Yesterday was probably the most interesting and fun day that I’ve experienced in Maio so far. We woke up early in our normal fashion since I’m convinced Cape Verde does not want me to get a full night’s sleep. As part of the tradition of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, people often eat apples and honey to represent a sweet new year. Since the honey here costs about 4 US dollars, I decided it wasn’t in my budget for the day so I substituted peanut butter for my honey and ate apples and peanut butter for breakfast.

We were really excited because today we were going to get in a car and drive around the entire island of Maio. In normal Cape Verdean style, our driver from the camara showed up about 45 minutes late. I think my roommate was a little worried he wouldn’t show but believe me, 45 minutes late is nothing. In Uganda I waited up to hours for our car to show to go on our daily activities. Once we got in the car we picked up a few people and headed to clockwise around the island, stopping Calheta to pick up my counterpart. From there we drove towards the north of the island and stopped in the Morrinho where we met the president of the community development organization in Morrinho and a friend of my counterpart. We followed the road to Cascabulho where we met another community development association president. Since the good road stopped and our vehicle wasn’t equipped to go off-roading, we head back back towards Calheta and saw a project that was put together between the development organization of Calheta, the US embassy, and the camara of Maio. It was a place where they grow saplings which are then sold to people and places to be planted. There are about 10 women who basically run the show and it was neat to see a project that a previous volunteer had helped with. We then drove back through Calheta, through the town of Morro, back through Villa, and around the southern part of the island in the towns of Barreiro, Figueira da Horta, and Ribeira de Joao. Another day we will go into the interior of the island with a jeep-like vehicle.

By the time we got back we were pretty ravenous for lunch and scarfed down one of our favorite Cape Verdian dishes which has become one of our staple lunches (the others being tuna melts or pasta). This dish that we make is Cape Verdian style tuna salad. Here’s the recipe for you all to try out back in the states:

Ingredients:
Can of tuna
Can of chickpeas
Can of kidney beans
One onion (chopped)
Salt, pepper, other spices to taste (we pretty much mix in everything we have which includes: all purpose seasoning, garlic powder, Montreal chicken seasoning, cumin)
Olive oil
Vinegar
Optional: avacado (if they come on the boat and are ripe)

To make:
Drain tuna, chickpeas, kidney beans and mix into bowl. Add onion, spices, olive oil and vinegar.

Note: This makes enough for two people for lunches for 2 days.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve attempted to go to the beach, which by the way is about a 5 minute walk from our house, but have failed in going when the water is good or the weather is good. We were determined that yesterday would be the day to go. So we head over to the beach to get some sun and enjoy the beautiful weekend. In typical Julia fashion, I didn’t actually swim, but I did get my feet wet and the water felt amazing. We’re going back today for pretty much the entire day.

After beaching we came home, read, showered and got ready to go to the Italian restaurant that we’ve been eyeing since we got here. We saved up money from our meek budget to go out to eat at this expensive (in our terms) restaurant all week and were stoked. My roommate, being originially from Italy was excited to practice her Italian and get a taste of the homeland. Now when I say we went to an Italian restaurant, I don’t mean a US Italian restaurant, I mean the owners were from Italy and most of the food ingredients are imported from Italy and Portugual—so this was the real stuff. And it was amazing, We had penne alla vodka and carbonata and split them, We even splurged for wine and dessert- tiramisu of course. What made the night even more interesting was the people that we met. First, a group of people from the Canary Islands started talking to us and bought us drinks. It was really funny because between the group of us we were speaking in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Kriolu. I think I understood maybe half of what was going on, including some talk about politics in Africa and Europe. From that conversation, we were invited over for cabrita- baby goat the following day.

Not only did we meet other foreigners, but guess who also showed up at the restaurant--3 Americans and a guy from the UK! We were so excited to see Americans and found out that they will be here for a few months working on a project. We immediately became friends, because in countries where no one speaks English, you immediately cling to anyone that does. They also had an abundant source of American junkfood which we gawked over for a good 15-20 minutes. You would have thought we had never seen cheese-its, beef jerky, and starbursts before in our life. You know how skewed our mentality is when we would give away a mosquito net for a box of cheese-its. Anyways, the other Americans are great and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them.


Sunday was just as interesting as Saturday. We woke up, had breakfast, and head out for the beach to get some sun and attempt to swim. The current was kinda crazy and the waves were huge so we pretty much stuck to getting our feet wet. After getting a little sun we walked down the beach for about an hour and enjoyed soaking up the rays. After lunch, one of our Cape Verdean friends came over to help my roommate write up rules for her classroom in Portuguese. While we were hanging out, the Canary Island people showed up at our door and were like, let’s go eat goat right now. So we were taken by car to this dude’s house to eat baby goat and other traditional food from the Canary Islands. There was also music time as they busted out the guitars and started singing songs in Italian, Spanish, and Kriolu. It was quite an interesting experience. When we left, we were invited to coffee the next day by the Italians and were told that the Canary guys are making us paella on Tuesday. The dude also said he’d buy us pizza on Monday when we go to get coffee so we can discuss a time for Tuesday.

When we got back our Cape Verdean friend came over to play Dominos and cards-our new regular nightly activity. The Americans also came by to hang out and bribed us with Jolly Ranchers to entertain them.