October 10, 2001

The other day in our Community Development class, we had to each teach a 15 minute lesson to our 10 person group – they called it open space technology. Anyway, I, of course, taught a class on how to make your own stencil from transparencies, and then techniques and supplies needed. Another group taught a lesson on the Catholic church, because many of us are clueless about its organization, despite living in a Catholic country. Another group of guys gave us a mini soccer lesson, which proved to be very helpful. Never kick with your toes – always with your laces or inner part of foot. It’s really amazing how much you can forget since middle school! The funniest group was this pair that did ‘Icebreakers’ that you can use to open or energize a workshop. We tried out a few of them, and they proved to be just hilarious. One in particular that made us all laugh was when you each have to tell an embarrassing moment.

Debbie, the Community Development Training Director, did 3 years of Peace Corps here in Cape Verde about 5 years ago. She is in her forties, I assume, and proceeded to tell us about when she first arrived in Cape Verde. She was at a bus stop, and there was this older woman in her seventies dressed in black and apparently sitting at the bus stop. She proceeded to practice her new Kriolu vocabulary by asking her kindly, "Modi ki bu sta?"(How are you?). The woman looked at her with this surprised face and didn’t respond. So, she tried again. "Modi ki bu sta senhora? Tudu dretu?" (Is everything good?). The woman this time squinted her eyes and gave her this look of anger and frustration at being so bothered. Debbie then heard a loud gastrointestinal noise erupt from this woman, and she realized the woman had been squatting and taking a shit! This is quite common in Cape Verde because 80% of all people have no indoor plumbing, i.e. toilet. Debbie proceeded to run up the street after the bus she missed in the confusion. When she got to work, she told her boss who laughed for an entire hour.

Jen told another funny story that happened to hear recently. She’s a recent graduate from Chico, CA, a small town from what I have been told. She went out with her host family to this nice restaurant for a birthday celebration. There were over 40 people in attendance. The family ordered crabs for everyone, and then her host family cousin stood up to introduce her to the group. Before they all began to eat, he asked her in a loud, inquisitive voice in front of everyone, "Do you like to eat cock?" He stood waiting for an answer, as she bust out laughing. He had meant to say, "Do you like to eat crab?", but it had come out completely wrong. Within seconds, the two other relatives who spoke English also broke out laughing, and then they recounted the incident to the whole family who laughed for a few minutes, too.

Mike, the husband of a Peace Corps volunteer couple from Washington, D.C., a real estate agent in his mid-twenties turned development volunteer, was at a meeting relating to education in Cape Verde. For about twenty minutes, he kept hearing the mention of what sounded like "PsiCola", which he assumed was just "Pepsi Cola." He heard them mention how they planned to bring PsiCola into the schools every week, and how this would become an integral part of the curriculum to improve student health. He just stared in amazement, thinking, "What exactly are they doing introducing sodas into schools like that?" Part of him found it completely humorous, and the other half could see it happening after the complete takeover of Coca-Cola in Cape Verde. Sodas, in recent years, have declined over 80% in price so that everyone can afford them. Surprisingly, Coca-Cola’s largest grossing African country for sales is Cape Verde. This is explained by the fact that Cape Verde has one of the highest GDPs, or national income. This means that a soda is a daily treat for most, whereas on the mainland sodas are a once a month treat, if the family has any extra money to spare. In any case, it wasn’t until another Peace Corps volunteer attending the meeting turned to ask a very slow, pointed question that he realized all along that they were saying "psicologa," psychologist in Portuguese. They were talking about introducing better mental health programs into the schools.

My own less humoring story was about how I was at Dawn’s house last week, and João, her sixty year old host father, walked in on me about to pull down my pants. He stopped in embarrassment and then got defensive, stating he thought nobody was in there because the door wasn’t locked when he turned the knob. At my house, I have my own small bathroom and I never lock the door because we use separate rest rooms. However, once I proceeded to lock the door at Dawn’s house, shortly after the incident, I got locked in there! The door was so stiff, and the lock so old that I was stuck. I had to yell for a minute until someone came to help open it up from the outside!

Hope I entertained you all, even if just for a few minutes!