I've had some times in the past few months when I've needed to slow myself down and remind myself that everything is ok. It is, when I think about it, but between work and the complexities of maintaining a social life in a foreign country, as well as the normal ebb, flow and occasional white water rapids in life, sometimes I begin to think it's not. When I need a quick fix I listen to music, and I wanted to share some, the words of which you may not be able to understand, but I think the appreciation of this artist comes from a place beyond language.
Sara Tavares is my favorite "Cape Verdean" musician. I use quotation marks because she's actually second-generation Portuguese. She's of Cape Verdean descent, but she was born and raised in Portugal. Her parents abandoned her at a young age to seek better lives for themselves and she was taken in by a family in Portugal. I've heard rumors around Fogo that she didn't speak Kriolu as a child, but wanted to relate to the culture that she never knew and learned the language to incorporate into her music.
She's a little example of the spirit's ability to persevere through hardship. Enjoy:
Cape Verde
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
These Photographs
Today as I was on my way to class I realized I had forgotten to take a photo of a document that I had to send to the Peace Corps office. I snapped a photo, clicked the memory card directly into my computer to save a few precious seconds, and set out to the school. It was more of an afterthought than anything.
I’ve been home alone for the past week; just me and my thoughts. I only have so many hours of HBO specials on my computer and eventually, I knew one night I’d be left alone to deal with myself. That night turned out to be tonight. I came to my room and searched through my computer folders and realized that I have nothing left to enfold myself in. Half a day! I don’t know how Thorough did it, just him and that silly lake.
I climbed into bed and realized that my memory card was still in my computer. It actually scared me to look at it! My own life, the past three years of it, stored on this little piece of technology. I guess it’s just one of those days when it seems to taunt me instead of serve of remembrance of happy memories. “Look what you used to have, sucka!”
Regardless, I just spent the last half hour sitting in an apartment enjoying second Christmas, watching the Superbowl with friends, lounging in the Caribbean, going on snowy photo shoots in DC alleyways, playing fancy flipcup games on my old balcony and dressing up. I enjoyed traditions, vacations and time with friends all over again. I saw people change. I watched people I love grow up, and make choices, and move on with their lives. I saw a friend I met at a beer pong table in college grow into himself, find his sexuality and embrace his strength. I watched friends fall in love, and others get married. Some people, after a while, weren’t in the photos anymore, and sometimes new people appeared.
Sometimes it’s hard here when I realize that so many of the good things that I had won’t be the same again. I never thought at the time, “this is the last time.” I guess I had convinced myself that when I went back home parts of my life wouldn’t have changed. But I took myself out of the pictures and life carried on.
A friend of mine gave me advice that I thought would be easy to follow but has proved, somehow, to be anything but. He told me that I’m here, I’ve left things behind and I need to live here. I need to be in the moments as they come, and stop thinking about what’s behind and ahead of me. So I smiled at the three years of photos and the memories, and the wonderful things that I was able to experience, and I put them away to take a look at what I have today. This is a taste of the latest stop along the road: the memories shared with all of the other people who left their photographs behind.
I’ve been home alone for the past week; just me and my thoughts. I only have so many hours of HBO specials on my computer and eventually, I knew one night I’d be left alone to deal with myself. That night turned out to be tonight. I came to my room and searched through my computer folders and realized that I have nothing left to enfold myself in. Half a day! I don’t know how Thorough did it, just him and that silly lake.
I climbed into bed and realized that my memory card was still in my computer. It actually scared me to look at it! My own life, the past three years of it, stored on this little piece of technology. I guess it’s just one of those days when it seems to taunt me instead of serve of remembrance of happy memories. “Look what you used to have, sucka!”
Regardless, I just spent the last half hour sitting in an apartment enjoying second Christmas, watching the Superbowl with friends, lounging in the Caribbean, going on snowy photo shoots in DC alleyways, playing fancy flipcup games on my old balcony and dressing up. I enjoyed traditions, vacations and time with friends all over again. I saw people change. I watched people I love grow up, and make choices, and move on with their lives. I saw a friend I met at a beer pong table in college grow into himself, find his sexuality and embrace his strength. I watched friends fall in love, and others get married. Some people, after a while, weren’t in the photos anymore, and sometimes new people appeared.
Sometimes it’s hard here when I realize that so many of the good things that I had won’t be the same again. I never thought at the time, “this is the last time.” I guess I had convinced myself that when I went back home parts of my life wouldn’t have changed. But I took myself out of the pictures and life carried on.
A friend of mine gave me advice that I thought would be easy to follow but has proved, somehow, to be anything but. He told me that I’m here, I’ve left things behind and I need to live here. I need to be in the moments as they come, and stop thinking about what’s behind and ahead of me. So I smiled at the three years of photos and the memories, and the wonderful things that I was able to experience, and I put them away to take a look at what I have today. This is a taste of the latest stop along the road: the memories shared with all of the other people who left their photographs behind.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Cultural sensitivity
Cultural sensitivity. Such a peaceful concept that makes perfect sense and is, in theory, always available at the forefront of a foreigner’s mind. Don’t shake hands with your left hand. Don’t take mangos from another person’s mango tree. It’s respect at a deeper form: taking the time to get to know cultural norms that are different from your own and adapting yourself to them, like them or not. So everything that I’ve hardwired myself to think and do in response to people for the past 25 years of my life is justifiably open to debate, and right and wrong have been shifted in every direction since setting foot in the country that I’ve chosen to call home for two years.
