Ahh, Michael Jackson would be proud...

So here I am enjoying delightful internet once again, very briefly to the tune of "Beat it"...and it looks like once again I might not be able to upload pictures. Bummer. But don´t worry, once I get to site, I will have much more regular internet access and better computers, this one is kind of a fluke. Anyhow, as per my previous post, I´m just including all my journals in order, so enjoy the journey through the last couple weeks! Much love, everyone...

7/30/06

One of the things I like best about Sao Domingos is that it has that small community feel to it, yet there’s always something going on or somewhere to be. Any excuse to throw a festa (party) and a large boisterous group of Cape Verdeans is there. Example: last night my neighborhood (and that of two other Trainees that live nearby—all our little sisters are best friends) threw a block party complete with excellent dance music and more chicken than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life. It was a good time. The fun part about these block parties is that they run on island time, so they all wander in around 10-11pm or whenever they feel like it, and then supposedly the parties last until 6am (I left last night around 1am, so I can’t say if anyone actually stayed that late). All the families in the neighborhood (primarily about 5-6 families) are best friends and spend all their time together. Next weekend we’re all going to Tarrafal, a supposedly beautiful beach a couple hours away—all 35-ish of us in 2 hiaces. It should be great, we’re a pretty fun bunchJ. The whole area feels very interconnected, like one big family (of course half the time they actually are family, cousins and nephews and aunts and uncles—you’re never really sure who belongs to what family). My sisters are always over at the neighbors’ houses and neighbors are always coming and going in our house, playing cards and Chinese jumprope in between. The group of young girls (Carla and her friends) are my favorite because they always run up and give me hugs and then grab my hand and pull me down the street to whatever exciting thing they’re off to see. The best part: they spend the bulk of their time choreographing dances to Cape Verdean music, which they perform anywhere and everywhere as often as they get the chance. They definitely made an appearance last night at the festa, and let me just tell you this—these girls know how to shake their butts like there’s no tomorrow. So awesome. I think it’s one of the first things you’re taught as a child;). Watching them reminds me of how Lindsey, Paige, and I used to choreograph dances to Mariah Carey and perform them for our doting parents.

I can’t say enough how much I love this concept of closeknit community, that speaks strongly to what I’ve always wanted and still hope to have. A support network, familiarity, an ease of interaction that gives life depth and simplicity simultaneously. Predictable, yet rarely boring. I say this now, though I’m sure a lifetime in a small rural community might send me overboard. I suppose that’s why it’s great that community transcends geography and we can have networks across borders and continents of people who understand and care about each other. I love being able to hear from you all how life carries on at home, while knowing that you are equally as interested in my life here in Africa. Yet I can’t help but note the difference between day-to-day life in the States and life here in this small community. There’s something about being able to just walk into your neighbor’s house unannounced and join in whatever game they’re playing or conversation they’re having. To be able to always walk through town and see someone you know, or if not at least be able to expect “hellos” from most people you see along the way. And to make passing through town to greet people a priority in your day to begin with. I like living in a community where I don’t look around me and see individualistic competition or the values of market-driven capitalism superseding the need to support one another. In a small town like Sao Domingos you can have a dozen mini-mercados, all selling virtually the same thing, and they all do just fine because it’s understood that you spread your business out and take care of the others around you—understood both by clients and the businesses themselves, who will urge you to go to Maria Antonia’s bar tonight because you went to theirs two nights in a row and she could use the business. This setting makes micro-finance and micro-credit projects very feasible, because they don’t necessarily have to compete with larger corporations or monopolies (yet…just wait for globalization to take over).

8/6/06

I haven’t really journaled all week for various reasons, so I’m going to attempt to update all at once. Get ready for long-winded Courtney.

