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.