First of all, happy belated holidays to friends and family in the States that I wasn't able to speak with in the prior weeks. My computer had an unfortunate accident and is currently undergoing surgery in the States. I'm hoping to be sent something shiny and new, fingers crossed.
The subject matter of this post isn't particularly uplifting and for that I apologize. But I promised people at home that I would update fairly routinely, and this has comprised a large part of my life for the past week e tal.
Let me start by saying that I had a great Christmas, albeit unplanned, home alone in my community. The sandstorms from the Sahara rendered a visit from my friend from Sao Nicolau in the north impossible, and our planned reunion didn't pan out. It was stressful at first, but I ended up having a very unique, very touching holiday at home with my neighbors, including Christmas Eve mass, witness to a quirky Secret Santa exchange (I was too late to participate unfortunately) and some great food with new friends in more distant zones. People here really took care of me, and as cliche as it sounds (I find it's unavoidable in this situation) I was deeply immersed in celebrations that honored what Christmas is truly supposed to signify.
My friend Chris from the States came here for New Year, as well as many people I hadn't yet met from other islands who are from the newer group to come to Peace Corps Cape Verde. It was a fun whirlwind of craziness wherein we tried to tap into everything Fogo has to offer, drinking wine the whole way through and (at least for myself) ending in a two-day sporadic nap session. It was amazing to have Chris out here, and hopefully he writes a blurb to put in here to elaborate on the trip (you're stuck doing it now sucker).
But the point of writing this is that my last weekend was spent going to two different visitas in As-Hortas, a zone south of me where many of my best students live. A visita is a week-long gathering for people mourning a death, and it culminates in a sete (translated simply as "seven," which is a week to the day after the death in this case) when people go to mass and then lunch with everyone in mourning.
There was a lot of stress involved in getting the full story, including a few terrible hours when I was under the impression that one of my best former students from a family that has been near and dear to volunteers in Ponta Verde for generations had been involved and had died. My heart was literally aching at the thought of reaching home and trudging up the hill to partake in the grief that my friends must be experiencing.
Once I reached Ponta Verde I was a mess. I couldn't even go to the visita that day, and made the long walk to As-Hortas two days later after class. The first house I went to was the home of a 16-year-old girl named Kely who had been in the backseat. Her neck snapped as the car hit the bottom of the ribeira and my only comfort when I greeted her mother, bed-ridden with grief and asking for her own death, was that she didn't feel any pain. Her aunt, the mother of another of my students, sadly told me that this girl had never even been to a festa. She was an intelligent, beautiful girl who spent her time studying and helping her family, and she never left home. Her father had given her money for new shoes that night so that she would feel presentable, and convinced her to go with her uncle.
The accident happened on the way back. I hate to admit it, but I automatically assumed the driver was drunk, which makes it easy to place blame (even from me, a distant witness with no right to place blame on anyone). It was New Year at 6am and they were coming back from a festa, and drinking while driving is widely accepted here. But that wasn't even the case. The driver was a young man from a respectable family who never drank. When he was rounding a ribeira, the back door, which evidently hadn't been shut properly, swung open and a woman in the backseat flew out of the car. Instinctively, he looked behind him, and turned the wheel too hard to the left while doing so, and the car flew straight off the road into a ribeira. Everyone but the two survived, and after the first visita I went to the second to get the full story.
The second visita ended up being much harder than the first. The woman who died was 33, and I'd never met her, but she was the mother of one of my 7th graders. I walked up the steps and saw Katia on a bench, glassy-eyed but otherwise expressionless, staring off at nothing in front of her. The heels of her glossy black shoes stopped clicking rhythmically against the bench when she saw me, and I realized that she didn't want me (as a teacher or as a foreigner, I'm not sure) to see her reaction to what had happened. I respected her anxiety and expressed my condolences but moved inside quickly to give her space, but my eyes were already overflowing by the time I turned away from her.
