A Year of Catch-Up

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

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?!?