2 Years in Cape Verde

2008-11-24T15:19:00.000-01:00

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.

2008-08-14T10:54:00.000-01:00

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.

2008-07-28T16:34:00.001-01:00

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

2008-07-14T11:54:00.002-01:00

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.

2008-07-07T11:37:00.002-01:00

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.

2008-05-28T11:55:00.002-01:00

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.

2008-04-29T11:22:00.002-01:00

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.

2008-04-18T10:36:00.000-01:00

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.

2008-03-11T16:41:00.000-01:00

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.

2008-02-11T17:07:00.000-01:00

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?

2008-01-16T17:25:00.000-01:00

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.

2007-11-28T16:20:00.000-01:00

Well, I am enjoying myself again here, but life is changing quite a bit. For starters, Nadia has been transferred to São Vicente, so I am living alone now. It’s a really, really long story, but in short, a single individual on Boa Vista managed to make things difficult enough for her that Peace Corps and CV’s Ministry of Education saw fit to move her. It’s shitty for her obviously, because she had a life and friends here, not to mention a boyfriend. And it’s shitty for me, because I liked living with Nadia. I speak so much less English on a day to day basis already, and the house is too quiet for my tastes. And I don't think the neighbors are enjoying the loud music I now play for several hours a day to make up for it.

On the other hand, some things are looking up. The wind picked up big time this week, so that promises 6 months of great windsurfing. Tony and Spela, the Slovenians from last year, aren’t coming back this year, but a different guy, Sebastian, is managing the club. I went snorkelling with him and Moises a couple weekends ago, and they showed me a great spot out by the islet with a ton of fish. There’s a little reef drop-off that is filled with grouper, morays, and other delicious things. I tried to go buy a speargun, but the guy here wanted 27.000 escudos (~$300) for one. I’ll try and get one elsewhere.

Kyle was here this last weekend, which always results in some crazy things happening. We mostly cooked, ate, and drank. First there was Thanksgiving, which was actually pretty successful. Shon, Betty, and Tânia came over, and I invited François and Moises, although Moises couldn’t make it and François seems to have just sort of forgotten. Oh well. In place of a turkey, I roasted 4 little chickens (after brining them all day with a lot of rosemary) with vegetables, made some awesome mashed potatoes, and baked homemade bread and an apple tart. The tart burned on the bottom because I am an asshole who drank too much wine and put it too low in the oven, but the apples and the rest of the crust were delicious. The bread was absolutely excellent as well, even though it was an experiment in a different method of baking. I think I could have improved on nearly everything, but it was also a first for nearly everything, too. So no complaints. The next day, we put together some ridiculously good pizza. We made an approximation of buffalo chicken pizza, a garlic mashed potato pizza, bread sticks, and then a more normal pizza, too. Those two meals inspired creative leftover meals for about 4 days. He was supposed to go home on Sunday, but TACV cancelled his flight twice, and he stayed until Tuesday morning. On Monday night, we had nothing to do, so we ended up sitting at a bar for about 5 hours, drinking whiskey and messing with the waitresses. They liked us, and we ended up going to their house at like 2 am, but then going home shortly afterwards. The whole event is really pretty blurry.

Anyway, at the moment, Shon and I are planning for World AIDS Day and International Volunteer Day more or less simultaneously. WAD is basically almost put together, with minimal contribution on my part, but we just remembered about IVD two days ago, and it’s Dec 5. So I think it’ll be a small thing. Ah well.

And now I have to go look at the high school’s computer classroom and then perhaps yell at the guy who is supposed to be delivering my water, but keeps not doing it.

2007-11-05T09:20:00.001-01:00

I can't believe I didn't get to watch the Colts/Pats game. Seriously. It's pretty upsetting. Especially since we won. I am currently trying to stream highlights. It is not going well.

So I still suck at keeping this thing updated. I'm going to try and get better at it, as I plan on doing some more blogging after Peace Corps service, as I adventure around the world a bit. More on that as details pull themselves together...

I guess the reason I haven't been keeping it up to date is because not much has been happening. Highlights of the last month include:

-The new airport opened up on the 31st. International flights don't start for a few weeks still, but eventually there will be flights to Italy 3 times a week and once or twice to London. Not bad, huh? I think I can expect an influx of English speaking tourists in the future, which means I already know I am doomed to teach many more English classes. Ugh.

-I went to João Galego twice this week to hang out with Nilton (Nadia's boyfriend) and his buddies. Once was for a BBQ on Thursday, and then I was there on Saturday for another BBQ, this time for Nilton's birthday. They're a cool bunch of guys, though I will say that it is difficult to get yourself "in" with a bunch of guys who have been tight friends for 25 or 30 years. Not that they are exclusive, but it's tough to get the thread of the conversation, especially when it's in rapid, drunk Creole. Still. Fun times.

-No water. Nadia and I managed to use our reserves, and our neighbor forgot to come by to refill our barrels. Nothing had come from our taps in weeks, and more like 2 months since we had gotten anything resembling pressure. In any event, we saw a water truck putting a hose up to our roof, so I wandered up there to see what was going on (because we certainly weren't getting anything from up there), and it turns out that the landlord has installed individual tanks for each apartment. This is after he has been telling us for weeks that they haven't managed to arrange a water contract yet. Which is clearly true, though he never once mentioned that we had our own tank now and could in fact get it filled on our own. In any event, I got the water guy to give us the remainers of the tonelada of water that he had been filling from, but still nothing came to our apartment. Apparently, our pipes are blocked. Awesome! Fortunately, our neighbor dropped by with his truck, so we got 3/4 of a bedon of water, which is enough to last us a while. Yeah that's right, 75 liters of water can last me and Nadia most of the week. We are efficient if nothing else. Anyway, the point to take away from this (other than that I didn't shower for 4 days) is that communication is not always, or ever, clear. It is generally expected that you will find out about something, although if you were to ask someone how, they would have no response. Things are not usually advertised here, except maybe on the radio to which I never listen, and word of mouth is everything. Which may be fine, if you are overhearing a lot of conversation. But no matter how good my Creole gets, I am not going to be overhearing conversation on the street, unless I am intentionally eavesdropping. Thus, I miss out on little things like "we installed a tank for you on the roof."

-I've been reading a bunch more lately. I have decided that I am done with fiddling with computers and watching DVDs in my house. Books are better. I'm most of the way done with The Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin. He goes to Australia to learn about Aboriginal Dreaming tracks, which crisscross the continent all over. It's pretty good, and definitely makes me itch to get out and do some exploring.

-I need a vacation. Italy is in about 8 weeks, and it couldn't come fast enough. I've been getting burned out on life lately. I need a good project to commit myself to. My software class ends tomorrow and my English class is done, except for some test correcting today. Afterwards, I won't have to develop any new courses. I've got 6 computer courses and 3 English ones planned out, including manuals and outlines, which should pretty much leave me in good shape for all future material. So now what?

-I am in terrible physical shape. Miserable. I have lost nearly all upper body strength, my legs are twiggy, and my stomach is getting soft. Either my body is just going to be another sacrifice to the Peace Corps, or I need to figure something out já.

Ok. Time to really seriously start my week.

2007-10-09T12:07:00.000-01:00

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.

2007-10-01T09:44:00.001-01:00

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.

2007-09-04T10:49:00.000-01:00

So I'm back on Boa Vista. And really happy to be here. Helping Peace Corps with training wasn't too bad, but as a friend put it, it's often easy to forget that we work with the US government, but we all remembered during PST. Lots of evaluations, meets, forms to fill out, etc etc. Like any large organization. But I'm back on my comfy island, enjoying my life once more. I spent a couple days on Sal afterwards, just to hang out with Kyle and Caryn. I'll be heading back that way via boat for Sal's big music festival in a couple weeks.

Anyway. Very little has changed since I left, which shouldn't be surprising. A couple of Portuguese comp sci students were here for a month teaching some classes as part of a cooperative program between their school and the câmara. I kind of met them, but we didn't really talk much. For some reason, I am shy about my português do Portugal, and yet I will speak with Brazilians with no problem. Weird. But I apparently missed an awesome music festival here as well as a few really great parties. A lot of kids studying outside the country were back for the summer, but now most of them have gone back abroad, so no more good parties for me. I guess I missed the best part of the summer. Damn.

Still, there was one good beach party on Saturday. It was on a beach about 15 minutes walk north of town, where there is basically nothing except sand, water, and one lone Coke kiosk. I heard about it from a friend and wandered over around 11, and was kind of surprised to find that it was already going strong. Normally this stuff doesn't really pick up until 1:30 or so. At first, they wouldn't let me in, because apparently you had to get a wristband from someone or other, and they weren't letting in any more people. But it's all about who you know, so I asked a couple friends of mine, and I got in after a few minutes. I didn't even pay full price, just because I drink at the same bar as the guys who threw the party. Anyway, they had fenced off a part of the beach, set up some drink stands and a DJ booth, and asked everyone to dress in red and white. I don't have anything red, so I had to go just white. I guess it worked out. It was your usual Cape Verdean party: lots of dancing, lots of drinking, lots of pretty girls wearing almost nothing. Plus, it was right on the beach. Unfortunately for me, I got drunk too early and ended up home in bed by 2:30, which was sad. Because the party went until the next afternoon.

Kyle copied me tons of TV shows he downloaded when he was in the US. I now have 3 seasons of Lost, 3 of Arrested Development, and one each of Scrubs and The Office. Plus a bunch of movies. Good, quality entertainment.

2007-08-18T19:29:00.000-01:00

Where have I been, why haven't I been online at all, and what have I been doing? In short: Santiago, too busy, training. The more lengthy answer would be...

Having agreed to help out with training the new IT volunteers, I left Boa Vista last month and went straight to Santiago and got right to work. No, not really. I went on a little vacation first. I flew over to Santo Antao and visited Natawnee in Paul for a week. Alli's despidida (going away party) was on the Sunday that I arrived, so I got straight off the boat, met up with a guy also going, and got a ride there. They were late. I could go into lots of details about the fun that we had, but it was like a month ago now, and well... I just don't feel like it. To sum up a few things, we had a party on basically a farm in the middle of nowhere, and then afterwards ended up in a really nice hotel in Ribeira Grande, where we actually got to swim in a real swimming pool, which was almost the best thing to happen to me all month. And then I spent a week basically just hanging around Paul, relaxing and enjoying friendly company.

I didn't really want to leave there, but I got to Santiago 3 weeks ago, and I have been up in Assomada helping out with training. There are 5 new IT volunteers, all of whom are pretty solid. They've all been assigned a site as of yesterday, and I think all of them are pretty happy with their situation. The rough part about training has been that this is the first IT specific training PC/CV has done. We developed the training material from scratch starting months and months ago, but it still is kind of tough to teach something that you have never seen taught. I think I'm managing to do a decent job, but more importantly, I'm trying to lay groundwork for more successful training in the future. Also, I'm not going to harp on anymore about training, because it just makes for boring blog material, and if you haven't stopped reading already, you must really like me.

Assomada had been fun, because I get to hang out with other volunteers whom I otherwise rarely see. But I miss Boa Vista. I miss my ocean and my friends. So next Saturday, I get to go back. And on that note, it is time for a cold shower upstairs (the downstairs shower, with wonderful wonderful hot water, has starting backing up nasty pipe crud that smells like sewage), and then we are apparently going to a discoteca somewhere.

2007-07-10T19:07:00.001-01:00

Forgot: Last Friday marked one full year in Cape Verde. Wow.

2007-07-09T20:13:00.000-01:00

Fantastic week. No really, the last 7-10 days mark a high point for the last... while. I guess the logical place to start is the festa. Last week was the Festa de Santa Isabel. Santa Isabel has some sort of significance for Sal Rei, because our praça is the Larga Santa Isabel. Beyond that, I don't know what the deal is with that particular saint. But every year on the 4th of July, we throw a hell of a party in her honor.

Festivals in Cape Verde have a pretty special place in everyone's heart (and liver). Every municipality has their dia municipio, which is basically their biggest festival. Rabil, Estância de Baixo, and João Galego each have their own smaller festival, but the dia municipio is the really baller here. I guess this is partly because Boa Vista is technically only one conselho. Life stops totally for this festival. No businesses are open, unless your business is selling beer, or food to drunk people. The câmara spends enormous sums of money to set up a big stage, attract the best musicians they can, and make the whole town look as nice as possible. In Paúl, Natawnee tells me that they spent basically all their money on their town's festa. It attracts the most people to a place, and gives the biggest economic boost of the year. So as you can see, a festa is a phenomenon without parallel in the US, except perhaps big fairs like the Big E or the Durham Fair (oh Durham...). But even then, it's not the same. You can take a small child to the Big E. I don't think you'd want your 5 year old hanging out at this festa at 4 am. Which isn't to say that there aren't children around... But Cape Verdean children are a whole other story.

So my festa experience: In a word, drunk. If I had to throw out another word, it would be "dancing." And if I had the leeway for two more, I'd probably say "grilled chicken." Because that is what I did. I drank beer, ate grilled chicken wings, and danced my ass off. The câmara inaugurated the new palivolente (kind of an all-in-one sports complex, mostly for soccer and basketball) in town, so the music part was there. We also inaugurated two new youth centers, a new children's park, a new square (Praça dos Namorados... that's hot), some new paved roads, and a buttload of other stuff.* They also set a little shantytown on the beach, dubbed the barraca, with stalls to sell food and booze. It was only about 200 feet from the palivolente, so the whole area is just packed with people. Gil Semedo, aka the Cape Verdean Michael Jackson, and Kino Cabral, aka... no, he doesn't have a nickname. Anyway, they both played for two nights in a row, starting a bit past midnight and going until 5:30 or so. I'm not a big fan of Gil's music, to be honest, because he's pretty much straight zouk pop music, but I enjoyed his show a lot. He has really talented backup musicians (great bass player), plus the atmosphere is just so infectious that you can't not dance. Impossible. Kino was even better. I had a blast. Plus, they are both from the south, so not only did they play some funaná, but they spoke badiu. "Nhos sta sabi?!?!" (Are you all great?!?!) For reference, in sanpajud' we would say "Bocês ta sab'?!?!". We don't pronounce our final vowels. So I liked them.

I ended up pairing up with my friend Praça for most of the night. His name is Praça because he reportedly likes to just sit in the praça of João Galego and just talk to everyone who goes by. That's the kind of guy he is. In any event, we were nuts that night, sucking down beers, dancing with every girl we could find, talking to everyone, and just generally tearing shit up. We held strong until about 6 am, when he asked me if I would mind if he found a pequena to go home with. In the most able act of girl-catching I have yet witnessed, he walked up to a girl he clearly knew, said about two sentences into her ear, waved goodbye, and left. HOW DO THEY DO THIS???? He claimed the next day that he left her house after an hour and tried to find me to drink more. I was comforably passed out by then. Still, I lasted longer than a lot of people. When the music ended, I told a friend that it was time for bed, he looked at me like I was nuts. He said, "Não!!! Nu bai pa barraca!" So we went to the barraca. And the drinking continued.

I spent all day on the 4th recovering, except for an excursion with Nadia to eat more, yep, grilled chicken wings. Shon and Betty, our two close friends, made it out that night, so I spent virtually all night with them. Gil and Kino played again, only this time in reverse order. I drank too many beers and danced frenetically again, although perhaps with a smidgen less gusto than the night before. Corp´tava cansot. Right after the music, they had to catch a car back to Estância de Baixo, so they left me. I went over to the barraca and ran into Praça and another friend Nilton there. A fourth showed up, and lo and behold, the party just didn't stop. When I finally made it home with the sun up, I was probably among the last 100 people still up. Good job, Leland.

After two days of recovery, I somehow managed to have a great weekend, too. On Saturday, I chilled on the beach, did some swimming, played chess with François, hung out with the surfer crowd, and generally took it easy. At night, I went to Mazurka, per usual. I was expecting an average night there, or even a not so good night, because I was feeling a bit out of it. But somehow, I found energy. More dancing ensued, and an abnormal number of close friends of mine where all there. Plus, I got roped into dancing the passada several times. Now this is a dance I usually avoid. It's that slow zouk grind that I just can't seem to get down. But somehow, I pulled it off. I danced with a whole bunch of girls, and even got a couple compliments on my dancing! What the fuck?! It must have been a charmed night.

Before Mazurka, I bumped into one of the windsurfers, Ericson, at Pub Makena, one of my preparty bars. He informed me that Sunday would have good wind, so like a champ, I set my alarm for 9:30, hauled my ass out of bed after 4 hours of sleep, and hit the beach. By 10:30, I was on the water. Now, the wind wasn't great. But it was better than it has been: probably 12 knots or so, gusts up to 15 and change. But I took out a 6.2 sq m sail and paired it with a pretty fat board. Small boards and low wind don't mix well, at least not for a guy with only 6 months of experience. But continuing with my freakishly good week, I had a breakthrough day. I managed to pull off things I've been working on for months. I had my feet in the footstraps, harness hooked in, sail pulled low to catch every gust of wind, body way out over the water, and I flew. I rocketed around the bay for over 2 hours, and when I stopped, I didn't even want to. I was just too thirsty, plus I had already formed and torn blisters on both hands. I still haven't mastered the art of jibing (or gybing, depending on who's spelling it), which is turning the board in a fast arc, switching sides, and then flipping the sail over to face the other way. But I did make more progress with it than ever before.

So there. GREAT week.

I should probably also mention the Miss Bubista pageant of the week before as well, because... it's just worth talking about. Bubista is, by the way, how people here pronounce Boa Vista. The pageant is exactly what you would imagine. Ten girls, between 16 and 19, strutted their stuff on stage, and then the crown was announced. Obviously, they were all hot. Obviously, I felt creepy for thinking half of them were hot, because they were only 16 or 17. But the whole thing was just bizarre, in a really entertaining way. The theater was, naturally, packed to the gills with everyone in town. Guys were hooting and catcalling. Girls were hooting and catcalling. Everyone was just really into it. In between each little walk, there was a short performance, usually of music. Some were pretty good. But I've got to mention the rappers.

Now I know I have expressed my feelings on rap culture in Cape Verde. Guys like 50 Cent and Akon have managed to bring basically all that is wrong with American culture to CV, while managing to entirely leave out the positive aspects of rap (which I'm pretty sure Mos Def epitomizes - that man is a genius). And these guys really showed it. The first guy's song had a bit of English in it. And the English he used is pretty expressive of why I think 50 Cent should be drowned for bringing it over here. The chorus, repeated several times, went something like "Fuck dog, yo yo fuck, I don't give a fuck dog, yo yo fuck." I might have gotten a bit of that wrong, but I think the substance of it is clear. The second guy wasn't as bad. A bit of a poseur maybe, but not as bad as the first guy (sporting sagged jeans, a beater, and an inexplicable white towel around his neck, which I am sure he though was pretty gangsta). As soon as he took the stage, the first guy's "gang" started hassling him and hooting. Then both of their gangs started yelling at each other. And then a fight broke out. The offender turned out to be wearing a striking combination of an XXXXL pink t-shirt paired with a large pink winter hat, which I am sure he also thought was pretty god damn gangsta. I cannot express to you how pathetic the whole scene was. I must admit that Nadia and I were both bright red from laughing hysterically, basically since the first "yo fuck dog," but that doesn't mean I wasn't also at least mildly irritated at what I was witnessing. Of course, Cape Verdeans are more than welcome to choose their cultural influences; I will not presume to pretend that my ideas are better. But I think it is wretched to see what is largely a beautiful culture being ruined, all because they think that 50 Cent is really cool. A friend of mine the other day asked me if I had a gun in the US. I told him no, that I don't particularly like guns. He informed me that he thought guns were awesome and he can't wait to get one, so he can kill someone. Clearly, my friend isn't going to kill anyone. He's a really nice kid. But I think his comment illustrates what's going on.

Ok, I'm done.

*This is partly due to the fact that municipal elections are next March. The president and vereadors want to do as much good as they can, partly of course because they just want to do good in the community (I like them), but also because it reflects well on them come election time.

2007-06-27T16:26:00.000-01:00

Boa Vista's festival season is upon us. This last weekend was São João, which was (appropriately) in João Galego. Needless to say, the location made it a pain in the ass to get to, but it was still worth it. I went down around 8-ish with Walter and his girlfriend (Walter was a student of mine, but his English was probably too good to be in my class). When we got there, there were a couple hundred people in the Praça, which already pretty much doubles the population of the town. A musician named Tiolino came on around 9 or 10 and was actually really good. I bumped into my friend Shon and we pretty much stuck together all night, drinking beers and wandering around talking to people. At midnight, another live band came on, and by midnight, I mean one-ish (we run on Cape Verde Time). They're called Cabo Verde Show, and have apparently been around since the late 70s. At first I thought they were downright awful, because they sounded pretty much like live zouk. And if you ever want an earful, just ask me how I feel about zouk, a.k.a. the form of music with no actual musical substance whatsoever. Maybe it was the extra beers, maybe I just got used to it, or maybe I was just having too much fun, but after a few songs I started to dig it. So they played three sets and we danced and drank the night away until 5:30 or so. Fortunately, I managed to snag a car with a friend and get back to Vila shortly after 6, because not everyone had the same luck. Tey, one of the surf club guys, told me that none of them were able to get home until 10 or so. Plus there was a rumble. No, seriously. Apparently, João Galego took on Bofareira. This is hilarious, because if João Galego is tiny, Bofareira is less than a speck. It's about 20 houses sitting in the desert. Plus, a fight in Cape Verde usually has very few punches thrown. Instead, everyone throws bottles and rocks. Not kidding. Fully grown men throw rocks at each other like 6 year olds fighting over swings. Anyway, it was a fantastic night. The festa continued on Sunday, but I was too exhausted/hungover to make it the 45 minutes through the desert to get there. I napped a lot though.

What else? I finally set up a date with a Cape Verdean girl last week, only to be stood up, or so I thought. Apparently she stopped by the CEJ when I wasn't here to tell me she couldn't make it, and an anonymous coworker failed to pass on the message. Damn. I'll try again.

I still swim every day. I don't think I am going to like going back to a place without warm ocean water. I'm slowly getting back into respectable shape, though I am still too skinny for my tastes.

I finished my Excel class last night. The tests were pretty decent, with only 3 people failing. I should probably mention that failing means getting less than a 10 out of 20. Yes, being 50% right is considered a good job. But I have a two week break from teaching right now, until the last computer class, plus a chess workshop I set up. Thank god there will be parties next week, because I might get bored otherwise.

No more. Time for a swim.

2007-06-20T12:09:00.001-01:00

Today for an exercise, I asked my students to calculate some percentages. None of them knew how.

2007-06-08T11:59:00.000-01:00

I am lazy. Not really, but as far as this blog is concerned, I am a piece of crap. Really I've just been too busy to write anything in it. But right now I have my lesson plans done for English and Excel for the next class, and then it's the glorious weekend. So what have I been doing? Fixing computers, teaching classes, and being generally helpful. None of which makes for good blog writing. But some interesting things are afoot.

