It would be impossible to describe every aspect of life in Cape Verde, every experience we are having, every new discovery or self awareness, every joy and pain. Change happens daily, and time is flying by.
But there are some experiences that are so magical, so beautiful, yet so simple that they need to be described, even though no matter what words are used the experience will still be out of reach for the reader. Still, we try to convey and share what we can, because happiness is meant to be shared. And so, this blog is about my recent moments of happiness.
My first happiness is a path. One particular section of road that cuts the distance between my house and Josh’s in half. I suppose that in and of itself would be enough to make the path a happiness, but that is only a small part of it. The journey begins before this patch of land, perhaps at Josh’s house, after saying goodbye to Nana, the 103 year old grandfather that sits on the ground and who I am lucky enough to drink tea with. It continues as people shout goodbye and see you later and stay longer after me, even though I will most likely see them again in an hour or so, down the short dirt road, past the growing corn stalks where the road turns into cobblestone, down the hill and up the other side until you reach the beginning of this path, which starts among the overgrown plants and trees that have flourished during the rain season and provide ample breeding ground for the mosquitoes that love dining on my ankles. This is where the magic starts.
The beginning of the path is dense with vegetation, so dense that sometimes you can’t hear anything outside of it. It’s not a long distance, but there is a brief yet distinct feeling of being in a tropical rain forest. It’s almost as if the temperature changes and the humidity rises for this small walk. You hear the bugs and bees buzzing and clicking around you, and sometimes but not often, birds singing. And it’s a bit frightening, because of the way the plants rustle with hidden life and the subtle smell of rot and a feeling of not knowing if something could jump out at you at any time…
And then you step out and all of a sudden the sun is high above you and the path is clear and dusty and on either side of you are small but growing corn stalks and there, in the midst of this scene and the middle of this path, is the most amazing site: hundreds of small grasshoppers or crickets or other sort of small brown and green jumping type creatures with wings that click when they fly, that blend with the ground just enough that you don’t notice them there until you are about to step on them and they spring up in front of you, three or six or a dozen at a time, like fountains squirting water, forming arcs on the path, jumping one after another after another as if the sea is parting before you. All this accompanied by that light clicking noise that sounds like dainty faerie wings might sound if it were they instead of grasshoppers bounding around you, and for a moment you think maybe it is, maybe when I started on the path I was in one world and when I ended up on the other side of the dense plants I ended up in another where faeries do flit around and play on the path in front of you while you walk, and you smile because the sun is warm on your face and the corn is growing and the faeries or bugs or whatever they are, are crisscrossing patterns in front of you and it is a beautiful thing.
This is my most favorite part of every day.
My second happiness has much more to do with my village and the reason I joined the Peace Corps in the first place (not that I can possibly complain about all the wonderful aspects of Cape Verde, but as many of us are finding, much of the beauty and “posh-ness” of Cape Verde is a façade and behind that is a country very much in need of the skills and talents of PC volunteers…but that’s a different blog entry). Last Sunday, our group of Youth Development trainees had another meeting with the youth of Mancholy. Unbelievably, 21 youth showed up, ages 16 to 23 (youth in CV has quite a different meaning than youth in America). We talked with them about their lives, their wishes for their village and what activities they wanted to do with us. They worked together for over an hour to come up with ideas for a Youth Day we are hoping to put on for our PST project and seemed extremely enthusiastic. We agreed to open the school twice a week so that the youth could have access to it, we planned a hike (my third happiness as you’ll soon see) and hopefully we’ll be painting the wall of the school shortly. In short, we got a really good taste of the type of stuff we might be doing when we get to site, and we all came away from it energized and excited. This is why I joined the Peace Corps. This is the point where it all makes sense. This is what I spent 20 months of my life working towards.
My third happiness is…indescribable. The youth of Mancholy wanted to take us on a “walk” to a place called Tabugal. We weren’t quite sure what we were getting into, but here were the details we had: the hike was 1.5 hours one way (not bad), we were going to this really cool place where you could pick fruit off the trees and eat it, and there were monkeys. Similar to the place we’d imagined two weeks prior, but this time we had enough people to back it up that we thought we’d give it a go.
We arrived at 10am on Sunday morning with only 2 youth. In addition, several other PC trainees had signed up to go with us, but weren’t there. At about 10:30, our numbers had increased to 6 – three trainees and three youth. The youth assured us we would pick up more on the way. Okay. Oh, and by the way, we’d been hearing throughout the week that Tabugal was a three hour hike…some people even said 5 hours. And Helena, Josh’s mom, told us not to eat the fruit or swim (apparently now there was swimming) and that the monkey’s threw fruit at you…so things were looking a little grim. But we had promised we would go and were lugging gallons of water, so what the heck. We hit the road with apprehension in our hearts and a giant bag of pipoka (popcorn) in our backpack.
True enough, as we walked through Mancholy, more and more youth joined us. Soon we were up to about 10 youth and our group. It was our first time actually seeing the back end of Mancholy which was as spectacular as the rest of the view. Since Josh and I had taken up rock climbing, the hike was both more visually stimulating (given the awesome rocks we were passing…Johnny, you need to come visit and check this place out, tons of first assents for ya!) and easier, given much of the terrain was less than stable (ie I was glad I’d learned balance from climbing). We climbed down from Mancholy to the “bottom” (remembering how mountainous Santiago is) and continued the hike.
