I guess I’m going to throw one last post up here, so I don’t leave any readers )that I likely do not have anyway) hanging. My last post was somewhat over 3 months ago, from Praia. So what have I been doing since then? Americanizing! That’s right, I now have a job, a house, a 401(k) and a morning commute. Is it weird? Hell yes. But I get ahead of myself.

Upon my return, I hid at home for 3 days, fastidiously avoiding any interaction that wasn’t my parents or a burrito. It doesn’t help that I came back with a rockin’ cold and was being treated for amoebas in my intestines. In any event, I was launched back into the world of normal socializing when I drove up to Wisconsin for my sister’s wedding. Now, this was no average wedding. It was preceded by 5 days of family reunion, involving nearly all of my aunts and uncles on both sides of the family, plus random friends, cousins, significant others, etc etc. It was, in a word, bonkers. I ate a ton of food, schmoozed around a bunch, did a little sailing, kayaking, swimming, reading and the like. I also got mocked a lot, because I was not allowed to drink alcohol due to previously mentioned amoeba medication. Fortunately, that prohibition ended on the same day as the actual wedding. The day itself was really phenomenal, with a big turnout of friends and relatives, plus (predictably) criminal amounts of delicious food and a beer truck with 10 kegs in it. They know how to throw a proper wedding bash up in Wisconsin.

Post wedding, I bummed around my house for about 10 days, doing absolutely nothing worthwhile. It was as great as it sounds.

I flew out to Connecticut in mid-September, where I visited my brother and a bunch of my friends. It was awesome to see people, especially my brother and his kids, one of whom (my nephew Logan) I had never even met before. Ryan, the 3 year old, was an infant when I left, so it was pretty wild to see him walking, talking and assaulting the people in the booth next to ours. He’s a cute kid.

After CT, I went to Brooklyn with my best friend Phil, where he has been living for a couple years. I had dinner with a big chunk of the Wesleyan crew, though a lot of people couldn’t make it. It was pretty much just how you would have expected it to be: everyone is doing a little better, moved up in their jobs, and overall seems a bit older. I mean, we didn’t drink nearly as much beer as we would have 3 years ago…

From there, the real adventure started. My buddy Ari put me up in his apartment for the next 6 weeks while I looked for a job and my own place. I lucked out pretty well in both those areas. I spent a while just sending out resumes and doing my damnedest to get any kind of interview. Ari made things easy by keeping me busy socially and introducing me to about 7 gazillion people every single night of the week. Anyway, after about a month, I got a call back from a little place called DAI for an interview. Since I am such a charming guy, I guess I did pretty well on it and they hired me. It took me another couple weeks to find a place. I must have sent out 15 emails to people on craigslist, and only heard back from a couple. Fortunately, on such email was from 3 guys with a newly opened bedroom in a great neighborhood for a bargain price. We went out a few times, and lo and behold, we got along and I moved in.

So there we go. A happy ending to a two year story. I’m now the acquisitions coordinator at Development Alternatives Inc, where I spent my days learning more than I thought possible about government contracting and proposal writing. I actually like it a lot and I can see myself staying here for a while. DC is an amazing city, and my social calendar is almost always full up for like a week in advance. What a good time.

Thus ends this blog.

I’m in Praia. Ugh. This city can really get you down. Seeing the movement of people is a nice change, but it’s also chaotic and smelly and crowded and generally insane. I’d rather live out my last week in CV somewhere more mellow. Tarrafal is pretty likely this weekend…

Leaving Boa Vista was awful. Really awful. I didn’t think it would be easy, but it sucked even more than I thought. I had two despedidas for somewhat different circles of friends. Friday night was my coworkers and a few other close friends, while Saturday was a grelhada with the surfer crowd and other people. Both were a lot of fun. All my friends on Friday stood around me and gave short little speeches about me. It was pretty awesome.

A lot of other volunteers have left already. There are another half dozen or so leaving at the end of the month. Right now it’s just Kyle and I in Praia, hanging out with the folks who already live here. It’s pretty surreal watching other people prepare to leave, not to mention preparing myself to leave. Everything I own in this country is in two bags in a hotel room. My reports are written and most of my forms are signed. I’ve got my plane tickets from Praia all the way back to Omaha, where my mother will pick me up and drive me back to SD to a house I’ve never actually been to (side note: I don’t have a bedroom there).

I am a strange mixture of excited and terrified. I can’t wait to see people, to have access to some of the small conveniences I’ve missed, to eat good food and drink real beer, and to otherwise enjoy the US. But I have no idea how I am going to react. The crowds in Praia make me nervous, and there are only 100,000 people here. Not only that, but the implications of hearing English all around me are mindblowing. Just hanging around other volunteers for the last few days has been weird, as it usually is for me. I’m pretty used to hearing a constant garble of languages around me, especially on Boa Vista where it might be French, Portuguese, Creole, Italian, Spanish, German or Slovenian. What’s gonna happen to my poor brain when I can understand every word around me? And what do people wear?? My friend Alex just spent a month on home leave before extending an extra year, and she commented on how out of style she was. I can only imagine. I’ve got to catch up on two years of trends and culture, films and music, television and new products. Ugh. I’m not so sure I even want to tackle that. However, I must say that I am pumped to watch the rest of season four of Lost.

