My parents visit to Maio
Guest column by my parents, edited by me
Julia was waiting for us when we arrived in Praia and we took a taxi to our hotel, driving at breakneck speed, the norm in Praia. Julia is not nearly as comfortable in Praia as she is in Maio. Praia reminded me of the poorer sections of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. There is much garbage in the streets, fairly narrow alleys, and not much paving.
After we checked into our hotel and found out that they didn´t have the suite that we reserved (we had already dragged all our luggage to the 3rd floor) we settled into a small but clean room. We took a taxi to the Peace Corps office and toured and met several people there. From there we travelled by cab to a restaurant owned by British (or at least English speaking) people and had nice sandwiches and coffee. Then back to the PC office to quickly check email and pick up the Thanksgiving turkey from the PC freezer. We had a nice chat with the Country Director for Cape Verde, who was extremely complimentary about Julia´s skills, dedication, and help with training the new volunteers. Then we taxied back to the hotel for some rest and for Julia to do a small food shopping for items not found on Maio.
After naps, we went to dinner around 8:00 at a place called 5al (Quintal) Musica, which had good food and live Cape Verdian music. We had excellent grilled fish for dinner with rice, potatoes, carrots, green beans (Steve and Jules had red wine) with a delicious flan-like dessert (puddim de leite).
We woke up at 4:30 am on Thursday because Julia misplaced boat tickets to Maio (oops). We lugged 7 bags and a cooler down three flights of steps to hotel lobby. We had paid for a van to the pier, but driver did not arrive to drive the van, so we took a taxi whose driver had been outside chatting with hotel worker.
We arrived at the Pier at 6:00 am but the ticket agent did not arrive until 6:40 to straighten out our tickets. Fortunately they had our names on a list of paid customers for three beds in a four bed “cabin”. Two men fought over the right to carry our bags onto the boat, so Julia agreed to use them both (and tip them both). They finally checked us out and hauled the luggage up a plank with rope handles onto the boat. Our “cabin” was two sets of bunk beds with a vomit bucket and a table. Before the sea became too choppy, we drank boxes of mango-orange juice and ate baked goods that we had bought the day before in Praia. The fourth bed was occupied by a woman and niece. The two year old fell asleep immediately, but the Mom was nauseated most of the ride. She was wearing basically a two piece bathing suit covered by piece of fabric (panu) that she alternatively removed and wrapped over various parts of her body. They had told us that the sea was calm, but it was definitely not. “Beds” were twin bunks with hard springs in mattresses that hurt after 3 hours of lying on them. We were in a cabin with one window and when the landed in Maio, the other woman shouted out the window (to the deck outside) for help unloading the bags and she lifted our more than 60 pound bag out the window to the waiting men, as well as our other 6 bags and her own. Julia was unperturbed that the bags would all be sitting on the pier.
So we disembarked over the side of the boat, rather than on the gangplank. Out on the pier, Julia immediately was greeted by several different hiace drivers to Calheta who knew her by name and helped carry all of our bags to the van. After dropping off several other people, going through Vila do Maio, Morro, and the dusty brown, cobblestone streets, we arrived at her house. There her neighbors carried all our bags up one flight of steps to her house. We stood on her roof and viewed the ocean and the panorama of Calheta and the nearby mountain. We met Elizabet, her neighbour, who is married to someone who lives in Holland much of the year, and with whom Julia cooks often. We played with her black and white kitten named Roxy and tried to keep the cat out of our luggage and our bedroom. A few other people stopped by and her cleaning person took our laundry to wash. We unpacked and Jules cooked us pasta for lunch with melon grown (and brought to us) by her next door neighbor.
By then it was time to locate the key to the computer center so that Julia could teach classes at 3:00, 4:00 and 7:00 in a building not far from her house. The weather is so very breezy that you have to prop open the shuttered windows with rocks (and there are lots of rocks all over the place). There area also roosters, cows, and dogs, as well as unsupervised kids running around the cobblestone streets. The 3:00 computer class had six women, learning Portuguese spell check (ortografia).
