Ease on down the road...

Ola again from Cape Verde! First, hi to all the mom’s of other volunteers who are reading my blog! Don’t get too upset if your kids aren’t keeping a blog yet; training is unbelievably busy and crazy and I just happen to be one of those crazy people who get up at 6am on a Saturday to write this all out for you. Plus, lots of the other volunteers are much further away from internet café’s than we are, so they have less opportunity to upload stuff.

So before the good stuff (and pics of other volunteers for once), I thought I’d give a breakdown of a “typical” day in the life of a trainee (note: this is basically my typical day and many other volunteers are much different).

At 4am, the first animal wakes up. This is usually a rooster, unless it’s a cat or dog, in which case they have been barking or meowing since midnight off and on. I have found the best thing I brought with me to CV is earplugs (parents, send these to your kids as a welcome surprise!). The roosters continue until about 11am with their cock-a-doodle-do competition, meaning that one rooster will start, and another will answer, followed by another, so that there is rarely a break in their song. By around 6am, the goats join the chorus, and, because our house is one where people come to get water with their donkeys, they join in as well. Yippee.

On the fortunate nights where my earplugs don’t fall out, I’m up between 6 and 7. If I have time, I try to get some studying in of my flashcards, then iron my clothes for the day (something I never did at home but do here daily), make my bed, and get ready for my shower. Although I am very lucky to have running water and don’t have to take a bucket bath, I don’t have hot water, so every morning I am shocked awake by the cold water (with bucket baths at least you can boil the water to have a nice, warm bucket bath…then again, it is a bucket bath…). After that, I get dressed and have breakfast, usually either bread with cheese and a yogurt, or bread with egg and cheese. No complaints here, it keeps me going til lunch around 1. By 7:45 I’m off to class at another volunteers house (we rotate each week); for an hour we have a “cultural debrief” to talk about issues we might be having, followed by 2.5 hours of formal language class, followed by an hour of applied language in the community or with our host families, where we use our skills to talk to people. This is going much better than the beginning, and conversations are actually taking place; I think I can speak kriolu now nearly as well as I could speak French after 6 years in school (but that’s not really saying much). Lunch comes next, which for me is leftovers from the night before since my mom works as a hairdresser. And if I’m lucky, a short nap. Then back to school at 2 for more formal language, followed by more applied language or working on our projects or other activities for the Peace Corps. This week, for example, we have 6 things due, such as a small business questionnaire, a SWOT analysis, a journal entry from our INIDA trip, a community based survey, preparation for a PACA presentation and our appreciative inquiry interviews. Plus Tuesdays and Thursdays we have to travel to another city during the end of our lunch time and have 2 sessions on business or community development. And usually it’s really, really hot. See why we don’t really have time to write/call/blog?

We’re “done” technically at 5:30, but at that point we have to find time to continue our homework, study, talk with our families, wash clothes (by hand), help with dinner, watch nuvellas (really bad Portuguese soap operas, but a lot of families watch them and we’re supposed to integrate with our families, so…). Dinner is at 8, then if we don’t pass out right away we offer to help with dishes and/or get more studying in, and then pass out. I think I’m asleep by 9:30 each night, and I’ve found I need at least 9 hours of sleep, plus a nap, to function properly. This is far tougher than any semester at college, and every day provides new challenges.

Wednesdays are our center days, where we have to be in Asomada by 8am and spend the entire day in technical training sessions: health and safety, community development, adult learning styles, anything we might need to get buy in our first few months at site. These usually run into our lunch, so we don’t have time to head to the internet café after eating to check email (but we do have plenty of time to eat, don’t worry, and they give us two snack and coffee breaks too). It gets over around 5:30, though we frequently run over, so we don’t always have time after that to get to a computer either. This past week Josh and I were really late getting home because we lost track of time checking email and the news (um, btw, feel free to send us some updates on the election, the Times has been pretty sparse lately!). We’re lucky because we’re a married couple, so our host families assume we’re with each other, and though we are always home by curfew (8pm on weeknights, 10 on weekends), it gets dark by 7:30, and our village doesn’t have any street lights, and if it’s raining families tend to get very, very worried about us, so getting home after 7:30 isn’t a great idea…plus factor in we need to leave about an hour of travel time to get home…ok, so by now you get the picture that we don’t always get a lot of free time. This in and of itself makes life a little stressful, and coupled with the other things mentioned above, life during training is definitely a challenge.