And of course, there is the job thing. I have more or less agreed to move in with my buddy Ari in DC in the beginning of October. I’ll be on the east coast in early September for Phil’s engagement party, then roaming through NYC and down to DC. After a month of dropping resumes and cover letters off via internet, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best jobs I find are going to end up being through personal contacts. And I’ve also come to the conclusion that I am not qualified for most posted jobs. All the sites posted online are so specific. “Senior project manager with 10 years experience in small business development” or “Country representative for XYZ Corp, Advanced degree and 7 years experience minimum” and crap like that. Where are the small project support roles that a guy like me could get into? It’s rough. Anyway, I am clinging to the hope that once I am in DC I can start talking to people and find some good directions to move in.

Also, Foreign Service Exam in November. Huzzah!

By this afternoon, I should be an official Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.

Another excellent weekend passed by. Spearfishing with Gerry and Daniel, Mazurka until 5 am, lounging on Estoril all day with pretty girls... Overall not a bad way to spend a couple days. Of course, it makes me pretty disinclined to leave here in two weeks. Yes, that’s right, two weeks. My flight out of Boa Vista is Sunday the 10^th. I have interviews and medical stuff in Praia for three days, and then I have a few days of just bumming around, because I couldn’t get a flight to Boston until the 20^th.

So how does all that make me feel? It makes my head want to pop. Two years is a long time to live somewhere. Ok, maybe if you said in the US “Yeah, I lived in Cincinnati for a couple years,” it might not mean much. Cincinnati doesn’t have much of an effect on people (or anything, I think). But two years of being here is really intense. It’s like living 10 years anywhere else. Not only is Peace Corps in general an extreme experience, but doing it on an island of 4000 takes it to a whole new level.

In any event, I’m excited to go back, but anxious. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to react, but I know it’s going to be strange. Every time I’ve hung out with a European here for the last couple months, I’ve noticed that I don’t understand why they act the way they do. They are bothered by things that I don’t notice. They take too long to get ready. They get anxious and worked up over minor details. They try to get to places on time. I dunno. If that’s how Americans are, it’s going to be a tough adjustment. But I honestly don’t even remember.

I’m not in a particularly philosophical mood at the moment, so I will once again postpone writing about any reactions. Also, I have no idea how I actually feel, because it seems to change every 15 seconds or so. So I’ll let you know once I’ve figured it out. In the mean time…

Things I will miss:

• Estoril beach
• Swimming on my lunch break
• Windsurfing on my lunch break
• 2-3 hour lunch breaks
• My friends
• Crystal clear, warm, blue water
• Being the only white guy at the party
• My work
• Confusing people with baseball references
• Crioulas
• Free time to read a lot
• Telenovelas (oddly enough)
• Cachupa
• Loud drunk Cape Verdeans
• Festivals
• Fresh fish
• Lunch at Gerry and Orquidea’s
• Conversations in 3 or more languages
• Complete silence after 11 pm
• Sitting in the praça for hours for no particular reason
• The desert
• BBQs
• Perfect weather, every day
• Not having to worry about rent, health insurance, car payments, money in general…
• Wearing t-shirts and jeans to work
• Living the rest of my life shirtless or sleeveless
• Being tan all the time
• Games of chess at the wind club
• Ridiculous Creole slang
• Speaking Creole in general
• Coca-Cola made with real sugar
• Riding in the back of pickup trucks
• Shameless dryhumping at Mazurka
• Sitting on my balcony with a beer and chatting with passers by
  

Things I will not miss

• Flies
• Mosquitos
• Struggling with water constantly
• Tourists
• Getting all my sports news in online highlights
• Shitty Portuguese beer
• Eating the same 10 meals on repeat
• Lousy fruits and vegetables
• Obnoxious quads
• Inflated prices
• Street dogs
• Zouk

Things I am going to eat in the next couple months

In no particular order...

• A huge beef burrito at Los Amigos in Elk Point
• Grilled hot dog
• Grilled steak, medium rare
• Mountains of sushi
• Pizza at Pepe's - this will happen multiple times
• A napalm burger: it may be off the menu at Eli's, but they will make me one anyway. Or else.
  
• Everything on the menu at Typhoon
• All my favorite beers, including Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, Anchor Porter, Guinness, Boulevard Wheat, Sam Summer, Sierra Nevada Pale, and so many more than my brain is racing to come up with names and flavors
• At least one fancypants meal in Sonoma with Lennon and Rebecca
• Buffalo wings
• Fajitas
• Something obscenely delicious that my sister will make that I will not be able to predict and couldn't come up with on my own in 150 years
• SALAD
• Piles of fresh fruit
• Delicious South Dakota corn with butter and salt
• My dad's caramelized onion and goat cheese pizza, featuring my mother's homemade goat cheese - my family is ridiculous(ly awesome)
• Terrible faux Chinese food
• Deli sandwiches - I have been craving these for MONTHS. Especially a reuben. And I could go for a Bob's Cardiac Attack from Neon Deli (hot pastrami, provolone and mayo on a buttered toasted roll). And a classic Virginia ham and gouda cheese with honey mustard.
• My mom's preserved lemon and garlic pasta
• A meatball grinder with provolone and hot peppers

I gotta stop making this list, not because I'm out of food items, because it's killing me inside. I am in my last month of service officially. Unfortunately, I had an awesome weekend yet again, and I really don't want to leave. Shit.