After the 3 and 4:00 classes, we went to visit with Julia’s counterpart, Silvia and her husband. We drank juice inside for about an hour until the power went out. Then we sat outside on the porch with several people and kids and her husband went and bought us all fried eel to try. It tastes much like a flounder but is bony. We returned in the dark with a full moon to Julia’s apartment and she cooked omelettes by candlelight. Silvia’s kids took some cash from us and bought us freshly baked rolls for our dinner and breakfast. The 7:00 computer class was of course cancelled, since there was no electricity. The power came back on around 7:30 or 8:00.
We woke up around 4 am to the sound of roosters, got up at 6:30 and took a bucket shower. We took the car to Morro after breakfast so that Julia could teach an 8:30 computer class. The driver stops every block or so and picks up people, and also is flagged down by people to take cash and run errands, like refilling prescriptions. In Morro, the power was on for the street lights but not for the houses and buildings, so of course, no computer class. Julia chatted with Ney, who has written the play for AIDS Awareness Day that is being practiced in Calheta for the Dec 1 performance. We found the home of a woman who runs the ceramic center and bought a couple pieces of pottery. Thne we took a back-of-the-truck ride to Vila do Maio. We saw the Camara (similar to mayor´s office), then sat in on part of Stephanie´s (other PC volunteer) English class, taught mainly in Portuguese. We went to two small grocery shops and then the open market for vegetables, then to buy fish at Peter´s restaurant. Peter is from Cornwall, England, and runs a “European style” restaurant called Admiral Benbow and also sells fish. Boba, the driver, saw us and offered a ride back to Calheta. Julia told Boba that we needed to buy fish and he said he would wait. Drivers on the island of Maio stop along the roads and let passengers do errands before getting on the bus.
Silvia came over with five lobsters (we had paid her about $20) and prepared them on Julia´s stove. She cut them up, then cooked them in a pot with margarine, olive oil, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, garlic, cayenne and when they were almost done, added about half a bottle of wine. We ate with her after she sent a child down the street to buy us some freshly baked bread. While we were eating, the chickens on the roof made noises which we were informed was the noises that chickens make when they are laying eggs. Boy are we city people!
After Silvia left, and we took a nap, we went downstairs and chatted with Elizabet until after 6 and then we took a walk until dark. Elizabet offered to teach me how to pound corn and to make us couscous for breakfast the next morning in the traditional Maio, Cape Verde, style. Each island has its traditional food preparation methods and Eliazabet is very proud of her traditions which are hard work and time consuming.
On Saturday, we got up before 7 and watched Elizabet pound corn with a large stick and a pestle. I tried my hand at it and it made a funny video. As you pound, you put handfuls into a large woven flat basket and shake the basket (also takes a lot of practice) so that the finer particles of corn settle to the bottom and the unground ones rise to the top. These can be put back in for more grinding. The corn comes from Elizabet´s field and they dry the corn out in the fields and then bring it in. When the corn meal was ready, we went into her kitchen. The couscous mold is shaped like a very large thimble (probably about 3 pounds large) with large holes in it. She mixed the corn meal, sugar, cinnamon, and powdered milk in a bowl. She wet a little bit of the mixture to seal the holes and then filled the mold, using a little more of the wetted mixture to seal the opening between the mold and a pot of boiling water with its outside diameter matching the diameter of the mold. The couscous steams on the stove until it becomes the consistency of cake when fresh. We had it for breakfast, hot and delicious, with coffee and papaya. Later the leftovers get harder and denser and you can cut slices and toast it.
Saturday was to be our adventure day, called a Volta Ílha or a car tour of the island. We went with Bert, a colourful American and his wife Mariamne (from Gambia) and her daughter Ami. Our driver was terrific and took us on what seemed like every single road on Maio, to almost every town, and to several beaches in Maio. We collected conch shells, climbed fabulous sand dunes that Julia said reminded her of Jockey Ridge (but we were the only ones there) in a town called Morrinho, and drove through small and smaller villages. The beaches were deserted and quiet and beautiful. We stopped back in Vilo do Maio at the end of the trip for coffee at a café run by an Italian family and returned around 3:30 (we had left at 10:00). We cooked “lunch” of some of the fish that we had bought on Friday, then showered and rested and cooked a turkey that Julia had shlepped frozen from Praia (which was rather defrosted and needed to be cooked a day ahead) for Sunday´s “Thanksgiving” dinner.
