Perhaps you are confused. When I said I wanted running hot water, I did not mean that you should take away our running cold water, especially if you do not replace it with hot water. Yes, that's right, we're out of water again. It vanished Saturday night, just a few hours after our guests arrived. Worse, the folks at Alavanca were on vacation for 3 days, meaning that we had no water for Christmas eve, Christmas itself, or the day after. Even worse, the normal place to get water from the community tank has incredibly long lines. Jocelyn and her boyfriend, Daniel, were staying in a hotel, so we took turns taking showers there to stay clean for the weekend. But now they have returned to São Nicolau, and we have lost that benefit. Still worse, we have dishes from a Christmas dinner for 7 in the sink, not to mention a nasty toilet, and no water to clean it with. And I haven't showered in almost 72 hours, but I actually don't consider that a big deal anymore. Oh well.

Nadia has just informed me that she spoke with the Alavanca guy today, and our water is not going to return until FRIDAY. He says its a good idea to keep a barrel of water filled for weeks like this. Yeah, thanks asshole, you could have mentioned this a) when we moved in or b) at least before the water ran out. We just asked Eugene, an American guy who has been living here a couple months on his boat, if he had any big rain barrels to sell, but he ran out. So, we can't actually get enough water to wash the dishes, let alone ourselves, until Friday. Great. Well, at least to flush the toilet, I will be walking to the ocean to fill up on salt water. That's free at least.

On the flip side, Christmas was great. Jon, Brady, Yasmin, Jocelyn, and Daniel were all here for 4 days to enjoy the loveliness of BV. We went to Mazurka Saturday night, and hit up François' place on the bay on Sunday. Daniel got a windsurfing lesson, but spent more time falling off the board than actually cruising. It's hard. I took it out for a spin as well, and I was surprised at how well I am doing in terms of not falling, already. At one point, I ended up right over a shallow reef where the waves break low but fast, and I actually caught a wave and took off. Scary for my 2nd time out, but fun. More importantly, I can now brag that I once spent Christmas eve windsurfing. On Christmas, Nadia cooked an amazing meal. We had 3 very small roast chickens, roast carrots and potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and of course several bottles of wine. It was very, very delicious. The day after, I took some people up north of here to try to get a good view of the island. Once I was actually there with everyone, I was reminded how very strange BV is and how much I take that for granted. It seemed pretty normal for me to climb a ridge for a view of the desert below, but because it was the first time I've done it with friends, I sort of noticed all over again that my island is not classically beautiful. Unless you're really into brown. But everybody seemed to appreciate the oddness of it.

So, quite the mixed bag these last few days. Food, friends, fun vs dirt, grime, thirst.

Dear Santa,

For Christmas, I would like

• Running hot water: I almost jumped out of my skin when the cold water hit me this morning
• A Napalm Burger from Eli Canon's in Middletown, medium rare, with onion rings
• The following beers: Guinness, Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, Fuller's London Porter, Chimay Grande Reserve, Victory Hop Devil, Freeminer Deep Shaft Stout, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and just throw in whatever else you can come up with. Better make it a case of each.
• Sushi. Lots of it.
• A good size mountain, covered in virgin Utah powder, and a new pair of K2 Apache Crossfires (172 cm)
• A pile of new music of all genres. Anything that is not morna, funana, or zouk is fine.
• A comfortable couch. You'll never realize how great couches are until they're gone.
• A Tool concert
• A really good martini: Bombay Sapphire, dash of vermouth, a little dirty
• A steak, medium rare, with A1
• Some green grass to lounge on for an afternoon. Foss Hill would be ideal, but I won't be picky.
• Shade.
• A real haircut, i.e. one that isn't me with clippers and a mirror
• Fresh fruit. I should probably put this one at the top. Oh lordy I need some real fruit.
• An evening of bar-hopping with the usual crowd somewhere in New York
• Copies of the newest seasons of Nip/Tuck, Family Guy, Rome, and Entourage
• etc etc

If any of these things seem silly, get them for me anyway. Not to give the wrong impression that I am unhappy here. Far from it. But some luxury would be nice.

