rap and romance

Donºt know if the thing worked above, try this, http://youtube.com/watch?v=B4oN5pW8DVY

My 15 year old cousin Ivon came running in the house one night.
“Brian, I need your headlight.”
“You going somewhere?”
“No, we’re about to kill a ‘porko’ outside and we can’t see because its dark.”
He and his mom already made the decision that this pig needed to go, right then. It was 10 o’clock. He’d also already summoned Vando, a 17 year old kid who was the neighborhood butcher. Before 7 most mornings I wake up to the sound of pigs being slaughtered. I imagine most of the times its Vando at work.

First, Vando slit the pigs throat. That’s when it squealed. That’s the sound I wake up to. The pig ran out of breath after a few seconds. It was like I could hear the life leaving his body. Then they poured kerosene all over it’s body to burn off the hair. Once it was bald, he cut its head off and slit the bottom side from its neck to its anus. The guts were gently pulled out and fed to a nearby chicken and dog. Then, with a bigger knife, he hacked through the its back and spine to split the pig in two. He chucked the pieces in a wheelbarrow and was gone within 15 minutes. Good business.

Speaking of killing pigs, the phrase in Kriolu “mata porko” is slang for sex. Here are some other ways to say ‘sex’ in Kriolu (translated into English): break poop, climb the bed, dent the pot, climb in the hair, sit on the nail, eat the head, eat kongu beans, give housework, give fire and give the dog a bath.

One of the big cultural debates that often comes up is the general acceptance of guys having multiple girlfriends or pequenas. Here’s my Cape Verdean friend’s take on the pequena situation:
“In rich countries, men normally have just one girlfriend. In poor countries, men normally have many girlfriends.”
“So what does that mean?”
“More pequenas is ‘ka fixi’ (not cool).” My buddy knows it might be better to have just one girlfriend, but because the culture allows it, it’s tough to do what’s right. He then continued with his analogy, “rich countries have wars while poor countries can’t afford to have wars. Wars are expensive. Poor countries have domestic violence instead.”

Thinking is like exercising. The more you do it, the longer you can do it for and the further you can go. It feels good when you do it and better when you stop. All this blogging is getting me in good shape.
Stop. Deep breath. Okay, here we go

‘Nelson. Pao.’ A kid knocks on our door about 6:30 everyday and hand delivers fresh bread (pao). It’s excellent. That with instant coffee is my staple breakfast.

I hear there’s a 60% import tax on more imported luxury cars. So the suped-up Expeditions and Hummers I’ve seen probably run close to US$100,000. Drug dillaz and professional athletes. So I’ve heard.

I’ve never listened to much Phil Collins before. I knew I should have because of that movie American Psycho. Never got around to it though. It’s certainly a nice pace of music. Very soothing. My brothers are crazy about him.

Speaking of which, my Cape Verdean homies tend to favor two kinds of music: rap and romance, like Phil Collins/ Michael Bolten-type romance. Could we draw a connection to the multiple pequena situation here? Rap clearly favors our ego. About the money, and the bitches, da-tada-tada. While the romance from the 80s is more focused on building relationships and “two hearts livin, in two separate worlds”. It seems like their relationships are torn between the idea of finding love and pimpin lotsa chicks. True, America is also in question of what is the right way to act in politics, media, sports, etc. I just hope America will soon find a nice balance and start to recognize how much influence it has on the rest of the world.

'Que tal' means 'whats up' in Portuguese and Spanish. Dedo means finger. I ask how someone how to say thumb the other day, ‘dedo de quetal.’ Awesome. I shoulda asked what they call the middle finger.

‘This is the Peace Corps, Brian. We’re not hippies, we’re professionals.’ -someone I’ll be working very closely with in the near future. This is tough. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a hippie with the whole deep thought stuff I do. And the whole idea of professionalism doesn’t really strike me anyway. The word itself, professionalism, makes me think of a guy wearing a short-sleeved oxford shirt in a tie tied too short, getting paid not what he should in a place he doesn’t want to be. If that’s the Peace Corps, I’m in the wrong business. Either somebody changes professionalism or Peace Corps changes what they think about hippies. Something’s gotta give.

Cape Verde is to Africa like the suburbs are to the US. They have enough food to eat and their kinda cruising along on their cash flow. They just get a little bored sometimes. When people get bored, they make problems because they have nothing else goin on. Cape Verdeans need jobs just like suburban America needs something to do besides getting their panties in a bunch when the mexicans show up late to mow their lawn.

Had a good conversation with my friend and soon-to-be roommate Alex and her parents the other night. A country needs one of two things to function: something to sell or a service to perform. Two examples: the Middle East and China/India. Mid East: lots of oil to sell, not much service. Then you got the rising powers: China and India. Why are they up and coming? They got numbers and they’re educating them. And its working. Educated people = service = jobs = happy citizens.

Ideally, Cape Verde could stand as a model of a place of creative economy. They have no natural resources, which sucks. But Cape Verde does have a strong movement toward education. Universities and vocational institutions are being/have been built using grant money from different country corporations (ie The Luxembourg Corporation or The Portugal Corporation). Sure, they don’t have much to sell the rest of the world, but with a little bit of creativity, I’d put my money on this country coming up with something the world would be interested in.

K, nuff with the spacey banter. Back to the story.

Had a model school few days ago. Four days, two hours each day. The idea is to give us, the trainees, a chance to try out lesson plans and get experience in front of the classroom. PC helped advertise our model schools around Assomada and 20 students showed up to my class. The class I taught was civil construction. I won’t know what I teach until 10 days before I start. Anyway, the class was all in Portuguese which went easier than I thought it would. The language was fine until I asked the class a question. Then I was in trouble. Listening to people has always been a weakness of mine. Throw it in a different language... man. Gonna be a long 2 years.

A can of peaches the size of your fist cost US$3. A head of cabbage costs US$3.80. Bananas cost a quarter so does a whole fresh fish. Everything depends on the rain though.

An Africa-wide basketball tourneyment ended a week ago. Cape Verde got third place. Beat Egypt in the consolation game after they lost to Angola. Cape Verde also beat Nigeria earlier in the tournament. Nigeria has 120 million people. Cape Verde has less than 1 million. Holla!

Nha irmao Ulysses, or Ne-ne, is working on getting a Passport to go to France. He’s joining the majority of his nationals doing what they do: go abroad to bring home the flow. “I can make more money abroad and send it home to help the family.” This country is very close to the tipping point of creating it’s own economy. Once they can convince the nationals to keep it local, things will snowball.

The intensive nine week Peace Corps training program has come to a close. After nine weeks, the 29 rookies have been groomed for the field. Down two, the 27 remaining troops have been stationed to live on four of the nine inhabited islands. We’ll be working in the following sectors: Community development, Youth Development, English Teachers, Teacher Trainers and Vocational Education.
Briefed, educated, motivated.
Now it’s time we get our hands dirty.

I’ll be staying here in Assomada and working at a technical school starting at the end of the month. I just moved into a second story apartment building with a girl named Alex from Bethesda. She started in Guinea a year ago but was transferred to Cape Verde when the when the Guinean government had some issues (all of PC left, not just her). She’s pretty sharp.

Our apartment has tray ceilings, electricity, running water (most of the time) and we’re a 5-minute walk from a wireless Internet cafe. Right now I’m making ice cubes in my freezer, typing on a laptop, thinking about getting a cleaning lady. Oh no, no more hippies in third-world mud huts. We’re professionals in developing country mid-rise apartments.