Okay, that went on a bit longer than I’d hoped. Now, on to the update for the week! As I mentioned last week, we had plans for a hike on Saturday. After riding to Txada Tanque (Cha-da Tonk-eee) in a Hilux (with three goats), we walked about 2.5 hours on a flat but rocky and gravely riverbed type thing, with very little shade. It wasn’t terribly difficult, but I unfortunately developed a huge blister which started bothering me after about 1.5 hours. More on that later. The walk was gorgeous with the mountains above us and small village perched on those. We arrived at the “grotto” which was nothing like we expected: basically, we got to a rocky beach with very few other people. The most amazing part was the sound of the waves as they washed over the pebbles/rocks on the beach…it was beautiful, like those cd’s that play natures sounds, except it was in real life. A short walk away was this super cool huge cave with pink rocks “dyed” from the salt water. We played in there a bit, climbing around, then hit the water. It felt amazing after the hike, and we floated and talked and sunbathed and ate for hours. For the hike back, our guides (LCF’s who unselfishly spent their day off to take us) took us on another path, which happened to be an hour uphill. Ugh. For those in great shape, I know it was a walk in the park, but for the rest of us it was a challenge lol. But the views were amazing and I think we were all glad we went. We had dinner in Asomada for one of the trainees birthday and then headed home to totally pass our (oh yeah, this huge blister of mine had opened up and had gravel in it from the second hike, so I’ve had to do several “self surgeries” to remove the skin and dig the gravel out. It’s healing fine, just hurts to walk a bit, and keeping it clean is really hard given that it’s super dusty or muddy and the only shoes I can wear right now are flip flops).

The rest of the week was less eventful but busy with work. We had a session on women in CV and services offered through two organizations, plus a session on the HIV/AIDS situation in CV. Last night was a huge festa back in Txada Tanque. I think I’m getting the hang of these festa things…typically there is a long Catholic mass (over 2 hours) at the local church as the festas celebrate the patron saint of the village or something similar. After there is a procession, where I think people carry a statue of said patron saint through the streets and to…well I don’t know, I haven’t participated in this aspect yet. After that, the festivities start with tons of food and drinks (don’t worry Hank, we all behaved ourselves and made the Peace Corps proud, politely greeting everyone, using our new conversational skills, etc.). Interestingly enough, each family serves basically the same food at each house, and you are expected to eat at each house or the family thinks you don’t like their food and it’s rude. You learn very quickly to eat just a little at each house, even if you are hungry when you get to the first one. We have five volunteers in the village of Txada Tanque, so we went to five houses and ate five times. Around 5 or so, we made our way down into the village proper where the streets were filled with people and cars and food and music. We were looking for somewhere to dance a bit, but everything was too crowded so we just walked around and enjoyed the sights and sounds. It was a big taste of CV culture, and just as we were warned, it wasn’t very safe with the cars trying to drive through large groups of people. Our Peace Corps family looked out for it’s own, and some great new friends we met along the way helped keep us going in the right direction (away from cars). It started to rain, and the roads can be impassable in Txada Tanque when it rains, so we took off in the first available Hiace and made it home safe and sound.

Our group is meeting with the youth in our community today followed by an American dinner at my place – woohoo! Tomorrow, I finally get to assist in killing a chicken and my mom is going to teach me to make katxupa. I’m also making the family omelets for breakfast now that I have discovered they have zucchini. Josh is spending the whole weekend here this week, and I’m spending the weekend at his families next week; it’s too much work to go back and forth every day over the weekend.

And now, for some pictures; they're in opposite order, sorry, so you'll have to start at the bottom where the rainbows are and work your way up...I'll get used to this yet. Enjoy, and see you next week!