I’m going to dive right into this post because despite the title, it’s probably anything but culturally sensitive. I’d like to think the fact that the person in question lives in America dilutes the need for attempted empathy, but on top of this, I’ve never heard of a person who is so annoying that every Cape Verdean I know collectively talks negatively about her at the mention of her name. So…I’m just integrated, right? And it’s one of those things that up until a point, I wouldn’t have written about for the sole reason of trying to accept my situation for what it is and move on. But all aforementioned reasons aside, life at home has recently dipped a toe into “so ridiculous it’s hilarious” territory, and I can’t resist a good story.
For the last month and a half, our landlady has been living next door to us. She usually lives in America but comes here every few years to work on the house that she lovingly reminds me on a constant basis is hers, and thus the decisions she asks me to make with her, in those cases where I disagree, are deferred to her alone. Every morning as the sun rises in the cool, peaceful countryside, she walks outside of my window, waking us from our innocent slumber with her melodic Kwaaaackckkkkuuuughhhkkk noise, as she seems to perpetually have a limitless deposit of phlegm lodged deep, deep in her esophagus which she can never quite clear out. But she’s persistent.
The first bit of work they did on the house was putting in a new door and a new window inside. The door is located all of five feet from another door, and it leads to a room that she’s ordered us to board up and never use. So I totally understand why she wants another door there; I’m shocked there wasn’t one to begin with. Two doors that access an inaccessible space, of course! The window allows us, if we’re on tiptoe in our kitchen, to gaze into the dark hallway in the back of the house that contains both previously described doors, and remains unfinished. That was a quick piece of work and I was happy in my naïve thinking that this house project surely (one eyebrow raised in retrospect) wouldn’t take a full two months.
This construction leaves the back exit to the kintal open, so the day that Sarah and I chased our chickens around to clip feathers and clean them up a bit we had a nice peanut gallery of one telling us how to improve. Which, I assure you, is exactly what you want to hear when you’re trapped inside of a chicken coop because you shut the door behind you to keep them from escaping and didn’t think about the fact that when the mama hears her babies squawking outside of the coop, days after the father of her babies was slaughtered in front of her, she’s going to attack the big threatening thing that doesn’t belong. In this case it was me, running around a chicken coop and screaming as the biggest chicken inside dive-bombed into my shins and scratched at my kneecaps. Kwaaaackkkuugh.
Next came the interior painting. This was about a week into her happy two-month visit, and it was about the time when I threw in the towel on any attempt at productive conversation with the woman, leaving my poor (more patient) roommate to deal with her one-on-one. Which meant that it inevitably started. Every day. With about a two second Mississippi pause (that may be generous but I’m rounding) in between each shrill, smoker voice shriek. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. Yes? Are you here? Oh, ok. Cue any excuse to leave the house. Any possible thing that a person would have no logical reason to say to another human being became just cause to yell Sarah’s name with barely enough response time for a proper eye roll (a half roll, yes, but it’s not nearly as satisfying, especially when considering you need to get in a good sigh and maybe a hysterical laugh as well depending on what time of day it is by now) before the next harpy shriek. After painting the rest of the house, she and I had a feisty debate over the need to paint the bedrooms, and she ultimately gave me all of one days notice that she was going ahead with it, so one lovely Sunday was spent taking down my card wall and moving things out of my room, only to hear the next morning, oh, we don’t really need to paint your rooms. Our response was a culturally sensitive insistence that they were painting the effing rooms.
After that was the tiles. There aren’t words for the tiles.
My personal favorite thing that was directed at me was when I was cooking on the opposite end of the house from my room: RaKEL? RaKEL? RaKEL? Mmmhmm? Open the window. Um, sure you can open my bedroom window. No, come open the window. I proceeded to turn off the burners, walk across the house, walk outside, walk directly in front of her (please note she was holding and doing nothing) to open the window she would have walked into had she taken one step forward, look at her for a moment with my eyebrows raised and my mouth slightly ajar, then go back to cooking. This surprised me because she has before taken the liberty to open windows (surprise!) at the ass crack of dawn to look into bedrooms to talk about her plans for the house, because asking if we want a bathtub is just that important. She has also butted in on conversations with other friends—usually to disagree with something we’ve said, has told us how we should cook our American food that she’s never seen or eaten before and has no idea how to make, interrupted my every thought on the rare occasion that I’ve had the patience to try to share one, taken our water despite numerous pleas to stop and reminders that her family literally stole all of the water from this house last year: forcing the girls who lived here to carry water on their heads up a mountain just to get by, criticized us to other people in front of me in assumption that I don’t understand the language that I speak with her on a daily basis, and has generally been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
And yet I remain as patient as I possibly can. I try to ignore our new wood paneling tiles that I think maybe sometime in the 1960s a lumberjack or a burnout somewhere would have been excited about, probably in New Jersey (sorry dad, just thinking about that timeshare back in high school), and the terrible craftsmanship of the installation, which makes sense to me now that the elderly man who was in charge of it just left my house with a bedong on his head, reeking of grog and drooling on himself (no seriously, toxic bubbles down the face when saying a word that includes F or P) as he walked into walls while he asked me how old I was. Which I find to be extraordinarily sexy.
