“Living in Cape Verde is like being in college forever!” my colleague shouted to me over the funana (type of Cape Verdean music most popular on Santiago Island where I live), as we sipped beers outside in a sky full of stars in front of an impromptu bar constructed out of scrap metal. He had a point.
Cape Verdeans love a party. There is no absolute no denying that. The festa (party) season is upon us, as people finish harvesting last year’s beans and corns and eagerly await the rains that come intermittently from June or July until September or October. Once the rains begin, everyone will be busy doing monda (daily weeding of small plants that grow around corn and bean crops) so for now, people celebrate various types of festas including dias de santos (Catholic saints’ days), festas de zona (each zone/neighborhood has a yearly celebration), and batzimus (baptisms). Each is a joyous celebration full of traditional food, dancing, family and friends.
I dreaded festa a year and a half ago. My socially awkward interactions that use to pass in college (usually because I had my roommate Sam to stand in a corner with me, drinking wine with a twisty straw) didn’t quite work in Cape Verde. Surrounded by unfamiliar sensory elements, outside for hours with uncomfortably loud bass and people arguing in Creole, festa used to be miserable. Now I find some colorful, tight outfit, put on some dangly earrings, and passa (walk around town to see and be seen), stopping at houses of families I know and help myself to a heaping plate of fejão (typical bean dishes at a parties, a white bean), xerem (a corn dish sort of like grits), galinha de terra (chicken raised in Cape Verde), and avoid eating bodi (goat) and any part of pig that is served.
Sometimes the similarities between Cape Verdeans and American are shocking. While in the kitchen, my Cape Verdean friends posed for pictures they insisted I put on Facebook. They sent text messages using cell phones much nicer than the one I have. My colleague and I translated several American idioms and they understood and agreed. They laughed out loud at “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” (Pamodi comprar a vaca si bu ta atxa leite de gras?). They also understood the classic “My friend had an emergency I have to go help her” escape phone call on a date.
There is one stark difference at a Cape Verdean festa. In America, if someone I don’t know asks me to dance with him and I say “No” that’s the end of the conversation. In Cape Verde, he grabs my arm and pulls me to dance. I continue to say “No” but my neighbors are laughing and insisting. I suppose this is innocent enough but you have to wonder what else this means for women and their ability to say “No” to a man.
It’s fairly easy to be deceived into thinking Cape Verdeans and Americans have the same concept of morality and appropriate behavior. When you live in another culture for a long period of time, the lines between the two cultures start to blur. Add in the fact Cape Verde has a lot of interaction with the United States (in terms of Cape Verdeans living in America, visiting, music, television, food, etc). I meet Cape Verdeans who speak less Creole than I do (Consider this, there are more Cape Verdeans living abroad than in the country itself). This blurring of cultural identity, this inability to separate the two and begin to identify strongly with the new culture is commonly referred to as “going Native.” This type of thinking can be dangerous, particularly as a Peace Corps Volunteer. How does one negotiate between adapting to a new culture while still keeping your own ideals?
Over the course of two years, people change. It’s inevitable. The challenges, the new encounters, cultural conceptions that are part of Peace Corps service leave an impression on you. Generally people join Peace Corps for commendable reasons based on their personal ethics, to help people less fortunate, to experience how life is for people in a less developed country, etc. It’s ironic then that Peace Corps service has the potential to negatively distort your perception of morality. When you live in culture where drinking at 10 A.M. and being unfaithful in romantic relationships is condoned as normal behavior, you start to feel confusion between adapting to a new culture and maintain your values. And just like that, you lose sight of your original perspective.
I am not sure how this blog originally about festas took a dark inward turn into my evolving (possibly devolving?) sense of morality…
its something the old RPCVs talk about but you never quite think it will happen for you...but then you start to melt into the culture and accept the things that once made you upset as an American...some say it creeps up on you and others say its like a flash of lightning and you are blending in your host country...this is not dark but intuitive and an observation.
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