Theme for the week: I DON'T CARE!

8/22/06

Today we finally started taking some concrete steps forward for our youth development project in São Domingos. We got some logistics settled for our girls’ futbol game and got to start doing the best part: going around to the different zones and getting girls to sign up to play and basically beginning to spread the word. I was nervous that we would get no response, that girls would be too shy or uninterested, but our player round-up was a great success. I think the best move we made was to start with the girls in my neighborhood who I already knew were interested—my sisters, my neighbors Sara and Keila, and Nadia and Tiffany’s sisters. These girls are so great, I can’t even describe. I got them to sign the list first and then they took us around the surrounding zones where they knew girls lived, particularly those who like futbol, and signed them all up. What’s awesome is that they literally know just about everyone and where they live, which makes things so much easier than going out on our own not knowing who we’d find. Plus having members of the community with you offers easy access to homes—the girls just walked in any home they wanted and yelled the name of who they were looking for. I think what I liked most was that they were really proactive; they took charge and ran with it, no questions asked, which is how I think it should be. Ideally we PCTs/PCVs shouldn’t be doing a whole lot on our own, we should be motivating the people involved in or affected by the project or event to do most of the work so that they are more invested, more likely to continue it in the future, and they know how to go about it. And I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of girls really interested in playing. Just walking around two zones (neighborhoods) we got 37 girls to sign up! So hopefully this will turn out to be a big deal, if we can get things all organized in time *fingers crossed*. It’s just a great feeling to finally be doing something tangible, something the community can see. It makes you feel that much more integrated, especially when you can walk around and get to know people’s names, their families, where they live, etc. It was just a really fulfilling afternoon, walking around with my favorite girls, arm-in-arm, singing songs about mosquitoes and getting excited about futbol.

Speaking of mosquitoes, I finally broke down tonight and put up my mosquito net—7 weeks into training and 3 weeks before I leave. I thought I could hold off hassling with it until I got to site, but I got so sick of being eaten alive and of walking up in the middle of the night to the pesky buzzing haunting my ears, knowing they’re picking the best spot to attack. It’s enough to make you start going insane, thinking you feel them all over you, starting to twitch. Dramatic, maybe, but I’ve spent many a sleepless night frantically swatting the little turds and crawling out of my skin feeling them all around me and itching like crazy. So the horrendously ugly green net has gone up. And it really is ugly, collapsed on one side so I have just enough room to sit up, an awful pukey color. And apparently it’s coated with some sort of substance that kills flies, who are now dropping “like flies” (haha…ha…) all over my room and creating a nice attractive layer of dead insects. So sexy. At least they’re no longer flying around in my face. Anyway, we’ll see if this nasty contraption successfully salvages what’s left of my arms and legs after the mosquitoes had their way.

8/27/06

So I’m starting to realize that the more languages you have floating around in your head, the more difficult it becomes to comprehend your own. The last two weeks (particularly since we started Portuguese last week) I’ve felt my knowledge and understanding of English fading quickly. Seriously. It’s like my brain can’t hold that much information, so it’s just booting out English little by little as new knowledge of Portuguese and Criolu come in. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true: people have to repeat things for me all the time and it sometimes takes me awhile to understand what people actually mean. I feel like my ability to understand sarcasm is suffering too—which is the saddest part because I love my sarcasm and now I can’t tell when people are joking. Very unfortunate. Have no fear, I haven’t lost all sense of humor, there’s just like at least a 10 second delay now. I was thinking I was crazy until I realized all the other PCTs are experiencing the same thing: we’re just a big confused mess. It’s hard to explain things (like to family back home) when you can no longer articulate yourself. So I apologize for my lack of eloquence. And forget about Spanish; it has helped me in learning Portuguese because the structure is very similar and if I heard it again I’d understand perfectly, but when I try to speak it, it comes out in mush—a weird combination between Criolu, Portuguese, and what little Spanish is still hiding in corners of my brain (quickly being replaced by the two other similar languages). My LASP friends would be so disappointed. On the flip side, though, if I ever go back to Latin America (or when I go back) I think my Spanish will kick ass because I’ll understand the grammar even better and will be a master at switching between all the languages muddled in my head.

That said, two languages at once is hard, especially when you only really use one of them. Portuguese is hard enough, let alone not being able to practice it, since no one speaks it. As much as I’d like to be fluent by the end of these two years, it’s going to take a lot of outside work, and I may have to settle for being conversational. In class most of what I say comes out in Criolu, and now on the streets I’m starting to mix in Portuguese with the Criolu. My brain doesn’t quite know what to do. But I know soon enough it will all start coming together, it’ll just take time. I can’t wait for the moment when it just clicks and suddenly you feel comfortable and it makes sense. And I’m confident that will happen eventually…I have so much respect for people who can speak like 7 languages, it’s incredible.