With this exchange happening outside of my back door, another man was loading bucket after bucket of our rapidly diminishing water supply onto a donkey to walk it up to the house next door to fill up that family’s water tank. I asked him why he couldn’t go to the public water supply down the hill, since it’s free and our water is dwindling because of their work and he has a freaking donkey. I even threw in a snarky comment about how it literally wouldn’t be any more work for him, just the donkey. He said he didn’t have time. For cultural sensitivity reasons, I’m not going to delve into that one. I waved a lock around, little does he know I unsuccessfully tried to remember the combination for an hour today, and told him to let his friend know that after tomorrow she can expect the water supply cut off. She’s tapped a whole new level of sass (that’s what she said! Stealth and avoidance* = The Office reruns) and I think everyone involved is happy that this experience is almost over.
So, where am I now? She leaves on Monday. God forbid the construction on the new airport (yes, anyone considering visits, your experience will now be more streamlined and you may be able to fly directly to Fogo…details pending) takes longer than people anticipated. My roommate is freshly gone for a two-week trip to Maio, so the patience has left the building. My current project: playing with fire and recycled bottles. Focus tends to be on the fire. My current pastime: stealth and avoidance, referenced above*. Current song playing on Itunes: Y’all Been Warned. Jus sayin, Wu-Tang don’t lie. Word.
I’m going to dive right into this post because despite the title, it’s probably anything but culturally sensitive. I’d like to think the fact that the person in question lives in America dilutes the need for attempted empathy, but on top of this, I’ve never heard of a person who is so annoying that every Cape Verdean I know collectively talks negatively about her at the mention of her name. So…I’m just integrated, right? And it’s one of those things that up until a point, I wouldn’t have written about for the sole reason of trying to accept my situation for what it is and move on. But all aforementioned reasons aside, life at home has recently dipped a toe into “so ridiculous it’s hilarious” territory, and I can’t resist a good story.
For the last month and a half, our landlady has been living next door to us. She usually lives in America but comes here every few years to work on the house that she lovingly reminds me on a constant basis is hers, and thus the decisions she asks me to make with her, in those cases where I disagree, are deferred to her alone. Every morning as the sun rises in the cool, peaceful countryside, she walks outside of my window, waking us from our innocent slumber with her melodic Kwaaaackckkkkuuuughhhkkk noise, as she seems to perpetually have a limitless deposit of phlegm lodged deep, deep in her esophagus which she can never quite clear out. But she’s persistent.
The first bit of work they did on the house was putting in a new door and a new window inside. The door is located all of five feet from another door, and it leads to a room that she’s ordered us to board up and never use. So I totally understand why she wants another door there; I’m shocked there wasn’t one to begin with. Two doors that access an inaccessible space, of course! The window allows us, if we’re on tiptoe in our kitchen, to gaze into the dark hallway in the back of the house that contains both previously described doors, and remains unfinished. That was a quick piece of work and I was happy in my naïve thinking that this house project surely (one eyebrow raised in retrospect) wouldn’t take a full two months.
This construction leaves the back exit to the kintal open, so the day that Sarah and I chased our chickens around to clip feathers and clean them up a bit we had a nice peanut gallery of one telling us how to improve. Which, I assure you, is exactly what you want to hear when you’re trapped inside of a chicken coop because you shut the door behind you to keep them from escaping and didn’t think about the fact that when the mama hears her babies squawking outside of the coop, days after the father of her babies was slaughtered in front of her, she’s going to attack the big threatening thing that doesn’t belong. In this case it was me, running around a chicken coop and screaming as the biggest chicken inside dive-bombed into my shins and scratched at my kneecaps. Kwaaaackkkuugh.
Next came the interior painting. This was about a week into her happy two-month visit, and it was about the time when I threw in the towel on any attempt at productive conversation with the woman, leaving my poor (more patient) roommate to deal with her one-on-one. Which meant that it inevitably started. Every day. With about a two second Mississippi pause (that may be generous but I’m rounding) in between each shrill, smoker voice shriek. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. SAH-rah. Yes? Are you here? Oh, ok. Cue any excuse to leave the house. Any possible thing that a person would have no logical reason to say to another human being became just cause to yell Sarah’s name with barely enough response time for a proper eye roll (a half roll, yes, but it’s not nearly as satisfying, especially when considering you need to get in a good sigh and maybe a hysterical laugh as well depending on what time of day it is by now) before the next harpy shriek. After painting the rest of the house, she and I had a feisty debate over the need to paint the bedrooms, and she ultimately gave me all of one days notice that she was going ahead with it, so one lovely Sunday was spent taking down my card wall and moving things out of my room, only to hear the next morning, oh, we don’t really need to paint your rooms. Our response was a culturally sensitive insistence that they were painting the effing rooms.
After that was the tiles. There aren’t words for the tiles.