In the evening, we were invited to again eat lobsters (they are caught off Maio) with several people - Djoi and Jacinta and her cousin and others. We would eat outdoors on the patio across the street. Around 5 pm we went to the community center to watch a group of people practice a play for the December 1 AIDS Awareness day. Play practice started at least an hour late (which is normal) - everyone has a cell phone but not too many watches here. On the way back, we saw a group of women a few houses down from Julia who were cooking huge pots of food and pounding corn. Julia asked them to show us what they were cooking. It was a big stew, traditional to the “celebration” a year after the death of someone, in this case a husband. The following morning (on a Sunday) they will make couscous and café (breakfast) to be served after the Sunday mass.
We had our outdoor meal later that night which consisted of lobsters split in half , cooked in a similar manner as the previous lunch, with onions and spices and a sauce, plus bread, and lots of beer and waters. Some of the people there were leaving around 10:30 for a local Festa in the town of Figuera. We had passed through Figuera that day on our island tour and had seen merchants setting up stands and grills.
Sunday
The streets are always noisy, especially on the weekend, with voices talking and laughing. About 11 we went searching for a man named Fogo, an artist, to look at some of his paintings in his house. His paintings included scenes with boats, Jesus, and Osama. He also painted the outside back wall of his sister´s stucco home. Then we walked over to the house of a woman who weaves very nice bags and arranged to have two made for me to buy. We then spent several hours cooking our traditional Thanksgiving-Day-on-Sunday dinner, with stuffing, string bean casserole, mashed and sweet potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie. Julia had invited Stephanie from Vila and Bert and his family from Morro, so there were 7 of us. They came around 3:30 or 4:00 and we ate a hearty American style supper.
Monday
We awoke around 6 am to Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge and no power. Fortunately we had given many of the leftovers to Stephanie, a box for Mr. Ed, the ex-pat in Vila, and to Bert and family. So of course the computer class in Morro was again cancelled. We cooked coffee on the gas burner and ate leftovers. We took the hiace to Vila where there was electricity. We ran errands – checked internet, confirmed (we think) our TACV reservation, and stopped at a Chinese lojo. We went to Peter´s restaurant to buy salted fish and found out that it was closed on Monday´s but that there is a back entrance where he gave Julia the fish as a gift. We told him that we would eat there on Thursday before we take the boat back to Praia, and he said that we would be welcome to leave our luggage there. We had some expresso at the Italian café and a piece of homemade cake. We planned to go back on Wednesday and do more errands, more Internet, and purchase our boat tickets (and not lose them).
We took the hiace back to Calheta (again the driver drives around and lets people run into stores). Jacinta brought us a hot dish with caldo de peixe, a fish stew made with a whole grouper, green bananas, squash, sweet potatoes, and spices. We ate this with our left over Thanksgiving food. We spent time locating a hotel in Praia for Thursday night that had vacancy. We cleaned up Julia´s house because she was holding a grilhada that night. Power came back on at 3:30, so it had been out for close to ten hours. We went with Julia to the community center to help teach her English class on body parts and related verbs - only two students showed up. Then we came back to her house to watch the nightly parade of Lisabet´s chickens and roosters up the steps to the coops on the kintal (courtyard) outside Julia´s kitchen.