Ohhhh man, windsurfing is fun. On Saturday, I actually managed to tool around the bay, zipping back and forth. Granted, the board I was using is for beginners, i.e. huge board, small sail, but François was impressed with me overall, which is good. The one thing I am having a hard time with still is turning around without getting off the board and into the water. You have to kind of twist the sail around and let the wind push the board 180 degrees around, while you shuffle your feet to the other side. I fell a lot trying to do that. But I feel an addiction forming. François still refuses to let me pay for lessons. He says I owe him just a beer.

Sunday, I went for a long hike up north. I went past MarineClub, but instead of exploring the first little valley, I continued past, to where a dried up ribeira has carved a much larger canyon and bay. I climbed up a tall hill, mostly on all fours, and then skirted the edge of the valley, still heading north. The view from up on top was pretty damn good, though a small mountain was blocking my view of Sal Rei. Unfortunately, there is an access road leading to the top of the hills from another direction and it looks like a lot of people have chosen to get tanked and smash their bottles up there. Lame. Nonetheless, my goal was to get a view of the northern coast, so I kept going. After I got to the top of another rise, I found that I could see Cabo Santa Maria, which is a huge sweeping beach that covers about half the north shore of Boa Vista. I could also see the famous shipwreck that is there. Who knows how old it is, but it is a huge rusty cargo ship that wrecked itself right on the beach. For whatever reason, no one ever cleaned it up, and now it is an icon of Boa Vista, appearing on post cards and paintings. It was probably 5 miles away, but it’s a pretty big boat, so I had no trouble seeing it. I also got for the first time a solid view of just how small my island is. Standing on the hill, I could see both the north and west coasts, as well as the long oasis that stretches from Vila to Rabil, not to mention the Deserto do Viana beyond, and the mountains off in the distance. In all, I probably had a full quarter of the island in my field of vision. I guess it helps that it is mostly flat. On top of my small mountain, there was nothing but brown dirt and volcanic rocks everywhere. There are also dry river beds everywhere, and you can see how perhaps once upon a time, there might have been more water here. I’ll bring a camera next time.

Well, as I am sitting here correcting the tests from my Excel class, I can’t help but notice some xenophobic graffiti on my desk. It says “Fock you strangeiro.” Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I love high school students.

A couple things I don’t love though: The first is not having any running water. Wednesday evening, all running water in our building stopped. The next morning, I asked a guy who works for the construction company that owns the place, and he informed me that “ka ten agu’ na red’,” basically meaning that the water pipes in my neighborhood have run dry. So I am not sure when we will have it again, but it better be soon. I am going to be a very smelly gentleman if this keeps up. And we have 48 hour old dishes in the sink that need to be scrubbed. There is a community well/water tank where we can go, but there is always a wait of many hours to get the water, especially when there are shortages in town. Apparently, this is a problem with Sal Rei, so Nadia and I are going to buy a big rain barrel and keep it filled in the house, to make these unpleasant things a bit more bearable.

Next thing I don’t love: correcting really poor exams. While most of my students are getting in the good to excellent range, and clearly know their shit, there are a couple people who are… not doing so hot. As in, couldn’t do anything at all beyond type in a few numbers. Sigh. I guess there are always a few. But on the brighter side, my two star students have also signed up for my English class next month, and can’t wait to sign up for the next computer class, also in January. I’m gonna have my hands full with all the teaching, but at least I will stay very busy. I prefer that to idleness.

It doesn’t feel like Christmas season. It is sunny and in the 80s right now. There is nary a fir tree in sight. But moreover, there are no crowds of people stampeding for the latest hot toy, or clogging mall parking lots, or bidding $3000 for a PS3. These I consider good things. There are also no overbearing window displays, or holiday songs played ad nauseam. Also good things. We have a small shiny silver tinsel tree here in the CEJ with some lights strung through it, but it’s not really doing it for me. When I told my coworkers that I used to live near a Christmas tree farm, where I could walk over with a saw, pick a tree, cut it down, and drag it home, they thought that was pretty funny. When Christmas itself comes along though, we are going to do our damnedest to make it a good holiday. The crew from São Nicolau arrives on the 23^rd, so they will be around for it. We are going to ask our friend Tony’s aunt out in João Galego to hook us up with a fresh, dead chicken to roast. Nadia and I are both supposedly receiving multiple packages from friends and family in the US. My mom and grandma already sent theirs, so I am just waiting for them to arrive. The postal system is so sketchy here.

Ok, gonna finish these tests.