And the festa is over. Last week was our municipal festival and saint's day (the saint being Santa Isabel), which is of course, the biggest party of the year. I still need some more recovery time, I think.

Last Wednesday, I went to the finalistas (high school graduates) ceremony and party. Now before you think I am sketchy as hell, remember a few things. First, there are not all that many people my age here, and yeah, I have a lot of 18-20 year old friends. Second, a lot of high school seniors are well over 18, because a lot of people take time off or fail a lot of classes. Third, they all look like they're 25, because this is Cape Verde. Fourth, the drinking age is 18 here and there was an open bar. Fifth... Well it was just a great party is all. The DJ was really good and a lot of my friends were there. The party was so good in fact, that I found myself among the last 10 people in the last car home.

I was supposed to go to bed early on Thursday to rest up for the main event over the weekend, but my "short walk" brought me in contact with the surfista crowd and I got dragged out to the festival area, where I stayed until 2:30. I wasn't even out getting drunk or anything, but it's tough to leave those guys once they get on a roll. It's like a crude comedy show all the time.

Shon came over around noon on Friday to spend the weekend at my place so he didn't have to shuttle back and forth between Vila and Estância de Baixo. We were at the pier most of the afternoon watching the events and whatnot. There was a race of the traditional fishing boats out to the shipwreck in the bay and back, followed by swimming races and beach volleyball. After that, we wandered around between the barraca, the praça and the pier, just mixing with various people and having fun. The barraca is an area on the beach where they set up a bunch of temporary bars and restaurants and whatnot, and it pretty much doesn't close for 4 days. The beer is usually not particularly cold, but the grilled chicken is SUPERB, so I can let it slide. Anyway, the festival usually migrates between there and the palivolente, where they set up the stage for the music. I meant to rest up a bit for the music part, but I couldn't get myself home at all. That's just Cape Verde for you: you try to go somewhere, and all of a sudden you've got a beer in your hand and you're being dragged somewhere else entirely.

The live music this year was Livity, which is one of CV's most famous bands, going back to the late 70s. They had some of the biggest hits of all time back then, so they're very much a part of musical history here. One of them, Kino Cabral, played here solo last year, but he was even better with the rest of the band. My friend Mel compared the singer, Jorge Neto, to Little Richard, because of the way he dances around stage and gives these little "YOW!" yelps all the time. He is awesome. He also has a great quotation: "Na Cabo Verde, nu tem cantores tcheu, artistas pouco" - In Cape Verde, we have a lot of singers, but very few artists. I think that pretty accurately reflects my views on pop music here. Most zouk is just a bunch of pretty faces singing uninspired trite love songs, while the real musical artists are fewer and farther between. But I digress.

Saturday should have been a nice quiet day to recover for more music at night, but Shon and I are incorrigible and ended up staying out all day, and then on until 5:30 am Sunday. I went for a nice long swim, drank a ton of water to rehydrate, and then shmoozed around all day and all night. I also accidentally broke a bottle with my hand while swimming (someone had tossed it in the water), so my knuckles are all cut up. Overall, Saturday night wasn't as good. Cape Verdeans aren't much for pacing themselves, so there were about 30% less people out. Still, I danced all night and generally made a fool of myself. Like Friday night, I managed to position myself in the midst of the prettiest girls on Boa Vista, including the incomparable Kristy, winner of this year's Miss Bubista beauty pageant. If you saw her, you'd understand.

My attempts to get out of the house on Sunday were thwarted by pure exhaustion. Which is too bad, because there was a lovely young lady on the beach on whom I've had my eye the last week or so, but I found myself sounding like an ass while talking to her. I decided to go take a nap, figuring to avoid any more damage that I might inflict. I got in a nice swim though. No broken bottles.

Anyway, I had planned on saying a little something about my crazy whirlwind feelings now that I am poised to leave here in 5 weeks. But I am tired and need some lunch, so it will have to wait.

Continuting with my pretty standard once a month blogging...

We had our COS conference a couple weeks ago on Santiago. Back to that in a second. Before the conference, Kyle and I decided to head over to Fogo for a few days. It was really a pretty inconvenient time for me to go, being in the middle of classes and a great week of windsurfing, but it was really my last chance for any kind of vacation until COS, and I desperately wanted to see Fogo. Turns out it was worth it.

