Update from Africa

Boa Tarde Amigos!! Here’s a sort of lengthy update on my status in Cape Verde. Someone send me some pics or bits of news, interesting or otherwise. Pretty much the OLY English I’m exposed to are my books (which I’ve already finished reading), and when I read or write an e-mail, so get busy typing. It’s funny how the mind craves English when it’s removed from you. Sometimes I go a little nuts from all the Kriolu and have to go walk to the closest other volunteer’s house just to hear a little “Hey what’s up” slang.

Things here are still going well. CV only gets 3 months with any rainfall, and they’re about to get them here at the end of this month. Consequently, there is a LOT of work going on to get ready for them. (The entire country revolves around these next couple months of rain.) Everyone is busy planting corn and beans. Many people, my host parents included, walk an hour or more to places where they can get work planting in the fields. I’ve volunteered to go with them tomorrow afternoon, and they can keep whatever money I can make for them, which will probably be about 75 cents. My Mai also takes water and food to the fields, which she sells to the other workers for about 2 cents. The women here are so amazing. Mai is 72 years old and carries a huge sack of cornbread-like stuff (cous-cous) in her hands while balancing a 50 pound drum of water on her head….and carries this, more or less) up an mountain and back down the other side. It’s beyond belief. Also, my neighbor had a baby 2 days after we got here, and the mother was back working in the fieldss the very next day. SO TOUGH.

On that note, they have a custom here that the baby is not named or really welcomed into the family until the seventh day. It’s nursed and changed and held of course, but nobody really speaks of the baby, like an elephant in the room.) After the seventh day, they have a big dinner and invite everyone over to meet the baby and announce the name. It’s to do with the high infant mortality rate here I think and weird to see. Another thin weird to see is the way kids are raised. It REALLY puts Darby’s life in perspective when I see kids her age around here. Girl’s her age are already learning to balance objects on their heads over here. Kids usually walk barefoot through the dirt and cobblestone streets, even though they’re scalding hot. I guess they build calloused feet because I can’t even stand to sit on them with pants on.

That’s another weird thing about this place. NOTHING is allowed to be put on the floor, and you’re certainly not allowed to sit on the floor. If you ask the locals, they say it’s because the floor is dirty, which makes me laugh because they’ll tell you this while they wipe their eyes or handle their food right after working with the pigs or cows or chickens or goats. There is also a shortage of chairs around here (almost no wood remember?) so there is a LOT of standing around and I’ve already learned not to carry anything with me, lest I be made to stand around holding it for hours at a time.

There is a definite hygiene problem here, although they’re completely unaware of it so maybe its no problem at all. (This is one of the many dilemmas of a Peace Corps volunteer…when are you helping and when are you adding to the problems??) Cuts and scrapes go unattended in all but the richest families. I used my Peace Corps medical kit to treat a huge gash on the leg of this 8 year old girl yesterday…she had tripped and fell off her porch. She freaked out and I think her parents thought I was hurting her, until they saw how much better the cut looked…at which point they tried to give me a chicken. There are kids here with what I think must be sinus infections…lots of stuff running our of their noses, and they definitely don’t have tissues or napkins to wipe them on, so you’ll sometimes see little kids with lots of snot on their face or shirt. Anyway…don’t get the wrong idea…it’s not like this place is a cesspool or that there is no medical care, it’s just that the problems that I see really leap out at me and make an impression. There is actually a full time nurse here in the village with basic first aid supplies, and a doctor that comes several days a month. It’s a free service, but the people just aren’t educated enough to take advantage of it.

The other big news is that on Friday I travel to Santo Antao, where I’ll spend a few days with a volunteer already living there, seeing what they do on a daily basis. It’s the big green, lush mountainous island that I’ve been hoping to get assigned to since I started learning about CV. There is a huge agricultural push going on there, with drip irrigation, micro-credit financed farm, honey collection projects, jam making projects, coffee production, Grog of course and a big influx big eco-tourism, as Europeans apparently go there pretty regularly to kike and camp in the mountains. I think its also sort of a test run to see how I’ll adapt to the language there, which is a very different dialect of Kriolu than the one I’m currently learning. I’m definitely the best student in my Kriolu class, and am even able to have some conversations with my neighbors and family. (As long as they are all in the present tense, which can be difficult, although I’ve found that as long as I insert a time reference “tomorrow” then I can just keep talking in the present tense, and they get that I mean in the future. Pretty much everyone laughs when I talk. I’m sure I sound like a drunk 3rd grader.) Its fun though, and I’ve found a neighbor called Suzi that helps me practice each night. She looks through my school notes, infers what we’ve been learning, and then she tries to make me practice it. Her whole family (like 10 people) sits around and watches this process, laughing every time I start to talk. Too funny. I’m already feeling at home in my village as well. When I walk to or home from school, all the kids are yelling “Keli!!!!!” and running up and giving me high fives.
Another funny thing is how the Fonze, from Happy Days, has invaded CV culture. I don’t know if its really from the Fonze, but everyone here gives everyone the thumbs up sign. Even during a formal greeting, it would be something like “good Morning to you Mam,” and you would give her a thumbs up, and she’ll say “good Morning to you as well sir,” and also stick her whole arm out with the thumbs up. People do it driving by, passing you on the street, pretty much its always appropriate to give someone the thumbs up…Its going to be a hard habit to break when I come home.