Two weeks ago I went to Santiago for a week to prepare for the next Pre Service Training, for the new batch of volunteers due to arrive in a few weeks. I went with the assignment of being a training assistant for the 6 new IT volunteers, the idea being that I would assist a professional trainer. But he flaked out, didn't sign his contract, and guess what? Now I'M the trainer for them. This sucks in some ways. One is that it's a lot of work on top of a pretty good pile of work I have already. Another is that I now have to spend a lot more time in Assomada (where the training center will be), at the expense of my projects in BV. I have already had to delay my technical training course twice, and now I have to push it back yet again to September. Also, I need a fucking VACATION, and it's going to be a lot harder now that I'm already spending 5 weeks away from my site. However, I really actually do want to help out with it, and I weirdly find the training work to be interesting and fulfilling. And it will look good on my resumé. Duh. So overall I'm pleased to do it, so long as I get adequate support from the Peace Corps, considering I can't be there in Assomada before training to organize my component. Fortunately, the new Community Development training coordinator seems really with it, so I should be ok. All the volunteers helping out with PST are going to be living together in one big house. It's going to be The Real World: Assomada, if only we had video cameras. Seriously, half a dozen volunteers, plus two staff members, sharing three bedrooms, one shower, and one kitchen? It's going to get crazy, trust me. Incidentally, if any incoming volunteers are reading this, your training is going to be a LOT better than ours was. I'll see you all at the end of July.

On the way home, I got to stop over on Sal for a night to chill with Kyle and Caryn. We spend a few hours in Santa Maria, which is THE resort town in CV. It was cool, but it sucks when everyone greets you with "Ciao! Come stai?" and you have to constantly assert your nationality and convince people that yes, you can in fact speak Creole. Still, I had possibly the best meal I've had in this country, in a restaurant close enough to the water that waves were splashing onto the seat next to me. (oh come on, am I really in the Peace Corps? I don't even believe it any more) And I bought some swanky stuff from Josh Angulo's surf shop. We also went swimming in the salt pools at Pedra da Lume, where the water is so dense, you practically float on the surface. I got hit with a giggle fit when I first got in, and I just kind of drifted around chuckling for twenty minutes. But the real prize of Sal is Espargos. Seriously. People from Santa Maria talk shit about Espargos like it's lame because it's not a beach town and it doesn't have all the wealth and resorts. But the last part is why it's awesome. In Santa Maria, we were three out of hundreds of white people. In Espargos, we were almost the only ones, and no one tried to speak Italian to us. Kyle and Caryn have tons of friends, and we made more over the course of Saturday night. Kyle and I swilled some coffee at midnight-ish (I was running on under 4 hours of sleep) and stayed out dancing at some disco until 5 am. It was fantastic, despite an ugly incident with a pushy guy and a pretty friend of Kyle's. Plus I met a Brazilian guy who looks like a short version of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Can't beat that.

My coworker Diva had her baby last Friday. Last night was the Sete, literally just Seven. It's a traditional party one week after the baby's birth where all the friends and family come and hang out, drink a bit, dance, and coo over the newborn. It wasn't the first one I've been to, but was definitely the most fun.

Well. That's all. Oh, almost. I'm going to Morocco in December. Rhett backed out of the Ghana vacation to spend some time with his girlfriend, and I asked my parents to meet up with me somewhere. My mom and I both suggested Morocco. Fes, Marrakesh, Rabat, Casablanca, and a trip to the Atlas Mtns if we can. Sounds nice, não é?

2007-05-09T11:45:00.000-01:00

Yeah yeah, it's been a while again. Normally, I could say that I don't have anything to write here, because nothing happens much in Boa Vista, but that's actually not the case. First of all, two weekends ago was the windsurfing competition. Ok, I'll start there.

On Friday, a boatload of windsurfers, surfers, and general water enthusiasts arrived from Sal. We had invited teams from Santiago (Praia Baixo) and São Vicente (Mindelo), but they never made it, who knows why. The first disaster came when I wandered through to meet everyone after my last class of the evening, and I found out that François had not arranged food for the competitors and their entourage. So there were 27 starving athletes, as well as some spectators and girlfriends, and all were unhappy about it. By Saturday morning however, he had negotiated some sort of agreement with some local women (including Dona Tuta of the CEJ), and they ended up cooking lunch and dinner for all the survers for the rest of the tournament. The tournament as a whole was a bit disorganized, but overall it went as well as it could. Money was scarce, since the two major sponsors that François was hoping for elected to not give any money at all. Still, we did a slalom, a race around the island, and some kitesurfing events. We weren't able to do freestyle or waveriding for the windsurfers because there were NO waves and we used all the good windy hours for the races. If we had more time, we could have done the sailing regatta we planned, and it goes without saying that with no waves, no surfing happened. So some people were disappointed, but it was a good start. I'm going to try to have more of a hand in organizing it for next year, since François was just too overwhelmed with it this year. We'll start organizing earlier, form a committee, and try to include goodies like a beer sponsor, a DJ, t shirts, and extend it for a week or more to include more events. I'm much more optimistic about it.

This past weekend was the Festival da Santa Cruz in Rabil. I went over there after having dinner with a friend on Friday night, and ended up staying until aroudn 4 am. A funaná band from Santiago called Ferro Gaita played. I had heard the name and music before, but never connected it to their faces, but after they took the stage I recognized them from TV. Nadia went home early because she had a class to teach Saturday morning, and my friend Lucas also took off because he works insane hours all weekend. So I just kind of hung around, attaching myself to random friends until I finally had to go to bed. Hearing funaná live again was spectacular, because Boa Vista just doesn't play much of it. Dancing to funaná is basically just a lot off ass shaking, which makes it way more fun than morna, aka lamest music ever. After a long night like that, I spent most of Saturday doing nothing, except for going for a nice swim in the afternoon. We had a dinner with all the CEJ staff at a nice restaurant in Rabil that night. I love hanging out with my coworkers. Good people, good people. I tried to convince a bunch of them to come to Mazurka, but everyone claimed they were too tired. So I went alone.

I know I've bitched about Mazurka before. And yeah, the music still sucks. But Lucas works there, so when I told him two weeks ago how bad the music is, he told the DJ to play more rap and reggae. And he actually listened. The usual 10 minute good music segment was extended to almost 25 minutes! Exciting shit. But really it's more fun now just because I know more people. There's never any awkward standing there, looking for someone I know. So I've been having a blast. I might start going a lot more often now. This last weekend was just as fun, and my friend Kyle is coming from Sal this weekend, so I'm sure we'll end up there again.

I need to wrap this up so I can get back to work. I've been working unholy hours for the last couple weeks, mainly because my English class is still going on and now I am teaching Word as well. It wouldn't be bad, except that English requires lesson plans and exercises, so I end up spending too much time on it every day. Bleah. Oh well, at least they're learning a bit.

It is completely orange outside. The bruma seca is blowing in off the Sahara again and the air is nasty and dusty.

2007-04-25T16:05:00.000-01:00

Internet is kind of back, but electricity has been coming and going in the CEJ's zona. Enjoy a couple entries:

4/23

I’ll start this out the same way I started the other one (below): My whole body is sore. I was windsurfing all day Saturday and Sunday, in high winds and on choppy water. Yesterday in particular was really gusty and tricky to work with. I had to wake up and stretch every muscle in my body this morning. And I really didn’t want to get out of bed. Not because I am particularly tired today (I got about 9 hours of sleep), or that I was dreading work today, but just because bed was nice.

Anyway, the internet is back, finally. My friend on Sal says it’s been back since Friday, but it’s been coming and going. The full story is that some ship dropped their anchor on a fiber optic cable, which happened to be THE cable in Praia that connects us to the rest of the world. Do not even ask me why a) there was only one cable, with no redundant system b) the cable was unprotected c) it was not buried d) it was placed underneath a harbor e) any other questions where the answer would be that CVTelecom is a bunch of morons. But it happened. As it is, right now there is a temporary satellite system set up until they fix the cable. You may or may not know that satellite internet is a LOT slower than a fiber optic cable. So my connection is constantly coming and going, and isn’t much faster than dial up. Oh well. I shouldn’t complain. I’m lucky I even have it.

I’ve mostly just been working this past week. Uninteresting, I know. But with all the classes, plus all the broken computers, I’ve been mostly just planning and teaching, with the odd repair work in between. In the early afternoon, I usually end up going for a swim and reading for a bit. That’s another new thing, the swimming. I’ve only managed to go a couple times, and it’s rough going. I wanted to start doing it in the morning, at 7, but I can’t get myself to get up. The mind is so irrational when it’s half asleep, I manage to convince myself that it’s not worth getting out of bed just to swim. Plus, my swimming form sucks, so I end up tired really quickly, and taking the occasional gulp of saltwater. Well, I will improve.

I went to a baby shower last night, for Diva, the girl I work with. I’d never been to one before, but I’m pretty sure they’re not usually like this. When the time came to give the gifts, Diva had to guess each one individually. She got four tries, and every time she missed a guess, she had to do something that the other person said. For most of it, we just drew on her with lipstick, but she also had to dance around a lot (awkward when you’re 8 months pregnant). Plus there was wine and pontche, which seemed odd for a baby shower. Good times. Doing things with my coworkers is always fun.

Time to correct some tests. Introduction to computers is done, thank all that is holy, and I get a short break from computer classes.

4/16

My whole body is sore. I’ve spent 3 of the last 4 days windsurfing and I am feeling it. On Thursday, I had a meeting with François, which was followed by lunch and surfing. Then I spent basically all day Saturday and Sunday at the wind club. I’ve started using a 125 liter board, which is not tiny, but small enough. I’ve gotten used it to it though, so the next time we have a good strong wind, I’ll try a 115 or so. Unfortunately, the wind is beginning to die down, and it’ll stay calm until the end of the rainy season in October or November. Sad. But the weak wind gave me an excuse to take out a 6.5 sq m sail (I’ve been using a 5.2) yesterday, and I was FLYING. It was awesome. I’d love to be out there again today actually, but there is just too much to do. I think I’ll go for a swim in the afternoon though, so maybe I won’t feel like I got hit by a bus tomorrow.

So I’ve been busy. I started teaching all my new classes last Monday, so I now teach 18 hours a week, which is more or less on par with a high school teacher. Every day I teach a computer class from 10:30 am to noon, then again (same class, different students) from 7:30 to 9 at night. And Mon/Wed/Fri I teach English from 6 to 7. I don’t mind the teaching in and of itself, but the constant stream of requests for computer repairs hasn’t stopped at all, so I feel like I am doing the work of two people right now. Or rather I would be, except that I’ve just been ignoring all repair stuff, except for things I know I can do in 10 minutes or less. People look at me like “What do you mean you don’t have time? I want this FIXED.” But let’s be serious, it’s been broken for months, if not years, because no one else knows how to do it, so why are you pushing it on me today? Hopefully I’ll get my plans a couple weeks ahead on classes this week and have time to step back and do it. Granted, I do in fact have all afternoon I could use to fix computers. But if I did that, I would be working 12 hour days, and they don’t pay me for that. They don’t pay me at all. Ha! I already have to be here from 9 am to 9 pm, so I’ll be damned if I don’t take a 4 hour break in the day to keep my sanity, get some exercise, and run some errands.

But on the plus side, all my classes are going really well. This English class is going a thousand times better than the previous one. Everyone is one the same level, which is basically nothing, so I know what I should be teaching. It’s weird teaching basic English. I never thought about how one would go about doing that, until about two months ago when I decided to offer the class. And the computer classes are going even better. Because I already taught the class once last year, I just use the same lesson plans, but with some improvements. Now that I know what people have a hard time with and what is easy, it’s been going more smoothly. I’m even becoming a decent teacher. Too bad I’ll probably never teach again after Peace Corps.

Speaking of “after Peace Corps,” my friend Kyle threw out a pretty great idea for a COS trip (COS = Close Of Service, i.e. where I’ll go for a nice vacation when this is all done). He really wants to see Brazil. Since I obviously love Brazil, I am all about going. But our friend Caryn is Chilean by birth and studied abroad there, so she might want in on it, too, so we can visit there. And then who knows, throw in Argentina or Peru, plus maybe a stopover somewhere in Central America, and that sounds like a pretty fantastic trip. Now we’ll see how many times we change our minds in between now and then.

Enough writing. Time to try and get something done in the morning so my afternoon will be more relaxed. I’ve also just been informed by François that the reason we have no internet (I’m writing in Word) is because the whole country has been cut off. Apparently a ship dropped anchor right on a fiber optic cable in Praia and bye bye internet for the whole country. That’s what we get for living on islands. And having only one ISP. Who has only one cable

2007-04-04T09:31:00.000-01:00

An interesting last week or so. Well, maybe not for you, but I'm going to write about it anyway.

We went to Tarrafal for IST last week. Tarrafal is on the northern part of Santiago, and it's definitely the best beach on that island. We stayed in a hotel that consists mostly of little huts among some palm trees right along the bay (yeah, sometimes this feels like a really nice vacation). Oh yes, and there were monkeys. If I haven't recently expressed my hatred for monkeys, here it is: I hate monkeys. One morning, they all hung around outside the breakfast room and started stealing food from people as they left. Our training director got mugged for a banana, and another monkey went for Nadia's loaf of bread. I smacked it with my folder. Note: smacking a hungry monkey makes it a hungry, angry monkey. (There was one really cute baby monkey at a bar one night that I actually did like a lot. He was kind of a biter, but really fun to play with.) Where was I? Right, IST. I won't kill you with the details, but I'd have to say that it was more or less what I expected. There were some sessions on administrative policy and whatnot that were boring, but probably necessary. The rest was mostly on project design and management, classroom strategies, etc. Some parts were actually quite useful, and just hanging out and talking with other volunteers puts your own work in good perspective.

But of course, there was partying. Lots of it. All night. Every night. Guess what happens when you put 45 Americans who haven't seen each other in 6 months on a nice beach with access to lots of beer? Madness. On the last night, we had a bonfire on the beach, and a few of us walked up into town at around 10 to get some beer. Well, we ended up clearing two (count 'em, 2) grocery stores out of everything they had in their refridgerators. I also forgot how amazingly entertaining some of the other volunteers are. It was like a non-stop comedy show for 5 days. With booze added. There was also a bit of swimming, of the naked-at-midnight variety. And by a bit, I mean a lot. So the point is that it was awesome, and a really good break from Boa Vista. Although, it's worth pointing out that I started missing this place by day 2, and I was immensely pleased to come back on Friday. I've realized just how much I like it here.

I got a couple days of peace and quiet at home, because Nadia stayed on Santiago for a bit longer. I caught up on some sleep, and had a pretty great night out alone on Saturday. It's amazing what happens when you live in a small town and you just go sit on a bar stool for a night. You see everyone. It's awesome. Now, Nadia is back, and we've got a few visitors. Catalina, Michelle, and Adam are all here right now, and Alli and Natawnee will be arriving later today. The plan is lots of beach relaxation, which so far has worked out well. I've been catching up on a lot of work, too.

One nasty little incident is that Catalina and Michelle got robbed on our beach the other day. They were walking together and two guys stepped out of nowhere and took everything they had. I was floored, because I had never heard of anything like this, but apparently these two guys have gotten like ten people in the last month or so. I don't think of the beaches here as dangerous, but I guess there is a price to be paid for rapid development.

Diva is listening to absolutely horrible music right now. Worse than usual. It might be Celine Dion, if I knew anything she's done other than that Titanic song.

Spela, my Slovenian friend, is leaving today, and I am sad. She had a little going away party last night at the wind club, and it was awesome. Every windsurfer around came for it, and we ended up hanging out there with Tey, Moises, and Yohann until almost 1 am. Damn this place is great.

Oh god, it IS Celine Dion. The fucking Titanic song is on now! I am about to stab myself in the heart with the nearest sharp object.

Ok, enough for now.

2007-03-20T16:27:00.000-01:00

I guess I should write something, huh.

I can't say I've been up to much lately. I finished up my English class (thank all that is holy), so I don't have anything to teach until April 2nd now, which is nice. It means I get to be home by 6 pm every day. So during the day, I've just been fixing computers and planning lessons for my beginner's English class. On that note...

I'm sick of fixing computers. I mean, I know I came here as an IT volunteer. And that's fine. But as of two weeks ago, I flat out refuse to hold a full time tech job, ever again, in my entire life. Why? Because all of a sudden, the few remaining people on Boa Vista with broken computers are now aware of my presence, and they just keep on piling through the door. It's unreal. I am constantly either fixing a computer, or being asked to fix one. In one sense, I don't mind, because I am the only one who can do it, so it's obviously at least mildly rewarding to help someone out. On the other hand, I hate fixing computers, particularly for people who don't understand anything about them (i.e. most, and that's not just here), and most particularly for people who don't understand that some computers are not fixable and are just broken forever.

I was in Praia this past weekend for a workshop on "Training Design and Evaluation." A training guy from Washington was there, as well as the West Africa regional training person, and they introduced what basically was a new way to approach training design. It was, as we say, mais ou menos. It could have been really good, and in some ways, it was pretty helpful. I honestly and nerdily find the whole topic of training to be pretty interesting, especially in light of the whole Peace Corps goal of sustainable development, which I will not bore you with here. What was not so good about the whole thing is that I can't see much of it coming to light in the near future. With the whole training model being changed this year, it's enough of an experiment that I don't imagine that they will also be trying to throw in another whole batch of new ideas. But I did get to hang out with a whole crew of volunteers and we had a pretty good time, even if it was for 2 short days.

Scary experience: I went windsurfing on Sunday, after getting home at the ass crack of dawn and sleeping for another couple hours. I decided to use a smaller board for the first time, since the winds were pretty high, and it's easier that way. So I grabbed a 119 liter board (contrast this with my previous 155 liter board - huge difference) and my usual sail and headed off. At first, no problems. I wobbled a bit, figured it out, and then crossed the bay 4 times. So far so good. Then I'm not sure what happened, but I fell off at one point on one edge of the bay and couldn't get back up. I kept getting on the board, hauling my sail, and then falling off right as I got a good grip on the boom. The balance on the smaller board was just completely different and I couldn't do it with high winds and rough water. So I fell and fell and fell and drifted the whole time further and further out. Eventually, I was exhausted, out of breath, banged up, and waterlogged. Even worse, I was too far away to swim back and further out than any of the other surfers. So after briefly freaking out, I ended up throwing my sail back across the back of the board and paddling to the nearest anchored yacht, where I tied my board up and flopped exhausted in the dinghy. There was no one on board, except a remarkably cute and friendly cat. So I ended up sitting on the this fucking boat for about 45 minutes until my friend Spela surfed over and waved over a friend on a motorboat to bring me in. So there it was, the first time I've had to be rescued on my board. Yeah, and it was scary as hell drifting out towards the open sea. And of course, everyone at the wind club has been making fun of me, asking me how Brazil was (Brazil being the next place you land if you drift out of the bay). So yeah, next time I am sticking to the shallows until I get a hang of the small board.

Ok that's it. That is honestly the most interesting thing that has happened to me lately. I'm reading Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, which is surprisingly good. I am very, very relaxed.

2007-03-02T09:26:00.000-01:00

Three cool things I've learned in the last 24 hours or so:

1) I am going to Praia twice this month. In addition to IST (which should actually happen this time), I was just told yesterday that I'm going in for a workshop in a couple weeks. It's Peace Corps related but I didn't catch all the details. Someone from each technical sector in Community Development will be there, and I'm holding down IT apparently.

2) We have an ice cream store in Sal Rei now. To those of you blessed with a constant supply of ice cream, just go die. HA, just kidding. But you may not understand what this means. We had ice cream before, but only a couple flavors, and it was expensive and only available in a restaurant. But now we have chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, coffee, hazelnut, apple, and lemon sorbet. I also feel I should bring up a point I have made before: I haven't been a junk food person since probably elementary school (excluding the occasional case of the munchies in college). But this place has turned me around. I buy Ruffles like there's no tomorrow, eat chocolate whenever it's available, and now there's ice cream, too. I even drink Coke. Without rum. And still losing weight...

3) We are going to have a watersports championship on Boa Vista. I spoke with François the other day to proofread some stuff in English he had written up, and some of it was about this competition. It will consist of 4 weekends, with the sports chosen based on best conditions. So there will be surfing, bodyboarding, windsurfing, kitesurfing, and boat races. I might actually enter in the windsurf slalom and perhaps freestyle as well. Not that I'll win, but it'll be fun. In any event, I am going to help out with it and see if I can get the CEJ involved as well.

That is all.

2007-03-02T09:21:00.000-01:00

Long time, no internet. Actually, I still don’t have any Internet, so I’ll have to post this later. The whole island has been out since last Friday apparently. But I am back on Boa Vista, after 8 fun days of Carnaval and vacation. You’d think I’d feel relaxed and happy and ready to get back into work. But no. Because I all I did for 8 days is party and sleep on hard floors. So I am not rested. And I have a cold. But it was aaaaall worth it.

First, a little something on São Vicente and Santo Antão. Mindelo, which is basically the only settlement of note on São Vicente, is like a small European city. It doesn’t have much more than 50,000 people, so it’s still small enough that you run into the same people all the time. But it’s also big enough that it has real restaurants, shops, and other things that I haven’t seen in 6 months. They also get fruits and vegetables. Even lettuce. Holy shit. Mindelo is also a big shipping port, because it has a large and deep natural harbour. The occasional cruise ship shows up and drops anchor. Oddly enough, Sal Rei used to be the biggest port here and was going to be the capital of the country at one point, until Mindelo started getting more business. Most big buildings have a sort of colonial architecture, and the whole place is very bright and friendly. Right nearby (look at a map) is the island of Santo Antão. The only way to reach it is by ferry boat from Mindelo, since there is no currently running airport there. It is all mountains, and the only airstrip that is built has powerful crosswinds that prevent planes from landing. Smart. Anyway. Santo Antão has a lot of people, and thus a lot of volunteers. The northeastern part of the island actually manages to catch a lot of moisture and is actually green 365 days a year, which is spectacular. Because it is all mountainous, the population of Santo Antão lives in a few ribeiras, again mostly in the northeast. A ribeira is basically just a deep valley cut by millions of years of rainfall, and during the rainy season, they actually turn into legitimate rivers again. The ribeiras grow crops all year, but it’s mostly sugarcane to produce my beloved grog, the ridiculously powerful booze that people drink around here.

On Saturday, Nadia and I arrived with a bunch of other people in Mindelo. We all stayed at our friends’ house, but the first night we didn’t do much. Just got some dinner, had a few drinks, and lounged around the house catching up with one another. Most of us hadn’t seen each other since PST, so there was a lot to say. The next morning, more people arrived, and we wandered around the city a bunch, just sort of exploring things. I can kind of lump most of the next few days together actually: By day, we’d all wander around the city in various groups, constantly bumping into one another and switching off people. All day the streets were packed with people, most of whom were drunk and wearing silly costumes. Most people think of Carnaval costumes as being bright and feathery and fancy (which is also true), but most people were just dressed up as if it were Halloween for a week. There were lots of guys in drag, weird masks, brightly colored wigs, and a lot of random costumes. And several times a day, there were the famous Carnaval parades. Sometimes they were informal, as in a group would just band together and parade through the streets, dancing in costume and banging on drums. Other times it was even less formal, and a bunch of more or less wasted people would stumble through the streets yelling and banging on whatever. But there were also the formal, organized parades that went on for long periods of time, with choreographed dancing, and really, really good drumming troupes. There were one or two a day, except on Tuesday (the big day), which had the three best and longest ones, which were actually judged as part of the whole event. So by day, we enjoyed the spectacle, ate good food, did a bit of shopping, and generally enjoyed ourselves. By night, we’d all get together and go out somewhere for drinking and dancing, etc. On Monday night, we got tickets to a big party at a hotel on the main square in town. There was live music and an unbelievable amount of people. Because it was the post-party for Monday’s big parade, all the dancers were there, dressed up in full costume, so I got more than a few brightly colored feathers in the face, up the nose, etc. I also didn’t care, because I had been drinking since mid afternoon.

