Kid, you´ll move mountains...

And so, we find ourselves at the end of the year. It’s been a good year 2007 has, despite all the bad press it got when it started, and sure, there was that rough patch during April, but we stuck with 2007 through thick and thin, and it paid off. In fact, I feel like Im ready to do it all again with 2008. It’s been 5 months now at site, and while there is still a lack of concreteness about what I am doing in terms of doing…um… things are moving along nonetheless. I have brains in my head and I have feet in my shoes, and I can steer myself any direction I choose. So while my Portuguese has reverted to that of nothingness, my Creole has been slowly slowly stumbling forward, learning a few new words each day. And with that, I have started having conversations that go beyond the apparent lack of rain to discovering more of the thoughts, wishes, and desires of the people here. And while I am not having deep philosophical conversations yet, I am learning the deeper side of the culture which is helping lead to create in my mind more ideas of projects to work on. For instance, a friend of mine sent me the book, The Unheard, about a PCV in Zambia who had a few unlucky experiences, as well as being deaf. Which lead me to researching the status of deaf people in Cape Verde. Well, there turns out to be one school that teaches LGP, the Portuguese sign language, and is based in Praia. This means that if you live anywhere, even in Praia, and cannot afford to go to school, which basically means almost everyone, you aren’t learning LGP. I also recently met a deaf person in town and his communication is SEVERLY limited as all he was capable of doing and all people were capable of responding back was with points and grunts. Imagine if this person had a more advanced way of talking about his world and being able to communicate with people. Hence, I am looking for ways to get people trained to be teachers in LGP, which if anyone knows ASL, is difficult in itself. Other little things that occupy my mind are ways to improve the efficiency of outdoor stoves, so far I have either thought about using mud/clay or recycling tin cans to surround the fire to make them more efficient. I also want to create a weekend story time or puppet (think marionettes) theater for kids here, as there is not much extra activity that stirs their minds. I really like this idea as it will incorporate young members of the community to help read stories or act out plays, will develop skills as we will have to write proposals for materials or money, and it gives the little kids something rocking to do. Plus, as our house has sorta turned into a little after school nursery, it gives the kids a chance to go somewhere else besides our house. About our daycare center… I had been sent a bunch of toys, some plastic animals or the farm sort, some dinosaurs, some stretchy lizard things, silly putty, a race car, and a yo yo. Well, no one knows how to use the yo yo, but the little animals are played with a lot, sometimes they pretend to eat the pigs because they know I don’t eat pigs, sometimes they stare in confusion at the dinosaurs because we tell them it’s a cow, sometimes they throw the lizards at other kids to scare them, sometimes we play basketball with the silly putty or play dodge ball, but all in all, we have a bunch of little kids that right when we get home, come running in asking ‘Pode brinka ma brinkadieras?’ To which you of course cannot say no. I taught my neighbor how to make vegan sugar cookies which he and his family ate 30 of in one night, impressive. It was his birthday yesterday, he turned 20, and they made cake and some food and we sang Feliz Aniversario. He is an amazing futebol player, he and his friends made a little team and played against the official Cachaço team and beat them. This is was great and unfortunate as it highlighted the fact that the official team is pretty weak. Anywho, ill be going to Mali the beginning of January and will hopefully be attending the Festival in the Desert, a music festival 60km outside of Timbuktu that has the best of the Mali and Western Afrikan musicians performing, with the Sahara desert as the stage. Should be pretty cool, plus seeing a different Afrikan country will be a great experience, to see where some of the culture in Cape Verde comes from. And so, a friend of mine said something a long time ago which she may or may not remember, but has always stuck with me, and has been repeated by other friends in similar, but varying ways. And is summed up nicely by that master of words, that DJ of poetry, Dr. Seuss… You can get so confused, that you’ll start in to race Down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace And grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, Headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place… … for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go Or a bus to come or a plane to go or the mail to come or the rain to go Or the phone to ring or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or a NO Or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite Or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night Or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil Or a Better Break, or a string of pearls or a pair of pants Or a wig with curls or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting… Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing … … On and on you will hike and I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are You’ll get mixed up of course, as you already know You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact, And remember that Life’s a Great Balancing act… - From Oh, the places you’ll go I learn everyday that if you sit around and wait, or if you always need a sign, things will quickly pass you by. All around us are reminders of the transitory nature of life. Why bog ourselves down with rules, with always needing streets for where we want to go, with the thoughts of others dangling like a carrot? Even Superman didn’t give a hoot about the rules when he tricked Zod… So what I am saying is that like matter, like those pesky electrons and photons, our life is not predictable, there are an infinite possibilities, so why take the straight line to get from A to B?

