September 5, 2002

I have only 20 minutes to write this email, but I feel that if I don't get one out before next week, then I will have too much to write later on. Ultimately, I don't get to say everything, like when I took a 2 week trip to other islands with my best friend in June and never recounted our adventures over email. So little time!

Yesterday, was perhaps one of my hardest days in Cape Verde. I just came to this conclusion that I was giving so much and my community didn't really need me or care about the resources in front of them. I spent the morning taking a minivan to another village to recruit girls for my camp in a week. The status of the camp is that it was originally slated to occur in my village, Hortelao, but has been moved to the nearby beach town Calheta. I strategically targeted girls ages 12 - 20 at the water well in my village on Sunday with fancy computer-typed sheets describing the camp. They were all interested, but bowed their heads in apparent sadness that their parents would never let them miss time in the fields to participate. There was too much work to be done pulling weeds after the first few rains to miss 5 days for a camp.

By Monday, I felt that no girls would show up from my village, or other surrounding ones, because they had too much work and their parents were too domineering. I brainstormed by candlelight, my cats curled at my side, and wondered how I could lower my stress level and not lose so much money from holding it in my village, catering food, organizing transport, and having girls not show up if it rained. I decided to move it to the nearby beach town. I enlisted the support of a woman leader at the town hall, who was to recruit 10 girls for me. The next day she ran up to me and said, 'I have to speak with you. I found 17 girls!'

The camp, originally budgeted for 20 girls, may, in fact, end up with 25 or more. I can't turn away girls from the river valley because this may be the only time they ever have access to the information I have planned at this crucial time in their lives. We will cover teen pregnancy, sex education, health, nutrition, environmental protection, team-building, computers, setting goals, career planning, etc. I have been frustrated, like Amy in Boa Vista, that nobody has been offering to help facilitate. I don't wait for them to offer, I have been begging, pleading. To no avail, people are just busy, busy, busy. I wonder why it is always me that is organizing and implementing, and why it is so hard to get appropriate community support when I need it.

The president of my agricultural association, along with another female president of a neighboring village's association, are two of my main bosses in the river valley. They have both expressed to me recently how upset they are that I am never around. Why do you never come to my house? Why is the camp outside the valley? Why, why, why? I just get so angry that they are so busy complaining about what I do and never helping. Being in Peace Corps has also reiterated my growing belief that I need a career where I can be my own boss. I hate addressing superiors who don't work as hard as me.

After spending yesterday afternoon painting my house and the community center for 5 hours, following my trip to that distant village to recruit girls, I emotionally cracked. I realized that nobody was really accountable for the community center that the U.S. Embassy funded a year ago. Moonshine liquor bottles laying everywhere, black plastic bags for the trees we are supposed to sell, used candy wrappers from children, broken chairs in the courtyard. I tried to think of ways to get my boss to enlist help from villagers. He stopped by, and I ended up ranting and raving about the condition of the place and the preventative care that it needed to not fall apart in the next 5 years. He just smiled and then yelled from the end of the courtyard, 'Have to run to my driving class. See you later."

Sheer frustration. I was organizing the all-day family health workshop on Saturday. I was organizing the 40 person scout trip to the beach on Sunday. I was organizing the 5 day Girls' Life Skills Camp, and all he could ask was, "Did you recruit any girls yet? Did you go to that other village to drop off those papers?" I packed up my paints and headed home as the river valley grew dark. I encountered the village religious leader on the way, who I spouted off all of my concerns and frustrations to. He agreed, and said that he would try to help. I realized that if I win the Rotary World Peace Scholarship, I would ultimately gain negotiation and conflict resolution skills that I don't have and need in order to get things done here and else where. One of my weaknesses is my inability to remain rational and cool-tempered when everything goes wrong and people aren't doing what they should be doing to get things done. I find it hard to respect and speak in a friendly tone with people who offer support and then flake at the last moment.

After we parted, my neighbor Silvina approached me on the road on her way to get water. She asked about the camp and could she just come the night we sleep at the community center and have a bonfire. I said sure, and then her mom Almazinha (featured in photos of neighbors on website) came up to me a few minutes later on the road. She asked if the camp would address sex education and teen pregnancy, as I had mentioned a few days earlier to a group of mothers? I was reluctant to answer, not knowing if she was liberal or conservative on the topic. Sex and genitalia are very taboo topics in the valley where mothers believe that girls who attend school or know more about these topics will become pregnant sooner rather than later. I say that we will cover many topics, trying to be vague and not put emphasis on any one in particular.

She completely surprises me when she responds, 'Well, I want Silvina and her sister to attend the days when you talk about specifically about sex and pregnancy. I was never educated, but I want them to be. My husband has many girlfriends, and I don't want them to have such bad marriages so young. The 16 year old had an older boyfriend for a while that worked her like a slave getting sand on the beach for construction all day. My husband says he's arranged better women than me to my face. How am I to take that? They will go with you everyday to the camp when you leave. You can go together. Their father will not approve, but I will tell him that they must go because there are things they must hear. Also, are you covering STDs at the health workshop on Saturday? My husband is going and I want you to tell him about the dangers he is putting me in by sleeping with many women. He will not listen to me." She goes on and on. I am so touched. It was one of those moments when the clouds part and you feel you are on the right path.

All of the village politics, all of the disappointments, they were all worth it for Almazinha, my neighbor and one of my closest friends, to open up to me and relinquish her daughters. As we part, she says to me, 'It is night time. I must go. You must go. This conversation will continue another day. We have a lot to talk about!' I walk to my house with this sense of awe at the good that is happening due to all of my hard work. I smile and wonder what these girls will be like in 5 years when I come back to visit. This was probably the most honest, open conversation I have had with a villager in a year. I have finally found a woman that will tell me everything that has been hidden from me as a foreigner because I was perceived to be naive and young with no children or even livestock to care for. The rain clouds break and give way to the milky way above me.