I posted a bunch of World AIDS Day pics on Facebook. Here’s the external link: http://wesleyan.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016033&l=ad73e&id=4200509

But on to the next project, I suppose. While having dinner with Paulo last week, he mentioned problems he was having getting the library here sorted out and set up. We have a library room here at the CEJ that has a bunch of books in it, even more books still sealed in cardboard boxes, no organization whatsoever, and no way to loan books out or anything. So I offered to do my part and figure out the management software bit of the deal. I did a bunch of searching online, but couldn’t find anything useable. Most software available is for large libraries and costs money. Paulo found a bit of software based on Microsoft Access that looked good, until it didn’t work. But it gave me the idea to just make my own. That way, I can modify it as other needs develop. Unfortunately, I don’t know jack shit about Access. I managed to learn enough about it last week to put together the two database tables for books and library members, but I am a bit lost on how to do the other stuff. I’ve requested a book on Access from the Peace Corps resource library in Praia, but I may have to wait until the conference in January to get it.

This weekend, I did nothing, and it was spectacular. Ok, well not quite nothing, but very little. Saturday, I went for a hike alone north of town, past MarineClub. It is mostly just rocks and sand and hills up there, but there are some interesting things. There are the ruins of an old colonial church and another building right next to it, presumably both from the 1500s. The church is on a rock about 10 ft high and faces the ocean where the sun sets, with steps cut into the rock leading to the door. It looks like someone has at least tried to give a half-assed effort at restoring or maintaining it by strengthening the arch of the door with concrete. There is another bay, and beyond it, a bunch of hills and canyons. I explored one of them, but got tired after a while. Next time, I think I’m going to climb one of the larger hills and try to get an idea of how far away the coast to the north is. There’s a road that goes along the coast past the hills and presumably to the coast there. I’d like to bike it, but my bike remains unusable. I popped a tire and can’t find an inner tube of the proper size to replace it. One store only had 24” tubes and the one that was supposed to have 26” tubes was out of stock. Anyway, the hike was good, and afterwards I just lazed around until late night.

I went to Mazurka at about 12:30, with my buddy Alves again. It was a carbon copy of the last time: same people, same music, same everything. They always start out with techno and Cape Verdean pop music, and then inevitably it leads to the slow songs. I hate them. Seriously. I despise this music. Not only is it awful music, but there is only one dance you can do it, and it involves grabbing a partner and doing this half-waltz, half-dryhump for the duration of the song, or sometimes two or three songs (the norm of releasing your partner at the end of the song isn’t really accepted here). Also, I am a poor dancer when it comes to partnered things, which makes it much easier to dislike the whole scenario. So I stood there and watched everybody dance, waiting until the more interesting music came back on. Then I danced more, until once again, they switched to slow crap. Alves and I were fed up by then, though also pleasantly drunk and tired, so we headed home just after 4. The club was still packed.

The weather has taken a turn for the worse here. It is cold and windy. I say this relatively, as it is in the 60s, but that’s pretty chilly for this neck of the woods. But yesterday, there was a constant strong wind from the north, with gray clouds and not a speck of blue sky. I hope it improves soon, because the São Nicolau crew is coming in less than two weeks, and I’d feel like an asshole if our beachy paradise was cold and windy for their vacation. Last night, we even felt a few drops of misty rain, which is pretty astounding. It hardly rains here during the rainy season, let alone in December. The paltry dozen sprinkles I felt were the first hints of precipitation I’ve felt since September. But of course it didn’t really rain. This is Sahel Belt, what did I expect?

What else? Overall, I am enormously pleased with life. That’s it.

So World AIDS Day has come and gone, and I’m sure that all 4 people who read my blog are just dying to know how my event went. And the answer is pretty damn well. At least, the parts that mattered to me went well. But it wasn’t perfect, and I learned a few things about organizing large events in Cape Verde.

First off, in one of the most important ways, it was a huge success: people. Shitloads of people turned out. We had 250 t-shirts to give out and we ran out with many, many more clamouring for more. I am not so naïve as to assume that at least a couple dozen didn’t just take their shirts and go home, but we definitely had well over 200 people. As for runners, not so many: just 19. But asking around, it seems that this is pretty normal. Most people here aren’t into running for competition. It is especially not normal for women to run, and so we had zero female participants. Weak. So two different soccer schools showed up, as well as a basketball school, a Nazarene youth choir, a theatre group, and an old people’s exercise group.

