A long day, Island Money

I think I had the busiest day of my life today. If you were anyone I talked to though, you probably wouldn’t have thought so.

My eyes opened automatically at 630 because I knew I had many things to do.

At nine thirty, they were half an hour into the technical drawing class and my students were clearly bored with the lesson plan. I was teaching them how to take corresponding two-dimensional planes, connect them together and draw the figure in an isometric perspective, or three dimensions. I switched my game plan and had them cut out a hexagon figure with six connecting sides. It would be easier to show the top, front and side view.

The front office grudgingly let me borrow scotch tape to tape the sides together. and it took the students awhile to understand how to cut something out without sissors. When they figured out I was giving out tape, they swarmed the desk. The assignment was completely forgotten about and it turned into a fight for who could rob teacher of the most tape.

I got angry at first, then I laughed and took a deep breath. They completely forgot what they were doing when something more appealing, in this case an opportunity to take something from their teacher, presented itself. The bell rang, they couldn’t leave the classroom fast enough.

At eleven, Nick and I had a meeting with the other civil construction professors. We were trying to convince them to stick to what they said about letting us build a solar hot water heater with their students during their practical lab. One of them was fighting us, complaining that he had many things to teach that semester and couldn’t give us the time. The other two seemed indifferent.

Break for lunch at noon: fish and rice. At one I had to meet Carlos to look over a report for Alex then at two I had my seniors for their first day of the trimester.


Island Money, April 12
The first question I ask my seniors the first day of their last trimester was, “can anyone explain what is going on in Iraq right now?”
They paused, surprised by the seemingly irrelevant question.
“Bush gosta de guerra!” Bush likes war!
“Jobi pa Osama Bin Laden.” They’re looking for Osama Bin Laden.
One of them in the back laughed while he responded, “yeah, they can’t find him.”
Then, “Petrol!”

That’s right, OIL! I drew an ignorant map of the world focusing on the Middle East.
“In the year 2000, Saudi Arabia exported more oil than any other country in the world. Now, what country was and still is the biggest consumer of oil?”
“Estados Unidos!”
“That’s right. Basically, the government of Saudi Arabia realized how much money they made selling their oil to Americans and valued the protection Americans gave them against opposing forces. Over the years, the Saudi’s valued the oil and security more than they valued the respect of their people. Congruently, the American government also realized that the American people were very dependent on oil and made sacrifices to maintain that constant source of energy. Thus, oil has (arguably) become more important than accurately representing the best interest of their citizens.*

(*Some of the facts came from the beginning of the movie, The Kingdom.) more importantly though, after a long debate with my brother, I now recognize there are many reasons, in addition to oil, why the US entered Iraq in 2003… I was ignorant and oversimplified)

“In 1990, Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s horrible dictator, took his army and entered Kuwait, a small country also with lots of oil. He wanted in. The Saudi’s said, no. You can’t do this. Two groups of people offered help: Osama Bin Laden and his army, Al-Qaeda, who recently fended off the Russian’s who invaded Afghanistan in the 80’s, and the Americans, who armed Osama Bin Laden’s army during that war.

Osama wanted to defend Arabia from horrible dictatorship and George Bush Senior wanted to help out his friends. The Saudi’s went with the American army and told Osama they didn’t need help.

Osama got upset. He was mad he wasn’t given a chance to defend Arabia and had reason to believe there was major corruption going on within the Saudi Government.

Throughout the 90’s, he started bombing people. Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen… then… do you all remember this date?” They whispered the date as I wrote 11/9/2001 on the board.

We, us, all of us here will always remember that date. Until we die, we will always remember this date. This was when Osama attacked America. He took down two of the biggest buildings in America.
“Yeah, with planes.”
“Teacher, why did he attack those buildings?”
“Because those buildings were the World Trade Centers. That was where lots of business was done. Lots of buying and selling, lots of money changing hands. Osama thinks that when people make a lot of money, they get corrupt and lose sight of their core responsibilities as individuals. He’s delusional though because he’s taking out his anger on innocent people instead of the figureheads responsible for the wrongdoing. (yeah, this was more opinionated than anything, what isn’t nowadays though?)

“Now, when the US investigated the events from Sept 11, they found 15 of the 20 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

“In 2001, Bush’s son was president. He too liked the relationship his family had with the Saudi’s and didn’t really want to stir up anything that would put that relationship to chance. In 2003, he decided to start a war to remove Saddam from power. He came up with some reasons about weapons and involvement in 9/11, but they ended up not being true.

“So now in 2008, five years into the war, America has dislodged a somewhat stable, although atrocious, government in Iraq, not caught Osama Bin Laden, the guy suspected to be responsible for the 9/11, and waits for the next explosion to take the lives of any number of innocent people anywhere in the world. The borders are tight, the economy is struggling and the price of oil is dramatically increasing… last week, do you all know the price of oil even went up here, in Cape Verde. How much does it cost to go to Praia?”

