And how many times have you climbed the volcano? What?!?” It is true – I had visited the hauntingly still village within the crater a number of times over the years. I enjoyed learning about the French aristocrat who brought grape vines to the people of Cha, and then preceded to have over 70 children with the women he found there, thus creating what they call the Montrond race - African people with blonde hair, wind-chafed coffee-colored skin and gleaming turquoise eyes. They insist on remaining in Cha despite its many eruptions, evacuations and government orders against it. In the evenings I would delight in the electricity-free area by watching the sun set behind the volcano and soak in the darkening sky as stars blinked one by one into existence, a glass jar of Cha wine in hand, intoxicated by the giant looming peak overhead.

For a while I was disturbed by the fact that I never could find time to allow the proper number of days needed to allow a full day in Cha. But slowly the idea of scaling the black dome that lorded over the island like a Cape Verdean god merged into a metaphor. It was decided. I would wait until the very end, when school was over and time was up, to work my way to the top, sit at the highest point, and say goodbye.

Another volunteer and I awoke early and dressed in the darkness. We met our friend and guide a little before six in front of a small cinderblock bar that provides live mourna, dancing and violins into the steamy, candlelit night. As we hiked to the volcano’s base, the sun emerged and spread light across the black sand, illuminating green vines of grapes. We walked and I took in the baby green of the leaves, contrasted against the glittering black, up to the rocky peak, candy blue sky and puffy white clouds beyond. The clear, crisp air hugged my awaking body and we began our climb.

At some point the easy hike became a bit of a rock-climbing expedition. But once to the top, the wind whipping my clothes about against my skin, I looked over a blanket of clouds at the tiny world below. This is it, I thought, This is goodbye.

And it was.

The descent was a joy – once past the rocky peak the ankle-deep sand allows the weary climber to leap and run, moon-like, down its steeply descending grade. We laughed, we flew, and enjoyed the fleeting descent. We took to it with wings.

So now I feel I have done what was possible these two years. I have taught, I have learned Kriolu, I have made friends and I have even lived here long enough to know who and what I don’t care for. There are no more delusions, no more pretending to be a part of here. I just am, in no way whatsoever, a tourist. This is my home. This is a piece of me. And yes, this is goodbye.

What a climb, what a view, what a joy.

And yes – this life – what a ride…

July 20, 2008

There are daily decisions to make. As a human being, we are all put to the test. Feats of heroism, optimism and simply awaking each morning require a dedication and desire to continue. I have found that in my last moments here on Fogo, I am shuffling through my challenges like a deck of cards. Oh, what will it be today? What one thing can I do that can only be done for the first time? There is a simplicity in childhood that reveals the utter joy of experience. Eyes look in wonder only once, then the glow of astonishment darkens to complacency. The rush comes forth, most vividly, this first time. I am in a constant state of awareness here. I awake always knowing this new thing will occur. It is like being a child once again, full of wonder. Each small step a giant journey.

Today my challenge was to kill an enormous pig that had been fattened for the kill. It weighed far more than me so I tied together its legs, settled the large animal onto its back, tied its snout shut and held the rope tightly in the grip of my sure hand. My right knee held down its massive weight, and I settled upon a spot on its neck. A firm jab with the knife and a jerk ripped through its tendons and veins as the blood poured forth and slowly drained the life out in frothy pools of crimson. This animal was raised to die. Its flesh, once cooked, will provide money for a family that needs it.

There is so much senseless waste in this world. I remember, as a waitress, having to throw out a $30 steak because it wasn’t cooked to the customer’s liking. To me, this is the true crime. And so people cringe and squirm in disgust if they feel inclined, but despite how the murder of an animal may sound, this is a good thing and a way of life. I am proud and honored to have been a part of it. I understand the value of existence, and appreciate how precious each living thing is. This is what is valuable; this is the method of graciousness. It is the entire substance of being. Now that’s something I can stomach.

July 23, 2008

Freedom flows through me, like blood through my veins. I can taste it like a refreshing beverage. It whips and snaps across the mouth like a carbonated dream. Down it goes, into the back of my throat, and sugar sweet syrup slides down on waves of ecstasy. Lips curl in pleasure and tongue laps up the juicy joy of it, thirsting for more. For once you savor the tangy substance, you can never have enough. It is an oasis of rejuvenation amidst a parched, weary desert of drought. Dreamy, floating freedom; settles in the stomach like a lively visitor who comes and goes in a liquid rush. But once full of it, it strays, seeks a hammock and lies down for a while, tamed by the utter dash of it all.

July 25, 2008

A Vaccination for Loneliness.

I have recently read that loneliness is not determined by the number of people around you, but by your relationship to them. Some things that cause a person to feel loneliness: transitions in life, separation, opposition, and rejection, among others. There are, what the author calls, “self-defeating ways” to deal with loneliness. Throw yourself into your work, attempt to seek solace is materialism, escape through alcohol or drugs, throw a big fat pity party and be disappointed when no one shows up, etc. It is clear that lonely people don’t take care of themselves. They do not eat right or exercise and they ignore their personal needs. Sounds like a particular debilitating disease to me. Even the late musical legends the Beatles found the topic noteworthy when their harmonic vocal chords lined up to lament, “Look at all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?”

Yes, loneliness. Poor Eleanor Rigby. I wish I could say I had never fallen into that pitfall. To be quite honest, I have often never felt so lonely since I joined the Peace Corps. It is an utterly isolating thing to experience. First with the cultural, situational and linguistic barriers that separate you from your new neighbors (none of whom you know), coupled with the fact that a whole lifetime reliance upon a closely knit family and friend network is now living quite nearly on the other side of the globe. I could even factor in the wonder of living on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the whole volcanic rock accommodates the same population as the number of people who attended my commuter college back home. Yes, I can be a witness to the inner workings and incapacitating effects of loneliness. So, quite normally, I have begun to think about my own transition that is ahead. Considering that the author cites transition and separation as two main contributing factors in the contagion of lonesomeness, I am expecting a bit of isolation at the end of service, upon my arrival home as well. How many people will be able to converse with me in Kriolu? I mean really, who is going to give a hoot about how the corn harvest is coming along in a remote village of Africa? What will happen to the little daily rituals and reliances I have clung to and sought comfort in, in order to survive here?

And so, the fear starts to seep in, and creates a river of difference between the mourning and celebration I feel when I think of returning home. I know I will no doubt be welcomed into loving arms and a sea of accommodations and luxuries so I can transition back to American life comfortably and sturdily. Yet, I can’t help but think back to the fact that loneliness is a tricky thing. That part that rings so true about being surrounded by people and yet utterly by yourself.

So to combat this bitter and isolating disease, I have sought comfort in a passage. Its truth rang out to me as my thoughts meandered back in time to my arrival here. It will no doubt aid me in many difficult times in the future. Like most resolute truths, there is nothing complicated, nothing specifically intellectual or wrought out. It was the one mast I clung to in an ocean of loneliness when I first arrived on this island, and it is this:

Love is the anecdote to loneliness. Instead of waiting to be loved, we need to give love; then love will be given back to us in abundant measure.

May this be an aid to those, like myself, who need a gentle pat on the back once in a while, to be reminded. Happy loving.

July 28, 2008

Two years ago, the walls of my house were empty – plain, whitewash concrete.

So in order to make my concrete block a livable space, I began taping up collages of photographs, letters and magazine cutouts to brighten up the place. As the years passed the walls of my home came to life. Bouquets of color splashed across the corners of my room and those bare parapets of nothing grew vines and blossomed into little faces and smiles and moments of living. Each rare bud of glossy frame was laid out like vases of yawning flora. They represented, moment by moment, the transition between walls of blank space and the progression of carving out a sense of place here in Africa.

I have the tendency now and again to enter my room, throw open the wooden shutters at the front of my house, and bathe in the incoming light. I sit upon the patchwork quilt on my bed and daydream. The windows are paintings of the outside world – the flat sparkling ocean and island of Brava a portrait. My eyes wander from the beauty of the outer space to the inner pallet of memories on display all around my head. These photographs, a visual depiction of my roots growing deep and strong in Ponta Verde. Each friendship, each snapshot of scenery, fertilizing the soil and tending to the growth of my love like an old woman dedicated to the task of her garden. These pictures were my patchwork of what was quickly becoming home.

There is a photograph of Mandinha, my 100-year-old friend, with heavy black locks of hair falling about her weathered smile and the stone of the quintal. Of my shadows, my adopted children next door, with grimy smiles and dirt-stained t-shirts, hamming it up for the camera and throwing up peace signs. There is one from last year, of me and Lisabette before she was pregnant, her long, lean frame of youth forever captured. A close-up of a bright yellow sunflower, its petals stretched out like open arms. Letters and drawings, National Geographic landscapes and maps, glimpses into the world and all its wonder. Portraits of people and things I have come to love here, that have become my lifeline, my air, my source of survival.

Today I tore them all down.

One by one, slowly and determinedly, I ripped the masking tape from the wall and pulled parts of myself away. Each photo torn from the surface of my heart.

And now there are empty walls again. Bare, empty walls of beginning. When I look around, I am reminded that this life I have created here may never be again. So I mourn for this empty space that was once so well tended and depended upon for two essential years of my life. I sit still on my porch and look out at the ocean and know that this too will soon disappear. Three weeks from now I will find myself back in the States surrounded by new empty walls. Walls without life, without history, that stare blankly back at me. And I will be forced to do it all over. To start afresh, anew and fill my walls once more.

Yes, I will begin again. And no doubt my life will continue to be full of adventures, challenges and searching. I will eventually move on. Yet, somehow, when I imagine the photographs of those future walls, all I can envision strewn across these fresh white surfaces are the lovely blooming images of Cape Verde.

The Years the Locusts Have Eaten

2007-10-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

September 14, 2007

There are times here when the purpose of my life seems to connect, willingly, with the unforeseen events of the future. There is a smooth interval that seeks to communicate to me without words, and I stand by willingly, awaiting the next installment of information, like a soldier on duty, ready at will, anticipating even the most unfathomable assignments. The fear within is dispelled by a belief that, despite the cloudy ash of aftermath, the meaning will somehow appear, as an apparition, from the obscurity of smoke. It will rise up, undeniably, from the complication of the visible, and utterly confirm the coded significance of that which has come to pass. In this, one seeks solace. Emotion, prayer, desire, conviction…all tend to play common roles in this method of thought. The requirement is none other than belief. Here lies an immense canyon of difference, between those who move forward courageously, and those who are utterly hindered by doubt.

September 19, 2007

It appears as though:

the issue of conflict arises from a situation in which two opposing ideas – whose owners favor an ardent array of opinions based upon a purely unsystematic mixture of genes, nurturing, life experiences, conflicts, tragedies, triumphs, relationships, and trillions of other seemingly unalterable factors – decline to accurately reflect the value in looking at the issue as a whole and complete truth; which is, ironically, often a mixture of both sides. Only when the issue of putting aside years of rational assessment and personal moral principles has been achieved, can these two polar opposites link in some way, and resolve the incompetence of this world.

Believing in the possibility of this is often referred to as Idealism. In other words, in all actuality this will never happen.

But I hope it does.

me========Idealist.

September 23, 2007

I have only recently begun to understand the concept of love. I believe I always saw love as an act of taking - as though it were something one was lacking and needed in order to fill that void of misunderstanding, doubts of existence, meaning and purpose. What I have only just now discovered is this concept is entirely switched, a mirror image of the thing. A definite reflection of reality, but backward.

Engaging in love is, in fact, entirely … not minimally, not slightly, not haphazardly … an act of giving, and taking is but a tainted distortion of the concept, one that corrupts and ruins it entirely. People often treat love as a filler: a drug, craving, high, addiction, reason or satisfaction as validation of worth. Those who expect anything – a mother with unfulfilled dreams, a spouse with selfish needs, a volunteer with high ideals – are distorting the concept of its existence. Love is simply and uniquely an offering, in which the transaction does not require (in fact outright restricts) the giver from taking in return. In this way a giver of love expects nothing but acceptance; loves only for the sake of the purity of the act. This is love despite hindrance. In this equation, fear of balance provides nothing.

There is yet another fallacy: Love is not an emotion, lofty in ideals and wrought with gleeful misdirection. It is strategic, and sensible. Its aim is drawn to those who lack it, and treats recipients as un-captained ships stocked with treasure, gone astray and seeking route. A lighthouse of hope amidst dark waves that crash, futilely, against battered rock. A map of clarity, an injection of courage, a firm providence of support. In short, love is given only for those who need to be reminded that they are worthy of it.

In this way, love is the most powerful tool available to us. This is why, when misunderstood, it is an equally powerful weapon.

October 4, 2007

“Where are the years the locusts have eaten?”

Those were his last words to me. He sighed, his heart heavy with living, his mind expanding beyond the tangible nature of the world, and the folds of his eyes creased as he looked up into the distance of the sky. The blue-veined hands rested, crossed resolutely in his lap, upon bony knees covered in gray sweatpants. I thought of those hundred-year-old hands; the hands my brother had photographed in sepia; the ones that had turned the dial of a radio for the first time in a friend’s garage; had labored during World War Two; hands that had built beautiful furniture, intricate carvings, boats out of wood. In the next labored breath, he looked at me, and the life that was only a moment ago pirouetting through the sky settled upon me, focused and intent.

Watery eyes like glass – eyes that have borne witness to a century of moments – allowing me to look in.

His words, as they fell from a closed mouth into the cavities of my soul, welled up inside me. His gift, a million memories, filling me so I was bursting with tears for every precious one of them. Each tear and triumph poured from my eyes and down my young face, in comparison so inexperienced, so new to the world.

In these final moments I thought of the beginning:

I used to go up to Santa Barbara often as a child. Road trips were always accompanied by my grandmother fretting over my predisposition to car sickness. It was then I learned to hold a brown paper bag to my stomach, in order to take my mind off the slow lurching curves of the northern roads. Once I saw the land take unfamiliar shape, turning from desert-like stretches to the whitewashed churn of ocean along rocky cliffs, past the outdoor stadium theatre and twinkling glass carousel, I knew we had made it to my land of imagination. I would become giddy with anticipation to visit my Popo.

Often I would show up to his cozy white house and crouch by a cluster of flowers my great-grandmother planted, the ones with bright colors and black puckered-up faces that sing in Alice In Wonderland. I would walk along the little path toward the giant oak with the wooden swing and contemplate what I would be that weekend. Would I be an adventurer? A famous singer? Wounded and unable to walk? Blind? By the time my little fist knocked against his door, I would have assumed an entirely different persona. Most often I was an English girl named Matilda, with a well-to-do British accent, silk gloves and purse, flower pinned in my hair and pink handkerchief to match. A proper pinky finger pointed in the air.

“Why, Matilda!” my great grandparents would exclaim as they opened the door. “How lovely to see you!” It would be that way from the moment I arrived to the moment I left days later.

In my great grandparents’ house I could be whatever I wanted.

Over the years, I, like most people who knew him, began to develop an interest for my great-grandfather, this man who was so full of life that it never seemed to run out, even with age. I began to take a video camera along with me on visits and listened to him talk about his life, from the beginning to the present. His face is recorded – at moments eyes shine with glee and utter joy as he recall stories that delight him. Other moments he sings old hymns he learned in church as a young boy, his celebratory voice booming and raised to the skies, then falters, becomes low and somber as he is taken away with emotion. Heavy, shoulder-wracked sobs drown out his words.

He made me cards on my birthday. One-liners that hit me like his characteristic hard grip of a hug. For all I know, he must have made them for everyone. Small pieces of wisdom handed out in recognition of celebratory days of growth. He always told me to use the least amount of words to express the greatest of concepts.

He liked writing emails to keep in touch. I can still imagine him sitting beneath the corkboard bed that folds upward against the wall where I used to sleep, surrounded by Raggedy Andy doll sailors and mementos of the sea. In his eighties he chopped down the enormous tree in his front lawn and installed a sprinkler system. He attended exercise workouts at the gym to, jokingly, “look at young women in their leotards.” He liked Taco Bell burritos, wore a white Gilligan’s Island hat and was a notoriously bad driver. I never saw him without his white bristly mustache. It would prickle me against my top lip when I would kiss him goodbye.

And now I see there won’t be any more goodbyes.

So the years have been shuffled through like a stack of cards. My father called today and told me our hero has passed away. The man we all thought would surely be with us forever. There is much more I would have liked to learn, and I am sure to never be Matilda again. Here in Cape Verde if someone dies you wail to alert the community of the death. You dress in black and you mourn your loss. The wailing is called chora and the missing, sodade. This is what I feel.

I know I am lucky for the time I spent with my great-grandfather during my summer trip to the States. I was able to see the greatest man I know in his month of twilight. As he stood weakly and reached for me to lead him into the other room to talk, one-on-one, I felt his firm hand on my arm. His heart was failing him, yet firm against my shoulder I felt the enduring strength of his grip on life. All his will was centered there in that hand. He sat down and I crouched across from him, my elbows on his knees, my knees on the floor like a child. I looked up at him and my great-grandfather looked at me one last time. In this moment he passed on a lifetime of wisdom through his eyes. I didn’t know someone could do that, so simply. But that’s how he was.

His gaze confirmed everything he had told me over the years – that he believed in me, in who I was, and in where I would go in life. He encouraged me to pursue my dreams and instilled that bit of faith that even the strongest people need as assurance in life to succeed despite setback. He inspired me to use my words, continue to search, have the courage to live a life of valor. He told me he was proud of me. The loving impression of my departing mentor.

My Popo continues to exist, to me, as a symbol of a man who enjoyed his life; who made mistakes, yet came to terms with them; who never allowed the passage of time to stifle the flame of his heart, but rather allowed the comings and goings of wind to fan the flames of what burned within. From him, I am sure to live on into my own life with a zest and eagerness strong enough to see me through a great passage of time.

As for Matilda, she is a part of me that will never die. Though I will never again return to those weekends of exploring imaginary lives, I am content to continue on in order to discover new ones. I can, after all, be whoever I want to. My great-grandpa taught me that.

Sodade Missing/Longing

Nha bizdono, My great-grandfather,
N ta tem sodade pa bo I will miss, long for you
Hoje e pa sempri Today and for always
Dormi dretu na seu ku anjos Sleep well in the sky with angels
E spera pa mim And wait for me
Pa kel dia n ta txiga e fla bo: For that day I arrive and tell you:
Obrigada, Thank you,
Guia de nha vida. Guide of my life.
Descansa na paz, Rest in peace,
Bu bizneta Matilda. Your great-granddaughter, Matilda.

October 10, 2007

It was dark and windy when I awoke to my alarm. The wooden shutters at my window opened and slammed. I lit a candle, and half-asleep got dressed in track shorts and wifebeater. I tied the laces of my worn running shoes and headed down the steps into the shadows of a moonless morning, being sure to throw my arms wildly about to avoid a face-first dive into a spider web. The cornstalks that surrounded me were tossing in surrender to heavy currents of air. The fluttering sounded like people walking about me as I tried to make out the outlines of billowing stalks. As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, a dog began to bark, echoing into the distance of the heavily blanketed sky. Besides the wind, all I could hear was the brisk pace of my footsteps as I stared at the innumerable stars twinkling mutely above my head.

Stopping a couple houses down, I awaited the first of dedicated friends who go running with me every morning along the cobblestone path. I stretched my tired legs along a low rock wall. A candle appeared, laughter at an unheard joke, footsteps down a corridor, a jangle of keys and the slam of a front door. As my friend greets me, hand extended in the darkness, we turn to hear a screeching noise near her house. A screaming, spitting and wailing.

“Kela e kuze!?” (“What is that!?”) she cried, leaping and grabbing me from behind, rather theatrically in my opinion. I looked blindly into the direction of a sound that appeared to be scratching the night out.

At first I thought it was chora, a mourning sound people make to signify when someone has died, but it soon became obvious – as the humanly high pitch turned to a more animalistic tone – that it came from two cats in a heated fight in the middle of the street. It took a great deal of coaxing, and finally an outright threat that I would leave her there in front of her house, for my friend to agree to run along with me.

She is a believer of tempo antigo “the old times” and there is a myriad of old wives’ tales, superstitions and humorous beliefs that she swears are God’s truth. It leaves me clutching my sides in laughter, or more often staring at her sideways, when I hear her random explanations for things. (A woman’s child has a drooling problem because she ate a type of fish when she was pregnant with him. Eat three limes and it will cure any sickness. On October 13th, all the flies will fall down dead.) What’s funny is half the stuff I tell her she outright disregards as hearsay, silly nonsense from a Western world. (Illness is often passed through a thing called germs. You must stretch after you run to avoid injuring yourself. Women can drink beer.) Somehow, despite these differences, we find a way to laugh at each other’s crazy notions and consider whatever comes out of the other’s mouth a source of endless entertainment.

As I drag her hesitantly into the darkness to begin our run, we make our way in the direction of where the catfight disappeared only moments before. My friend crosses herself and makes an array of elaborate hand motions to ward off bad spirits. The schedule-based American in me checks the time to make sure our pace has not been set back to the point that I will be late to teach class when the bell rings at 7:30 a.m. (FYI: time does not formally exist in Cape Verde).

Both of us, with a sly air only close friends can get away with, observe the other through a sideways, knowing glance and stifle a giggle as we head up the hill together for our daily run, side by side, each of us shaking our head.

October 16, 2007

There are many aspects of life in Cape Verde that I never expected to encounter during my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer. For example, I did not expect to live in a large beautiful house (humble as it is within, lacking in furniture, running water, etc.). I did not expect to see young teenagers walking out of shacks looking dressed to perform in a hip hop music video shoot on MTV, sporting fake bling and professing their undying love for Tupac and 50-Cent…and Celine Dion. I couldn’t have even anticipated trading my idea of the “bush” experience on mainland Africa for a life in mainland PCV-dubbed “Posh Corps,” in which one of the northern islands boasts windsurfing and scuba diving lessons available for interested European tourists.

Yes, there are many things I did not expect to encounter in Peace Corps. Most significantly of which is Cape Verdeans’ utterly diehard obsession with Brazilian soap operas called telenovellas. On the rare occasion that there is actually something interesting to do on a weekend evening, it is absolutely necessary to coordinate the time of departure with the ever-exhausting issue of the T.V. People here are so intrigued by the lives of these Brazilian celebrity dramas that families of 15 who sleep in two-bedroom homes and dress in rags are sure to have a shiny television mounted like a serene idol within their unpainted (and unfinished) cement block homes. Simply put, the street is a ghost town between the hours of 8-10 p.m.

Hence, the current issue of Zorro.

Much like the prime time line-ups that air on all cable-connected programs in the States, the telenovellas that appear at the beginning of the Fall season often feature new shows with yet another random mix-up of the same actors that appeared on three older shows from last season. Cape Verdeans anticipated the subtle change with an emotion that can only be described as political fervor tinged with a dash of religious zest. Their excitement was nothing short. Most popular of all these anticipated telenovellas was the cheesy Brazilian take of (whoosh-whoosh-woosh!) ZORRO.

I have, I admit it, seen the show once or twice. Although it was, in my defense, against my will: I watch it only under the pretext of integration. I saw the busty damsel who is, shockingly, in a constant state of distress. Zorro himself makes his consistent appearance, wielding his thin swooshy sword and vanishing dramatically into the night the moment his alter-ego takes form. But lately Zorro has taken on an even greater level of distinction: he has been appearing in houses on the island of Fogo. Not on television, but as real-life robbers.

Indeed, on a tiny island known as the “crazy” island (Cape Verdeans actually have a saying that goes: “Are you crazy or are you from Fogo?”) it is normal to experience your shock level to sink to a tolerance of just about anything, but my personal low has reached a new depth. Apparently some young teens with a rather unintelligent interpretation of Zorro’s plight have taken to wearing black masks, breaking into people’s houses at night, and stealing everything they find within. It happens anonymously and at random, and despite the fact that it has not occurred in my zone, this place is small enough for word to get around quick. Zorro is on the tip of every tongue, and fear is in their eyes when they say his name.

For those of you back home, don’t worry. I am taking the necessary precautions. I lock my door, don’t go out at night, and make sure I know how to say, “I’m calling the police!” in Kriolu. Yet I get a small sick pleasure in the fact that everyone is running around crying out, “Zorro is coming! Look out for Zorro! Don’t let Zorro get you!” I suddenly find all attempts to convince my Cape Verdean friends that telenovellas aren’t real life slightly embarrassing, considering Zorro’s running about in human form. But fear not, I’ll do my part. I’ll just be sure I don’t take the program as seriously as the young ambitious looters. I will keep my bust covered and avoid looking like I’m in distress – two things that are guaranteed to get any female in trouble in Cape Verde.

Yes… there are many things I did not expect to encounter during my time here. But I’ll just keep expecting the unexpected. Fogo is the kind of place that continues to dispel all concepts of rational logic. It keeps me guessing. In the meantime, my name is Brittany and I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Western Africa.

And I’m looking out for Zorro.
Z.

October 20, 2007

My good friend turned 100 years old today. There were three days of preparation. Women of the family and myself ran about frantically baking cakes, rolling dough for pastels, ripping cove (collard greens), separating beans, frying pork skins, pounding corn and putting up decorations. The firewood kitchen was kept lit all through the moments, a thick, lazy stream of smoke that rose out from the cement floor and danced through streams of light. Women bent over as they toiled, their heads covered in colorful scarves. Since I did this last year for the 99th birthday party, I found myself a bit more helpful than I had been the year before.

With big events such as these I find the gender roles are completely separated (and my role as well). The women were in charge of food, cooking, presentation, etc. The men killed the animals, put up a ragged tarp covering for shade, and then sat under a tree and got to work at drinking a bottle of the strong clear liquor called grogue. Then they offered me a swig.

It is strange to be an American woman in Cape Verde. At times I feel as though I am seen as an honorary man. I have a career, my own house, and the freedom to go wherever I please without being confined to a restricted role. Yet I constantly teeter between this recognition and the newness of living in a foreign country. One moment I am treated as an elite celebrity that commands the respect of even the highest community members and country nationals. The next moment, a five-year-old is laughing at me for mispronouncing a simple word or concept. It is both confusing and humbling. I am not quite a man, not quite a woman. I am called a Kriola and seen as just another person among my group of friends, yet I am a strangeira (foreigner).

So who am I here? Where is my sense of role and purpose supposed to lie amidst this enormous canyon of perception?

It may be safe to conclude, as I watched my friend dance about gleefully upon her century-old feet, that both age and self-depiction can be transcended.

October 21, 2007

It is harvest time! I have gone through and counted the husks of corn friends and neighbors have left as presents on my front porch. Just today the grand total is 26. What am I going to do with all this corn?!?