Most of the island of Fogo is a volcanic cone. Some time ago (I have no idea when), a massive eruption blew the entire top off and shot out sideways and eastwards, leaving a large caldera that is open to the sea on one side. In that gap, a small volcanic cone has risen up. There have been dozens of eruptions over the last few centuries, including half a dozen in the 1900s, 1995 being the most recent. Anyway, my friends Mel and Sam live in the caldera in a little town called Chã das Caldeiras. Sam got stuck on Brava for the week due to a sunk boat (wait for it), but Kyle and I spent a few happy days with Mel. Chã has no running water and no electricity, which is surprisingly not much of an inconvenience. When you build your life around it, it's pretty easy to get by. Although, with no refrigeration, you don't get much meat, which is pretty sad. And the total lack of light makes it the darkest place I have ever been in my entire life. The bordera of the crater is hundreds of feet high and blocks out any light you might see from São Felipe, which isn't much anyway. So we pretty much went to sleep just after dark every night. And on the second day, we climbed the volcano. Chã is about a mile up already and the peak is at just about 10,000 ft, so our climb was probably around 5000 ft vertical. With a few stops to rest and enjoy the view, it probably took us 3 1/2 hours total to reach the peak. I hadn't done a good hike in forever, Boa Vista being entirely flat, so it felt really, really good to get my legs working. The view from the top is pretty awesome and is probably the highest I have ever been (except maybe freshman year - hey oh!!), marred only slightly by the stanky sulfur smell coming from the active crater. The descent down makes the tough climb totally worth it, too. The slope down is mostly fine black gravel, somewhat easier to maneuver on than sand. So to go down, you just half-run and half-slide your way down. It takes about 20 minutes. And then you spend 5 minutes dumping more gravel out of your shoes than you would have thought could possibly fit in there and still leave room for your feet.

After Chã, we visited Dave and Sean in Mosteiros on the other side of the island. We spent a couple days there, mostly just mellowing out, being dudes and drinking the Coronas that the store in their building mysteriously acquired. Corona is weak and watery, but it is heaven after Superbock and Sagres. I crashed for a day in São Felipe with Lauren before flying to Santiago. Incidentally, São Felipe is a really pretty and picturesque town. I wouldn't be upset to live there. A bit heavy on sketchy deportees though...

Oh, about the boat. Natawnee was on the Musteru en route to meet us in São Felipe when the boat sunk. Not even kidding. Nobody died, and Natawnee is fine. Some cargo wasn't properly tied down and shifted to one side of the bay. The boat tilted, more cargo shifted, and basically the whole thing just filled with water and went down. They turned back 3 hours out to try and make it back to Praia, but didn't quite make it. The boat sunk just off the coast of Porto Mosquito, and a bunch of fishermen from the town sailed out and rescued everyone. Still, most people on board lost everything they had with them, which in at least one case was everything that they owned. Apparently one guy was moving his family to Fogo, so the entire contents of his house were on board. Yikes. Plus, this is the 2nd Fogo-Brava-Praia boat to go down in a month. Also not even kidding. The Barlavento sunk off the coast of Cova Figueira, Fogo in late April when both the guys in charge of steering fell asleep and the boat hit rocks. So now there are a limited number of boats running double time in between islands, including the Sal Rei, which normally does Praia-Boa Vista-Sal. This could explain why we haven't had any flour in 10 days... I need bread, goddamnit.

Wow, I started this to talk about the headfuck that is COS. COS stands for Close of Service, so you can imagine what it's for. There was a bunch of administrative stuff. We had to sign papers, talk about insurance policies, make some decisions about our readjustment allowance, etc. There was a bunch of time to work on writing our Description of Service, which is the official document that Peace Corps/Washington keeps on file to send to employers, grad schools and whatnot. There was also a lot of time sitting around and talking about what we were nervous about, excited about, not prepared for... Something I could have done without. I've already spent the last few months thinking about that kind of stuff. I don't need to hear that other people have, too. There was a career panel with the senior foreign service officer from the Embassy in Praia and the director of the Millennium Challenge Corporation for Cape Verde, and that was obviously great for me. It cleared up some doubts about the Foreign Service for me, so I think I'm going to take the exam next April. It can't hurt.

More importantly is what the conference has done to my head. It's not so much what we did there. It's more the fact that it's come so close to the end of service, and it was just one last doorway to walk through. I have mentally checked out of my work. I'm trying. I am. I come every day and I do what I have to, but I'm not here anymore. Here's what I've got for the next two months:
-one last advanced Excel class for the câmara
-typing up and compiling all my class information for the future
-developing content for our new website
-writing up final reports for PC
-multiple festivals
-diving and spearfishing
-July and August, when all the students abroad come back for the summer
-many visitors from other islands and maybe from the US
So really. HOW could I be focused? I've more or less done here what I came to do. Time to wrap it up and move on. Right?

It's hard to live in two places at once.

My friend Alex (fellow PCV over yonder on Santiago) sent me these articles today.

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2000/mayjun/articles/strauss.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080425/wl_csm/opeacecorps

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4295&page=2

Robert Strauss, the author of the first and third articles, is also the guy who wrote a harsh critique of the Peace Corps in the New York Times earlier this year. I disagreed with a lot of what he said, but I can't say he's entirely wrong. So here's some random reactions from me, in no particular order.

