March 14, 2003

These last remaining weeks are going to be a whirlwind. So much has been happening at my site and in my cluster of houses that I thought I should write this all down before I forget the details -- for you and for posterity's sake. First of all, February was the official month for curing neighbors. At moments I thought that I could become a nurse or doctor someday with great success. We had the 25 year old association worker who cut off his fingertip in the sugarcane press, the neighbor’s son who slashed his hand open, an elderly man with a swollen/infected foot, an elderly woman with an obscenely large boil on her thigh, Almazinha’s gaping leg wound, various cuts and scrapes, and an occasional fever/diarrhea.

The crazy thing is that all of these people had to frequent my house once a day for 7-21 days until their cuts healed, so that I could change the bandages. With only one bottle of surgical soap, it was difficult for me to dispense supplies for them to do it on their own. Having this many daily patients made my life more complicated because they filtered into my house between 5-9 p.m., which meant I always had to be home and presentable in the afternoons (i.e. not wearing pajamas, cooking, or eating). Peace Corps nurses gave me some questionable looks when I went into Praia each Friday and re-supplied my medical kit with medical tape, painkillers, Band-Aids, etc. We aren’t allowed to treat anyone, so it looked like I’d been falling quite a bit or abusing the ‘system.’

A fellow rural volunteer named Davin came to my site this week for a few days. We hiked up to the mountain peak that shadows over my river valley – the second highest one on this island. I honestly dread this hike because it is usually about 8 hours roundtrip. If you look in the photo gallery in my website, there is a photo of me blissfully smiling while covered in sweat at the top a year ago. On Wednesday, we left around 10 a.m. and got back at 5 p.m., as I had expected. The hike was amazing though, sheer cliffs rising above us, yucca plants in bloom, women harvesting sweet potatoes, children drying clothes on rocks, banana groves in mountain springs, small villages nestled into valley walls, etc. We stumbled upon a cluster of 10 houses that I had visited a few times earlier, but had never noticed they were abandoned. I merely thought the farmers were never home, i.e. out working in the fields. On this occasion, we saw a thirty-something woman standing next to two small toddlers at the backside of their house. We yelled up towards her to greet them before we arrived at their house, and, by then, they were in the front yard.

The two girls Ruthie and Raquel, two-year-old twins, had African hair bleached by the sun and affected by malnutrition, as well as dirty dresses. The woman explained in a somber tone that she was lonely and everyone else had moved out of the cluster. There was only her house and one remaining adult in another house. The kids were her granddaughters. Her daughter had immigrated to France, leaving them when they were one – she had been raising them with another teenage grandchild. I pulled out my last cookie from my backpack and broke it in half, handing them each part. Bruce, the neighbors’ dog that has claimed me as his owner, tried in vain to snatch the cookie from their hands, and they mumbled to ‘grandma’ that the dog was trying to eat their cookies. As we talked to the young grandmother, the girls slowly munched at their cookies, and I imagined this woman’s life in an abandoned cluster of houses a 1-2 hour hike from a road. During the rainy season they would have plenty of food, but, for now, it was hard to get fruit or fish from town without a major hike. I asked the woman to take a quick photo of us on the cliff, and after much confusion and ‘I just can’t do it’ comments, we got her to take a picture of us with Ruthie and Raquel. This was one of the highlights of the hike.

The other one was reaching the peak and meeting the family with the stone house with a traditional thatched roof, one of the few left in a valley with predominantly clay-tiled or cement roofs. I had wanted to meet this family for months, even since I saw their house from a distance when hiking through in December 2002. As we approached, their two, large dogs raced up to us to attack Bruce (my dog). The twenty-something son then chased his dogs off with a stick and stones. They offered us a lunch of rice and green beans, so we ducked into the house, a full size bed, a single bed, a table, and belongings stuffed into a tiny stone room with wooden rafters and a thatched straw roof. The father asked us where we both lived, what we were doing in Cape Verde, the weather, and the hike as we ate. Davin and I commented that it was a definite ‘Peace Corps moment’ to be sitting in the highest traditional house on a peak on an island off the coast of West Africa. We were as thrilled as they were to sit and chat, enjoying the pine trees and fresh mountain air. When I requested a group photo, the young mother with her baby strapped on her back tried to get up and run. I grabbed her leg, as a show of affection for her to stay, and she laughed, then complacently agreed to stay for the photo. Davin and I agreed that we would be the talk of the house and mountain top for the next 6 months, especially since both of us had done shots of moonshine liquor with the father! You have to imagine the excitement of a rural family having two ‘white’ people for lunch, let alone conversing with them in their own language!