Ta Bai e Triste, Ta Bem, Maguado

2007-09-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

July 20, 2007

A month of life – and how can it be that it passes away in a blinding memory, searing the edges of thought and lingering, the color of a roaring fire. Distinct moments guide me through the concept of time, hinting shyly at the many innumerable events already forgotten. A tree cut down, now but a stump of wood. A canister blackened to soot. Green buds rising from a barren earth. These are evidence of the running of things, of the continuation of a script written long ago. I am left to wonder.

July 21, 2007

My cat types too:

XsclkZ_Q }’7u
‘]8

*Conributed by distinguished Amilcar Cabral, a.k.a. “Xuxanti” (little rascal)

August 22, 2007

I just got to my house in Fogo after three whirlwind weeks in the States and a week of mid-service exams in the capital of Praia. I opened the door and immediately smelled something rotting inside. My friend and I walked cautiously around, attempting to guess at the source of the pungent odor. Apparently the electricity had been turned off and there was a good amount of fish left in the freezer. Despite my general tendency to detailed description, I will simply say that it was the smelliest welcome home gift of my life.

August 23, 2007

After about three whirlwind weeks in the States, I am now back in Ponta Verde. My roommate is helping to train new volunteers in Assomada. In my solitude, and the mid afternoon calm laying a soft veil of serenity upon me, I reflect on the past month of my life. Arriving in America was like jolting out of a dream. I thought of the small rural routine I had become accustomed to as the starry expanse of Boston lights slowly churned by. Then the wheels of the plane hit ground, jerked and came to a roaring stop along lines of other airliner jets. I felt like the breath was knocked out of me, and then I opened my eyes to another world. The dream of the last year drained thickly out of me and I woke up.

Standing numbly in line at the customs area along with a large group of Cape Verdeans, I saw the culture of Cape Verde in striking contrast to the American security personnel around me. The lights of the airport gave the bald pale heads of the American men an unnatural glow. Their intimidating orders were barked in the faces of people I knew from Cape Verde – professionals, people with Visas, those with stature due to a connection to the States – appeared small and ordinary, at the mercy of these large men with Boston accents and short tempers.

“Look lady – if there are mangoes in your suitcase, you’re in BIG trouble, you hear me?? Just ONE mango, and that’s a $300 fine. Do you understand! I am NOT messing around!” I heard a female security employee bellow in the face of a Cape Verdean woman who looked perplexed and slightly annoyed as she guessed what this angry foreign woman was shouting. It was a harsh observation of relativity for me. Many of these compliant and anxious people were community leaders with big reputations in Cape Verde. Here, airport personnel were shoving them around.

As I was contemplating this, one of the younger male employees, badge shining, pulled me out of line by the arm and said, “You wanna get out of here?”

“Well, it’s not 7 hours until my next flight, so no, not particularly,” I responded.

“C’mon, you don’t belong here, these people smell,” he smirked in disgust. “Let’s go, I’ll get you out of here so you don’t have to wait with them anymore.”

Since it appeared that he wasn’t giving me a choice, and since it seemed ineffective to let him I smelled just as bad as everyone else in line (I knew because I could not smell it), I followed compliantly (must have been the intimidating badge) and “got out of there.” A stamp on the passport, a whisk though imaginary boundaries, and Boston opened up before me.

My mom, unexpectedly, stood among a group of Cape Verdean-Americans waiting for passengers to disembark. She jumped on a plane to surprise me in Boston and her smiling face mixed along with the crowd, she holding a welcome home sign. My mind recognized her before my eyes did, and instead of having to sleep in the terminal till my next flight, she pulled me into a hug and swept me along in my cultural shock to a high class hotel.

The efficiency and luxury astounded me. It was all familiar in my memory, but I never knew how many factors contribute to quickness and comfort in the States. Cars arrived on time, speakers listed helpful information, moving sidewalks made walking effortless, and doors flew open automatically into air conditioned rooms full of comfy chairs and refreshments. No map needed, no difficult journey, no problems. Everything was organized, people were efficient and you got what you wanted when you wanted it. We went up to the room and I flushed a toilet for the first time in a year, which I reported to my mom who appeared amused. We had a beer that actually tasted like good quality beer in the lobby. I took a hot shower and fell asleep in a comforter-covered bed wearing a soft fuzzy robe.

The next couple weeks flew past like a single, wonderful day. I slept about 3 hours a night just to not miss a moment. It was difficult to see everyone I wanted, and even more so to find quality one-on-one time with people. I went off-roading in my jeep, ate a billion burritos, attended comedy shows with friends and visited San Clemente, Santa Barbara, Lake Arrowhead and Vegas where my best friend got married. I delivered a maid of honor speech, to a crowd of twinkling wine glasses, drank out of a Fat Tuesday’s sippie cup that boasted 33 shots of alcohol, and walked the larger-than-life radiance of the strip. Family members gave me clothes and school supplies to take back to Cape Verde. I saw the people I loved, spent as much time as I could, and was under the delusion the entire time that my service had ended. The reality of the past year appeared to slip away.

I guess everyone expected to see the physical impact Cape Verde has had on me over the past year. People kept saying to me, “You look exactly the same. You’re exactly the same!” Maybe they were expecting dreadlocks, torn clothing, a weather-worn face and bony arms. And so, once a haircut, good eyebrow plucking and T.J. Maxx shopping trip had been achieved, I was swept back into Southern Cali lifestyle as though I had never left it. It appeared – to others – that I was exactly the same. I believe I was under the delusion myself.

But I am in no way the same. I will always be me, but I am changed entirely. It is surprising that the reconstruction of my spirit, priorities, interests, methods of thought, experience, maturity, life lessons, challenges, patience and adaptability became transparent. I feel like a Zelda video game where the character goes out and gathers more hearts, fights monsters, overcomes triumphs and collects weapons and riches that are hidden beneath his cloak. The whole idea is that once he gets through it all he can return home and forget. There he will be welcomed back, congratulated and accepted, as he was, an unchanged man with an impressive obstacle overcome, ready to be who he was when he originally left. It makes me wonder if this imaginary character in his imaginary world ever tells anyone about the monsters he’s fought, the courage it took for him to return, and the dreams within which he continues to live the adventure.

I thought about this a lot while I was in the States. I found myself wondering what it will be like to leave Cape Verde and live once again in my old life. What will I do when I can no longer speak Kriolu? When every stranger on the street does not say hello, how am I, how is my family, tudu fixi? How will I leave behind a community, cutting up vegetables on concrete floor, hanging laundry to dry, a 100-year-old woman who says I love you bo, the toddler shadows who knock on my door the moment I awake, the dimly lit nights of dancing Zuki and Funana, the women who laugh toothless smiles with me and teach naughty words in the firewood kitchen as we make catxupa…?

So sometimes the burden becomes the blessing. The challenge grows into a beautiful way of life that is difficult to leave. No one stays in Cape Verde long – everyone is trying to get out and discover success and possibility. But no one ever denies their love for a sleepy agricultural village 300 miles off the western coast of Africa.

And so I ask the warrior, home from the beaten path at the end of it all: does he ever fully put down his shield and not dream of his adventures?

I can answer this, as I am amidst it now and the dreams already come.

August 26, 2007

When I was a child, I remember my preschool teacher sitting down next to me at snack time as I was eating an apple. At the time I was a quiet child who had a tendency to remain awake during naptime. Pity taken in regards to my iron will, I was allowed to turn the pages of books as other children slept about on mats in the dark room. My imagination was overactive yet my inexperience in the world made me equally uneasy. At the age of four I had not yet come to grips with how life worked or why it wasn’t like the place I had left behind. The teacher must have taken an interest in this tiny silent child as she, smiling, leaned down to my level and took the apple from my hands. Instead of protesting, I looked at her as she asked, “Would you like to see a star in this apple?” Intrigued, I nodded.

She placed the apple on a little table and cut it in half horizontally. As she held up the wax crimson and milky white, I stared in awe at the russet seeds that formed the shape of a prominent five-point star. I couldn’t eat the apple. It was too perfect. Instead I proudly carried it around all day as both it and my hands turned brown and gooey. It served as my first true lessons about life: beauty exists where you least expect it, and life is full of mysterious surprises. Without the memory of each, such things would cease to exist at all.

The apple lasted about 3 hours. The lesson remains.

August 28, 2007

My loud turqoise-painted house stands firmly along a cobblestone road and looks out longingly at the island of Brava. Surrounding papaya trees dance jaggedly in the breeze. There is a heavy heat and incoming darkness at midday, which means rain is coming. I feel the sticky musk, curtains of mosquitos and … a tiny knock on my door. Golden ringlets and a coffee-complexion stare up at me with saucers for eyes. Long lashes, a button nose, rose-petal mouth and bare dirty feet.

“Agu xu-xu!”

Kriolu from this 3-year-old wrapped in brown rags. I hand her the black bucket with the thin metal handle. She takes the broken eggshells, apple cores, fish bones and vegetable peels, stumbles awkwardly out across the dirt path to feed the family pig. When she comes back holding the washed-out bucket, I place plump imported grapes from the market in her hand. Looking out the side window shutters, I watch as her siblings surround her and follow her back to the front of their home, tucked away in fields of corn, stone walls and smoke from the firewood kitchen. All of them about three feet tall. All of them filthy and giggling at the purple bouquet of fruit. They sit about the concrete floor and sing in little voices as they eat. Their melody finds my painted house as I write, type down their expressions and personalities so you can picture them and know them in a way. And here you are, reading, picturing, knowing them, my shadows who never leave my side.

August 30, 2007

Do you see these diaries collect? While I was in California my aunt pulled out a stack of my printed journals. It was over 50 typed pages long. I felt the papers in my hands and imagined myself, countless times, as I am now, leaning over the laptop at the tips of my fingers and laboring over the love of speculation, engagement, want of capturing that which can not be contained fully in a thousand pages. If there were not some solace in seeking comfort an ocean away, I would continue on in my quest to get it all down. I would perspire and furiously assess the daily meaningful encounters. I would continue, and in doing so, achieve a transcribed notion of two years of life.

September 3, 2007

Yesterday I ran through torrents of rain to my friend’s loja (store) and waited for a car to bila. There at the airport I met the incoming flight and four new Peace Corps volunteers who will be living on the island of Fogo. In the life of a volunteer, when the job description is formally fixed (although not in practice) and the time allotted is limited, there is nothing as eye-opening in regards to the passage of time as welcoming in the next year’s volunteers. That makes me a second-year – an “experienced” volunteer. The funny thing is, despite the fact that I know the answers to their questions, I don’t think that I could call myself experienced even another year from now. There is too much to learn, too many people to help, too many projects not pursued, too much of the language left to master for me to consider myself an expert on anything here. The arrival of these bright-eyed ME’s from last year is too uncanny to fathom. I feel as thought I am teaching myself.

And throughout all of this the clock continues to wield its threatening hands as the caution of time ticks away…

September 7, 2007

Today is 14 months in Cape Verde.

September 9, 2007

as the transition of seasons flow…
the island of Fogo looks like a fairy tale –
a sleeping beauty transformed from brittle lava rock
to a deep ivy green wrapped in purple flowers.
dusty ribeiras
garbage and filth
slide away
grow life,
promise.
an inner stir,
a flutter of lids,
been kissed
and awakened from a deep slumber.
moss-covered cliffs over a goblet ocean;
above,
a crater of stone houses
caught within oncoming mists.
smoke rises and dances along a forest of fiery blossoms
swimming in bottle green.
life all around takes a deep breath,
stretches wings wide.
beauty yawns,
majestically rises from a dream.
and all the while,
rain falls in a soothing hush.

September 10, 2007

Today is one year in Ponta Verde.

September 11, 2007

All of America has, for the past six years since this date, seen Sept. 11 as a time of destruction, terror, and a catalyst that set the world stage to a script that spells out an illusive war. A time of heightened alert, international awareness, and the ambiguity of rights has forever been scorched into our minds as a defining point between the moment the towers - and our nation - was standing firm, to the moment it appeared to be crumbling before us into a sea of flames.

The tragedy of that day never led me to believe the world was coming to an end. Although my mother works for a major airline and I found myself as a staff writer for the college newspaper interviewing students about their reactions to the images splattered across every channel, I never questioned the continuation of life that would no doubt continue despite the thousands of lives lost, an ensuing fear of traveling to unknown parts of the world, and the enactment of the Patriot Act. Call me a Californian who was on the other side of the nation when tragedy struck; call me a naïve youngster with ideas of liberation, freedom, optimism and autonomy at my willful disposal; I was simply not dissuaded to join Peace Corps.

The horrendous event did, in fact, enforce the desire within me to communicate with people who, by all accounts, were worlds apart. Ensuing fear of the unknown that was strongly felt in the aftermath of the eleventh made me want to go out and shake hands with what might overwhelmingly be categorized as the “enemy.” This year I live in a country I did not know existed a year ago, in an isolated Cape Verdean community off the western African coast. My friends here laugh at me as they point out my white glowing skin in contrast to their radiating coffee-brown complexion. My fine, soft hands (mão fino) smooth against their strong, hard-earned calluses. They gawk at my blonde hair blowing free next to their beautiful thick braids. We both struggle helplessly, like children, as we attempt to communicate in the other’s language. But we try, and we succeed.

I have begun to learn that there truly is nothing to fear but fear itself. That there really are demons who walk the earth, but that they largely exist to keep you from meeting angels. That there are enough dangers and tragedies to last us to the end of days, but that never kept another day from coming. Here, little by little, I bridge a gap of misunderstanding within myself and another culture. Here, fingers intertwine, light and dark, tip the scales of history and even out the evils of the world a bit.

And so today I am remembering a different story of 9/11 – a story that still envisions two towers continuing to stand. One, the nation I represent, and the other, at my side, the new nation I have come to call home.

September 14, 2007

There are times here when the purpose of my life seems to connect, willingly, with the unforeseen events of the future. There is a smooth interval that seeks to communicate to me without words, and I stand by willingly, awaiting the next installment of information, like a soldier on duty, ready at will, anticipating even the most unfathomable assignments. The fear within is dispelled by a belief that, despite the cloudy ash of aftermath, the meaning will somehow appear, as an apparition, from the obscurity of smoke. It will rise up, undeniably, from the complication of the visible, and utterly confirm the coded significance of that which has come to pass. In this, one seeks solace. Emotion, prayer, desire, conviction…all tend to play common roles in this method of thought. The requirement is none other than belief. Here lies an immense canyon of difference, between those who move forward courageously, and those who are utterly hindered by doubt.

Terra

2007-06-27T08:21:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Bits and Pieces

2007-05-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

May 14, 2007

The changing of spells here – between the short downpours of the rainy season and the long, drawn-out drought of the dry season – is like the brutal shifting of a mood. There is a feeling in the air that hangs thick and heavy. It weighs upon the shoulders like overbearing hands of heat and does not shake easily. In the upcoming months pregnant clouds will appear in the sky like giant eggs and crack open. The yolks of rain will pour heavily upon this sizzling pan of an island. But for now, there is a haze that covers the mystical view of Brava and whips dirt, animal feces and dry land up into swirls that dance furiously across the brutal landscape. Fat, black flies stumble drunkenly through the thick blanket of heat, copulate, buzz and fall with a feverish pitch that makes my skin crawl. Mosquitoes, newly hatched and thirsting for blood, penetrate writhing flesh and gulp down the syrupy sustenance. Droves of ants attack with fervor and carry out loads of stale crumbs with admirable force. Shade is hard to come by and the rays from the sun sear both skin and spirit. Everything living grasps tightly to the dry shell of life.

My island is a crazed traveler on hands and knees, parched and desperate in the midst of a scorching desert. This time of year the volcanic rock of Fogo throbs like a tormented heart about to burst. In the endless sweat of night I dream, with all the miraculous enchantment of a mirage, of the torrents of rain (like steadfast, incoming troops) that will shower down upon the eager, aching earth and relieve the land of its parched, acidic state.

May 15, 2007

(Specifically) To Women of Valor…

I went to a Domestic Violence polestra (information session) today at the school I work at. A woman fluent in English, well educated, and who has lived a majority of her life in the northern island city of Mindelo led the polestra as a part of the organization she works with in bila. It was intended to educate and enlighten the women of Ponta Verde about their rights and equality as women. My community is well-known for its lack of gender equality and there are school officials, outside resources (such as Peace Corps) and OMCV (a women’s organization) that all seem to be making efforts to help my village’s women take control of their lives and stand on their own. After a series of unfortunate events I have witnessed in the lives of my female friends here, it is more than refreshing and nothing short of inspiring to see the women here be taught by other Cape Verdean women who are self-employed, independent, respected, and able to leave the house without the permission of a jealous boyfriend or controlling husband.

(**Side note: Not all men here are jealous or controlling, but I have discovered that the “machismo” in Fogo society allows for a majority of men to take advantage of women they are in relationships with. As an example – unfortunately not a particularly rare occurrence – two weeks ago a woman and mother of eight who lives up the crater from my house was stabbed to death by her husband for attending a party without his consent.)

What was interesting about the polestra – besides the fact that my counterpart’s three-year-old raced back and forth across the panel of speakers and then proceeded to pee on the raised platform – was that the attendance was made up entirely of women. As the speakers discussed the need for the “development of women’s integration within the community of Ponta Verde,” the physical and psychological effects of domestic violence, education needed within the home and school, social consequences of abuse, etc., only women looked on. Not one man besides the three teachers who were present attended the meeting that was intended for “parents of students” at the school. I thought it was interesting to note and it was the supporting evidence behind what was discussed during the meeting.

“Women have to be alert,” the guest speaker stated firmly to the crowd of scarves, gold earrings and curlers. The woman speaking was well dressed, with a pressed cotton blouse, tactful earrings, well-manicured hands, a designer watch, trendy thick-framed glasses and high heels. I kept looking at her, and then at the crowd of women, my neighbors, whom I have come to respect deeply for their work ethic, strong opinions and strength.

I observed their muscular builds, their worn faces, the dirt beneath their fingernails, and that distant look you can find as escape in all of their eyes…

The woman on the platform looked entirely different, like a woman of the future, a future in which women were single and had professions, owned their own homes, drove cars, and wore designer pants. As I watched the woman ask, “Is there a husband in the world more important than a child?” on the topic of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, I realized how important it was for the women I care about to hear from another woman that it was wrong to allow abuse. I looked at the faces of the women I know well in the crowd, and I thought of all the opportunities I have had that they never did. I looked at my next-door neighbor who is thirty with six children, who has never gone to school a day in her life. I looked at my student’s mother who is large-and-in-charge, outspoken and would probably make an excellent businesswoman. I looked at my friend’s mother, whose three children and partner are leaving her behind in Cape Verde to pursue a life in America (they were never married and she is therefore ineligible to go as well). I looked and looked and I thought, all the strength, intelligence and potential in the world is wasted in a woman’s life without these three things:

-economic independence
-education
-social respect/equality (women viewed as human beings instead of mothers, wives)

(my roommate has insisted that I read Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own)

I urge the women reading this who are living in a reality that provides these three things to fully appreciate and develop the women that you are meant to be. There is no glass ceiling that cannot be penetrated in the world, yet in the States I am proud to believe that it has already been shattered for us. The sky is, therefore, our birthright and irrefutable purpose. As for here, the women are just beginning to tentatively grasp the limits with which they are constrained and are only now beginning to strategize a way to break through. I envision them as caged birds, quickly gnawing away at the confines of life and soon to break free into the luminous freedom of a boundless world. It’s a long, famished road ahead, but it is one of valor…

…its destination is freedom.

May 18, 2007

There is so much I will never know or understand about this place I temporarily call home. Intricately intertwined relationships and blood – both bad and binding – is woven so tightly and beneath so many layers that will forever remain unknown in my mind. As I sat with a friend on my porch one evening, we watched and guessed at which of the men walking up the street were drunk (unfortunately, many are at that time of night). One was swaying up the street, but before I guessed my friend told me he was not drunk, but had been injured in the head from a fight and had never fully recovered mentally. It was the father of my good friend who has been my handy man around the house. I never knew who his father was, but watched this man as he made his way up the hill. My friend explained that this man used to be a well-known violinist in the area, and often played Mourna, music popular among more traditional Cape Verdean society. Yet he began to have a drinking problem and one day got in a fight with the husband of my friend, who picked up a brick from a house, and hit this man in the head. He was sent to Portugal for an operation but never fully recovered. Now I understand why the wives of both these men never have gotten along. In church, I often notice the tension between the two women and never knew why. Another mystery solved. I’m sure there are many more I will never know.

May 19, 2007

I left the house, together with my roommate, around 9 o’clock at night, hoping to get a little fresh air and search for an open loja (store) where we could buy a bottle of wine and relax on our rooftop. Along the way down the road, I noticed a neighbor of ours with a large cow in the road in front of their house. In the darkness, its dark bloated frame was highlighted by the lamps set out to allow for the task at hand. Immediately, I knew what we had happened upon and asked if I could help with the killing of the female cow. People walking by, to nowhere in particular, stopped and stood around as though there was nothing more important going on, and well, this would do. They stuck their hands in their pockets and viewed the spectacle, their heads hanging low and their eyes barely visible beneath tattered baseballs cap worn thin and bleached from work in the scorched fields.

I immediately recognized the man who was to kill the cow, and since his name has escaped me, I call him the Cow Man. He sharpened the blade of his knife, tied the hooves of the heavy animal together with a thick rope, and toppled her sideways onto the cobblestone. It fell into a surprised, yet already surrendered heap of defeat. As the blade was raised to its throat, it let out heavy gasps – her eyes wide, nostrils flaring, and tongue hanging large and pink from her mouth – but she did not put up much of a fight. One thing I have learned from observing the killing of cows is that their deaths are silent in comparison to the writhing, fighting, squealing slaughter of a pig.

I watched as a young girl rolled up her black sleeve (the family is in mourning for a relative and they are each to wear black every day for a period of six months) as she set a large metal basin at the throat of the incision and caught the thick red blood. As the cow lay dying, the Cow Man sliced the animal’s legs to test whether or not she was still alive, and once she was gone, men began slicing her down the middle and skinning the hide from her inner flesh. There is an old man up the road who will use the skin to make drums for corn-pounding festas in the future. Everything taken from the cow, including the head and blood, will be used. This being one of the many times I have witnessed the killing of an animal here, I am beginning to see it all in a surprisingly non-emotional light. This cow was born to be killed for food. The family that owns this cow will sell the meat, which will be one of the main sources of their income this year. It all begins to make perfect sense, and I will never look at the meat section of the supermarket the same way again. From now on I will know where my meat comes from.

The main reason I felt the need to explain this scenario was to share a bit of how random and unexpected my experiences here are. I left the house to buy a bottle of wine and ended up assisting in the killing of a cow. This is a long shot, but I doubt a drive to the market in the States would ever lead me to that scenario…? I made arrangements with the Cow Man to allow me to assist one more killing and before this summer, I will have killed a cow on my own. Not for the enjoyment, but for the understanding of a part of life that I would have never understood otherwise. I want to be more than an observer here – I want to live this life. I never did get that bottle of wine. I think I myself have surrendered to go where life takes me from now on. It will no doubt take me where I least expect, but I’m willing to go there.

May 20, 2007

Here is a brief update on the side projects (outside of teaching) I have been working on during my service here.

-Women’s Futebol Team: Yesterday my roommate and I held a meeting for the interested young women in our community (a majority of whom we are close friends with) ages 16-26 to form a women’s soccer team in Ponta Verde. We will start practice next Thursday. It may not sound like much, but these girls hardly ever leave the house and there is nothing to do in the community, so it is essential for the strength and growth of women’s involvement in the community to just get them out and interacting with one another.

-Sala de Informática: I am working on translating a funding proposal from Portuguese into English to search for American sources that may assist in donating to the construction of a computer lab/information room for the youth of Ponta Verde to have Internet access and computer classes. A lot of people my age and older don’t even have a fourth grade education, so this allows for a process of learning, and a connection to the outside world, which is difficult to connect with from an obscure island in the middle of the Atlantic.

-The World Map Project: is in the works, which involves painting a map of the world on a visible wall somewhere in the community. The map is broken into a graph and members of the community are able to paint a portion of it and put the thing together to give them an idea of how big the world is and where the countries they hear about are located. I think it helps to see it laid out in order to inspire those who are passionate about travel or looking abroad for work, seeing where their family members are living, etc.

-Role Model: A good friend of mine has no real education to speak of, but she is model material – tall, slender, gorgeous, has a good head on her shoulders, is courageous, forward-thinking, not satisfied with simply existing, you name it. Here she is stuck in the house and has nothing really to look forward to. This may be an absolute long-shot, but if there is a way I can put my modeling connections to use, I’m sending the agencies her picture and story, and see if I can get her the heck out of here.

-PC Newsletter: I’m enjoying editing the Peace Corps publication that helps volunteers exchange information among the islands and let each other in on experiences, projects, funding sources, best-learned practices, opinions, interviews, creative expressions, etc.

Think that’s about it for now.

An Ocean

2007-05-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

May 12, 2007

Welcome to the World

Who knows why life happens the way it does. Does anyone know, really? I would like to never know, to never understand the countless injustices and strands of fate as they intertwine with the secret cords of existence and all the ever passes, ever.

Because the weight of understanding such a world and its innermost workings would be a crushing blight to the soul. It would be hard to exist and difficult to keep a hopeful spirit in the face of such abounding possibility.

And so I search, hoping never to find. I don’t want to know, and though I care more than anything, I desire to never encounter that image of truth out there in the darkness. I want to live life like I’m swimming - completely and utterly content to float above the madness, never concerning myself with that which lies below. I would lie flat along the surface, close my eyes to the enormity of the above, and look only at the back of my eyelids. The light would look like two orbs of shade and the subtlety of it would keep me blind to its harsh, penetrating stare.

And yet, I am out there. It is I who have swam out to these depths, to the middle of the unknown into a sea of untold magnitude and possibilities. And so I am treading water at the above confinements of my dreams. All is there, just below, waiting to be discovered.

An ocean of life, love, pain, discovery, torment, injustice, miracles, death, suffering, elation, laughter, singing, and silence.

I open my eyes, feel the weight of my body slide into the upper edges of mystery and begin to sink into the abyss of it all. As I inhale, and breathe in the delicious freshness of illusion, I fill myself with the pleasure of unknowing. I gulp in the final moments of the rocking, cradling currents of safety. They will be my last. In a final gasp, I allow the vastness of what lies beyond to take hold and surrender into the crevices of my soul; descend into the beautiful madness.

I wonder what I will discover within its limitlessness depths…welcomed into the world.