We’ll start with yesterday. Yesterday was what I’ll call my first shitty day in Cape Verde. And I almost feel bad calling it shitty, because really not all that much specifically happened, at least nothing huge or life-altering. But I feel justified in allowing myself to have a bad day once in awhile and not let it mean I’m not happy in general. Come on—I’m adjusting to a new culture, frustration happens. Anyway, yesterday was just full of me feeling sick and generally down-in-the-mouth. It was one of those days when you want or need a little extra rest, but you get the opposite—not five consecutive minutes alone. One of those days when you don’t understand 90% of what’s going on around you because you’ve suddenly lost all mental capacity to comprehend or speak Criolu. One of those days when you just plain miss home, want someone to allow you to be sad, want your Mom. Which is what I spent most of the day looking forward to—the opportunity to talk to my whole family all at once. Mom’s side of the family had a reunion, so everyone was going to be altogether at once, and so she was going to call so I could talk to everyone, including Lindsey since it was her birthday. Instead, the house phone chose that exact moment (literally, it was working ten minutes before when my dad called) to stop working, apparently because it was going to rain and the phone poops out when it’s going to rain (damn psychic phone). So no phone calls for me. I went to my friend Tiffany’s house to try and use her phone and calling card, called every number I had and left three messages on cell phones, which I wasn’t even sure they were getting. I waited to see if they would call me on that phone, every minute growing sadder and more exhausted. No one called. I went home and cried for the first time since I got here. It’s so strange because I knew before I left for the Peace Corps that communication would probably be difficult, and I’ve been fortunate to even be able to talk to my family at all, but it still broke me down last night. Just one of those moments when all you want is the one thing you can’t have, and you’re helpless. And it won’t be the last of those moments, but they’re not the end of the world. Really I suppose that should be the least of my problems. But man I just wanted to hear everyone’s voices and remember that I am loved. Oh well. Happy birthday, Lindsey. Sorry I couldn’t pull through for you.

So after that I got dragged to a late-night festa where I was forced to dance in a hot sweaty room until 2 am. I was beyond exhausted. Although I will say this: the festa was pretty entertaining, well worth the exhaustion. We couldn’t figure out exactly what the purpose of the party was (probably just an excuse to dance), but everyone had to wear black and pay to get in (presumably to cover food and drink costs. They said the black had something to do with witches…I think they just wanted an excuse to look fancy. It was all young people, about 17-28ish years old, and all about crazy dancing and letting loose. Picture a truly traditional African version of Dirty Dancing—except the parents know about the dancing and support it, and would probably take part in it if it wasn’t so late at night. Really, though, observing this was exactly what I pictured an African dance party (minus the indigenous outfits and surroundings) would look like. It was like for one night the true African spirit snuck out for everyone to see. No modernized European influence, just tribal-like shrieking and fast, energetic movement. In the middle of the festa they busted out a pastry and birthday candles and started screaming the name of the person celebrating a birthday. Cape Verdeans definitely know how to celebrate a birthday in style—nothing mediocre or somber about it. They swept him off the ground and carried him high above the crowd, singing at the tops of their lungs. Sometime after that they busted out the food: huge platters of rice, meat, and vegetables. Cape Verdeans can’t have a group of people together without having food present, and lots of it. And they’re so sad (or confused) when you don’t have the appetite to eat a large meal at 1:00 in the morning. Anyway, the party continued on to the wee hours and all in all was a pretty good time, though it might have been more fun if I wasn’t so ridiculously tired.
* * *
So we’re all starting to get pretty anxious to hear our site announcements, which is somewhere between 1-2 weeks away (it changes every day). Not knowing exactly where you’re going can make it hard to mentally prepare yourself for service. For me, it is apparently a little more difficult to find a placement because I have to be doing my thesis at the same time, so even though I want to be in a rural site, I have to have regular electricity and semi-regular internet access. It seems likely that I might end up staying on Santiago working at an ICM in a community called Santa Catalina near Assomada, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m trying not to think about it and just let what happens happen. It’s just weird to think about us all separating off to various islands, not being able to hang out all the time and have fun on the weekends together. It’s nice to have a group of people you can experience all of this with…but I’ll be the first to admit that it’ll be great to move out on my own and try to regain a tiny bit of independence. Being under the wing of a large bureaucratic U.S. institution can be reassuring and frustrating at the same time, more frequently the latter during training…though I’m sure it will get better.