Thy oster - this keyboard doesnt have the letter after o so youll have to imgine the word i was trying to sell, i didnt sell that word wrong either

There is a new website that one of the volunteers here has created for the park, check it out

http://www.ecosaonicolau.com/

Its chilly here, a certain cartoon penquin would do quite well. Not cold like an NYC winter cold, but after strolling along in shorts and a t shirt on your troical island for aos long, even a little bit of a chill seems like chillier weather than it really is. We have been getting bombarded wiht food galor, from canceled site visits and from friendly vizinhus, and now that the corn season is upon us, we have been getting lots of ears of corn, because, behold, people grew more corn then they can use. It isnt Jersey sweet corn, and really, can anything compare wiht something from NJ, but its decent enough.

Our first eco club, Os Jovens unidos do Eco Clube, will have our first action this 5th by cleaning the two schools in Tarrafal. If you are in the nieghborhood, sto by for all the cleaning fun. And we have been contacted by students in Vila that they want an eco club all of thier own too, so thigns are looking good.

Just a quick little udate here, Ill get another one out in a week or two.

23 Skidoo

Very slowly, move your eyes to the right…slowly. What you behold is one of the newest modern wonders of the world. To quote Quinness: This is the finest piece of craftsmanship, the most brilliant display of human intelligence, the single most beautiful object that expresses so much more than what the viewer sees at first, that to include it as part of the world records would dwarf all other records and render our services moot. End quote. I naturally am humbled, yet agree. I feel like its a dishonor calling it a poster, but this poster not only displays for children the rates of decomposition of common items in their lives, but expresses the inner desires of all mankind to join hands together to create a more hospitable world for all creatures. I said I wouldn’t cry… Anywho, life has been humming along here quite nicely. It is still relatively warm during the days, but the nights have started to get a bit cooler which is nice as sometimes I forget that’s its normally winter. The sun rises and sets pretty much the same time too, around 6:30 ish. As evidenced above, I have been working with Community Development on making presentations for the environmental education aspect of their work. So far, I have made and given a presentation about eco clubs, and we are moving forward with that today actually, having a meeting for the students interested, well see what happens. Lixo is a big deal here, so hopefully it goes over well. I plan on making a contest for kids to collect these little plastic bags that are everywhere because the lojas sell frescina, little frozen treats that all the kids buy, and then throw the bags on the ground. So were gonna make a contest collecting them and then make soccer balls out of them. Next on my mighty list of presentations is global warming, which is most definitely affecting these little islands, sustainable living, which will be hard because by default most people live pretty sustainable, and more to come. On the eco tourism front I have been doing more work in the EIA for the park, and gave a little presentation for the staff here about what it is, why we have to do it, and how we do it. The next step is to actually do it, and me thinks this will most likely be the hardest step. For the past two weeks, we had a little War of Food going on. Nightly, one of two neighbors were coming to our house and giving us food. Mostly the food consisted of catxupa, or arroz ma fava inglesia, with the occasion batata or bobra. All good stuff, but we had a hard time eating it all before the next shipment arrived. Naturally, we wanted tot hank them, so we made some food for them. I made my world famous biscuits and sugar cookies, and Nate made his banana bread and cake. They liked it all.. and more food came. All the food would not, and really is not, a problem if we didn’t already have a bunch of vegetables sitting around starting to go bad. Lo, we have finally caught up and there has been a little lull in the food action. Speaking of food, we are going to have our own little Thanksgiving. Not sure whats being made, but I know there will be some mashed potatoes, biscuits ala me and sugar cookies ala me, some cake, and as always happens at there affairs, some type of meat. And now, onto a little description of one aspect of life here, what do people do here for fun. If you are a child, and by that I men a young boy because girls do most of the work, you do one of several activities Play futebol, throw rocks at things or each other, chase one another around, build little toys cars out of empty montega containers, or if lucky, ride a bicycle. Little girls do house work and if lucky have some time to play with other little girls. Jovens do similar things as the little kids do, just with more vigor I suppose. They also do more work for the family such as harvest animal feed, or panhga, get fire wood, or manda depending on the time of year. Elder men will sometimes play futebol, but most often have to do the hard labor of collecting firewood, manda, getting animal feed. But they are rewarded with lots of time to rest in the shade and passea the day away. The women aren’t as lucky as they have the bulk of housework to do, which includes cooking the meals, cleaning the house, washing the laundry [which can take a lot of time if you have a lot of clothes, doing it by hand is vigorous] along with helping in the fields. And women do not have the luxury of enjoying a cold brew after work as it is culturally frowned upon for women to drink in public. Many people have small tv sets which run off antennas, and perhaps by many I mean a few. But lots of people who have tvs will watch the news and novellas each night, on Thursday nights is wide world of sports, and I think on Sunday afternoons that show English movies. The biggest thing to watch, naturally, are futebol games. Most of the people know in Cachaço do not have a typical 9 -5 paying job, as those types of jobs are very scarce here. Most people rely on remittances sent home from family living and working abroad, and tend their farms and live their daily lives. I think everyone grows a lot of their own food which supplements them for part of the year. 90% of the food consumed in the country is imported as they can not grow enough for themselves. They main crops as I have mentioned before are corn, batata inglesia and batata doce, bobra and fava. There was little rain this year and as a result the crop yield is small, people have been saying that there is little corn this year. It should have been ready by now, but we have to wait more. Well, I think that’s all for now. As always I welcome comments or suggestions and for people to send me stuff, like cliff bars or other vegan stuff. You would probably be as surprised as I was to learn that there isn’t a huge markets for vegan products here. Huh. PS: I couldnt load the picture of my poster.