Global

2007-05-09T07:19:00.003-07:00

April 28, 2007

There is no television set in my home. No blues, whites, grays splash blemishes of reflection against the walls that surround me at night. Ghosts and sequences of flickering light are thrown about only in the waxed form of a lit candle as it dances, twirls and seeks life upon the wick of a tiny pointed toe. Instead, amidst the haunting brilliance of evening when the larger lights of day travel to the unseen regions of the globe, leaving behind a rounded orb of calm and a trail of salted stars, I sit complacently within a corner and listen to words. With me on the ground, and my roommate perched high upon the throne of a barrel full of well water, the words tumble and flow evenly from her mouth. The highs and lows of her expressions take flight around me and travel through the air, lifting me up into the thoughts and lives of others. I am a mad woman straining for reality, a man longing for the essence of youth, a brilliant gummy flower in its early stages of opening, a thin stick-like insect turning back on its leafy path, a green frog flopping over, and a sea monster spouting a fringe of blue pebbles, its scales shedding along the glistening shore in the moonlight.

There is no television set in my home. No Benfica games, greasy commercials, dramatic telenovellas or hour-long infomercials. These nights the only ink thrown onto the palate of my mind is in an array of thin, pencil-like swirls that travel through literature from one page to another – from the fruits of an artist’s labors to the table of my heart.

May 4, 2007

I walked down the dimly lit world of my home and fell into the school where I then wrote a summary in gritty chalk along a scratched and grainy blackboard. I wrote “Opinions and Dreams” and the small, unsure fingers of my students reenacted the effort and strained to forms curves, and lines to match the board. I asked my students to copy six statements in English and then decide whether or not these statements were true or false. The first statement was: Men are better than women. The class was split on the issue – but most said it was true.

Ten months in this country and I am only now beginning to understand the language, people and culture enough to awake to the reality that I am living in the Dark Ages in terms of human rights. Here women are a presence that exists for a purpose only when a man desires them. In that moment, she is only an object of what they call “love” and when that is over and done with, the door closes and the man continues his affairs with his other women. It is accepted, encouraged and expected for a man to have a number of these women. They are called pequenas.

I think back to the women’s studies classes I took in college and remember this topic being utterly cliché due to the attention the issue of gender equality often receives in the States. When I read about women belonging in the home I remember thinking it was a thing of the past, and what an out-of-date way to live. BUT WOMEN LIVE LIKE THAT HERE. They are in a state of slavery – I do not use that word lightly – and I watch daily as each of my good friends and neighbors sit waiting for their boyfriends and husbands to return from their side women. They are not allowed to leave the house. If they so much as have a drink at a party society’s gossip will shame them and put them back in their place. Just last month a woman with eight children was stabbed to death by her husband because she went to a party without his consent. When I asked one of my best friends here (whose boyfriend also blatantly cheats on her) why women stand for it, she said to me in Kriolu, “Oh, Brittania, fidelity is only something the old people believe in. It’s a thing of the past. People don’t believe in that now.”

And so I am stuck in a swiftly titling dot of history that spans across centuries and exists everywhere and yet nowhere at once. What is meant to be and what actually is pardons excuses that arise from guilty mouths and ignores the plight of desperate misgivings. Be it complacency, apathy, hopelessness or greed, the difficulties of these women continue and I watch, helpless with idle hands fumbling about, willing to work for change yet unable to grasp a way in which things can get from here to there. Wanting to see instant results in an age-old struggle, I speak until my mouth is blue, only to see the passion in women’s eyes fade into a state of disbelief and doubt. “It’s not right,” they say, firmly. But then, “It’s how it is here. It won’t change.” Many tell me that if they spent their lives looking for a faithful man here, they would die looking.

And yet despite my heart’s loss and the fear that I can do nothing here, I sense optimism in my young students. When I told them men and women are different but equal, it was as though I were introducing a new idea, planting a tiny seed that may one day grow into a stronger, more substantial ideal. As disappointed as I was when the hands of students who thought men were better shot into the air, I was equally content with the proudly raised hands that declared women as deserving of rights. Below these hands were faces of determination and I saw a forthcoming generation whose realities are still under careful construction, a glimmer of hope evident in their fresh, and still evolving eyes.

May 7, 2007

This

Not

Poem

……………………………………

Is there any way to cut ties once they have become attached?

If so, I would use heavy black metal scissors.

Snip, the metal would creak, and away the ties would fall.

Effortlessly, really - But with profound weight.

The subtle strands would not land in a hush,

But crash hard upon the earth and shatter into fragments of porcelain lies.

Is there, in essence, a desire to unravel that which has become hopelessly intertwined?

If that is so, I would get to the tangle of life immediately, with patient, fixed fingers and a stool to sit upon.

And I would smile, pleased at the ticking away of my life,

For every moment would unravel loosely in the dexterity of my willful hands

As the moments in life whisper,

Teach me of how to savor time,

How to let it fall into place beneath the deep placid lake of my eyes.

In truth life, in its entirety, falls like confetti,

And I am caught in rapture

Deeply imbedded hues dance about

Formed by generations of madmen

Gaps of history and a superficially taut strand of logic

A fountain of feathery tufts glides around me in a maddening dazzle

The infinite line of a horizon stretches its arms wide

And I grasp at the enormous measure of it all.

Is this what I have come to assess?

This colossal perpetuity of shifting fragments and evasive realities?

It dances about flirtatiously

I lead myself astray and wait patiently as the thoughts and realities collect,

forming pools lifetimes deep at the weary soles of my feet.

Each has a papery edge and lays fixed in a trance upon my existence,

like a pillow resting softly against the features of a dream.

Down

They

Float

Innumerable untold perspectives,

Eras and eye colors,

Desires and fingerprints,

Heartaches and winds of untold passion fall

- like snow -

Onto the soft, fragile, befuddled palate of my limited mind.

Famished Road

2007-04-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

April 15, 2007

My favorite novel, The Famished Road, begins like this:

“In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origin.

There was not one amongst us who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.”

Ben Okri, the author of this book, continues from this opening passage to weave an intricately woven legend that has mystified and left me breathless. There are times when a novel comes across at just the right moment, revealing pages of hidden truths that strike chords upon the heart, and vibrates through the vast chambers of the mind. What this book of hunger and awareness has taught me goes far beyond the depiction of a spirit child living amongst a poverty-stricken compound of Africa – it symbolizes the fact that our journey is a path of beauty, pain, suffering, and love….

I rolled this around in my mind as I walked from bila to Ponta Verde yesterday. It took a good part of the day and I did it in lifetime-warranty flip flops that are worn to the sole and ripped at the straps. The sun beat down as equally upon my body as a scorched volcanic rock surrounded me in straw-colored dryness, the cracked soil aching for water. The one cobblestone road that twists and turns along the outer portion of the island stretched for miles as my roommate and I trudged determinedly between wisps of frail, brittle trees bowing sideways from the constant harsh winds. As we made the brutal trek through the zones we recognize from our weekly drives into the city, I thought about the boy in the novel, The Famished Road. I quickly realized the main difference however; my road is not hungry, it is dying of thirst, and only the first fat drops of rain in the upcoming months have the capacity to ease the suffering of its parched landscape.

April 16, 2007

After I gave classes today, I caught a rickety truck into the city. It was a small cab with a truck bed in the back rigged into an area that provides two benches and a tarp covering to shelter its passengers from the wind. People are crammed into this tiny space and forced to hold on for dear life as the sideways ride bumps its way along the hole-ridden road. Because the only place to grip is the metal above your head, every ride instills in me the virtuous act of giving and I am forced to fight the urge to donate a stick of deodorant to each traveling member. Everyone rocks and sways in unison as the tiny beat-up truck barrels around uneven turns. The laidback island music of Zuki and Funana blares from the driver’s seat and women with sun-beaten faces climb into the vehicle and take loads of firewood or tubs of fish from atop their weary heads. They chatter incessantly about the latest aches and pains, familial happenings and small-town gossip. Older Cape Verdeans sit close to me, hold my knee for support and offer me a blessing when they reach their stops. Tiny children sit mutely and stare with giant brown eyes and unabashed curiosity. There are usually live chickens clucking in plastic bags and the car sometimes stops to pick up a passenger with lean, hard-earned muscles who throws a bewildered goat in my lap. I have yet to get on without encountering a man drunk on grogue - a highly potent alcohol comparable to moonshine – stinking to high heaven at the ungodly hour of ten and unable to resist a fondness for clasping and caressing the nearest American woman’s hands. The man today, with twinkling eyes and a gap-toothed grin, grabbed hold of me, asked if I would “lend him my whiteness” and proceeded to invite me to pay for his next drink, and his ride.

In the beginning, these rides left me exhausted, my nerves shot. Yet now I look forward to them with familiar expectancy. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when all the discomfort, filth, noise and invasion of privacy began to inspire feelings of belonging … but I did realize today - as I rode in the back of the jam-packed truck and glanced behind us at a rich group of tourists looking silent, bored and comfortable in a shiny Land Cruiser - that the space between them seemed a mile wide and I felt a pang of sympathy for their distance from one another.

April 17, 2007

I was not able to use the Internet today, and will not be able to do so for a while. Apparently a ship docking in Cape Verde sent an anchor down that hit the connection line in the ocean, severing all hope of linking me with the outside world via computer for the next, oh, eternity. Not only does this cable provide Internet access for this country, but also Argentina, Brazil, here, Senegal, the Azorts, Canary Islands, and then up to Spain. (I’m assuming the captain of the ship had a bit of a “doh!” moment.) They say it will be fixed within the next week or so, which in Cape Verde translates to about a month. The odds of a swift Internet return is about as far-fetched as a boat severing server access across a good portion of the globe … but I guess stranger things have happened…

April 18, 2007

My roommate and I got doors put in our house today, including (drum roll please) the bathroom! Beforehand we simply had a thin, burgundy Japanese curtain that I bought during my travels long ago; it has designs that my roommate thinks look like crustaceans and is a lot like what you would find in the hallways entrance at a traditional sushi joint. That slender bit of material was all that separated us during our most private bathroom moments and also served as our only sense of isolation from one another. Twenty-four seven, we had to keep each other up to date on our digestion cycles, and even found ourselves holding a loud conversation as one of us cooked breakfast and the other took a cup bath in the next room. And now there is a door. Not only that, but there are now doors on our rooms as well. Light, unfinished wood with six panes of textured glass that obscures whatever lies beyond. No longer will we be forced to jokingly shout, “I’m being indecent!” when we change; no longer will we awake from the slightest toss or turn in bed that preempts a creak from the other room; no longer will we be living in a bright blue cement block! You know why? Because now we have DOORS. Amen.

April 19, 2007

There are experiences in one’s life that leave a lasting impact; an outer shell that covers an inner changeling that is taking new shape, new form, new life. I remember my past days of solitude in which I was known to stand away from the crowd, devour books and engage in my imagination. I could be seen set apart, independent, and comfortable with my different-ness. For these reasons, I have always considered myself a person who would live on my own. Despite my interest in people, in my ability to converse, get to know a person and indulge in inquisitiveness, I have always been separate. I owned my uniqueness. I thrived on the fact that I was made from a different cloth, so to speak. I imagined a future that required nothing more than a loyal dog, run-down shack on the beach, piles of novels and an antique typewriter. A long-term partner rarely crossed my mind, and a family even less so. I guess that was what led me to Peace Corps. It allowed me to lead a life that was different, that allowed an escape from the whole, and a possibility to live on my own, to see what I was truly made of. I wanted to test my character I guess…all that “pursuit of individualism” that American culture so ardently exalts.

Well, with all that in mind, I completely failed. Since I have lived in Cape Verde, I have been with people. And not just next to, around, or in the presence of - there were certainly a lot more people in the States – but I mean really WITH. I have been a part of a Cape Verdean family, a full-time roommate with no doors, a teacher in a classroom overflowing with inquisitive students, in a kindergarten brimming with screaming 4-year-olds, visiting families of 15 or more, and constantly pursued by my “shadows” (my young neighbors next door). In my search for individuality I have become part of a whole, a part of a community that has embraced me, and continues to involve me daily. I cannot walk down the tiny cobblestone path without being led into the company of four or five groups along the road, forcing me – originally against my nature – to divert from my solitary path in order to take part in a more common goal.

So my dreams of seclusion have eluded me and I no longer want that life. I do not want to turn my back on what this society has taught me – that I need people and relationships in my life…that they are what makes it all worth it at the end of the day. I know now that when I am forced to leave, it will not be the place that I miss, not the trees or the ocean or the stars…it will be the beautiful faces that haunt my dreams, the tender, open comfort of the people I now know that will follow me once I leave. And for this I understand that even if I were to live alone in the future, it would be only an illusion of loneliness, because the hearts of my friends will sink deep into my being and remain, wandering along in memory, and as much a part of me as myself.

April 22, 2007

My mind is a glass case, opaque and fragile in its state of crystalline beauty.

The shape is a defined curve, like a woman’s hip. Its sleek descent falls to a rounded circle meeting a flat, dull surface below - a foundation, a starting point, a place where things connect. Within this encased glass is a swirling, floating freedom - seeds of dandelions blown by the pursed lips of an enigmatic breath. In a space so elegant, so free from contradictions, so float-worthy calm and composed, it is possible to overlook that which defines the edges of existence between serenity and chaos. This tranquil world holds within it a fury. The shallow banks of calm are battered by an opposing wind. It sprouts wings and dances about like an incensed light. This being’s attempts to soar thrash the conscious momentum of time and splatters crimson along the purest of pallid white. Its tormented existence is a delight to the eyes, yet a crippling throb to the heart.

The beauty of its captured state dazzles
intrigues
enrages.

April 24, 2007

There are no flowers, green buds, or fresh dew along the corners of the path to prove it, but spring has most definitely stormed into Ponta Verde, unabashed in its arrival and demanding recognition. This is not to say that the continuous drought has fled. In fact, it has held fast to its arid temperament and its brittle, dry roots have dug themselves indignantly in the ground, standing weak yet unyielding like an old man in a willful state. But Miss Spring has sashayed into my village like a woman demanding for her presence to be heard, felt, and obliged to. She wears the perfume of love and the scent of longing, and all around it is quite clear that her human inhabitants are reacting favorably to her seductions. Spring fever has hit, and like the soil craving the first sweet drops of rain, men stare at women with a feverish hunger. Everywhere I go, I am confronted by whistles, catcalls, gaping, solicitations, smart remarks, pleading, advances, etc., imploring me to take part in spring’s passionate embrace. Not only the men, but also my roommate’s eighth grade boys have taken a sudden disturbing interest in me and they give me the Cape Verdean call, “ppssst!” as I walk up the hill after a day of work. I have more than a few times heard, “Teacher, I love you!” or “Bu kre kaza ku mi?” (“You want to marry me?”) I have actually accepted an offer to marry an adorable six-year-old who lives down the street from me. Our wedding is Saturday.

Anyhow, the testosterone-filled air is a harmless, sometimes entertaining, usually pitiful, always annoying part of life this time of year. I am beginning to wonder if American men’s comparably subtle advances will ever offend me again. As for me? I’ve holed myself up in the house and opted for a favorable and less complicated route - spring cleaning…

April 25, 2007

Every once in a while I am completely struck in the face by the way people must make sacrifices in order to survive. There is one water source in Ponta Verde where those who do not having running water (which is pretty much everyone) go to get their water every day. I have become quite accustomed to seeing young boys of eight or nine making their way down the road with their donkeys in order to fill up the black inner tube strapped to the animals’ backs. I watch as they careen down the rocky paths atop the animals, grunting harsh commands and whipping them the entire way with sticks or ropes. Young girls with thin frames and muscular arms walk in threes or fours up the steep hill, the heaviness of full buckets balanced atop their heads, their homes far up the steep slope of the crater. To put this daily activity in perspective, I have, on a few occasions, helped a pregnant woman or friend with her bucket, clumsily balancing the 20-something pound bucket atop my unaccustomed head. By the time I’d made my way up the incline, the water had often splashed everywhere, my arms were burning from the blood that’d drained from my arms, my legs shook and I had a sore neck for days. That’s a short distance and for one bucket, yet these people are carrying enough water for the average ten to twelve people who live with them.

And to think - in the States we just turn a nozzle.

Yesterday as I was walking downhill to the school, I met a girl along the road. As I often see her making her way down to the water source, I struck up a conversation and she greeted me with her usual bright smile. As I asked her about her life, I discovered that she is fifteen, and that she lives in a neighboring zone up the crater that has no place to get water. She is no longer in school – once she completed the eighth grade, she was put to work getting water every day. She talked about her siblings, how many she had and what she did every day working in the house. Her story sounded pretty typical of most of the young girls living here in Ponta Verde. She washes her family’s clothes and cooks; the typical household duties. It was the same thing I’d heard over a dozen times, and yet each time I look into the eyes of these strong, beautiful young women as they share themselves with me, and I can see them drowning. This girl could easily be a bright student, and in another place maybe she would have been a talented artist, a writer, a physician. Here, at the age where individuals just begin to get a glimpse of who they are and what they want to do with their lives, any future she can imagine is cut short so that she can provide water for her family. Every day, without exception, up and down the hill she goes, a concentrated look on her face, as the water splashes and drips down along her well-developed arms. She will continue to do this for decades. She always flashes me a brilliant smile. Somewhere behind it is an image of what else she could be.

Sysiphus

2007-04-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

April 13, 2007

The other day I was sitting upon my porch, looking out at the beauty of the world, as though it was laid out on a plate for my eyes to devour. I stared lovingly at the island of Brava, known as Fogo’s bride, and I watched, dazzled, as the ocean sparkled in the final brilliant moments of the sun’s departure. All around me was the cozy silence that only one living in a small rural village can recognize. I smelled the sticks that were burning in the kitchens of my neighbors and the subtle aroma intoxicated me. In this place of paradise, everything seemed right in the world.

Just then I heard a rickety rolling of wheels and turned my head down the path to see a man with no legs struggling up the incline of cobblestone. He was headed to the saint festival that I had been to earlier that day, and he was a long way off. I watched and recognized his face as the brother of a friend of mine, a man whom I had never formally met. I’d heard he’d had an infection in his bones and that was why his legs had been cut off. I knew also that he was the father of one of my students who is living at the bread lady’s house two houses down. This man’s wife was in Praia, and I had been told she was mentally ill. Their son is a very good student.

As I studied the tendons in his lean arms and the squinted determination on his face, I wondered how anyone could use a wheelchair downhill on these hole-ridden cobblestone roads, let alone uphill. His plight was unlikely, and yet I knew he would eventually get there. The moment that I was watching this man wheel his way up the steep cobblestone, turn by tiring turn, I felt a deep sadness and realized the image represented how helpless I sometimes feel here. On the surface, this place can look like paradise. Yet the issues of poverty, education, inbreeding, health care, options, futures, lives - is a constant uphill battle. I often feel frustrated with my Peace Corps experience and think that it benefits the volunteers more than the people who really need it. I find myself angry with the organization, thinking maybe it was created not to help others, but to help American citizens.

All in a swirling mixture of emotions, I am drunk on sympathy for this man as he struggles up the hill. He, to me, represents the plight of all Cape Verdeans and therefore he has many faces. It is too painful to watch him struggle because it is the struggle of every person I have come to love here, and it is such a great effort; a fight that I can’t do much about in the short two years I have here. And in these moments of despair and helplessness, I get up, run up to the man, and push his wheelchair up the hill, he laughing the entire way. His laughter rises up like wings into the air and for a moment – only a moment - his burden is lifted onto the wind and seeks new horizons.

Gooey things that go squish

2007-04-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

April 12, 2007

About a week ago I was washing dishes in our sink, as I do every day. Since there is no running water in the house, I often fill the sink with water and allow the dirty dishes to soak before rinsing them in clean water. Considering that this is the dry season – which consists of nine months of drought – it is one of the many ways in which we try to conserve water here. Anyway, I was washing the dishes and as I fumbled about for the last piece of silverware hidden beneath the soapy water, I grabbed the sponge and squeezed. Only it wasn’t the sponge. It was a mouse that had fallen into the sink during the night and had drowned in the lake of dishes. The giant, poisonous centipedes and flying cockroaches instill no fear in me, yet for the first time since I’ve been here, I yelled loud and pranced around in horror animatedly enough to give my roommate, who is not accustomed to hearing me scream, a semi-heart attack.

In the ongoing saga of squeamish catastrophes, I found myself once again in the uncharted territory of fright along the way to the kitchen. It was a dry, arid day and I ran into the kitchen dreaming of apple juice. In the informal fashion of the stereotypical bachelor, I bent down, unscrewed the lid and took a giant swig of sweet goodness. But there was a soft, chewy substance to it in my mouth. I looked down into the bottle, and an array of moldy green clumps bobbed along the surface of the past-due amber liquid. Calmly, collectively, I set down the bottle, slammed my hand in agony against the concrete floor about five times, and bolted to the bucket where we keep scraps for the pig, spewing out the vile contents of my mouth. I have brushed my teeth a record four times today and after this and the dead mouse incident, I am seriously considering signing up for Fear Factor upon my return to the States.

Volta

2007-04-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2007

Since I will be visiting the States for my best friend’s wedding in August, I thought I would let everyone know my tentative schedule for July 31-August 18:

July 31 – arrive in LAX at 10 p.m. (sleep)
Aug 1 – recover from jet lag! (eat yummy food, visit with the fam)
Aug 2 – appointments, errands (haircut for the first time in a year! shopping date with mom…?)
Aug 3 – go out with friends (probably some bar in OC where everyone can meet up - Stella!!)
Aug 4 – recover from going out with friends (SLEEP, fam time)
Aug 5 – church and day with family (Saddleback and long overdue coffee date with sis)
Aug 6 – visit my great grandfather in Santa Barbara (get caught up with my favorite 99 year-old)
Aug 7 – family BBQ/get together … visit! (all my family members are invited over)
Aug 8 – time with boyfriend (much needed)
Aug 9 – time with boyfriend (note: I will be MIA these days)
Aug 10 – prepare and pack for Jackie’s wedding (get dress fitted, drive there?)
Aug 11 – Vegas for wedding (visit family in Vegas)
Aug 12 – Vegas (bachelorette party?!?)
Aug 13 – Vegas (I’m the maid of honor) =)
Aug 14 – concert in San Diego (hip-hop with the newlyweds)
Aug 15 – Palm Springs with family (strictly Mamas time)
Aug 16 – Palm Springs (off-roading in the desert with Grampa)
Aug 17 – Palm Springs (good quality time with Teej)
Aug 18 – catch a flight back to Fogo (so soon…??)

This isn’t set in stone, but I thought I would map out a game plan - as you can see it’s pretty jam-packed. I will be doing my best to coordinate everything correctly and make time for everyone, but since it’s impossible to do that perfectly, I am having whichever friends want to go out meet up with me Friday, August 3rd and all my family members can come visit Tuesday, August 7th (I think that just makes it easier on me). If for some reason any family members aren’t available that day due to work or other plans, I’m sure there is a different time that can be figured out because I really want to see everyone. Thanks in advance for your patience, as this is going to be a whirlwind of culture shock in comparison to my slow-paced life here in Cape Verde! =) Miss you guys and can’t wait to see you soon…

Yell Fire

2007-04-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

April 5, 2007

Reclining upon a lawn chair overlooking a glassy pool that reflected the starry night above, I sat and wished upon the falling stars in contentment. There were dim lights that illuminated my face in the darkness of the hotel’s ambience and I moved my eyes to the person reclining in another chair at my side. He was a German tourist, and he was talking about his life in Brazil, in Switzerland, in traveling the world. I listened to his kind, contemplative mood and my eyes wandered to the group of volunteers who had come to visit us from the mountainous island of Santo Antao. I thought about the epic beauty and great heights of both the Alps and the wondrous shifts of land in the sparkling mystery of the northern island of Barlavento that my friends call home, and I think, How did I get here?

My wandering mind shifts to my friend who lives within the crater of the volcano and I can accurately picture the enormous grin on his face, the hop in his dance step, and the inviting lyrics he mouths behind an ardent enthusiasm for reggae. I begin to think, as the German tourist inspects the inner workings of his fate, about what this sense of home is and how I would define this recently rooted feeling to the land in which I have been living for 9 months. A fondness for language, a newly acquired knack for cooking, the desire to create a space to belong, the familiar recognition in my neighbors’ eyes as I drive past and wave, an understanding of a my village’s culture. What makes a home a home? Is it a deep, internal craving for the nourishment of the soil? Or is it the anticipated acknowledgement and realignment of priorities, interpretations, and behavior?

For all these internal wanderings and misplaced precisions, I am content to close with a lack of conclusive thought. The future holds nothing but answers, and a myriad of new questions to consider. I look up into the night sky and see only the underbelly of an intricate tapestry being woven from above, and am content to wonder at its mysterious, illusive pattern.

April 6, 2007

Today is nine months completed in Cape Verde. It’s not yet a year, yet not little enough to be offhandedly thrown into the category of a mere stint in the forgotten abyss of African’s coastal Atlantic. It’s not enough to be fluent in Kriolu, but it is enough to have formed Fogo hick accent (think Minnesota accent, folks) even when I speak English, and I have more than a few times peppered my conversations with Kriolu when the English word is not as readily accessible in my mind.

My roommate wished me a happy nine months today and said, playfully, “You could have had a baby in this amount of time!” I laughed, but realized she was correct and thought of all the new people who were born in my village during my time here. New personalities, new responsibilities, new names, new conflicts, new love. In a way, I have given birth to a new life as well – my life. When I arrived, this new being was conceived within me and over the months I have often felt like a child, dependent upon others, learning to live in a new world, trying to speak and express myself all over again in order to respond to my new surroundings. And so today I give tribute to who I am, and for what I feel I have learned and accomplished during the infant stage of my experience on this volcanic rock amidst a tumultuous sea. Today I am opening my eyes, looking around, and using each day to grow into my new self.

April 7, 2007

“Those who start wars
Never fight them
Those who fight wars
They never like them
And those who write laws
They can’t recite them
And those of us who just fight laws -
We live and die them.”

-Spearhead, Yell Fire

Home at Last

2007-04-05T05:25:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2007

I just returned home from In-Service Training (IST), an All-Volunteer Conference (AVC) that allowed me to meet up with other Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) who have been living among the islands for the past ten months. We were in Praia, the country capital. Then we sat through sessions that were held along the beachside of Tarrafal. After that I visited my home stay family in Sao Domingos, where I lived the first two months in Cape Verde during Pre-Service Training (PST). And yes, when you join the Peace Corps, you become aware that every official title becomes an acronym of some sort.