I’d like to give more details as to what Carnaval really looked like, but I’d rather just post some pictures. Nadia has some, and I’ll also get some good ones from Natawnee and Kyle, which I diligently forgot to do before leaving.

After Carnaval, I went with Tawnee and Kyle to Paúl to take in a different sort of Cape Verde. The way there is pretty taxing. After the ferry ride, which is only an hour, you then have to grab a hiace to make the journey through the mountains. It takes another hour and change to get to Paúl, most of which is going either up or down and winding along cliff faces that drop hundreds of feet straight down. But once you get up high into the clouds, it starts turning green and stays that way all the way down the ribeira. There are pine forests and grass, with little farms and stone houses perched in the most ridiculous places. People will terrace what looks like basically a cliff, and find ten square meters of farming space to use. Very resourceful. Anyway, the main part of Paúl is Vila das Pombas, where Tawnee and Allie live. Das Pombas is basically one long road of houses that goes by the seaside. Immediately behind one row of houses is the ocean (Allie’s back door opens literally onto the Atlantic. The water used to wash under the door until someone built a retaining wall), and on the other side is the mountains going straight up. There is a second road that goes inland up the ribeira. Paúl is small and rather poor, and has about a 33% unemployment rate, which translates to a lot of people just hanging out around town with nothing to do. But for all that, it’s a cool place. It’s really pretty, and really quiet. And have I mentioned that it’s GREEN? I don’t see much of that color these days. We spent most of the time just relaxing and hanging out. Kyle, Tawnee and I walked a while up the ribeira to go to a restaurant of sorts. There is a German guy who makes his own cheese and grows his own veggies, so we ate a bunch of his cheese, and he smoked some fresh fish. He also produces his own grog, and Kyle and I had a shot of some stuff called ’77,’ as in 77% alcohol. It was not entirely unlike getting punched in the face. But in a good way.

So Friday night, Tawnee threw a party, and by threw a party I mean invited people over to Allie’s for a party. All the folks from Santo Antão came, plus me and Adam (from Calheta on Santiago), though Kyle and crew had already headed back to their respective homes. The party was fun, grilling and drinking and all the usual, but I ended up spending my last few waking hours on Santo Antão taking care of a barfing Natawnee. Ah well. My overnight on Sal was pretty uneventful. We watched Scrubs. Yeah.

Well, the internet is still not back here. I have been informed that DSL is still working in another zona, so it’s not the whole island, but I will be damned if I pay for internet. So this will go up when CVTelecom gets their shit together and gets the CEJ back up.

2007-02-12T12:25:00.000-01:00

So, I just spent the last half hour or so browsing other people's Peace Corps blogs in West Africa (yeah, I know, I'm just wasting time on the internet. Give me a break, it's Monday.) , and thinking about how my own experience holds up. I don't really want to do any heavy comparisons, because I think it should be obvious that the kind of service you do and the place you do it shapes your service enormously. But it's wild about how different it really can be. The blogs I was looking at were mostly in Ghana and Togo, mainly because Rhett (PCV at the Escola Técnica in Praia) and I are trying to plan a vacation to Accra and Lomé, for surfing and other beachy goodness. But I got caught up in reading about people's rural experiences, because of how vastly different they are from mine.

People spend time doing agricultural work, volunteering at the hospital with the Red Cross, helping with childcare and midwifery... The kinds of things that I always envisioned Peace Corps volunteers as doing. People talk about their friendly neighbors who come over to help them with tasks that Americans aren't used to: cooking, washing clothes, minor projects around the house. Many don't have electricity and update infrequently when they travel to whatever city happens to be nearby. But overall I guess, the focus is on the basics of life. The projects tend to be organized around developing services that we might take for granted in the US (or Cape Verde), but don't exist in the bush of Togo. A part of me is mildly disappointed that my experience isn't more like this. Maybe I just wanted to rough it a bit more than I am here, but then again, I'd probably sing a different tune if I were actually living in a rural village in the middle of nowhere. I think the bigger issue for me, however, is that it sometimes seems that Boa Vista doesn't really need volunteers. Don't get me wrong: Boa Vista definitely does need us here. But it doesn't always seem that way.

Nadia's service is a bit more straightforward (which isn't to say that she doesn't have her own doubts and tribulations), because there is a serious lack of English teachers here. If she weren't around, classes just wouldn't get taught and a generation would pass through school with no further language training. But as a technology person... Part of it is that for a place to even have a use for an IT volunteer, they have to have already achieved a certain level of development. You've gotta have consistent electricity, infrastructure, education levels, small businesses, etc. Boa Vista has all this. Which is why I feel like a chair warmer sometimes. My chair is exceptionally toasty today, thanks to my ass. Buuuut, then I start to think about the flip side of things.

You know how sometimes, a random offhand comment by somebody will stick in your head forever and ever? Well, during training, we had many representatives from various agencies come and talk to us about development work in Cape Verde. One of them (I think it was a UN guy) was talking about how Cape Verde will soon be removed from the Least Developed Countries list, because the country has hit several benchmarks, indicating great progress. Removal from the LDC means that you immediately lose many benefits and developmental aid. Without being inappropriately POed about it, but clearly bothered, the guy made a remark to the effect of "Why are we being punished for doing well?" Cape Verde consistently makes the most of the development aid it is given, with very little being squandered by corruption or inefficiency. As a result, it is the wealthiest African country, with a booming economy and fewer of the poverty-associated problems associated with continental West Africa. So if Cape Verde does such great things with the money it is given, doesn't it seem perverse to take that money away? The obvious answer is that now there are other countries in need of that money. So what does Cape Verde get? Me, I guess (not a great prize, though my remarkable good looks may be contributing to Boa Vista's overall wellbeing).

The one thing that consistently keeps me optimistic is that I think I still fit into the development model. It's just not in a place that I ever really considered before. Somewhere in between the US and Burkina Faso are a slew of countries that are pulling themselves out of 3rd world status, but need assistance in getting up to speed with the developed world. So I wander along and start showing them how to use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of monthly expenses, and all I ask for in return are free windsurfing lessons. If I can get done the ONE thing that I want to do here, which is to train at least one reasonably competent technician, I can go back to the US (or wherever) feeling good about it.

Ok, did I rant? I might have. Just feeling a bit useless today, as I have no concrete work to do, except plan my English class for tonight, which I really don't want to do. At all.

And I've been practicing using the harness while windsurfing, and I have achieved some awesome speeds in the last couple days. Some awesome crashes have come along with that (explaining the bruises and roadrash on my arms, chest, and shins), but how are you gonna learn how to fly across the bay without flipping headlong over your board a few dozen times?

2007-02-07T10:23:00.000-01:00

A few random things:

1) I hate dogs. I've never really felt like that before, but it's undeniable now. I specifically hate their barking. If you could breed a new species of mute puppy, I'd be ok with that. But the dozen or so neighborhood dogs who now routinely wake me up between 4:30 and 5 am with 45 minutes of non-stop yapping have got to go. In my half-asleep daze of confusion and irritation, I sometimes have extended fantasies about how I would kill these dogs. It's usually a baseball bat, though assault rifles sometimes make an appearance.

2) I am bored. I was just chatting with Kyle (fellow IT volunteer on Sal, just north of here), asking what he does with his days. He is in the same boat as me. He teaches some classes, though his are quite small owing to lack of computers, but during the day, there is not always stuff to do. For instance, today I want to come up with a way to revitalize my sagging English class, as well as come up with a schedule for my technician training courses. The problem is that for the former, I need to speak with my counterpart who is on her daily coffee break, and the latter is just not that urgent, plus it involves coordinating with several other people to avoid stepping on toes and interfering with other classes. According to a very useful sheet of paper that PC gave us during training, "feelings of uselessness" are normal during this time of service. But it's not that I feel useless. Ok, maybe it is that I feel useless. It will pass, I guess. At least I now have a plan for 3 more courses to teach, and I feel like my service is going in a positive direction.

3) I love windsurfing. Yeah, I know, I talk about it a lot. But it's my little lifesaver here. On Monday, I finished typing up several course proposals in the morning, looked over the whole package I had assembled, and decided it looked pretty good. So, I took a longer than normal lunch break and went windsurfing (hey, I'm here until 9 pm most nights. I deserve it). And ohhhh man, it was a breakthrough day. I'm using a smaller, lighter board now, as well as a larger sail, and I finally achieved planing. That is when you plant your feet towards the back of the board, throw all your weight backwards, and lean your sail right into the strength of the wind. The result is the tip of your board angling way up out of the water while you skip across the waves, not unlike a speedboat. And it is a phenomenal feeling. Johann and Tony (guys who work at François' place) tell me that I am ready for the harness next time, to provide a little more stability at high speeds.

4) I am ready for vacation. I will be in Mindelo in 10 days. It couldn't come soon enough. I haven't left my 15 mile diameter island in over 4 months. That is the longest I have ever stayed in one place, at least in recent memory.

5) I need a martini.

6) I have so many books to read, and it no way is that bad. I am still working my way through "Freedom at Midnight," and I think I'll tackle "Freakonomics" next.

7) I am increasingly stressed out by news reports from the Middle East. I know I am not alone in this concern, but it really, really bothers me these days. I may have to start learning Arabic. You know where I'm going with that.

2007-02-02T12:41:00.000-01:00

So I just got back from the post office, and I feel I need to say something. The post office here is the worst place in the universe. I know you may be thinking "Really? Well, what about prison? Death Valley in the summer? A fire ant nest?" No, I assure you, it's the post office. Generally, if you arrive before 10:30 am, it's not so bad. You can pick up a package or send an envelope in 10 minutes or so. The problem is that they have several services there: regular post office stuff, all CVTelecom stuff (land lines and cell phones), plus Western Union. So there are people there to send stuff, receive stuff, pay phone bills, get contracts, send money to their families, receive money from abroad, etc etc. So really, it's a madhouse. And it could work well. Except for one guy. He is my mortal enemy. Granted, most things in Cape Verde run a little slower than usual, and I'm fine with that. I can just relax and let things go at their own pace, and it rarely bothers me these days. But this guy... oh man. Nadia and I joke that he is the most useless human being in the world. Sometimes, even when there is no one else there, he will literally lie to you about something to avoid completing some task. He's the reason it took 6 weeks to get a phone installed. Nadia asked him for a printout of our phone bill last week, and he said it was impossible without filling out a request for the main office in Praia. Two days ago, I asked someone else (the manager, who is awesome and supremely helpful), and the detailed bill was in my hand 45 seconds later. Today, I was 5th or 6th in line to pick up a box, and it took over an hour. Just because the simplest tasks take him 15 to 20 minutes. It's really pretty amazing.

On the positive side, my mom's package was filled with good books. I recently became fascinated with Arab history, so I now have 3 books on it, dating from thousands of years ago until the 90s. Also, Nadia got two cool books recently: on reading Hebrew and Arabic. She has a personal goal to read religious texts (Bible, Torah, and Koran) in their original languages, which I think is badass. So between that and the Anglo-Saxon grammar book I found in the PC office, we are nerding it up hardcore in Sal Rei. Who loves other languages? I do.

Also, it RAINED a couple days ago. Seriously. It never even rains here during the rainy season. It's only the 3rd time I've seen precipitation here, and the first time since September. But there was a full on thunderstorm. It moved to the west of the island, but I could see the lightning out over the water, and then the rain caught us. I discovered that the ceiling in my room leaks, too. Hurrah for buckets.

Mostly I just wanted to vent about the post office. OH, but I have another story. I don't know if I've ever mentioned the Chinese loja phenomenon before, but here it is: Cape Verde has a decent number of Chinese immigrants here, because they are able to import inexpensive everyday items for really cheap and sell them here. For instance, there are two lojas (loja is just a store) here in Vila, and they are always packed with people. Someone from São Vicente told me that there used to be Chinese restaurants around, but they all closed when the families decided to open stores instead, because you can make so much more money. Anyway, the point of this is that the woman who owns one of the lojas in town came into the CEJ the other day with her daughter, who had just arrived from China last week. She apparently hates Boa Vista and wants to go back to China. I don't really blame her, considering she doesn't know Creole or Portuguese, and this sure as hell isn't what she's used to. So her mother asked me to let her into my English class, so she can at least do something and maybe make some friends. I agreed, so she's been to a few classes. So on Wednesday, we're having a little class discussion on AIDS, and she's being really quiet. My friend Walter (whose English is excellent) was wondering what the AIDS situation was like in China, so we asked her if she knew. Conversation in brief:

"*girl's name*, do you know what the AIDS crisis is like in China? How do the rates compare with what we just read?"
"I don't know, really."
"Oh ok."
"I don't care about this."
"Um. Ok. Why?"
"Because it is not about me, so why should I care?"
(Jaws drop all around room. Stunned silence follows.)
"Oh. Well. I... Uh... Does anybody have anything to add to that? No? Ok, um... wow. I guess class is over."

Gee, good question. Why should I care? I mean, it's only the largest epidemic in history, killing millions of people per year, but I guess that's no big deal. I personally don't have HIV, so I guess I can just ignore it. Gosh, life is so much simpler now. I guess I could have taken the opportunity to discuss why she should in fact care, but the way she phrases it was pretty confrontational and unpleasant, so I just let it go rather than start an argument.

Ok, well the wind has picked up. Tonight, I teach two classes in a row. At 9 pm, I am free to spend the weekend windsurfing. The storms have been increasing the swell at the outside of the bay, so maybe I can play on the waves a bit.

2007-01-29T10:53:00.000-01:00

Well, this past weekend was another to go down in the annals of history. Or at least the annals of this month. Shon, my coworker, invited Nadia and I to Estância de Baixo again, only this time for a grelha in the desert. Nadia and Shon's girlfriend, Elisabeth, have class at the same time Saturday morning, so we went back with her after she did some grocery shopping. We put together a few coolers of food and drinks and walked about 25 minutes out of town to where the desert begins. The Deserto da Viana is weird: it starts and ends really suddenly, and it's pretty small. One minute, you're walking through fields of brown dirt and lava rocks, and then all of a sudden, there are huge sand dunes that go for a few miles and then end just as suddenly. But when you're actually there in the desert, it might as well be the Sahara if you can't see over the next few dunes.

So we set up camp underneath a big tree that gave us shade from the sun. Someone had set up a grilling pit there, but we had to find it under the sand first and dig it up. We grilled fish and some chicken legs that Beti had marinated in something close to liquid heaven because good god damn they were delicious. We had an awful lot of wine and beer, which we polished off while we ate. After the meal, we struck off into the desert to enjoy it. I don't know what the original goal was, but it turned into a booze-fueled romp in the sand dunes. (pics here. The album is public, no need for an account) In the end, we made it home just after sunset, exhausted and covered in sand. I am still finding small deposits of sand here and there. So we relaxed at Shon's and then headed home, only to find... Yep, water's gone. I did the best I could to wash off the sand with a bottle of water, but I still woke up with a few fistfuls in my bed. No worries though, the water is back as of this morning.

Sunday, I woke up and immediately headed to the bay, obviously. Unfortunately, there was a lot less wind out on the water than there was on, say, my street, so the day wasn't particularly good for speed. Still, I cruised around a bit and even caught a few waves. But like a jackass, I managed to get in front of a big one that carried me halfway across the bay and right into shore, because I never bothered to think about how to get off a wave that big with almost no wind to move myself. I looked about 90% retarded. But right until the end, it was just about the most fun I've had on a board. The wind and swell picks up on Wednesday. I am addicted.

I really do have the best post in the Peace Corps. Not only can I play in the desert and windsurf on the same weekend, but I have free internet to write about it afterwards.

2007-01-23T11:29:00.000-01:00

Ho hum, it's been another slow week. I started my English class, which is going shockingly well. My students are all mid-twenties to 40s and 50s, so everyone is pretty well educated and most people have reasonably good English. One guy of course speaks nearly perfectly, leading to the question "Why the hell did you sign up for my English class?" No, actually, I'm really glad he's there, because he breaks the occasional awkward silence with a well-formed sentence, and I feel less like an ass. The class is all reading and discussion based, so I'm not bogged down planning grammar lessons. If there is a grammar question, I just answer it on the fly. So this week I had a burst of genius with an assignment idea to kill two birds with one stone. I've been meaning to update the wikipedia entry on Boa Vista and Sal Rei, because they both SUCK. I mean it. Go look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boa_Vista%2C_Cape_Verde The facts are only vaguely accurate and some of the sentences don't make sense. But why write it all myself when I can just get my class of 15 perfectly willing students to do it instead? They practice English and inform the world about their home at the same time. I'm so smart. Look for that stuff to be posted on wikipedia in a couple weeks. There will be entries on Boa Vista, Sal Rei, Rabil, and João Galego.

I just have one thing to vent about, and it's sort of a revisit of something I have mentioned before: the music here. I feel like I'm living in a musical black hole. Anybody who knows me knows that I have a musical fixation, and anybody who knows me really well also knows that I am a music snob. So you can imagine how I feel about a culture that only likes two kinds of music: slow music with an easily discernible beat, and fast music with an easily discernable beat. This is no problem at a club, or from a passing car, or even on someone's stereo every once in a while. About 20 minutes ago, someone came in and sat the computer next to me. He had earbuds in, but I could still hear his music as if he had speakers. While waiting for his ears to start bleeding, I couldn't help but notice that his music was just some generic vaguely R&B-ish American imported crap. They love it. They eat it up. The American music that makes it over here is hands down the bottom of the barrel. It is the most irrelevant, talentless pop garbage you could imagine. Linkin Park is experiencing the zenith of their popularity here. I am not kidding. Linkin Park. Few bands receive more contempt from me (I think only Creed and James Blunt currently top them. Creed has held the number one position for 6 or 7 years now. Oh wait, Good Charlotte might make it, too.). On the rap front, 50 Cent and Jay Z still hold sway, though Akon is also inexplicably huge. I continue to try to introduce people to good hip hop, but I mostly get lukewarm responses, unless the song has a really really catchy chorus, or gun shot sounds mixed into the beat (note: a gun shot sound effect, especially if it is incorporated into the beat, is a surefire way to get me to hate your rap song instantly. it's such a pathetic gimmick). It's an uphill battle I suppose, and most people just don't care much for rock and roll. However, bizarrely enough, the Scorpions are somehow wildly popular in Cape Verde. Yes, those Scorpions. Weird, right? Anyway, sometimes I just can't stand to hear one more generic beat and repetitive pseudo-soul chorus and I have to go plug myself into some Medeski or Led Zep. I have never loved my iPod more.

On to something less stressful. I went to Estância de Baixo on Saturday, where my coworker Shon lives with his girlfriend, Elisabeth, who is a math teacher at Nadia's high school. They are great people, easily my favorite couple here on Boa Vista. Beti cooked up some cachupa (Cape Verde's national dish, if I've never mentioned it: beans, corn, sausage, onion, pork etc all in a big stew-ish thing) and fish, and we had lunch with another guy, confusingly also named Shon. The food was really good, and they busted out with an unbelievable amount of wine. My Creole gets much better when I've been drinking, so the conversation flowed in equal proportion to the alcohol. There was a big barbeque going on right across the street, where they were cooking up a (wait for it) donkey. This is not a lie. I don't know why this is even remotely appealing, but apparently this donkey needed to die and they ate it. Yummy. In much the same way rotten cabbage and sweaty socks are yummy. I wasn't offered, so I didn't try it, but I suppose I'd give it a shot. Anyway. The whole day was great, and I was reminded how different the rest of Cape Verde is than Sal Rei. This town feels more like the world I'm used to: people are nice enough, friendly and easy to talk to, but nobody goes out of their way to hang out with you or befriend you. It's only in places like Estância and João Galego where just showing up in town is reason enough for everyone to learn your name and be your new best friend. There are only 2-300 people in Estância, making it a tenth the size of Vila, so it makes sense. In any event, every friendly gesture in Cape Verde comes with a friendly beer, ponche, grogue, or wine, so by the time I found myself a ride home at about 9 ish, I was pretty far gone. I ended up spending Sunday entirely indoors, partly due to recovery and partly due to a lack of wind. No wind, no surfing.

Ok, no more typing for me. I stupidly cut my finger last night trying to make my fan stop making sqeaky noises. There was much blood and discomfort.

2007-01-15T10:45:00.000-01:00

Life is quiet. After the initial sense of limbo when IST was cancelled, I’ve more or less found things to do for the next few weeks. Most importantly and excitingly, I have officially purchased tickets for São Vicente for February, to spend Carnaval in Mindelo. Nadia and I are both going, as are many other PCVs, so it should be a wild time. After Carnaval, I’m taking the boat over to Santo Antão to visit Natawnee in Paúl.

Predictably, I spent the weekend windsurfing. I won’t bore you with the details, but I moved up a couple meters in sail size, and the difference in speed is awesome.

I start teaching English classes tonight. This class is an advanced class, for people who already speak English. I don’t know quite what to expect right off the bat, so I have to spend the first couple classes trying to figure out what level they are so I can work with it from there. Because of the IST fuckup, I now have to take several breaks: one for my internet class (can’t teach both at the same time – it’s complicated), one for Carnaval, and one right at the end for the rescheduled IST. I’d be lying if I said I was excited about the class, because I really don’t care to teach English. I’ve never done it before, and there seems to be a lot of pressure on me to do it well. Then again, I’ve never done any of this before, so who am I to complain?

The library project seems to have come to a screeching halt. Nobody has so much as touched a book in there for weeks. There is still no organization, no plans for organization, and most of the books remain sealed away. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know why anymore. I don’t know if they just don’t know what to do, or if they just don’t feel like doing it. By “they,” I mean the rest of the staff here. Apparently the president of the câmara is pretty annoyed that it is not up and running yet. So we are having a meeting today to discuss getting it on track. I don’t know how much help I should give, because if they already have a set plan, then I’d rather just let it happen. On the other hand, I am not sure that they have as much experiences with public libraries as I do, having grown up as a little nerd-boy. Hmm.

Otherwise, life is exceptionally quiet. I am going through what seems to be a pretty universal experience with all volunteers. I am bored and restless. This is the longest I have ever stayed in one place in ages. I mean, I never leave town. There is nowhere else to go. Transport even to Rabil or Estância de Baixo is really expensive and there is nothing there that isn’t also here in Vila. On a bored weeknight in CT, I could at least drive down to New Haven and meet people for pizza and beer. Here, all I can do is grab a book. I guess it’s a nice change of pace from the east coast, but I can’t help but get fidgety. I am looking forward to February, not just to have a good time and see other volunteers, but just for the chance it represents to get off Boa Vista for a week. Island fever strikes hard. If it weren’t for windsurfing and the general camaraderie of François’ place, I think it would be a lot harder to deal with.

