March 26, 2002

Little miracles or memorable experiences happen on a daily basis, and I find myself thinking, ‘I should write that in my next group email.’ I forget most of them though.

I haven’t given an update on my neighbors in a long time. A week ago, I had a falling out with my water girl Nha. I walked into her patio area and caught her filtering my water through a tablecloth with her 7-year-old neighbor. The water was filthy with sticks and dirt in it, and she had obviously brought it from the stream in another village where they still have water. The water from the town well comes out of a metal spout in a house and it pure – no dirt particles. So, I immediately walked out of there, and to my house. She jumped up in surprise and asked where I was going. When she brought the water a half hour later, I had to confront her. Her eyes were bulging from her head as I told her I knew she had been bringing it from the stream for 2 months because the water was always dirty now.

Kevin, the other rural volunteer, says my problem is that I am over-paying her. The general rule in development work is that if you over-pay someone, then they won’t respect you and will probably take advantage of you. He says I need to cut my contract and establish a new one for half the price. I currently have the highest water bill of all Cape Verde volunteers because I included her labor, and thus the bill is around $30 a month. The next highest bill in Cape Verde is for $15 USD. I am basically paying double. The Peace Corps accountant has been pestering me for months to create a new contract, but it is difficult when I eat meals with this family. Breaking a contract in Cape Verde is extremely hard. That is why there is so much inefficiency from government to village politics.

I confronted my boss in my village, and he says that breaking my contract would be hard. The family would get upset and maybe turn my neighbors against me. He suggested I carry the water myself, which would be the only solution in his eyes because that way she wouldn’t lose face. I then explained ‘opportunity cost’, and how paying someone saves me time that I can use to work on projects. He didn’t understand until I told him that his secretary at his micro-credit organization answers his phones because that gives him more time to do accounting and manage clients. Then, he finally understood. I have actually contemplated carrying my own water though. I could fill up 10-gallon plastic containers, put them on the morning bush taxi that goes past my house, and then merely walk them the 100 feet across the riverbed to my house. The work would take me about 2 hours to fill them and them carry them across, but the actual cost would be only 10 cents. It’s only 2 cents for 20 liters of water at the well. I am paying my water girl about 90 cents per 20 liters.

In the meantime, yesterday she stopped by and said the solar panel was not pumping water because it was cloudy, so she had no water to deliver. It was a small slap in the face, like, well, now that I can’t bring it from the stream, you will have to wait on the sun. I do not trust her much anymore, and I think she was just avoiding work. Today, I will have to go by the well and ask the manager if she even stopped by yesterday to get water. Her 21-year-old brother Sabino has a live-in 18-year-old girlfriend who does all of the house chores along with Nha because the mother has been in Portugal since October when I arrived. The girlfriend has unprotected sex with Sabino (probably every night), so she got pregnant recently. Nobody knew until she had a miscarriage last week at the hospital. I wouldn’t have even known if Nha hadn’t confided in me and told me one night. Nha has been relegated to doing all of the housework now because men basically do nothing besides go to school or do construction work. Men never cook, and they rarely walk miles to get a mound of weeds to feed the animals. It’s as if she is running a small farm all by herself at age thirteen. I felt sorry for her and decided not to cut her contract yesterday, until, of course, she said there was no water.

Nha is also part of my Girls Exchange, which starts this Thursday in Praia, the capital city. The project, as all of you know, was slated to begin during Carnival in February. The USAID funding just arrived, so it is starting this weekend. I will go to Praia tomorrow to do all of the food shopping required. Thursday, I go with the eight Praia girls to my village. The eight rural girls meet us there, along with Meg, another PCV, who is an English teacher in a beach town 30 min. from my house. She plays the guitar and her Kriolu is great, so I have asked her to assist in all activities. We will do some icebreakers on Thursday when we arrive, in addition to name games before everyone departs in pairs for their houses.

Let me tell you that this activity has been the hardest thing I have done so far in Cape Verde. I had this reconceived notion that recruiting rural teenage girls between 14-18 years old who don’t have children yet would be easy. Hah!!! It has been anything but easy. Most of them come from families where the father has immigrated to Europe to do construction work. The families still maintain close ties with him, as observed through their weekly phone conversations in the local beach town. The man still holds tight control over his family in every way, dictating when and where his children and wife should be at every moment. He is generally very astute at controlling them because he is a player and probably expects his wife and daughters to be targeted by players like himself who want easy sex. For this reason, he prefers that his wife and daughters always stay at home tending to the farm. God forbid that they attend school or any event that would require them to sleep outside of the home! (sarcasm) Over two weeks ago, I started recruiting girls in my valley for the exchange. I spend an entire day with Sabu, a smart 16 year old, at her family’s ‘horta’, or garden plot/orchard. They have at least an acre of bananas, avocado, papaya, and nut trees. The father looks around 65 years old, and has supposedly fathered over 20 kids with different women. Sabu is my most talented English student at my Monday afternoon class because she attended high school in a nearby beach town up until last year when she failed out. Her father refused to pay for her to attend again, so she is living at home doing chores. I desperately wanted her to participate in the Exchange because I feel she has the drive to succeed in some way other than to become a stay-at-home teenage mom in our valley. I tried to gain the trust of her father, and then I mentioned the Exchange. He said it was a great idea, and he gave permission for her to participate – all I needed to do was ask her mother though. Right. That simple, huh? Wrong. I went to speak with her mom the next day who immediately said she was not allowed to participate. I felt so angry that I had come so close to gaining their approval, only for them to say no. I later discovered that it was not the mother at all. The father is two-faced and will always say yes in public and no in private. (Note: by September 2002, Sabu gets pregnant).