Children here are handed cash to purchase small items all the time and to deliver messages, locate people etc. Steve compared them to the owls in Harry Potter. The rhythm and flow of life here is so natural. Most people do not turn on lights during the day, never leave lights on when they leave a room; some cannot afford to keep their refrigerators on unless they need to use them. The animals in the streets (chickens, ducks, roosters, cows, goats, burros) don´t bother the people and vice versa and everyone seems to know whose animal each is. Water is very scarce; Julia has a water tank on her roof and a bedong (barrel of extra water) in her kitchen, plus a large filter from Peace Corps to which she adds bleach. But many of the CV-ians carry large jugs of water on their heads to use for their families who live 6 to 15 in houses not much larger than the one-bedroom apartment that Julia lives in. Julia has a toilet that “flushes”, but you have to wait hours for the tank to fill, so you do not flush often, and no one can flush toilet paper in Cape Verde. There are no hot showers; you can take a cold shower (which I guess is better in July when it is hot outside) or you can warm up water on the gas stove and take a shower using a pitcher and a bucket. Then you want to save as much of your shower water as possible (and as much of your sink-dishwashing water too) to pour down the toilet, especially when there are 3 of us instead of 1 using the same water tank. Hard to imagine 10 or 15 people sharing water. And the countryside is so dusty that you never really feel clean. You don´t exactly feel dirty, just dusty, with wind blowing the savannah like but volcanic dirt everywhere. Nothing is wasted, empty large water bottle bottoms are used as pencil holders, children don´t have any toys but seem content running all over the streets playing with stuff. We filmed a video of little boys taking off one of their thong sandals and using it as a steering wheel making car noises, running around with one shoe off and one shoe on. Women greet people with kisses on both cheeks (as in France); you constantly greet everyone with Bom Dia (until noon), Boa Tarde (until dark) or Bom Noite.
In Calheta, everyone knows Julia. The man next door, Jacinta´s father, speaks some English from his time on fruit ships, and said, “Your daughter is nice…..Julia knows the Cape Verdian language well and can between everyone´s house,” and we took that as a compliment to her. Everyone asks her if we “speak Cape Verdean” and we keep telling them that we understand a little, but have not learned to speak. They also constantly tell us that “we are young” and sometimes that I am “bonita” (pretty). We have watched Moms carry their youngest children on their backs, wrapped in a cloth that is tied in the front around their waists. This way they can carry a large basket, bucket, or drum of water or bag on their heads and other items in their hands. The women are strong and the men are good lookin…..
Julia´s grilhada was set for around 8 pm (time is always just a suggestion). Around 7, Monica, who had organized this, came to Julia´s to get carrots, onions, and tomatoes to contribute to the arroz (rice). We went over to her house, where several women were helping prepare this huge, huge pot of rice over a wood fire. They add bouillion (knorr), spices, sausage, and chicken to the rice and veggies and cook for a long time.
Monaca, who had organized the women to do the cooking, collected 200$00cve (about $2.40) from each attendee - Julia´s adult students had all been invited and about 20 or more people came. This paid for the chicken wings (supersized wings, the length of a large skewer), conch to skewer, and sodas. Julia and we contributed wine, cups, hamburgers (our freezer had defrosted and Julia had bought about 2 pounds of frozen ground beef in Praia), and her roof space. Elizabet strung a wire from the 2nd floor where Julia lives up to the 3rd floor roof with a compact fluorescent bright lightbulb. Kind of surprised us, since there isn´t much high tech on Maio. Women carried huge pots up the stairs with skewers, plates, chicken, and marinated conch. We brought a few chairs up to the roof, but mostly people sat on the ground against the walls, as it was quite windy.
Most people arrived after 9:00 as they had to first watch the Portuguese novellas on tv. The women did all the grilling (mostly one woman) and were expert at loading the huge chicken wings on to the skewers, distributing the rice and cooked chicken and sodas, then loading the conch onto skewers and doing the same, and then cooking Julia´s hamburgers, which also disappeared. Other than some rice (which people divided up), there was little left over. It was obvious that Julia enjoys being with these women (the guys mostly stayed in a corner or with a wife or girlfriend). They keep teasing Julia about how silly she is and she is great a laughing a lot. They are already telling her that they will miss her when she goes home; I guess some of this was prompted by our presence. Steve noted that the guys as a group sauntered up to the roof and I thought they looked like a basketball team entering the stadium. Steve and I are starting to understand some of the conversation, especially when only one person is speaking and not too fast, but we are shy to participate. There are a lot of French/Spanish words that are similar to Kriolu. It was a beautiful night up on the roof. The town was quieter than on the weekend (this was Monday). The moon, which had been full two nights before, was still pretty but hidden behind the clouds and the stars were out. No cars late at night and no airplanes. Because it was a Monday night, people cleaned everything up and left “early” around midnight. Julia said it was good to do this on a non-weekend or they would have stayed chatting until 3 am.
