Other News

Howdy friends and family. Here is an update on things in Txa di Tanki. (And yes, I know I’ve spelled it a few different ways, but that’s how they do it here.)

So some of the teens in my town wrote and have been practicing a play to perform at a town festival (think Burgesfest or SXSW, except in a tiny village in Africa) and I’ve been going and taking pictures and helping out with it every night for a week or so and have made some great new friends. (Hopefullt there are some pictures of the play practices up with this entry. I brought my guitar the other night and these 2 guys I hadn’t met before showed up with another guitar and we basically took turns playing all night, teaching each other songs. Great night. By the end of the night, they’d arranged for us to all do a song together before the play starts. (I think there are pics posted of play practice.)

I’ve also become very close with a family up the Ribera a ways. There is an 8 year old girl named Rosie and her family that I’m crazy about, and I basically spend most of my free time over there. My parents here are old and don’t leave the house much, so going over there gives me a chance to get out in the community. They’re all beautiful, nice, polite, intelligent, happy, easy going, caring, and have never asked me for anything except my presence at their dinner table. It’s the mom Anna, a 19 year old boy (boys and girls are kids here in almost every sense of the word until about 25 or 30, and even after, rarely move out of the house they grow up in) a 17 year old girl, a 13 year old boy, and then Rosie. They haven’t seen their father in 8 years (Rosie’s never met her dad) as he emigrated to Portugal where he works as a construction worker. He sends them about $70 a month from his salary there. In this country, their dad is essentially the “typical” father, and is highly regarded as a “good man” in Txa di Tanki. They’re dirt poor...literally. The floor of their 2 room cinderblock house is the dirt of the earth. Gil and Sydney share a cot, and the women share a bed, all in the same 8X8 room where they make a wood fire to boil the water for the rice or corn or beans that they eat every night for dinner. They have a table and a couple chairs, 6 plates, 6 spoons, 5 cups, and (and this is beyond belief) several changes each of very nice looking clothes, and not a whole let more. The mom makes money by selling cow milk and butter that she makes from same, and serving as the town, cascador (animal castrator). Gil cuts and gathers firewood up on the mountain to sell to other people in the village, and also gathers padja (sorta like hay) and sells it to people to feed their animals. Lena does all the cooking and clothes washing, Rosie the cleaning of the house and tending to the smaller animals. Basically I think I’ve been adopted into their family (to the extent that that’s possible). I usually have breakfast over there, then I help feed the goats, and milk the cow in the morning. Rosie takes the milk from the bucket and puts it into empty wine bottles and then fashions corks from dried corn cobs, and their mom goes to Assomada to sell them. Then I go to school, then come back, and help Lena and Gineelson carry water to the house from a natural ground well about 2 miles away. The well puts out a sad, spasmodic stream of brackish, grainy water, which we carry in buckets on our heads. Evenings we tend to the animals again, then sit around playing cards, practicing their English and my Kriolu, swapping stories (mostly in the present tense on my part) and laughing. In a lot of ways, I feel more at home there than I ever have anywhere…although it’s impossible to explain why. The point of this isn’t to lament their poor and difficult lives, but to put their smiles and laughter, their love of family, friends and neighbors, their friendship and their hospitality, into context. Salt of the Earth.