Peace Corps needs to focus on hiring older and more experienced volunteers. Yes. My training group had one 64 year old and one 33 year old. Neither stayed for the full two years. One of them left in large part because her extensive experience and expertise was not being used at all, which is pretty depressing. The current group of first year volunteers is slightly older than my group. By that, I mean that the average age is probably 27 instead of 24. A lot of us were fresh out of college when we got here, or in my case, with one year of work experience under the belt. One year of work experience doesn't add up to much. And I do think that in general, older volunteers probably are more effective. There's a sense of work ethic and focus there that just isn't found in twenty-somethings. And we could use a lot more of that.

But... In the NYT article, Strauss made a point that I think is pretty inaccurate. He wrote something to the effect that in the '60s, Peace Corps volunteers offered something in short supply in the developing world: college degrees. But then he goes on to say that this is no longer true. The developed world, according to Strauss, is doing much better, and it is no longer sufficient just to offer a bachelor's degree as your qualifications. Bullshit. Post-secondary education is a relative rarity even in Cape Verde, which comes out at the top of the developing world in sub-Saharan Africa. The government here makes admirable efforts both to send promising students abroad to school and to develop our own national university. But both of these initiatives have a long way to go. Many students languish for years waiting for the mysterious documents to appear that will permit them to go study in São Paulo or Lisboa. I recently looked over the curriculum for a bachelor's in computer science at Jean Piaget University in Praia, and was depressed to realize that I had essentially studied 3 years worth of the program. And I was a Classics major, merely dabbling in comp sci. When mathematics that I studied in the 8th and 9th grades are part of a post-graduate study program (yes, algebra and trig), you cannot tell me that a bachelor's degree in nearly any field does not qualify you for work here. I am one of the only people on this island who knows how to remove a virus from a computer, let alone repair a faulty video card. So are we qualified? Yes, we are.

We don't accomplish much. Sadly, kind of true. In nearly two years here, what have I accomplished? I've passed about 100 students through a basic computer literacy program. And many of them will promptly forget what I have taught them. And I'm OK with that. I really am. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not much. It is pretty widely accepted in PCV culture that accomplishing very little is fine. I was told by many people, including my uncle who was in Nepal 30 years ago, that if you go into your service expecting to change the world, you will be disappointed. And that is a realistic thing to say. Keeping that in mind has kept me sane for quite a while. But I also don't think it's OK to simply let this status quo stand.

Allow me to illustrate a point, using the IT program here as an example. Most of my accomplishments here come from teaching. And that's a role that nearly any IT volunteer will fill, and that is as it should be. But I have spent countless hours putting together lesson plans, developing, scrapping, and redeveloping curricula, writing up exercises in Portuguese, and otherwise preparing for teaching. Well, that's just silly. With the number of IT vols that have passed through Cape Verde, why am I doing this? Shouldn't someone have done this work ages ago, so that I could spend more time doing worthwhile projects with larger impact? I think so. Well, thus was born the PC/CV website, complete with file dumps to store lesson plans. In no way can I take credit for the original idea, nor any of the technical work. But I did put together 7 or 8 course packages, in the hopes that future volunteers will use them, and thus dedicate more time to big projects.

I have digressed. The point of that last paragraph is not "Leland is awesome" (I am), but that there exists no administrative framework to accomplish this sort of thing. Ok, not entirely true: we have a resource center in Praia that is full of good books on development topics, but none of them are quality lesson plans. I grabbed the packet called "Computer lesson plans for Cape Verde." And man was it bad. I couldn't have used more than two or three of those classes. And that was the only book offering any help. But that is just me griping. A much more relevant complaint: Cape Verde has a cohesive information society in the government, with a comphrehensive national strategic plan, qualified employees, and a growing infrastructure. SO WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO WE NOT WORK WITH THEM?!?!? My relationship with NOSi (the IT group) is precisely zero, and that is patently absurd. I've attempted contact a couple of times, but generally not followed through, and I'll tell you why: If I work with them for a year, and then leave, what has happened? Nothing. There will still be no relationship with Peace Corps. I make this small point with the admission that I could have worked harder to establish a relationship, but there is a broader lesson. Volunteers are largely on their own. Because of Peace Corps status as "almost a development agency," which Strauss rightly criticizes, we have no meaningful ties with larger groups, nationally or internationally. I understand the fear of politicizing the organization, and I understand the grassroots theme. But that is no reason to cut ourselves off from the development world at large.

Volunteers are/are not excellent diplomats. Well, let's slow down on that word "diplomat." Of course we're not diplomats. But we make nice goodwill ambassadors. Strauss makes a big fuss over badly behaved volunteers who do drugs and drink and make asses of themselves, and he goes out of his way to say that the truly excellent volunteers are a small minority. Again, I call bullshit. Yeah, there are douchebags who make bad names for themselves. But I would say that they are the small minority. Likeable, honest and hard working volunteers are the norm. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty popular in my town. Granted, Cape Verde is not exactly an America-hating country, but I like to think that I've helped undo some of the damage that Bush has done to our reputation.

