no sleep

My roommate Alex and I interviewed a local farmer named Domingos. He uses some very innovative approaches to making water and keeping his plants from getting thirsty in the Serra Malagueta National Park.

Just before 7. Morning run. The novelty has worn off and it’s more painful to get out of bed. Sometimes I still do - bones crackle, eyes still half closed. I slip on my shoes and descend a flight of stairs. By the time I get my feet moving on the cobblestone road, Assomada is in full swing: the two teams for the second game have already lined up on the basketball court and women are hawking fish from the early catch. The men mixing concrete at the new market see me run by. When they meet my eyes, I notice something oddly normal about their faces - crisp as cold water. It’s daybreak and Cape Verdeans have no sleep in their eyes. My hand instinctively flicks a piece of goo from my eye I hadn’t yet rubbed out. I wonder, how do they stay so fresh? My bet is on their tranquilo lifestyle rather than some product they apply before going to bed.

“Kal estado di undi”
“Georgia. Konch Georgia? ...Sta perto di Florida.”
“Ah, Florida, ami konch Florida. Ami oja na televisor txao Cubanos bai pa Florida.”
The only thing this guy knew about the State of Georgia was that it was near a state where he watched Cubans get arrested because they tried to sneak into the US by boat.

‘So, what else is going on at home?’ I ask, flipping the conversation back to my parents.
‘Not much, House is about to start a season of reruns. The Screen Writers Guild is on strike. I’m pretty sure it’s because of the YouTubers,’ dad says.
My mom adds, ‘hey, there is a new season of Dancing with the Stars. That should be good.’
The evolution of Americana at its finest - in my generation, we’ve gone from the Huxtables and the Tanners to Real World and Dancing with the Stars and now finally to whatever you can think of minus boobs and profanity.
Hey, Screen Writers Guild - you better stay at the picket line. The only hope TV has of survival is by showcasing the gems of the Internet through some kind of voting system like this.

Some stats (socio-economic indicators for Cape Verde (UNDP 2002)):
Cape Verde Sub-Saharan Africa Developing Countries
GDP per capita (PPP US$) 5000 1790 4054
Life expectancy 70 46 66
Infant Mortality Rate (per 1000) 29 108 61

Here’s another one: 52% of Capeverdean income comes from external sources. 48% of those sources are from family members abroad.

Up until a few weeks ago, I tried to be the cool teacher - talking about stuff like sex and hip hop as long as we got through the lesson plan, focusing on teaching just what they need to know, not being too strict on discipline. Because class was lax, I figured they would do the little things I asked them to do. I was wrong.

Seven weeks in, I gave my first homework assignment. Six out of eighty nine students transposed two polygons the four ways we discussed in class. I hounded them and gave out minus’s. They were devastated. The rest of the day they did everything I said because they feared receiving another minus for the day.

Of course, I dwelled on this and thought about how the whole education system needs to be reshaped. Here’s what I propose:

Colonial education emphasizes two things: the absorption knowledge and how to follow directions. These two concepts are important, but they are only a means to accomplishing something.

To accomplish something, two other things are far more important: self-motivation and productivity. If you’re not self-motivated, you don’t care about what you’re doing and if you don’t produce, you’re not doing your job.

For example, everything you do, in terms of a job, starts with an idea.
Once you have an idea, you jump on a track that is eerily similar among any job:

Development of an idea
Motivation – follow directions – acquire knowledge – produce

You need to be motivated to act on this idea and picture what you want it to look like when you finish. When you focus on the end product, you come up with a set of directions you need to follow to make your idea come to fruition. As you follow your proposed directions, you acquire the knowledge necessary to carry out your idea. Eventually, with patience, you produce.

The first step is motivation. As a teacher, you can motivate one of two ways: through fear or through inspiration. Fear is easy - use authority to make your students fear you will give them a mark that will somehow damage their future. That’s old school. Inspiration is what is new. Inspiration is what will change with the world. Make ideas hip. Make them sexy. Use inspiration to teach students about ideas that relate to their life and their community. Do this, and they will want to come to school.

So, I propose schools teach kids two things: the importance of following through with something you said you would do and an understanding that you have to do something.

To do this, schools should lead projects for students to do that applies chalkboard theory on a project that leaves them with something they can be proud of. If they focus on producing, the theory will sink in and the students will feel a sense of achievement having finished something they started.

I won’t be assigning any more homework from now on. I figure it’s my job to put a sexy face on drafting so these kids will think about ideas in their sleep.

Speaking of which, Nick and I finished the solar still. Everyone is really excited: the Ministry of Agriculture has given the idea a nod, a number of farmers already stoked to try it out and we’re planting seeds in our seniors ears to turn this into a business when they graduate. We got the hype - I just hope the damn thing makes water. We will see, we put water in it tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.