It was interesting seeing the other volunteers, to exchange information about recent project proposals, secondary community development projects, funding sources, varying forms of Kriolu, etc., but the entire experience was a whirlwind that I am honestly glad is over. The paved roads, tall buildings, speed and accessibility of Praia was overwhelming, as were the lifestyles of PCVs from the northern islands. I am beginning to realize that living in a rural site develops a much slower pace in an individual, even one from L.A. like myself. The whole experience of IST was admittedly too much for me because I found myself aching to get back to the stillness of Ponta Verde.

Once the plane touched down on Fogo soil I felt I was finally able to breathe again. The streets were familiar, the people recognizable, and I felt I was myself for the first time in two weeks. As I sat in the front seat of my friend’s car, full of people I knew and with the driver’s gorgeous sleeping baby resting trustingly in my lap, I looked out at my island and felt a sense of belonging. Friends along the road greeted me, telling me I had been missed, and I arrived in my community to hear that my good friend had given birth to her baby. I immediately went to pay her a visit and as I lay next to her on her bed, gently touching the tiny fingers of her newborn child beneath the covers of the dimly lit room, I knew what it was like to be home.

Starting Tomorrow Early

2007-04-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 17, 2007

I just awoke from a dream. It was a dream lost and deep, as within an ocean, in the early morning hours when even reality is quiet and shifting. In my dream I’d ended my Peace Corps service. I had arrived for a time in Nowhere, U.S.A. and I was placed in a high-rise hotel, in an apartment-esque suite. The giant room was top quality, with food overflowing from the shelves and welcome gifts along the counter. The glimmering floors and metal refrigerator threw me fake smiles in a gooey-sweet, grotesque manner. My mother called, and then my father, to congratulate me. Then I stepped out into the world I had left behind for two long years; long not because they represented a weary, unknowable journey, but rather because I had become a different person. I knew that in my dream.

As I made my way down the enormous hall, I explored the new territory. People were bustling about, no doubt on vacation, but their getaways appeared to resemble more of a preoccupied state of frenzy. They HAD to get down to Activity A immediately in order to squeeze in that massage, and be to dinner in time to make it to the matinee, etc. I made a wrong turn down the hall and found myself in a video/book store. All the DVD’s had the same up-and-coming actress advertised across the front, in a variety of sentimental or death-defying scenarios, depending on the film’s budget. In one scene she was the elf in a Christmas film, maternally cradling a child star – in the other she was leaping over a burning building, sex-goddess meets tae kwon do instructor. The room was dizzying and full of bodies that clearly understood the new system. It did not involve waiting in a line at a cash register, but rather a flip of a card across the front of an intended purchase. So I made my way to what was more familiar – the book section. Like a shiny, new age pattern of a quilt, the books gleamed so brightly that they hurt my unaccustomed eyes. Once my sight had adjusted, I made out the titles, many of which had been arranged in a Magic Eye technique, so that the words pop out at you and dance across your irises seductively. “How to Lose Weight by Consuming Only Chocolate” was one of them. “A Quick Fix-It Guide to Slowing Down Your Life … In Only 5 Minutes a Day!” was another. Feeling a bit nauseated, I left the store.

The bellhop I met along the way was not a normal bellhop. Apparently, bell hops were no longer people you could trust, well-intended individuals in funny little hats who could direct you to the nearest anywhere, with a small tip required. Against my prior knowledge, I found myself in the midst of negotiating a high-cost escape route that required bribe sums of money. He pulled me into a corner of the hall as people passed and stole suspicious glances with a shrewd sideways glare. He had a twitch that must have been acquired due to the stress of his job, and there was a film of sweat along the baby hair of his upper lip. People no longer get something for nothing, he told me. If I was unfamiliar with the area, I was a particularly rare find. I politely thanked him but said I was not in need of help today, slowly walked backward a few steps, and then bolted around the corner.

I burst through the front doors of the seven-star hotel and screeched to a halt as this new world unfolded before me. I had spent the last two years on a tiny island in a community of less than 2,000 dispersed along the upward slanting crater of a volcano. Now, thousands of quickly moving bodies running from Activity A to Activity B spread before me. At this early hour, a few were congratulating themselves because they were already on Activity C! Having sprinted through the first two, of course. Yet they wore beaming, hurried faces. They had had their fun faster than everyone else. The thousands of squirming, bickering, laughing, arguing, rushing bodies shuffled against an idyllic backdrop: an enormous fountain, perfectly spaced planted trees, color-coordinated flowers arranged in shades and areas that were psychologically intended to make people hungry, happy, make them spend more money. The fountain bubbled intoxicatingly, trees swayed and ushered the preoccupied humans along plumes of flowers that whispered the latest PR advertisements.

I found myself caught up in the current of this well-orchestrated tide of confusion that led me to yet another hotel. There I ran into a girl I recognized from the basketball team in high school. She was polite yet relatively unperturbed by this sudden happenstance. Her life was too busy and she too important to slow her pace at the slightest unforeseen event. She led me into her office within the hotel where she worked. She had a mustache and a small goatee, completely natural, she assured me. All the women lately were choosing to embrace their masculinity, were taking testosterone pills to be like men in order to shun femininity and all that was associated with the gender. Women can be men, she said. I began to wonder what was wrong with women being women, but kept my thoughts to myself. She wasn’t paying attention to me anyway – two of her friends had arrived, each sporting matching goatees, which, by the way are the latest craze on the runways nowadays, they offhandedly remarked to me. Then they launched into a discussion about that night’s party and a variety of other tabloid-related gossip mixed with the necessary comments of the perils of war (no girl could be taken seriously about the latest ab workout without first demonstrating her wealth of knowledge on the topic of world reports).

In dream-like fashion the scene was shifted elsewhere and I found myself warped and shot out into the poolside party. The three manly women were at my side, pressed into cocktail dresses that accentuated their firm, grapefruit breasts. They each stood with their womanly hips jutted out, hairy legs delicately placed into size seven Steve Madden heels. Each took particular care sipping her champagne. The lipstick stays on the mouth, the facial hair in place, they told me. I took my leave of them. The party was a high-class event and an ocean of yuppies was crowded along the stadium seats that overlooked a poolside resort, each flashing wealth and speaking of the dire necessity to cure AIDS, world hunger, poverty, and tan lines. Engulfed in the wining and dining, I realized that years of straining to understand Kriolu in an African crowd was now replaced by dozens of partygoers whom I could understand. “Good God, I would NEVER wear purple past March!” a drunken woman cried as she crashed into me, feathers and diamonds flying.

Just then the lights went out. The drunken woman I was attempting to untangle myself from screamed a momentous scream, along with a chorus of others. Though surrounding lights from the city made it possible to see, the partygoers erupted in a sea of despair. A GQ model grabbed my ass as he fell to the floor. My friend with the goatee was atop a landing, looking particularly panicked, her lipstick smudged and her mascara eyes lined in terror as her gruff voice shouted orders to the fumbling staff. “It’s okay!” I shouted up to her. “It’s no big deal, just a power outage. It happens all the time in Cape Verde!” to no avail, as she was engulfed in waves of tuxedoes and hairpins.

“You were in Africa?!?” An old, disillusioned woman’s voice finds me and pours her words like syrup atop my head. “We are just so fond of those who help the poor, you dear soul!” she exclaimed as I wrestled free from the manicured claws of her grip. Like a traditional rain dance, the bodies around me moved and squirmed, as though they were fighting the gods of nature, searching the polluted skies for escape. The god was found. Someone called the electric company and with the whoosh of a finger the almighty CEO flipped a switch and the god of light sashayed in on artificial rays. The crowd of pearls, cufflinks that said “Save Darfur” and fake fur garments (a woman’s got to save the animals, dammit) bowed down in thanks. There was later a support group session organized for those caught in the moments of darkness to express the terror they had endured that night. It was orchestrated by owners of the hotel in response to concerns of a lawsuit, but the well-intended workshop turned into a drunken debate on the ills of Wal-Mart.

Me? Well, I was lost. I could not find my way back to the hotel and I kept getting attacked by cleavage and suits congratulating me on my fearless escapades in the “darker side of the world.” I had no money with which to bribe the local bellhop and I was concerned that an iPod/TV/cell phone/GPS system would knock me out under the inattentiveness of a distracted owner (note: walking while under the use of iPods was outlawed last year due to some near-deaths). I listened to the latest news from the bubbling of the fountain and the trees kept me company as they urged me along the flower-lined paths. It was the middle of the night, but some goal-oriented families were already up and running to Activity A. Unwavering parents dragging their sleepy children by the hands under a thick night sky as they set out to have their fun first. They wanted to start tomorrow early, and they were determined not to miss it.

I awoke with my own determination: to slow down and live.

“When you let your time become money you cheapen your life. One measure of a culture is its treatment of time. In the United States time is money: we save it, spend it, invest, it, and waste it. Not so in traditional Italy. Here life is rich and savored slowly. In Italy – like in India – time is more like chewing gum. You munch on it an play with it … as if it will be there forever.”

-Rick Steves, Postcards from Europe

A Sense of Place

2007-03-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

I got a package in the mail today. The ripped open and re-taped lump of cardboard that arrived looked like a shining gift as it was placed in my eager outstretched hands. Within the box I found a ton of clothes and a book called A Sense of Place, which includes transcribed conversations with travel writers “about their craft, lives and inspiration.”

It’s led me to thinking a lot about writing, traveling and the idea of having a sense of place. The significance and reliability of the three are so interwoven in the book that I have really taken to it. Just thought I’d share a few discoveries on what some famous travel writers have derived from their experiences:

“It’s a great big huge world. Say you’d been to every single place I’d been to in my life except that you were ten feet to my right. You would have lived a totally different trip…They (Wordsworth and Emerson) said, ‘Poetry is strong emotion recollected in tranquility.’ And I said, ‘Adventure is physical or emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.’ An adventure is never an adventure when it’s happening. An adventure is only an adventure when you’ve had time to sit back and think about it.”

-Tim Cahill, in an interview for Sense of Place

“That’s why the words ‘Let’s go!’ are intrinsically courageous. It’s the decision to go that is, in itself, entirely intrepid. We know from the first step that travel is often a matter of confronting our fear of the unfamiliar and the unsettling – of the rooster’s head in the soup, of the raggedy edge of unfocused dread, of that cliff face that draws us willy-nilly to its lip and forces us to peer into the void.”

-Tim Cahill, “Exotic Places Made Me Do It,” Outside

“Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression ‘a place in the sun’ first come from? My rational thought processes cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate. I’m here because I climbed out the window at night when I was four.”

-Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

“That little moment of climbing out the window is kind of the impulse: Go. And I always feel that, I feel very split always between the desire to stay, the desire for home, the desire for the nest, the desire to gather people around in the home, and that equal passion to shut the door and go, to leave it all behind and seek what’s out there. So I think for me writing partly comes from the tension between those two things. And it’s odd because they both involve a sense of place, the place being the home, the domestic, and then the place being out there to be discovered.”

-Frances Mayes, in an interview for Sense of Place

“’Fiction’ comes not from this imaginary Latin verb fictia meaning I make it up as I go along. It comes from the actual Latin verb fictia meaning, I give shape to.”

-Jonathan Raban, in an interview for Sense of Place

Oh…love, love, love.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

In honor of Women’s Day - a story about a strong Cape Verdean woman (who represents an honest mixture of the women I know):

Daybreak

She only wishes she could awake with the sun, but her almond eyes open long before the first rays of light have drifted over the crater behind her stone house. She blinks in the darkness and reaches her long slender arms toward the familiar place where she keeps the candle, and a small box of matches. One quick strike and the dark room flares up in a vision of oranges, yellows and deep reds. For a moment, the sleeping bodies of ten others on the three beds are seared into the vision of her mind. They stir, breathe deeply and escape slumber, unwillingly and with heavy bodies clinging to the lingering moments of dreams.

She grabs her thin wrap and folds it expertly around her coarse plaited hair. The Portuguese gold earrings gleam momentarily in the flickering light thrown from the flame in her careful grasp as she creaks open the heavy wooden door and makes her way slowly to the kitchen outside. Bending down over her layers of tattered clothing, she enters the cozinha de lenha (kitchen of firewood) and grabs a few meager sticks to place beneath the pot above the smoking embers. Blowing on the flame she pours the grains of coffee from a wrinkled bag and thinks to herself she is glad she had the time yesterday to pound the coffee beans into the fine substance that she depends on to will herself awake at this early hour.

The fire begins to take hold and the thick, curling hands of smoke grab her throat and beg tears from her irritated eyes. She leans low over a large bowl and pours flour and water slowly into the palm of her rough yet capable hands. She begins to knead the dough and her life once again takes the form of one who is not truly living, yet existing simply to fulfill the tasks that will see her thin muscular body through yet another day. The angular strength of her cheekbones are highlighted in the smoky light that filters through the room, clings to the strong jaw and wide, firm lips pressed in effort against the kneading of heavy dough.

While she is not yet done with her bread and the faint aroma of coffee is just beginning to overcome the smell of smoke, her husband walks in with heavy steps and prepares to leave for another hard day of work in the fields. He looks at her briefly, ignores her presence routinely and she listens as he leaves the room, trudges toward the tree where the donkey is tied, and slaps its flanks in an effort to move the stubborn animal along. In that moment, the first signs of dawn are approaching and she can hear the sounds of the tiny community awakening – roosters crowing, donkeys burrowing, voices yelling to one another in Kriolu along the cobblestone path outside.

A mixture of high-pitched laughter and argument comes from the house across the stone quintal and she looks toward the door as a tiny ten-year-old body walks beneath the thin shirts, sheets and other faded clothing hanging along the line like a long row of subtlety and surrender. She forgets her work for a moment and imagines she too is a limp article of clothing, once vibrant and now hanging low, fully lacking of color and worth. The voice of her child, now in front of her, brings her back and she nods toward a can and tells the knock-kneed shivering body to go to the store and buy sugar. The clanking of a few meager coins rattles the woman’s nerves as the child discovers the change and walks down the rocky dirt path toward the store. She stares, still lost in her thoughts, as she watches her daughter’s tightly curled braids disappear in a moment around the papaya trees along the otherwise desolate street corner…

The baby’s shrieking pulls her back to reality like the forceful slap of a belt. She wipes her dough-covered hands on her dresses and with five quick strides enters the house and forcefully grabs the writhing body from the hands of her seven-year old son. In low, guttural intonations she chastises the boy for being burro (stupid) and slaps his hands as she orders him to feed the pig outside. Her four-year-old daughter is late taking her bath and she too is scolded and told to leave immediately for the jardìm (kindergarten) down the road. Taking her baby in her arms, she finds a wrap and ties the tiny body to her breast so she can continue her work and nurse at the same time. She orders her oldest son to fetch water with his sisters who are already walking down to the well with buckets balanced atop their tiny heads and strong necks.

As she begins to sweep the dirt cobblestone outside she notices the sun is just beginning to rise and the pinks and yellows fade to a dull, light blue. She looks out over the expanse of ocean laid before her like one long, empty table and wonders what lies beyond. Leaning against her broom and feeling the warmth of the tiny bundle nestled to her breast (her sixth child, and she, only 32 years old) she imagines living a million other lives. She tries to cry but discovers feeling much beyond weary takes too much strength. And so the tears come only in the mornings, unwillingly and without allowance as the smoke from the fire burns the lingering dreams out of her eyes and she prepares for yet another daybreak.

Friday, March 9, 2007

This is something my roommate found and shared with me - I thought it worth passing along…
I Stand In Awe
Loret Miller Ruppe
In 1983, I was invited to the White House for the state visit of Prime Minister Ratu Mara of Fiji. Everyone took their seats around an enormous table—President Reagan, Vice-President Bush, Caspar Weinberger, the rest of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister and his delegation, and me. They talked about world conditions, sugar quotas, nuclear-free zones. The President asked the Prime Minister to make his presentation. A very distinguished gentleman, he drew himself up and said: “President Reagan, I bring you today the sincere thanks of my government and my people.” Everybody held their breath and there was total silence. “For the men and women of Peace Corps who go out into our villages, who live with our people.” He went on and on. I beamed. Vice-President Bush leaned over afterwards and whispered, “What did you pay that man to say that?”
A week later, the Office of Management and Budget presented the budget to President Reagan with a cut for the Peace Corps. President Reagan said, “Don’t cut the Peace Corps. It’s the only thing I got thanked for last week at the state dinner.” Peace Corps’ budget was increased. Vice-President Bush asked again: “What did you pay?”
Well, we know one thing: it isn’t for pay that Volunteers give their blood, their sacred honor. I can never forget the sweat, the tears, the frustrations, the best efforts and successes of thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers. I stand in awe and with the deepest respect. I always thought I could be a Volunteer until I went out and met them.
I ended many speeches when I was Peace Corps Director with this: Peace, that beautiful five-letter word we all say we crave and pray for, is up for grabs in the ‘90s. A question must be answered above and beyond this special forum: Is peace simply the absence of war? Or is the absence of the conditions that bring on war—hunger, disease, poverty, illiteracy, and despair?
When fifty percent of the children die in a village before they are five; when women walk miles for water and then search for wood to cook by; when farmers leave their villages where there are no jobs to flock to cities where there are no jobs; when neighbours ethnically cleanse their neighbours, then let’s face it America, the world is not at peace.
And here at home, when fifty percent of our children live below the poverty level in many of our cities, when the homeless abound on our streets, when our nation’s capital is bankrupt and our schools require metal detectors, racial tensions abound and immigrant bashing and downsizing terrorizes loyal workers, then, let’s face it America, we are not at peace.
The Peace Corps family must respond again to “Ask not what your country can do for you, rather ask what you can do for your country.” And today, in our world, it is, as President Kennedy said, the “towering task.” We can do it!

Saturday, March 10, 2007

There is a part of me that sometimes wonders if Cape Verde is somewhere I can ever picture myself living – and here I am, living. It is strange because when you have a dream to do this as long as I have, you can’t help but have preconceived ideas about the experience. Since my eleven-year-old mind set my heart on joining the Peace Corps, I think I always pictured myself living in the lush leaves of a rainforest, much like the cloud forest reserve of Costa Rica or the sandy beaches of Brazil. I pictured myself working with the environment and living a very simple lifestyle. I pictured it fitting who I was.

I never pictured living where I am now. This place, at first, kind of rubs you the wrong way. It is rough and harsh and beautiful in all the wrong ways – so obviously it takes some getting used to. Yet what I am finding is that although this place doesn’t mirror any part of me, it is growing on me like I’d never imagined. I am beginning to love the brutal honesty, the acceptance of the way things are, the hard work, the importance of family, the struggles that require perseverance, the determination that lies behind the eyes of those who know that Cape Verde will never have enough food, or resources or jobs to sustain itself.

I am becoming used to the smells, the rough ways in which people communicate with one another, the dirt, the dryness, the wind. And what I am slowly discovering is that I have always seen myself as a fragile person – worried the petals of my exterior would whither under harsh, sunlit rays. And yet, maybe this place does mirror me in a way. Here my roots are growing and although those petals are indeed withering away, I am realizing that I am of an entirely different species. A species that drops its delicate accessories to reveal beneath a strong, deep core. It’s not a bad reflection.

Love ... and everything else that matters

2007-03-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 14, 2007

There was a big build-up to Valentine’s Day; or, more appropriately, Dia das Namoradas (day of girl/boyfriends) here in Ponta Verde. I received a cut out invitation down the road where there was going to be a dance, a lot of my younger female students were talking about what their much older boyfriends were going to get them, and I was given a cheap plastic rose. Yet my mind couldn’t have been further from the date. Today the father of the woman who calls me her child - and whom I have dubbed as my Cape Verdean mom – passed away.

I have been to other funerals before and have experienced, in some ways, the common rituals and practices among Cape Verdeans who have lost a loved one. Yet this time it was my family who was aching. It was my best friend who headed the funeral procession wailing for the town to hear her suffering as she walked dazed and was held up on both sides down the dirt path. It was her cries that echoed through the town. This was my family - these people whose smiling eyes had turned to sorrow and whose colorful clothes were now drowning in black. It was the arms of those who had held me up all this time who now turned to lean heavily upon me.

Due to the proximity of this family to my heart, I learned a lot more about how people cope with death:

Three days after a person dies the body “comes” and there is a funeral. A week, month and then year after the death there is a church service in honor of the deceased. In the family’s home, there is a room that is cleared of furniture and emptied for visitors to come and pray for the soul of the person who has passed. In another cleared-away room many chairs are placed for the mourners to sit and wait to receive those who have come to pay their respects. After visitors have said a prayer, they make their way to this room and shake the hand of each person dressed in black. This is when the wailing starts. It is a deep, guttural sound - an almost forced sigh that escapes the throat at first in a mournful whisper or whine, and then continues to rise like the melody of a song. The melody often takes a harsh turn and often the mourners are caught up in their sorrow and it becomes a wailing, crying, shrieking, painful thing to watch and hear. Doors are thrown open and people take their sorrow to the open air and throw out the internal emotions to the wind. Tears and blood and pain writhe outward and lend to the volume of this world.

At the end of the week of mourning, the mourners are almost walking zombies themselves. During that first week, visitors are accepted at all hours and it is custom for those mourning to express their pain through these wails. It is a forced, drawn-out practice that leaves even the most passionate of mourners barely standing after a week of taking visitors, accepting the loss and crying. In this case, the house of the man who died was a 25-minute walk along a narrow twisting path up the crater behind my house. The family had to walk up and down gathering food for visitors and preparing for the funeral sometimes four times a day. My best friend, who normally won’t leave the house with a hair out of place, was worn ragged and thin, her hair hanging in her face and her eyes dark from crying and lack of sleep. I couldn’t take my eyes off the black clothing and I sat down with her, hoping to God her high-spirited personality hadn’t drown in the darkness for good. We talked and she showed me a photo of her grandfather. I helped her fill bags of water to freeze and she did what does not seem to be the cultural norm here, despite the open mourning – she told me how she felt about his death.

On this day I held my best friend’s hand and supported the members of a family that have been good enough to guide and support me since I have arrived in a foreign place where I didn’t understand anything. They opened to me like only family would. I have the stains of their tears on my shoulder. I have the warmth of their hands gripping mine for balance. And that acknowledgement of connection taught me about a different kind of love this year.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

I haven’t gotten a lot done today. My roommate and I are calling it our “American day,” which we sometimes do when we feel like ditching the 5 a.m. runs, hilly walks, tiring visits and intense Kriolu sessions. Today we are keeping our windows shut and hiding from the world, existing in a reality where only music, books, journaling and writing letters back home matters. I did try to wash my clothes earlier, but the weather sent me on my way. Now I am bundled up in bed, the covers pulled tight around me and the sound of wind howling through the cracks of my refrigerator of a house. Now I hear children’s voices outside. I can make out the sounds of their little feet as they trudge up the cement steps to my door. Knock, knock, knock. So much for American day, I think, frowning. Then, against my stubborn intent to turn them away, I think of their little faces and smile.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Lately I find it difficult to get through the Newsweeks that arrive every two months from the Peace Corps office. Since there is no television in my house and since the BBC has adamantly decided not to come in clearly on my short wave radio, I usually look forward to the pack of magazines that can catch me up on the latest world news. Don’t get me wrong – as a print journalism major I often feel as inundated and repelled by the columns upon columns of writing that depict the latest upheavals, famines, scientific breakthroughs and war, war, war of the content as the next person – but somehow it has, until late, given me comfort to know what is going on in the world. Yet with the last stack I have discovered this connection to the international atrocities have been particularly stomach wrenching.

Here’s a brief example: I just read about Oprah’s $40 million school that she is building for impoverished girls in South Africa. I read that she has an extensive selection process with an acceptance rate of 4% (Harvard’s acceptance rate is 9%, just to put it in perspective). One hundred and fifty-two girls will be accepted into this elaborately constructed and ornately decorated Oprah-esque “leadership-making” lab. Her idea is that surrounding villages will send their most promising young girls to be selected to enter a school that will, Oprah hopes, birth a generation of well-educated women who will go on to be leaders in their impoverished communities.

Good for her. She is doing a generous thing by spending a ton of money. I mean - everybody loves Oprah, right? At least they did when I left the U.S. eight months ago … I know a lot can change. My humble concern is this: why create one elitist school for 152 girls that ranks in at $40 million when you could construct ten $4 million dollar schools that would be beautiful and that would educate a whole hell of a lot more? Just cut back on a little closet space, give them 40 pencils instead of 50 in that cup by their beds? Maybe cut back on the matching china or silverware?? Save some dough on the fashion show she attended in order to pick out the girls’ uniforms? And the whole “have a village send their most promising girls” bit is complete crap if you understand the way villages are set up. The simple fact is that the girl who comes from a family with wealth and power will pass up the poor girl with all the potential in the world. Maybe Oprah didn’t think about that. You could say it’s a generous project and you would be correct – but I think it has seriously overlooked flaws that have been downsized by her desire to save the little girl (admittedly, herself) that she sees in these applicants. I don’t know, that’s just me.

Once I read about the U.S. Interior Department’s proposal that Artic polar bears are to be listed as a threatened species due to global warming, and statements such as: “the U.S. is entering a new period of post-U.S. dominance,” I opted for the lighter content of a Shape magazine my father had sent me in the mail. While I marveled at the firm, bronzed bodies of models and celebrities and flipped impatiently through the pages upon pages of Christmas gift suggestions and makeup tips, I began to fully realize that eight months has the ability to change a person drastically. I used to read the issues in the news, become distraught, think hard about it, discuss, and then go about my day. After all, you can’t allow things like world hunger and obesity to place a cloud of pity over your head all the time, right (place a curious form of sarcasm here)? I used to mind-numbingly flip through celebrity news, bitch about it and loathe the gossip chain or obsession with the tangible things in life.

Now it is hard to know what to feel about it all. I suddenly feel so separate from current events, yet all the more influenced. I compare it all to the life I live here – where food is imported from other countries only when it has passed its due date, and where the population on Fogo is less than the students who attend my commuter college back home. Dirt paths and donkeys have replaced my world of freeways and cars. Swimming pools in every backyard versus my concern that the well in the back of my house will dry up before the next rain in June. Three car crashes a week that I barely blinked at along the 91 and a truck that dumped into the ribeira and was the talk of Ponta Verde for weeks. Here, news is not about the latest NASA space race or the possibility of a woman becoming president. I was simply shocked the other day when a Cape Verdean woman stood up to a man here (it was the first woman I have seen openly defend her opinion in front of a man in my little community, and she has spent the last 20 years in Portugal, which probably explains it). Space travel here is considered traveling 45 minutes by car to the other side of the island. I’m not really exaggerating.

