Dreary March

It will never feel normal to have to greet every single person I pass on the street. In the U.S. I am not even from a big city, I am from the suburbs. A simple wave will suffice for neighbors I have known my entire life. Here in Cape Verde the briefest dialogue goes: Good morning/afternoon/evening, how are you? How is your health? Your family? Your family’s health? Your work? It is exhausting. Also there is generally some commentary about how you have not visited that family in a long time and how you are ungrateful.

A couple of weeks ago another PCV spent the night at my house. We went to bed around 9:45 P.M. I put in my earplugs to block out the dogs barking, roosters crowing, and neighbors shouting. Every night I sleep with my window open, fitfully. During a normal night I get up to close it and re-open it 2 or 3 times. The reason being there are no bars in my window and I live on the first floor of a house and did I mention I already had one stalker? So this particular night, I am just about sleep and I hear movement outside near the gate close to my room. This is not too alarmingly, sometimes the dog or the wind makes noises, but I notice it and feel a bit on edge. Then someone says something to me, I think it is the other PCV saying a person is entering the window. I jolt awake and scream “WHAT” to realize what is being said is that “Lus dja ben” (The power has come back) by the sweet old woman I live with. According to the other PCV I sounded really angry. When I woke up in the morning she was standing outside my heavy cement door, as soon as she hears us in the room talking, she asks how I woke up and mentions she is going to the next town over to see her family. There was a payapa in my kitchen.

I have had a few other incidents with her like this. At first I was so adverse to living with her and husband. They are both actually very hospitable towards me, constantly giving me payapas and kataxupa. I have felt sick (think I have the grippe, what everyone here calls the flu, and says they have whenever they have any kind of ailment or common cold) the last few days and have been spending a lot of time alone in my room. The woman I live with has came into my room a few times when I am in bed, without knocking. It startles me every time. She has given me headache medicine and scented water that you inhale and rub on your forehead, it smells like that rub you put on your chest as a child when you had a respiratory sickness.

I hate mornings in this country. I try to wake up early enough to go running, come home and have coffee, before my day really begins. However the day begins so early here. I wake up to the random shouts and screams that are so commonplace here. People here are loud. There is no way around that. It makes me quieter, self-conscious, and continuously desirous of spending time alone. I have lived with people like this before and it always felt exhausting. That high energy, that hyper nature, constant communication makes me want to hide inside and nap.

I am frustrated because a simple report of how donated money has been spent is over-due. Receipts and statements continue to be lost. I can’t help find them because I never had knowledge of them in the first place. A pattern is emerging where I meet up with people, ask about the report, and a problem arises that postpones work yet another day. I have no actual role in the report itself, aside from seeing that it is done.

I have learned that the project I am here to work on, is actually in it’s first phrase, the construction period. The project is three years long I am only here for two. At this point we have one of two reservoirs constructed. We now need a technician to come survey the first reservoir and make sure it was completed and make any necessary changes. We then need to have other contractors bid to complete the work on the other two reservoirs, set up a committee to consider the various contractors and decide which team we want to construct the reservoirs. There is no way this process will take any less than 7-8 months, in my opinion, and keep in mind during the rainy season (roughly July through September no work can be done and there’s the possibility of previous work being destroyed). I am sort of depressed about that.

My Cape Verdean friend here, who lived in the U.S. for several years and is my sort of confindant here, told me he thinks the best ways Peace Corps can help Cape Verde is in terms of medicine and education. Teaching English here has been a frustrating experience for me and I think a lot of it has to do with because I am not teaching in a school system. At least in the school system, students attend class with somewhat regularity and have had the same number of years of instruction. Every month or so I am reminded I need to go to the high school to form an after-school English homework help time. However when I told people in my association this idea, they got upset and told me that I am not here to teach English. Frustrating. March is proving to be a frustrating month, but in the beginning of May I will be going on vacation to the volcano island of Fogo so that will be a nice escape...