My personal favorite thing that was directed at me was when I was cooking on the opposite end of the house from my room: RaKEL? RaKEL? RaKEL? Mmmhmm? Open the window. Um, sure you can open my bedroom window. No, come open the window. I proceeded to turn off the burners, walk across the house, walk outside, walk directly in front of her (please note she was holding and doing nothing) to open the window she would have walked into had she taken one step forward, look at her for a moment with my eyebrows raised and my mouth slightly ajar, then go back to cooking. This surprised me because she has before taken the liberty to open windows (surprise!) at the ass crack of dawn to look into bedrooms to talk about her plans for the house, because asking if we want a bathtub is just that important. She has also butted in on conversations with other friends—usually to disagree with something we’ve said, has told us how we should cook our American food that she’s never seen or eaten before and has no idea how to make, interrupted my every thought on the rare occasion that I’ve had the patience to try to share one, taken our water despite numerous pleas to stop and reminders that her family literally stole all of the water from this house last year: forcing the girls who lived here to carry water on their heads up a mountain just to get by, criticized us to other people in front of me in assumption that I don’t understand the language that I speak with her on a daily basis, and has generally been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
And yet I remain as patient as I possibly can. I try to ignore our new wood paneling tiles that I think maybe sometime in the 1960s a lumberjack or a burnout somewhere would have been excited about, probably in New Jersey (sorry dad, just thinking about that timeshare back in high school), and the terrible craftsmanship of the installation, which makes sense to me now that the elderly man who was in charge of it just left my house with a bedong on his head, reeking of grog and drooling on himself (no seriously, toxic bubbles down the face when saying a word that includes F or P) as he walked into walls while he asked me how old I was. Which I find to be extraordinarily sexy.
With this exchange happening outside of my back door, another man was loading bucket after bucket of our rapidly diminishing water supply onto a donkey to walk it up to the house next door to fill up that family’s water tank. I asked him why he couldn’t go to the public water supply down the hill, since it’s free and our water is dwindling because of their work and he has a freaking donkey. I even threw in a snarky comment about how it literally wouldn’t be any more work for him, just the donkey. He said he didn’t have time. For cultural sensitivity reasons, I’m not going to delve into that one. I waved a lock around, little does he know I unsuccessfully tried to remember the combination for an hour today, and told him to let his friend know that after tomorrow she can expect the water supply cut off. She’s tapped a whole new level of sass (that’s what she said! Stealth and avoidance* = The Office reruns) and I think everyone involved is happy that this experience is almost over.
So, where am I now? She leaves on Monday. God forbid the construction on the new airport (yes, anyone considering visits, your experience will now be more streamlined and you may be able to fly directly to Fogo…details pending) takes longer than people anticipated. My roommate is freshly gone for a two-week trip to Maio, so the patience has left the building. My current project: playing with fire and recycled bottles. Focus tends to be on the fire. My current pastime: stealth and avoidance, referenced above*. Current song playing on Itunes: Y’all Been Warned. Jus sayin, Wu-Tang don’t lie. Word.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Carnaval
This is one of the few moments in my life when the number of things that I have to say are too impossibly numbered to say them. I've spent the past week on the island of Sao Nicolau in celebration of Carnaval, and after the dust has settled, I feel that I may need convincing that it happened at all. Everything about the past two weeks makes me think I couldn't possibly have been living my own life. When I booked my tickets two months ago to come to the northern island that we've endearingly nicknamed "man island," both for the *ahem* suggestive shape of the island and the fact that female volunteers are not sent there, I had a totally different vacation in mind. The only way I think I can feasibly write this is as a journal entry. Too many facts and thoughts to sort through, so do with it what you will.
The trip started with either a fizzle or a bang, depending on how you look at it. Coming from Fogo is difficult. We made it from Fogo to Praia, Praia to Sal, and then due to plane malfunctions that I'd rather not think about, we found ourselves stuck on the island that offers three things: salt, windsurfing and resorts. The airline had no choice but to get us rooms for a night, which included a fantastic free dinner with Portuguese wine, white sand beaches and a chance to explore the nightlife of the most Westernized island of this archipelago. After dinner and wine, we caught cabs to go to Santa Maria, which is the focal point of the nightlife and also the site of the most extraordinary stretch of white sand beach that I've seen in a long time, if ever. The night was an adventure that is too strange to explain, suffice it to say that we passed it by bar-hopping, befriending Italians in their gelato store, snapping photos outside of a dance club that is pirate themed, and stumbling back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to catch the flight. Luckily the flight was delayed and we were able to go back to Santa Maria beach to explore the beach, which is a hot spot for windsurfers. Definitely worth the delay, but we were ready to get to Sao Nic.
Our flight put us in Sao Nicolau in the mid-afternoon, but somehow in the brief skip of a flight the airline had managed to lose my bag. Just mine. It was the second time it's happened and I was partially convinced that it was stolen, so I stayed at the airport with a friend and drank enough to get belligerent before giving up and ensuring that we had extracted a promise that the airline would call me with updates. The next few days were comprised of two days of preemptive Carnaval, a day of rest, and then Carnaval proper. This is a difficult thing to do for days in a row, although I wasn't aware of that until afterward when all I wanted was the simple promise of not having to move. This was the first year that girls from PCCV had costumes made. I had ordered one, but given our delay in Sal I was unable to get it altered and didn't end up dressing with the girls. I also didn't have baggage, so I shamelessly borrowed sequined skirts and used a quirky Christmas bow as a brooch.