So, predictably, all I mean to communicate in this long and possibly drawn-out entry is that reading life on a world-scale and living on an island-scale are pretty contrasting perspectives – it makes me wonder what it will feel like to enter that world again.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

I feel like I have stumbled into a jumbled box of mixed messages. “What is it like to be in Peace Corps in Fogo?” people back home often ask. Well, it’s like being in a world where everything on the surface hints at realities that do not truly exist. There is money (too much of it) and there is no money (not nearly enough). An author of a Cape Verde travel book once wrote this in his introduction:

He met, by all appearances, well-to-do men on a plane from Portugal headed to Cape Verde. Each man on the plane was well spoken and jovial, dressed in a suit, and gold rings on his fingers. He later ran into one of these (what he thought of as well-off) men on an island, stepping out of a tiny, worn-down shack of a home and into the dirt path. When the author greeted the man he learned that it was the house of his wife and children. He was visiting his family. The rest of the year he worked in a factory in Portugal. The suit and tie was a façade. So it goes in Cape Verde.

I am in Peace Corps. Yet, when I pictured my service in Africa I was prepared for living in “the bush” experience. I pictured poverty across the board, and sparse wealth among the upper classes. I think I pictured something like Brazil – the forgotten favellas (slums) of the side streets in contrast with wealthy overweight vacationers eating ice cream on the beach. I was prepared for that kind of distribution of wealth. Yet here, the mansion is next door to the shack. The one rich man living in a six bedroom home has a stunning view of the ocean … and the two bedroom hovel where ten people live and the children run around in rags for clothes.

Yesterday as I walked home from a visit, I ran into a woman who I consider the “celebrity” of Ponta Verde. She owns one of the three bars in town and four additional stories of her house stretch upward above its entrance like a palace. She is big and round and showers herself with jewelry. Her frequent comings and goings to and from America are the talk of the town and she drives around in her Land Cruiser when she feels the urge to go to bila. She informed me that she will be leaving for America soon and that she may stay there for months because there are no stores or malls one may go to in their free time, should one feel inclined to do so. She feels very inclined to do so. She also cannot wait to go back to the States because there she can turn on the T.V. and stay in her house all day and watch it if she wishes. And she does wish to do so. After all, Ponta Verde life is so stressful (what with her planning parties and leaving the house once a day and all that). I nod, oh so sympathetically.

I am learning to keep my mouth shut around the few people who live in the area and parade their wealth from their bright pink and orange mansions, broad iron gates, big attitudes and yellow sports cars (yes, there is a canary yellow Mustang convertible that speeds down the quaint cobblestone path each day). Here, as in most any place, image is everything.

Yet this image is deceiving. I went home and awoke the next day to a familiar knock on my door to take a glimpse at the other side of Ponta Verde – the side that screams poverty and injustice. (The part of Cape Verde that does not offer free public education past primary school and leaves hundreds of kids with only a sixth grade level of education, if that; the part that does not have Social Security or mental hospitals, addiction programs for people battling alcoholism, schools for those with learning disabilities, optometrists for my students who have visual problems and whose futures may suffer for lack of a simple pair of glasses.)

I answered the door. Four-year-old eyes looked up at me as a tiny body with a distended belly shivered in the cold. She’s too shy to speak much, but I know she wants to know if I will walk with her to kindergarten. I ask her if she’s had breakfast, and receive the usual answer in a whisper, “No.” These lovely brown eyes look up at me and all the beauty in them is contrasted with my feelings for her mother who sends her children to my house to beg so she won’t have to feed them. The soft side of me gives in and I give her a pop tart my dad sent from America. I’m not ready for school yet so I send her and her pop tart on their way. She will, like most days, return home for a beating (I will hear her screams from my house) and she will work as hard as her other five siblings. She won’t have a jacket. But at least today she will have a full stomach.

Two minutes after the four-year-old leaves the nine-year-old knocks on the door. She hasn’t eaten either and I resolve to talk to their mom about this. This second child has a severely deformed back from a childhood fall. The circle I can form between my pointer and thumb fingers have a circumference much wider than her arm. The mother of these children is expecting another baby any day now. I have heard that they are saving up for a T.V. They live on one side of my house, to the left. On the other side is one of the biggest mansions I have ever seen, on the right.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Today was one of those days when I realize how much I love my new home. Nothing in particular happened. In fact, it was pretty bland in every way. I woke up at five to run, taught until the afternoon, announced a soccer game on Saturday, collected entries from people in the community who wrote compositions for a contest we organized in honor of Dia das Mulheres (Women’s Day), returned to the house and hand washed my sheets and towels, went back to school to give prep lessons to the sixth grade, went to the new sala de informatica (computer room) that just opened to give instruction on how to use programs, returned home to bring my laundry of the line and sweep, visited my good friend and bought some things at the store to make dinner…etc.

Despite all the running around I am just beginning to realize that this is Ponta Verde and not L.A. I think it’s ingrained in my being to rush and stress and be on a specific schedule to get everything done. I often hurry past people along the road imploring me to visit because I, in my American thinking, must get everything done. Today I let that go and allowed myself to slow down, relax and enjoy the company of my many friends here that I often neglect in a mad rush to uphold my responsibilities. And in doing this, I actually got more done. It’s a new pace that does not come second nature to me and is only now, in my ninth month in Cape Verde, beginning to take shape.

Now I am sitting on the floor, on a little duck-shaped bath mat my mom sent me in honor of the carpet I miss in the States (it makes the concrete floor all the more comfortable). My roommate is cooking tuna and grao (chickpeas) and I am reading her yoga book and comically attempting the positions as she laughs and as I take a moment here and there to write this entry. It is warm and serene in my house. My sheets are clean and there is a candle by my bedside with a new book to read. The aroma of cooking and the conversations of the day dance softly along the edges of my mind … and I am content to lean back and enjoy the slower pace.

A mixture

2007-02-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I think at some point here my life retired and regressed, and is now in a backward stage of motion. Whatever I possessed and considered to be the slow yet sure accumulation of wisdom - the fragile threads of life that hold together common thought and an overall panorama of being - is now narrowing into a slender wedge of sky carved out of a previously inexhaustible expanse of freedom. For whatever reason, I have taken to juvenile traits that I didn’t dare attempt even during my infantile years when I was too busy trying to be an adult to acquiesce to adolescent behavior. The explanations for this are out there somewhere, tiny petals of reason that dance about in shadowy gusts of winds and evade my willful grasp…

For now, I am left wondering why my blood quickens and tiny sparks of exhilaration pulse through my body during the monotonous moments of day. The barren plateau of afternoon, when cobblestone streets are silent and hens are left alone to explore beneath benches and children’s deserted toys, a giddiness arises beneath layers of boredom, lethargy or unease. At times like these, laughter bubbles up from a fountain and I find myself fashioning my hair in a sideways ‘80s ponytail, hiking up the legs of my jeans and jump roping while singing Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean is not my lover” from my short wave radio (yes, I have pictures).

I take risks, too. Risks I don’t think I would ever have taken in the cushiony slumber of the States. Like when I was in a cove on the beach the other night, dancing in the waves and sprinting above the reflection of moonlight in the sand. I taunted the ocean, ran boldly into frothy whiteness where the crashing power of the sea connects firmly with the steadfast strength of land. I shrieked and sang and raced and played along the shadows and illumination that only night provides, everything bathed in a blanket of black clasped together with metallic white - the shrouded sky, the glitter of stars, the churning sea, and the light in my eyes.

Pace has been slowed, as well. My sense of awe increases when faced with the sheer authority of this rock in the middle of the ocean. Walking along the foreboding mountain of gray sand, my feet sank into the steep descent of Cha das Calderas, a community where people who have defied government orders live within the crater of Fogo’s active volcano. The landscape is daunting – dunes of ash spread out like a Dali painting – a bit twisted but nonetheless haunting in its beauty and stillness. I stared at my outstretched fingers, once again childlike, as my friend and I dropped to the ground to feel the warmth of magma radiating from cracks of volcanic rock. We crouched low to the surface as the sun set and admired as squiggly waves of heat swarmed like flies from the earth and dissipated into a darkening sky.

I find myself juggling an intense desire to once again climb trees like I did in Costa Rica; sail on a boat with only an hour’s darkness in the north of Sweden; stroll through the icy frost of Kyoto’s Japanese gardens; go off-roading in my Jeep through the cracked ravines of Palm Desert; dance in the waterfalls of Monteverde’s cloud forest reserve; roast marshmallows by campfire on the beach of San Onofre; play hide-and-go-seek with orphans I lived with in Brazil; drink a pint in an Oxford pub; white water raft down a river in Northern California; swim with manatees in the lazy swamps of Florida with my childhood friend who has since passed away; sit on a bench with my travel buddy and admire the Alps of Switzerland; get lost in the canals and eat bad spaghetti in Venice; build houses with volunteers in Mexico; collect hermit crabs beneath a hammock near the red and white striped lighthouse on Abaco Island; collect hemp bracelets and run for my life from a scary tattoo artist in the bohemian beach town of Canoa Quebrada; eat waffles from a vending machine in Belgium just to say I’d eaten them there; visit the Ann Frank house and be shocked by pornographic postcards in the “coffee shops” of Amsterdam; take a tip from the locals and sneak in through the back exit of the Louvre in Paris; hike to castles tucked into the mist and green cliffs of southern Germany; pound corn into a fine flour to make cous cous; stand in front of sixty beady eyes and prompt Cape Verdean teenagers to form their first English words; take a morning run in the dark and watch the longest trail of a shooting star I have ever seen disappear from my sight as the sun begins to flood light over the crater of the volcano behind my house … In this way I have regressed. I am slowly sinking back into the depths of my mind to live there, and crouch like a guest in the corners of pleasant memories.

The truth is that I don’t know how to end this journal entry. Possibly because I have been describing what has already happened in my life and am attempting to conclude that which has not yet matured, fully blossomed, or existed in full. So I will leave these words and the significance to be derived in whatever ways are favorable to the reader (if you have, indeed, read this far). The novel of my life has not ended; in fact, another section has just begun. But for now, the chapter has reached its final page and will remain open only in the sense that it may be relived through the eyes of someone who can relate.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

As I was walking home from work a friend of mine coaxed me into the shaded darkness of her home and proudly announced the birth of a young woman’s baby.
“Oh! You are already back from the hospital?” I asked naively in Kriolu.
“The hospital?” The woman laughed as her giant slanted eyes opened wide and her missing teeth smiled back at me in an amused grin. “She had the baby right here on the floor! I delivered it!”
“You delivered it yourself!?” I asked, again naively.
“Claro! (clearly)” she said. “You just catch the baby, cut the birth cord, wash him off and set him on the bed.”
Well, of course, I thought. Simple as that. It turns out this woman who had delivered the baby has five children. She birthed each of them on her own.
“You just crouch down like this,” she explained, crouching to the floor in what apparently was a birthing position. “Then you put your hands out, push real hard and catch ‘em!”
“Doesn’t it hurt??” I exclaimed in genuine horror (I happen to see birth as the most miraculous thing a woman is capable of, but all miracles aside - I would never wish the excruciating pain upon myself. I’ll make a good aunt one day).
“No, it doesn’t hurt much,” she stated, waving the comment away, spacing her feet firmly apart on the floor and placing her hands indignantly on her hips in pride. “Doesn’t hurt at all.”
Well … claro.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The class summary today was the verb “to live.” I asked my students who had family living on other countries.

They all raised their hands.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

The one thing I had heard about Cape Verde after I got my Peace Corps invitation in the mail was that the country is of transient nature. Since there is a lack of jobs on the island of Fogo, many fathers, sons, mothers and children leave their country of natural birth and seek futures in other countries like Portugal, Brazil and America. The money they make there they send to their families back home. Others go to places like America in order to receive education and still others go to reunite with loved ones. I believe this fact alone affects more aspects of life here in Ponta Verde than any other factor.

I knew all this even before I stepped on the plane to come to Cape Verde, but what I did not know was that this fact would affect me so deeply. Since I have arrived (which was about five months ago) a good number of my community members have left for America. One was a young man with a family, who left to work in Boston for three years. Another is one of my roommate’s students, who will go to live with the mother she has been separated from since she was a small child. The fact that my male friend has a five year old daughter who has not seen her mother since birth (because she moved to the U.S. five years ago) is something that has always hit me hard – the closeness of the families here is separated my miles of distance. I have been able to relate on some level, since I left my family and friends behind seven months ago in order to live in another country away from home; yet, I recognize that leaving your life on your own free will as a result of options is entirely different than being forced to leave for a lack thereof.

Today one of the best friends I have in the community told me she will be leaving to live in America by the end of February. She is someone I feel I can be myself with – a person who regularly invites me over to play Cape Verdean music, dance and write down the lyrics for me to understand. She is always the life of the party, the person who is most open and willing to put herself out in front of people and be unique without trying. In a community where I was desperately searching for somewhere to fit in, she provided that space for me. When she told me she was leaving, my eyes focused on a group of white pigeons that landed and spread out behind her in the quintal. Some were clustered together, others flew away. The unity and separateness of the moment compelled me and despite my happiness for her and her future, I had to look away through a vision of tears.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

My ten and four-year-old next door neighbors came over today - as they do every day – and watched the uncharacteristic lightning storm that has been raging outside my house for the past couple of hours. As the wind picked up and shadows chased the sun beyond the horizon of sight, the two tiny girls sat in my lap as we watched the bolts create fissures of light in the darkening sky. The little one braided the bangs of my hair and the tiny muscular ten-year-old giggled excitedly with each powerful flash. We sat holding hands and the closeness reminded me that even so far from my place I can be home.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Despite the intense process of learning and adjustment over the last seven months, things have been generally calm. In fact, at moments I feel that I am standing within the hourglass of my life; in the lower half, where the fine particles of measurement gently pour atop my head in a consistent and steady rush. It flows quickly, yet in a manner in which I find it difficult to keep track of things. When I attempt to look above to glance at time left, it glides in a glittering waterfall of light that blinds me to its perception. In this way I have been blissfully unaware of the time that passes. I close my eyes in the stretch of night that separates February 5th from February 4th and it all begins again. The monotony has been a clear cushion of comfort.

Today I was jolted from that glass case and the steady intake of sand began to empty itself upon me with a weighted force. A few people back home have been asking what I’m up to (and I know there are Peace Corps applicants that stumble across these blogs from time to time) so for those interested in my weekly schedule it appears as follows:

Sunday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00-11:00 a.m. – wash clothes (yes, it takes that long … kiss your washing machine for me)
12:00-4:00 p.m. prepare lesson plans and make visits in community
4:30-6:30 p.m. – go to church and make community announcements
7:00-9:00 p.m. – finish lesson planning and prepare for going to the city Monday

Monday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00-11:00 a.m. – teach 7th grade English
11:30 a.m. – arrive in vila (city) use internet, check post office for mail, go to the market, buy groceries, get new phone card, pay bills, go to the bank, lunch, etc.
2:30 p.m. – coordination meeting with the English department at the liçeo (high school)
5:00 p.m. – arrive home in Ponta Verde. Make dinner, lesson plan, etc.

Tuesday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00-11:00 a.m. – teach
12:00 p.m. – make lunch, community visits
4:30 p.m. – weekly community meeting with the church
5:00 p.m. – make dinner, lesson plan, etc.

Wednesday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00 a.m. – shower
7:45 a.m. – English private tutoring
8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – volunteer at the local kindergarten
1:00 p.m. – make lunch
2:00-4:00 p.m. – community visits
5:00 p.m. – make dinner, lesson plan, etc.

Thursday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00-11:00 a.m. – teach 7th grade English
12:00 p.m. – make lunch, community visits
4:00 p.m. – teach 6th grade classes to prepare them for 7th grade English
6:00 p.m. – make dinner, lesson plan, etc.

Friday:
5:00 a.m. – morning run
7:00-11:00 a.m. – teach 7th grade English
12:00 p.m. – make lunch, community visits
5:00 p.m.-? – whatever I want!

Saturday:
8:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. – meet students and hold a soccer game at a neighboring field
2:00-whatever time – visit the houses of students
Free time! (which usually means a bottle of wine and sitting on the roof of my house with my roommate, looking at the stars)

In addition to this I guess I am the new editor of the Peace Corps Newsletter, which happened last minute, and along with the volunteers on my island (we call ourselves Team Fogo) I am preparing an island-wide essay contest in order to commemorate Women’s Day. The winning essays will be broadcasted on Radio Mosteiros. There is a new sala de informatica (a computer room) that was just opened in Ponta Verde and I will begin to work and teach classes there as well. In the upcoming weeks I will begin teaching English classes for adults who are interested. And the sand just keeps emptying into the lower half of the glass case.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

“Islands lost
in the midst of the sea
forgotten
in an angle of the world
-where the waves
cradle
abuse
embrace…”

~Jorge Barbosa, poet of CV

Today is seven months in Cape Verde.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

There is a woman who has become a very close friend of mine. She is well known in the community for her energy, her clear vision, her sense of humor and her two long black braids. She loves to jump up and move to the traditional fundo (deep) dances of Fogo and has never had children. I’ve been told that she’s visited America three times in her life. Along the way she picked up such phrases as “sit down!” and “come here!” which she uses often in my presence. She is quite a character and is known for a lot of things. But manly she is known because she is 99 years, three months and 17 days old.

I paid my near century-old friend a visit yesterday and she greeted me with a genuine toothless grin and a giant embrace. As I sat next to her in a small room that she shares with the 14 other people who live in the house, she grabbed my keys that are attached to a stretchy hair band so I can wrap it around my wrist and not lose them, as I often tend to do. She told me she would love to take those keys and walk herself down to my house and pay me a visit whenever she’d like, but her house is high up the crater of the volcano, and not the kind of hike a one-hundred year-old body can withstand. As I sat in the room with the family she lived with, I looked around at the beginnings and endings of life in people. The mother of the children who lived there is painfully thin yet with an inner strength that shines through her eyes. She sat nursing her one-year-old and playing with him, tickling him, as her much older 27-year-old son playfully argued that men in Cape Verde really can wash their own clothes and cook (I told him that he may wash mine any time he wished). The mother’s beautiful daughters were about the room (one of them is my student). They have calm demeanors and almond eyes.

I ate lunch with them, played, laughed and shelled beans, but I was really there to see this woman who was so young despite her age. She showed me a picture of her husband, a man she had married in the dawn of her life, but who had passed away in her eighties, nearly twenty years ago. I wondered at how someone that age has withstood the loss of each and every person born before her. Most of all, I just joked with her and held her hand as we talked. We were both glad for the company. Before I left she slipped a ring onto my pinky finger. It is silver and delicate with a thin black stone. It is over 90 years old, just like her. “Uma kuza para abo de lembra de mi,” she said (one thing for you to remember me by). I always will.

Trying to sum it all up...

2007-01-29T05:39:00.000-08:00

Boas Festas

2007-01-29T05:38:00.000-08:00

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.

December Closes

2006-12-30T05:15:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Giving of yourself is not a taking away of who you are.

It is a refinement of that which you most admire about yourself – and a direct confrontation with that which you always wished to hide. The constant push toward development and understanding furrows the softly lines edges of the beauty we believe strength possesses. As individualistic as we are, we crave the solidarity that commits us to a whole, a more unifying and possibly gratifying existence. In order to fully comprehend what we are doing and why we are here requires stepping out into the darkness with fingertips strained before a world that holds nothing but secret passageways and deadly corridors. Without knowing our way we struggle as we take our first steps into the narrow, uneven path that opens up the world into an abyss of unfathomable depth. A reality awaits you and yet you stand still and trembling, catching your breath for fear that the air you are accustomed to breathing may no longer suffice. When one enters uncharted territory there is nothing to do but pray – for comfort, for understanding, direction. And yet as time passes, that which we pray for arrives in unexpected whims and delightful images. Follow the multitude before you and frustration wears you like a scar; take an about-face and bump straight into fate. The unsure gait of an inexperienced soul with a warrior’s heart; a restlessness that longs for calm, yet finds it in the unlikeliest of places (perhaps of volcanic nature).

Giving of yourself is not a taking away of who you are.

It is a mirror in which all that was once distorted focuses sharp to become clear and defined. It lacks the comforting lies of a tilted reflection, because you are now able to see everything, yet unsure of whether or not you want to see it. It forces the unwilling to stare imperfection in the face and dare to call it beautiful.

Friday, December 22, 2006

I went to a Christmas gathering for all the monitorias (teachers) at the Jardim (kindergarten) today. I found myself sitting in a tiny colorful classroom. Below me was a miniature chair made for a four-year-old and above me were stuffed animals, paper drawings made by the children and a variety of other festive decorations hanging along a string that stretched across the room. Morning light shifted in even folds along the edges of the walls covered in artwork made by tiny hands. Outside I could hear the bell-like laughter of other monitorias speaking Kriolu amidst delicate flowers in the garden.

My good friend and neighbor gave birth about a month ago. She sat nursing the tiny light-skinned bundle in her arms as I stared up at a dangling clear globe above my head. I began to talk to her about America and when she asked me to take the globe down I untied it and held it between my fingers to demonstrate where I lived. We sat in the peaceful stillness of the dim classroom and held the map of the world up to the golden light of the sun. She sat asking me questions about where I had been and what I had done there. My fingers traced Costa Rica, Europe, Sweden, Japan, Brazil, Africa…and back to Cape Verde. Looking at the size of this tiny dot of an island amidst the overwhelming magnitude of this world I wondered at how a small place could define so much of me.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Time is escaping me. Day by day I feverishly attempt to keep up amidst the mad rush to slow down and enjoy the moments that make up my fleeting life. I open my eyes to the warm rays of morning sun; I feel the pounding of my running shoes along the jagged lifts of cobblestone road; the ridges of the washboard rub firmly in forced thrusts along the palms of my hands; pools of water run down my face as I pour my cold bath above my head from a large old can of grao – the hair along my skin rises firmly in indignation against gusts of wind that rush through the open window. Even Christmas comes and goes without much of a blink. I opened my eyes, lived a few hours, and away it went. Without family and the traditions I am used to, the day sped along as quickly and unassuming as any other day, like a child attempting to slip past a crowd of adults engaged in weighty conversation. I innocently peeked out, tested the view, saw the coast was clear and sped full force into the next day … fearing I will be sucked into the gravity of life … I´ve decided to stay right here and not grow up.

Par for the Course

2006-12-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 15, 2006

I have a diagram that was put together by a group of volunteers who COS-ed (completed service) in Senegal in the mid-‘80s and is applicable for volunteers living in West Africa. It’s called “Critical Periods in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.” The calendar charts the emotional roller coaster that a majority of volunteers experience and explains what can be expected during each phase of the 27-month service; soaring highs, painful lows, deep-rooted feelings of utter contentment and the painstaking panic of self-doubt. Since most of the volunteers who are a year ahead of me attest to its accuracy, I have taken it out at times to chart my progress. I am at the 3-6 month mark and am supposed to be experiencing the following:

ISSUES:
-Assignment
-Separation/solitude
-Uncertainty of role

BEHAVIORS/REACTIONS:
-Fright
-Frustration with self
-Loneliness
-Weight and/or health changes
-Homesickness
-Uselessness

INTERVENTIONS:
-Develop in-country correspondence
-Host visitors
-Visit peers, other PCV’s
-Establish links: NGO’s, services
-Technical research for future use
-Language study
-Establish routine, sense of “I”
-Hobbies to do “in public”
-Simple projects: garden, trees

It’s times like these, when I pull out this chart, that I feel mockingly predictable … down to the “simple projects” addition in which for some absurd reason I have suddenly become overly enthusiastic about plants. Yet though the conventional knowledge is sadly applicable (the first time I skimmed this chart, I determined my experience would be unique, original, different, blah blah, etc.), it is nonetheless comforting. Apparently it’s completely normal, even expected, for a usually grounded person to feel adrift the rocking tumultuous sea that is Peace Corps - especially when the only solid ground is a volcano.

VIDA (life)

2006-12-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 1, 2006

Today was Dia Mundial de Luta Contra a SIDA (World AIDS Day). Aside from teaching, my volunteer work here consists of getting to know the needs of my community in order to plan for development through the organization of community events. In preparation for World AIDS Day, Portuguese volunteers from the Posto Sanitario (Sanitary Post) came to the school and spoke candidly with them about AIDS and other pertinent sexually related topics. In order to reinforce the activities the students have taken part in, we held a drawing contest and taped the students’ entries along the outside walls of the school today. The community was invited to participate and both the primary school students and secondary school kids wore red or white t-shirts. I passed out pamphlets and we held a march in which the kids stood along the sides of the street. The students formed two lines, one red and one white, and held the shoulder of the person in front of them all the way to the Posto Sanitario on the other side of town near my house. Students held up signs on our march with information about AIDS. Before the event, I was worried that it may be a flop, but was happy to discover that all I had to do was mention the event and the participation was there. The other teachers became heavily involved and I stood back and watched as the work I had put into planning the event took off, creating a life of its own.

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Side note: (I cannot believe today is my little brother’s 18th birthday! Time just continues to fly and the only way with which to measure the passage of time is to flip the pages of my calendar in a feeble attempt to keep up with the months. I left the U.S. midway through the year, and now I stare dumbly at “December,” wondering where half the year has been hiding.)

There is a saying here in Cape Verde about the island I call home. When someone does something that’s a little socially questionable, the remark is “Abo e de Fogo?” or, in English, “Are you from Fogo?” Culturally translated, that well-known phrase means you are crazy. Although I often find myself shaking my head in confusion over the norms of this tiny community tucked into the volcano of the Atlantic, there are a handful of neighbors who I have been told (by other Ponta Verdeans, mind you) are straight up “from Fogo.”

My roommate and I were waiting along the side of the road for a ride to Mosteiros to celebrate a late Thanksgiving with the six other American Peace Corps volunteers on the island. Feeling strangely American in reference to the holiday, we were loaded with bags, dressed for vacation, sporting sunglasses and even loaded down with a homemade cake. While we sat along the road, an older man notorious for having monologue-like conversations with us stopped with a saw-like tool in his hand and commenced an hour-long speech. Oblivious to the fact that we are not fluent in Portuguese, his tiny eyes gleamed and his gummy smile spoke animatedly as he got down on the ground and demonstrated something that he felt was urgent for us to understand.

At first I was polite. Then I was entertained. Then annoyed. After unsuccessfully asking him to leave us four times, I started to sit in trapped somberness, arms crossed in defense at my silent sides. Midway through a full-bodied gesturing charade, another woman who has an affinity for peeing in front of our house and baring her flat breasts in public came by and began cackling at the man who was in a full-swing conversation with himself. As she walked down the road hooting, hands on her hips, my irritation with the situation erupted as laughter poured from me like a fountain. Undeterred, the man continued his sermon in the road as I doubled over, grasping my stomach and wiping tears from my smiling eyes.