Interesting. I managed to write a page about nothing.

2007-01-08T10:25:00.001-01:00

Well, first of all, why am I blogging from Boa Vista, when I am supposed to be in Tarrafal for training and conferences right now? The answer starts with the Sahara. Whenever there is a strong easterly wind, it picks up dust from the Sahara and carries it straight across the Atlantic to the Carribean. But we get it first and worst. It’s not like there is sand choking the streets or anything (no more than normal at least), but visibility is reduced to shit. Last week, São Vicente had it pretty bad apparently, and no flights left the island for a few days. So even if flights were back on for Sunday, they would have been backed up pretty badly. And considering that Mindelo and Santo Antão have about a quarter of the volunteers there, Peace Corps saw it fit to just cancel the whole thing until the end of the month. So instead of being in Tarrafal right now, starting In-Service Training, I am right where I’d normally be. And the chaos with the flights screwed over Caryn, who is visiting us. She was supposed to fly to Praia with us, and now can’t get a flight back home to Sal. We don’t mind. We like the company.

Mel and Courtney also visited us over the weekend. We spent all day Saturday at François’ shack, which is no surprise, considering that I spend every weekend there. I finally am good enough at windsurfing where I can lean all the way back, pull the sail tight against the wind, and really take off down the bay. This is still with a 3.3 m sail (which is tiny), so I’ve got a ways to go. But I digress. We all intended to hit up Mazurka late that night, but we were all so tired from the beach that we elected to skip it. Instead, we bought two cases of beer and settled in for a marathon game of asshole that left us all hammered and out of control. Pictures to follow if I can remember to post them.

What else? I am just really disappointed that I am not on Santiago right now. I was looking forward to seeing everybody. It’s also really screwed up my work schedule. We now have to postpone two of my classes to begin in February instead of next week. I was putting off started a couple projects until after IST, and now… Well now I don’t know what to do with myself. Sucks.

Oh, and my birthday was good. I spent the day windsurfing (claro), and then we all got hammered at Pub Makenna in the square. Good times. Only annoying part was when Diva from the CEJ came to my apartment to tell me that I was needed here. So I pulled myself together and walked over with her. And it was just this guy who works for a construction company in town, whom I have been helping a bit with a computer problem. And he had been calling every half hour, asking for me constantly (despite the fact that I had already been there earlier in the day), basically to ask me what I could do to help them fix it.

2007-01-03T10:37:00.000-01:00

Well, Happy New Year’s all around. I would have written this yesterday, but the CEJ was inexplicably closed, even though I had been assured it would be open. The whole town was still pretty much shut down actually, even though it was the 2^nd.

Our big present from the powers that be on New Year’s was the sudden reappearance of running water sometime between 9 and 10 pm on the 31^st. Nadia and I had already had a pretty good head start on the wine (and grog and whiskey in my case), so the ridiculous celebration that ensued was probably pretty funny. So after 8 days without water, I got to take a real shower that didn’t involve a 1.5 liter bottle. Spectacular.

Afterwards, Nadia decided she didn’t feel like spending the 3000 escudos to go to the big party, but I was determined. I went out to find someone who could sell me a ticket at around 11, but couldn’t. I hung out on the corner with this guy from Ghana for a while, and then found the bus driver going to Cabrer’ (the club), who told me it wouldn’t leave until 12:30 or so. So I went back, had a few more drinks with Nadia and celebrated midnight rather quietly (except for a lot of left over exuberance from the arrival of the water). Afterwards, I bumped into our neighbor, Jirson, who was going to Cabrer’. We had some beers at his place, and drove out to the club.

Ok, so I had never seen this place. It’s not like a normal club – it doesn’t open regularly for normal nightclub stuff. Somebody rented it out and arranged the tickets and open bar and whatnot. It’s HUGE. Not something you’d picture on a random island in the Atlantic. Then again, Boa Vista is filled with surprises like that. It supposedly holds 5000 people, i.e. the entire population of the island. There were probably close to 1000 people there. So anyway, loud music, open bar, lots of people, dancing… Standard New Year’s goodness. I wish I could give details on everything that went down, but it’s a bit blurry. I just know that I talked to a lot of people, friends and strangers alike, I danced a lot, and I drank a lot. Have I mentioned open bar? Oh, twice? Yeah well… open bar. At one point towards the end, after they played the standard 15 minutes of American rap music (fully appreciated by me), I wandered to the outside courtyard section of the club and noticed the sun creeping up pretty high in the sky. I made the move for home shortly afterwards and crawled in bed shortly before 8:30. Overall: great New Year’s. Still no competition for Arraial d’Ajuda though.

Our friend Caryn is here from Sal right now. She arrived yesterday afternoon and is hanging out until we all go to Santiago together on Sunday. Courtney and Mel are coming on Friday as well. Should be a Peace Corpstastic good time. We collectively represent 5 of the 8 Capricorn birthdays. Only Jonah, Rhett, and Sarah couldn’t make it.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. Send me toys.

2006-12-27T12:11:00.000-01:00

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.

2006-12-21T11:48:00.000-01:00

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.

2006-12-18T10:55:00.001-01:00

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.

2006-12-15T10:32:00.000-01:00

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.

2006-12-11T11:15:00.000-01:00

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.

2006-12-04T11:26:00.000-01:00

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.

2006-11-27T12:54:00.000-01:00

As a warning, I might write a lot here, and I might brag excessively about how great my life is, so if that’s going to piss you off, just go look at porn instead.

So I had a great weekend. No no, really. I had a GREAT weekend. And I’m going to tell you all about it, because I can. So where to begin…

My class on Friday went very, very well. I am teaching Excel now, which I don’t have to tell you is pretty hard to teach and understand anyway. The whole idea of spreadsheets and formulas is tricky at best, particularly in a language like Creole, which doesn’t have any mechanisms to explain complex ideas. But I apparently did a damn good job, because nearly everyone finished the exercise perfectly. Having failed utterly at explaining cell selection and formatting on Thursday, I took a different approach that I think I will now stick with. So I was already in a good mood when I got home and Paulo picked up Nadia and I for dinner.

We went to a restaurant that I had never seen, or even heard of. It was closer to the fisherman’s harbour, and it was rooftop, bar and everything. Paulo took charge and ordered everything for us, including pinchos (little shish kebab kinda things, but with pork) and grilled lobster for me and Nadia. And ohhhh man, I’ll be damned if it wasn’t some of the best lobster I’ve ever had. This could be a problem if I develop a lobster addiction, because that shit is expensive. After the food, plus plenty of wine and whiskey, we left to go elsewhere. We heard live music coming from a different rooftop, so we went up to check it out, and lo and behold, the omnipresent morna band Djalunga was playing. Seriously, they’re everywhere. More on that later. I was a bit tipsy and feeling friendly, and spectacularly enough, the roof was filled with people I knew. After spending a while chatting with people and listening to the music, we decided to leave, but took a detour at Pub Makena, which I normally avoid because it is way expensive and is entirely geared towards tourists. The bar was filled with them, but we just sat and chatted until 1-ish and then headed home. So, really fun night #1 ended.

Saturday, I spent all morning in bed reading, which was fine. In the afternoon, I headed to Boa Vista Wind Club to try (again) to catch a windsurfing lesson. There was only one teacher there, and he was occupied, and by the time he was done, it was too late to start. But it wasn’t a total loss, as I made some friends. First, I hung out with Te (spelling?), the instructor, for a while. Then his student (who had waved to me from the water already), came ashore and turned out to be a cute Swiss girl named Veronique, here on vacation alone. So I made another friend. I loafed around with them and François most of the afternoon and made vague indications that we should try to find each other later in the night. I relaxed at home briefly and then went to the praça to try to catch a car to João Galego, because I had been told that there was a huge party there that night and I could get a car at around 7. Well, there were no cars and nobody at the Coke kiosk where the cars generally gather to go to other towns. So I gave up and dropped in at a local bar where I know the bartender, a mellow guy named Alves from Guinea-Bissau. I mentioned a thought that I might go to Mazurka (the only discoteca around, an idea suggested by Veronique), and he said he would close up around 11 and go with me. So I struck off back to the praça, having sighting someone with a guitar heading that way. Sure enough, Djalunga again. I hung out a bit and ran into Nadia on my way back. She was all about going to Mazurka, so we met up with Alves, and waited the hour-plus it takes to catch a ride to the disco. Everyone just clusters around the Coke kiosk and when the bus arrives (I guess Mazurka hires it every week), everyone pushes and shoves like 4th graders to try to pile on. When we finally got on, people were even opening the windows and climbing onto laps to squeeze in. It’s Africa, maximum capacity is just a vague suggestion. In any event, the club was packed and totally different than the last time I was there. People were mingling, tourist and local alike, drinking and dancing. I had a damn good time, though I could do without the slow music. They have a tendency to play a lot of couples dancing music, which I don’t dig at all, mostly because I have no clue how to dance like that and could only succeed in making an ass of myself with some poor unsuspecting, but probably attractive, Cape Verdean girl. Veronique was there with some friends, including Te, and she seemed to be enjoying his company an awful lot, so I threw out the idea of flirting more, which I had intended to do. But the important thing is that I danced and drank and revelled until 4 am and had a fucking blast. Awesome day #2: check.

I woke up early, despite a headache, and headed back to François’ shack, as I had promised him I would do. Te showed up late, so in the mean time, François set up a board and sail on the sand and told me that everyone has to practice there first. It saves a lot of time falling over in the water all the time. So I practiced regulating the sail and adjusting to wind changes, as well as using my weight to balance the sail against the wind. I got the hang of it pretty well, so I think I’ll do all right when I get in the water. Veronique showed up with Te and they clearly had a hell of a night together and spent a lot of time making out everywhere all morning. Ah well. At that point, the previously calm bay erupted out of nowhere with waves and conditions quickly turned very bad for a first lesson in the water. So instead I practiced on the sand a bit more and hung out with Te and Veronique. Some of the more expert windsurfers hopped on their boards and took off, and god damn it looked like fun. François’ oldest son, Shon, is about 11 years old and already good at virtually every watersport ever invented. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up on the beach and your dad is a former windsurfing champion. I also met Tony and Spela, two Slovenians who are business partners with François. They are going to help me find a used board and sail so I don’t have to waste money renting all the time. François gives me a discount, for being a volunteer and a semi-local, but I think this’ll be better in the long run. In two years, I’ll just leave it for the next volunteers here. An Italian showed up, and everyone decided to go surfing. Spela showed me how to stand on a surfboard, and it’s fucking hard. I accompanied them down the beach to watch them, along with the Italian surfer’s girlfriend, who spoke no English. So I sat on a dune with her for about an hour and tried to hold a conversation in Italian. She was blessedly patient and helped me out a lot, and overall I did better than I have in the last few weeks. Still, there’s plenty of room for improvement. I made my way home after a full five and a half hours of fun in the sun.

I got home and showered and had a brief nap, interrupted by Cecy knocking on the door, saying that Iva and the CEJ needed me. I had already agreed to help out at an event that night, so it wasn’t a surprise, but I though I had plenty of time. Anyway, there was another homage-style event, this time for a guy named Plá, who plays with… Yeah, you guessed it, Djalunga. I had made a slideshow of about 150 photos of Plá and the band during the week, and they needed me to do projection for the event. I set everything up and then proceeded to wait while everything started two hours late. But no big deal, my friend Joari (man, I just don’t know how to spell these names) was there and he fed me ponche and beer the whole time. Veronique and François were there as well, though they both left shortly afterwards. The music started, I projected my little thing, and all went pretty well. Iva and Cecy were there, as well as some other friends. Veronique came back and we hung out until midnight or so. The music finally ended at about 1 am, and I packed everything up and went home, completely and totally exhausted. But I had the best weekend I’ve had in Cape Verde so far.

I am mostly still elated by the feeling that I live here and have friends. I also have given up on disliking tourists and I now view most of them (the younger, cooler ones at least) as vehicles to practice languages. François’ shack is ground zero: I can practice French and Italian, chat in Creole with the windsurfers, and every once in a while run into someone who speaks some crazy language I’ve never heard. Windsurfing lessons are just icing on the cake.

So what I’m saying is that my life is awesome and you should be jealous. Road race in 5 days… everything seems to be set up to go smoothly. We’ll see…

2006-11-20T12:18:00.000-01:00

So I though I would be starting my Excel class today, but apparently it starts on Wednesday. Which gives me a slightly longer break from being here all night. But it turns out the class is 2 full hours, and I will be here pretty late, so that kind sucks. Ah well.

I had a pretty satisfying weekend. It was kind of divided between "friendly active Leland getting out and meeting people" and "semi-comatose relaxed Leland who just wants to stay in and watch moves in English." I thought it was a good mixture. The latter personality managed to watch the entire series of the show Firefly, which I apparently missed entirely while it was actually on TV. In any event, it was actually a good show, and now I'm kind crabby that it got cancelled. So that took up about 9 hours spread over 3 or 4 days. I've also been reading Greek history for fun, because apparently the Classics major in me has not yet been fully purged. I am at risk for reinfection. If I try to enroll in grad school for it, somebody put me down.

Nadia invited two of our friends, Tony and Helena, over for dinner on Thursday, along with their kids. We made pizza. This was a breakthrough event. I made the dough, Nadia made the sauce, and we put together a melange of toppings. And I'd have to say that it was some god damn delicious pizza. Friday night... Umm... I don't remember what we did, so clearly it wasn't exciting. On Saturday, we took a walk up north, past MarineClub (the huge Italian resort), because a friend had told us that there was a little protected inlet "like a swimming pool." So we found it, right near the ruins of an old colonial church by the ocean. But the waves were gigantic, so it wasn't particularly swimming pool-like that day. On the way back, I stopped to go for a swim while Nadia continued home. Again, the waves were gigantic, and I gave up after about 15 minutes of playing in them, after I got annoyed with being knocked over by waves above my head. If I knew how to surf, I probably would have shat myself with joy. So Saturday night, Nadia and I made a quick dinner and sat around drinking grog and beer. We ducked in at the small bar across the way, because I made friends with the bartender there earlier in the week. After a few more beers and some ponche (if I haven't explained that before, it's grog mixed with honey, sometimes sweetened condensed milk and various other flavors: coconut, strawberry, lemon, whatever), we returned home. Booze makes Nadia sleepy, so she went to bed. But I was feeling antsy and friendly, so I struck out for nowhere in particular. I head music from the praça so I went over that way. Per usual, there was the standard morna band playing in the café. I grabbed a beer and joined a friend and his brother whom I had spotted. We chatted for a bit, and then he announced that he was headed to a birthday party, and asked if I wanted to come. Of course I accepted, and before too long, I was at a small party for someone I didn't know. But Iva, my counterpart, was there, along with Cecy, a mutual friend. I met a few random people, and more drinks forced on me. Note: It is not really possible to refuse a drink from a Cape Verdean. They will give it to you anyway. Ex: "Leland, would you like another beer?" "No thanks, I'm all set." "Ok. Here." "Umm, thanks." Anyway, I stayed out late and generally had a good time, particularly when I noticed that I was speaking Creole without even noticing anymore.

Sunday, I spent the morning reading and generally combatting a headache caused by the night before. I tried to go for a bike ride in the afternoon, but was thwarted by the pressure valve on the inner tube spontaneously popping off for no particular reason. It is actually physically broken, so I have to find a new inner tube somewhere here. Hmm. So I substituted another swim with gargantuan waves and had a hell of a time, even though the big waves threatened to de-pants me pretty much every time.

So my only fuzzy realization to make here is that I actually feel like this is home now. Sure there are a few things that irritate me, but over all, I really really like it here.

The grad school thing captured my mind for about 4 hours last week. I spent a while looking into programs in the US and Europe, and I am tantalized by all of them. The University of Geneva's Master's in International Affairs still is the forerunner, but I'd have to find substantial aid to afford it. Oxford is another one, but I'd probably be trying for a Fulbright on that front, and both are a long shot. 25 slots for the MPhil (300ish applicants), 3 for the Fulbright. Yikes. On the domestic front, the University of Denver, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Yale, and Harvard's Kennedy School have all caught my eye. I suppose I should also develop some safety schools instead of a fantasy list... UD and Yale have Peace Corps Fellowships though, which will help a lot. But before any of that becomes really relevant, I need to figure out what to do about another year of work in the interim. I sent an email to my friends the Helseth family, most of whom work or live abroad now, in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Cambodia. I am trying to see what direction they can throw me in, particulary Gary, who has been working with the UN for years. One of my mother's students worked with them for a while and now she is with UNOPS in Sudan, just barely out of undergrad. Now THAT is a hell of an opportunity.

Now off to try and get a fucking phone line installed. This shit is impossible.

2006-11-15T08:53:00.000-01:00

One more class down. I finished up with my Word class the other night by giving an exam. It was actually more frustrating than running a class, which I had grown used to and was starting to enjoy a bit. It's frustrating because, while you expect high school kids to cheat, you don't expect it out of 25 and 30 year olds. There was a point where I had to walk individually to three pairs of people and tell them to stop talking and looking at one another's screens. One person in particular I had to tell about 7 times, because she just kept asking other people how to do things. Anyway, I think a lot of it is a cultural thing. Not like "Cape Verdeans are cheaters," or anything negative like that. But I don't know if having a silent, do-your-own-work computer exam is something they are used to. And since none have a university education, the idea of working with one another on a test probably seems fine, as opposed to the violently fierce anti-plagiarism policies most of us have had rammed into our heads during college. Ah well, other than the one case, very little helping went on after I made it clear that they were not supposed to. And in the end, nearly everyone seems to have done well, though I have yet to correct them. I am waiting for one guy to finish up right now, because the poor fellow finished the whole test and then somehow lost everything, so he is back this morning to do it again.

I went down to Tortuga beach over the weekend to talk with François, but unfortunately there was no wind at all, so lessons never happened. But I hung out with him for a couple hours, and made friends with his bartender and some random Italian guy named Marco (of course) who is visiting for a month and spends all day just chillin there. I was reminded once again how far my Italian has fallen. I tried to make conversation, but I kept forgetting stupid things like the loro form of potere (yeah, it's possono, I remembered half an hour later). Fortunately, I can still understand pretty well, so we did all right. Anyway, because there was no wind anywhere, the bay was glassy calm, so later in the afternoon I came back with Nadia and we floated in the warm water for a while, until the sun went down and it started getting chilly. By chilly, I of course mean 75-80, but I am already turning into a cold-wuss. How's the fall treating everyone?

I also went for a bike ride, which was nice. I haven't ridden a bike recreationally in many, many years. Yes, my thighs were less than happy the next day. I'd like to continue to do it as part of my "Leland actually gets in decent shape again" plan for the next two years, but my schedule is so damn irregular that I don't always have the time to exercise every day.

Also, HOW 'BOUT THEM DEMOCRATS?! Wooooooha! Ok, we're not supposed to put political things in our Peace Corps blogs, plus this is about Cape Verde, not the US, so I'll stop there.

Oh yeah, my English classes have been postponed/cancelled. After several weeks of having sign up sheets available, NOBODY signed up for the beginner's class, and only 4 for the advanced, including my counterpart and a friend in the câmara. I'm pretty sure it's because the class was too expensive, which I had mentioned before, but I deferred to the knowledge of people who actually live here, thinking maybe the price was more normal for Boa Vista. But no. Lots of people told me they wanted to sign up, but couldn't afford it. So we are waiting for 6 more people to sign up for the advanced course. After the holidays and IST (In Service Training - we all reconvene on Santiago for a conference), I am going to give the beginner's class another shot, only at about half the price. I would just as soon not charge, but the CEJ needs to income to fun other projects, and to pay for materials for the class.

I am running out of things to blog about these days. Maybe I should just make these things weekly.

2006-11-09T17:17:00.000-01:00

Still permanently exhausted. We are all moved in now and the bathroom is finished. I even got to shower last night. Not that I smelled or anything. Oh wait. Yeah, I did. The only thing missing is the shower curtain rod, which they are putting in tomorrow morning. Also, I dunno what the hell is going on with the water there, but when you take a shower, the sink turns on. No kidding. It's like Poltergeist. Also, the (extraordinarly attractive) girl who works here just gave me some kind of fruit called a tambro (I have no idea how to spell that) that is small and yellow. It was kinda dry, but tasty in it's own way. Continuing...

I actually had a fantastic conversation today entirely in Creole. I was on my way with a coworker to meet the head of the Assoçiação de Atletismo in the câmara, but he turned out to not be there. This is in no way unusual - scheduling a meeting with someone doesn't guarantee that they will be there, or even on the island. In any event, we decided to wander into a little hole-in-the-wall bar/restaurant that I've been to a couple times. It's usually packed, and only has 4 tables, most of which are occupied by European tourists. But today it wasn't, so we settled down and had a couple beers. In any event, I actually held a long conversation about politics, religion, economics, immigration, war and peace, the weather, family life, and on and on, entirely in Creole, with no trouble, for about an hour. Needless to say, I feel pretty damn good about that. I also have almost no problems teaching my classes these days, and even my listening comprehension has picked up, which is hands down the hardest thing for me.

The road race planning continues. Once we get the athletic coordinator from the câmara involved, I just have to hook the Red Cross, but they have already expressed interest. All I really need from them anyway is pamphlets and informational materials, and hopefully a speaker as well. In return, we are going to help them with their own activities for WAD. The high school is also doing a march around town with signs and posters and stuff, so I'm sure we'll dig our grubby little fingers in that and help out, too. My counterpart spoke with one of the vareadors (like a local government department head, or the President's Cabinet on a smaller scale) about the 5k, and he absolutely loved the idea. So to get funding, which is tough to come by here, we are petitioning a Spanish construction company that has projects on the island. Good publicity for them, provides t-shirts and water stations for our race. Rock on. My aunt got Brooks, the shoe company, to donate 200 number bibs and two pairs of running shoes, for male and female winners. Did I write this already? I don't even know anymore.

Nadia made me a curtain for my bedroom window, so I no longer have to deal with the street lights. She made one for herself as well. Mine is blue, hers is red. When the sun shines really brightly, her room glows hellish red and mine is electric blue. It makes for an interest effect when you look down the hall. Also, the dog heavy metal band has eased up at night, so I haven't spent too much time glaring out the window praying for a slingshot. We hooked up the stove today, because the boat carrying the propane tubing finally arrived, two days late. We'll hopefully do a bit of cooking tonight. We do seem to have a minor cockroach problem in the apartment, but it's not all out awful. Just mildly gross. We do however have a severe lack of furniture problem. We just found a local carpenter who is going to make us shelves and bookcases for our rooms, but we don't have anything in the way of a couch. The living room consists of lawn furniture basically. It's nothing to complain about really, but the only soft surface to relax on is my bed. I'd rather use the not insignificant space in the living room.