That night and the following consisted of parades, firework attacks, dragons, Optimus Prime, canary feathers, power cuts, dance clubs, tables thrown by angry Portuguese tourists, goat skins, Pirate beers, cheese runs, Freedom dog, pontxe and a multitude of things that wouldn't make sense even if I tried. So I'll try to sum it up in a few pictures instead:
Once Carnaval was over, we had one more day in Sao Nic. A handful of those who were left packed daybags and boarded a Hiace towards Taraffal, the beach-town where Nelson, a third-year volunteer, is living and teaching. It was beautiful, and we were able to see at least two, maybe three islands in succession in the distance over the ocean as the sun was setting. We played bocce ball and made some epic chili for dinner, which was the perfect way to wind down.
The last day we stopped for lunch in Cachaco, another PC site, that had gorgeous views and Dragoeira pontxe (dangerous) which is really only grog mixed with sap from the Dragoeira tree, which for all intents and purposes is fairly isolated to Sao Nicolau. We didn't have time to climb Monti Gordo unfortunately, but maybe next year.
So now it's back to real life, and I'm finding it a process to resettle into the normalcy that has been uprooted. A lot has changed, life won't be the same that it was before, which is both exciting and scary. But that's why I'm here, after all.
The trip started with either a fizzle or a bang, depending on how you look at it. Coming from Fogo is difficult. We made it from Fogo to Praia, Praia to Sal, and then due to plane malfunctions that I'd rather not think about, we found ourselves stuck on the island that offers three things: salt, windsurfing and resorts. The airline had no choice but to get us rooms for a night, which included a fantastic free dinner with Portuguese wine, white sand beaches and a chance to explore the nightlife of the most Westernized island of this archipelago. After dinner and wine, we caught cabs to go to Santa Maria, which is the focal point of the nightlife and also the site of the most extraordinary stretch of white sand beach that I've seen in a long time, if ever. The night was an adventure that is too strange to explain, suffice it to say that we passed it by bar-hopping, befriending Italians in their gelato store, snapping photos outside of a dance club that is pirate themed, and stumbling back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to catch the flight. Luckily the flight was delayed and we were able to go back to Santa Maria beach to explore the beach, which is a hot spot for windsurfers. Definitely worth the delay, but we were ready to get to Sao Nic.
Our flight put us in Sao Nicolau in the mid-afternoon, but somehow in the brief skip of a flight the airline had managed to lose my bag. Just mine. It was the second time it's happened and I was partially convinced that it was stolen, so I stayed at the airport with a friend and drank enough to get belligerent before giving up and ensuring that we had extracted a promise that the airline would call me with updates. The next few days were comprised of two days of preemptive Carnaval, a day of rest, and then Carnaval proper. This is a difficult thing to do for days in a row, although I wasn't aware of that until afterward when all I wanted was the simple promise of not having to move. This was the first year that girls from PCCV had costumes made. I had ordered one, but given our delay in Sal I was unable to get it altered and didn't end up dressing with the girls. I also didn't have baggage, so I shamelessly borrowed sequined skirts and used a quirky Christmas bow as a brooch.
That night and the following consisted of parades, firework attacks, dragons, Optimus Prime, canary feathers, power cuts, dance clubs, tables thrown by angry Portuguese tourists, goat skins, Pirate beers, cheese runs, Freedom dog, pontxe and a multitude of things that wouldn't make sense even if I tried. So I'll try to sum it up in a few pictures instead:
Once Carnaval was over, we had one more day in Sao Nic. A handful of those who were left packed daybags and boarded a Hiace towards Taraffal, the beach-town where Nelson, a third-year volunteer, is living and teaching. It was beautiful, and we were able to see at least two, maybe three islands in succession in the distance over the ocean as the sun was setting. We played bocce ball and made some epic chili for dinner, which was the perfect way to wind down.
The last day we stopped for lunch in Cachaco, another PC site, that had gorgeous views and Dragoeira pontxe (dangerous) which is really only grog mixed with sap from the Dragoeira tree, which for all intents and purposes is fairly isolated to Sao Nicolau. We didn't have time to climb Monti Gordo unfortunately, but maybe next year.
So now it's back to real life, and I'm finding it a process to resettle into the normalcy that has been uprooted. A lot has changed, life won't be the same that it was before, which is both exciting and scary. But that's why I'm here, after all.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Campanas
Two posts in one day!! Whaaa?
I haven't had internet in weeks and I haven't posted in even longer. The past month or so has been a rough one for me. It's part of the service and I found this quotation the other day that sums it up better than I seem to be able to:
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. – Cesare Pavese
Well said, Cesare. Part of the deal in being here is acceptance of bad days and the resolve to take them as they come, trusting the whole way through that we have the inherent strength to make it through to the other side. But sometimes we mess things up along the way. But this post isn't about bad days or the peculiarities of change. That's just a thought.