When I thought the day couldn’t get much stranger, the ride through a friend of ours appeared…it was a Hummer. I have heard about there being two Hummer cars on the island but never believed such flamboyant vehicles could exist against the backdrop of poverty. After living for 5 months without running water or mechanical devices of any kind, this shiny monstrosity of chrome and tire took me by surprise. I hopped into the back seat next to a large carton of eggs and the wide contraption made its way down the narrow road. I stared out the flawless window. My teeth chattered from the air conditioning. I watched as tiny bodies carrying firewood, weeds, and buckets of water made their way slowly up the steep hill as we flew past. I have often thought about how unhinging it will be to return to the luxury of the States. Sitting in this ostentatious vehicle was a more painful contrast than those previous anticipations. I felt encased in a glass ball, gliding past the struggles of the world around me – and I didn’t like it.

Our ride stopped in a neighboring zone and we were to catch another car to Mosteiros. As we walked through an unfamiliar neighborhood past a rough looking group of guys sitting along a wall near the road, my roommate whispered to me, “Don’t worry, I can always hit them on the head with this giant squash.” (…only in Fogo…) Once we arrived safely in Mosteiros, we met up with the other volunteers from around the island and enjoyed the company of Americans for an evening. The group is a diverse one, as we all have entirely different personalities: my roommate who is an east coast small-town version of me and a Lit major/previous vegetarian turned fish and chicken eater; a girl from Sao Felipe who is calm and collected just returned with pictures from her volunteer trip to a refugee camp and boat clinic in Benin, Africa; a girl from Cova Figuera who is talkative, loves to laugh, and makes amazing hummus; a quirky good-natured guy who lives within the crater of Cha das Calderas, loves to walk and I swear knows a little about everything; and the two guys in Mosteiros – one is tall and thin, practices Tae Kwan Do, wears handkerchiefs around his neck and has a passion for hot peppers; the other has a pessimistic sense of humor, an in-depth blog that I read before I came to Cape Verde, and fluently switches from English, to Kriolu, to Chinese. A turkey was killed and the seven of us, along with a Nigerian guy nicknamed Myguy with a self-professed “PhD in culinary arts,” ate Thanksgiving dinner on a rooftop overlooking the crashing shores of a rocky beach.

So the term crazy floats to the surface of my mind often. But then again, I’m living on a volcano in Africa, so I guess that comes with the territory.

Sunday, December 3, 2006

One way in which I love (and, admittedly, sometimes dislike) about life here is that there is little distinction between what is public and what is private. In America, my profession ended the moment I walked outside of work. Here I am a teacher in the classroom, but once instruction ends I am walking alongside my students to my house, giggling and making jokes with them. I see my student in the mornings at a house where I buy bread (he gets the privilege of seeing the just rolled out of bed look even before class at 7:30.) When I walk down the street during the day my students are riding donkeys beside me to get water. Sometimes students stop by to sit and watch the sunset with me in the evenings. The familiarity that exists between the people who live here has smudged the previously defined line that existed between my vocation and my true personality. I am now “me” full time, trying to find a balance between professionalism and the understanding that students know what my hair looks like after I’ve tossed and turned throughout the night.

On my way from Mosteiros back to Ponta Verde I stopped in a neighboring zone. As I was walking through, I discovered many of my students along the road. They seemed to come from everywhere – they all shook my hands and invited me into their houses to meet their parents. It was telling in the sense that I got the opportunity to see what their home lives looked like. Some lived in nice houses with parents who were interested in talking to me about how their children were performing in class. Some lived in tiny houses and had parents who were rather silent with sad eyes. Others still lived in houses perched high up along the outer crater of the volcano, and I found myself on a full-on hike that I was not expecting. After that experience, I liken the skills of the boy who lives in that house to a goat. People here can walk in heels up mountains I don’t dare attempt in hiking boots.

So in essence I am getting used to letting go of the independence and anonymity that living in America has always afforded me. Sometimes I feel as though I were unknowingly wearing the American flag as a cloak all my life, and now I am pulling it back, little by little, so that which is uniquely me is revealed. The bright red white and blue fabric behind me is a trail of stars.

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

I couldn’t sleep last night. When you live in Cape Verde, you become accustomed to sleeping through the orchestra of cock-a-doodle doos, hee-haws and whatever other random noises animals elicit throughout the hours of darkness. Yet last night the barking of dogs was so intense I lay in my bed with restless eyes and patience that wore as thin as my shirts from being harshly rubbed against washboards. I remember making a comment out loud that I would like to exterminate a majority of the dogs in Ponta Verde, especially the one next door who made a sport out of chasing me up the street every day. Then I got up at dawn and went to school as usual. When I returned home my roommate was in a state of panic. “I’m so glad you’re back,” she practically whispered. “I don’t know what to do!”

She led me to the quintal and there laid the hairy crème-colored body of a dead dog. For all accounts, he appeared to be sleeping had his head not been twisted at an unnatural angle along the wall. I picked up a rock and tossed it to get a reaction, despite already knowing it was the dog from next door and that it was dead. As I heard a noise from behind I turned around and saw our young next-door neighbor. I immediately yelled for her to look away, trying to spare her the grotesque vision of her dead dog. Yet her ten-year-old body remained still and she had an awkwardly polite smile on her face, as though she was not registering the image. Her grandfather came over and calmly picked up the dead carcass of the dog by its legs and dragged his bobbing head along the cobblestone path as though it were a bundle of weeds that he carries from the fields every day. Our little neighbor splashed water on her face and wiped it from her eyes, smiling through the tears I imagined pooling unwillingly along her face.

We later found out that dogs have been sa ta mata (killing) goats in the middle of the night. Since goats are a symbol of livelihood, and since the owners of the dogs often refuse to pay for the damaged property, the police resolved to poison the dogs of Ponta Verde last night. Many of the dogs were discovered dead in the road early this morning. All except the ones that were tied up or kept within the house had been destroyed. At first I was completely horrified by the thought, but as the community explained it to me, a part of me realized once again that death is accepted here and that mentality is therefore altered by that fact. It was just another reminder that the approach here is not focused on comfort, but rather, survival. Whereas the remedy of the situation repulsed me, a part of me is beginning to understand the belief system of a culture that truly embraces the attitude that life goes on. Ten goats live and a dog dies. I’m expecting the night to be eerily silent.

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

As I walked up the steep incline of a rocky path toward the house, trailed by dozens of others, I could already hear the wailing. The silence hung in the air with a deep-sea stillness and each unsure footstep sent a grated chill up my spine. People along the path behind and in front of me held their heads bent low in reverence. I attempted to do the same, but found myself instead looking around like a lost animal in fright, unsure of what lay ahead of me. I had been here once to pay my sympathies amidst the deathbed of an ailing woman, but I had never before been to an actual funeral.

As I neared the house, people were scattered about outside, speaking in low, indecipherable tones. I recognized many of my neighbors, colleagues and students, and gave them each a simple nod of the head, smile-less. From inside came the deep-throated wailing of mourners. It sounded like the souls of the world were shrieking in pain. It sounded like a hauntingly beautiful melody. It sounded like the winds that swept along the beaten path would carry their sorrow to the ends of the earth. It was the most beautiful and horrifying resonance that has ever entered the inner chambers of my mind.

I walked in. Step by careful step I followed the friend in front of me who had promised she would demonstrate the traditional movements of a visitor paying his or her respects to those whose loved one has been ripped away. Amidst women and men beating their chests, wailing and throwing their handkerchiefs about freely, I began to shake the hands of the eight grandchildren of the woman who had passed away. Each looked down with deep circles of redness around their eyes. I shook the hands of every person crammed into the tiny room, walked around the black casket, and out through the stone quintal in the back of the house to join the rest of the visitors in front. Before I had made my way through the quintal, a daughter of the deceased woman (the mother of the eight grandchildren whom I know well) was in a state of frenzy. The calm, kind demeanor I was used to broke out through the passion of her wails. Her shirt was ripped open and I could see the veins in her neck and chest pulsing through her screams. One of her sons and her husband held her arms as she hoarsely screamed “Nha mai! Nya mai e morrei! Undu bu sta bai? Mai!” (My mother! My mother is dead! Where have you gone? Mother!)

I sat in front of the house with the older women of the community who I am beginning to consider as close and supportive honorary aunts. They wrapped their arms around me and cried. After a while they began to speak in hushed tones about everyday life as the commencement of prayers were uttered from within the house. Our Fathers and Hail Marys could be heard in a long and trance-like succession. I began to feel sleepy and calm sitting among my friends in the warmth of the sun. From where I sat, I could look out over Ponta Verde and the glistening movement of ocean far below…

As soon as the prayers ended, there was a moment of utter silence, and then there suddenly erupted a melody of woe. Previous cries lost their agonizingly guttural grief and blended into an array of grieving intonations. This song of suffering had no words, no rhythm, and no endeavor. All I could make out in the combined expression of despair were silent hearts that had found voices and began to sing.

On the way home after the funeral, an older woman I know well asked what the funerals in America are like (judging from my reaction that day, I think she picked up on the fact that the wailing was new for me). I found myself saying, “In America, people try not to cry.” She looked at me a bit strangely and it struck me that at a funeral in America, if someone had burst out in a fire of emotion like the one I had just witnessed, they might be politely escorted. She took in my words, thought for a minute and said, “It’s important to cry. It’s healthy.” And I knew she was right.

Looking back upon my journals, it seems the common theme lately is death – the killing of the pig, the poisoning of the dogs and the funeral. I am not in a morbid mood. This is simply what has happened here. I find myself becoming less fearful of dealing with the reality of death, because I am learning how to live life in a way that makes the everyday aspect of waving to a friend or sweeping the floor enjoyable. When people make plans for the future here, they have a tendency of saying, “Si Deus kre” (If God wills it). It is not a surrender of will, but rather an acceptance – one that I am becoming accustomed to. I will no doubt use it often in life…si Deus kre.

Thursday, December 7, 2006

I’m on the top of the world, looking out over the islets to the right of the neighboring island, Brava. A friend of mine leans over and tells me that Fogo has a bride and that her name is Brava. More feminine than Fogo with its haughty peak and dominating landscape, Brava is cooler, covered in flowers and always surrounded by a group of fluffy white clouds that hang above her like a veil. I imagine the tiny islets to the side are their children. It’s a beautiful family.

Saturday, December 9, 2006

At eight thirty this morning a student of mine (who is also my good friend’s brother) knocked on my door to show me the way up to their family’s house in Lomba, the zone located within the hills far above Ponta Verde. We hiked a good forty minutes and despite his tiny stature, I found myself making an effort to keep up with the pace he set. Huffing and puffing, I couldn’t help but notice he was not out of breath as I focused on the placement of my unaccustomed feet.

This time of year is the beginning of the dry season and the husking of the final remaining food left upon the vines of the wet season’s harvest. People go out into the fields and pick the husks of corn off the stalks in order to dry them in a bdong (barrel) for food that will last them until the following wet season. I had been invited to korta midju (cut corn) for the first time and experience what my friends and neighbors do on a weekly basis in the fields. On the way up the road I ran into people I knew from my runs up to Lomba. They met me with smiles along the road and stopped to shake my hand and laugh at the fact that I actually wanted to learn to cut corn - I think some people have the idea here that Americans consider themselves above doing fieldwork. Odja bu mao! E fino! Abo ka kre fazi kela! (“Look at your hands! They’re fine! You don’t want to do that!”), they said, their sun-worn faces and bright eyes smiling beneath layers of sweaters, hats and scarves.

When we finally arrived at the terra (land) of my friend, I was completely surrounded by dry cornstalks as far as the eye could see. I passed some cows to the right of the dirt path and then entered the tiny concrete quintal of a house filled with plants and colorful flowers. Since my friend is one of fourteen children, there was a lot of people there working. Women were tending to two 3-month-old babies with poofy tufts of black hair atop their smiling infant heads, another was cooking lunch in the conzinha de lenha (kitchen of firewood), another was washing clothes on a washboard and yet another was sitting along the floor separating dried colorful beans that always remind me of Jelly Bellys.

As we were sa ta toma kafe (drinking coffee) my friend who had been in the fields jumped into the doorway and squealed with delight that we had arrived. Her tiny body was layered with long shirts and a jean jacket, on her head was a scarf and she was covered in stickers from the weeds. Her beautiful grin was bright and welcoming (She has quickly become one of my closest friends and we work together at the Jardim (kindergarten). Though she is thirty, she is one of few women who have no children and is a bundle of energy, so I like being around her.).

I put on long sleeves and a baseball hat and headed out to the fields where my friend’s father, husband and husband’s friend had already been hard at work. They handed me a sack and showed me how to comb through the thick brush. Making my way through the cornstalks, I discovered the thick husks, twisted and ripped them off one by one. They also explained how to look for bean pods in the ivy-like twists of vegetation that had grown around the stalks. When I found them, they demonstrated how to feel for whether or not they were ripe enough to pick. I pulled the ripe ones from the vines and placed them into a sack around my friend’s waist. When my sack of corn was full, I tied it at the end and heaved it onto my head. I made my way through the thick brush, making high careful steps, walked along the path back toward the house, leapt down a stone wall onto their property and emptied the husks into a large pile underneath a giant tree.

This continued for more than four hours. We told jokes, pulled up mankara (peanuts) and ate them along the way. Dozens of grasshoppers leapt among dry withered stalks. I searched, discovered, ripped, placed in sack. Searched, discovered, ripped, placed in sack. Heaved, carried, dumped, returned. The prickly stickers from the padja (brush) itched my skin and the heat blazed down on us as we worked. Yet I have never felt so satisfied. My mind wandered and I suddenly felt very far from city life back home. I realized had I not taken the chance to come here I would not recognize the melody of my friend’s laughter as she cuts corn; I would not feel the coarse irritation of plants against my sensitive skin; I would not know the people that surrounded me who were now like family; and I sure as heck wouldn’t know what was like to cut corn.

When I had arrived early that morning, they had already been hard at work for hours in the fields. When I left that evening to get home before dark, they were still bent over in the fields, cutting corn. I walked down the road, covered in stickers and sore in the neck. A part of me felt proud that I had worked a day in the fields, yet another part of me felt like a tourist. Because I knew that behind me there were miles of fields yet to be harvested and thousands of husks to be cut. When I got home I sat on my front porch and took off my dirty shoes and socks. I rolled up the prickly sweat of my jeans. My feet ached and were covered in blisters and dirt.

I had only lived four hours in the life of a Cape Verdean … and I was beat tired.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

An older man who lives a few houses up told my friend that if anyone messes with me he was going to have President Pedro Pires get the police to light them on fire.

Side note: Today is five months in Cape Verde.

Catching Up... (blogs from the past 5 months)

2006-12-03T02:40:00.000-08:00

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Today was my first full day as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It started early and after a brief farewell to other volunteers I found myself on a 20-minute plane ride to the island of Fogo. The view from the sky was dramatic – the peak of the island’s infamous volcano stood boldly to the right side of the island, surrounded by water and nestled into an array of clouds. Its peak rose sternly above its white companions and I found myself wondering if I may learn something from its lush and showy climate.

The people, much like the island, demand your attention and contain richness within. Their beauty and diversity seem connected to where they live and I hope this affects me during the next two years. Our zona (zone), Ponta Verde, lives up to its name. As I walked down the cobblestone road of my new neighborhood, to the right was a steady incline of green sea; to the left stretched an expanse of the sea itself. The air is fresh and there is coffee, grapes, wine, fish, avocados, papaya, mangoes and a variety of sweet ripe fruit. No refrigeration, no packaging, just the simple clean taste of the land and sea. A majority of it comes from within the volcano’s fertile soil, yet there are crops of green covering every inch of this place.

I find it difficult to believe that I will ever let the memory of seeing my new house slip from my mind. Large, bright and welcoming, it faces the ocean and looks out toward the island of Brava, almost like a lover admiring an object of affection from afar. There is a quintal (an area that opens the house to the outside) in the back where my room mate Callie and I will be able to plant a garden and hang our laundry out to dry. We have a plot of land with corn and limes growing alongside a papaya tree. Above our house is the roof where we will bati ropa (wash clothes) with the world at our feet. For now the inside of our house is just four walls of cement with a concrete floor. It is like a beautiful woman who lacks a sense of worth, but I see in it what I see in the school – a place of potential waiting patiently to be filled.

The school is modest at best. A sparse number of salas (rooms) surrounded by windows of broken glass. One building is unique in its beauty – it is built out of rocks of lava from the volcano. The door to one sala has been kicked open and within it are scattered pieces of trash along the floor, no doubt the remains of last year’s lesson plans. The children must have been learning about the names of bugs because there are drawings of spiders, flies, corta deidos (which literally means “finger cutter”), butterflies, etc. Written upon the tainted yellow door is: “WeLLcome to HeLL” in white chalk. Callie and I first balked at it but then could not decide whether we were more concerned about the content of the message or the fact that welcome was spelled with two L’s. Either way, we decided our presence here as teachers is necessary…if only to incorporate that door into the first day’s lesson… =)

We are staying at a quasi (semi) hotel and the couple that owns it lives across the street in a bar that has music and dancing on Sunday nights. They invited us over and after an amazing dinner we learned to dance some local dances typical of the island of Fogo. The music here, in comparison to Santiago’s, is more romantic and the dancing is more close and formal. I feel that the music of Santiago had more of an African fora (country) influence that is more wild and free. Like the people, the dancing here is more relaxed, laid back and intimate. The bar has mirrors along the walls and the dim lights reflected off the bodies of dancers in world that appeared dreamlike. We only have electricity until eleven tonight so I will turn in.

Until tomorrow…

Monday, September 11, 2006

I just had the kind of day that is probably indicative of the days they prepare you for in Peace Corps manuals. It consisted of frustration, weariness, hard work and then of enjoyment, reward and surprise…

The frustrating part:

We went into the city of Sao Felipe to check on the status of the items Peace Corps guarantees for us to have - bare essentials such as a stove, a table with four chairs, a refrigerator and two beds. The beds we discovered waiting for us in the city were nothing more than glorified cots and since Callie is six feet tall (and I’m not much shorter) we worked hard communicating that we did not need the TWO refrigerators they gave us but we did mattresses that accommodated the full length of our bodies. Our house has no running water and the electricity only works about six hours a day, so we picked our battle. Apparently our landlord skipped town to visit America without installing doors in our house (bathroom to boot) and on top of this we set about getting prices for everything from a washboard to finding a way to rig a place to hang our clothes. The city was hot and we were exhausted when we returned to Ponta Verde.

The amazing part:

All said and done, things worked out. A woman who is our counterpart, neighbor and co-worker has taken us under her wing and provided us already with a sense of family. Her children and some neighborhood kids went with us on a walk as the sun was going down. We hiked along the edge of a thin hill of green as certain houses made of stone were pointed out as places where future students of ours live. On both sides was a valley of plants and flowers. The sun shone softly upon the ripples of an expanse of ocean and horses stood grazing among spotted bits of white and purple flowers called sempre noiva (always married). The children laughed and spoke to us in Kriolu (a simple local language we learned during training) and led us by the hand to the edge of a cliff near the water. Certain kids would run ahead and then hide in the flowers to giggle at us and make us look for them. Butterflies and birds lazily glided through the cool wind that is only found in Ponta Verde but so sought after on this hot island. When I thought the moment had reached its peak of perfection, the kids threw a thousand bits of tiny flower petals into the air and they swirled in a beautiful fiery dance of orange and red. They called it a supresa (surprise) and I left the brilliant petals that had fallen into my hair, not wanting to wipe away the events of the day.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

A majority of the day was spent practicing the cardinal virtues required of Peace Corps volunteers: patience and flexibility. Over the past two months of training, these words have become more than cliché, but only because of their truth. To get anything done here requires ability to wait, wait and….wait some more - sometimes with the knowledge that in all likelihood things may not work out and therefore are not worth the wait in the first place. In our case, receiving our furniture was worth the wait. As of today, we have moved into our home with two full size beds, a table and chairs, a refrigerator and stove/oven. We had to fight to get a bed that did not resemble a cot, but it all worked out in the end.

I am beginning to realize that this island is HEAVILY influenced by American culture. Don’t get me wrong, there are things here you would never find in the States (such as traditional African dance, chickens, donkeys and naked babies running wild, etc), but I am finding it difficult to get people to speak solely in Kriolu. They like to speak a bit of what I call Kringlish because they think if they season their language with English words they know it will demonstrate their skills and their connection with America. But really, with the accent, the English words just catch me off guard and I would have understood them better if they had used the Kriolu word. The same goes for music. When I get in a truck for a ride, the driver automatically switches on the “latest” Britney Spears or 50 Cent hit. Mind you, these new hits are about three years old U.S.-wise. So basically, learning the culture and language are more of a struggle here, though it’s worth the additional effort.

I have found the way of the people here to be one of community solidarity. This particular town is so small that I think I already know half my community after only three days here. When we go to Sao Felipe, which is considered the third largest city in Cape Verde, we run into people we have already met who know us (big city? I don’t think so). Just to give you an idea of the size of this country, there are more Cape Verdeans living in the city of Boston, Massachusetts than in Cape Verde itself. I had a list of contacts from people in Sao Domingos who knew people in Ponta Verde a week before I left for it. Everyone knows everyone. And everyone knows exactly what you are doing and when. I remember being in Sao Domingos and telling my host mother what I had done during the day and her response was always “I know, I saw you,” or “I know, our neighbor Ana told me.” Anonymity is now officially a thing of the past. =)

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Errands are a risky business…I remember getting frustrated back at home as I looked for a space in the parking lot. Now the frustration is prolonged past the point of actual annoyance and transcends into a state of disbelief. Cars don’t run on schedule, the server for the Internet is down in the entire town, the van/taxi I sit in with all the new items I’ve bought for my house is piled upon my lap and we stop 25 times to pick up 25 people and are crammed into a space - pigs, chickens, toiletries and all.

But where the work is tedious, the rewards are awe-inspiring. I spent the day sweaty and frustrated, but ended it in my new home with a beautiful sunset throwing colorful light upon the glittering expanse of ocean. You can see Brava clearly from my house until it fades and the lights in the town go out. I spent my evening sitting on the roof wearing the traditional saia (dress) of Cape Verde. As I watched the most brilliant lightning storm dance over the contrast of a distant volcano, I wondered how I had earlier felt any bit of animosity toward a place so full of life.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

I woke up fairly early and as my room mate Callie went for a run I set out to our well in order to leba agu (pull water) to put into the two bdongs (barrels) we have in the house. One needed to be filled in the bathroom for bath water and bucket flushes, and the other for the kitchen in order to cook, purify water and lava losa (wash dishes). Since there is no running water in the house, I go out to the back terrace near the roof to pull water from a well in the ground. Luckily it rains here a lot so the rainwater runs off the roof and into the well. I then drop a bucket into the well and pull up the water with a thick rope tied to its handle. I dump a few buckets into a larger bucket that I put on my head, walk into the house and dump into the bdong.

Water is only one way in which I’ve learned to be resourceful here. Callie and I found some old planks of wood near our house that we set atop some cinder blocks to create tables. Since our windows don’t have glass or anything to protect us from the rain, we took the leftover plastic from the packaging on our mattresses and cut out a square that we taped to the window in our bathroom. I filled a wine bottle with water and stuck a candle in its neck with a napkin beneath it to catch the wax, so now we have a decent light. I am currently taking cup baths using a leftover can of grao (chickpeas) as a cup and we even found a thrown away blanket that we use as a doormat in front of our house.

During what was no doubt a sorry attempt at transferring water into my house, I attracted a rather large group of onlookers who were apparently perplexed as to what the new American girl in town was doing, and why she was doing it so awkwardly. As I tried to continue the pace of my work I would throw out a few introductions in Kriolu beneath the bucket as I stumbled past. The children just stared at me wide-eyed and blankly while the elders of the neighborhood spoke so rapidly and with such enthusiasm I only caught about half of what they were trying to say. They gestured excitedly with their calloused hands and toothless smiling mouths about how wonderful America must be, how rich everyone is there and how burro (literally meaning “dumb”) everyone is in Cape Verde.

I realize my greatest challenge and responsibility here is to combat the stereotypical image people have about the States and how perfect they think everything there must be. Some Cape Verdeans have lived in the U.S., worked hard and then returned to live in Cape Verde in ridiculously large houses. Therefore, when poor people living in Cape Verde see this, they think everyone in America is rich and intelligent and happy. I think this may have a very negative influence on the way Cape Verdeans see themselves and their country. I was given a tour of such a house today. It was a house with four stories and nine bedrooms. One man who had no children lived there, in a beautiful yet empty house. The man who owned the house told Callie and I that he had made his money while living in America and that we should move out of the house in the fora (country) and move into the top floor of his home. When we tried to explain to him that we liked our house because we came here to learn about Caboverdeana (Cape Verdean culture), he balked at us and said he would never carry a bucket of water on his head.

As we were visiting our counterpart Lolo and her family it began to rain. Lolo’s mom taught us how to make bread and as we waited for the rain to die down we sat drinking coffee, eating pao (bread) and sharing superstitions relating to our culture. (For example, many Cape Verdeans tie a string around their children’s waists to ward off bad spirits). There were about ten of us crammed into a tiny room laughing and talking about our differences and similarities. I am beginning to feel a real sense of belonging here, and now it seems I have a family.

The lights are about to go out so I will close…

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Yesterday I was too tired to write. I had a long day in Sao Felipe trying to get the final necessities for our house before our reunions (meetings) with staff at the liceo (school) start Monday. I think about everything that takes little to no effort that I used to find tiring in the States and now laugh at myself. I remember referring to myself as “domestically challenged” before I got here. But what was so challenging about switching on a stove or turning on a faucet? What was so difficult about vacuuming carpet, throwing clothes in the washing machine or dishes into the dishwasher? I shook my head in disbelief all day as I swept our concrete floor and washed our dishes with water I had spent an hour transferring from a well on top of our house into a bdong in our kitchen. Being tired after a day of hard work takes on a whole new meaning here – you actually feel it.

Around lunchtime I visited a friend down the street and ate some apples that were grown in Fogo. The food here is plucked straight from the soil and everything is fresh. I have been drinking a lot of guava juice and eating fresh bread and fish. After we ate, we met up with some of my counterpart’s family and neighborhood friends to visit Salinas, a black sand beach that is “near” Ponta Verde. But it was not near. Our walk down was carefree and full of laughter, but just going downhill took us over an hour and a half. When we got to the beach, I kept thinking about how Cape Verde Peace Corps is nicknamed “posh corps” or “beach corps” by volunteers in other areas of Western Africa. I think that statement is valid in terms of the beauty of this place. Mountains as high and far as the eye can see stretch green and upward toward a cloudy blue sky. The varying shades of pure green contrasts with the black lava rock of the shore and the clear, swift current of the ocean. Horses, cows and goats graze peacefully along its cliffs. Colorful fishing boats lie along the black shore as beautiful locals jump into natural pools formed by the molten rock.