Who mistook this steak for chicken?

I have been wondering as of late about many a things. Some of these involve tap dancing, others involve how much 15 kilos of pork really is, while others are simple day to day wonderings that we all have. My point... I have none. I was simply looking for an opener. Anywho, two months have now passed since being at site. These two months certainty went a lot faster than the two months during training on Santiago. This leads me to believe that much of the time spent here will go relatively fast, or at least not at the snails pace that PST went by at. We have rumors of having our IST at the end of November, letting us celebrate that wonderful holiday celebrating the genocide of a native race, Thanksgiving. But I digress… if we meet not in November then most likely we wait until March. Our three month moratorium of not traveling out of site or off island soon ends. I have been looking at the TACV deals hoping there will be some magical deal for inter island travel. I am probably more likely to walk through a wall, which as we all know will happen eventually given enough time. Islands I hope to see, though I want to see them all, are Santão Antão, Boa Vista, and Brava. Islands I know Ill see are Sal, as whoever comes to visit or if I need to fly out of country, Ill do it from Sal, and of course our beloved São Tiago [the proper way to spell Santiago]. Most of these islands you can also take ferries too, which is a lot cheaper and since I have been issued a huge, yellow and red Peace Corp life jacket that I MUST wear when traveling via water craft, it makes the prospect of taking a boat even more attractive. So, what else if anything has been going on here… The weather remains tropical for the most part. The days are warm and the nights would be too, but in Cachaço it gets a little bit chillier due to our altitude and the mountains. The mist that had been enveloping our town for the first month and a half has slowly been retreating, the days have become much more sunny, which is nice. There are not many festivals happening now, basically there is the festival on November 1st for corn in Faja, and then Ano Novo, the new year which is a two day celebration. After that, it’s a festival rollercoaster. In February, there is the famous Carnival celebrations, and then almost every other week there is a Saints Day celebration. All of these festivals have common themes with the exception of Carnival, which is similar in scope to the Brazilian version. Festivals have lots of meat. Many animals are killed and cooked because as meat is scarce and expensive, having it at festivals is part of what makes it a festival. Then there is the ear shatteringly loud funana or other music, the obligatory grogue and beer, and then basically its like any other party you might go to back home. What else…what else… I have been asked to work more with Community Development in regards to environmental education in schools, which I have some experience with. Oh, and our community has approached us to teach them English, so soon we will probably start having English classes at night for our town and a few of the nearby towns, which is kinda exciting because it A. helps further our integration, B. Helps us learn me of the people in our town and vica versa, C. Its actually fun to teach English, D. I like this letter, E. we can introduce other things as part of our classes like environmental stuff or health stuff and F. see g, G. they came to us to for this which makes it even better. Lets see what happens… Not much else has changed, or really for that matter there hasn’t been any major happenings. No meteors crashes, no sudden volcanic eruptions, no new rivers a flowing… Simply falling into the pattern of life here. Everyday it feels more and more like home. Making food from scratch and from food that we either grow or have growing ourselves of often given to us from our neighbors is nice, and going for a hike almost everyday into the park or other areas is really nice too. I am going to start going on longer hikes during the weekends, two day-ers, as the weather is pretty predictable, warm and no rain, and you can sleep outside anywhere without hassle. Plus, there is a lot to this little island I haven’t discovered yet, like the so called elusive east pistol part of the island. Well, I suppose that’s a lot for now. Be well. Oh… and Im getting a bike….

yo

Lucky Update Number 9 (hooray)

I have been battered by people with questions about life in Cape Verde, about what my dia a dia is, are there really elephants in Cape Verde and if so, how high can they fly off the ground, is it true that they have an inside out verison of blue, these among many other questions i hope to answer in this next exciting installment of "Janelas: Ka pode fechada!!!!!"

