Initial Impressions

Semptember 6, 2007
Cha de Igresia

So I’ve arrived, not without incident, to my new home in Cha de Igresia (village of the church). It is as beautiful as I remember it, and a lot smaller. Like, I went for a walk around the entire town yesterday, and it took about 5 minutes. My house is amazing, and it is going to be hard to remember that I’m in the damn Peace Corps, because my place is nicer than anything I ever rented in the States. I’ll send pictures as soon as I can. I’m sure I’ll write more about the town after I’ve gotten to know it a better, but here are my initial observations, having been here only 3 days.

Beautiful. It is beautiful beyond belief here, and I’ve never seen it’s equal. To quote the Bandt Travel Guide, “Santo Antao is truly one of the world’s most stunning and majestic landscapes.” I’m pretty sure the guy that wrote that was sanding on my roof when he wrote that. Cha has a unique combination of mountains, beaches, tropics, desert and lush green. There are nearly vertical mountain walls that cover about 300 of 360 degrees of view. The other 60 degrees offer a spectacular view of the ocean, which is a 15 minute walk down the ribera. The hills surrounding Cha have palm, banana and papaya trees, cane, corn and bean fields and an intricate canal system that channels the run-off water from the peaks above into the crops. The town itself is filled with brightly painted houses, flowering plants line the cobblestone streets, and a perfect and ancient white church sites directly in its center. Outside the church there is a public “plaza.” In the plaza there is a rudimentary playground, several benches and shade trees and a little tiny bar that serves ice cold beer and cokes. (They also have a television, and after the sun goes down, they turn it on and half the village comes out and sits on the plaza benches to watch the news or the Portuguese novellas. It’s quite charming.) Cruzinha is a little fishing hamlet (there are less than 300 people there) at the mouth of the ribera (15 minutes from here). I went there yesterday and it too is stunning. Crystal blue waters, a huge cave that offers shelter from the sun, and giant volcanic boulders that you can dive off of. Halelujah. If you continue past Cruzinha another 15 minutes, you arrive at a deserted and spectacular beach. It is completely inaccessible, except to walk from my village or Cruzinha, and if you keep reading, you’ll see that that makes it just about impossible to get to. I was on this beach yesterday, and I saw a half dozen of the biggest turtles I’ve ever seen, and maybe about 40 eggs buried in the sound. SO COOL! A neighbor in Cha told me that this is the month where the turtle babies hatch and run into the ocean, so I’m sure I’ll be spending a few nights conducting turtle watch on the beach.

Isolated. The road to get here from Provencao (the nearest town with computer, bank, internet, fresh groceries etc.) is ridiculously bad. In total its about a 45 minute drive, and there are parts of it that make me close my eyes in the hiace. The only thing that’s got me a little worried though, is that the hiace (van) that runs between Cha de Igresia and Provencao (and this is the ONLY van, and the ONLY road) runs exactly once per day. It leaves Cha at 630AM and comes back from town at 1200PM. So, if I ever want to go anywhere, and I mean ANYWHERE, I have to make sure I’m back in Provencao by noon, or I’m stranded. This means I can’t do any of the great hiking on the East side of the island, can’t visit Pont de Sol (which is the Cape Verdian equivalent of Malibu, and only 15 minutes past Provencao) etc., unless I spend the night. Luckily there is a volunteer in Provencao and another in Coculi, both with big houses, so I’m sure I’ll be able to crash there on days when I’m out past noon. This hiace situation also means of course, that nobody can come out to Cha de Igresia, unless they get on the noon hiace to Cha, spend the night, and go back on the 630am hiace the next day. Now I know why they requested a community development volunteer.

Clean. There isn’t any trash anywhere, which is a striking contradiction to the island of Santiago, where there was trash EVERYWHERE. There are public trash cans on the street corners. Flowering plants line the streets. Nearly all the houses (at least the sides that face the street) are painted in bright and pretty colors. There are no animals in town, except for a few chickens and dogs.

Hot. I haven’t been here long enough to know what’s normal for this part of Cape Verde, but yesterday it was Africa-Hot, and let me tell you, even by Texas’ standards, that’s pretty goddamn hot. I could actually feel my skin baking. (Don’t worry mom, I went inside and put on sunscreen immediately.) To be fair though, two days ago it was very pleasant, not climbing above 85, with a really nice breeze that lasted all day and night long.

Poor. There is nothing to do here, except farm the land. When they aren’t planting or tilling or harvesting (and there hasn’t been any rain yet, so none of that is going on) people are basically just, sitting around on the street, on porches, under trees, doing… absolutely nothing. My second day here I brought my guitar downstairs, and started playing around. Within about 10 minutes, half of the village was sitting there too, and we didn’t get up until the sun started setting. There is a LOT of free time. They can’t get jobs in Provencao because there isn’t any transportation after noon, and there isn’t ay sort of business here, except for 2 or 3 lojas (African equivalent of a mini-mart, where you can get rice and corn and juice and things like that). I’m really not sure what the answer to this problem is, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what these people do to get money. It’s possible, probable actually, that they don’t have any money, and that they are just able to grow enough to survive, with nothing extra. I’m sure I’ve got a lot to learn about this subject in the next two years