Busy Day!

So yesterday was definitely my busiest and most rewarding day so far in Cape Verde. Today I am exhausted and happy to have nothing to do. A brief recap goes as follows.

I awoke to the sound of a honking horn and someone yelling “Oi Patch” on the street below. I open the window to see Elder carrying a couple of green sea torturugas turtles. Elder is my friend from INDP, the government funded turtle protection group, and he and I have been working on making a turtle-awareness video to be shown in schools in Cape Verde. These particular turtles were caught in redes (nets) last year and he´s spent the last 12 months caring for them in Sao Vicente and today was the day that we were to set them free in the ocean (I had actually no part whatsoever in this, he was just kind enough to invite me to set a turtle free). We drove own to Cruzinha and dropped the pessods (heavy bastards) in the ocean and he rushed me back for my second event of the day, budzod (day of mass-baptisms).

Over here, because the padre is so hard to get a hold of (he serves about 7 communities on the island) they do mass baptisms rather than just one at a time. Yesterday about 24 kids were baptized, and I was recruited by the families of nearly all of them to document the event, so it was home to wash off the turtle smell, change into my one sorta nice outfit, grab my makina (camera) and rush off to the church where I was just in time to see the padre smearing some stuff on the kids heads. Everyone was buzoff (in their finest attire). Although most wore white there were a couple of women in princess tiaras and others in slinky red minis. There was a lot of sitting and standing and singing and Hallelujahs and salves and oils applied to the foreheads of the kids and then finally the actual Baptisms. Immediately following the service, I began taking family photos, individual photos, photos with just the newly baptized child and their padrinhos and madrinhas (godfathers and godmothers), photos of the kids with the padre, photos of the kids with the Jeezuz statue, photos with the candles and without the candles, and eventually, every exponentially possible combination of child/children/parent/godparent/cousin/uncle/padre…well you get the picture. I went through a whole camera battery and 3G of digital film. It was awesome. There´s no way that I, or they, can afford to print the pictures to keep in an album, so we decided that next Sunday, we´ll borrow the big TV and DVD player from the associacao and have a group viewing of all the pics. (Hopefully I can get some of the best pics included on some of the CDs that people volunteered to print in the States.) Eventually the kids had had enough and we were all dismissed to the various festas (parties)around town.

So naturally, this being an extremely Catholic country, a Baptism requires a HUGE party, and rather than combine parties, which would have been my suggestion, there were 24 separate parties (in a town of less than 400 people)with each table topped with more food and booze than could feed the Cape Vedian army (there is one). I was obliged (and happy) to appear at each of the parties to take some pictures and stuff my face with pizza and grilled meats and stewed meats and cake and peanuts and pastels and olives and cheese and chorriz and even a few salads. Immediately following the feeding frenzy, the drinking and the dancing commenced. The drinking and the dancing were to go on well into the morning hours and have only just now died down (it´s currently 1:45 on the following day). At some point I snuck out of festa #24 and went home for a nap.

I woke up and got to the associacao to meet a group from Povocon who have come to Cha di Igreja to talk to the town about VIH/SIDA (HIV/AIDS). We contacted the group after a member of the associacao vouched for their program and suggested we bring them in. Also, they came de graca (for free). Hindsite is 20/20 and I now realize what a monumental scheduling error we made when planning this little talk. With all the festas going on, there were only about 14 people present at the formacao (seminar). Anyway, these guys showed up with a very impressive amount of equipment including slide projectors, computers, dvd players a portable stereo and, due to its overuse, what I now assume to be a very recently acquired laser pointer. (He was apparently unaware that it may be harmful to shine it directly into the eyes of his audience.) Anyway, they got their stuff set up while I ran around trying (unsuccessfully) to pull people away from their festas for a few minutes and then eventually got started at 6:00. The guy was a nice and actually very engaging speaker, but by the end, I was pretty much wishing I had given the talk myself, and was actually glad that more people hadnºt attended. During the talk this “expert” expressed some pretty radical views on the principle causes of AIDS (“breast milk and fornication”), statistics (he quoted the population of Cape Verde as 40,000, with 8,000 having AIDS…we eventually settled on 480,000 as the population of Cape Verde with a 0.8% infection rate) , and most shockingly, forms of prevention (he claimed that “courage, family and abstinence” were the only ways to prevent it and even went so far as to say that “condoms have only a 30% success rate at best” and left open the possibility that if used incorrectly, camisinhas (condoms, or literally translated..."little shirts") could actually multiply your risk of catching the disease. At that point someone raised their hands to ask if this meant that they werenºt going to be handing out free condoms and when he said no, 9 people left. As you may have guessed by now, these guys were sent by the Catholic Church (the name Associaçao de Accao de John Paul II should have been my first clue) and while I applaud the church´s efforts to at least spread awareness, I have to disagree with their tactics. Before they left they handed out a few pins that depict a wooden cross with a red ribbon draped over it.

Later it was back to all the festas for more eating, more dancing, more drinking, and eventually, lip syncing, and topless modelling. Its tradition for all the guests to toast the father of the newly baptized kid with a grogue, which makes for a staggering amount ofdrinking.) I am absolutely incapable of having more than 2 or 3 and still be able to walk, so I left to go home a little after midnight, but the music was going on all over town until well into this morning, and there is STILL a full house at church today. From the looks of things, theyºre getting ready to ratchet up the parties once again this afternoon, so Iºm planning to swing by to take a look at what foods are left, then seek refuge from the festas and go to the beach.

Anyway, yesterday was great (and a good thing too as I was in a bit of a slump in the days leading up to it) Iºve now officially entered and eaten at every single family house in Cha di Igreja, which I am particularly proud of. Pictures of the day below!