First we gathered at the CEJ in one huge group, to hand out t-shirts and register the runners. I handed out the numbers and took names, while Shon and Iva tried to maintain some order among the eight billion teenagers and little kids running around, and Diva and Aurite handed out the t-shirts. We were supposed to march around town to the praça at 9:30, but that hour came and went, and we were missing one important person: the vareador. It’s pretty normal for people to be late here, especially a person of such local importance, but it still got on my nerves. He showed up over an hour late, having delayed the whole event. But no big deal, onwards. Everyone marched, while I stayed behind to get the runners going. Djoy, the head of the Associação de Atletismo, was also a bit late, and when he came, we discovered that nobody had organized the cars to drive the runners out to the starting line. Fortunately, Paulo was there and he drove a load of us out. So we drove 5 k down a road through the oasis that runs from north of Sal Rei down to Rabil, and we stopped. At this point, it is 11:15 and WELL past the 9:30 or 10:00 start time that I had tried for. So the African sun was blazing in a cloudless sky when we finally took off. Did I mention that I ran the race? Ha ha. Yep.

I knew I was in trouble when immediately everyone else bolted from the starting line, sprinting ahead of me. Normally, this is a stupid thing to do. If you start a 5k sprinting, you’ll die off fast and end up falling behind quickly. Slow and steady, ya know? In high school, I was always in the bottom quarter of the race for the first half mile, but by the last half, I was usually up in the top 10, having passed 100+ people who were all pooped from running a 5:30 mile in the first third. Anyway, my strategy didn’t work this time, because the sun was scorching, the headwind was strong, I was exhausted and hungry, and I was running against 18 black dudes who play soccer every day. But a lot of the guys who took of sprinting died out, as I predicted, and 5 or 6 of them gave up and hopped in the chase car to be driven back to Vila. So in that respect, I didn’t completely lose… Ha, that’s right, 5 sweaty, scorching, stomach cramping, I-want-to-die kilometers later, I finished last, about 100 feet behind the next guy. Nonetheless, I got a lot of cheering and clapping from the finish line crowd, for representing the CEJ in the race and for finishing despite everything. I don’t know what my time was, but it was definitely the worst I’ve run in years. The winner was predictably, a guy named Adilson, who is literally the best runner in the country. He wins every race in Cape Verde, hands down, no contest, as well as international competitions. He is expected to win the ultramarathon this week, too.

All the groups had done little demos of their trade while the race happened, so things were already seemingly winding down when I got back to the finish line. We put together a kid’s race, which was just two quick laps around the praça, maybe a half mile total. These little kids were pretty fast, despite the fact that not one was wearing shoes. Keep in mind that the road is cobblestone. Afterwards, we all went to a restaurant nearby which has a huge kintal (like an atrium: large open space inside a building) for lunch. These nice ladies cooked feijoado for 300 and I stuffed myself. Afterwards, the plan was to return to the praça for a couple more things, followed by some music and a closing ceremony for the trophies (yes, we got trophies and medals). However, after lunch, nobody seemed interested and virtually nobody came back to the praça. Everyone else went home for a nice long siesta. So after hanging around for a while, Iva decided we could just have the music and ceremony at the CEJ later in the week. So the DJ packed up and we all went home for naps, too.

So overall, successful? Hell yeah. The race was fine, if late. The turnout was huge. Everyone wore our t-shirts, and will continue to do so. One thing that was lacking was the stuff from the hospital. Because the doctor is so hard to get a hold of, we never managed to get the condoms from them to hand out. But the head of the Red Cross talked about AIDS and stuff while he was MCing the whole thing, so we managed to keep the message in the event. We took lots of pictures, so I’ll post them when I get them on this computer.

What I learned is to never plan anything that continues after lunch. Also, never assume that people will take care of things: micromanage if necessary. I let a lot of the events just sort of go, with other people managing them. I think this was ok, except for a few circumstances where I wish I had watched closer. Mainly, I think I stepped back from the event a bit too much, and next time, I think I will try to have a closer hand at everything. But enough criticism. It’s done!

Also, someone broke into the CEJ over the weekend and stole the laptop and projector I use for classes. Who steals from a youth center? The laptop is protected by a system password that can't be gotten around or uninstalled. Ha ha.