This weekend, I am going to go back and visit François and hopefully get my first windsurfing lesson on Saturday. My only plan for Sunday is to maybe go on a recreational bike ride down to Rabil or Estância de Baixo. I've been slacking on the exercise this week, mostly because I've been totally pooped since Saturday.

Gotta continue planning out some English classes. Now that I have an idea of what to teach, I just have to come up with plans on how to actually teach it. This is where my expertise runs completely dry and I am stumbling blindly. But hey, try everything once, right?

2006-11-07T09:07:00.000-01:00

First: VOTE. I don't want to hear any bullshit about "my vote doesn't even matter," because anybody out there with a brain knows that that is a load of crap. If you do not vote, and you whine about what's happening in the country in 6 months, I will slap you. Hard.

Ok so today I'm going to talk about some good things, then some bad things, then some more good things. It's what I like to call a "compliment sandwich..."

Well we moved into a permanent apartment yesterday. So finally I can settle myself in (two months later) and start really living. Our neighborhood is much more Cape Verdean oriented, instead of being full of tourists. We already know some people in the area, and there is a store across the street, where people hang out on the porch all the time. There is apparently a British woman living in the building, too, but I have yet to meet her.

All right, I'm going to move into my negative whining binge ahead of schedule, and then talk about more good shit. Problems with the apartment: bathroom isn't finished yet. Nope. Has a toilet, but with no back, i.e. no flush. Has a shower base, but no head, i.e. can't shower. Has a si- no, scratch that, sink is on the floor of the living room. So what happened when I woke up to pee last night? Plastic water bottle. Welcome to the Peace Corps. Please don't drink that, it's not scotch. What else? Ah yes, because our previous apartment was furnished, we now have to buy everything. We spent all day yesterday buying stuff and lugging it around (note: it was 90+ degrees), but still don't have much stuff. The kitchen is still being touched up, so we can't plug in the fridge, thus not much food. And we just got gas for the stove this morning, so we will actually be able to cook tonight. Also, my bedroom window is right next to a street light. Fortunately, Nadia is sewing me curtains, because otherwise, there is not a chance in hell I could sleep. I didn't much last night. But that was also partly because of the dogs. Oh the dogs. I'd guess there were about 15 of them last night, in full choral arrangement, for just over an hour, with short breaks to catch their breath and sniff each other's butts. Lovely.

Also, I broke up with Natawnee last week. There were several reasons for this, all catalyzed by an incident that I will not publicize here. A lot has to do with the fact that it wasn't much of a real relationship. Considering I only knew her for about 10 weeks before splitting to other islands, maybe it's that I didn't know her well enough or feel close enough to her to make it work. But even though I am not the type to think about the future with a girl, which has bitten me in the ass more than once, I kind of had to realize that living apart on other islands for two years, seeing each other every 2-4 months for a week, and then moving back to god knows where in the US isn't much of a relationship. Anyway, I had kept these thoughts private while I worked them out, but then aforementioned incident occurred, moving along the process in a much quicker, if less pleasant, fashion. Oddly enough, I'm not too bothered by it. Don't get me wrong, I liked her a lot, and still do. But when you've already been apart two months (almost as long as we knew each other beforehand), it somehow just isn't all that strange to lose that one last connection. So that's that.

Ok, onward to the good stuff. My road race project is in full swing. I wrote up a proposal for it last week and translated it into Portuguese yesterday. We've contacted the high school gym teachers, who are going to tell their classes about it and get them to participate. We've spoken with the local Red Cross, and they have lots of info. They are doing a bunch of World AIDS Day activities on the 1st, and then they will help us out with materials and information for the race on the 2nd. I wasn't sure how to get numbers for the race, until I emailed my awesomely cool aunt in California. She's a marathoner and all around serious runner, as well as an AIDS activist and volunteer, so I knew she'd have ideas. Well, she got Brooks, the running shoe company, to send me 200 race numbers, and she is working with the owner of a San Diego running store to donate two pairs of new running shoes, one each for the male and female winners. Score! That should encourage people to get involved and get competitive. So far basically everyone we've spoken with is really into the idea and is pretty excited about it. I've got a lot of planning work to continue to do in the next few weeks. I've gotta plot out a 5k course, pick a start/finish line, show the map to the police so they can block off the roads, contact several organizations to get materials on HIV/AIDS, get a speaker for the post-race event (with music, of course, because it's Cape Verde, and everything has music), and recruit volunteers to man the finish line and water stations. It's a damn good thing I've run a lot of races or I'd be totally lost. So even though it's a lot of work and was pretty stressful yesterday and Friday, I think it's going to be endlessly satisfying when it actually happens and is hopefully a success. Whew.

So I'm actually pretty much busy all the time now. I worked basically a 13 hour day yesterday, probably 10 or 12 on Friday, and I expect to be here all day again today. I don't mind so much though, because being at home is so quiet, and this gives me something to do. Plus, when I'm at work, I can always stop to write an email, or a long blog entry. But the overall point of this is that despite the stress from moving and organizing this event, not to mention breaking up, I still finished this last week feeling great. OH, and I forgot to mention that I met François Guy, a former international windsurfing champion, who is going to teach me how to windsurf for a discount. Scooooooore. So basically, none of the bad or stressful things are bothering me. It's awesome.

2006-11-02T10:35:00.000-01:00

Posting again this week. Not too much to say though. I've settled into a pretty comfortable routine here that I am enjoying. The good thing is that I shop at the same stores often enough now that I know all the people who work there. João the baker is a particular favorite of mine. His breads are pretty damn good, and I have told my father that I will try to buddy up to him and get his recipe for coconut rolls. They are damned delicious. I think I will be modifying my routine somewhat, because I'd like to fit in some more activities. Mainly once I get some watersports gear, I'm going to have to fit in some surfing/bodyboarding time in the afternoons, meaning that I won't be able to run then. So I'll have to wake up early to run. Ugh. I HATE waking up early, especially to expend that much energy. The shipment of stuff from PC included a bike for me, so I also may start biking around for exercise. Running, surfing, biking, swimming... I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

The first person of our training group has officially ETed. For those of you not in the loop, ET stands for Early Termination. It's the PC lingo for leaving service before your 24 months are up. There can be many reasons for it. Some people are administratively separated, which is I guess sort of like being fired... You fuck up and they send you home. There is also medical separation, which happens if you need lengthy medical care out of the country, get pregnant, something like that. But then there is just plain deciding to go home. Some people can't deal with the stress, some people want to return for a boyfriend/girlfriend/job, and for some others, PC just isn't right. This is the case for my buddy Jean-Claude. His work at site is just not going well and they barely have any thing for him to do, and the idea of staying for two full years and having to fight to have something to do just doesn't sound so good. I don't blame him. It's wild how two people in the same country can have such different experiences at their work. In any event, I bring it up because it sucks that he's leaving. I hung out with him a lot during training, so it's shitty that he won't be around for more gatherings of volunteers. Fortunately, he's from NYC, so it's not like I won't be in his neighborhood in the future. Also, kind of a wake up call that PC service can some times just not work out, even for really committed and competent people.

What else? Oh yeah, Halloween was a bust. People here know of it and call it "Noiti de bruxa," translated more or less as Witch Night. But no one here does anything. Apparently in São Vicente, there are all night parties. Even in João Galego, there is no party on the 31st, but starting at midnight on Nov 1st, people go wild and party all night. But nope, not here in Vila. Fortunately, the 1st was All Saints Day, so it's a national holiday. Nadia and I got to stay home from work. Since nothing is open (at all), there was basically no reason to go anywhere or do anything. I relaxed, read, and went for a swim. The waves were absolutely ridiculous, most of them towering over me. A few times I got good positioning and managed to body surf them a good distance. After a while though, I started getting tired and the waves kept pulling me further out away from the beach. I got worried and swam back in and went back to relax.

Ok, I'm going to finish making my action plan for next year. I'm going to try to make a calendar of all my classes and when I want to work on certain projects. I've gotta get all this organized in my head.

Also, I have noticed a pattern here. Whenever I write an email to someone, I generally get one really enthusiastic reply ("Leland! Oh man, how have you been?! How's Africa?!"), to which I then also reply, but then the next exchange... just stops. Some people have broken this pattern, such as the one and only Jess Paga, and more recently, Miss Grace Chu. So thanks. The rest of you, get on your shit or we're gonna have an awful lot to catch up on when I get state side.

2006-10-30T10:09:00.000-01:00

Well, I had a great weekend, how about you? Really though, after a long string of satisfyingly relaxing but dull weekends, this one was pretty non-stop and fun. To start with, on Friday night, we were invited to dinner at a friend's house, though we were very late, because I had to teach until 8:30. So after arriving late, we ate a bit, had a drink, and went to the praça in town for live music. For the first time since arriving in Sal Rei, there was a crowd in the center of town, drinking and listening to music. I'm not sure if it's just because it is starting to be tourist season and they want to put on a good show for the cash cows, I mean, visitors, but it was a good time. We got pretty tired pretty early, because it was such a long and exhausting week, so we were back home by midnight, and I was asleep by 12:05.

We had invited a lot of people over for dinner on Saturday, promising Mexican food, so we spent a lot of Saturday preparing for that. I spent all morning walking around town, buying a few things for dinner, but mostly trying to organize picking up some of our stuff from the port. Peace Corps sent us our beds, tables, and chairs from Praia by boat, so we had to get them. Unfortunately, this involves finding someone with a truck we can use while both the port and the future apartment are both open at the same time. Harder than it sounds. Turns out that neither were open Saturday morning. So hopefully that will happen early this afternoon. Anyway. I relaxed a bit in the early afternoon, and then we tackled making dinner. We made enchiladas, refried beans, and spanish rice. To those of you in the US, this is not terribly exciting. To anyone who has lived overseas, this is earth-shattering. Nadia's mom sent her some spices you can't get here, like chili powder, so that is what made a large part of it possible. In any event, 6 or 7 friends came over and ate with us, and the dinner was a huge success. The enchiladas were awesome, and the rice was also very good. The beans were good, but I think I need to work on that one a bit. Not that it really mattered to our guests, considering that I don't think any of them had really had any of these things before. So everyone stuck around until eleven or so, and took off. One guy promised to return in an hour to pick us up to go out to Mazurka, the one and only real discoteca around here, but three things prevented that: we passed out in the living room of sheer exhaustion; the power went out at midnight, as always, thus ensuring that we would not wake up again; and Paolo never showed anyway. He just told me this morning that he fell asleep at home. And a bird just smacked headfirst into the window of the CEJ. Lovely.

Which brings us to Sunday. We had planned on not doing a damn thing all day. At least, that's what I planned. Reading, running, swimming, napping were the only agenda items. But Helena, a Portuguese teacher at the high school, called at 10 asking if we wanted to go on a little trip with her and her family. So obviously we said yes. Helena and her boyfriend Tony came with the two kids and we drove to the opposite shore, in the northeast corner of the island. After picking up two more kids in João Galego, we went to a place called Baia das Gatas, where the water is calm, shallow and warm. So I spent about two hours floating in two foot deep bathtub-warm water, sipping cold beer and eating watermelon. I can think of at least 7 million worse ways to spend a Sunday. We went to a little fisherman's shack nearby, where we bought some fresh fish and eel. We then returned to João Galego, where Tony is from and where most of his family lives. The whole family was absolutely amazingly nice, and it also turns out that at least two other people I know in Sal Rei are immediately related to them. That's just what it's like here. One big family. My counterpart also has family there, so she was there with a coworker, and we chatted with them briefly. We hung out with Tony's family until about 8 pm, drinking beer, chatting, eating, and just hanging out. I got to witness my first goat killing, followed by my first goat skinning, gutting, and dismembering. My only observation is really just that there was a lot less blood than I thought there would be. I guess the goat was pretty small, but still. We deep fried the moray after it got dark, which was delicious, as always, though the little spine bones are a pain in the ass. Tony's uncle and their neighbor, who also works at the high school here, were particularly drunk and were desperate to practice their English. I obligingly had many long, drunkenly repetitive conversations with them about various and sundry topics, but mostly we just reiterated many times over how Boa Vista is the best island in the country, and how they also think it is the best place in the world to live. Anyway, other than the conversations in English, one of the best parts of the day was realizing that I had almost zero trouble with Creole all weekend. I managed to carry on conversations with a minimum of pausing and repeating, and overall had a damn fine time of it. Go me.

So that's all for now. Back to putting together an English course.

2006-10-27T18:24:00.000-01:00

I'm going to try a somewhat more thoughtful post today. People always say that Peace Corps service is a lot of ups and downs, and that's very true. But not quite in the way I was expecting. I guess I was expecting some loneliness, challenges with language, difficulties with food, water, electricity, etc. But none of those things have bothered me: I haven't felt alone since the first week or two, my language needs work but is progressing nicely, and food, water, and electricity are blessedly stable and adequate here (mostly). No, the thing that has been bothering me the most has been me.

When you are put somewhere alone to do a self-motivated, self-designed job, you quickly learn the most difficult part, which is the "self." It's not that I'm lazy. I hope. It's more that, because I am young and only a year out of college, I am pretty used to having someone prescribe my work for me. When I was manager of the helpdesk at Wes along with Justin, I had the most say in my job that I've ever had, and I liked it a lot. I'd like to think I did a good job. But even then, I had a director who worked really hard to keep us afloat and we received a lot of direction from her. The most guidance we receive from Peace Corps is some information on how to get ideas for what to do, or how to plan a conceived project (ok training in that area was less than adequate, but that is another story). Not to say that PC doesn't support us; they do, fully. But they aren't there to give us a job description. Also, my counterpart here, though she has ideas, isn't pushing any one job on me, other than the English classes. My computer classes are going well, but they are mainly designed by the training coordinator here.

Now, as far as what to do, I have no shortage of ideas. I've got about a dozen ideas for projects, both major and minor to do in the next couple years. I've been mostly thinking about the major ones, but I haven't yet started them because I keep thinking it's too early for them, and I don't want to get involved in something huge now while I'm still such a newbie at planning and teaching classes. But there are also minor projects I could be tackling.

So what is bothering me about me? That fact that I have yet to tackle one of these projects. Now, the Peace Corps, along with most sensible people, would say "Oh come on, you've been there a few weeks, take your time." And in fact, PC recommends that community development people take about 3 months to just kind of watch the community, build contacts, find out what people need, etc. So I'm only about halfway through that period. And every PC volunteer I've spoken to has said not to set high expectations and not to push yourself too hard, because the end result is disappointment: one person can only do so much in such a short period of time. But nonetheless, I can't shake the feeling that I expect a lot more from myself. I don't expect to change this place in 2 months, let alone two years. But I do expect myself to do lots of small things, and so far I haven't even dented my list.

So what am I going to do? Organize a road race for World AIDS Day. It's short notice (5 weeks away), but I think I might be able to pull it off. Most of the burden of organizing falls on me and Nadia, but if I can do a lot next week, I bet we could have a successful event. The idea is that, in conjunction with this global event, we have something to promote health and bodily care in general, with additional focus on AIDS.

Anyway. It's not that I'm disappointed with what I am doing. I just kind of feel like after spending so much time in the youth center here, I should have more to show for it. But starting on Monday, I have resolved to spend less time on the internet here (it's incredible how addictive it is), and more time getting around and doing things.

2006-10-23T11:04:00.000-01:00

Ok, back to writing about Cape Verde, I promise. Oh wait, first though: damn it all, the Mets lost. I didn't get to see the game, which makes it worse, but apparently a crappy reliever by the name of Wainwright struck out Beltran with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. Maybe next year. In the mean time, we can only hope that Detroit will take out the Cards. Bleah.

Last week was interesting, especially the second half of the week and the weekend. I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but the whole Peace Corps staff came here last Thursday for a staff retreat. I didn't get to spend too much time with the staff unfortunately, other than the director, assistant directors, and medical officer. I spent a lot of time with my immediate technical boss, who runs the community develpment part. He obviously had to meet with me, check up on my progress, remind me of some things I had neglected, talk to my counterpart here, etc etc. The country director also took us out to dinner one night. He is really cool, and I'll be sad to see him go in January, when his service is up and he will return to the US. We ended up going to a restaurant that we had never tried before, which turned out to be a mistake, as it is also apparently the most expensive restaurant on the island, if not in Cape Verde. Some Portuguese architect/macrobiotic chef runs it. Cool guy, good food, too much money. So where was I? Ah yes, we also had dinner with the medical officer last night, who is also really nice, and like everyone in Peace Corps, has interesting stories about all the places she's lived. Saturday, we had dinner with the whole PC Cape Verde staff, 17 people in all. I met the regional training director (for West Africa, I assume), and of course she graduated from Wesleyan, class of '86. We're everywhere. Overall, it was really good to see familiar faces, not to mention speak in English to a whole table full of people. It's the most I've spoken my own language since leaving my fellow volunteers after training. Some people had ideas about things I can do here, other people just had some feedback on what I've already done. I feel a bit reenergized about my work here, after hearing some positive things, and also realizing that I've done a bit more than I thought I had.

Friday night was one of the most fun nights I've had on Boa Vista. Unfortunately, Nadia missed out on it because she was sick. The CEJ had a little event to celebrate Cape Verdean culture: music, art, crafts, people, etc. We had some random carvings, instruments, hats, clothes and whatnot hanging around the entryway, but the main even was a sort of homage to a local woman for her contributions to culture through music. The woman, Valda Vieira, is an older lady from Vila Sal Rei, with kids and grandkids. She has an amazing voice and has sang a lot over the last few decades. A friend had taken videos of interviews with Valda, her family, and neighborhood friends, and my part in this whole thing was to piece it all together into one video. So I made a 22 minute video of everything, and Vilma made a 42 slide powerpoint of photos of Valda's life. So during the event, I hunched over in the front and manned the projector and laptop, changing between photos and videos as the whole thing progressed. The meat of the whole thing was the music. A morna (more on that in a sec) band came and played instruments, while various people sang. It's eerie that all 15 or so people who sang had amazing voices. In a room of 100 people in the US, I don't think you'd find 15 people who could sing like this. Valda sang a few, as well as her family, and all of her friends. The whole event went on past midnight, and I was exhausted by the time I made it home.

Some notes on music here. There are three distinct styles of Cape Verdean music. The type that has its roots on Boa Vista is called morna. Morna is very slow, acoustic music, usually a couple guitars, drums, and mayba a bass, accompanied by very emotional, heartfelt singing. It's mostly love songs, or songs about life on Boa Vista. It's not exactly dancing music, but it's really nice to listen to. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is funana, which I think I've mentioned before. Funana usually has an electric guitar, bass, accordion, a kind of percussion thing I can't really explain, synthesizer, and a drum machine. It consists of a loud repetitive beat, accompanied by frenzied accordion, guitar, and organ. It is unbelievable annoying to listen to, especially in a packed and crowded hiace with a massive woofer under your seat. But it is really fun to dance to, plus the beat is simple, so it's easy for pure honkeys like myself to grasp the rhythm and not look retarded. The third type of music is zuke (spelling?), which is basically Cape Verdean pop music. It's much like standard pop music around the world. It's a little R&B sounding sometimes, maybe some reggae and hip hop influences, depending on the song, along with some generic pop influences. I dunno, I can't really make many comparisons, since my background in pop music is weak at best. It's entertaining enough in bars and clubs, but (like most pop music) a lot of it sounds exactly the same. The most famous CV musicians are probably Cesaria Evora and Tito Paris, but there are some younger ones getting more famous in the world at large, like Gil Semedo and Mayra Andrade, whom I actually kind of like. And she's really hot. Horrendously, American rap culture is invading here in a huge way, and has yet to do a single positive thing for this society. People here are dangerously obsessed with 50 Cent, and for some reason they love Akon, who fails to be relevant almost anywhere else in the world. So kids here dress like they think big rap stars in the US would. You see a lot of NBA jerseys around, even though games aren't broadcast here and most people don't know the teams, baggy jeans with huge logos, bandanas, chains... I dunno, I find it to be pretty irritating that their own culture is getting drowned out by rap drivel, musically and socially. Not that I have anything against some quality hiphop - I love some good Mos Def as much as the next guy. I'm talking about the really lame, corporate gangsta rap that is as much marketing machine for a fake lifestyle as it is anything close to music. So it's sad.

Ok, time to try to figure out how to teach beginning English.

2006-10-19T12:24:00.000-01:00

Wrote this last night...

Ok, in today’s blog entry, I’m not going to comment much on Cape Verde. Instead, I am going to vent on America. American politics in particular. But first I’d like to mention that I just reshaved my head and it is fuzzy and pleasant. Also, there is a dog in our neighborhood who has decided to start barking all night, inspiring the whole local gang to join in. Would I be a bad person to big rocks at somebody else’s pet? Anyway. Since coming here to Boa Vista, I’ve taken up the habit of spending some time every day reading the newspaper. No no, I’m not having the New York Times delivered here, though if any wealthy readers of my blog would like to arrange to have it sent to me, I will love you/marry you/give sexual favors. But I read the Times and the Washington Post online for a while. Partly it is because I am a hopeless politics nerd (among my other nerdisms), but also because if I didn’t do so, I would probably not even notice World War 3 happening. We’re that isolated. But enough on that.

So this may sound cheesy, but one of the things that is so important to America and the developed world at large is democracy. We don’t really think about it much, and a depressing number of people don’t even vote (note: I have not missed a single election since turning 18. Not even state and local ones. Yeah, I care that much. Ok, fine so I may have missed a school board election or two. Shut up.) But the point is that we have the luxury to pick and choose candidates based on our infinitely picky standards and personal opinions. We have the choice to choose between multiple people representing different ideologies. Want tax cuts? You’ve got your man. Against the war in Iraq? So is this guy. What I never thought about until recently is that a lot of places don’t have these choices. This may seem obvious, and perhaps people more aware than I made this realization before the age of 23. And I don’t mean just knowing it, because it is an obvious fact, but I mean really thinking closely about it. But a lot of other countries (my current residence being a fortunate exception) either do not have the choice, because they do not have a democracy, or they have the choice between someone corrupt and someone who is not, or at least is acceptably so, which isn’t really a choice at all. You don’t get to pick ideologies. You just get to pick someone who won’t starve you, kill you, or squander your money.

So here is where current American politics comes in. For the first time in my admittedly short life, many districts are facing a different choice than usual. I’m going to go ahead and target Republicans here, because they have made it so damned easy lately. The corruption rampant in the GOP has surfaced in so many places recently as to be unbelievable. It is something that I have always been aware of, and that most well-read people have probably also been aware of. But it until recently has not been something criminal, provable, and public. I won’t pick on Foley here; he’s fucked. Everyone left and right of the aisle can write him off as a creepy pedophile. But the House leadership that cared more about damage control than his behavior is blameworthy. Bob Ney admitted to selling influence to lobbyists as part of the Abramoff scandal; who knows how many more will be implicated, or worse, escape unharmed or unnoticed. Then this new lobbying scandal investigation involving this other guy (can’t remember his name right now – Wolder?), who is accused of heavily helping out a sketchy Russian oil and gas company who was on his daughter’s firm’s payroll. I can’t say whether he is guilty of anything illegal or not, but it still makes him an asshole in my book.

