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October 12, 2007
I went over to Silvia¹s on Tuesday (Oct 8) and hung out after class. I told
her about my issues with Dinora and she said to me that she wanted to warn
me about her but didn¹t want to overstep any boundaries and it is my choice
who I am friends with. So I learned a lesson there and its good to hear from
someone I really trust that these behaviors are not normal. I confronted
Dinora about the dinner incident and she said she wasn¹t upset so I don¹t
know what was going on.

Anyways, I spent the past two days participating in the end of a formacao on
management, projects, and small businesses that was given by the Direccao
Geral de Juventude. Today was diploma day and I helped give out diplomas to
everyone who participated. After it was all over we went on a passeo (trip
for fun) to a beach called Pao Seco. The water was freezing but we had fun
singing to Micha and his guitar and started up a game of football which here
is called brutebol.

This morning was Nhos Brinka for the third week in a row. Today went a
little smoother although some of the kids will not listen to anything I say.
We made God¹s eyes which the kids really liked and you could tell who
actually paid attention by looking at their crafts afterwards. I taught them
Red light, Green light but it was sort of a failure in that when I caught
people moving they wouldn¹t go back to the wall where we started from and
others would break their ³freeze² position to tell me that other people had
moved. I also tried One Potato, two potato which worked until they got
bored. Must remember for future potato games that 10 kids is too many. I
brought cards and Uno to entertain the kids when they first arrived and one
of them actually knew Uno ahead of time. So we had 7 kids all playing Uno
together for a good half an hour which is fabulous.

Once I got back from the passeo I headed to Silvia¹s for a quick visit and
ended up staying for about 2 hours talking to this guy who is from Calheta
but lives in Praia. It turns out he is in charge of ³energy, water, and
sanitation² for all of Cape Verde. He insisted on speaking English (he is
fluent) and we had a really great conversation about renewable energy here
in Cape Verde and my interest in hydroponics. So wind power may be coming to
Cape Verde, Mr. Burton! They are starting a national campaign on conserving
energy and part of it is replacing all the light bulbs in the country with
the long lasting florescent bulbs. He told me to be in touch if I have any
project ideas for Maio. So this was a really good evening.