Backlog of blogs from PST

Here´s a bunch of stuff to catch you up from training...

Journal entry on thoughts about your Community Project.
The day we learned that we would be planning and implanting projects in Sao Domingus I was really excited and a little nervous. With only four weeks to create and carry out a project in a town we are still getting to know, I had in my mind that whatever we do must not be too complicated or difficult to carry out. Yasmin’s idea of building a movie theater in town was a great idea but a little unfeasible for us to accomplish in 4 weeks so it turned into a community movie night. We’ll have it at the Polivalenti where a lot of people can attend, show a movie that will be entertaining to the community and have someone relate an issue in the movie to the problem in Sao Domingus. It sounds like a great idea on paper but I don’t know how well it will really play out. After two weeks in, I’m a little scared that it will fall through.
We still need to meet with people, reserve the space, choose a movie, get people to participate, find a speaker, advertise, and actually implement the event. With only two weeks and no set date to do the project, I’m very worried that it won’t happen. There also seems to be a lack of time to figure out the details, actually talk to people about the project, and get people together to discuss what we want to do. We’ve already hit a few setbacks with one of our key people being out of town and on a boat to another island and lack of communication between the PCTs who are implementing the project. I’m hoping that we can get our act together and make it really happen. I’m really excited about the project idea and want it to be successful but I also want to be realistic about what we can do and how much time we have to do it. I feel like we should have been told on week one that we would be doing projects so we would have a lot more time to plan and think about them and incorporate different techniques that we learn into our project planning as it happens.

Journal entry on HIV/AIDs and other Social Problems in CV and the US.
I find it hard to compare HIV/AIDs and other social problems in Cape Verde and the United States because they both have a lot of the same problems. Everywhere you go in the world there are problems with STDs, substance abuse, unfair treatment of people for a variety of reasons, etc. When it comes to sex education in Cape Verde, we’ve been told that people have the information but there is a problem with taking it and using it. It’s difficult in every culture to get people to put what they know into practice or to change what they previously do. People in America do not seem any more likely to use condoms than people in Cape Verde despite knowing the consequences. What does work in America is the shock and scare factor. Show people pictures of terrible diseases that they could get and put fear in the American public and then you can change their practices. I don’t know if it works like this in Cape Verde but it seems to do a good job in US society.
What I do think is important socially in Cape Verde is the gender and development component. I think that women’s groups, especially micro-finance, are key to Cape Verde’s development and empowering women. I’m not an expert by any means but from what I’ve heard, helping women reach their potential has been very beneficial to Cape Verdean society. I also think that there needs to be more attention paid to men and teenage boys. From what I have observed, the fathers are not around the family all that much and young boys are missing out on positive male role models who can show them that drinking at the bar is not the only activity they can partake in. Even on a family trip to the beach, all of the adult men were absent. It was very bizarre to me that a “family trip” consisted solely of women and children. I’m not sure how to get the fathers more involved in children’s lives or how to work with teenage boys but I see a lot of potential in working with this group.

Intercultural communication and adjustment skills- Describe an interesting experience you had in Cape Verdean culture and share how you plan to use it in the future by looking at from different perspective.
I normally keep a personal journal and thought I would take something that I had previously written and expand since it describes one experience I’ve had that really gave my perspective a turn.
“The electricity has been inconsistent lately due to the fact that a Portuguese company is supposed to pay the bill and forgets about our small island nation and forces the electric company to turn off our lights until it is paid. It can be really annoying at times but I really enjoy eating by candlelight and learning mornas from my family. My brother and I will often play cards- I taught him how to play “War” and he has taught me a few games. Cape Verde’s style of cards is way different from what we are used to in the US. They always take out the 8s, 9s, and 10s because they want only 10 different types and the rank is switched, Ace is the highest, then 7, then King, Jack, Queen, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The society here is pretty male dominated so the “male” cards are all higher than the female. Its kind of hard to get used to but this is quite the norm in many societies outside the US.”
I feel pretty well traveled, at least through parts of Africa but I have yet to encounter a place where the cards are all switched around because of the function of the society. Hearing that the Queen is ranked lower than the Jack was really weird for me to accept as well as made me have to think twice about playing a card during our nightly games. In the house, the women are the ones who clean, cook, make sure their kids get to school and also work outside the house. With all the work that they do on a daily basis, it makes you wonder why they wouldn’t be “ranked” higher in society. I think knowing how the society functions here will help me with future projects during my service. I would really like to do some work with empowering women and making sure that they feel like they can reach their potential. It has taken years and years of empowerment and women’s groups to bring something that can still be argued as inequality in America and it is something that will not change in one day. Learning about the card ranks really gave me a wake up call to how males dominate society here and I think just being more aware of it encourages me more to work with women.

7.11.06

Here’s a fun story from today. If you ever start learning a new language you are bound to make mistakes. A lot of words may be similar but say the wrong word and you’re either offending someone or saying something bad. In Kriolu, the word coku means coconut. So when I tell someone I am allergic to coconut I’d say “Ami alergico di coku.” If I accidentally say “coco” I am saying poop. I was warned of this a few days ago by a current PCV and really understood today when my 3 year old brother and his friends all had to go to the bathroom to “tem coco” or literally, “have poop”.

This evening I had an embarrassing moment. I was on my way home with my 11 yr old host brother and had just finished escorting a friend of mine home. A man was in the street saying something I didn’t understand but was standing there making what appeared to be strange arm movements and running in place. Since we keep talking about drunk people in Cape Verde I assumed he was drunk and turned to my host brother and said, “Ael moka” thinking I had said, “he is drunk.” He laughed at me and said that the man said that I was strong and was making muscles and running in place because he had seen me running in the morning with my friends. Then when we got in the house he told his mom what had happened and she corrected my bad Kriolu and told me that “moka” means “sex,” The word I wanted to use was “moku” meaning drunk. Once again we all laughed me telling my brother that the old man was having sex. Way to go Jules!