So the point is this: next month’s elections are no longer about whose politics you side with. For the first time since I have been politically aware, the vote is about driving out the corrupt, the disgusting, the bought-and-paid-for. It is something wholly incredible and inimical to the American spirit, or at least what I desperately hope/wish the American spirit is. It is something reminiscent of the third world. Of course they’re not killing people or holding indomitable military power. But the corrupt control more than most of us can imagine, and it’s killing the country. There is no choice right now in many parts of the country. It’s not about who supports gay marriage or medical marijuana. It’s only about a citizen’s attempt to drive out a culture of corruption and influence peddling that pervades the current government. We’re finally at the point where our democratic choice is only vaguely a choice.

I know, the Democrats aren’t wholly innocent. I understand that the same mentality pervades part of my party, too. And I know that a right winger would invoke Harry Reid’s name here, but if you go ahead and read the details of his story, you will notice that his infraction was quite minor, and actually rather silly. All he did is neglect to declare a change in property ownership from personal to a corporate half owned by a friend. He has apologized and agreed to enter his oversight into his financial declarations. Nonetheless, I am sure that there are some jerks out in the Democratic party as well. But in no way, shape, or form does it even begin to approach the awesome level of corruption in the Republican party. I could go on for pages about it here, but this blog is supposed to be about my experience in Africa, not my American political opinions. Nonetheless, I had to get it out there. But whatever I think, get out there and VOTE on the 7th. Please. I don’t give a damn who you vote for (well, I have a preference). Just do your part.

I should also note that times like this are probably the major reason why I have abandoned previous thoughts of a US political career. Those of you who knew me in high school might remember me telling you that I had every intention of running for Congress one day. Sorry, I’m reneging on that. I just can’t get myself involved in this system. So instead I’ll be wandering the globe, working for international organizations, and having a much better time.

Ok I’m done now.

2006-10-16T18:41:00.000-01:00

Well, I'm sitting in my classroom, watching all my students take a test. It's weird. I've never been on this end of the spectrum before. Oh wait, except TAing Latin 102, but that hardly counts. In any event, they are taking a 2 part exam on what I've taught them lately. I think they should be able to do it. At least 75% will be able to with out a problem.

Also, I am immensely pleased that the Mets have tied it up with the Cards. Obviously, I wasn't able to watch any games, and I have in fact nearly missed out on an entire season, but I check online in the morning for 15 minutes of sports reading to catch up. Mondays are the most exciting, because I get to read up on weekend games. I was vaguely nervous going to espn.com today, seeing as how I was about to find out about 2 key games. So it looks like I missed a 13 or 14 inning hitting slump and then a hell of a come back. Go figure my team waits until I move to a country without cable to get this far. Now if they can whip the Cards twice more, we'll have... a Mets/Tigers WS?? Wow. If Delgado ends up pitching again by the Series (if we make it...), I think we

Anyway. I had a freaking great weekend. Guess what I did? ...Nothing. I relaxed, took walks around town, ran, swam, read, and just chilled the fuck out. Now, this isn't any different than any other weekend in Cape Verde, really, except that this time I did it with a different attitude. Before, I always kind of felt like if I was relaxing, I wasn't being a good volunteer. Like I should be improving my Creole, or meeting people, or trying to do something else volunteery. But I've pulled away from that. My Uncle John, who did PC in Nepal in the 60s or 70s, had one piece of advice for me, and that was to just take it slow and not have huge expectations. He said that as soon as he stopped trying so damned hard, great things started happening, and he ended up being a phenomenally successful volunteer (he worked with the Red Cross to set up the Himalayan Mountain rescue system that is still in place today). So after laying the pressure of myself, I am enjoying myself more, and actually meeting new people much more easily.

I also have continued my running a bit. After running, I'm usually so hot and sweaty that even 5 minutes of freezing shower can't cool me down and I start sweating again as soon as I get out. Any runners will know what I mean, and I hate that shit. So yesterday, I didn't even go straight home. I ran to the other side of the road, across the beach, stripped off my shoes, socks, and beater and dove right into the water. And let me tell you, it was probably one of the best ideas I've had in the last 10 to 15 years.

I wandered down a long beach to where the watersports guys have their little shacks set up and asked around about equipment for sale. No one sells it. One guy pointed me to a street in town where he said someone had a shop that sold snorkel gear. But I went there, and the shop didn't exist. It's a frequent problem here: people will be certain that something is there, or that you can buy something in town, but really it just does not exist. It's odd, like people don't really know their own town that well. Nonetheless, I got a nice long walk out of it and met a few people.

One unforseen blessing of teaching a class in Creole for an hour and a half every night is that I have improved my speaking a lot. My listening is still so-so, I often don't understand when people speak fast, but that's just how languages are for me. I find them easy to form, but difficult to comprehend. Kind of the opposite of most people I think. But practice will improve.

Ok, kind of worried, some students have asked me many questions about the test. Must tend to them.

2006-10-13T09:18:00.000-01:00

Well, it's Friday and the end of my 5th week on Boa Vista. It's gone a lot faster than it did in São Domingos. I wonder why... In any event, all I've really done this week is teach classes and write a proposal for two English classes. Some thoughts on teaching here...

I had a really, really awful class on Tuesday. Now keep in mind that this class is just Windows Explorer: Make a folder, copy a file, make a shortcut, move this, cut that. I got up and went through a few miscellaneous things and handed out a sheet of exercises for them to practice with. It was basically making a series of folders and subfolders and copying some files into them. The mega problem came when people all of a sudden didn't seem to understand making a folder inside another one. I noticed that about half the class had just created about 15 folders all right next to one another, in clear defiance of the directions, which very clearly had the word "dentro" (inside) over and over again. So I tried explaining it, and received blank stares all around. Frustrating. So the next day, I went into the room before class and deleted all the extraneous and ridiculous extra files all sitting around on the computers, and re-explained everything to them. It seemed to work. I handed out the exercises again and they all got it. Whew. But one of the problems I have noticed is an all around difficult time following directions. Sometimes a student will get to, say, exercise 8 which asks them to copy a file into a folder. They can't find the folder. Ok, look at exercise 3, where it asks you to create the folder. Did you do that? No? A-ha, therein lies the problem. It's very strange to me, but seems to be pretty universal here. But it's not all bad. The class is pretty clearly divided into three groups: those who have a really hard time, those who get it after an explanation and some practice, and those who get it before I'm even done talking about it. I have one last class of miscellaneous stuff to do today, and then it will be followed by a test on Monday, which they have to do alone. Given the general difficulty with following guided, written exercised, I wonder how some of the students will fare. Many of them understand what they have to do perfectly well, but nearly always need verbal nudging to get it done. I have been told by PC volunteers the world over that this is a common issue. American and European school systems stress problem solving skills, but here it is generally rote memorization that is emphasized. As a result, people in some developing countries have difficulty applying a skill in an abstract way, i.e. any way that isn't exactly how it was originally explained.

Anyway. I am planning a pair of English courses now that will start in November. Both classes will be aimed at slightly older folks, because English is already required for 7th through 12th grades. The first will be an introductory course for those with little to no experience in English, and the second is a more advanced conversation course for those who just want to improve grammar and vocabulary. I finished up with the proposals the other day and am going to start planning out classes today. I was a bit disinterested in the idea for a while, but I'm starting to get excited about it. The beginner class will be fun to just teach the most basic aspects of our language. And for Leland the Language Nerd, it will be interesting to kind of dissect English in a way that I haven't ever had to before. For the advanced class, I've picked a list of real world topics to discuss, mainly shamelessly stolen from an advanced textbook I found in the library of the CEJ. So the goal will be to facilitate (bonus peace corps buzzword) discussions and use them to clarify grammar confusion and pick up new vocab. Not bad.

What else... Nothing really. I still live on the beach. Tomorrow, I'm going to wander down a stretch of beach on the other end of town to see if I can find some of the watersports guys. I want to ask them where I'd be able to buy a bodyboard and snorkel gear, and maybe get some connections for windsurfing lessons. They cost about $40 otherwise, and I clearly cannot afford that. So let's hope... Ok, time to plan some English lessons.

2006-10-10T10:19:00.000-01:00

Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain copy and paste to 16 people who have only just learned how to use a mouse last week? Really hard. Really fucking hard.

2006-10-09T09:51:00.000-01:00

Sound the trumpets, folks, because we finally have a home. Temporary, of course, but it's not a hotel room. So here's what happened last week: The country and regional safety and security coordinators were going to be visiting Boa Vista anyway, to check out the island, add to the notes that they already have. So PC basically enlisted their aid in helping us get a place to live. So Mike and Hilario showed up on Thursday and saw some places. Then we spent nearly all day Friday looking at potential houses and apartments. Nothing was really to perfect satisfaction, unfortunately. Everything was either too expensive, too old and crusty, too not-entirely-built-yet, or too one-bedroom-ish. As for that last one, you wouldn't think that this would be an issue. But on no less than half a dozen occasions, we have showed up to see an apartment that we have been ASSURED has two bedrooms, only to find that it has only one. It defies all sense and reality. If I were a scholar, I would make this my life's research: How does the number one, in passing through a single human beings eyes and brain, suddenly turn into two? It's spectacular. But that is neither here nor there. We did revisit an apartment we had seen before and were pleased to see that it only has a few weeks more work to be done on it. Obviously that is no good for now, but it is absolutel ideal for a permanent residence in size, price, location, everything. So in the mean time, we are shacked up in the only other two bedroom place we could find: an Italian tourist apartment just outside the main cluster of town. It kinda sucks that we are not as inside the community as we would like. It also kinda sucks to be associated with the tourism industry. It definitely sucks that it is costing way more than it should. But oh wow is it a nice place. It's nice enough that I feel guilty having it. As much as I like it, I definitely prefer the more humble place in town. Nonetheless, it is never bad to eat dinner on a balcony overlooking the ocean, or spend Sunday reading with a nice beach breeze blowing. It was also fully furnished, which was pretty necessary given our situation. It just wouldn't make sense to have to buy all our furniture and then move again a month later after barely settling in. So yeah, that's where I am now. I can finally relax and enjoy myself a bit.

I also am halfway through teaching my first computer class. It's going pretty well as of now. I have to teach in Creole, which was a frightening though at first, but that has actually not been the hard part at all. The most difficult thing is forcing myself to go at a pace suitable for someone who has literally never touched a computer before. In the US, even people who don't have computers or despise them know how to move a mouse, know the difference between right and left clicks, know where the start button is, etc. Not so much here. And concepts that seem easy to me aren't. In giving instructions, I might say quickly "Ok, go to the Start menu, click on the Control Panel, find the user accounts icon." But it's not that easy. I usually have to specify which mouse button, and say exactly where to click on each screen. It was frustrating at first, but now I don't mind so much. The good part is that my class is interested, attentive, and nearly always on time. Because they are older, they are mature and don't give me shit ever. I like it. I have another class, in Microsoft Word, coming up at the end of the month. Also, my counterpart is pressuring me to start teaching an English class soon. I certainly don't have a problem with teaching it, and I would actually love to get it started, but I'm a little lost on it, to be perfectly honest. It's not exactly my element and I don't even know where to start. Nadia has been giving me ideas, and I think that the first class is going to be a very basic conversational class, with the material dictated by the needs and levels of the students. I can see that either going really well, or really badly. We'll see... For people who already know, I think I'm also going to try to organize an informal discussion hour with friends that we've made around town. They always want to speak English with us, so I figure why not get them all together at once and have a chat?

Also, North Korea just tested a nuclear weapon. Yikes.

2006-10-03T16:12:00.000-01:00

Well, I just visited our potential "two bedroom" apartment. The reason for quotation marks? It doesn't have two bedrooms. I have no idea why we were told that it it does. But it doesn't. It has a futon, in the living room. And by living room, I mean kitchen. It would be a really really nice place, if you were a tourist couple looking to stay here for a summer. But not if you're a pair of Peace Corps volunteers. Who aren't married.

Well, now I have to call my asst director and tell him that we still don't have a house. Not only that, but we no longer even have any leads to find a house. According to Nadia's boss last week, this means we have to move to the other house, an hour away, in the interior of the island. Shit. Not that that makes any sense, moneywise, because the cost of transportation would actually come out to the price of an entire other apartment for the two of us. Fuck.

2006-10-02T13:31:00.000-01:00

I still haven't taken any pictures of Boa Vista, but I did find this on the computer I'm using, so I decided to upload it. I have no idea where on the island this is, but this could basically be any beach anywhere, except Vila Sal-Rei. Beaches are beautiful, interior is heinous. See what I mean?

As I indicated in the last email, I've been struggling to get this apartment thing handled. But of course, we weren't able to see it last week. The landlord got back from Italy yesterday, so we are waiting for him to show it to us. We bumped into his wife last night, and she said that it is best if we wait until evening to call him and set it up. Clearly, this is not ideal, but I am slowly learning to deal with things like this. Hopefully (HOPEFULLY), we will be able to see the place by tomorrow morning and we can tell our director to jump on a contract. Holy shit, do I ever want this apartment. It's located in another section of town that I very badly want to live in...

Ok, to explain that: I've sort of figured out how this town is divided up. Nadia and I always just thought that this was a quiet and less social town than São Domingos. Not so. On weekends, there is never anybody in the praça (town square), and the whole end of town that we are on just seems deserted. But a walk around on Saturday with Nadia, and then a separate solo journey of my own on Sunday proved otherwise. The other, older part of town is buzzing with life. Every Cape Verdean is sitting on the stoop, drinking at a bar, lounging by the boats, playing soccer, swimming, or one of any number of other random weekend-y kinda things. So yeah. It was very uplifting to see that this town has more than meets the eye. With some luck, we'll get to live there and then we'll have a balcony to relax on and make friends with our neighbors. Ohhh, the balcony... It overlooks some rocks and then the bright blue harbor filled with fishing boats, with Ilheu de Sal-Rei just past it. The ilheu (a long island that protects the harbor from the ocean) is almost totally barren, except an abandoned 16th century Portuguese fort and a lone church. Anyway, the point is that every evening, the sun sets over this nice little vista right in front of my potential future balcony. Oh god, I will cry tears of blood if I don't get this apartment.

So last week was kind of a downer. I think other volunteers are having similarly rough experiences. Natawnee and I (obviously) keep in constant contact, and she had a bad one as well. I was feeling pretty down all week about the housing thing. I can't possibly express often enough or strongly enough how much I despise living in a hotel room. Ugh. So I ended up downloading a bunch of cheap games to my laptop and hiding in my room for like 4 hours on Sunday. Not the most constructive way to deal with the situation, but sometimes it can't be helped. Afterwards, I decided to get up and go for a walk. That's when I wandered through the cool section of town and my spirits were much uplifted. Saturday, we just kinda floated in the bay for a while in the sunshine, and did a little shopping. I also bought a backpack for work, which is significant because it is the only concrete purchase I have made in over 3 months. Wooha.

Also, I miss my girlfriend a lot. A lot a lot.

Ok, off to do some work for a while, because I teach my first computer class tonight. Introduction to computers, 17 students, 7 pm to 8:30, Monday through Friday, for two weeks. Fun.

2006-09-27T09:31:00.001-01:00

I'm sitting in the fully functional cyber café in the CEJ now, with a bunch of teenage boys all gathered around one computer to my right. Every time I get up and walk past them, they quickly close all the windows on the computer. Gee, I wonder what's keeping their attention... The CyberCaféPro software arrived on Monday morning and I installed it along with Vilma, the CEJ technician and computer teacher. We set up the server and a couple client machines to test it and make sure it was all satisfactory. I spent last week learning the software with a demo copy, and I taught her all I had figured out. She's pretty smart (getting a comp sci degree in São Paulo, Brasil), so she picked it all up quickly, and was teaching it to the other employees not twenty minutes later. I spent the afternoon installing the client software on all the computers here while Vilma finished ironing out the rest of the server configuration, and by the time I left at 5:30 or so, there were half a dozen customers and the girl who works nights was handling it fine on her own. So there you have it, first project is done. Go me.

I've felt a bit aimless since finishing up this project, so I just ducked into my counterpart's office, and talked with her a bit about where to go next. Apparently, she wants me to start teaching computer classes on Monday. This is tricky, considering I've only ever taught two computer classes ever, and I have no lesson plans. So I guess I will have to cobble something together in the very near future. Of course, I am not sure what topics I will be covering, or what skill levels my students will have. So basically, it's exactly what I thought Peace Corps would be like. And the solution is, as always, to just roll with it. I'll start working with Vilma today to put together a course. I've got sample lesson plans from a book from the PC resource library, as well as lesson plans given to me by Brent, a 2nd year volunteer on São Nicolau.

We may have found an apartment the other day, so I am going to visit it this morning. If it is satisfactory, hopefully we can move in soon. One of my coworkers lives in the building, so I've seen what it looks like. Apparently one of the bedrooms is pretty small, but I really don't care. Clearly, I came here with not that much stuff, and I definitely don't need a desk and chairs and shit. So I told Nadia that I will take the small room, just so long as we have a place to live, and soon. The building is about 50 feet from the water and is in an older section of town. The location is prime, so hopefully the apartment is as nice as I hope it is.

Ok, Paulo (guy who works at the camara, and our apartment-savvy hookup) is here, and it's time to visit what is hopefully my future home.

2006-09-26T09:08:00.000-01:00

This is my little brother Maniyky, in my room wearing all my stuff. It's just a good picture.
Me and Natawnee. I am including this partly because I just think it's a good picture, and partly because I think she will be at least mildly embarrassed when she notices that I have posted a picture of us on the internet.
This is the greatest goat of all time. Full credit must go to Jean-Claude Lebec for both the photo and noting that this is the sort of goat that probably did blow with David Bowie back in the day.
This picture is just a god damned great photograph. Darrell, Kyle, Jean-Claude, and me at the youth center where J-C now works in Praia. Oh right, that's me with a shaved head.
This was just about a month ago, at a party for Jacob, a volunteer who was finishing his two year service. The theme of the photo was intense concentration. Anyway, I am at work right now, so I need to not post any more pictures and get back to working. I helped put together a cybercafé yesterday, which appears to be running smoothly around me. Nice.

2006-09-25T17:17:00.000-01:00

Here is São Domingos towards the end of the dry season. This is where all the training went down. We all lived in separate houses around town. Note the funky brown color. That is the color of Cape Verde 9 months out of the year. It is also why I thought the Portuguese were lying through their teeth when they named this place.
But no, they weren't. They just arrived in the rainy season. This is a picture taken not far from the other, but at a different angle. My home stay house is just above that square walled-in area (a cemetary). The entire island changes to this amazing electric green color. The brown patches in the hills are just cultivated areas with crops.
And this is our first weekend of training. This is at Bar Estudante, where we stopped going after two weeks because they stupidly decided to start overcharging us for beer. Everyone else was paying 100 escudos, and they asked us to pay 120. So we started going to other places. Two people of particular note here. My girlfriend, Natawnee, is the very tan girl right above my head. And the other dark girl to the right of me is Nadia, my current roommate on Boa Vista.

Here is Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. It's a big city by standards here, but is only a bit over 100,000 people. There are no tall buildings as you can see. Not much else to say about Praia... We only spent a little time there, but this is where the Embassy and Peace Corps offices are.
Somewhat out of order, but here is a view of Dakar, Senegal from the balcony of my hotel room. We only stayed there one night as a layover, but the beach was just really pretty, so here it is. This is the edge of the city, on the north side of the peninsula. Downtown Dakar is much larger and less picturesque.

Ok, gonna post this now and try for some other pictures in a sec.

2006-09-20T14:39:00.001-01:00

Time for another post, I guess... We may have a temporary house now, which we will hopefully move into tomorrow. It's kind of a tourist apartment, which is bad because I would rather not be associated with anything touristy here, but good because, well, it's fully furnished and right by the beach. So I guess no complaints really. The fully furnished thing is the most key, because I don't really want to spend a bunch of money on buying stuff and moving it into a house if we're going to leave a month later. So if we can actually get a hold of the landlord, we will visit it today and move in tomorrow. Finally.

Oh, and I have a mailing address now (just a PO box), so if you are feeling beneficent and want to mail me things, shoot me an email and I'll send it to you.

So my major observation about Boa Vista thus far is that the tourist aspect of it sucks more than I imagined. In Sao Domingos, it was so easy to make friends. Just by virtue of my skin color, I stood out, and people were curious. So I was constantly talking to people, and everyone just wanted to know all about me, why I was there, etc etc. But here, you can't spit without hitting an Italian (note: I have not yet actually spit on an Italian), and most people here are rightfully sick of tourists. So there is no overt friendliness. Once I speak Creole, it's usually not a problem. Then they realize that I am not a tourist, and the Cape Verdean hospitality comes right out. But it's unfortunate.

Ok, gotta run some errands now, but I've more anti-tourist venting for later.

2006-09-11T16:57:00.000-01:00

Well I'm here on my new home island of Boa Vista. Note that I didn't just say "home." That's because, oh yeah, I DON'T HAVE A HOUSE YET. But, hey, no big deal. So here's what's been happening...

Upon arrival, we spent a night in a hotel in Vila Sal-Rei, which is where Nadia and I work (Nadia is my future roommate). The original plan was for the two of us to spend a month living in an apartment in Rabil, a nearby town, until a more permanent house is completed. Well, on Monday we went to visit this apartment and found... well, a few things. One, it is tiny, certainly not big enough for two people. Two, there is no bed or refridgerator, and the table and chairs look like they were pulled from a trash pile. Three, speaking of trash piles, someone's (presumeably the landlord's) stuff, including a motorcycle, is filling up one of the rooms of the apartment. Given the size of the place, this is about 25% of the total room space. Fourth, there is an apartment above that seems to have physical access to the one I am meant to live in, i.e. someone's stuff was in the bathroom. Fifth, Rabil is far enough away that it actually costs more money to get to Vila from there and back than PC actually gives us to live on. Not to mention the fact that I would clearly prefer to live in the town that I work in, so as to really home in on the community part of community development. So, I told the vareador of the camara (basically a head of department in local government... important guy) that I couldn't live there. Here's the kicker: due to some kind of miscommunication, they have already entered into a year contract on the apartment. Needless to say, he wasn't too pleased, for which I don't blame him. The camara has invested this money in getting a volunteer, and look what happens... So, we went back to the hotel for another night, and informed our respective Peace Corps bosses of the situation. We ended up visiting the apartment that is under construction, and found that it is perfect, but we still have to wait a while for it to be done. What followed is several days of calls back and forth between me, Nadia, our directors, the camara, and the owners of several apartments and pensions in Vila, all trying to sort this mess out. As of yesterday, we have been told to relax, stay in the hotel, do our thing, and all will be sorted out by the guys in charge. So ok. Doesn't change the fact that it's a huge headache.

But otherwise.... I'm trying to think of what has happened since my last post over a month ago. Both a lot and a little, I guess. My Creole is very good now. I scored Advanced on the Language Proficiency Interview, which is a standardized language testing process developed by the Foreign Service. My Portuguese is shockingly not bad (Intermediate High), considering I only had two weeks of it, but I can barely hold a conversation. I became thoroughly sick of training shortly after that last post of mine. If it weren't for the other trainees, it would have been pretty hard to slog through it all. Computer model school was a disaster, as was the IT community project. It's hard to pin the blame as to why they went so badly, but it was just really really disorganized. We did the best we could with what we had, and I can at least say that I learned something from both experiences. The rest of training was just a blur of hanging out with other PC trainees and Cape Verdean locals.