We benefit more than our host countries. Almost definitely true. But I fail to see the problem with this. Is it a "government subsidized semester abroad?" No, it's not, and that's pretty insulting. OK, some similarities to college: I don't have to worry about bills or food money, because my stipend is provided; there is a lot of partying and festival-going; I am learning a lot. I don't see what's wrong with the first or third, and the second is just a fact of life here. Cape Verdeans like to have fun, and I like having fun with them. It's not all I do, and overall, there's a lot less of it than any semester of school I've ever been in (you can only survive undergraduate once... the body can't handle more than 4 years of that).

But yes, I have probably gotten more out of this can Cape Verde has. Well why not? I am one person trying to affect thousands. There are thousands of people unconsciously affecting me. Naturally, it hits me harder. I've learned two new languages, figured out how to run training sessions and develop curriculum, and a plethora of other useful tricks. More importantly, I've built a basis of skills that I plan on using in development work for many years to come. Don't begrudge me that.

We're cheap. Got damn right we are. We are amazingly cost-effective. I am probably one of the most expensive volunteers in the world, and I hardly cost a thing. You cannot mount any other kind of development plan like this.

Other development workers ain't much better. Read that other article, where Strauss rips into other development programs. I couldn't tell you how accurate that portrayal is, but I've gotten a pretty good sense in the last few years that he is spot-on. At least we're not flushing millions of dollars down the drain on grandiose projects that don't work. In general, our projects, however small they are, are pretty successful. We know our communities in and out, better than any development agency worker ever could. We'd never drop money on a seaweed processing plant where there was no seaweed. But I bet if that company had asked some PCVs in the Phillipines where they think such a plant could go, they'd have built it in the right spot and it would be doing whatever it is that seaweed processing plants do.

Anyway, I've now been writing this on an off for most of the morning, with a break for class, and it's probably time I actually went and did some real work.

August 13th is the new date for return.

Time is accelerating. The last month has gone by unbelievably fast, and every week is over by the time I notice that it's even started. Every second year volunteer will tell you that this is the case, but it's a different thing entirely when it actually happens. Next month, I'm taking a little trip to Fogo to hike up the volcano and visit some friends, and then afterwards we have COS (close of service) conference. And then just three more months in Cape Verde.

I've already partly checked out mentally, I must say. But not entirely. I've still got to wrap up my work here as best I can. Two small tech support businesses have moved to Boa Vista in the last 6 months, so I feel reasonably good about that. Before, I was the only person who could fix a computer here, but now I think they'll be all right without me. But there are no trainers. Tech support is no good if the average person can't use a PC. So the one thing I would truly love to do here is to run a week long course to train some teachers. If the CEJ hires just one person part time to continue with the classes, I'll feel pretty confident leaving this place behind. It's not a done deal that a new volunteer will come to take over my position, so I feel more than a little pressure to make this happen. Plus, it will be nice to actually have a lasting effect here.

Beyond wrapping up here... The question of what the hell I'm going to do in the US is becoming more and more urgent. I actually applied for a job yesterday. My assistant director sent me an email tip for what basically amounts to the perfect job for me, so I immediately fired off an email with a resume and cover letter. So hopefully something happens there. If not, I'll be doing a fair amount of travelling in my first month back to try and find something to do. It's going to be really awkward to be staying with my parents in South Dakota while searching for jobs on the east coast. Oh well. At least the email from yesterday made me realize that there are indeed perfect jobs out there. Now if only I can get an employer to realize just how damn fantastic I am...

The CEJ director is in the US all month. Things have actually been going pretty smoothly, except that some minor things get completely overlooked. When an extension burned out, we just didn't use a printer for like 5 days. I suppose I could have gone and grabbed one, but I've taken an attitude lately of letting things just flow here. It's not laziness on my part, but more than I am curious to see what it takes to impart a sense of personal initiative here. Answer: 5 days or so. Overall though, people have stepped up and taken care of everything on their own. Unfortunately, Jonny is moving to São Vicente in a couple weeks, depriving us of a really solid guy, not to mention the closest thing to another technician we have here. I taught him how to fix up computers last year, and he's since built himself a PC with spare parts. Whenever people come in with really minor issues, he can pretty much take care of them on his own, and he enjoys it (whereas I get annoyed after someone comes in for the 10^th time with the same problem – I can't help it). Before he goes, I've been giving him little lessons on networks in the afternoon. Teaching binary-decimal conversion in a foreign, non-technical language to someone without higher math is tricky at best. He got it though.

I'm having a party tomorrow night. It was fairly spontaneous. I mentioned it in passing and my coworker Márcia latched on to the idea. So now I've got a dozen people coming by tomorrow night. Cool.

Too much work.

