Sad Cemetery

This is a sad site. On the right side of the cemetery you can see all the graves and headstones and shrines. All those little mounds of stones on the left?...that's the child cemetery. Although they're much better now, in the years before independence the infant mortality rates in Cape Verde were very high...comparable to other African nations. Anyway, if you go way back in the blog you'll find a story about a guardacabeza festival that I went to. Basically, newborns aren't really acknowledged by the community until after they've been alive for more than a week, after which point there is a party to introduce them to the town. This photo puts that tradition into a little better perspective.