The past three days have comprised the festival of Campanas here in Fogo. Aside from festa Sao Filipe in April/May, this is one of the "bigger deal" festas on the island. Saturday was the killing day. I've seen a pig slaughter, and despite remembering the shaky feeling in my legs that persisted through the screams that gradually became gurgles and chokes on a seemingly endless river of blood, I figured I could witness an assembly line slaughter, having heard that goats are less vocal.
After we hunted down the house, my roommate and I sat in chairs along the wall and tried to figure out where the killing would take place. Gradually, the sound of drums broke through the assortment of voices, and grew until the assembly of drummers entered the house. A crowd of people holding flags preceded them, some with blood-stained pants and machetes with brilliant splashes of red down the sides tucked into belts. Everyone had blood on their shoes, having come from a house farther down the street where numerous animals had already been killed. One woman wearing all white--a torn shirt, pants and a scarf--looked like a violent Pollock painting. Others had red handprints on their faces, or splashes and dots between their eyes.
The house filled with so many people that we had to stand up. Eventually we saw an old woman carrying a large, metal bowl and we knew that the killing was about to begin. They collect the blood in bowls to use in chorizo, or blood sausage, which is one of the only foods here that I haven't developed a stomach for. We circled to another part of the house where I squeezed in just in time to see a goat being bled to death, with two grown men holding it above the bowl. I kept locking eyes with a Portuguese guy right around my age who evidently hadn't witnessed fora parties before. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it. One after another they led in a goat and professionally hoisted it above a bowl to saw through its neck, before stringing it to a tree to skin it. As one was being killed, another would be standing behind it, calmly, watching everything take place.
They killed three goats and I thought it was over. There was a gelatinous coating of blood on the dirt floor that people covered and danced on. Gradually people began to scatter, and seemed to be nervous. I looked towards the trees, now occupied by numerous dead animals, and saw a giant cow being led down to the area where the goats had been killed. Killing a cow is a process. First, four grown men led it to a tree where they tied its head to the stiff trunk. The hind legs were tied together, which was a fight, and gradually the animal was felled to its side and all four legs tied in a bundle. One man readied its neck, which meant sitting on its head to make sure it couldn't move. Two others held down the body, and a man with a knife broke through the people pushing past to try to find a comfortable distance. The woman holding the bowl danced through the crowd, the drumbeats not pausing during all of this, and after what seemed like an hour of nervous preparation, they slit its throat.
Watching a pig die is difficult. The screams last for such a long time that it almost seems necessary to look away. The cow didn't make a noise. Or if it did, it was drowned out by the drums. One of my students came next to me and put her arm around my waist, and after seeing so much blood throughout the day, I was worried that I might fall on her. The smell was overwhelming. Blood smells sickly, and thick and salty. I walked away for a breath of air and quickly heard the screams of a pig that was being killed on the other side of the house. There's no escape on festa day. But I held my own, though a little shakily.
It was astounding, really. The rest of the festa seemed fairly normal. The street was lined with people and it felt almost like a party that happens in Blacksburg every year, when people crowd in the streets to eat good food and drink a few beers and listen to the live music. Except here everything is public, from start to finish. Including the slaughter and preparation of the food that everyone eats. The rest of the time I wandered the cobblestone streets, ate good food (except no chorizo), watched the stars and talked to friends.
The background of this festa is the most interesting part, in my opinion. In the days of slavery, the only way that slaves could feasibly have an uprising was to dress in costume from head to toe so slaveowners couldn't recognize them. They would run from house to house in an attempt to scare and intimidate the slaveowners. Because of this, the "Rae di Festa" or king of the festival dressed from head to toe, even in blackface, kind of like a clown. He and his son (who also dressed up) got up early in the morning and went from town to town. Every man who wanted to participate in the killings that day had to catch the man and his son before they would be allowed to participate. If they caught both men, they could be part of the procession and help kill the animals. Another part of the tradition is that the king of the party steals things throughout the day, so I would occasionally see him running from a crowd of people who would be throwing rocks at him. At the festa after the killings, whenever I saw him he was carrying a goat head and threatening to attack people with one of its horns.
So it was a weekend filled with significance and emotions that left me absolutely drained when things were said and done. I regret not taking my camera with me, but will try to scavenge a few to post.
I haven't had internet in weeks and I haven't posted in even longer. The past month or so has been a rough one for me. It's part of the service and I found this quotation the other day that sums it up better than I seem to be able to:
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it. – Cesare Pavese
Well said, Cesare. Part of the deal in being here is acceptance of bad days and the resolve to take them as they come, trusting the whole way through that we have the inherent strength to make it through to the other side. But sometimes we mess things up along the way. But this post isn't about bad days or the peculiarities of change. That's just a thought.
The past three days have comprised the festival of Campanas here in Fogo. Aside from festa Sao Filipe in April/May, this is one of the "bigger deal" festas on the island. Saturday was the killing day. I've seen a pig slaughter, and despite remembering the shaky feeling in my legs that persisted through the screams that gradually became gurgles and chokes on a seemingly endless river of blood, I figured I could witness an assembly line slaughter, having heard that goats are less vocal.