Back on the trail, we passed women harvesting crops and majestic 360 degree views of ocean waves crashing on distant shores, fishbone mountains falling to the coast, clusters of houses, and dramatic clouds casting shadows on dramatic landscapes. We slipped down through hundreds of feet of rock through a tiny trail left by villagers carrying heavy loads from field to home. Every ten minutes, I stopped to examine the view and sigh at its immense beauty. As fatigue started to set in, we hurried through GonGon’s mountain villages, greeting the families I knew so well. Finally, upon reaching Hortelăo, we came upon the adult education program finishing for the day and the primary school letting out. This meant that over 100 villagers examined me walking with a blond, ‘white’ guy. Women smiled and turned towards each other with speculations as to what I was doing with a guy from my country. Why had he spent two nights? Was he my boyfriend? Would he move there after I left? Was he the next volunteer? School kids practiced their Portuguese for us, and we ambled back to my house, only to greet all houses in my cluster for the next hour.

The following day, Davin departed for his site, and I went to my women’s painting group weekly session. Only four young eight year old girls showed up, and I was told that culinary classes would now mean that we had no space in which to meet on Thursday afternoons. I had been contemplating what to do for the past 3 weeks, since I realized that women had dropped out of the group to make liquor and others came infrequently. My Group had slowly transformed into casual art classes for primary school kids. I decided to just cancel the class and focus my remaining weeks on other projects: a scout weekend, a family health session in GonGon, painting the GonGon one-room primary school, painting educational murals at 10 kindergardens, painting the village water well (newly constructed), and holding an anniversary trip to Praia for the girls that participated in the Girls Exchange a year ago. I also decided to work one-on-one with the remaining 5 women of the group if they chose to continue until May when I leave.

That afternoon, I was invited to the 1st culinary class in a 5-month series to be sponsored by the World Bank’s “Fight Against Poverty Program.” Thirty-five women are participating, and it will give them opportunities to learn how to make new dishes and integrate improved nutrition into their diets. Personally, I can’t wait to learn how to make some of my favorite Cape Verdean dishes from an experienced facilitator/chef who owns her own restaurant. We split into groups, and decided what we wanted to learn to cook in the coming months. I was invited as a special guest, and can actually go whenever I want, despite the strict 35-person limit, but will probably only be able to attend the Thursday afternoon classes. Another Peace Corps moment occurred when Luleesha, the facilitator spent two hours explaining the uses of all of the kitchen equipment that was purchased for them to use. The wine glasses, champagne classes, orange juice squeezers, trays, tupperware, utensils, coffee sets, tea sets, cloth napkins, steamers, pots, pans, cake tins, tart tins, pudding tins, etc. Women sat in awe at the quantity of colorful and shiny objects that were useful in the kitchen or with food. Most own a few aluminum pots and cook over wood. At one point, a close friend of mine, a young mother of four, leaned over to me and asked if I had ever used ‘those’ glasses on ‘special’ occasions like Leleesha said was common. I nodded, and she sighed in amazement, then said, “This course will need to be more than five months long!” She knew she had a lot to learn.

I am excited because Luleesha is going to help these women purchase their own gas stoves following the course, and the World Bank has agreed to start a women’s baking cooperative for those who successfully complete the course. Things are looking up in Hortelăo. I just can’t believe how much the place has changed since I arrived. Before Barry, a volunteer from 1999-2001, arranged funding for the community center, there was nothing. No adult school, no scout meetings, no kindergarden, no music jam sessions, no health workshops, no graduation ceremonies, no cooking classes, no drip irrigation school garden, no art classes, no village cohesion. I can’t wait to visit in a few years and eat new dishes at village houses.