Outkast is everlaaastin'...

I have to take a short break from work to write about my elatedness at this moment, the moment when a Peace Corps Volunteer truly feels her role being done as it “should” look. I have been trying to elicit help from the youth volunteers at the CEJ to come help out at the girls’ Center, seeking to create interest in Cape Verdeans to volunteer in areas of most need, and making connections between all these different pockets of youth in all these different institutions. So two weeks ago I announced at the CEJ that I was organizing a group of whoever was interested to come and help, primarily with studies, at the ICCA Center. I immediately got a list of people with their contacts who wanted to help. Awesome. I tried to follow up and call people, and after weeding out all the bad phone numbers, we got about 4-5 available youth and the participation of the Red Cross youth (which has a core of 64 volunteers), which is just the small start we need. I have since been contacting the local President of the Red Cross to start establishing connections, planning exchanges, seeing how we can get people involved in helping the girls, reducing the stigma in the community, etc. etc. Today, finally, we sat down with Andreia and talked concretely about options for volunteering, for planning joint workshops/life skills sessions, and for doing cultural afternoons (with dance, theater, music, etc.) together. Three excellent girls involved in the CEJ showed up, and I sat back and watched as a wonderful connection was made between the people present, talking about the needs in the Center and how each one could contribute. In actuality I participated very little in the meeting and instead threw my input and support in where needed, which is as it should have been. It just felt good seeing people’s willingness to help come together with specific needs and me having such a little part in it. All it took was me asking and making a few phone calls, and people stepped up. Just when I start to lose faith in Cape Verdeans, I get proved wrong, thank goodness. And it turns out to be very good that we only have a few individuals to start off with because there are so many structural issues to be worked out within the Center and so many problems with the staff that we don’t want them to be turned away from volunteering and turn everyone else away as well. This way we can experiment with the addition of a few new youth volunteers from the community, see how they integrate, how the staff responds, how the girls react, etc. before we start to elicit more help. Because now I know the help is out there. There are willing people, which is good to know. So today, this morning, was a good experience, a good feeling to see your role as the nearly-invisible facilitator, just bringing people together and doing little else. So yay.

I guess all the screaming I was talking about before finally paid off and someone heard.

As another note, I have officially begun giving English classes at the CEJ, even though I didn’t really want to originally. I figure it will help give me experience for the future, knowing what it is like to teach language and being able to do it elsewhere. So even though it takes up time I could be using to do other things, I have about 9-12 people each session (I do two a week, so about 20 youth) who come to hear what Teacher has to offer so they can learn to talk to tourists and go study outside of the country. The first lesson when we talked about why people wanted to learn English, I ended up imploring them to come back to Cape Verde instead of just getting educated and staying abroad, which is what a large part of the population ends up doing. Teacher has very definite objectives for her English class, and has a hard time keeping her opinions out of discussions. Teacher needs to work on that. P.S. Teacher is my new name since they can’t say my real name. Teacher also has two classes each full of males, one girl per class. Teacher wonders if the participation includes a small factor of male interest in the new white foreign girl. Hmm…

One last thing. We took the first group of girls to Tarrafal last Sunday, and had a wonderful time. Even though the mães forgot to bring balls and toys to play with, we buried each other in sand, played in the water, hunted for sea creatures, and ate lunch and snack, a truly complete day at the beach. Here are some pictures from the experience:

This girl, Patrícia is soooo adorable. She was cleaning the sand off my feet for me:)

Haha, we filled her suit with sand so she'd look pregnant. When you don't have things to make sandcastles, you get creative...
We borrowed a ball from local boys for a bit.

We will be taking the second group this coming Sunday, I’ll post pictures of that later. Aaaaand, I get to stay in Tarrafal because IST is finally arriving! Woohoo, finally we get to spend a week with all the Volunteers, sharing stories, having fun, bitching about Peace Corps, etc. etc. We are staying in these cute little bungalows right on the beach and much fun will be had, I am sure. I am also sure there will be plenty of pictures to show from that as well. But for now, I should get back to work…no more slacking off…