The women at this visita were wailing, customary for Cape Verdean visitas, but this was the first time I'd experienced it in close proximity. I spoke with the cousin of the deceased and discovered that Katia's father had died years ago, he'd hung himself. Her siblings still had fathers but Katia was left with nothing after this. The most upsetting thing out of all of this was the graphic nature of describing everything. I'd casually asked what had happened, to be sure to have the story straight, and the woman told me that Luisa had been in the backseat, and was alive when help came. They loaded her into the backseat of a car, superficially in good shape aside from a scratch on the head and arm, but halfway to the hospital she began gushing blood from her mouth, nose and ears. They tried to stop the bleeding and went through two towels, but she was dead by the time she reached the hospital. I couldn't think anything other than please, God, please don't let Katia have heard this about her mother. But the openness of the culture and the rapidity with which the news was circulating was too apparent for me to hope that that could be true.
Luisa worked for a family up the street who live in America, and they've offered to adopt Katia and bring her to the States. While trying to avoid involving myself in a very intimately personal matter, I expressed to her aunt that I thought this was an amazing opportunity and offered to come to the house once a week to tutor Katia in English to ease the transition. I haven't heard much more about it, but I'm hoping that she takes the chance she has in front of her, as difficult as it will be to leave the few things that she has left of her life.
I went back for the sete the following Saturday and spent a few hours at each house. This time I started at Katia's house, where I felt my support was more important (whatever that means). She seemed to be doing better, and most of the community was there to show support. I stayed through lunch, but the ambiance was strange, and I felt like I was at a normal community gathering, so after two hours I decided to show face at the second house farther down the street.
This time it was the second visita that tore me up. I drank a beer with the men to calm my nerves a bit and then headed up to the second floor. I sat in the mother's bedroom with a small handful of other women from the community trying to show support for the girl's mother, still in bed and in a state of bewildered half-sleep. I was joking with the other women, and even got the mother to laugh a few times, and then the wailing started in the other room. It was a family member, a big woman with an equally big voice that echoed throughout the concrete rooms. I looked at the floor and cried with the women. In a second's time we went from joking about men and the differences between parties in Cape Verde and America to reabsorbing the reality that brought us all together to begin with. I think Kely's mother had run out of tears, and would only occasionally click with her tongue her reaction to the reminder that her daughter was gone. I left with a driver friend of mine and her mother asked me to come back some time soon and pass a day with her, to which I quickly and happily agreed.
I'm not even sure what the point of writing this is. I haven't had a computer (read: internet, tv shows, general distractions) in a matter of weeks now, and this on top of the new level of isolation from lack of contact with the rest of the world led me to a strange, Vonnegut-esque realization that we are, as a whole, completely absurd creatures. We find comfort in distracting things that don't mean anything, and really what we're choosing to distract ourselves from is meaning. I didn't have 30 Rock to turn to, or have an opportunity to watch zombies take over the world before bedtime (which is my favorite pastime), but I felt myself burst at the seams and survive. I reached my threshold of what I'm able to handle, and then surpassed it, and came out realizing as always that I'm still better off than so many others. I exhausted myself giving every part of myself that I could to strangers who couldn't help but put their full weight on me, and I'm not used to that so it was a strain, but what did I lose? What changed for me? Nothing.
I'll get my computer back in a month, eventually have a long day teaching and come home and curl up to whatever show I've bummed from the last computer I've scavenged. I'll choose to stay at home one hot Saturday and read all day and eat macaroni and cheese until I have to nap it off. I'm American, and you can take the girl out of the States, etc. But this week, perhaps more than another span of time in the recent past, put into stark, uncomfortable perspective the things that I have in my life, and the things that matter, and the things that I was desperately hoping do mean something, or could, but ultimately don't and never will.
Life is hard. We have a funny tendency, dangerously coupled with an uncanny ability, to trick ourselves into thinking that we'll be the exception to the rule in the blink of an eye we call our life, without stopping to think that there are no rules. So if there's any point to writing this it's to ask anyone who reads this, just once, and not out of a sense of entitlement or thinking that I've suddenly learned something unlearnable (on the contrary I feel stupid for systematically falling into this trap), to shut the computer or turn off the tv at the onset of the next urge to watch a show or surf Facebook and do something you've never done, or talk to someone you've never talked to. Or just go sit in the grass and do nothing.
I don't know. I plan on spending minimal time in my house this trimester, and getting to know every square inch of this island before I leave in the coming months. My reality will never be as hard is it is for the majority of people here. So I'll continue to give what I can, and hopefully ease the burdens of those who need help, but I'll always be going back to better. Go play in the sun and leave your iPad at home. I'll join you in September. Much love to you all.
xoxoxox
Rakel