A neighbor of mine helped Nick and I move gravel to school the other day. It was the last step we needed to do before we could pour the concrete basin for the solar still. Once we dropped off the stone, Nick offered to buy him a round of grog. Instead, Lixi invited us into his home for a whiskey. First, he showed us his house. Lixi just finished building a dojo where he has already begun giving karate lessons. He then showed us his homemade workout equipment - metal rods coming out of the wall used for dips and pull-ups, pulley’s with a block of concrete for arm curls and a metal rod with the concrete balls on either end for benching.

We sat down and had a grog. Then another grog. Then some fries, then a whiskey, then some fried eggs and sausage. Over the course of two and a half hours, we talked about everything we possibly could think of. After the first hour had passed, I found myself looking at the clock – we were talking about the festa in Assomada, for the third time. Lixi suggested we get a coffee in town. Nick sucked it up and went out with him. I walked home and thought if I should feel guilty for trying to leave the marathon chega (chega – to arrive somewhere, or hang out with someone).

So much of everything is balance. You can get better at it, but the scale is always in motion, so it’s something you can never perfect. How much do you give, how much do you take? Do you do what you want to do or do you do what other people want you to do? How do you know if you’re right? No matter how well you think you can read a situation, there are always other factors, other temptations to swing your decision. In my case, I’m always a sucker when there’s a small glass of whiskey sitting squarely under my nose.

I ask Alex one night, “What’s the definition of intelligence?”
“Thinking quickly and deeply, well,” she responded at a pace that left no question she had this conversation before.
What about modesty? Is that part of intelligence? If you’re modest, it might allow you to think quickly and deeply, better, because you’re thinking only for the sake of thinking and not for the sake of appearing intelligent.

The one natural resource the world has left is the infinite quantity of human ingenuity.
-The Economist

Have you ever said to yourself, when I’m an old man I’d like to be able to say…?
Let me share with you a letter I’m writing to myself I plan to read when I’m 100:

Hey you wrinkled faced bastard. It’s you 76 years ago. I have no children yet (that I know of) and don’t really plan on getting married. The whole idea doesn’t make sense to me, putting a paper contract on a personal relationship. Babies? Yeah, probably, mainly though to satisfy mom, I know she wants grandkids really bad. It might be cool though to leave something behind once your body gives out. I’m sure by the time you read this, people will have figured out that we won’t be here forever, humans that is... I’m sure we will have identified our minds and the physical world as two parallel realms… both coexisting through time, each dependent on the other and indefinitely transcending solely into the realm of our mind through immaculate communication…

It’s weird, the more mobile people become through technology, the less we have to move. When people started out, they had to move around to get food and stuff, then they started farming and domesticating animals… it escalated from there. Now I can find work, give some dude in Africa money to start a business, chat with friends, watch porn and read the news all at the same time. We’re mobilizing our minds and stabilizing our bodies, at the same time. Wait, why am I telling you this, you’re probably reading this linked into some network of life hovering in a pod over the ocean.

Anyway, so what’s it like? Oh wait, I can’t ask you questions cuz you can’t go back in time... unless…? Hmm, I bet by the time your lady friend’s boobs sag as low as yours do someone might have figured out how to travel through time. If you can, will you please send me some kind of a message? Like show me what kind of tattoo you wish you had gotten, if any. You know, the biggest deterrent I have in getting a tattoo is that whatever I put on there now, I might regret later on. Let me know what kind of tattoo you wish you had gotten. I guess it’ll have to be something that blows my mind, leaving no question it was you.

What’d people do about oil? Did we go nuclear? Anyone drop a bomb? Or did we take it all the way back to solar and wind energy type stuff? Are we really approaching the end of nationalism?

Enough about you, I’m young and selfish and needy and want to talk more about myself. Work is okay. Sometimes it sucks though, my boss is an asshole. He gives me no respect despite me giving everything I got. Guess that’s it though, that’s the motivation. The more people give me shit, the more I can’t get lazy and relax. Well, I sure hope you’re enjoyin the hell out of it now. You’re laughing aren’t you, oh yeah, the joke’s on me because I’m young and naïve and think I know everything. Okay, I guess it all starts with laughing. Here’s what I’m gonna do: everytime I feel angry or anything other than laughter, I’m gonna picture you sitting in that fat leather chair wearing a robe some foxy lady bought you for an anniversary you forgot about, taking some kind of medicine for something dumb I’m gonna do between now and… now your time... when I get angry, I’m gonna step back and see if there’s something I can do to fix it. If I can, I’ll do it, if I can’t, then it’s someone else’s fault. That’s when I’ll laugh with you at how dumb people are. People, they’re the worst aren’t they?

Okay, well, I probably made you’re day cuz you’re old and bored and don’t have anything else to do with yourself… or is it that what you figure out as you get older: that the most important thing there is, is to be able to watch your children live and prosper and be able to see a reflection of yourself in what you left behind. Nothing really matters as much does it?

Well, old man, I’m here. I’m you, I’m tryin to do those things you wish you did but never got around to. Course, I hope by the time I get to be your age, I won’t have missed that much.