I then spent an entire afternoon schmoozing with Natalina’s family. I was happy when I arrived and realized that she is a girl who frequently attends my English class. Her family probably trusted me by now, right? The mother cooked me food, and served it to me alone in their dining room. This is an odd custom, and I am still not sure why they don’t like to be in your presence when they serve you food and you eat. I sat there for hours, thinking I was gaining their trust. The mother loved the idea, and so did the daughter. All they had to do was ask the grandparent who was not there. That easy, huh? Wrong. Natalina comes by my house the next day with the Exchange schedule that I have given all prospective participants written in Kriolu. She explains that they called her father in Portugal for his permission, and he will not let her participate. She bows her head and leaves quickly because she is so disappointed – I can see it on her solemn face. (Note: By June 2002, Natalina gets pregnant)

The next day, I trek up to Patricia’s house, up on the mountainside on the way to the village I work with called Gon Gon. I am delighted when I arrive and realize that I just ate lunch with her mother the week before. I had no idea the mother had a teenage daughter, and I am silently praying that the mother has gained trust in me. We greet each other, and I pull out a roll of cookies before I begin to explain the details of the Exchange. She says she doesn’t want her daughter sleeping away from home. I tell her this is a great opportunity that shouldn’t be missed – everything is paid for! I go against my human nature and desire to sell the event as educational because these mothers always want their daughters to stay ignorant. Most even want them to have a baby young because they like to have babies around. Any mention of ‘helping give the girls a voice through theatre’ or ‘familiarization with Praia for days when they need to return’ is avoided. This Exchange is covertly educational and purely ‘fun and games’ from what they can see.

As I come down from Patricia’s house, I am so disappointed, considering her another failed attempt. In that exact moment, I run into Nha’s older brother Sabino (mentioned earlier). He is Nha’s father figure, so I ask for his permission to allow her to participate. He immediately says yes, and I know that he means it. He wants her to do what she chooses, like he does, and he knows that she will act responsibly. Finally, someone who has some common sense, trust, and respect for their sister or daughter! The next day, I hear from Nasolino, my boss in Hortelão, that Patricia’s mom has decided to let her participate. Now, it is only one week from the actual event, and I have recruited two girls. Whoopie. Only six left to go.

I quickly enlist the help of the president of the association in Gon Gon. She recruits two girls on her own. I spend an entire 95° F day hiking up to Gon Gon to attempt to recruit Eva. I met Eva months ago when I was doing a health survey. She is a typical rural girl, shy and homebound. She is not home because she is out picking beans with her mother for the day, but her father is there. I explain the events, and then mid-way through the long explanation, he says he has hearing problems and can’t understand much of what I am saying. His teenage neighbor (girl) that is there with me explains to him the Exchange like this, ‘A group of girls is going to Praia for the weekend and also receiving a girl from their in their house. She wants to know if you will let Eva participate?’. She makes the Exchange sound so disorganized. I jump in to salvage what she has said, but the father already does not like the idea. He says in this chauvinistic voice that Eva needs to work those weekends. There is a lot of work to be done, and she is needed at home. There was no way that in his mind he could fathom what she would gain if he merely saw her as a workhorse. I left there saddened by the inability of girls to succeed in life with such close-minded fathers acting on hundreds of years of tradition.

In the end, I recruit two girls from Hortelão, one from Gon Gon, and enlist the help of Nasolino to go to Principal, the remaining village, with me last Saturday. He drags his feet because he doesn’t like to go to a competing village that has a rivalry with his farming association. He eventually gives in, and we hike around for the day. I am convinced that if he comes along, people will trust me more and allow their daughters to participate. After six hours of going up and down hillsides, we finally recruit three girls. Three in one day! I am amazed and have learned a lot about event planning, especially for my next venture in the coming months. In the future, I will avoid such excess footwork by merely inviting everyone to the community center, requesting that my boss attend, and also the third party (Praia girls) involved. We will have a meeting, and convince them right there on the spot. People will probably feel peer-pressure because some families will say yes, and they will want to, too. This is what happened in Principal. After we recruited the first girl, we used her name to recruit the two subsequent ones because their mothers knew each other. I imagine this also would have been much easier if we had phones.

I will email next week once the first weekend has culminated. Unfortunately, I don’t have a digital camera, so it is unlikely that you all will see photos until July when I have a chance to put them online from the USA.