Starting the Second Week

Sunday, July 27, 2008-6:49PM (CVT)
I’m here getting ready to start my second week at the homestay. I really seems as though I have been here forever but I am also reminded that it has only been a week every time someone speaks to me in Kriolu because I rarely understand the first time. My Portuguese is progressing at a natural pace and I feel confident that I will be where I need to be in a few months time. Unfortunately, like other African countries, the European language is spoken in business situations while the local language is spoken everywhere else which is basically all the time. What the Portuguese will help with is when I am writing grants proposals to the government when I get to my site and start my secondary project which I think will have something to do with nutrition and physical health.
I guess I should be describing some of my daily experiences so basically yesterday I went to a festa in a town that is about 30 minutes away. We rode in what they call a “Yass” which is basically a skinny minivan which serves as a taxi. Its not the typical taxi that fits four people tops but instead you just pile as many people in a possible and the driver drives as fast and reckless as he can to get you to your destination. Different Yass’s go to different places so one may be taking all of passengers to Praia while another will be taking all to Assomada and so on. The Third Worlders know what I’m talking about because I’m sure there is an equivalent in their country. In Trinidad these are called “maxis.” So we basically got to this festa at 11AM. Don’t know what kind of party starts in the morning but basically it was some religious holiday so many people in the town went to mass which I guess was about 2.5hrs long and then afterwards you’re supposed to go around to the houses of the families you know and eat and drink until the night when the partying and dancing starts. The country’s devotion to their religion is fairly comical. Go from mass straight to getting drunk. Ohwell, to each his own. For me, I did not go to mass because mass is one of the most boring and dreadful experiences that I have ever had and a Cape Verdean mass is just as boring as any mass anywhere I’m sure. While in Chadalain (the town of the festa) I definitely realized that I got shafted on the housing situation. Some of the other Peace Corps trainees houses and rooms are ridiculously nice. One kid basically has a rooftop apartment and another is living in a legit American standard house while I still have a random stray dog that roams through my house periodically. Its okay though. I did not come here to live like that any way so I’m definitely not too jealous. It would have been nice though.
The real problem with these types of festas is the food. Though a lot of the food here is great, after one week I find myself already getting tired of it because everything eats the same thing and the selection is very limited. Also, you can never trust the cleanliness of the preparation. Since it is rainy season now there are a lot of flies and when people put food out it is inevitable that the flies will get on them which is not even the bad part. It’s the fact that food is not always cleaned properly which would basically entail soaking it in chlorine. Even more, there is this one dish that is made up of beans some other vegetables and pig skin. Though pig skin sounds bad enough to me I would probably eat it if was cleaned properly but the problem is that you can still see the hair on the pig skin. Definitely was not about to eat that. This all goes to say that yesterday and this morning diarrhea was definitely happening for me. Loose bowels are always fun. It was not as bad as before though. I’m good now. I have come to realize that I can’t eat as recklessly as I would like to. By 6 or so I think everybody was beat and we headed home in this pick up, migrant worker looking truck thing. Any of us could have easily fallen out but I guess its normal. I definitely felt like an illegal immigrant crossing the border of something.
Besides that nothing crazy has really been happening. I’ve been mostly spending time in the community and hanging out with my host family who continuously laughs at my bad Kriolu and feeds me every second. As far as meeting people in the community, most do not recognize unless told that I’m an American. Some get really excited and intrigued when they realize that I am an American while others don’t. I definitely do not get the same reaction as white Americans though which is good and bad. Can be annoying to see brain-washed Cape Verdeans worship white people like they are something better but at the same time once I learn the language I’ll be able to see things in the country that other people won’t.
Final thought I guess comes from this “American Apartheid” book I’m about three-quarters of the way through. Basically its about the construction and maintenance of the American ghetto and how this is the root of race relations in the United States. Basically goes from the late 1800s through to the present and shows how policies and actions in the United States has held onto segregation through discriminatory housing practices. It shatters the idea that class is more influential the race. Anyway, it made me think about the segregation on an international scale. Why is it that every country that is made up of mostly black people is of the Third World? On top of it, it seems like the poorest countries have the darkest people which are generally in Africa, the middle income countries usually have brown or lighter skinned people like India, Brazil, etc, and the richest countries have the whitest people. I’m not saying that its all based on this and there are definitely exceptions like Afghanistan and Paraguay but in general the correlation holds. Begs further thought about a seemingly internationally universal conception of skin color and maybe the systematic construction of an “international ghetto.” Even, here in Africa, the northern African countries are far more advanced that those of the Sub-Sahara. Is it just coincidence that their people are lighter-skinned? I guess you could say that they more involved in the Middle Eastern economy but Cape Verde for instance is not. Here there is a far higher standard of living than most African countries. Is that also a coincidence that people here are lighter-skinned? Who knows. Just interesting to think about it. Anyways, I’m out. Get at y’all later.