It’s interesting how suddenly I’ve switched from spending time with Karla to spending most of my time with Vandiza, my 21-year-old sister. I get the strange feeling sometimes that Karla got bored of me—she’s 13, it happens. Vandiza’s a fun girl, spunky and social and still very youthful. The hopeful, naïve little girl in her pops out every once in awhile, and I’m reminded that even with adult responsibilities and a strength most American 21-year-olds wouldn’t imagine or need to have, girls in the developing world sometimes go through emotional development in similar ways as girls in modernized countries, feeling themselves out in small pieces at a time and finding their place in the community. She is still often self-conscious, worried that she’s not pretty, and not ready to settle down with a husband and a family (she giggles at every mention of boyfriends). One minute she’s fulfilling arduous household chores and the next she’s showing me the old Britney Spears picture she found in a magazine in Praia and posted on her wall, asking with anxious eyes if I love Britney as much as she does. She is competitive and fierce, yet soft and girly when she wants to be, begging me to let her paint my toenails. They’re pink now. Spending time with her (not to mention the rest of my family, and hell, all Cape Verdeans) has shattered my personal space bubble completely. Luckily in some situations that bubble wasn’t too big (or important to me) to begin with. My sides are constantly pinched, fingers interlaced with various girls’, hair tangled with curious hands, and even my chest grabbed by my nonchalant older sister Tania (in a 5-seond language lesson as she passed by, she first pointed to my nose—“what’s this?”—then shoulder—“what’s this?”—then latched onto a boob—“what’s this?”—like it was nothing). The space issue doesn’t really bother me, in fact when it’s my sisters or other women it’s often comforting. Because there’s no stigma here: people touch, they’re open with their bodies, and it doesn’t usually have any type of sexual connotation. The traditional dance funana (very close with lots of hip action) is learned almost as soon as a child can walk, and girls, siblings, adults, everyone really, does it together and at every chance they get. What looks very sexual (and possibly for us awkward) to Americans is just a way to have fun and move to the music for Cape Verdeans. The instant the music comes on a group of Cape Verdeans is there dancing and grabbing your hand to show you how to do it, erupting with glee when you shake your butt like they love to do. And somehow they have all mastered the ability to shake only heir butts while perfectly balancing cups of liquid on their heads. Amazing. Add that to the list of things I want to be able to do by the time I get home.

8/7/06

My mom likes to sit down and watch me eat every meal—every single on, all the way through. At first I found it odd, maybe she’s worried about what I eat, making sure I eat it all, fascinated by me, who knows? But I’ve realized that she memorizes every detail of what I eat, taking note of the things I eat most of, what I don’t eat, and changes her meals accordingly. Extreme, I know, but I think it’s kind of sweet, her way of showing she cares, her way of taking care of me. And also a way to avoid wasting food—why bother with food I won’t end up eating? Plus her sitting with me has proved a challenge for me to continuously think of new things to say or talk about during the frequent awkward silences. Sometimes I just look at her and smile, and she always just laughs. She is truly beautiful.