Our first “surprise” was the small waterfall that we were expected to navigate and climb down and across. Rather it was a 20 ft tall dam that you walked across, and on the other side you had to climb down some sloping yet stable rock, jump across a small creek, and continue close to the wall on the other side, cross back over and you’re there. Whether or not this sounds challenging, it was a surprise to us, and again I was thankful for the approaches I’d done with climbing – for me it was a breeze because I was confident in my balance and my feet (the shoes didn’t hurt either).
As beautiful as that scene was, on the other side was a staircase that led to something even more spectacular. The giant rock walls coupled with the cobblestone staircase, the sound of water trickling everywhere and the lush, tropical greenery…it took us a while to let it soak in. Whatever the rest of the day held for us, this made it worth it already, and we truly felt sorry that our fellow trainees missed out on this experience. Little did we know what was to come.
We continued our walk through thick vegetation and began to really realize what was happening. It was like on this island of little water, a rainforest had sprung up in the middle of nowhere, and there was a constant flow of water that we were following. The water, apparently, is a natural spring from the ground and feeds these miles of palm trees and orange trees and banana trees and mango trees and avocado trees and…the list goes on. It also houses the infamous fruit-throwing monkeys, which we were not fortunate enough to see as our group continued to grow until we were approximately 20 strong and not so quite. Where all these youth came from, we’re not sure, but we were thrilled to have them with us and to get to know them. They were amazing navigators and the most hospitable hosts you could hope for, and we now have some truly wonderful Cape Verdean friends.
After a couple of hours, we stopped at an old house for a break to eat the oranges we’d just picked off the trees, though we were fortunate that the sun was not so hot that day and the clouds were keeping us cool. We asked if we were here, if this was Tabugal, and we realized that Tabugal wasn’t a destination, it WAS the hike, the whole place since we’d hit the dam/waterfall was Tabugal. This also accounted for the confusion on time. It was an hour and a half to hike to Tabugal…then another two hours to hike THROUGH it…and another two hours to hike out. By this time none of that mattered, we were having the most amazing time, and yet the best was still yet to come.
I had brought my iPod with me and a speaker and we played music and danced and passed some snacks, and more youth joined in…apparently they had thought the day was excellent for a hike as well and we continued on with about 30 of us. A few minutes later, someone shoved a coconut in my hand. “Bebe” he said, and we all sipped fresh coconut water through a sugarcane straw, then broke it open to eat the flesh inside. It was delightful but disappointing as there was only one and so many of us to share. Wait wait, they told me, and 10 feet later we were standing in the middle of a shaded grove, watching one of our new friends climb 30 or 40 feet up a tree to fetch coconuts for us. Down they came, one after another after another, until we each had our own coconut and then some, and our friends began breaking and chopping them open with their huge knives (there are many knife wielding folks in Cape Verde), drinking them straight from the top or making sugarcane straws, drinking them dry and then breaking them open to eat. My wish for you all is to have this experience sometime in your life. Already, only a day later, it feels like a dream. What I wouldn’t give for a fresh coconut right now.
We hiked on, drinking in not only coconut water but the sights and sounds, scaling cliffs (not really), hopping over and through streams, running from random roaming cows (again, an exaggeration) and then stopped for lunch under and in a tree next to an old grogue house, where we ate and sang and danced some more (iPods are a wonderful invention). Everyone brought food and shared, enjoying the communal generosity of the Cape Verdean people that we have experienced since the day we arrived. Then, we started on the hour or so hike to the ocean…because it wouldn’t be an outing without a quick bath in the sea.
It’s good to have guides in Cape Verde, and to pay attention to warning signs in the ocean. For example, there were people already there, swimming in one particular place, then more people swimming about 100 feet away with no one in between. Stay close to us and don’t go far out, they told us, and we could feel the pull of the ocean even where we stood. Again our friends were looking out for our rather unschooled American behinds (it was rather embarrassing for them to take care of us as much as they had to on our hike, but the reality was everyone needs a guide their first time out, and we wouldn’t have ever known about this place to begin with if it weren’t for them). After our swim, we were a quick 20 minutes to Riberia di Barka, another town where PC trainees live. We stopped in for a quick cold, refreshing drink (ahhh I have found diet soda in CV and it is delightful) before hopping on a Hiace at 6pm, 8 hours later, bruised and scratched and sunburned and exhausted and exhilarated from the best day we have had here yet and easily one of the best days I’ve ever had in my life…which is saying a lot given the amount of fantastic days Josh and I have shared with each other.
I know this is long as my posts always are, but I hope sharing my happiness with you will bring a smile to your face…and possibly encourage a visit to the tiny specks in the middle of the Atlantic that we now call home.
(Another HI to Dacia’s mom, she’s doing awesome and yes, she enjoyed the hike as much as Josh and I did. And only fell once.)
Because we had so many amazing pics, I’m uploading them to Flickr so it takes up less space on the blog. Hopefully these few will give you enough of a taste to see more!
(These are only part of the photos right now, the rest Iºll have to upload to flickr later as Iºm out of time!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doveandjoshua/sets/72157606983632707/
Ti logu,
Dove (and Josh! He’s doing awesome too! I promise!)