Life here is slow and when people walk by they expect to be invited to txiga (visit), even if they don’t know you. The same goes for every house you pass along the way somewhere. One day I was in a hurry to call my Peace Corps country director and just about every person along the road invited me in and would not take no for an answer. They will each often proceed to serve me a full course meal. Callie and I have learned quickly that leaving our front door open is an invitation for any random older villagers to walk in and make themselves comfortable. One day a man walked right on in as I was getting ready for the day and proceeded to point out all the things that our landlord had neglected to do properly in our house. Often curious children will linger behind plants and watch intently through our windows to see what their new American neighbors are doing. The brave ones will catch me doing something clumsy (like trying to carry a heavy bucket of water on my head) and instruct me on how to do it right. In some ways I feel like I am the child having to relearn everything again. Other times I feel like I am an animal on display at a zoo.

Although living here requires more effort, I am falling in love with this place – with its beauty, its people and its lessons.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Today I had to bati ropa (wash clothes) and let me tell you, it’s an experience. I drew water from our well, bucket-by-bucket, and filled up two large tubs to wash my clothes. I had trouble lugging the near-full tubs onto the roof, as you have to climb up a four-foot wall, which is not easy, even when you’re tubless. When I began to wash clothes with the large bar of soap and washboard I had fixed to the tub, I had grand ideals in mind – As I looked out at the beautiful view of the ocean and the island of Brava I figured I could wash my entire basket of clothes within two hours. Four weary hours (and a broken back) later I found myself putting clothespins on the last bit of line.

After I toma bano (took a bath) Callie and I went to return some dishes to a neighbor who had brought food to us as a welcome gift. When we arrived all the women and children of Ponta Verde were preparing to go to church. Though we hadn’t planned on going (and neither of us are Catholic), we decided it would be better to attend in order to meet the members of the community. The church was piqonoite (tiny) and shaped like a plus sign. In the middle was the pulpit and in four directions stretched a wing of the church where the attendees sat. So there was a wing behind the pulpit, in the front, and on both sides. During the service, the Father of the church unexpectedly introduced us to the community. I was slightly horrified because: a) I know very little about Catholicism, b) I am not completely familiar with the culture and customs yet, and c) our counterpart told the attendees we wanted to personally visit each and every house in Ponta Verde during our two years here. That’s 300 houses - and though I want to visit them all, I am deathly afraid that a few will go unvisited and I’ll have a few vizinhos shatiados (angry neighbors) on my hands.

Regardless, I think attending church was vitally important to allowing us to integrate. When we stood up in front of the church I felt it was an opportunity (clumsy as it was) to let people know who we are and why we’re here. I am here to teach, but I feel I’m here mainly to get to know the lives of the people who live here – who they are, what they care about, what they value…today was a step in the right direction. Now we have let the community know that the next two years we are not Americans, we are Caboverdeanas.

Monday, September 18, 2006

We had our first staff meeting at the liceo in Sao Felipe today and met with all the teachers there along with teachers from the satellite schools of Ponta Verde and Cova Figuera. I am constantly surprised at how welcoming everyone is when we are introduced as volunteers from the Peace Corps. It’s not so much their hospitality that catches me off guard but the manner in which they express it. People seem to go above and beyond to make us feel at home here. Even within a professional atmosphere, they are able to communicate more personal warmth. We were met with broad smiles and strong “Bon dia” s and were applauded when introduced at the staff meeting of sixty or so teachers.

After the meeting, Callie and I returned to Ponta Verde in a buleia (ride) that is more or less a rickety pickup truck with a top secured to the bed and fashioned as a communal taxi. People, groceries, babies and animals pile into it and hold on for dear life as the vehicle makes its dusty way through rocky cobblestone paths. Once we arrived home, neighborhood children stopped by our house carrying welcome dishes of homemade bread, locally grown pepinos (cucumbers) and catxupa (a traditional Cape Verdean dish made mainly of beans and corn). In order to thank the families that brought us food we visited the people in our zona. The older women here are strong and beautiful. Despite how poor they may be, they all wear earrings made of Portuguese gold and wrap their hair in colorful scarves. They gestured us into houses made of pedra (stone) and surrounded by colorful flowers. Many of the tiny houses were filled with the thick and welcoming aroma of catxupa - its smoky flavor wafted through the air as we sat and talked about life in this tiny rural village.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

I woke up around six in the morning and went on a 40-minute morning run along steep cobblestone paths nestled into lush green hills that overlook a glass ocean. I caught a ride to the villa (Sao Felipe) and attended a staff meeting with the English coordinator (who is Portuguese) and other English instructors who work there. I checked some books out of a meager library at the school and then searched for an Internet place in the city that had luz (electricity). I discovered Mike there, a volunteer who has worked a year in Mosteiros teaching. We bought some fruit and vegetables from the market and then walked for about twenty minutes uphill looking for a ride back to Ponta Verde. When we finally did get an iasi (van/bus) we realized about three minutes into it that we were going the wrong way and it was an ordeal convincing the iasi driver that we wanted out…we still had to pay him full fare.

Our wrong turn left us stranded in the middle of a desert-like landscape on the outskirts of Sao Felipe. We hiked down to the road leading the Ponta Verde and waited for an iasi. Instead, we caught a ride on the back of a large truck and stood on the back as it halted and titled clumsily (yet quickly) around turns and through pools of water in broken parts of the road. As it started to txuba (rain) I felt like I was on a ride in a theme park, bouncing along the track and dodging the spray of water. When I returned home I had just enough time to take a well-needed cup bath and grab some food before I went with some neighborhood friends to watch a futbol (soccer) game in the polivalente (concrete “stadium”) the next zona over. It was a big deal for Ponta Verde because it was a rival game against the neighboring Galinheiro (a zona which means chickens, since a lot of chickens are raised there). The audience that lined the walls of the polivalente was in a frenzy and I have never seen people so hyped up for a game. Every time the ball came remotely near a goal everyone would grita (scream) loudly either in protest or encouragement.

Unfortunately the excitement was cut short by the sounds of thunder - which most people are comically afraid of here - and as the rain began to pour, people screamed in fear and themselves poured out of the polivalente to look for shelter. Callie and I ended the night making our first official cooking attempt. It took about two hours, but we were able to concoct a rice and chicken dish with onions, peppers and tomatoes. I was just awake enough to eat it and am now about to pass out.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Time here passes in a way that is immeasurable. My perception of it twists and turns and just when I think I have a grasp of it, it flies loose and gets away from me like a butterfly fleeing the clasp between cupped palms. It seems that already a week has gone by and I have not had the chance to write, which is sad because it has been an amazing one. I feel that the memories may now be lost somewhere in the depths of my mind…

The weekend raced by with a vengeance, and on Monday I became a teacher. I teach 7^th grade English to three turmas (classes) and each class has its own personality. The thing about teaching 7^th grade is that there is both a pressure and an opportunity to provide a strong foundation of English for these children. Because America is seen as the “promise land” to so many people here, there is a strong desire to learn the language and go there to live. Yet, despite the heavy influence of the culture, I was amazed at how little most of the students knew of the language. When I spoke words like “hello” or “thank you” all I got in return was the blank stare of 60 beady eyes. Yet the challenge is an exciting one – I spoke Kriolu on my first day of class and told the kids a little about myself. I asked them how long they thought I had lived in Cabo Verde and most guessed two years. I explained to them that I understood the difficulties of learning another language and that if they needed help they could feel free to ask me…but that I would speak only in English, as the direct method is the way I am learning to speak their language.

My mom says that when I was eleven years old I told her I wanted to join the Peace Corps. To be here is something I’ve wanted for a long time, yet I never could have guessed I would be a teacher. I now see teaching as an amazing job to have and when I think of the teachers in the past who have spoken truth not only to my head but also to my heart, I think the best way to transcend the language barrier is to do the same.

It’s malaria pill day so I’m off to a glass of water. Txau txau (bye-bye).

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

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, this archipelago of ten islands that has recently become my home. Or so the saying goes…

This creation myth, I believe, may have been born from the reference that Cape Verde is comprised of the “forgotten islands.” When I received a Peace Corps package in the mail that said I was going to Cape Verde, I hadn’t the faintest idea where Cape Verde was. Yet I’d like to believe the idea that God brushed his hands together came from a more austere idea - that Cape Verde was not a forgotten mistake but rather a kind of divine intervention where the islands are not islands at all but rather fragments of all the parts of the world. When I sit on the black sand beach and watch the light dance across the grains of sand in my hands I imagine what sticks to my skin is a sparkling map of its own and I can see everywhere at once. In each flash of light I see a window that leads somewhere new and I brush my hands of the dirt and watch the islands fall into place over the ocean. This is how I like to think of Cape Verde.

I thought a lot about this on Sunday as personnel of Peace Corps stopped by our house and offered to take us with them on a “tour” of the island to visit the sites of other volunteers who live here. The CD (Community Development) volunteer from Sao Felipe met us and we went to visit the two male volunteers living in Mosteiros, a town not too far from Ponta Verde. Then we made our way around the island to visit a female volunteer in Cova Figuera, and ended our trip in Cha das Calderas, where a friend of mine lives within the volcano toward the interior of Fogo.

Fogo rises steeply from the ocean, and stands firmly through the clouds as high and forbidding as a fortress. I once read in a travel book that Fogo was: “a menacing place: dark lava flows from centuries of eruptions to reach down its eastern side to the ocean. But it has a soft heart. Amongst the clods of cold lava that have covered much of the floor of the crater are fertile fields. Spilling over its northeast side (where I live) are woods of eucalyptus and cool valleys in which grow coffee and vines. Inside the crater lives a race of people who have defied government orders to evacuate and instead live and farm below the smoldering peak that last erupted in 1995.”

Cha, the area mentioned above, was both riveting and eerie in its stillness. Within the crater of the volcano live descendants of a Frenchman who had over 60 children. Almost everyone there has blonde hair and light eyes. They sit amidst a black sand backdrop with the peak of a volcano looming overhead. The dirt swirls and catches their bare ankles and dusty feet. They hold trinkets shaped like the traditional round houses and pointed roofs, houses made of lava rock and sold to European tourists who find themselves lost in this strange land where African children have striking blonde hair.

Looking back on the day, I am astounded that a small island can contain such variety. A twenty-minute car ride can send you from the lush green of cornfields to a barren desert of heat. Twenty minutes from there you may find yourself in a rough fishing village full of deportees or in a lazy town with dispersed houses existing in contrast with the interior life of a volcano just above. The island of Fogo has come to epitomize what Cape Verde represents itself: a lovely, shocking, wonderful, frustrating mixture of all. The culture is a dash of Portugal, a blend of Africa, a hint of Brazil, a slice of America…and a whole lot of Cape Verde.

Thursday, October 5, 2006

There are plenty of things to learn in this world – and there are an equal amount of things to teach. Teaching children another language feels like teaching someone to think differently, to see life in a way that is unique to them, and to have new ideas. Today during class as I walked around to monitor a text my students were copying into their cadernas (composition notebooks) it hit me: I’m a teacher. As I paced the room and looked over the shoulders of their navy blue striped school uniforms, I watched in patient silence as they wrote down the English words in impeccable cursive. Their heads were bent over their pages, eyes were squinting and a few tongues stuck out in concentration as they copied down the foreign material. I can empathize with the confusion, as I spoke my first words of Kriolu just three months ago, yet every day I watch the strands of code form understanding as I enter the classroom.

“Good morning class,” I say.

“GOOD MORNING TEACHER!” is always their high-pitched and beaming response.

There are moments when I know I have a lot to learn, like when a lesson is dragging and I can’t for the life of me figure out a way to make a grammar point exciting. So I make the class stand up with me and we all laugh as they follow my instructions to raise their little hands into the air, wave them around and stretch out the boredom. In these moments I watch as life returns to the room and the repetition of words slowly weaves the fragile threads of understanding.

It will not always be like this. I know that as the hands of clocks continue their relentless pace, with time this tall white woman who comes from America and speaks English will lose its awe-inspiring celebrity and the curious stares I get will make way to familiarity and all that comfort implies when it comes to the behavior of students. Yet for now I am soaking it all in; like the warm feeling of sun peeking through passing clouds on a breezy day.

Friday, October 6, 2006

I have begun to find great pleasure in uncomplicated things. Yesterday I sat on my front porch overlooking the ocean kaska (“shelling”) green beans with a neighborhood boy who had brought over what he’d picked that day in the fields. The beans looked like normal peas in a pod, but within were different brightly colored beans that humorously resembled Jelly Beans. I sat with my feet hanging over the edge of my house and shelled them, discovering the striking bright blues, greens, pinks and whites nestled within the pods with a contentedness that I did not know I was capable of feeling. I was listening to a CD of Cape Verdean music an iasi driver had made me and as we sat the boy and I talked and swayed as we sang along with the mellow island melodies. In these moments I am gripped by the desire to transport my friends and family to my side in order to share the beautiful simplicity of this life.

The children here are incredibly self-reliant. They are so connected with the earth that any one of them can take you by the hand, lead you through the six-foot high cornfields and point out each variety of plant. They know the sex of each plant, the name and the exact moment each should be harvested. If you are sick, as I was yesterday, a child knows to take an orange peel and boil it in water with sugar to make the greepe (sickness) go away. It is strange to be in a world where your eyes see everything as new and for the first time. In a foreign place the words that leave your lips are awkward and dissected with great care so that one feels a bit like a stumbling fool when trying to express the most elementary of ideas. I am in awe as I in essence learn how to walk again, how to take care of myself and find my way…it is a humbling thing to be led by the hand of a child.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Since I have lived in Ponta Verde, there are two things I am sure of: One, to have eight, or nine, or twelve siblings is normal; and Two, Ponta Verde’s futbol (soccer) games are the next biggest thing since Michael Bolton (yesss…they love him here).

Callie and I attended the “last” futbol game against the rivaling team of Galinheira today. The memory of my first jogo (game) is still fresh in my mind. I remember standing amidst the crowds of high-pitched shrieking Cape Verdeans and thinking, “Wow, these people really get worked up over these games.” The guys on the team prepare and warm up in front of the crowd with a celebrity-like façade. As they stretch, hundreds of eyes admire their every move. When a team member makes a goal, the humble little stadium erupts in screams and everyone jumps about in sheer giddiness. Fans of the rivaling team are just as loud in their protests, making intimidating gestures and shouting smart remarks to their boastful neighbors. I made the mistake once of sitting on the wrong side and cheering for Ponta Verde…let’s just say I will not make that mistake again.

…And that’s just for normal games - today was a big game. The score was tied and the sun was beyond set. One had to squint in concentration in order to make out the tiny white globe that bounced about and was the center of everything. The tied score ended in a kickoff where the entire stadium poured out onto the field around the teams and rooted them on in their final attempts at success. It was not a fair game. I have a friend who claims he plays on the team, but since I have never actually seen him do more than stand on the sidelines I have dubbed him “mascot” in reference to his comic dedication. He was taking pictures of the alternate team’s goalie, blinding him in the unnatural light before each kick. When Ponta Verde made the final tie-breaking goal I witnessed one of the most enthusiastic responses from a crowd I have ever seen. The sea of children, women and men rushed the team as they were carried in the air; a plastic gold trophy held firmly above the teammates’ heads like a guiding light as they were heaved out of the polivalente and onto the winding uphill road to Ponta Verde.

I was able to walk ahead of the madness, as a great many young men stopped at the local store to drink shots of grog (a potent alcohol made in Cape Verde) to celebrate their triumph. About ten minutes into the walk, chanting, singing and high whistles could be heard from the quickly approaching group. Looking behind me I was just barely able to make out the silhouettes of the team members jogging in all their glory - fans and worshippers in tow - trophy held high above the deafening crowd. They slowed when they saw me and I was swept up in the transportable festivity, surrounded by shouts of glee and arms raised in victory.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Today I went to the Festa de Gracas da Nossa Senora, a religious holiday that the entire town had been talking up for weeks. People from all parts of the island were to congregate in a mass of confusion and chaos in Galinheira, a neighboring zone near Ponta Verde. We took our time during the 30-minute walk to the festa and as we rounded the last corner, two mangled cars and a crowd of animated onlookers gestured furiously amidst the wreck that blocked the only road that circles around the island of Fogo. Cars backed up along the cobblestone path and I recognized one of the iasi drivers as he stood mournfully silent alongside his dented vehicle. After staring dumbly at the mess and lending some words of sympathy to my friend whose mode of income lay mangled in the street, we hesitantly moved on, following the sounds of music below.

I met with some colleagues who are about my age (teachers who work with me at the school) and we entered a tiny bar to sit and take in an eyeful of what was happening all around. I strategically placed myself in a corner between my friends to avoid contact with any deportees or forward men who are accustomed to striking up unwanted conversation with American girls like myself. Often, the ones who have lived in Boston or Brockton have an irresistible urge to connect with me and throw cheesy pickup lines in English with a thug-like accent that they deem undeniably attractive. I find them fastento (annoying).

Within the tiny local bar a few older men were playing traditional music from the terra (grassroots Cape Verdean music). One man was playing a violin and there was a comic liveliness of their movements that inspired a great many old men to jump out of their chairs and frolic about on spindly legs, smiling toothless gums and flailing their joyful hands all about. Boston deportees sat wearing their American baseball hats tipped back in boredom, looking into their glasses of Black Label as though at any moment something more interesting would pop out and amuse them. As for me, I was completely entertained by the random spectacle before my eyes and I sat perplexed, taking in this strange mix of a party where the traditional broke free from its stagnant state and danced gleefully about its oppressor, youth, sitting uninterested with impatient eyes.

When we tired of watching the generations rub elbows within the bar, we made our way to a concrete building that was still under construction yet temporarily posing as a makeshift club of some sort. Music vibrated from within and bodies writhed and sweat within the limited space. As we entered, my face met with a blast of heat and I made my way quickly through the dance floor, which appeared utterly alive amidst the twisting and turning all around. Outside among the concrete floor and metal shafts sticking out from all sides of the unfinished building, I stood sweating in the heat in wonder of the fact that this unfinished structure was the hottest “club” on the island. I soon opted to return to the street where the festa was in full swing. People were devouring fried chicken and pantomiming entire conversations amidst grease, Kriolu and confusion. It was not long before I decided to return to the calmness of Ponta Verde.

When I got back to my little town I sat in the shade along a wall that overlooks the ocean and dangled my bare feet over the edge. I could hear the cool breeze rustle the leaves of the corn stalks as I brushed my toes along the green rubbery plants. Some friends of mine stopped by and sat with me and we rested in the shade until the shadows became long, the sun went down and there was nothing but darkness and contented silence.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

I remember when I was in 10^th grade a friend of mine had a German exchange student living with his family for a semester. I met him at a birthday party and noticed with sympathetic hilarity that the poor kid had no idea what was going on. He was tall, awkward and dressed funny. I clearly recall a moment when a group of us sat talking about how ill at ease he was and joking about his inability to speak the language. It was all in good fun and looking back I realize it was rather cruel to be secretly whispering about this student who was so obviously out of his element. But let me tell you – this German exchange student, God help him, was hilarious. He simply had no clue what was going on. He was a fish out of water, floundering for a breath of understanding amidst an unknown environment.

Well, today I was the German foreign exchange student.

I was told there was a festa at a house that is under construction down the road. Since I had arrived at an event last week sorely underdressed I was careful not to make the same mistake twice. I took a bath, put on makeup, and dressed in black slacks and a white formal shirt. After taking a final glance in the mirror before we left, Callie and I headed down the road for the party, dressed to the nines. As we approached we realized we had made a horrible mistake. The “festa” was really a gathering for friends and neighbors to get together and help finish building the house of a couple - everyone was dressed in dirty and ragged clothes, covered in cement and sweating under their efforts to construct the house. About thirty dirty men who were shoveling rocks greeted us. The women were busy cooking food within a smoke-filled room and transferring buckets of water to make the cement.

I could have died!

Everyone was very polite about the cultural blunder but behind their welcoming smiles was a twinkle in their eyes that did little to hide the fact that they were holding back laughter. We immediately excused ourselves and ran back up the hill to change into dirty t-shirts and tie bandanas around our heads. Once we returned we were given cups of warm goat milk and cous cous. We began transferring water from the well to the house in order for the men to make cement for the roof. It was a spectacle to see the amount of people who had shown up to help this couple. Almost everyone from our neighborhood was there on his or her Sunday afternoon, completely dedicated to the task of building this house.

There are many times that I am struck by the poverty of people here, or the lack of access to things on this isolated island, but I am always amazed by the fact that these people are rich in their dedication to one another. It is an honest devotion that comes from an environment where everyone is family, or grew up together as children. They are sometimes rude or short to one another, but with an air of familiarity. It reminds me of how I can argue with a sibling, and then five minutes later we are the best of friends.

Once the house was finished, old women with cauldrons of food began handing out Cape Verdean dishes and we all sat and ate as they set off loud fireworks. People began opening bottles of wine, made from the grapes that grow within the volcano of Cha das Calderas. It began raining but no one seemed to notice as the music continued to play and people began dancing in the street. Their faces and hands were raised to the dark sky as the showers fell down upon the lush fields that swayed and danced along with their joyous bodies. I forgot that I was the “foreign exchange student” and joined them.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Today I awoke to the sounds of wind rustling through the cornfields through the wooden slats of the janela (window) above my bed. I heard three sets of little bare feet slamming against the concrete floor outside. Hurried shuffles and suppressed giggles made their way from the front of the house around to the back where the quintal is. I knew these sounds well – they came from a few of the six children who live in the house across the cornfield. Almost every morning, without fail, I hear a knock at my door and lo and behold, these tiny criancas (children) with dark skin, blonde hair, big brown eyes and tattered clothes are smiling up at me. Their presence at our house is a daily assumption. What began as adorable quickly took the form of bothersome (after the daily visits turned into 6-times-a-day visits), and now I find myself admittedly lonely if they do not show up.

I waited, anticipating the konko na porta (knock on the door) but all I could make out was the excited babyish lisps whispering in hushed giddiness beneath my window.

“Callie?” I called to my roommate. No answer. Wondering what was going on, I heaved myself from the enveloping arms of sleep and punched open the slats of window that were poorly made and creak open only with great effort. Shafts of blinding light danced through the leaves of a papaya tree and into my room; little beads of day rained down on my face and I regained sight long enough to catch tiny feet scurrying around the corner toward the quintal. It was then that I remembered the surprise. For days, Callie had been disappearing and returning as mysteriously and as quietly as she had left, always with a mischievous grin on her face. When I questioned her strange behavior, she always answered, “Ku tempo (with time).” I was to espera un bokadinho (wait a little bit), a phrase we often remind each other through suppressed smiles, as waiting a little while in Cape Verde can often turn into hours, or even days of anticipation. That day had apparently arrived.

Not wanting to waste my time dressing, I threw on a wrap and tied it around my neck as a dress, shuffling into my brown flip flops that are quickly wearing thin from constant walking on brutal cobblestone streets. I shut the heavy front door behind me and made my way through the tall stalks of corn, up the unsteady dirt path where we pull water, over the giant cement block to the platform where our well sits and down the back steps to the quintal. Rounding the corner, I discovered that the garden, previously overgrown with weeds, trash, and long-forgotten clothing was now spotless. I looked around in awe and marveled at the fertile dark soil, the malegetta (chili pepper) tree that had been trimmed from its wild and sprawling state into a tidy bush with red accents, and the four beaming faces smiling at me with expectation. “Supreza!” they squealed, arms open wide to monstra (demonstrate) their triumph. Callie and the girls had spent days sa ta padja (weeding) the abandoned no man’s land that was once the back of our house. Now it was a beautiful clean haven.

We spent the day finishing the task of cleaning the quintal. The tiniest girls swept the floor of the cobblestone as the older ones ran back and forth collecting colorful flowers with the roots attached to plant them among the papaya trees. We dug little holes in the dirt with sticks and set the weeds on fire. Tiny hands carefully placed the roots of flors (flowers) into the ground and when all was patiently positioned we stood and looked at the work in progress.

Back home I considered a big gift something like a ticket to a concert, new clothes, a free tank of gas. Here, where gifts are hard to come by and smiles are given out by the handful, this surprise instilled a contentedness that lasted throughout the day. I am beginning to understand the importance of giving a polite handshake and kiss, cheek-to-other-cheek, to everyone I meet - whereas I didn’t even know the neighbors who lived across from me back home. I know that when I finally find a precious pack of Smarties from the States in a loja (store), I should hand out most of them before I eat it, no matter how hard they are to come by here. I get back what I give tenfold, yet in a type of currency that is best described in an expression here: Rico in sono mais pobre en ouro (rich in dreams but poor in gold).

I have been in Cape Verde almost four months now, and every day it becomes evident that the assumptions I have made about life here shift and change from moment to moment, like the sunsets I watch from my front porch every evening. Easter egg blue turns to a clear hue near the edge of the water where suddenly somber tone snaps like a broken pen and leaks a brilliant magenta across the backdrop of orange and gold. Life here is like a sunset – predictable to an extent, and then shocking when you least expect it.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

There are days of journals left unwritten; almost weeks of moments lost within my mind that will never be captured to the page. I am triste (sad) that I have not had the time to write for so long, but attempting to capture a day here is something I value and I would rather it remain perfect in my thoughts than tainted in a rushed attempt to jot it all down.

That said, one event stands out vividly that deserves to be mentioned. I went to the birthday party of a woman I have grown close to during my time here. She lives in the same house as one of my students along with about 12 other people – she has long jet-black hair, no children, a saucy disposition and … has lived almost a century here in Ponta Verde. The community helped her celebrate her 99^th birthday last week and we spent days preparing food for the occasion. She is old and a legend among the people who live here, and I think she has taken a liking to me - when she sees me, she smiles a gummy grin and motions whoever sitting next to her to please get out of the way and let me sit down. She then proceeds to put my arm in a firm 99-year-old grip the entire stay, slipping handfuls of food my way, usually already half-eaten by her.