Natawnee and I have ended up getting very close, certainly closer than I had anticipated. In the week or two before training we decided to stick it out and give a real relationship a try. Unfortunately, she is in Paul on the island of Santo Antao, which is at the total opposite end of the northern archipelago. To get there from here, I have to fly from here to Sal, then to Sao Vicente, where I take a ferry boat from Mindelo to Porto Novo on Santo Antao, and from there I have to take two hiace rides across the island and down the coast. Yeah, it's pretty remote. Yeah, I know what y'all are thinking... Jackass Leland got himself into another impossible relationship. Fortunately for us, our situation makes it a lot easier (at least in my opinion) to make it work. I don't think I could adequately explain here, but just trust me when I say I'm pretty pleased with how it's going. Though I would be more pleased if she were here.

So my CEJ (Centro de Juventude - Youth Center) here is nicer than I could possibly have imagined. It is brand new, with about 30 computers in various rooms. The main room is a cybercafe that they use to make money and keep the whole thing more or less self-sustaining. There is a computer classroom that I will be teaching in, probably starting in a few weeks. The cybercafe oddly enough doesn't have any cybercafe software running, so that is my first side project here. I found some relatively inexpensive software that I am going to download and install on a couple computers to test out. I'll run it through some tests next week and see if I can procure the $70 it will cost to license it for all the computers here. I don't know a damn thing about cybercafes, but I guess now is as good a time to start as any.

As far as other projects go, I've got more than a few in mind. Peace Corps has linked up with Cisco to get all IT volunteers certified to teach Cisco Networking Academies in developing countries. For anybody who knows me well enough, they may realize that I was studying for this very certification in the US before coming here. So I am going to start up an academy here to train people in networking, software, and hardware. It's an unbelievable program, and I can't wait to get it in full swing. It also ties a bit into another project: There is an organization in the CV government called NOSI (Nucleio Operacional do Sociedade de Informatica... I think) that runs all the government's networks and software for them. They started out with just the Ministry of Finance, but now they work with multiple ministries and have physical connections with all 9 inhabited islands. They host government websites and run web-based software to streamline government applications. We toured their facilities and talked with one of the guys there for about 3 hours last month and it was really unbelievable. Anyway, their goal is to link every camara municipal to their system. My goal is, of course, to get the ball rolling on that for the camara of Boa Vista (the whole island is one conselho... it's that small). That ties into my Cisco project, because they need people on the islands who can handle the ongoing maintenance on this end, i.e. maintaining the Cisco router and other equipment, not to mention someone who knows the software well enough to be able to troubleshoot. Other than those two big ones, I've got some other ideas floating around in my head to keep me busy when I'm not teaching classes.

Now the island itself... Well, it is the classic desert island in nearly every sense of the term. Yesterday, Nadia and I went with the CEJ to the opposite shore (to play with sea turtles! Boa Vista is one of the top spots in the world for sea turtle nesting), and we drove through the interior ...wow. It is nothing but miles of sand dunes, fields of brown, red, and black volcanic rock, and the occasional low mountain. There are a few oases scattered around that are beautiful clumps of grass and palm trees, plus the odd town, but mainly there is nothing whatsoever. I've never seen anything like it. Fortunately, the coastline makes up for it. The whole island is a nearly uninterrupted circular beach. The water is crystal clear and it's that perfect temperature: just cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough that you can stay in all day. The bay of Sal-Rei is protected by a long islet that makes it calm and easy to float around in, not to mention windsurf. But other coast areas get pretty respectable waves, and I am currently in the market for a bodyboard. I can body surf the smaller waves, but the bigger ones are a bit intimidating, and near the rocks. The clarity of the water also makes for phenomenal snorkeling, so I'm going to try to find a mask tomorrow, too.

The town of Vila Sal-Rei is small, quiet, and beautiful. There is a large square in the middle of town, where people hang out at night. All the houses are brightly painted, and the streets are clean and well-maintained. It has one problem... tourists. This is really only a problem for me, because I am always mistaken for one, until I open my mouth and they realize that I speak Creole, which no tourists know. But I get a lot of "ciao" and "bon soir" when I walk around, since most of the tourists are European; I have yet to meet another American, which is fine with me. Nadia is very dark-skinned, so more often than not, we are assumed to be Italian. The tourism is also a problem (again, only for us) because it has inflated the economy to the point that it is going to be difficult to live in the Peace Corps living allowance. If we keep detailed track of our expenses, we may be able to wheadle some more money out of them, assuming that it stacks up as much as I think it will. But perhaps if we continue to shop at the Cape Verdean markets and drink at the Cape Verdean bars, we will be able to live on what we get. We'll see. For the Cape Verdeans, the tourism is all they've got, seeing as Boa Vista is virtually totally lacking in natural resources. They have salt. Which they no longer produce. And fish. Which they no longer export commercially (there used to be a tuna canning plant here). So tourism it is.

So in sum, I guess I basically love it here. My job is great, my town is amazing, the island is gorgeous. If I could only get my girlfriend here, life would be perfect. Oh, and a house would be nice, too. I've got regular internet access now, so expect somewhat more regular blog postings. And y'all should write me some emails. I like to get love, too.

L

2006-08-12T13:38:00.000-01:00

Ok kiddies, a real post! Here are the 14 pages, single spaced, that I have been writing on and off for the last month. It starts out while traveling and ends... this morning. Enjoy!

Friday, July 7, sometime after midnight – Dakar, Senegal

We just arrived in Africa a few hours ago, and my group of travelers got stuck with a night over in Dakar. I say stuck, but I’m really not complaining. I’ve always wanted to see Senegal, and now I’ve got the whole morning to do it. Our hotel is right on the beach, north of Dakar on the opposite edge of the peninsula. This is the westernmost point of continental Africa, apparently. The PC director for Senegal has informed us that the beach is amazingly beautiful, but it’s dark already, so I’ll have to wait until morning to find out.

Travel so far has been pretty hellish. Our original flights through Amsterdam were cancelled sometime last week and everything has been reorganized at the last minute, and it’s all been chaotic. We were routed through Paris, but everyone left DC at different times. After all taking the same flight to Dakar, half the crew has continued on to Praia, while the other half is staying here. My hotel room is really nice and has a spectacular view of the ocean and what looks like it might be a port, though I can’t really tell. Gotta wrap this up, cuz I think I just fried my voltage converter and I’m out of battery…

Monday, July 10, 2006, just before 9 pm – Sao Domingos, Cabo Verde
Ok, well I finally got an adapter, thanks to the genius of one of my little brothers (more on that in a bit). So I am sitting in my living room (mine for the next 2 months at least), while the rest of my host family watches Brazilian soap operas. Now, to start where I left off…

My morning in Dakar was pretty nice. I woke up around 10, and went to lounge by the pool for a bit. There was a mismatch with boy/girl ratios, so I ended up rooming with Catalina, a volunteer in her mid twenties from Arizona, I think. Some other PC folks were already by the pool, and the rest wandered down as time went on. I left our private beach (our hotel was pretty nice…) to walk down the public beach for a bit. Yeah, we didn’t get stared at. It was me, Kyle, and Mike; 3 white kids on a beach that probably doesn’t get too many. But the beach was colorful and loud, if really really dirty. Guys rake piles of garbage out of the water and neatly organize them all day. The result is large piles of trash every twenty feet; not pretty. But the water was blue and warm, though I wouldn’t have gone for a swim. That’s what the pool was for. We had a huge lunch, and then headed for the airport, where we soon discovered that TACV (Cabo Verde’s airline) doesn’t really have its own check in section, or employees that I could see for that matter. One other kid and I had enough French between the two of us to work out a solution. Even with pretty decent listening comprehension, the African accent makes Senegalese French REALLY hard to understand. But I buddied up with an Air Senegal guy named Mike (probably not his real name?) who knew as much English as I know French, and we managed to check in all 16 of us, AND recover all the baggage for the other 16. Did I mention that? Didn’t think so. Yeah, TACV totally forgot to send on everyone’s bags to Praia. And of course we found out that our flight was delayed 2 hours and change. So we hung out in the airport from 2 to 8:30-ish. I made friends at the airport bar with a Danish guy named Per, which was apparently funny… Someone decided he was gay and hitting on me, plus he was some form of international sheep trader, which didn’t help. Anyway, I learned a fair amount about West Africa from him, plus his beer and the others I bought combined forces with my malaria prophylaxis to get me way drunker than I should have been. Anyway.

Arrival in Praia was chaotic, since we had to not only find all of our own bags, but all the rest as well. Then when we went through customs (no, they didn’t mind that we each had about 8 bags… thank you 3rd world countries), only to find… no one. No PC representative to be found. Finally, some guy walks up and says “Peace Corps?” As if the 16 kids piled with 2 years worth of luggage wasn’t obvious. So we loaded all our crap into a huge truck, hopped into a few vans and trucks, and headed into Praia. We stayed the first couple nights at a student residence, kind of a dormitory-esque situation. Obviously this involved lugging all our shit up to the 4th floor (or maybe 5th… it felt like a lot more), for the billionth time. In any event, I walked up a lot of stairs with a lot of luggage, not all of it my own.

The next couple days were spent at a local high school, sitting in a classroom getting basic training stuff. Most of it was what I expected: what places to avoid, how to act, medical procedures, rules, etc. One rule turns out to be that we are not allowed to start romantic relationships during training. A current volunteer revealed to us the night before that practically everyone in her training class dated someone during the first nine weeks, most of which ended in disaster, seeing as at the end you basically move to a different island, unless of course you are placed in Praia or Sao Domingos. But I won’t be. Nonetheless, there are several pretty girls in the group, all of whom are chill and likeable. And we’re spending a full 9 weeks intensely together. I can’t see how people won’t end up dating, no matter what. But I guess we’ll see.

Not much interesting to say about training… got some shots, played lots of ice-breakers, got a rudimentary lesson in Kriolu… But the country of Cape Verde (also known as Cabo Verde in Portuguese, or Kabu Verdi in Kriolu) is… well, here’s the bad: It is dry and dusty, not particularly green where I am, though I understand that other islands and even other parts of Santiago are much more lush. It is poor, and many buildings are crumbling, or frequently unfinished, with rebar sticking out of the upper floors. There is garbage all over the place, and people generally toss trash wherever they feel like it. There is no such thing as a hot shower; there is only one knob and it is for cold. Really cold. The sewer system is not very robust, and it can’t handle anything except #1 and #2. That includes toilet paper. Which goes in the garbage bin by the toilet. Still getting used to that one. But the good things about this country…

It is warm and breezy all the time. I mean it. The day can get up into the upper 80s, and with the sun, it’s pretty hot. But it’s not sticky humid heat like CT or SD. It’s pretty pleasant, as long as you’re not lugging a girl’s 75 lb suitcase up a few flights of stairs. And the heat lasts only from about 10 am to 5 pm. Other than that it is in the 70s with a perpetual breeze. The ocean is beautiful, though I actually haven’t spent too much time there, since I have been busy pretty much 18 hours a day since arrival. The staff here is great, and they make everything really easy, but it is still a lot of work to do, and it takes a lot of adjusting. I left my life to live in Africa, what the fuck did I expect?? Nothing less.

So I’ve been getting a better idea lately about what I may end up doing. I had an interview with the assistant director, who leads the Community Development program here. He asked about my managerial skills, and when I told him I managed a helpdesk for a year and a half, he was overjoyed: “THAT’s what I want to hear!!” So apparently we are looking to send a couple people to an island that does not currently have volunteers, to start new projects in IT and TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language). I don’t have any more details, but apparently I am a good candidate. I also wrote in my pre-training survey that I am interested in starting a project from scratch. It doesn’t hurt that the island in question has the most beautiful beaches in the country and is a European tourism hotspot. OK. I’m in.

Sunday afternoon, we left Praia just before noon to drive in an hiace to Sao Domingos, a small municipality about a half hour outside Praia, inland. There is no internet here at all, which is why I am writing all this on my laptop, to post at a later date. I am staying with a host family here, to improve my Kriolu and adjust to the culture. I thought it would be really hard, but they have made it very easy. My host mom is really sweet and feeds me well. We live right next to the school where our training HQ is set up, so my walk in the morning and afternoon is about 200 feet down a hill, which I don’t mind. Means more sleep. It also turns out that they own a little restaurant/bar in the front of the house that only serves fried chicken, French fries, and rice. Best god damn fried chicken I’ve ever had. Wow. So I eat well, though my nickname will probably be Fatty by the time I leave here. Her husband is a truck driver, so he is gone most of the day, and I have had little chance to get to know him. But hey, only 1.5 days have gone by, and I’ve got 9 full weeks ahead of me. My little brothers on the other hand… I have gotten to know them well.

The younger, Maniyky, is 8, and the older, Yanyky, is 12, almost 13. Both are little troublemakers, and are so much fun. They are the little brothers I never had. The first afternoon, I took a nap, and after waking up, Maniyky was ready to start leading me around. We went to investigate some loud music from down the street, and found a funana band warming up. I have no idea if I spelled that right. Afterward, we played soccer using one of his shoes, because we had no ball. Oh well. After returning home, I sat down with a Kriolu dictionary and tried my best for a few hours with my host mom. She is very patient with my shitty speaking, and said that I speak more and better than the volunteer she hosted before, whom I met last week.

Interlude: Kriolu. Strange language. It is not as close to Portuguese as I thought. It is not a written language, but is only used as a day to day conversation language. Verbs are not conjugated, and the whole structure is simple simple simple. I am picking it up fast, but my vocabulary sucks. Then again, I’ve only had 3 lessons. It’s a struggle to get by every day with my family here, but I’m pretty optimistic about learning this quickly. Some other trainees are having a much harder time. It sounds like a strange mixture of Portuguese and every African language you’ve ever heard. Take for instance this easy phrase: N ka gosta galinha – I don’t like chicken. Say it out loud. It’s really cool – half African, half European in sound. I can’t wait to come back to the States and be the only kid fluent in Kriolu. Ha. Just kidding, I have no desire to be in the US right now. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back.

So, back to what I’m doing. I was in class all day today, getting Kriolu lessons, medical info (water purifier, medical kit, more shots, etc). At lunch I showed my little brothers all my cool shit from the US: laptop, iPod, camera, hackysack, poi set, etc. They were pretty entertained, mainly by the hackysack. (Note to the Nesselhufs: two little kids in Cape Verde know all about “VOTE BEN”) After training, Maniyky convinced me to go for a little hike in the mountains… This turned out to involve hiking up a steep slope of slippery dust and jagged rocks, bramble bushes, and steep rocky faces plunging off cliffs. By the top, I was beat, sweaty, and covered in dirt (that’s kind of a way of life here… above all, it is DUSTY). But ohhhh the view. I had an amazing shot of the whole valley of Sao Domingos, plus the road leading away on the other side, not to mention the rest of the mountains in the distance. Clearly, I forgot my camera. So I’m gonna take some other trainees up there soon to take in the view.

Today is a trainee’s (Jean-Claude) birthday, so we all went out to find a place to party, but somehow he never made it out… So a whole bunch of us went to a little bar, where a clearly drunk creepy old man serenaded all the girls on a beat up guitar. I had a beer and headed home, because my host mom wanted me back early. She appreciated my punctuality, and I guess I don’t mind. Sure, I’d rather have gotten smashed, but I didn’t come out here to do what I’ve been doing in the US for the last 5 years. So after writing 3 pages single spaced here, I’m more than ready to hit the sack. More thoughts on Cabo Verde to come.

Tuesday, July 11 – 1:30 pm
Back on a short lunch break, and I’ve run out of awkward conversation with my host family. They are always busy at lunch anyway, so it’s fine. It turns out that they are adept at making things other than fried chicken, but it’s still all fried. Last night I had what I thought was just fish, but moréâ turns out to be exactly what it sounds like: moray. Fried, of course. And it was pretty damn good, although there are lots and lots of pin bones to pick out, and the spine is pretty significant in size. Today lunch was some kind of unidentified white fish, fried up in big chunks. It’s all very salty and filling, and my cholesterol is probably already 10 points higher than it was 3 days ago, but you won’t find me complaining. And you all thought I’d get skinnier in Africa…

The family here has 3 pets. They have a kitten and a puppy, both about 4 months old, who fight with each other nearly constantly, but in a playful way, so I stay entertained. When I arrived, I had been told that my family has a makáku, monkey, but there was no monkey to be found. I eventually discovered through, broken Kriolu that the monkey was just on vacation at someone else’s house. However, he has just made an appearance. I believe his name is Xiki, and he’s not particularly friendly, but he doesn’t mind being petted, although the cat seems to hate him.

Learned a bit more about the culture of the islands today. Apparently the southern islands are more “African,” while the northern are more “European.” In retrospect, I can see how that is true of Santiago. The people I see here look more West African than what I had seen in pictures. I discussed the possibility of starting a project there again yesterday, and Aguido (Asst Director for development) still says to keep it in mind. I spoke with another PC worker, and she told me that life there is S L O W. Which is cool. I guess I could use a couple years of relaxation. Note to East Coasters: I might not fit in there anymore when I return. Have I mentioned that I may head off to France for 9 months when I come back? Yeah, I’ll fill you in on that when I have time. Ok, back to the liseu for more development seminars and Kriolu class.

Wednesday July 12, 2006 – 8:40 pm

Ok, well the last day and change have been pretty good to me. I did some language classes yesterday afternoon, and afterwards I went to play soccer with some PC friends. There is a little sports complex in the center of town. And by “little sports complex” I mean that it is a concrete soccer field, with basketball hoops for good measure. It was pretty much exactly what I pictured Africa to be like. Crumbling walls, 150 kids playing various sports… I dunno, it just looked like a video from the travel channel or something. Anyway, everyone was really really really good at soccer, so I didn’t play at first, but when some more volunteers showed up, we went to another field nearby to play. It was pretty much a large patch of dirt with goal nets at either end. So I started playing, and had to good fortune to grab a free ball with no defenders between me and the goal. So I starting kicking and running when… I fall. Yeah. I’m wearing a pair of K Swiss skate shoes with no grip and I’m running on 3 inches of fine dust. So I fall, do a somersault, and land sitting, jump up and look for the ball, but my friend Darrel has already scored. Ah well. I’ve got some scrapes and minor embarrassment to show for it. So I guess I suck at soccer. Ha. I’ve got 2 years to get better, so no worries. After a nice shower and some antibiotic ointment, I had some dinner and settled down for the usual Brazilian soap operas with my host mom, when Nadia and Courtney, two volunteers, showed up. So we sat in the living room and chatted about random shit for a couple hours. And that was the end of my night.

Today was mostly more training: language, safety and security, roles in community development, and more health. And of course, more shots. Today I got the first in the rabies series, as well as typhoid. By the end of the month, I’ll be immune to nearly every disease known to man. And as far as the health seminar goes, apparently I have little to worry about in Cape Verde, except for diarrhea and a cold. I pretty much lucked out on countries as far as health goes. And people. And beaches. I love my life.

After school, I talked with a volunteer who has been here for a year and did her training in Sao Domingos. She told me that last year, the everyday hangout after training was… my house. Because I’m next to the school, and my host parents run a bar. So I got a dozen or so people to come over for a beer, and we chilled for a couple hours. And the monkey was there, of course.

Right now, my brothers are listening to my iPod, playing with my camera, and trying on my shoes. They really really like to play with my stuff. It doesn’t bother me at all for the time being. It’s kinda fun to be this popular. HA, Maniyki just put on my shoes, which are about twice as big as his feet are. Anyway, my family has fed me way too much beer, and it may be time to head out somewhere. Ate logo…

Thursday July 13 – 7:00 pm

Just got back from another attempt at playing soccer, which failed earlier than even the last try. Both fields near my house were full up and had whole teams waiting to play, so no go. Today was not so good. Not bad, per se, but not so good. The usual cool breeze wasn’t blowing as frequently, so it was much hotter than usual, especially in the school, where there is no a/c, obviously. There pretty much isn’t anywhere.

But what was really bad was the frustration with the community development class. The first 2 hours could have been summed up in about 15 minutes, and the whole day just felt horridly repetitive. Nearly everything we were told was common sense, and I could have figured it all out in a matter of hours if I were just dumped off on site. Of course, I understand that they want everyone on the same page, and that things will pick up as training goes on, but it’s frustrating as all hell when I’m trapped in a room, falling asleep from the heat, with no interest whatsoever in what’s going on.

But Kriolu classes continue to be excellent. My professor, Pedro, is really friendly and fun, and there are only 4 other people in my class anyway, all of whom I like. And that’s for 2 hours in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. I’m beginning to realize that Kriolu is the easiest language EVER. It’s completely intuitive. I’ve had 4 days of class and I can already hold a (somewhat disjointed) conversation. I just need more vocabulary. But it’s pretty encouraging, considering I’ve got 8.5 more weeks to practice.

I’ve acquired a new nickname. Well, nicknames. Leland is too hard for Cape Verdeans to say, so they tack on an i somewhere. I’m either Lelandi, Landi, or Leli. Oh well. I don’t have it as bad as Courtney or Natawnee, who are Corny and Natni, respectively. Anyway, I think it’s dinner time. So much more I could write.

Saturday, July 15 – 7:30 pm

Today: fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. Welcome to Africa. Let the good times roll!

Seriously though, it’s been a rough one. I went out with a bunch of the other volunteers last night to basically the only other good size bar nearby. I didn’t really get too drunk, and I dunno if it was the alcohol that set it off or what, but I woke up this morning with a full on gastrointestinal riot in my body. I’m still feeling pretty crappy, but much better. I can actually walk around in relative comfort now. I’m not sure, but I think I got it from drinking untreated water. My family refilled my water filter, but I think they forgot to add the chlorine drops to kill bacteria. So I got some fresh, sediment-free, but apparently very much alive water. Which I drank all day yesterday. Ah well.

The TEFL kids came back today from shadowing other volunteers for a couple days. It’s just been us CD kids for 48+ hours. (for some reason WNBA is on the TV right now. No joke, I’m in a remote town in the mountains of an African island, and I’m watching the Connecticut Suns. Weird.) I’ve got my shadowing next week, back in Praia, where I will hopefully be able to post all this shit I’ve been writing in my spare time. Apparently, the youth center here has one computer with dial-up, which my director says I can use whenever I want, provided I am able to fix it. Maybe I’ll give that a shot during lunch on Monday.

So other than my internal difficulties, I’ve been having a fucking blast and a half. The things that I thought would bug me (dirty water, no infrastructure, unreliable electricity, etc) haven’t at all. The biggest challenge is just getting my Kriolu on point. Still, considering I didn’t know a damn bit of this language 7 days ago, I am doing really really well. Thus far, this has been the best experience of my life. And it’s only just beginning. Word is that the director has been talking about Boa Vista to another IT volunteer, so now I just have to impress the hell out of him for the next 4 weeks so I can get an edge.

