August 24, 2006

In America we are such a closed society. When driving by a car accident, for example, who ever knows what is going on? We, as observers are often pushed a side, we are not meant to see what can be unpleasant or private. We build walls and fences to keep everyone out and ourselves locked in. We teachers have Model School in the capital city, Praia, this week and next week. This means we drive the 30 minutes from our small town to the fairly large city of Praia. Do not think city like New York, or even Phoenix. Think city like Rocky Point, Mexico. But Praia is unique in that you can see sparks of “first world” light mixed with the pull of poverty. And yet, today, I realized how open Cape Verdean society is. In Praia, on our way back from school, there was a large crowd on the street and the cars were backed up. People were running in every direction and yelling. Two men came up to our Hiase (the transport car we were all riding in, similar to a small van) and explained to our driver that there was an accident up ahead, but it should not affect our drive as it was on the other side of the road. There were no police, no ambulance sirens, just people who had come to observe or to help, whichever one the crowd would allow. A car had hit a man. We drove by slowly and through the fence of a hundred legs I could see the man. He was lying on the ground, unconscious and on his stomach. His head was bleeding but people were trying to move him. They couldn’t wait for the ambulance; I don’t think there is a word in Creole for ambulance. But here you don’t wait for someone bigger and stronger to do the work for you. There is no need to hide what happens in life. A few feet away, a man was walking away from the body and crying. We assumed he was the driver. I almost cried with him.

An open society lends its way to the necessary sharing of work and other of life’s essentials. For the past three days, they have been digging a ditch down our side street and passed the front of my house, on towards the neighbors’ house. This is for the water pipe, so that the water can be pumped directly into the storage tank, they will not have to carry it anymore. Progressive, I thought. Last night my home-stay mother turned to me, as all the men were struggling to lift a fairly large rock, and she said “In America you have machines to do this a lot faster, right?” and then she laughed. And I looked around. “Yes,” I thought, “we do have machines to do the work.” And I had to laugh as well. Because the scene in front of me, wasn’t of the neighborhood boys (about my age) forced to do this hard manual labor. It was that they were ALL here digging this hole that was for all of them. It was something of an event. And it was hard, and they were tired, but deep down, I don’t think any of them wanted a machine to come and do this work. It was their pipe for their water and they were all there to help because they wanted to be there. This same idea applies to the planting season. During the beginning of August, the boys around my age take responsibility for farming the family land. There is no hired help. But there are friends and their friends also have family land. My home-stay brother will help plant on his friend’s farm, and his friend will, in turn, come the day it is our time to plant. This sense of community is vibrant and rings true with every aspect of daily life. There are no closed doors, no fences or high walls. Just people and their emotional, mental, and physical strength.

August 20, 2006
Yesterday’s site announcement went well. I was extremely happy. I think most people were. I am going to Boa Vista with my friend (thank goodness) Leland. We are living 15 miles/30 minute drive from our jobs, so needless to say our primary objective when we get there is to find new housing in the main town of Sal Rei. This may prove to be difficult as Sal Rei is increasingly more popular with the tourists and new investment properties are popping up all over the place. I believed this piqued my father’s interest. As he is in the midst of possibly purchasing an investment property elsewhere, our conversation earlier today turned slightly into a real estate interview when I informed him about the rampant construction currently in progress on Boa Vista. It made me laugh a little. I told him I would get back to him in about a month when I had the info, and we could negotiate an offer then J. He makes me laugh. Oh, daddy I miss you! Needless to say, now that I know where I am going for the next two years, I just want to get on the plane and go; but, alas, I am here in training for three more weeks. One of our Education trainers, Charles, made and interesting point, however: he said I will be in Boa Vista for two years, I should enjoy being someplace different while I still can. And I like it here in Sao Domingos. Tonight, a current volunteer, Jacob, organized a basketball game mixed with Americans and Cape Verdeans. In my opinion, the Cape Verdeans play soccer far better, but basketball is cool and different to them, and they enjoy it. Dancing of course followed the game; the only thing missing was food. These people know how to live. Charles admires us Americans for coming over here to a strange place that is completely different from our lifestyle. He says he can relate. He moved here from Nigeria 6 years ago and has pursued a nice career as an English teacher. At first I wondered why he chose Cape Verde of all places. The language was completely different, it’s not on the African mainland, and who (besides the Italians) has ever heard of this place? But every day I understand a little more and I completely agree with him when he says in his thick Nigerian accent, “If there is one place you have to be for two years, this place is not bad.” Yes, I believe I can make it work on my impossibly beautiful beach for the next two years.