Just outside Julia´s kitchen door is the “pig bucket”. Instead of composting, we put our melon rinds (from the melon that Elisabet grows out in the field) and then dry out the melon seeds in the sun to give to her so that she can plant more melons. The pig bucket gets any semi-edible leftovers and skin and bones to feed Elisabet´s pig. The roosters and chickens roost on the kintal and run around the town during the day. When the chickens lay eggs (which is all the time) we are welcome to take what we need to eat. Very little food comes with big packaging and the government waste disposal truck comes by on Monday morning to empty the very small by American standards waste containers that are shared by the whole street. And much of the trash was from beer bottles - there are bars on almost every block, many of them just an awning to a room in the front of someone´s house where you can buy a cold drink, a snack, and maybe sit and watch tv. If you don’t have a refrig, you can ask to put food in one of the bar´s large refrigerators, especially if it belongs to a cousin or a friend.
In the larger town of Vila do Maio and on other islands with larger towns, most of the stores are called Lojo´s or Chinese Lojo´s. They are about the quality of the Dollar Store, but probably worse and more expensive. In Praia there is a new “American style” grocery store called Leader Price that has a variety of merchandise, but it´s a long boat ride with a cooler to bring food back from there. Stores in Calheta and the smaller towns on Maio are either a little room in someone´s house or a woman with a basket on her head going door to door or sitting on one of the benches that line the main roads. Cold drinks of soda are fairly expensive, about 70$00cve or almost a dollar and beer is slightly more expensive for an 8 ounce cold bottle. Small cottage industry is interesting; two years ago a cooperative group from the island of Sao Vicente taught the women here to weave bags and there are several looms to share in the community center. Not all the looms work and the yarn is locked up in a room until the teachers come back (maybe not). Several women still make the bags and they each know who still do and where to find their houses. So I ordered two bags and picked out colors and patterns and got to watch one of the women make one of my bags. Jobs here are scarce, intermittent (fishermen, carpenters, electricians etc). Everything is cash. People are trusting and hand each other cash to do errands or to pay people back constantly. In spite of the poor education system (until a few years ago high school only went up to 10th grade, so many adults are going to night school to finish high school), people seem to want to learn. Primary school through high school is held in two half day sessions and students attend either morning or afternoon. The only high school for the island is in Vila do Maio, and there are buses throughout the island for high school. They try to send the students from the farthest towns to the morning rather than late classes. The roads on the north and eastern parts of Maio are barely paved.
Sounds are part of the rhythm of the day. After the 3 or 4 am roosters, who seem to compete for loudness, you hear cows and chickens all day, and the early morning pounding of corn (grown and dried out just outside the town streets in fields marked by stone fences). Starting past daylight, you hear hiace (van) drivers honking their horns to let you know they are available and you can stick your head out the window and call the driver by name and tell him to wait. These vans circle around the streets door to door rather than having a particular van stop, which seems wasteful with the high cost of gas and the low mileage per gallon, but that´s how it is done. Lots of footsteps on the cobblestone streets and lots of voices, morning and night.
Tuesday
Around 12:30, we went out to find the person from the community center who hides the computer cable that connects the printer-scanner to the new computer in the computer room. There are 6 computers (5 brand new) but only one printer. Julia needs to scan about 100 pages for Peace Corps training. After first visiting with another family (visiting means sitting on hard wooden chairs in a dark front room set up for visitors, kissing everyone and saying good day, and chatting, plus having each of their 2 or 3 or in this case 9 children come in if they are not attending school that part of the day or if they are home for lunch). Often the grandparents either live in the house or spent much of the day there. So it took an hour to walk five minutes, visit twice, greet people in the streets, and walk back to Julia´s house for lunch. And then anyone we run into in the streets tell Julia that she needs to bring her parents over to meet their grandmom or cousin or greatgrand parent or whomever…..
We ate some leftovers for lunch and gathered up Julia´s materials for a 2:30 (yeah right, time is just a suggestion) time to make posters for the big AIDS Awareness Day and to present the recorders to Djoi so that he can organize the teaching of recorders in the music program at the primary school. Eventually people drifted into the room and at 5:30 they were still making posters while I typed this journal and Steve used another computer to work on a journal article.
