Two Sticks

The Batuk is an early Cape Verdean dance that came about when enslaved women would shake their hips in defiance of pain. The women wore Pano de Terra, which are woven scarves, around their waist to excentuate their hips as they danced showing their men they still had it.

Claudia, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, started a project to teach people how to make the Pano de Terra. The project is doing well and Sabino, the Pano trainer, hopes to continue to expand the business.

If Cape Verde was located 300km further West, it would be a lush tropical island because of heavy rains. If it were 600km West, it would be a saturated puddle of land ripped apart by hurricanes. Because it is where it is, it gets less than 3” of rain a year and is battered by windstorms off the Sahara Desert called Brumaseca.

A camel sneezes in the Sahara. A puff of sand curls in the air. The dust turns into a storm. The storm picks up momentum and reaches the West coast in Senegal. The windstorm moves off the coast and 500km later nails Cape Verde. The windstorm turns into a rainstorm and the rainstorm turns into a hurricane. 4000km later someone gives it a name and people watch it tear apart cities in the Gulf of Mexico. How do meteorologists make weather so freakin boring?

With all the other newb’s gone, it’s three other volunteers and two Mormons holding down the fort for the American people in Assomada, as far as I know.

The sound of pigs being slaughtered no longer wake me at daybreak. The roosters crow at 5 and barking neighborhood dogs lay me to bed at night.

This place is just big enough for everyone to not necessarily know everyone, but know of everyone. For example, our landlord is “Jose Luis de hospital” because he’s a nurse at the hospital. Carlos my Portuguese teacher is “Carlos de professor,” because he’s also a prof at the technical school.

I got another haircut the other day. Again, just wanted a trim, but either my language is still horrible or they only do one cut – the afro-buzzcut. Once the barber ran the clippers over the top of my head, I ask him to go ahead and do my face. He pointed at my eyebrows. “Sta txao” (sta – chay-o) - They’re huge! - First time I’ve had a man primp my eyebrows. I won’t lie, it was kinda nice.

Okay, rant #1. Bare with me.
Microfinance is pretty cool. Especially Kiva.org, check out the ad on the right. The simple profiles make it easy to see who, what, when, where and how much these rising entrepreneurs need to develop their idea. The concept burns the barrier between the fortunate and the unfortunate.

Peace Corps has this thing called Peace Corps Partnerships. Volunteers can submit a project proposal to their director and beyond. Once it gets through the system, it’s posted on another site and people can donate.

You get your money back with microfinance, PCPP is all donation.

My point is, is that these two ideas support individual ideas and public projects, the two elements of community. Furthermore, because you get your money back with microfinance, some hippie could argue that these two ideas represent a new vision of banking and taxes.

What is a government? One dictionary definition is “the system by which a nation, state or community is governed.” The system. System for individual and social benefit. You get your money back with microfinance, banking, and you already forfeit some 15%+ of your paycheck to the government (for public works) through taxes. What if you kept your money in a place that helped people out? Or what if you had a choice where your taxes went?

Just throwin it out there.

Tried to explain Sudoku’s to some local boys during a HILUX ride to the beach one day. A HILUX is a small Toyota truck with a metal frame and benches to accommodate anywhere between 5 and 25 people. Anyway, I was doing a sudoku my parents mailed me and tried to explain to them how it works. The only thing I’m sure they understood was that Japanese people really like math.

You know how sometimes people take a break from drinking, ya know to let the liver dry out? They have a good way to phrase that here: “n sta na feria de beber.” It means, “I’m on a vacation from drinking.”

Sarah, a friend living in Hortilao, a village an hour and a half by car from Assomada but less than 10 miles as the crow flies, had a conversation with one of our administrative directors when he dropped her off at her new home, a home with no electricity and 30 minutes from fresh produce. Eloquently summing up the Peace Corps experience, he said, “Sarah, don’t make things too complicated - you come, you tell these people something they don’t know, you go home. That is all.”

Here’s a good Cape Verdean rule: if you ask someone out for a drink, you have to pay. Even if it’s just as friends.

The town is bustling with all the students in their little school uniforms and backpacks. I think I have the privilege of teaching the countries brightest kids. Assomada is a safe, relatively urban town, my students are well-mannered, motivated kids and the technical school has got everything a school needs: computers, an outdoor area for practical labs, even housing for students from other islands. The Escola Técnica charges the equivalent of about $30 a year to go there. The cost, as I understand, is more for incentive for the students to show up more than anything else. In the first few weeks, it seems to have worked.

Rant #2, three paragraphs long if you only like the sweets:
‘Yo, Blair’ – Recycled quote from Newsweek, the magazine all PC Volunteers in Cape Verde get. Guess it’s middle ground. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, so there’s this article about Wiki’s on there. (For those in the dark, wiki’s are open Internet forums to post information) Organizations are starting to realize the potential of this concept. Names like, Intellipedia (the name of the wiki used by 16 US intelligence agencies), WikiCongress (open forum used by Congress to vote on stuff), even the Green Party in Canada posted their platform on there to let people know and let people even make suggestions to what their plan should be… hmm. The guy who coauthored the book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott, said in reference to a wiki survey he’s currently conducting, “this could be the biggest change in the nature of democracy and the relationship between citizens and their state since the foundation of Western democracy.” That’s damn sexy.

“Transform the allocation of capital for social benefit.” – ashoka.com. Cool website. This was just a random quote from there. Alex’s step mom, Kate, works for them. They sponsor people who have ideas to make an impact on developing countries. Juxtapositionism?

Ahh, man this blog is getting pretty theoretical, ey? I’ll try to tone it back.

The class I teach is technical design (desenho técnico). It’s basically how to draw construction plans and understanding how they fit together. My students are 17 and 18 years old. Many will go to universities abroad and become architects and engineers. The first day, I thought I would be nervous when I walked into class, so I wrote at the top of my typed lesson plan, ‘don’t be a pussy.’ I introduced myself like a champ. Bring on the drawing plans.

Teaching is like having a conversation with 20 people. You can’t talk too much at one time or you’ll lose their attention. You need to ask them questions to make sure they’re engaged, always look to see if their eyes are on you or if they’re staring out the window or flirting with the person sitting next to them. If they’re flirting, stop what you’re saying and make fun of them. If they get embarrassed and the class laughs, you doing alright.

This place has no tolerance of homosexuals but it’s cool for men to hold hands. Hmm, so if a man washes clothes improperly, he’s a sissy, if he holds his friend’s hand in public, it ain’t no thing?

It’s not uncommon to see a child pushing an old tire with two sticks down the street. It’s also not uncommon to see this child entertaining three other kids running next to him and four others on the porch waiting to play. Some people argue intelligence can be measured by how well you occupy yourself when you have nothing to do. I like to think these people are right.