August 18, 2006

I have had issues thinking about what to write about. It doesn’t help that I am currently thinking in three languages. The Peace Corps Medical Officer told us yesterday that a Peace Corps volunteer’s stress level was equal to the stress levels of “losing your spouse times 3, losing your job times 5, and a family member in jail times 7.” She occasionally comes up with these ridiculous statistics and other interesting factoids about bizarre health concerns. As far as my actual stress level at this moment, I believe it is pretty low. Tomorrow is Site Announcement day. Here in Cape Verde I believe that this is something of great concern. We get placed on totally different islands. Meaning we have to fly to get to the other part of the country. And those of you in the US, of course this sounds like a ridiculous concern. But flying is expensive, especially compared to a bus that is generally the preferred and cheaper method of traveling in other 3rd world countries. All the islands are different and have their unique qualities which often are cause for greater discussion and believe me when I say that site announcement is ALL we trainees have been talking and thinking about for the past week. I feel lucky in that I pretty much already know where I am going. And the island is beautiful. It’s called Boa Vista, and it is one of the more touristy islands. A guidebook called the beaches on my island “impossibly beautiful.” This makes me laugh. I wasn’t prepared for this. Which is ironic. I was prepared for nearly everything. I prepared for sitting in my straw hut and living by myself in a strange town, I mean isn’t that what you think of when you think the Peace Corps Africa. I know it is. Instead I will be living on the beach on a beautiful island with a good friend of mine named Leiland. He loves to cook too, and we have made ridiculous plans about building a brick oven and an herb garden to make pizza. But you can’t laugh because half of our ridiculous notions are not so ridiculous, and they are completely possible. We don’t have much in the way of materials here. But the ability to improvise is a talent we have all picked up. Especially when your classroom is bare, and the students don’t have books, and are often hurting for a pencil and paper. Their notebooks become their textbooks and you should see them. They are immaculately neat and the translated vocabulary words are in different colors when they can trade colored pens with a friend. The remarkable thing is that I am not in a one-room school hut in the middle of nowhere. I am in an extraordinarily normal-looking three-story high school. But I don’t even have the ability to make photocopies for these children. Either they or I have to pay for them. My situation may be a little different when I get to my site but I doubt the living conditions of the locals will be vastly different, despite the touristy nature of the island. I am looking forward to living there, and being on my own. We have three weeks of training left. Believe me when I say we are all dying to go start our work. I personally cannot wait to start teaching my own class. The kids really are a good time and my new name is ‘teacher.’ Not Ms. Fazel, but just plain old ‘teacher.’ It’s cute the way they say it in their little accents, and I could be called worse…:)

PICTURES!!! FOR SOME REASON NOT ALL ARE UPLOADING, I WILL TRY AGAIN LATER...SORRY
but the top one is my homestay mother and some neighborhood girls and the second one is us having dinner at my house in our kitchen wiht some of my friends. my ´mother´and the girls are in our kintal which is like an open area in each house, it goes to the roof which is the picture i tried to upload as well that didn´t work so well...oh well i´ll try again!

actually, go on myspace and you can see more, they were able to upload better there!!

August 6, 2006

Friday was the last day of our Model School. Children come from all over the area to come to the secondary school. Some have to drive 30 minutes just to get there, and this is no easy task. But the school is cheap 20$00 for 8 days of class taught by novices, but, for the most part, is still effective. I was lucky to have older children. I taught 10th and 11th grade and they were pretty god kids. They didn’t give me much trouble, and because they already know a lot, they are easy to instruct with directions and such. But I marvel at their drive. Today, two of my 10th grade girls, who are also cousins (everyone here is cousins), gave me a gift at the end of school today. It was a music box in the shape of a piano that doubles as a jewelry box. When you wind it the ballerina dances to Fur Elise, which amused me. But where in the heck did she get this little gift? These things are not just lying around. She cannot hop to mall to pick up a little trinket. I admired this, because I wondered if she had bought it, or was it something she had already? I couldn’t help but wonder. The ‘festa’ after Model School was something amazing. All the classes had learned a song in English and had to perform it for all the rest of the school. My 10th graders did “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles. It has approximately 5 words, so it was perfect for them. They did really well. Which brings me to my next marvel: artistically speaking, these people are incredible. They picked up my song faster than I did. And you should see them dance. They are not afraid to let loose. They dance close and I mean really close. It’s a dance called ‘funana’ that can be done both fast and slow. And believe me when I tell you that you better like the person you are dancing funana with, because more than likely he likes you….a lot. They are just beautiful people. They dance, they sing, and they are just physically beautiful people. They never cease to amaze me.
All this weekend I have done nothing but dance. Saturday evening, my ‘older sister’ (she’s not actually older than I am but she’s the older of the two sisters; her name is Lai) took me to the neighborhood dance party. We had to dress all in black, something about witches. I’m not really sure and when I tried to explain our Halloween I don’t think she got it, but I mostly understood the witch idea. You dance with everyone and anyone and EVERYONE is into it; boys, girls, all and no one cares. They just dance and they dance awesomely. There is always food and drink and they don’t start till about 11pm and go until well into the morning. We were there until 3am because, come on, how many of you know what time I usually go to bed? But it was still going strong for a long time after we left. Again, I love this place.
Also, on another note I have to say that ANYTHING I say in my blogs is my opinion only and has not been endorsed or supported by Peace Corps or the US Government in any way.

