We threw a party last Saturday. Mexican themed-ish. It wasn't huge, just a dozen friends or so, mostly from work, plus Shon's brother and sister, as well as my friend Walter, who has been fiending Mexican food for like a year. Apparently he had tacos once in Praia and loved it. Nadia and I put it together at the last minute, because Boas Compras (the biggest store on the island) randomly got a shitload of ground beef. Like most things around here, it comes and goes at random. So Nadia unexpectedly bought 2.4 kg of it, and we tacoed it up. Nadia made beef and tortillas, and I made some spanish rice and black beans. Everyone else brought booze. So we powered through a couple cases of beer, a bit of ponche, and most of a bottle of tequila. Most people had never had tequila, except of course Walter who refused to drink any for the same reason that most people stay away from tequila (people tend to lose their taste for the stuff after one bad experience, and it seems like everyone has had that one bad night - except me), but I demonstrated the salt-shot-lime method, and it was throughly enjoyed by all. Especially Jonny, who downed at least 7 shots by Shon's count (plus beer and ponche), though he only remembers 4 and thinks we're all lying. In any event, the food was good, and everyone liked it a lot, even the skeptics. And most of us got drunk. Which resulted in...

Verdade ou consequência. If you cannot translate this, go away. Cape Verdeans love this kind of game. Keep in mind that everyone here ranged from 19-30, so this wasn't your average 16 year old's game. That being said, nobody here ever wants to take a damn dare, so I'm pretty sure that I did nearly every one (except Jonny, who was dared to do more tequila shots. what a sport). But the damn bottle kept landing on me, over and over again, and everyone was determined to get me to hook up with Jaqueline. Now, it's no secret among us that I've liked Jaqueline for a while now. I've taken her out before, and I hang out at the café a lot when she is working. Nothing has ever come of it, because she is leaving for São Vicente to go back to school on Thursday, and like a smart girl, she doesn't want to get involved with anyone, etc etc. At least that was my take on it, which turned out to be correct. First, before the game even started, everyone maneuvered us out onto the balcony alone for about half an hour, but she wouldn't kiss me, for pretty much exactly the reasons that I thought. And once we were back inside and the game was on, we were primo targets. First she was forced to admit that she does, in fact, like me (pleased), and then I was forced to do all sorts of ridiculous shit, such as a declaration of love for her, answering all sorts of uncomfortable questions, etc. Fortunately, I had enough to drink that I wasn't feeling shy about it at all, so no embarassment on my part. In any event, she still wouldn't really kiss me in front of everyone, but I settled for a peck at the end of the night. Could be worse. But it was a pretty good party overall, and people stuck around until about 1 am. Half the people don't live in Vila and another quarter had babies at home, which makes all-nighters kind of impossible.

I'll put some pics up on facebook when I get them from Nadia.

Anyway, I'm on the hunt for a new project now. I've got one more advanced class coming up next week, which will last two weeks. After that, I'm going to restart my standard courses, with the new addition of a PowerPoint class. But that's really only like 10 hours a week, so I need something else big to do. Options: attempt to interest the câmara in networking the building. I may drop in there later this week and try to gauge the interest level. It's been tried once before, and met a lukewarm reception. But we are now one of the wealthiest câmaras in the country, and one of the last that still has ancient computers and no network. So we'll see.

Next option: try and get the One Laptop Per Child program to get in Cape Verde. Obviously this is something I would only be able to kick-start. It would be a massive project of several years and encompassing a few million dollars. But if I could get a proposal in and start the coordination, I think it could go a long way. Think about it. Right now OLPC is starting mass production of laptops, but they are having order problems. Apparently Brazil and Nigeria failed to order a million each. I guess OLPC wants to limit orders to a million or more, mainly because they don't have the money or staffing to deal with multiple small orders. But if they are having problems, I don't see why CV shouldn't be able to order 200,000 laptops. We're the perfect fit for the program: a progressive democracy, low corruption, wealthiest country in sub-Saharan Africa, small size, existing national education system. The IT infrastructure already exists, and there is an organization in the government called NOSi (Nucleo Operacional da Sociedade de Informática) that has the leadership capability to oversee the development of such a project. In fact, NOSi's national strategic plan calls for the development of educational programs on a national level, which the OLPC program fulfills in large part. I already emailed a guy in NOSi whom I met last year to see if they even knew about the program (and also to ask about the câmara's potential network). I haven't heard back yet, but that's no surprise. I'll just try again later.

We're also doing another World AIDS Day thing this year. We've already started some planning, so hopefully it all goes down as well as last year.

Lunch time.

Ok. Let’s try to catch up on the last month. Probably they best way would be to admit right off the bat that life has pretty much returned to its normal sleepy ways. I’ve been back in Sal Rei for a month and change, and it comes as no surprise that nothing has changed at all.