We often have the sporadic “isn’t-America-great-and-aren’t-you-all-rich?” conversation, to which I stumble through an answer of “Well, no…I mean not everyone…I mean yes, some people have a lot of money, but not everyone…” I try to explain that America is complex, that there are lots of extremes with plenty of grey area, that we have lots of homeless people, and that we aren’t overwhelmed with the plentiful abundance of jobs for all who seeks them. But I always catch myself pausing to think that, well, yes we are rich in a relative sense, in comparison to most. Really my life is vastly different from others because of the wealth and opportunity I’ve experienced. To pretend we don’t experience a certain privilege in our comfortable lives is almost insulting. How confusing it must be to hear from the white girl with her own car in America and a ticket to Cape Verde that no, not all Americans are rich. No wonder she always gives me an amused look of disbelief. It’s interesting to think where some of the mistaken perceptions must come from—she was surprised to find out we have mosquitoes in the States too—but I suppose if your only real exposure to the US is one past Peace Corps Trainee and brief clips from a Brazilian novella called “America”, you might end up making up your own oasis-like idea of what life must be in that faraway wealthy country. Mama always jokes that Karla will eventually come to the States and I can show her what life is like. Her perception of America is much like the more rural areas we encountered in Central America (and assuredly throughout the rest of the developing world), an idealized notion of the “American dream” that represents everything they feel they are lacking. And I suppose so much of that perception is or may be determined by the country’s interaction with the US: Cape Verde doesn’t have a past history or current experience of violent or negative relations that were/are prevalent in other parts of the world—instead, many of their families live in the States and send back money to Cape Verde. Of course they must think there’s endless money in America. And of course each person’s opinion will be different depending on their own experience.

8/8/06

Today was another excellent day for CD class, in a different way than the day we went to SOS. A Volunteer in Mindelo, Sao Vicente who works for an emergency infant center under an ICM (Cape Verde’s short-term orphanage organizations I will be working for) came to speak to our class about the problems with youth in Cape Verde. He gave a very realistic perspective of what it will truly be like to work for an ICM or other organizations that work with severely disadvantaged youth—very frustrating. At the center, they temporarily house kids up to age 12 who have dangerous or abusive home situations, who are usually sent to the Center when the police have been called and social workers come to remove the child(ren) from the home. There are so many holes and problems with social services here it’s hard to know where to begin. They are desperately understaffed, underfunded, and under-motivated. The system is inherently flawed because little is being done (or is able to done) to work with families to change behavior or increase understanding/awareness of child-rearing or child development, nor is much done to rehabilitate families or provide counseling, treatment, etc. Instead, kids come to the Center for 9 months, are sent back to their families, then return to the Center again so that it becomes a revolving door for the same troubled children, who come back worse (i.e. with more problems) each time. There are no laws in Cape Verde regulating the behavior of minors (i.e. criminality), and therefore there isn’t a juvenile court in existence. The relationships between social workers and judges who decide where these youth are to go are apparently very informal and superficial, and kids are almost always returned to their abusive families. There is a temporary-care system through the ICM (like short-term foster care), but it is under-promoted with a shortage of willing couples/families ready to take on more children. In Cape Verde, it is an odd concept that someone outside of your biological/extended family could take your child—even if you aren’t adequately providing for your children or even care about them. So families want their children back home, even if there are ten other kids, none of whom they can really take care of. This is a major problem in Cape Verde—they have so many kids and a very high teen pregnancy rate (especially since males generally have several girlfriends, or pikenas, all over the place), with not enough resources to help these kids and families. The result is a very apathetic attitude—“These underprivileged kids are beyond our capacity to help, so why bother if we can’t even provide for our own children?” It’s a very lost-cause mentality, truly sad, but one in which there will hopefully be room for improvement. The government of CV and provision of services are so new that it will understandably take some time to get things up and running smoothly. And what better time to be able to get involved, when things are being molded and change can be made…it’s quite a challenge to think about, something that needs a lot of work and that runs the risk of feeling overwhelming, but I’m encouraged that small improvements can be made. It was also very helpful for the Volunteer to describe the real conditions, the real hardships, and the real attitudes he has encountered. How depressing it can be to know that all the children have scabies (I won’t describe the awful condition in detail, just trust me that it’s miserable) and play in sandboxes filled with cat feces, and there’s little you can do to help them and people are reluctant to assist in preventive measures. How helpless you can sometimes feel. And it’s something that I know will be hard for me (not taking the job home, not carrying the weight of these poor children on my shoulders), but something I think I can and want to overcome, something I want to challenge myself with and that can stretch me in a lot of ways. I suppose overall today was a day of healthy, encouraging realism—not everything is perfect or runs smoothly, and there is a lot of frustrating and heartbreaking work to be done. I’m ready to go to it. It’s where I truly want to be right now.