8/28/06

Friday night we went to a party of a Volunteer who is COS-ing (close of service-ing), which was a great time, then afterwards (at crazy hours of the morning, of course) went to join the wedding festa that was going on in my neighborhood for the woman who owns one of the mercados and was getting married on Saturday. The thing about Cape Verde, as I think I mentioned before, is that they’ll take any excuse to party for days on end—so a wedding means a party the day before, a party the day of, and a party the next day…and probably some more partying somewhere inbetween. The weddings we’ve seen so far in town have had the actual event in Praia, and then all the partying is done in São Domingos, the bride and groom paraded through town in a decorated car. A good time is had by all, and most of the men in town are drunk by 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Speaking of drunk men, when we stopped by the party on Friday night, we went to the top balcony of the local hotel where everyone was dancing to partake in the fun. One might think that when you notice very few women dancing and an assload of drunken men, it might be best not to partake, but we learned that lesson too late. We stayed on the outer edge of the party, but were eventually lured in to the sea of men who proceeded to act like flies on a spoonful of honey, grabbing at all parts of your body, pulling you in every direction to come dance with them. I don’t know that I have ever had that many guys touching me at one time. I had to yell to my neighbor friend Igor to come rescue me, so I danced safely with him and then ran back to the edge of the crowd with the American guys who were watching and praising the Lord they were male Peace Corps Volunteers, not “cursed” with being female. Well it was an experience anyway. And not the last, I’m positive. I’m becoming good at ignoring the men that call out and make the famous Cape Verdean “pssssciu” sound as you walk down the road: better safe than sorry, right?

* * *

On Saturday all the PCTs went to Tarrafal with the staff and took a little tour inbetween of Picos, Assomada, and the concentration camp in Tarrafal created by Portuguese colonialists. Altogether it was a pretty good day, and I got to learn more about my site, which makes me even more excited to be there in two weeks! Assomada is full of history, particularly because it’s located in the interior, where the slaves ran to flee from Portuguese colonizers in Praia. So a lot of the traditional African culture preserved by the slaves and transformed into its unique Cape Verdean context was borne out of Assomada. The traditional music tabanka, from which funana and batuk came, was originally a way for the slaves to communicate with each other. It involves a rhythmic beat with women slapping their knees with their hands (for lack of drums), women singing to the beat, and men playing conch shells. This music was the only way they could speak to each other under slave rule, so they used it to communicate in all ways, to let each other know that they were going to escape into the hills, to speak of each other’s pain, etc. When they had no food, no water, and were near dead from exhaustion, tabanka was a way for them to stave off the pain and forget about their surroundings. The lady that was telling us all about it gave a demonstration, and you couldn’t help but be caught up in the energy and the rhythm of it all. It made me really excited to be staying there for the next two years, with such a rich musical history. Plus they have this wonderful huge women's market on Wednesdays, which I'm excited to see in action.

After the tabanka lesson, we went to the concentration camp in Tarrafal, which was created in 1936 and modeled after the camps used by the Nazis, complete with torture devices including what was called the frigideira, a dark enclosed space with a few puncture holes for air. This represented the camp’s “slow death” philosophy as nearly all who entered died soon after leaving it. The camp existed primarily for political prisoners, many of whom were Portuguese anti-fascists during World War II. Later, when Cape Verdeans began to be imprisoned there in the 60’s, it was mainly used for rebels against Portuguese colonial rule, those who fought for Cape Verdean’s and Guinea-Bissau’s independence. It was pretty bizarre to find a place like that in Cape Verde; although it wasn’t nearly as dramatic or intense as Auschwitz for example, you don’t expect to find a place like this in the little African islands no one knows about.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach at Tarrafal, one of the nicer beaches on Santiago, and I was happy to be reminded that I will be only a quick hiace ride away from visiting Nina (another PCT who will be living there) as often as possible. I really just love the beach. I love swimming, laying in the sun, everything about it. It was overall just a happy day, relaxed, informative, and of course sunny. It really pays to be doing the Peace Corps in an island nation…such amazing benefits!

8/29/06

So there’s this boy. I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t want to hear it—just hear me out first. The boy is my neighbor and he is simply beautiful. He’s very kind, humble, fun, sensitive, and he has a smile that knocks you clear off your feet. Seriously, he’s just plain gorgeous. He’s worked hard all his life to support his family since his father died when he was six months old, so he’s very family-oriented. And so I’d like to continue to be friends with this boy, who has recently told me (very shyly) that he likes me (how very kindergarten) and wants to come visit me in Assomada to get to know me better. Hmmm…I told him I wouldn’t mind. Now before you start to lecture me, understand that I plan to take our friendship at turtle pace, not to mention not putting expectations on the situation. If anything, it could just be a fun flirtation. So stop worrying (because I know you are, Mom)! The awkward part of it all is a good friend of mine (a PCT) likes him as well, so he is being very cautious not to hurt her feelings. Thank goodness in two weeks I won’t have to worry too much about it—she’ll be on another island and we can preserve our friendship without drama, it’s the last thing any of us needs. Damn dateable Cape Verdeans (we have all decided that Cape Verdeans, being the culture that it is here, are very dateable: not as big of a leap as it might be in other Peace Corps countries for other PCVs trying to make relationships work in drastically different cultures). And so there’s my story about this boy, which I figured I could share with you all, being my avid blog-readers and all (all three of you…:)). Who doesn’t love sharing their thoughts on the world wide web for the whole world to see?