Blue moon...you saw me standin alone...

I stayed up late last night to finish reading The Secret Life of Bees and am now sitting wondering how I want to respond. It’s a beautiful book, wonderfully descriptive and strongly personal. And I’m left feeling the same thing I often feel when finishing a good book, as though I’m not quite sure who I am or where I’m at. That’s the problem with a good book, or really any book that takes you away from reality to create a new proposed reality, or someone else’s reality: you melt into it, feel yourself there, imagine your life within the character’s, hurt when she hurts and can’t pull yourself away from this other life. Then when you put the book down, your mind can’t see through the fog to remember where you are. And then it hits you that you have a very different reality, that your life isn’t what you’ve been feeling for the past few hours, back to the real world. It’s always hard for me to finish a good book, no matter how much I want to and will sit for hours until it’s done, because I know when it’s done I will have to say goodbye to the world I just came to briefly love. And my own reality here in Cape Verde is an equally beautiful reality, not one I am disappointed to return to, but there’s something about the internal solidarity that you can feel with a good novel that is hard to describe in words when you feel a distinct loss at its end. And maybe that’s the beauty of it: if you can’t get that involved in a book, what good is it? And maybe the sadness comes from the longing, the desire to be where the person is, to experience what they live, and for a short time to be able to imagine that you have it, that it’s all yours. And as much as it hurts a little to end this book, I realize that it is part of what makes me feel alive and what helps me to escape for a moment the things that weigh my heart down.

This week was one of those paradoxical weeks where at the same time that it’s wonderful and new, it’s frustrating and trying. A little more of the latter at times. My second day at the ICM I sat down with Andreia and we spoke about the center, how it works, what people’s responsibilities are, what her duties are, what kinds of the things they need, what things I can be involved in, and I left feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes you don’t think about how it would feel if you suddenly got everything you asked for all at once; when it rains, it pours. I asked for experience in social work, for responsibility, for a chance to get myself organized and be self-motivated, to dive in and work with children in other cultures with some of the hardest situations. And I got it. So I can’t complain, and really I’m not. It’s just that sometimes it hits you like a freight train that you are only one person, and while your role is supposed to be only to mobilize change and facilitate the actions of others rather than do everything yourself, sometimes you sit and realize there just isn’t anyone else who wants or is willing to do it. That’s the problem with working with “the least of these” and the areas of the most need, you don’t always have the luxury of sitting back and organizing, getting people to get up and act to make change—instead you have to do a lot of brunt work yourself, or focus on making structural change. In Cape Verde there are very few people who are trained in social sciences like psychology and social work, because most people can’t finish high school and wouldn’t dream of having the money to go to college, and if they do they generally study to become teachers or go to trade school to work in more “practical” professions. So you have an ICM center where one social worker fresh out of her social work degree is acting as coordinator, director (since they don’t have one), official social worker, activity coordinator, financial collaborator, and sometimes glorified babysitter. They just don’t have the money to pay anyone else to come in, and good luck finding volunteers (though I am determined to find willing hearts to help). Other than herself, Ivete, and the psychologist, no one who works at the Center has any training (formal or informal), and she really wants to see some workshops or training sessions come to the center, since no one really knows a lot about dealing with special needs children, or about group dynamics and how to discipline 30 girls at once, or even about basic health and safety needs. She listed off the formações she wants to bring in (with assumedly my involvement), the financial constraints, the need for collaboration with other organizations, the activities and programs she wants to see, and I had a vision flash before me of my next two years, without a second to breathe. It might help if at first I focus on being more time efficient—instead of telling me to come in at a certain time and then having me wait 30-45 minutes before we can do anything, and then in the afternoon instead of getting to know the girls and some of the activities they do going around town and watching her do her grocery shopping. I understand it, though, the need to escape from the office, to get outside, to try and multitask, but it just seems like I spend more of my time waiting and wandering than learning. And part of me really did expect this, there are very different mentalities regarding time in this culture, as there was in Latin America, as there is in the rest of Africa, as there is in many parts of the world. But another part of me was hoping that this is just because it’s the first week, and they may not be sure what to do with me yet or what I will ultimately be capable or, where I’ll fit, but that eventually we’ll nail down a good working schedule. That may have to be my doing though. The same thing occurred at the CEJ, exactly what they told us to expect: I came for a meeting for a Volunteer fair they’re having this next week at 9:00 am, no one was there yet, and when I asked one of the CEJ workers where the director was, she smiled and said “Here in Cape Verde, meetings that start at 9:00 never start before 10 or 11”. Which is fine, I can learn to expect that, but not when I’m being spread out between 3-4 different locations—I have to be able to plan out my time according to which organization needs me when. Hopefully this next week we’ll be able to sit down and work out a more concrete schedule. At any rate, I’m not feeling very articulate right now. I’m still sad that I couldn’t go to São Domingos today like I was planning, and since we have no working phone, I can’t call my host family to tell them I won’t be there, and to give them my address and potential phone number to give to Igor. And my real family in the States can’t call till they turn our phone on. So I guess it’s just a blue afternoon, but one that will get better as I have a little more down time. And time with the internet:), that always helps a little! Suffice it to say for now that my mind is elsewhere, though I haven’t quite nailed down where that is yet.