(For this update, i have used the very old form of listing that the Afrikans used way before the time of Jesus or pita bread, they called it bullet points. Ancient huh?)

• Since my commute to workis under a 5 minutes walk, i for some reason get up earlier than when my commute was an hour bike ride through the mean gritty streets of NYC. Entao, i get up about 6:30 and do a little workout jam session untill about 8 ish. Depois, i get some stuff ready for work and then read untill 8:30 when i leave my house, take a few steps and wa la, i'm at work
• I have just created a plan for the nextthree months of work here, basically i will be working on a few things with room to maneuver to help out other sections or do fun stuff that seems to pop up every once in a while, like last week, the school here had to harvest a bunch of vegetables they wanted to sell. So, me and Nat went on over to watch and/or buy, As they kids were standing around getting restless, i would pick up a vegetable and ask "O Que e que li?" or "Tomat verde e mais sabe do tomat vermelho?" And then all the kids would scream out thier answer. Twas fun.
• Anywho
• My three main areas of focus for eco tourism are:
• Creating a management systems (and quality system) for the eco tourism section
• this is harder than my brief description makes it sound as i have had to create everything from scratch minus what i have slyly copied and pasted form old ISO documents i made
• creating a simplified EIA framework for park projects to adhere to. This is basically to help ensure that bio diversity and local communities are not harmedwhen projects are undertaken...and lastly
• english classes!!! thats right, not only was it my major in college, not only do i rank #3 in 2007 for Worlds Best Speller, but now i am teaching my superior form of english to the guides and eco tourism staff two days a week. Fun

• After work, which ends at 3:30 offically, i have been hiking. Moslty, its a hike in the park, which wiht its limited number of trails is slowlybecoming very known to me, or something. other times, i hike or catch a ride to Vila where i can buy most of the thingsthat you cant buy in Cachaco, like vegetables and dryed chickpeas, thens it an hour and half hike up hill, and when i say hill, i mean pretty sheer volcanic mountain, tis grueling at times. Vila is also the magicaly town where the post office is for all of you wondering
• Then, we make dinner.
  
• hmm, thought thatd be more exciting

• Then its more reading or other stuff, and to bed around 9:30 or 10. I bet you are surprised, just as i was, to realize that the night life in Cachaco isn't as robust as they advertised. But alas...

Anything else, well, thats my basic kind of day. The weekends are very similar except i dont walk to work, i just hike alot longer, or we go to Tarrafal, where a few of the UN volunteers live. Its hot, very, in Tarrafal so not only do we get a break form the mists of Cachaco, but we can bringout clothes and dry them, go for a swim in the ocean, and other stuff that PCV's and UNV's do when they hang out.

And the elephants, always buzzing overhead wearing summer dresses of the most striking inside out blue you have ever seen. Tis a sight.

The Daily Grind

The work day here is from 8:30 till 3:30, mais o menos, as lunch takes a bit of time. Anywho, since I dont have any real defined role as of yet, I come to the office at 8:30, a 3 minute walk from our house, and for the time being, i might go online, or i might read one of the books about the park they have or a report done by the UN, or kinda just sit around. This week we´ll be doing alot more of field work, hiking the trails with the guides to assess the trails, or in my case, how we´ll implement an environmental impact assestment (eia) to new trail work, and slowly develping a waste management and sustainable management plan. Ultimailty, that will be a piece of my work for the park, developing these systems.

Another piece is the Peace Corp piece. As the park is working to develop its eco-tourism, once our language is a bit better, we will go out and interview potentila famalies to either provied meals for tourist or to be homestays for tourists to stay at. This will be really good community development work and very inline with what the Peace Corp likes to say its here for.

So for now, work is wishy washy as we are still learning the park, they are still learning our skills, and as everything just takes long to happen here, but alas.

Once i start doing more defined work, i suppose ill have more to say about it. In the meantime, there is this nifty feature on the blog called comments. I welcome people to use it, and by welcome i mean, USE IT.

Hiking in our backyard

Well, literally our frontyard, but either way, here are some pics from a hike i took this past weekend up the peak of Monte Gordo

This is a view from the peak, Cha do Monte Gordo. Basically, the mountain splits the island, or at least the middle section, into two different climate zones. On the cachaço side, its green and misty and windy, then on the Tarrafal side, its hot and sunny and not misty. Though, this first picture is an exception as it lies on the non misty side, or nisty side as i like to call it. This next picture (which i used the medium format for to add dramatic effect) is, um, where was I? I think this is also from the peak, pretty much looking at the same area.

And laslty, we have a birds eye view of Cachaço