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.