Sometimes when I wake up and look around, it seems pretty bizarre that this finally happened for me. A year ago, I was starting work at ACS, and I really thought I would be there for a while. And now I couldn’t even imagine still being there. So when I am done here in 26.5 months, I gotta find something to do to make permanent my escape from the IT world. So here’s the France thing I mentioned: Apparently the French government will pay a stipend to Americans to come and run English language discussion sections with French students. As in, they give you a place to stay and food money, and you run 12 hours of English discussions per week. Wow. So this would start around October, the same month that I close service. So I could either just stay on this side of the pond and head to France, or I could drop by the States for a couple weeks just to see people.

Also, update: Pretty sure I will not be visiting the US in the next couple years. I kinda thought that was a normal thing to do, but I’ve been talking with volunteers, and it seems that most people don’t bother. Thinking about it, I guess all it would do is make me uncomfortable both there and here. I’d just as soon hike around Africa or hit up France with my folks, which is pretty likely.

My little brother are eating hard boiled eggs in the living room, and the smell is gonna make me boot again. I gotta go find some people in an hour or so and I have yet to choke down my first full meal of the day. Pretty sure I’m losing weight. Damn it!

Wednesday, July 19 – 8:00 pm

Hanging out in the living room, and writing for the first time in a while because we actually haven’t had very consistent electricity since the weekend. All the electricity in the islands is controlled by a Portuguese company that has been unable to fulfill its obligations lately. It’s becoming a hot topic. I don’t know the whole story, but I hear that the Cape Verdean government is pretty pissed about the whole thing, since the company can’t really fulfill its contract. Praia has barely had electricity this week, and it’s been spotty for about a month. Since no one can refrigerate things, people have been getting sick from bad food. A bunch of the TEFL people has some stomach problems last week after eating some questionable chicken at a restaurant in Praia. Fortunately for me, my family’s restaurant is still as delicious as ever, and I have been eating fine. The only problem so far has been the lack of a fan at night, so it’s been a lot hotter when I’m trying to get to sleep. It wouldn’t be a problem, except that I don’t have windows, so it gets stifling. But I’m usually exhausted at the end of the day, so sleep hasn’t been too hard to get.

My illness was brief, and I’m back to my usual chipper self. I got some more immunizations today (total count so far: 6; and that’s only because I got to skip the hepatitis series, which I already had years ago), and I’m pretty sure I’ve got some more next week, and more to follow. I don’t mind so much, since the PC nurse who does it here is pretty experienced. The MMR shot I got in DC made a huge bruise that is still yellow and purple, nearly 2 full weeks later. Good times.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be able to actually post this and write a few emails. For anyone who I don’t get to write to, don’t be offended; I don’t know how much time I’ll have on the internet. It turns out I am not shadowing in Praia, but in Pedra Badejo, which is a much smaller town. It’s coastal, and larger than Sao Domingos, but it’s not exactly a metropolis. I’ll be shadowing Jonah, the volunteer who actually lived in this house last year, so I’ve chilled with him a few times already. He’s a CD volunteer, which is a better match for what I’ll be doing, plus he teaches technology classes at the high school where he lives. And Pedra Badejo has a volcanic black sand beach. Nice.

Not much else to say really. I still love it here, and my Kriolu is progressing well. I ended up switching classes this week, because my previous professor started doing a slower class for those having a rougher time with the language. I don’t like my newer class as much, not because the professor or the other students are worse at all, but just because I was enjoying the vibe we had before. Still, I’m doing fine. I’ve developed a bit of schoolboy crush on another volunteer. Yikes. This can only complicate things.

Last post for god knows how long. I’ll try to keep writing, but I can only keep writing as long as the electricity holds out. I am way too tired at the end of the day to keep a pen and paper journal. Gotta wake up early tomorrow, because I promised the director I’d fix the computers at the youth center here and I can’t really make them wait another week. Plus, I did move here to help out, so I might as well get a head start on it.
I miss you all in the States. No joke. I also miss: Italian food, scotch, fluffy pillows, clean water, my lower intestinal tract, the English language, the internet, New York City, Typhoon, hot showers, flushing toilet paper, deciduous trees, washing machines, and hamburgers. I’ve got so much on my plate here that I barely have time to breathe, but sometimes I wonder what I’d be doing if I hadn’t come here. Oh yeah. I’d be working at ACS. Fuck that! My life is awesome.

Sunday, July 23 – 10:00 pm

Well I’ve had a busy few days. Shadowing was LOTS of fun. I woke up early on Thursday to head over to the CEJ (youth center) to try to fix their computers, because my director had said that they were having some problems with internet access. So Kyle (another trainee) and I worked on a PC for a while and pretty much determined that it was working fine, and that the problem is in fact that the phone line is dead. OK. So I guess my first unofficial project is going to be to figure out why and get this place on line.

I met up with Jonah (the volunteer I shadowed) and Catalina (fellow trainee) and left for Pedra Badejo at around 12. We spent most of Thursday just getting to know the town and wandering around. At night, we played about 5 million rounds of asshole with this French guy whom Jonah knew. I got to practice my French a bit, though it wasn’t so good after some grogue (sugar cane booze, if I haven’t mentioned it before… powerful shit) On Friday, we woke up early and grabbed some breakfast before heading down to the water to snorkel. In pictures, the water doesn’t look all that clear, but that’s only because the rock and sand underneath is volcanic and black. The water is actually really, really clear and blue. So I chased schools of fish and just kinda swam around this little cove for a few hours, earning myself a spectacular sunburn in the process. Cheers to Irish heritage.

We spent a few hours doing Peace Corps type stuff as well. I went to the CEJ that Jonah works at to see what it was like. He teaches computer classes there, which is something I will most likely do, even if it is not my primary project. It’s just that important. So far, I’ve actually been pretty impressed with the level of technology. I was expecting to see wretched old PCs, but they’ve been decent so far. I mean, not exactly sparkling and new, but very useable and in good working order. However, I have been told that I will see lots and lots of porn at the CEJs, which I guess isn’t that surprising. Apparently that is the internet’s gift to developing nations. I also took a little tour of the camara, which is the local government. It’s a very important phenomenon here. The president of the camara is like the local mayor, but it is over a pretty good size chunk of land. It’s more like a county than a city. In any event, when I am at my permanent site, I’ll be working with the camara more than anything else, so it’s all pretty relevant.

We laid low for a while afterwards and bought some unbelievably tasty grilled chicken from a street vendor to make sandwiches with. Jonah and I had a water fight with some local kids, which mainly consisted of them trying to tackle us while avoiding the water we were dumping on them. And it turns out that there was a huge music festival on the beach that night. What luck! So at around 11:30 we headed down to the beach (yep, the one with black sand… so pretty) to do some dancing, along with Max (the French kid) who vanished with a Cape Verdean woman shortly thereafter. There were probably 1500 people on the beach, with food vendors and beer for sale, as well as a stage at one end. The music got into full swing a bit after midnight and went until god knows how late. I learned a few good dances and did surprisingly well for a branku (white guy). We didn’t stay too late, because Catalina and I had to head home in the morning, so we were home by 3 or so.

In the morning, we visited the ocean again to take some pictures (I’ll post them when I get a chance) and then hopped on another hiace to head back to Sao Domingos. Reflection: I am SO excited to live near the ocean. Jonah has a little homemade spear gun that he uses to catch reef fish to cook himself for dinner. I will most definitely be doing exactly that when I get on site. I have also developed a newfound love for snorkeling, which I will be doing a lot. I also have read that while surfing is not as popular here as I thought, windsurfing is huge. And Boa Vista has amazing windsurfing. So that makes me pretty happy. Yet another thing to look forward to. Also, I can’t wait to move into my permanent community and make some real friends. For two years!

Saturday afternoon, I dropped by a Cape Verdean wedding that a friend invited me to, and got to see a true party. It was awesome. Lots of cake, dancing, general camaraderie. That night, I went out to meet up with the other trainees for some good old fashioned drinking. I got to the bar 15 minutes early and impressed myself by having a long conversation with the bartender, entirely in Kriolu. And I knew some of the other patrons there, which made me feel really comfortable and happy to be in this community. After getting pretty smashed, I headed home a bit too late and found my house all locked up (no, I don’t have a key), but my host mom was awake and opened the door for me. I thought she’d be annoyed or mad, but she just thought it was funny that I was drunk.

This morning, we headed off to another town (don’t remember the name) where a volunteer wanted us to see a meeting he had organized for a small women’s microfinance organization that he has been assisting lately. And it turned into a true test of cultural assimilation. One group was about 3 hours late. That’s just how shit happens here. Meeting is for 10 am, but hey 1 pm will do just as well, right? So we bided our time by… throwing a spontaneous dance party, of course. Someone threw in a CD of funana music and we all just kinda started getting down to it. And that went on for quite a while. Amazing. After lunch (had to wait for a long time for that, too) we headed to Courtney’s (another trainee) house and watched Anchorman, a.k.a. the best movie ever.

Since then, I’ve just been wandering around town and hanging out at the bar out front. My family is out there with some friends right now, but I am just too tired to deal with more Kriolu conversation right now. I’m getting better by the day. I rarely have to hesitate, other than to look up a work or paraphrase. So I’m pretty content. No, fuck that, I’m SO happy here. I can’t even tell you how great this country is. Sure, there are things I miss, and people I’d like to see back in the US, but I just can’t get over how great this place is. I couldn’t be more excited to call it my home for the next 2 years. And apologies to everyone on the east coast, but I’m not coming back. I mean, I’ll leave here, but I just can’t go back to CT. There’s too much more out there. If I can find this much in a small group of islands that I never would have thought to visit, imagine how much more there is to see.

I got the opportunity to use the internet and email a few of you this weekend and post something in the blog. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use my USB drive to post all this, so I will just continue to write here until I can. And by then, none of you will want to read 15+ pages of rambling. Anyway, I’m pretty beat now from drinking a few beers with the fam, plus being in the sun all day on a mountain. Time for bed.

Monday July 24 – 10:00 pm

The problems with electricity are getting worse. No power for several hours now for the ??th day in a row. The generator is out of juice and the fridges and freezers for the restaurant are no longer running. I walked home in total darkness tonight, but fortunately had a flashlight. Not mine, of course. On the positive side, the stars have never looked so pretty and bright, not even in SD where there usually aren’t many lights anyway. I’m a bit nervous right now, because I saw a huge wolf spider in my room this morning that has been suspiciously absent from sight since then. Not all that cool when you’re in the dark. Oh, and it’s hot as fuck in here without the fan running. And the lack of power has killed all water pressure, so we also don’t have any running water anymore. Hi, I live in a developing country.

But all things aside, I had an excellent day. An unfortunate side effect is that my crush on my fellow volunteer, with whom I spent the entire evening (hence the excellence), is getting very distracting and insistent. I’m going to have to do something about it soon. I probably should have tonight, but chickened out, in full Leland form. Well it’s been a long Monday, so I guess it’s time to turn in and sweat myself to sleep. Unless the wolf spider gets me first, or the Lariam wakes me up with bizarre insomnia at 2 am. Which happened last night.

Tuesday July 25 – 8:30 pm

Well it looks like I’m psychic. The Lariam insomnia struck after about 2 hours of sleep. I was up from midnight until around 3:30. The wolf spider made an appearance around quarter after one, and quickly fell victim to my shoe. Crunchy. Still, I was half asleep all throughout the day, although I managed to be pretty on top of my game. The one exception was our classroom management session, which I was barely conscious for, because it was after lunch. Which was fried chicken. Sweet mother of fuck, I swear it is still the best fried chicken ever.

Power kicked back on around 5 pm today, so I’m back to having running water, lights, and a fan. And cold beer. We decided to frequent another bar after school today, because we had heard that other proprietors were annoyed that my bar was getting all the business. So we are sharing the wealth. The new ritual seems to be having a shot of grog with Rhett right after language gets out, then chill with a beer for a couple hours. I just signed up for a yoga class that starts on Thursday, led by a fellow volunteer. I haven’t done yoga in like 3 years, so this should be good.

The TEFL volunteers started model school today. They basically student teach English classes for local kids for the next month and a half. They are all nervous as shit about it, which I guess I can’t blame them for. My little brother is in a class taught by two of my friends.

OH. And more news on the living situation. It seems the TEFL director has been talking to two of the girls about living on Boa Vista. One of them will probably be there. With me, apparently. My director hasn’t said anything to me, so we’ll see how it pans out. But Nadia and Stephanie are going to be on Maio or Boa Vista, and they will paired with an IT person, of which there is only one female. So no matter, sexes will be mixed, and I kinda feel like I’d prefer to live with a girl at this point. Girls are clean. And both of them are good cooks, too. And I am told that Boa Vista has a large Italian community. Score.

Monday, August 07 – 9:30 pm

Ok, so it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. And I’m not sure quite where to begin. A whole lot and very little has happened lately. My language has progressed to a very reasonable level and I am comfortable in the community now to the point where I feel at home. I can have fairly fluid conversations with little trouble, though my vocab still needs some work. Daily routine is more or less the same: class all morning, lunch at home, class all afternoon, beer with friends after, followed by family time and bed. It all feels pretty routine, but I’m happy. Much happier than I was driving from Rocky Hill to Cheshire every day.

We had a little field trip to Cidade Velha last weekend. It’s the oldest city in the archipelago, not to mention the first Portuguese colony in Africa. It’s pretty small, but it’s got a lot of history, with some old churches and a hilltop fortress (Sir Francis Drake attacked it twice). We had some beach time there as well, which I took full advantage of by body surfing every good size wave that came my way.

We’ve had interviews now with virtually every staff member in charge of anything: homestay directory, language director, training director, technical trainer, and assistant PC director for community development. For me at least, I can honestly say they all went well. Part of the purpose is for PC staff to get an idea of how things are going and how to make improvements, but another big part is also to see who is not doing very well. Obviously the goal is to help these people as much as possible, but we’re reaching a point where I think they want to let some people go. I am 100% positive that that will not be me, but it’s sad to think that 3 or 4 of us will be gone in the next couple weeks. But then again, this isn’t right for everyone, and I can see some people struggling. Cape Verde has the highest early termination rate in West Africa, and I guess they want to reduce that. Fortunately, my language is good and I think I’m one of the more active participants in day to day training, and all my interviewers told me that I seem to be doing well.

Once more, I have been told that Boa Vista is nearly definite. I’m so very, very pleased with this. I foresee two years of beautiful beaches and watersports mixed in with my work. Aguido (asst director) also told me today that I may end up living alone. For the last couple weeks, I’ve been thinking I’d live with Nadia or Stephanie, but apparently the president of the camara in Boa Vista found a very nice apartment that only has one bedroom. So this could change, but it may end up being just me. I guess that’s ok, but I’d just as soon live with someone. I’ve had roommates for so many years, I just think it’d be weird to be on my own. Not entirely alone of course, because one of the girls will be on the island, but in a different place. I’ll know more in a couple weeks. Site announcements are the weekend of week six (this is week five).

So this last weekend was amazing. Friday night, we all met up at the bar na praça, as we have come to call it, because it’s in a little square across from the camara in the center of town. The closest thing to the center of town as we have, at least. Anyway, we all got nice and drunk, and had a wild dance party all night, until after 1 am (which is late for us these days… I’m an early to bed kinda guy lately). We played soccer all afternoon on Saturday, CD vs TEFL. My whole body is still sore. I am in horrid shape. At night, we hit a few bars, trying to recreate the mood of the night before, but gave up when it just didn’t seem to be going the right way. We ended up at a birthday party for a kid in town, apparently a friend of my host cousin here, where the theme was all black. So we danced and drank again until almost 3 am. My host mom is really mellow about me coming home late these days. She is just so damn cool, I can’t believe it. She doesn’t care if I’m drunk, or late, or whatever. She’s just happy that I’m having a good time. What a country. Sunday was lazy and I did nothing of note. And I absolutely needed it. The insomnia has been really awful for the last couple weeks and I’ve had a hard time sleeping more than 5 hours a night. If it keeps up, I’m going to have to talk to the medical officer to try to switch to doxycycline instead of mefloquine.

The best development of the weekend was the return of affection by the object of my big schoolboy crush. Her name is Natawnee, if I haven’t mentioned that before. I spent most of both weekend nights with her and we’re hitting it off pretty well. It’s strange, because we’ll probably end up on different islands in a month, but I enjoy her company too much to just ignore it. Tomorrow is her birthday, so we’ve got an all night party to throw after school.

What else to say? I don’t think about the US as much as you might think. Sure, I think about my friends, but mostly in the context of how much fun it will be when they visit (you all are coming, right??). I feel more at home here than I ever did in South Dakota, and I was there for 2 years. I’ve been here for one month.

Ok, exhausted now. I’ve had a long ass day. More tomorrow if I can remember to do it.

Saturday, August 12 – 11 am

This morning I’m just lounging around the house, nursing the usual mild Saturday hangover. I’m thinking about heading in to Praia, because we have been told that we are now allowed to do this, just to use the internet and buy some stuff if we need it. But I can’t find anyone to do it with me, so I guess I’ll just see who shows up.

Also, I am somewhat resistant to walking around right now, since I managed to tear a muscle in my leg last night. I wish I had a good story to tell about it, but really it was just stupid. We were talking about skiing and I kind of mimed the motion of telemark skiing, and all of a sudden I felt something rip in my leg. Yeah, it hurt a lot. So I drank a few more beers and sat down for the whole evening. It sucks because we’re having another soccer game today and I really want to get in on it again. Ah well. My leg is wrapped now and it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly anymore.

The rainy season is in full swing now. It rains for a long stretches at a time, and the whole valley has bloomed. A month ago, this place was brown and dusty. It doesn’t even look like the same town. The mountains are blanketed in green and all the fields are tilled and planted. It actually looks like a place that someone might name Cape Verde, which looked like the biggest misnomer ever before.

Electricity has been consistent for a couple weeks now. Apparently Praia and some other bigger towns are still having problems, but we’re doing well here. We ran out of water last night for the second time, but it looks like we refilled the tank this morning, so I can flush my toilet again. Sweet.

I shaved my head. I don’t know why I forgot to mention that when I last wrote. Nothing crazy, just a #2 all around. It feels great, and doesn’t look half bad. Turns out my head is pretty symmetrical. Nice

Also, it is 99% positive that I will be moving to Sal Rei on Boa Vista with Nadia next month. The house that PC has found for us is about a half hour outside the town itself, which isn’t too cool. But they are very accommodating when it comes to moving, so Nadia and I have agreed to make finding a new house our top priority upon arrival. Boa Vista is pretty touristy and thus expensive, so we’ll see what it’s like for rent costs, because they usually cap us at about $300 a month. I think we can swing it. So everyone book your plane tickets to Boa Vista. There should be a pretty wild birthday party going down in early January, because there are a lot of birthdays in a short stretch: Sarah, Rhett, me, Mel, Nadia.

I’m still seeing Natawnee. By this, I mean that we don’t just make out when we’re out drinking. The whole moving to separate islands thing sucks pretty bad now, because I do like her a lot. Well, 4 more fun weeks with her, and we’ll see what happens. Is this where I’m supposed to write a short biography so all my friends know a little something about the girl? Umm, she’s 22, cute, from San Jose, went to Tufts, smart as hell… Yeah, I suck at this. Try me later.

I had my first little bout of depression the other day. After Tawnee’s party, I was hungover pretty much all of Wednesday, and then Thursday was just a downer. Nothing in particular made it bad, but I just felt restless and shitty all night. I ended up wandering over to Natawnee’s house and she did a good job of cheering me up, but it was a bit of a reality check. It’s still pretty strange to think that I won’t be setting foot in the States for another 2 full years. Not in a bad way, mind you. Anyway, it’s getting hot in my room now, so I’m gonna go outside on the porch and hang out with whoever is in the bar now.

2006-07-20T15:43:00.000-01:00

Ok, so I found an internet cafe. And I have 9 pages of entries written on my USB drive, but I am not allowed to use it here. Damn. So what to write?

The town of Sao Domingos is small, dusty, and far from the beach. We're nestled in a little valley inland. My host parents run a bar and restaurant right at the edge of town, so I see a lot of people coming and going and I have a few local friends. Still, my best companions remain my little brothers, who keep me occupied and exhausted most of the time I am home. Which is pretty rarely, as training keeps me busy from 8 am to 6 pm during the week, and on the weekends most of the time. The night life consists of a few bars and one 'disco' where everyone dances, but there are great festas outside sometimes, where everyone dances to whatever music the band is playing that night.

I've learned a bit more about Boa Vista, where I will probably end up in September. I'm pretty excited about it. I will be able to start a brand new project with the local government there, as I will be the first volunteer on that island. Not bad. Anyway, it's time for me to head out of here. I'm in a town on the eastern coast of Santiago, and I have the urge to walk on the black sand beach. There is a big music festa there tomorrow.

In sum: Life is wonderful and I haven't looked back once. Best decision I have ever made.

2006-07-08T15:59:00.000-01:00

Just a quick post to say.... this will be my last post for 9 weeks. I am moving to Sao Domingos until Sept 8, and there is no internet there at all. So that's that. I will try to be good about this after I am at my permanent post. I've only got a couple minutes left inthis slow ass internet cafe, so I'm signing out. Cape Verde is amazingly beautiful and all my friends here are awesome. That's pretty much all I can say. Write me emails to say what up and I'll try to get back here to Praia at some point to reply. Love to everyone back in the States. I miss nachos.

L

2006-07-05T12:56:00.000-01:00

Ok kiddies, this is it. My first post as a Peace Corps trainee. I'm writing from Arlington, VA in my hotel room, which I will be leaving in about 2 hours to head for the airport. I've spent the last couple days in staging with 31 other trainees, getting all the basic info before heading off.

So far, I like pretty much everyone who I'm going there with. Most are young, 21-25, smart, etc... More or less what I was expecting. So I'm pleased. My roommate in the hotel lives in Hawaii, so it looks like I've got a surfing buddy for the first 3 months at least, maybe longer depending on where we end up stationed.

So I check out of here shortly and head for the airport, only to wait around for hours more before my flight. I've got a night over somewhere in Dakar, after taking a night flight to Paris, so really I won't even arrive in Cape Verde until Friday. But, I certainly don't mind some time in Senegal, though I suspect we won't be given much freedom to roam around. Ah well.

In the mean time, I gotta take a nap, seeing as I was up drinking at the revolving bar on top of the hotel until late and I was up at 6 to get my first round of shots. And this hotel wireless connection is shit and keeps dropping. There is no way I'm paying $9.95 for this crap.

But god damn am I excited.

L

2006-05-14T17:32:00.000-01:00

Oi amigos,

Since I'll be gone for quite a while, I figured I'd make a place to keep in contact with people, instead of being one of those folks who writes mass emails to all his friends every couple months, which are irritating at best. So for the next couple years, I'll try and keep a bit of a journal and post some pictures of whatever the hell I happen to be up to on my little island. Still, I can't guarantee any form of regularity, because I don't know how reliable my internet connection will be. Plus, I'm lazy. I suppose the whole thing will start in Perth, Australia, where I will be in a couple weeks. So here I go....