Dinner is to be salted fish cooked in the oven (Peixe al Forna) prepared by Elisabet, Jacinta and whoever else, but Jacinta and Djoi are attending night school (they both teach primary school and are very bright but only went through 10th grade because that was all that was available 10 or 15 years ago). So dinner will be quite late.
Wednesday
Elisabet had offered to make xeren (chopped corn that tastes like rice) and galhina de terra (a chicken stew made with her freshly slaughtered chicken). The meat was very dark and delicious and the stew included sweet potatoes and massa di farina (dumplings).We had thought that this was to be dinner, but it turned out to be for lunch. So we went into Vila for the morning and did errands, buying boat tickets, purchasing another bag at the Shell station (made by the same person back in Calheta), going to the Camara where one of the people printed a nice map for Steve that was on her flash drive and not on the Camara´s files. We took a van back to Calheta and ate lunch with Elisabet at Julia´s. We napped and rested. Julia teaches a 6 to 8 pm computer class in Morro on Wednesday evenings and Bert had invited us to visit first. When we arrived at his house, they were cooking fresh pastels (fried dough filled with cooked fish similar to tuna called Serra) and had made a cake topped with caramel and bananas for us. Bert then took us on a tour of his new grocery store/hotel which is under construction and called Casa Blanca. From the roof of the unfinished 5 room hotel, you get beautiful views of the ocean, the mountains, and the towns, especially just before sunset. Just before 6, we went to set up for Julia´s computer class, where the room does not have adequate lighting for an evening class. The two hour class was cut short because one of the men with a van/truck who was giving us a ride back to Calheta wanted to leave early (with a bunch of people) to go see a soccer game between Calheta and Morro and/or also because the Portugal soccer game was on the radio. So it goes.
Thursday
Woke at 6:40 as usual. Bert called at 8:00 to say that the boat was not coming today. I guess it is the travelling Kramer effect! Several other people stopped by or called with the same news. Many calls later, we decided that we needed to pack up and look at options. There was a rumor that a smaller boat might come so we decided to drag all our luggage to Vila, and left it at Stephanie´s house. We ate lunch at Admiral Benbow, the British restaurant, but Peter was still in Praia (same boat). His partner Barry was there as was George, who cooked wonderful fresh tuna, shrimp (with heads and tails on) and goat with potatoes and carrots, all served with rice and green olives. Julia shared her home made chocolate gelato and Steve had the rum baba cake. Then we spent the next three hours trying to find a way to get home earlier than the next Tuesday Boston flight, which would mean an overnight stay in Boston and not getting home until Wednesday afternoon. Sun Travel, Peace Corps and the TAP web site were all useful. The best help was a telephone call to the International Customer Service dept of US Airways where we had a terrific agent who found us a way to get from Praia at 2:00 am on Sunday to Lisbon, with a 4 hour layover, then an 8 hour flight to Newark. So if the Saturday boat actually runs, we will go straight from the pier at Praia to the airport at Praia and spend how ever many hours in the Praia airport…..Please BARCO (boat) don´t be broken. This took until 5:00 pm including phone calls and Internet.
Looking for a ride back to Calheta, we ran into a friend of Julia´s named Andy who lives in Calheta with his CV-ian woman and their son. He had a small jeep and offered us a ride back.
Exhausted, we took naps until around 8:30, then Julia made homemade pizza and we went online to save the US Airways-TAP reservation to a flash drive so that we could take the drive and the connection to the Community Center printer the next day and print out our reservation.
Friday
Morning routine as usual. Listen to roosters from 4:30 am until getting out of bed. Actually slept until 7:20. Go into living room and through door to kitchen. Open and latch open door to outside kintal (courtyard); Open back door off of living room and latch it. Open front window shutter and walk outside to fasten latch. Get cross ventilation. No screens, shoo flies. There is a door through a “closet” to the bathroom, to the bedroom. This little apartment has nine doors plus three windows and most of the doors have either glass panes on top or frosted glass panels, so electric lights are not needed from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm.