I knew I'd work a lot in the Peace Corps, but it got out of hand last week. Normally, I teach two or three classes per day, morning and night, and I have my afternoons free to run errands, windsurf, or just relax and take a nap. But last week, my director had me coming with her on her occasional rounds of all the CEJs on the island, for only vaguely apparent reasons. In general, I was supposed to “take a loot at” the various computers in the CEJs. But when every trip is scheduled for 2:30 in the afternoon, and I end up driving an hour through the desert only to turn on 3 computers and find that they are all perfectly fine, it's a little annoying. Especially since my schedule now runs thus: 8:30 am to 1 pm – work to do in CEJ/câmara (or teach), 1 to 2:30 – lunch/errands, 2:30 to 5:45 – traipsing around the interior, 5:45 to 6 – furious and hectic lesson preparation, 6 to 9 – teaching, 9 to 10 – dinner, and finally 10 pm – pass out from exhaustion. I am not a huge fan of 11 hour work days as a rule. It is especially frustrating when there is good wind, and I have zero time to myself to windsurf. A guy's gotta have a way to release, ja?

Anyway. The weekend wasn't much better, as I got sick Saturday. I went to a dinner for International Women's Day Sat night, put on by the primary school teachers, despite feeling like shit. It was fun, but I went home when everyone else went out to the bars and clubs. I watched half a movie (The Abyss – been forever since I saw it, great movie), tried to sleep, woke up, projectile barfed, went back to bed, and slept/read my way through Sunday. But just so as not to sound completely wretched, allow me to backtrack to Friday, when there was a concert by Tecla 2, a band from Sal. They're electronic, which means that it is two guys with keyboards and effects boxes, which is pretty much always a bad sign. Sure enough, they played the worst/most hilarious Akon remix/cover I have ever heard. And I've heard a lot of them in this country. But it wasn't all bad, and the party went on until 4 or so. A lot of people showed up for it and the beer flowed like it always does.

Hm. Re-reading all that doesn't sound good. So I guess I can say that it's been a rough week. But since I haven't updated in a while, I guess I haven't mentioned this: I know when I'm coming back to the US. Obviously, I'd been debating this for a while, between planning the trip with Kyle and not knowing what I'd be doing for work after this, but now it looks like I'll be back in mid-August. Turns out my sister Caroline is getting married! I could have predicted it, but that kind of stuff is always a bit of a surprise anyway. The week before will be a big family reunion thing at Stout's Island, so I am going to try to get to SD by the 20^th so I can drop off my stuff and drive up to WI with my parents. As for when I will see people on either coast... That all depends on when I line up job interviews.

I'll try to make a trip out west and another out east in the first few weeks back, depending on how the employment world reacts to my plaintive cries. Anyone in San Francisco, New York, DC, or basically anywhere else in the world reading this: find me a job! Just kidding. I'm not stressing about that for a little while. It's not easy to get employment 6 months in advance from 3000 miles away, so I'll just hold off for a bit. But when I visit, I'll try and visit everyone that I can.

I am thinking a great deal about food these days. Sushi, burritos, steaks, fresh vegetables, fruits... these are things I dream about now.

I don't think I need to say anything about how upset I am over the Superbowl. So I won't. Football season is over and it's time to move on to March Madness (about which I am completely clueless this year) and baseball season. Fortunately, the Mets have signed Johan Santana and I am really pumped for some spring baseball.

I'm sick, for the 2nd time in two months. I don't know how. I haven't been sick since the first weekend of training, in July 2006. All of a sudden, I get a bad cold over Christmas (probably something to do with the fact that I partied more than I slept for 2 days straight). Last week I got some pretty bad gastrointestinal fun for a couple days, recovered, then got a cold AND gastrointestinal goodness. I spent the whole weekend lounging around the house reading, so I'm feeling a bit better.

I got the chance last week to test out my windsurfing rig. It's pretty awesome. I'm riding a 105 liter Mistral Freestyle board with a 5.5 sq m Ezzy Wave Special Edition sail, along with a dizzying arrangement of other parts pulled from the back sheds of surf shops. The wishbone, mast extension, mast foot, uphaul line, harness lines, harness, and most of the cords were pulled for free from various cardboards boxes. I bought the sail used (still 2007) from Josh Angulo last month. The board is a bit older, but it's still in perfect working order, except a couple chips by the nose. It's a LOT harder to ride on. I was out with a pretty strong 20 knot wind and I was having a rouch time of it. I spent a lot of time uphauling the sail. Once I adjust to the board though, I think I'm gonna get better really fast. I can already tell how much quicker and responsive the board is. Hopefully this week I'll have time to put in some serious hours on the water, if the wind cooperates, which it should (check out Windguru).

Carnaval was shockingly fun here. Kyle came over from Sal for the weekend and a bit. Unfortunately for me, my case of exploding ass occurred on Tuesday, which is of course the biggest day of Carnaval. I recovered as best I could all day, then popped some Pepto and went to the parties at night. We had a couple friends over for dinner that night too. I learned how to approximate ricotta on the stove, so I made some real lasagna and it came out really really well. There was a party at Cabrer', the big venue in Rabil. It was 1200 escudos to get in, with an open bar and music and snacks. Everyone was in costume, although I couldn't put together much for myself. I'll post some photos on Facebook eventually. Typical things happened: I drank whiskey, danced a bunch, talked to a lot of pretty girls, went home alone anyway. Still, I met a girl I had never seen before and whooo... I won't say anything, because I'll probably curse myself.