Kriolu classes are going well so far but it’s still very overwhelming. We’ve only been here for two days but I already feel I speak better Kriolu than I spoke French when studying in Senegal. Ha. I’m still not exactly sure what the development track entails but at least I have a better picture of Cape Verde and what its priorities are in development. I think this will help me focus my projects when I get to site.

I’ve got a few ideas already for things I want to do when I become an official volunteer. When we were out running this morning I saw a group of people walking together for exercise. I thought it would be a great idea to start a walking group in my community where they can meet a few times a week and walk and chat together as well as maybe have a few classes on health and nutrition and the importance of exercise. It would also be a good way to integrate into the community.

Another idea I have is to work with young women to form a futbol team and work on women’s empowerment. I was disappointed to see that no girls were playing soccer at the stadium and I was really stoked to play. They tell me I can play tomorrow and we did end up on another field and played around sunset but I think I have a few contacts that may be good resources for starting a team and helping women in the community.

In the past, Community Development volunteers have been given one specific assignment or project they are assigned to but from what I hear, this year we will each be given a few projects so we can find a good match. I think this will be very beneficial in making contacts in the community and getting a step in on working on numerous projects simultaneously. I’m really excited about it.

Time for me to go to bed. A ti logo.

7.27.06

There’s so much to write about I don’t know where to begin. I’ve been in Cape Verde now for about 3 weeks and each day flies by. We spent the first 3 days in Cape Verde in the capital city, Praia, at a school called Madre Teresa Residencial. Its rented out while the school is on summer break.

When you join the Peace Corps you’ll hear the phrases “patience and flexibility” quite often. Our first bout with these words came rather quickly as our flight plans changed before we even left the states. Instead of flying through Amsterdam we ended up flying through Paris and Dakar and ended up in two groups instead of one because of the lack of seats available. I ended up in the first group which spent an extra day in Praia. The other group arrived the next night after spending a relaxing day on the beaches of Dakar.

Three days later we had one Kriolu class down and were off to Sao Domingus to meet our host families. I was a little nervous to go into a situation where pretty much all I could say was “my name is, how are you, and good.” It turned out pretty great and I had an 11 yr old boy and my host mom there with huge smiles on their faces and big hugs to welcome me. The 11 yr old brother’s name is Michel (pronounced Michelle but he’s not a girl, its how Portuguese names are). I also live with a 3 yr old brother, Fred (eriko) but most people call him Fefeo. He is really cute and the two of us share of love of mangos. He also loves cars and putting anything he can find in his mouth, probably the reason why so many of his toy cars have all been ripped to pieces. My host mom’s name is Anita and she is so wonderful. I have a lot of fun chatting with her in the afternoon when she gets home from work (she works at a civil registry place) and asking a million questions about everything. My host dad’s name is Dida and I’m still not sure what he does but he does have a car which is pretty rare in Cape Verde. There’s also a sister, Cynthia, who is studying French in Dakar and a brother, Ronnie, who lives with his grandmother and teaches sports or something related to sports at the high school. Just so you get an idea of how all the families are related here, another PCT’s mom is my mom’s sister, and her husband’s sister is another PCT’s mom and it keeps going from there. Anyways, the community here is very close and pretty much if something happens, the entire town knows within the hour. Keeping in the same fashion, the same happens between PCTs.

The electricity has been inconsistent lately due to the fact that a Portuguese company is supposed to pay the bill and forgets about our small island nation and forces the electric company to turn off our lights until it is paid. It can be really annoying at times but I really enjoy eating by candlelight and learning mornas from my family. My brother and I will often play cards- I taught him how to play “War” and he has taught me a few games. Cape Verdian’s style of cards is way different from what we are used to in the US. They always take out the 8s, 9s, and 10s because they want only 10 different types and the rank is switched, Ace is the highest, then 7, then King, Jack, Queen, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The society here is pretty male dominated so the “male” cards are all higher than the female. Its kind of hard to get used to but this is quite the norm in many societies outside the US.

I’ve been asked to colead a session on developing projects for our Community Development section next week since another girl and I both have significant project experience. This has got me thinking a lot about projects I’d be interested in doing and how to go about doing them. Last weekend, we took a trip to a town called Rue Vaz where we saw a meeting between two women’s microcredit groups who came together to talk about what they have done and for the more established group to show how their community has changed since the formation of the group. It was really fascinating and I’m really interested in helping a women’s group with microfinance. I had a conversation with my neighbor the other day about the reasons why she will not go to university next year. It turns out that right now there is only one general college in Cape Verde and it is private and expensive. There is also a teacher’s college but its not really what she wants to do. The government is currently working to unite the two schools and create a public University of Cape Verde but I don’t know how long it will take and what it will cost people. Anyways, there are not very many local scholarships available, only ones for school in other countries, and I would really like to work with the local government and organizations to create scholarships for women to go to school for higher education. The women in this country do everything and mostly inside the house. It would be great if they could continue education and really get to follow through with their dreams. For some like my neighbor, it seems that these often fall short when feeding 7 people is your main priority.

Tomorrow we have a CD fieldtrip to an orphanage which will be really great to see. Fieldtrips are the best tool we’ve had so far to really see where we’ll be working and what we’ll be doing. We’re still feeling the “working for a government, need to know information basis” right now which can be frustrating but we’ll find out everything in due time. And by everything I really mean our sites and who we’ll be working with. I’m off to watch novellas with the family. Ti logo.