After we hunted down the house, my roommate and I sat in chairs along the wall and tried to figure out where the killing would take place. Gradually, the sound of drums broke through the assortment of voices, and grew until the assembly of drummers entered the house. A crowd of people holding flags preceded them, some with blood-stained pants and machetes with brilliant splashes of red down the sides tucked into belts. Everyone had blood on their shoes, having come from a house farther down the street where numerous animals had already been killed. One woman wearing all white--a torn shirt, pants and a scarf--looked like a violent Pollock painting. Others had red handprints on their faces, or splashes and dots between their eyes.
The house filled with so many people that we had to stand up. Eventually we saw an old woman carrying a large, metal bowl and we knew that the killing was about to begin. They collect the blood in bowls to use in chorizo, or blood sausage, which is one of the only foods here that I haven't developed a stomach for. We circled to another part of the house where I squeezed in just in time to see a goat being bled to death, with two grown men holding it above the bowl. I kept locking eyes with a Portuguese guy right around my age who evidently hadn't witnessed fora parties before. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it. One after another they led in a goat and professionally hoisted it above a bowl to saw through its neck, before stringing it to a tree to skin it. As one was being killed, another would be standing behind it, calmly, watching everything take place.
They killed three goats and I thought it was over. There was a gelatinous coating of blood on the dirt floor that people covered and danced on. Gradually people began to scatter, and seemed to be nervous. I looked towards the trees, now occupied by numerous dead animals, and saw a giant cow being led down to the area where the goats had been killed. Killing a cow is a process. First, four grown men led it to a tree where they tied its head to the stiff trunk. The hind legs were tied together, which was a fight, and gradually the animal was felled to its side and all four legs tied in a bundle. One man readied its neck, which meant sitting on its head to make sure it couldn't move. Two others held down the body, and a man with a knife broke through the people pushing past to try to find a comfortable distance. The woman holding the bowl danced through the crowd, the drumbeats not pausing during all of this, and after what seemed like an hour of nervous preparation, they slit its throat.
Watching a pig die is difficult. The screams last for such a long time that it almost seems necessary to look away. The cow didn't make a noise. Or if it did, it was drowned out by the drums. One of my students came next to me and put her arm around my waist, and after seeing so much blood throughout the day, I was worried that I might fall on her. The smell was overwhelming. Blood smells sickly, and thick and salty. I walked away for a breath of air and quickly heard the screams of a pig that was being killed on the other side of the house. There's no escape on festa day. But I held my own, though a little shakily.
It was astounding, really. The rest of the festa seemed fairly normal. The street was lined with people and it felt almost like a party that happens in Blacksburg every year, when people crowd in the streets to eat good food and drink a few beers and listen to the live music. Except here everything is public, from start to finish. Including the slaughter and preparation of the food that everyone eats. The rest of the time I wandered the cobblestone streets, ate good food (except no chorizo), watched the stars and talked to friends.
The background of this festa is the most interesting part, in my opinion. In the days of slavery, the only way that slaves could feasibly have an uprising was to dress in costume from head to toe so slaveowners couldn't recognize them. They would run from house to house in an attempt to scare and intimidate the slaveowners. Because of this, the "Rae di Festa" or king of the festival dressed from head to toe, even in blackface, kind of like a clown. He and his son (who also dressed up) got up early in the morning and went from town to town. Every man who wanted to participate in the killings that day had to catch the man and his son before they would be allowed to participate. If they caught both men, they could be part of the procession and help kill the animals. Another part of the tradition is that the king of the party steals things throughout the day, so I would occasionally see him running from a crowd of people who would be throwing rocks at him. At the festa after the killings, whenever I saw him he was carrying a goat head and threatening to attack people with one of its horns.
So it was a weekend filled with significance and emotions that left me absolutely drained when things were said and done. I regret not taking my camera with me, but will try to scavenge a few to post.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Adaptation is a funny thing. A primary goal in Peace Corps is integration. Yet one of the things that becomes difficult to grapple with is becoming accustomed to life and no longer feeling as though everything is exciting and new. There's not even sides, this is just the same coin.
A friend of a friend served in Senegal years ago and before I left the States, she wrote me a wonderful heartfelt letter of advice and thoughts on two years of service in a foreign culture. One of the things that she wrote is that one day I would likely wake up and find that things that used to be mysterious and exhilarating would feel normal, and it may result in feeling like I've fallen in a slump. I have to say that this part of service has been true for me. As it is with everything, really. But the great thing is that occasionally unexpected things happen that can puncture the mundane when I find myself slipping into routine.
A good example was this past week, when I was slowly trudging up the hill to my house, explaining to a student once again that I wasn't going to leave him my computer when I leave, nor my Ipod, and no, not all Americans are rich. It was getting tiring; the smiles and friendly gestures from this kid had been replaced by constant requests for electronics or food. He used to be my favorite, until he called me a bitch. But the point is that I was feeling a little disheartened, and more than a bit disrespected.
About halfway to my house, we noticed a little piglet standing in the street. Patrick, my student, asked me if it was mine, which of course it was not, and a few steps later the piglet noticed us coming. There was a brief moment of panic and it started to run in different directions to find which way to go. At this section of cobblestone street there are high walls to either side, and it couldn't duck into the crispy tall grass that has yellowed along the sides of most stretches of road. It turned around to run away from us, and I realized that its front and hind legs on the left side had been tied together to keep it in place, which evidently didn't do the trick. So the best it really accomplished was a ridiculous lopsided sprint.