I've got a full complement of classes now, including an English class that just started. I am not a fan of teaching English. Even more complicated, this class has a Portuguese guy and two Italian women, so I can't speak Creole when I need to. I have to try for grammatically correct Portuguese. I need the practice I guess, but man is it ever a pain in my ass. Ugh.

The One Laptop Per Child proposal is slowly coming together. More on that if anything earthshaking happens.

I've begun serious job thinking for when I get back. I think it's time to reactivate that resume on Monster.com. Anyone know any good openings in the international development realm?

I will never be a good blogger. But that’s ok.

I am back on Boa Vista after a very badly needed 3 week vacation. I went off to Sal for a couple days before Christmas, to hang out with Kyle and generally have a good time. As usual, crazy things happened, and we stayed out until 8 am on Christmas eve, and not much earlier the next day. It was the first time I celebrated Christmas morning with a beer at 7:30 am on the way home from a party. It is not generally traditional to spend most of Christmas day asleep, but I thought it went very well.

I flew to Italy on the 26th and arrived the 27th, because of course my flight was delayed until night. It was harder than I thought to find the apartment we had rented for the week (every doorway on the block looked just like the picture), let alone get to Rome from the airport due to money and bank issues, but I made it, and my parents arrived that afternoon. Our whole week in Rome consisted of wandering to various ruins, punctuated with delicious meals and rests. New Year’s was ok, but nothing crazy. I met up with my friend Jon, who was in the same study abroad program 4 years ago, and we hit a few bars around the Campo de’ Fiori area. My parents liked the history and archaeology and stuff, and I was amazed at how much of it came back to me. I would look at a temple and all of a sudden realize that I knew what god it was for and who built it. I don’t think I could have remembered that stuff sitting here. My Italian also came back to a smaller extent. I couldn’t form any fancy sentences, but I got us by for two weeks. I couldn’t have asked for much more.

After the first week, my parents and I picked up my sister and her boyfriend at the airport and drove up to where my mother had rented rooms at some sort of Tuscan farm-like thing. But after a long stop at Orvieto to eat and drink some Orvieto Classico, we were behind schedule and didn’t get to the town until after dark. Plus it started snowing about 5k north of Florence. The place turned out to be up a long steep dirt road that was now covered in snow, and our rental Renault was absolutely not going to make it. So we turned around, drove 20k back to Florence, and found a really nice place to stay there. The end result of all this is that instead of staying in one place for a week and doing day trips, we pretty much drove our way back towards Rome through Tuscany, which was a pretty good decision. We spent two nights in Florence, two in Siena, one in Montepulciano, and then the last one at an airport hotel in Fiumicino, plus some lunches at other little towns along the way. I’d be lying if I said we did much beyond just eat. Caroline and Ryan aren’t big into museums, so we mostly skipped them and concentrated on restaurants. On one glorious day in Siena, we woke up, had breakfast, walked to the duomo, discovered it was closed until 1:30, had a brunch-ish snack, went back to see the church, ate lunch, took a nap, had aperitivi and snacks, then ate dinner. Then I went out with Caroline and Ryan and had three pints. Five feedings in a day is a damn good day.

The finale of the whole thing was when I got an email the day before I was supposed to leave from the travel agency in Boa Vista, basically telling me that there were no more seats on the flight and that I didn’t have one. She made it sound like it wasn’t her fault, but I can say with 95% accuracy that she simply forgot to make the reservation until the day before. Those flights just don’t fill up that fast. So I went to the airport, found the ticket desk and managed to get myself on a flight out of Milan leaving two days later. Yes exactly, those flights don’t fill up until the day beforehand. I scraped my cash together, bought the plane ticket, and put myself on a train to Milan. I guess it turned out to be a good thing that I got stuck there, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see another city. Still, I spent some money there that I would have preferred not to use. I did eat some shockingly not bad sushi on my first night there, which I was pretty excited about. Milan seems to be a more ethnically mixed city than Rome or Florence, so I had some kebabs for lunch the next day and tried to mix it up a little bit before returning to the land of no culinary skill. I wandered around the city aimlessly for the better part of the day, accidentally ending up on some of the premier shopping roads, where I watched people buy things that cost significantly more than my entire two year Peace Corps stint. I wasn’t too impressed with Milan, mainly because I think shopping is wretchedly lame and there didn’t seem to be much else to do. I went to a natural history museum which was decidedly average and was actually kind of blown away by the Duomo in the center of town, which was probably the most impressive church I’ve seen in Italy. I poked around a few other cool churches and museums, but…. Eh. I wasn’t heartbroken to leave Milan, and I was looking forward to coming back to Boa Vista, but sweet Christ on a bike I miss that food.

Anyway, I am back here and feel very well-rested and motivated for my last 8 months of service. I’ve got some good projects in mind and with any luck things will get rolling this week. I also have a huge wheel of pecorino, some boar salame, and a bunch of wine to tide me over for a little bit.

Also, to whom it is relevant: I have more or less decided to return to the US after my service.