People say this 99-year-old woman is in such great health because she never had children, something that is unheard of here. The women in Cape Verde, on average, have eight to fifteen children in two-bedroom houses. Their lives are their work. Since there are no actual jobs in the community besides the three tiny “stores” that sell alcohol and a few household necessities, everyone works the land. I often see the six-year-old boy next door bringing in a load of plants from the fields before the sun comes up in the mornings. He is just three-and-a-half feet tall (small for his age from lack of proper nutrition). Like a worker ant carrying a load two times his size upon his back, as he walks beside his grandfather. The two walk the path wearily, side by side, trailed by a worn donkey beneath the early morning twilight as I go for my run. Many times I have seen them still at it during my walk home at night, one small, one slightly larger, two shadowy silhouettes bent in the night along the familiar, aching path.

Friday, November 3, 2006

Ponta Verde is a world all its own. It is a universe of surface value - a shifting, twirling façade that shields reality like a battered cloak. Walk down the main road and my community appears, by all accounts, to be pretty Americanized. People who have made their money in the States and returned to Ponta Verde live off of their hard earned nest eggs that took nearly twenty years of brutal factory work in the poorer slums of Massachusetts to earn. The three-story houses rise grandly from the humble road below in a glory that seems to proclaim, “Look what America bought me!”

Yet behind houses of beautifully decorated empty rooms lies a backdrop of stark poverty. People who wake up in the dark, light candles, walk an hour or so to their land and harvest the day away. People who bring these loads of harvest – squash, corn, peanuts, potatoes, peppers – and then unload, peel, pound and cook. People who haul water from a well twenty minutes away and balance the heavy buckets above their heads, who at the end of it all have enough energy left to eat and begin again hours later. I dropped by one of my student’s houses last night for the first time. When I peered through the door of her one-bedroom house, I looked in as she and her seven siblings were huddled around one candle, studying their homework together in the darkness. Light danced around the walls and cast shadows among their intent faces.

On the surface, many people here like to sport jerseys from American teams, throw out phrases in English and flaunt knowledge of the culture I know so well but left behind. They imitate life in the States so convincingly that I am shocked, time and time again to find teens who look like they’ve stepped out of hip hop music videos emerging from shacks or walking a pig down the road. Imitation goes only so deep. I have been told Fogo is “old school” and there is definitely a conservative nature in regard to the separation of gender spheres. Whereas most of my friends back home were guys, here a two-minute conversation with one can lead to a 300-person community speaking of the scandal the following day. So basically, talk to a member of the opposite sex who bears no relation and bam, whether you know it or not, you’re considered an item. Goodbye anonymity, hello celebrity status in Ponta Verde!

What I’ve discovered is that this change-up between what appears to be and what truly is can be utterly confusing. As a strangeiro (foreigner), what is assumed usually comes with a smokescreen. Here, if a person is asked a question, they will give the answer they think you want to hear, and not necessarily the unspoken one that is needed. Questions such as “should I wear formal or casual clothing to this event?” or “is it acceptable for women to drink in public?” are always met with, “oh, casual clothing is fine!” or “sure it is, go ahead!” or, my favorite, “qual ker,” which literally means, whichever you want. Countless wardrobe blunders and cultural mishaps later I have learned to sit back and imitate the actions of the women around me as a means of avoiding future cultural slip-ups. It is a daily progress.

In essence, living in Ponta Verde is like a game of chutes and ladders. With a new community, job, life and language to learn, it’s normal to take five steps forward and two steps back. There are unexpected setbacks followed by immense gains. Each day is a new roll of the dice.

Saturday, November 4, 2006

My room mate Callie and I ran all the way to Lomba today - a neighboring zone tucked into the ribeira (riverbed) that snakes its way up the outer shell of the volcano – as opposed to our regular, more forgiving route. The run was an uphill battle, much like our experience here as volunteers. As we are opening up a new site, every turn comes along with a new shift of pace and we must balance our endurance with what lies ahead as unknown. Every morning I wake up in a tiny bubble of a world that shrinks a little smaller.

One thing I have learned about life in Ponta Verde is that women, despite their strength and vitality, are often submissive in the presence of men. I have seen many an annoyed girl calmly tolerate the grip of a man’s hand on her arm, though her face reveals the discomfort in having to do so. It may be too early for me to acknowledge all the ways in which women silently rebel against their second-class status, but when Callie and I announced to our classes that we were organizing a game at the polivalente for girls it became clear that their lack of participation in sports was not for lack of interest. Their eyes lit up and some jumped out of their seats beaming.

So in a world where everything runs an hour late, I was not surprised to see a group of girls waiting outside our house an hour early. Their attire ranged from soccer jerseys with cleats, to bare feet and tattered clothing, to miniskirts and high heels. Regardless of their dress, it was clear that this was quite an event for them. I had invited the boys from my classes, in case they were interested in watching, but wondered whether or not they would show. I shouldn’t have wondered. When we arrived at the polivalente, of our 200 students, almost all were in attendance, even the boys. There were already a bunch of older guys kicking a soccer ball around, but when we took the field and began counting off teams, a few volunteered to referee for us, since Callie and I know very little abut the rules of soccer beyond our two teams, two goals, kick-the-ball-knowledge.

Overall our first organized community activity was a success. There were a couple heated arguments, a bit of squabbling over teams and a sprained ankle; but despite the confusion, the girls got a day to get up off the benches and play, and the boys sat in the crowd. The excitement from the boys, however, along with the realization that the younger boys of Ponta Verde never have actual organized tournaments either, led to our decision to have them play in the future as well. When we finally left the polivalente a few hours later, a line of our students trailed us up the steep narrow path and onto the main road back to Ponta Verde. As we walked, my students surrounded me and asked for the names of animals, plants and vegetables in English. Since they have a test next week, I asked them questions we have been using as dialogue in the class. What is your name? How old are you? Where do you live? When is your birthday? Who is your teacher? What is your favorite subject? What is your phone number? Why are you here?…Their interest and inexperienced voices beginning to make sense of the foreign words gave me a sense of satisfaction, their progress settling in on me like a calm pool.

But the day was not done. We parted ways with our students near the path that breaks off toward our house and changed clothes for the birthday of one of our friends. We made a rare discovery of oatmeal in the villa earlier this week (from the looks of us jumping up and down in the tiny store and clutching the oatmeal to our chests, finding the red and white tins of imported delicacy was like reading the winning numbers of a lottery ticket). So we attempted to make oatmeal chocolate cookies, sans brown sugar and substituted with Snickers bars. We carried our concoction to our friend’s house and a group of us subi monte (climbed the large hill) that overlooks Ponta Verde on one side and a sparkling ocean view of the sunset on the other. At the top, we had a picnic and sang “Parabens a Voce,” the Portuguese version of “Happy Birthday.”

Later that evening we met up with some friends and went to a gathering at a house where the mother of the family was having a goodbye party before she left her husband and children to work in America. Because of the lack of work, countless Cape Verdeans are forced to leave their families behind to work difficult jobs in the States so they can send their earnings home to improve the lives of the people they love. In fact, there are more Cape Verdeans living in the city of Boston, Mass. than in the entire country of Cape Verde itself. I met one woman this week who was sitting with her children in her lap at a gathering. Over the head of her youngest daughter who was curled gratefully in her arms, she told me she had a good job that “paid well” working for KFC in America – and that maybe after a few years she would have enough money for a better way of life.

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Each passing day I am able to unveil a bit more from the curtain that shrouds my perception of Cape Verde. The inexplicable silences despite the shocking volume; the unspoken secrets; the acceptable yet simultaneously ironic forthrightness…There is vital information that I am not aware of often until it is too late. I have a friend, a neighbor, who I recently discovered has eight children from a variety of fathers. I have another friend, a woman who I look to as an aunt, who teaches me to make cous cous and freskinhas (bags of frozen juice like Popsicles). I was walking down the road with one, and encountered the latter sitting in the shade. As I spoke with the one in the shade, the other gave a curt greeting and appeared suddenly rushed and irritable. I was broken away from my conversation by the other’s impatience and it wasn’t until ten minutes of racking my brain later that I realized the cause. I had to dig deep, to create what I like to think of as a version of the “Seven degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a game that states any actor that is named can be traced back to Bacon through less than seven co-starring roles. As I continued to think, it all became clear – the woman in a rush had an illegitimate child with a man who is married to a woman whose next-door neighbor is the brother of the woman sitting in the shade. Yes … this is the kind of awareness necessary to avoid stepping on the cultural toes of Cape Verde. With the idea that I had left the experience of high school drama far behind me, the small town rural community of Ponta Verde has the long-forgotten feel of adolescent times and I find the nostalgia of years past biting pertinently at my heels.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Of a myriad of books that exist in this world, my most memorable read was “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. Although I have read her journals in the past, I am rereading them, as television (and any other form of entertainment) is far from reach, and my love affair with the written word has revived. I am devouring my dwindling selection one by one. In a passage of her unabridged journals, Plath writes:

“I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children’s books to read. I remember that I was writing a poem on “Snow” when I was eight. I said aloud, “I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I’m still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like.” And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to the growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting, eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years.”

About a year ago I lost my lifelong collection of poetry. There were hundreds of pages that were wiped out in a corrupted file. It was my own fault, as I entrusted my innermost thoughts to a scheming technological machine with a corrupt agenda. But lost with those words were the expression of my adolescence. I feel as though the more I learn in life, the more confusing it all becomes. As Plath writes, youth’s brilliant and fresh perspective is injured by an inability to transform feeling into art. Likewise, the maturity’s capacity to express is hindered and jaded by the apathy that is experience’s loyal companion. This web of reality is spun intricately, with the same precision and awe-inspiring accuracy of the enormous spider that hangs reliably outside my kitchen window. Yet the more intricately woven the web, the more difficult it is to determine the beginning of things. My thoughts and perspectives are like the gentle lines of mesh – a production of theories and perspectives that hold me adrift a rocking tumultuous sky. Yet distinguishing one from the other is a solid, daily task. At the center of this craft is the aging me, attempting feverishly to renew previously constructed lines and make sense of it all, sans the vanished blueprints of my past.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

This environment is harsh - on the body, the mind, the soul. True, Cape Verde is aptly named “posh corps” by mainland volunteers, yet there is something about the life here that requires a bit of wearing in. I look at my hands and feel the rough calloused palms with the soft and feathery virginity of my fingertips, the firm raised skin only beginning to respond to the washing of clothes, carrying of water, and pounding of corn. More than one Cape Verdean has looked upon the deep cracks forming along my heels with a sympathetic smile of familiarity; and in the early morning darkness, as I look into the small mirror in my bathroom, the flickering light of a candle reveals tiny lines beginning to form in the corners of my previously taught eyes.

Like my body, layers of myself are falling away. Weaknesses, like the softness of flesh, are chafed and exposed. What lies beneath the exterior is revealed, and I inspect myself with the innocent eyes of a child. The previously ignored grooves that encase who I am and the pale, reticent fragility of what exists beneath. I rub up against Cape Verde and it rubs me back with a ferocity that reveals the entirety of my being, and I am left a bit sore.

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Here, pleasure is derived from an unexpected gift that happens to cross the casual path. I gave my first test today and the students did not perform at the standard I was expecting. As I walked up the steep cobblestone path, squinting in the harsh sunlight and dreaming of a cup of water, my room mate Callie picked up the dry corpse of a monarch butterfly from a gray stone. In our boredom we inspected it, took its wings in our fingers and spread them wide to admire the intricate patterns of brilliant orange, deep black and blinding white of its wings. Then Callie placed the dead insect in her palm and blew it into the air. For a moment, a slight warm breeze carried the papery fragment of color across a deep blue sky. It danced through the wind in a feverish liveliness and then faltered, paused and twirled silently to the ground.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

I watched a pig die today. It was a huge, fat quivering mass of light pink flesh. I stared as its willful weight was dragged to its death against the harsh concrete. Tiny hoofs scraped pitifully in protest against the thick rope around its fat neck. Screaming – a hoarse, high-pitched animal screaming – emanated from the flaring unclean snout. As sinewy accustomed arms pulled it, the creature looked up at me with wide pleading eyes.

Before today, I have never seen an animal killed. I remember when I used to have four lively finches that danced about a cylindrical iron cage near my bed. One day I came home to find one sulking quietly at the bottom of the cage as the others continued about their jerky, bird-like lives. I kept an eye on it all evening and later that night it began to sing stridently, flapping its wings with all its might. The volume became piercing and feathers fluttered all about as I watched, along with the three other birds whose attention had turned to the sudden spectacle. For a moment I assumed the bird had recovered, yet after a few seconds of intense desire for life it wavered. I watched in slow motion as the tiny fighting body was drained. A burst of vigor was followed by a slow expiration of life and it lowered itself to the floor. I remember thinking it was strange the way the other birds’ previous apathy had changed from interest to general concern. The little dead body surrounded by its three companions appeared so human-like I was touched. Everything was so silent.

Today was not silent. The pig was thrown onto its back. I watched as its hooves were tied together. I briefly looked away as my friend took a sharp rock and struck it against the pig’s face so that it would open its grimy mouth to rope that would restrict its shrieking. I wasn’t sure if I could go through with understanding such a gruesome sight. What’s more, I was sure I couldn’t watch. (The “me” four months ago couldn’t have stomached sheer dialogue on the topic.) Yet I stayed. I sat a foot from the gaping mouth and pitiful heaving flesh. My friend sat atop the giant hairy body and shoved the snout downward with one hand and the knife upward with the other. The dull blade of the knife plummeted into its obese neck and then with a quick slice, it cut vertically along the outer wound. Blood squirted from the bucking animal as its screams escalated into shrieks of pain and shock. It continued to heave and its muscles spasmed as women held bowls beneath the draining animal to collect the pools of blood that continued to pour even after it had passed away.

My roommate, a previous vegetarian and self-proclaimed animal lover, bee-lined for the side of the road and took post to cry. My friend, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Mosteiros, took the masculine approach and got photos from all angles. I sat in shocked silence, feeling repulsed by the bloody mess, but unable to tear my eyes away. Women collecting the blood laughed at our reactions, their hands covered in the syrupy deep redness of life that had poured from a living thing. Tiny children stood calmly along the sides of the cornfield, probably more interested in the strange Americans’ disgust than from the mundane ritual of killing dinner.

In seeing death approached so non-emotionally, I have been thinking a lot about living. There is a stark contrast between the peaceful sadness of the natural expiration of life with the horrendous atrocity with which it can be ripped away; between the tranquil death of my bird and the appalling murder of a swine. What I have discovered is that I do not know so much about life – or of death for that matter. But what I do understand is that there is a difference. And though we all live a life, and though we are all to die, the ways in which we do both will vary in a strange and inexplicable combination between that which is out of our control (death) and that which we can grasp whole-heartedly in the fleeting love affair that is life.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

…The fuzzy soft carpet of the States and the hard gritty concrete of my home in Ponta Verde…The McFlurry from the drive through and the pounding of corn into flour…The secured padded comfort of the single-child life and the 15-child anonymity of a two-bedroom existence…The plush enveloping softness of laying on a sofa and the rigid upright discomfort of wooden chairs…The desk work of America my Cape Verdean friend refers to as “working with a pen” and the heavy sacks of kaska piled high upon strained backs…The rigid personal space of my relationships back home and sitting in the lap of my female friends as they casually wrap their arms around me, intertwine our fingers and giggle about the absurdity of men behind the cultural yet impenetrable sheet that keeps men and women separate…The intense beeping of my alarm clock and the coarse prideful crow of the rooster up the street…The sweet, freeing escape of the open road in my Jeep and the awkward effort of clomping down the uneven incline of cobblestone paths…Fresh garden salads piled with crisp, clean greens and the monotony of corn, corn, corn…The way in which Americans value politeness over truth and the shocking gut-wrenching honesty of people in Ponta Verde…The beauty and worshipful wonder of washing machines/dishwashers/vacuums/faucets/blenders/garbage disposals and the cracked bleeding knuckles of my hands…The packaged, sanitized, diluted, unawareness of where food comes from and the living, bleeding, shrieking knowledge of what I am about to consume…The enormous malls and grocery stores that exist to accommodate all desires and the tiny convenience stores that shelve just rice and soap, the Chinese lojas that display only a handful of options in terms of clothes…The beautiful crashing waves of the California coast and the unreachable yet equally stunning panorama of ocean spread before me and left untouched on this volcano of an island…The cuddly warmth of my princess of a dog back home and the terror that the barking of dogs here brings out in me…The clean accommodating existence of life in America and the earthy, natural rawness of living in Africa…

I could go on…and on…and on…I love and crave my life back home and simultaneously resent it in contrast to the difficulties in people’s lives here.

I feel frustration about social norms and ignorance in Cape Verde but also love and admire it for all it has taught me.

I feel frustration about social norms and ignorance in America but also love and appreciate it for all it has given me.

After only four and a half months of living here, my two worlds are beginning to merge and I am left with a mixture of what is true and what imagination and memory has exaggerated. Did an In-N-Out hamburger really taste that good? Were movie theaters something to do only when you had run out of more exciting options? Is eating corn 3 times a day really that bad? Isn’t sitting on the side of the road in the breeze and doing absolutely nothing kind of nice?

In and out flows the tide of my thoughts. The relativity of life ebbs and flows like the changing nature of the moon that looms above me each morning on my dark early run. When the soft glowing orb is pregnant with light I rejoice in sight. When it is lacking, I stumble with a blinding unsure gait that comes along with the unfamiliarity of darkness. With time, I am sure the path before me will become familiar and I will be able to rely on myself and what I know – and not upon the changing patterns of astrological whims.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Both the end of the wet season and the conclusion of November are approaching. The surrounding fields of lush green corn are drying up and there is a crisp echoing as the parched stalks sway vulnerably in the arid wind. I watch from my porch as dozens of spindly legs shuffle down the road beneath top-heavy bundles of seca padja (dry corn stalks) they carry on top of their heads. I find myself wondering how they can see the road in front of them. Most of the wavering limbs belong to children as thin as pencils. They stumble under their loads as the fall winds attempt to blow them away in strong gusts. The planting season is over; the period of cultivation has ended; the fruits of labor die away as weeping fields bow to the ground in a slow surrender. The people here trade in the overflowing abundance of freshly cultivated vegetables and fruits for canned sustenance. As bright flowers and green foliage shrivels and dies away Ponta Verde is no longer the Point Green that its name boasts…

And so the honeymoon period with this place is over and I can take off the rose colored glasses as I complete the first sixth of the 27-month Peace Corps service. The surface of this new world is falling away and the wondrous dreamland of abundance is kneeling down in defeat as it reveals the true earthy harshness of reality. Like a new relationship, the beginning attempts to impress and lure have ended and I am now able to truly get to know my community – to see beneath the layers of façade that were so convincingly demonstrated in the beginning. The people, like the terra (land), are revealing themselves – not just their incredible strengths, but their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And I love them more for it. In perceiving their sadness, I can more accurately understand their needs. In seeing their worries, I can more clearly visualize their dreams.

And dreams, resilient despite the changing of the seasons, are the only things that do not die away.

Keep thou thy dreams-

The tissue of all wings

Is woven first of them;

From dreams are made

The precious and imperishable things,

Whose loveliness lives on and does not fade.

--Shead

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I made visits today, as I often do in order to get to know the people of this tiny community. The houses are so dispersed and hidden within the ribeiras (washed out riverbeds) and fields that I often begin my journey by simply walking aimlessly along the road. One foot in front of the other never disappoints – within a few steps I am called at and invited in to txiga (visit). Today led me to the house of an old man who I run into on the road every morning on the way to school. He is rather tall and old, and he walks slowly without pressa (hurry). Cane, step, cane, careful step, like so. His eyes are old yet kind. I discovered today that he is ninety years old, and has children living in America, Brazil and Portugal. He talks to me at length about Abraham Lincoln and of the history of Cabo Verde as he folds pieces of religious text into barkos (paper boats). I watch in awe as he weaves intricate stories out of the simplicity of Kriolu and calmly folds indecipherable Portuguese words peppered with “Jesus” into tiny, lifelike boats.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Weeks ago, when my room mate and I first arrived in Ponta Verde, I remember we sat on the front step of our house and discussed the multitude of possibilities that were to occur during our stay in this small area. We approached the topic and concluded that people, no doubt, would be born. That people would get married. That we would watch in disbelief as little children of two would grow to children of four or five. And that people of eighty or ninety would begin to feel the tug at the end of their lives and pass away from this earth just as surely as they had once arrived, so many years before.

Being aware of the cycle of life is one aspect in which this culture does not hide. I watch, rather calmly now, as animals are slaughtered, or as I wave to a good friend passing by in the bed of a truck, casually sitting atop a dead cow. When babies cry, women do not get up and breastfeed in privacy. Many a time, they continue their conversation with me, whip out a shockingly enormous nipple, attach their infant to the source and continue to go about this or that topic in earnest. Likewise, the morbidity that surrounds death in America is smoothed over with an air of familiarity and acceptance.

Well, the cycle of life is continuing its steady yet astounding gait along the cobblestone paths of Ponta Verde. My good friend who works in the Jardim had her long-awaited baby today – a tiny, light-skinned little boy with bright pink flower petals for a mouth and a tuft of dark hair. Along with tradition, he will not have a name until his godmother gives him the formal identity that he will use for school and church. The name with which he will be called within the house will come with time, as his personality inspires a nickname that his friends and family will know him by. Until then, he is a tiny bundle that is accepted into this world as casually and expectedly as any other living being.

After a visit to spia (look at) my friend’s newborn child, I returned to the house and later that night answered a knock on my door. The grandmother of my roommate’s student was dying. We walked to her house along with a group of older neighbors in the dark. It was a new moon so the light normally granted for such a journey was nonexistent, making the walk slow and tedious as we made our way up the narrow winding path to the two-bedroom house. Once we arrived, dozens of people were standing in the rua (road) speaking lowly and the rest were looking in through the tiny window.

The old woman was a pile of respiring bones beneath a thin white sheet. Her jawbones were sunken in as the candle was raised to her face and neighbors stood coaxing her to drink a broth. Her eight grandchildren were sitting in wooden chairs in the candlelight and we shook hands with each of them. We were invited to sit and I was shocked at how the attention turned from the dying woman to us. “Tudo bom?” a woman with the candle asked with a heavy pat on the back. Yea, sure, everything’s great, I thought, staring the advancing steps of death in the face. A man (I’m assuming the woman’s son) arrived from the villa and the moment he saw his mother he began wailing. The howling sounds of his grief were mixed with the giggles of children playing games obliviously in circles on the floor. So it is in Ponta Verde that the heaviest of life’s realities is mixed with the mundane happenings of everyday life.

And so first predictions of living here were confirmed today - a newborn infant took in his first gulps of air as an aging woman strained to inhale the ending moments of her life. And so existence continues all around. Children will chase each other around a dying body, men will get up in the darkness and make their way to the fields, women will balance enormous buckets of water on their heads, the absurdity of a donkey’s call will continue to force me to laugh, and as I open the front door for my morning run, the web of a very persistent spider will greet me, as it always does. I will walk down the road past cows, cloth bag in hand, on my way to buy freshly baked bread. I will eat it. I will go to school. And life will go on.

I was once born, and I will one day die. For now, I am a girl who grew up in Orange County, awaking to vida (life) each day on a tiny volcanic island off the African coast. In living here, I am amazed at the ways in which I am both nearing death and running from it with each breath. It’s strange the way the passage of time is not necessarily consistent with understanding. When I was young I felt old, yet trapped in a candid body. Now I am childlike despite an aging exterior, and fine lines frame the brilliance of youthful eyes.

Shadowing

2006-07-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have been so out of touch but I had no idea that when we left for Sao Domingos (the site where me 2 months of training is held) I would have no Internet! I just had two days of Shadowing, a term which basically means that another trainee and I shadow a current volunteer and see their site, eat and work with them. I was lucky because I was with the volunteer who has the most rural site and she has no running water, electricty, etc. and lives in the middle of NOWHERE! It was fun though because we had about a 3 hour steep hike just to get to her house. Definitely an experience, lol.

Right now I am unfortunately trying to hurry because I have only a few minutes until I can get to a car to take me back to training where once again, I will have NO INTERNET...how sad. =) Its ok though, I will learn to live without it!

So far training has been great. I love my host family and have begun to learn Kriolu, the local language here. There is so much to tell but it will have to wait until I am sworn in as a volunteer and given an assignment. I promise as soon as I get a chance, I will write all about it. I miss you all back home and hope everything is well!

Lots of Love,
Brittania (the only way they can pronounce my name here) =)

Bridge to Pre-Service Training

2006-07-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th!! It is my final day of orientation and tomorrow morning my group of 30+ trainees and I will catch our last glimpse of America - for many of us who do not plan to return to the States during service it will be the last time for two years. Our orientations have been informative, but I find myself wanting to stop "talking" about Cape Verde in order to just GET THERE to experience it!

From what I hear, the country has a vibrant culture with colorful surroundings, welcoming people and beautiful beaches. On the other hand, there is extreme poverty, lack of education, alchoholism and other issues that prompt Peace Corps involvement. Yet despite it's pros and cons (as every country has), I have taken it upon myself to believe that this country is one of the best places that Peace Corps could have assigned to me (a little biased, maybe, but I'm entitled, right?) =)

The next time I will be able to get Internet access will probably not be until I get to Africa in a couple days, so I will log on as soon as I can. If you don't hear from me for a while just assume I am adjusting to my new environment.

Anyhow, the breaks today are short and I need to get back to orientation. I hope everyone back home has a great 4th of July and know I love you...(happy omen/spears day baby!!)...

xo.

Capital Anxieties and Aspirations

2006-07-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been day two of a 27-month journey for me. I am in Washington, D.C., right now for my staging event. There are 32 other trainees here and we have made it through our first day of intense orientation. Tomorrow it is shots, more info sessions and my last day in my nation, on my nation's holiday, in my nation's capital...what a send-off, right?

Our flight on the 5th is from D.C. to Paris, then to Dakar, Senegal, then to Praia, the capital of Santiago, and island in Cape Verde. I will life with a host family for about three months durng language, skill and cultural training. If all goes well, by September I will swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer and then begin my service on one of the islands as a TEFL instructor.

Right now is a major time of transition for me, as I am saying goodbye to a perfectly good life and amazing people in trade for a nation now unknown to me full of strangers. I hope in time this temporary trade-off (if you can call 2 years temporary!) will begin to reveal this exotic nation and its people as home and a type of family to me. For now, it is a journey of excitement and anxiety rolled into a tight ball formed in the middle of my stomach. The unknown looms ahead and I can't help but feel an intense desire to experience it.

My greatest desire is to live this service right - to make the most of every situation and learn from the challenges. I can't wait for the future and miss those back at home with a passion I have never known (already!!).

So, as the last email subject that was sent to me states: Off, off and away... =)

FIRST POST!!!

2006-06-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Hi. I haven't left yet