“220 escudos.” It used to be 200 escudos for the 45-minute ride in a Hiace to Praia, the capital city.

“My point is this: what can Cape Verde do to help the situation of the world right now?”
“Americans can stopover here on the way to Iraq to fight.”
“Nooo, no, no. Why would they want to do that? It’s peaceful here. You shouldn’t want to bring war here.”
They knew that. They didn’t know what else to say. Since Cape Verde won their independence from Portugal in 1975 fighting a war with Guinea-Bissau, in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde has been a peaceful country. And every Capeverdean is proud of that.

“So what can you all do to help this situation? What can we do to help heal many of the open wounds in the world today?”
Pause.
“Okay… where did this whole story start?”
Short pause, “petrol.” Yeeesssss….
“Exactly. And what is petrol?” Pause. “Petrol is energy. It’s what the Saudi’s sold to get rich, what the Americans use more of than any other country and comprises 78% of the total energy consumption in Cape Verde. People predict the world’s oil supply will run out before we die – some estimates predict we have about half a century. We must begin to look for other sources of energy.

“So, how can we, out here in the middle of the ocean, help the situation in the Middle East?” Pause. “What do we have a lot of here?”

“We have lots of sun and lots of saltwater. And wind.”

“Correct. What can we do with those natural resources.”

“Fazi dessalinizador solar.” Make solar stills. They either said that because that’s what they thought, or because that’s usually the answer to anything off topic I talk about in class.
They continued though, “wind, solar, water… wave.”
“Hell yeeaah. Energy. We need to ween ourselves off our dependence on oil. We can do that by focusing on projects that use the natural resources we have around us: sun and saltwater. Look, there are jobs in this profession, there are people with money ready to pay us to build projects like the solar still. For anyone to try and tell you there is no job market in Cape Verde, tell them they are wrong.”

Nick and I have continued to expand the project. I wanted to etch into their minds how seawater and sun can be turned into jobs, food and money - thus lessening the country’s dependence on oil and giving young people a reason not to leave the country. On the board, I drew a diagram from start to finish.

It goes like this: dump the saltwater into a basin, have it trickle through a solar hot water heater, trickle that into a solar still. Collect the distilled water from the solar still. Use the distilled water for either drip irrigation or a hydroponics system. (This trimester they will draw plans for a hydroponics irrigation system.)

By the time I turned around, they were already copying down what was on the board. This never happens.

Theory, meet practicality. I think you two will get along well.


An experiment, April 12
After class the day I gave the energy lecture, I had my best students post their solar still designs from the second trimester in the hallway. Then the class gave them a round of applause. A group of 11th graders then grabbed me on their way out of class. They had asked me the day before to help them film a project for their construction class. I couldn’t say no to that. My eyes almost welled up when they ask me.

On the way to the site, they told me I needed to “experiment” with a Capeverdean woman. I told them women aren’t worth it. They’re not worth the stress in the head. Then they said I should have a baby. Two of them, about 18 years old, had one. One had two. I told them that would be more work. One day I’ll get to that, but right now my work is school. They nodded in approval.

Two hours later I was back in my house. 6pm. My head was thumping.

Zé buzzed. He is my friend from Guinea-Bissau who’s been here long enough to refer to himself as Capeverdean. Zé just opened a bar down the street and was expanding it into an Internet cafe. He had a crush on another Peace Corps Volunteer. Last weekend, he had me send her an email from the bar when we were both half drunk. She hadn’t yet replied.

“Brian, when I do things, I like to finish them. I like to do one thing and finish it before I move on. I can’t get past this thing with Katie. I can’t move on until I hear back from her.” He leaned over, almost bent in half, and took a deep breath. “Ahhh man. Life is difficult.”

“Ze, dude. She’s a woman. She doesn’t think like you do. You have a job and you do your job. It’s not the same when you deal with women. It’s tough, but you gotta shake her from you man, you’re not yourself.”

Women and money - men have to be cautious with both of them. If a man has too much of either, he feels falsely powerful and might do something irrational - like father a child before he’s ready or start a war over documents that never existed. If he has neither, sometimes things are harder than they should be - like respecting down time or buying food. Even the most powerful of men have struggled with women and money at one point in time, if not at the same time.

So, if you can’t live with em and can’t live without em, I guess men need to figure out a way to live with both, women and money. Until I decide to sacrifice my professional ambitions for the comfort of a relationship or have money be an incentive to work, I plan to keep myself obnoxiously busy doing what I’m doing. This way I won’t miss what I don’t have.