As we continued up the hill, looking around to see who it could belong to, I saw my friend Junior running down the length of the wall on my right side. He disappeared for a moment and I wondered if he was out for a jog or if he even knew about the lost piglet in the road, when all of a sudden he burst out from the bushes and landed a few feet below in the middle of the street. Both he and the piglet paused for a brief second and locked eyes before the piglet turned toward us and hobbled past with a frantic squeal. Junior took off after it. The piglet started swerving in all directions to try to outmaneuver him, and after a few failed attempts to catch it, Junior jumped over the animal, landing on his left foot and simultaneously reaching back to tap it with his right in a perfect stop that would make Benfica proud.
Of course, Patrick and I had stopped to watch all of this. We were close enough to have been considered involved in the chaos but neither Junior nor the piglet seemed to notice us. The piglet stayed in the patch of grass he'd been stopped in and, victorious, Junior picked up the little pig by the front legs and stopped for quick greeting and kiss on the cheeks before heroically returning the lost livestock to an elderly woman who was still gushing her gratitude as Patrick and I turned the corner. It caught me completely off guard. As soon as I feel as though I "get used to" this place, something happens that I can almost not even react to it's so absurd, and I remember where I am.
I've been taking more notice of the strange little things that knock me on my ass and place me back on my little isolated island when I've allowed myself to forget where I am: an epic piglet chase, sitting on a rock heated by the sun and shelling peanuts with a friend, stumbling on a fisherman friend fishing from the divider of a road and stopping for a moment just to talk, long Hiace rides crammed between a fish lady and a young mother with her child. The part that really strikes me is that now I have the weird passive, float-away-from-reality experience about the life I used to have, and when I find myself whirling back to reality, I find myself ending up grounded in the place that I used to dream of going to. That part is still surreal.
A friend of a friend served in Senegal years ago and before I left the States, she wrote me a wonderful heartfelt letter of advice and thoughts on two years of service in a foreign culture. One of the things that she wrote is that one day I would likely wake up and find that things that used to be mysterious and exhilarating would feel normal, and it may result in feeling like I've fallen in a slump. I have to say that this part of service has been true for me. As it is with everything, really. But the great thing is that occasionally unexpected things happen that can puncture the mundane when I find myself slipping into routine.
A good example was this past week, when I was slowly trudging up the hill to my house, explaining to a student once again that I wasn't going to leave him my computer when I leave, nor my Ipod, and no, not all Americans are rich. It was getting tiring; the smiles and friendly gestures from this kid had been replaced by constant requests for electronics or food. He used to be my favorite, until he called me a bitch. But the point is that I was feeling a little disheartened, and more than a bit disrespected.
About halfway to my house, we noticed a little piglet standing in the street. Patrick, my student, asked me if it was mine, which of course it was not, and a few steps later the piglet noticed us coming. There was a brief moment of panic and it started to run in different directions to find which way to go. At this section of cobblestone street there are high walls to either side, and it couldn't duck into the crispy tall grass that has yellowed along the sides of most stretches of road. It turned around to run away from us, and I realized that its front and hind legs on the left side had been tied together to keep it in place, which evidently didn't do the trick. So the best it really accomplished was a ridiculous lopsided sprint.
As we continued up the hill, looking around to see who it could belong to, I saw my friend Junior running down the length of the wall on my right side. He disappeared for a moment and I wondered if he was out for a jog or if he even knew about the lost piglet in the road, when all of a sudden he burst out from the bushes and landed a few feet below in the middle of the street. Both he and the piglet paused for a brief second and locked eyes before the piglet turned toward us and hobbled past with a frantic squeal. Junior took off after it. The piglet started swerving in all directions to try to outmaneuver him, and after a few failed attempts to catch it, Junior jumped over the animal, landing on his left foot and simultaneously reaching back to tap it with his right in a perfect stop that would make Benfica proud.
Of course, Patrick and I had stopped to watch all of this. We were close enough to have been considered involved in the chaos but neither Junior nor the piglet seemed to notice us. The piglet stayed in the patch of grass he'd been stopped in and, victorious, Junior picked up the little pig by the front legs and stopped for quick greeting and kiss on the cheeks before heroically returning the lost livestock to an elderly woman who was still gushing her gratitude as Patrick and I turned the corner. It caught me completely off guard. As soon as I feel as though I "get used to" this place, something happens that I can almost not even react to it's so absurd, and I remember where I am.
I've been taking more notice of the strange little things that knock me on my ass and place me back on my little isolated island when I've allowed myself to forget where I am: an epic piglet chase, sitting on a rock heated by the sun and shelling peanuts with a friend, stumbling on a fisherman friend fishing from the divider of a road and stopping for a moment just to talk, long Hiace rides crammed between a fish lady and a young mother with her child. The part that really strikes me is that now I have the weird passive, float-away-from-reality experience about the life I used to have, and when I find myself whirling back to reality, I find myself ending up grounded in the place that I used to dream of going to. That part is still surreal.
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