August 2, 2006

The date looks weird to me. Dates and times and days of the week have taken on completely new meanings. Just like many other things here. I am physically and mentally exhausted but somehow I fit here like nowhere else I’ve ever been. Who would have thought, the little princess from Paradise Valley could feel so comfortable in a completely opposite environment? I may be working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and believe me, working for my father in his office was no easy task. We have four hours of language per day followed by lunch. After lunch we come back to school where we teach two high school English classes in a row. This is how it has been for nearly two weeks. This time is called Model School, when we learn how to be teachers. Yes, we are basically thrown into the fire and we are forced to create new and imaginative ways to survive. But this whole process has been pretty much that. With language, I was thrown in with a family who speaks absolutely no English, and if that doesn’t get you speaking another language in about 2 days, then I really don’t know what would. It’s interesting though because we teachers have stopped our Creole classes during the day in exchange for Portuguese. But when I go home everyday, I speak to my family in Creole but the television shows are all in Portuguese. And then occasionally in conversation I tend to throw in a Spanish word or two. The French is completely gone, not that I knew much of it to begin with. I’m mixed, just like my emotions, just like my soul. But this thought is definitely not something I dwell on. Though my skin color has become something of a fascination with the Cape Verdeans. They don’t entirely understand that my color is a result of two completely different colors mixing. To them I am just the ‘mas bonita Merkana’ with good hair and interesting skin. The emotions are also churning. Human beings thrust together and placed in an alien environment changes them. They draw close to each other and long for the familiar. I am happy to say we are an extremely normal group of American twenty-somethings, though there are a couple of us who stretch slightly beyond in age. I could not have handpicked a more accurate representation of my generation. We amazingly come from everywhere and have every type of experience you can imagine. And if you put us all together we have, combined, probably traveled over 98% of this earth. And we have mixed into each other, sharing, learning, and teaching and above all, laughing. And we eat a lot of French fries here. I’m not kidding. Possibly more than I ever ate at home.

July 30, 2006

As my mother neatly pointed out, clearly the blog entries are not up to blog snuff. So as I sit here in the dark, my typing only guided by the raised notches on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys, I contemplate a topic to direct my current message from the (usually) sunny archipelago of West Africa. But I am in the dark, as the power has left us and we are forced to bathe and eat by candlelight. It doesn’t bother me. The thing is, I came into this expecting the worst. The volunteers on the African mainland have come to call the Cape Verdean Peace Corps experience ‘Beach Corps.’ Honestly, we don’t have it that bad. Except for the occasional power outage, the house I am boarding in for the next few weeks is larger than many flats in London and in New York. The rainy season is here and so I have become a midnight snack for various mosquitoes and I’m sure the occasional spider. But I am happy. And the beaches here are really nice. Every once in a while you see the creepings of tourism threatening to consume the beauty. How could it not? People are always looking for something new and different. Volunteers here have mixed feelings on the tourism bug. Some don’t believe a society should survive based on servicing other people. But there really isn’t much else here. I marvel at their ability to grow corn and sugar cane on these islands. Particularly here, in my little temporary town of Sao Domingos. We are situated in a valley, and the mountains are steep, but they farm and it produces and I am in awe. People find other forms of sufficient income. My home stay father drives a bus in Praia; he is gone before I wake up in the morning. I believe this affords him a sufficient living. Everyone here also has animals they raise and then sell when they are of adequate weight for slaughter. I am reading a book right now called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It is a well-written novel; slightly depressing and he drags sometimes, but I almost feel like I can relate. He talks about the slums of India and making it in a world that feels as though it doesn’t want you to succeed. I by no means am in the slums of anywhere; nor, however, am I in my Paradise Valley home. I am in the middle, but have thus far traveled a journey that has taken me a little closer to someone else’s existence; I look at my old life from their existence, and I can’t help but smile. When I sit with my host mother and some of the local neighbors, I think: “these people are truly happy, they want for nothing.” There is a huge sense of community here. Just last night there was a neighborhood party with more delicious food than I have had yet. They all pitch in a little money and if you don’t give money, you are responsible for making and bring grog, the locally made alcohol (a little while the locals gave up on competing to sell their sugar cane for sugar, so they found a way to compress it to form a really disgusting alcohol that’s cheap and clearly a better use for the cane). The community is the one thing I admire most. They care for one another and there is absolutely no rush to do anything. People call it ‘island time’; I personally call it a good time :)