Two weeks after coming back here though, I left again, just for a weekend. That weekend was the Festival de Praia Santa Maria over on Sal. It’s a huge two day music festival, second only to Baia das Gatas on São Vicente. So I took the boat over and stayed at Kyle’s house for the weekend. Four other PCVs were supposed to come from Santo Antão and São Nicolau, but Natawnee is the only one that made it. Mike’s boat was cancelled due to lack of passengers, and Jocelyn and Yasmin’s boat was overbooked, causing a near riot in their town that the police had to break up. So it was just the three of us instead of six. But ok.

Maybe I need to elaborate a bit on this boat ride, because… well it was interesting. The boat was late, of course, by about 4 hours. So instead of leaving mid-afternoon, we left after dark. A nice side effect of this is that everyone passed the time by drinking a lot, so a good percentage of the nearly 200 people on board were wasted, and got even more so because of course they sell beer on the boat. Lots of beer. Anyway, I’m ok on boats most of the time, but the sea was rough and it was night, so I was feeling a bit queasy. I chilled in the back with Stravagant and all the windsurfer guys for a while, and then moved myself when the chick next to me almost barfed on my feet. For an island-dwelling people, Cape Verdeans have a serious propensity for seasickness. I’d put the percentage at around 40 for number of people vomiting over the side (or on the floor, on other people, my feet, wherever). Anyway, I was sleepy, so I found a comfy spot by the side and slept for a couple hours. Unfortunately, my comfy spot included some sort of foul dead fish liquid that ended up soaking through my clothing and my backpack, leaving all my clothing for the weekend smelling like… I can’t even describe it. Fucking awful though. I actually had to throw out my belt because the smell wouldn’t leave even after soaking it in bleached water for a night. Anyway, we got to Sal at around midnight and I caught a ride into Espargos, for the low price of whatever change I had in my pocket because the driver didn’t want to deal with finding change for my 1000 escudo bill (1000 escudos = $10-ish. A lack of change is a chronic problem in this country).

Anyway, we passed most of Saturday lounging around and being lazy because we had to reserve energy for the night. Festivals here don’t even start until midnight most of the time. But we went to Santa Maria in the late afternoon to find our hotel room and get some dinner. Which brings me to two side notes. One, the câmara furnished us with backstage passes and a hotel room. Well, the room was for Kyle and his colleague Moises, but four can fit almost as easily as two, so we managed. But the backstage passes got us behind the stage where we drank free beer and munched on snacks with the VIPs and musicians. It was awesome. Second side note: We started drinking at noon. This will be impressive shortly. Anyway, the hotel room was small but comfy (HOT SHOWER. AIR CONDITIONING.), but most importantly right on the beach by the boardwalk where the barraca of vendors was set up. And there was a swimming pool, which turned out to be salt water, but cool nonetheless. The stage was set up right on the beach by the water and there was a big crowd from early evening on. The number I heard quoted was 30,000 people, but I don’t know how accurate that is. I could believe it.

So the music started late and it was good. I didn’t know who most of the bands were, but it was still good. A few: Maria da Barros – lives in the US, has a really nice voice, a lot of fun. Mayra Andrade – amazing voice, but mellow music, not so good for a festival, Kassav – everyone else’s favorite except mine; he was ok, but eh… Banda do Pirata – some Brazilians dressed up as pirates and doing lots of dance-y music; weird but lots of fun. Heavy H – famous, good voice, boring music. African Roots – all reggae covers, but pretty entertaining. Youssou N’Dour – The showstopper. He’s the biggest star in Senegal, and he’s been around for ages. Awesome stage presence, huge percussion section, and just all around ridiculously good. Go find his CDs. Seriously. Live if you can. Anyway, Kyle and I wandered around all night, stopping backstage for beer refills and relaxation in between shows. We hung out with a lot of his friends from Sal, and a ton of people from Boa Vista were around. So we drank and danced steadily until around 7 am. So, that’s 19 hours pretty much non-stop. Go us. Day two was basically identical, except that we slept for 4 hours in the middle of the afternoon.

Monday morning, we got up after 2 hours of sleep, went to Espargos, slept for another hour and change, and then I went to Palmeira and got on the boat to go back home. This boat ride was pretty subdued, because everyone was wasted and exhausted, or just hung over. I sat up top this time with Shon and Betty, who were on their way back from a month of vacations on São Vicente and Sal. A girl I know was sitting across from me and probably wins the prize for drunkest person on the boat. After shouting a lot and then eventually flopping over in her seat, she then slid onto the floor, passed out in the aisle between benches, threw up a little, then peed herself. Awesome. People were jumping everywhere to grab their luggage in time to avoid the stream of piss rolling across the floor from her. Nice girl most of the time though.

Which brings me back to Boa Vista. Where I have been lounging around, working, reading, swimming, and generally enjoying my peace and quiet again. More later.