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So yesterday was Xmas, although it hardly felt like it. In what can now safely be called my Christmas Eve tradition, day before yesterday I went fishing in Cruzinha, and although I didn’t manage an octopus this year, I DID spear a glorious red speckled fish. I thought it was a grouper fish, but I’m told it’s something else.
Whatever...it tasted great and I’m feeling like Tarzan again. Something very satisfying about catching, killing, cooking and consuming your meals.

Christmas dinner was an adventure. I offered to cook for all of Benvinda’s immediate family, which turned out to be 11 people, plus me. I had originally intended to make some smoked chicken and stuffing and corn on the cob, but panicked at the last minute and made chicken teriyaki with pineapples and veggies instead, which turned out to be a good decision. There was plenty of food, everyone seemed to enjoy it (16 chicken breasts, 5 pineapples, almost a kilo of rice and a kilo of mixed veggies...and no leftovers!) and afterwards we opened presents.

Beni got me 2 chinese loja DVDs, the first of which was called “Gigantic Super Pilot” and which included 22 Tom Cruise films (all on one DVD). The second was called “Invincible Ugly Woman,” and it turned out to be the entire first two seasons of an American show called Ugly Betty. I gave her the last of the loot I brought back with me from the states. For Nelinda I got a memory card game, for Beli (Beni’s mom) I got a cutting board and a good knife, which I found in Sao Vicente; Cuchi, Vani and Lavinha all got beads to put in their hair, and the rest of the family got tomato, corn, squash and herb seeds. It was over in about 10 seconds.

After that (and by”after that” I mean beginning at about 1 in the morning) there was a dance in the town plaza, with pretty much everybody from town in attendance. Everyone was all decked out in their finest attire and it was the first time I’ve really seen the WHOLE village together...to include the babies, kids, teenagers, adults, old folks, crazy folks, all the folks. They were still dancing when I went to bed at 5:30 this morning.

Dolls seem to have been the present of choice this year, as today nearly every kid in town between the ages of 3 and 13 (boys included) is running around with a little plastic person in their hands. The luckier kids got soccer balls, a couple even got new shoes. There were no bikes, bb guns, or iPods.

Anyway, today everyone is walking around from house to house eating leftovers and wishing everyone well and asking about their Natal holiday. There is a soccer game in the polivalent this evening and yet another mass at the church. (There have been 2 masses a day for 3 straight days now.)

Anyway, hope everyone had a great and merry Christmas. Pic of my glorious catch below!

In CV, Jennifer is pronounced "j-KNEE-fir"

"Cute"does not even begin to describe this little girl's personality.

So yesterday was the last day of school before the Xmas holidays and so of course, there was a party. Beni and I spent the better part of the last three days blowing up balloons, making paper snowflakes (the kids had no idea what they were supposed to be) and paper Xmas trees, popcorn garlands and paper tinsel, and generally preparing to spread a great deal of Xmas cheer. I brought my guitar to school and taught them to sing Jingle Bells (it comes out as “jingo bays”) and Beni sewed some Pae Natal (Santa Claus) hats. I remember last year that the food was pretty frako (weak) so for exactly 16 U.S. dollars, I sponsored the mesa (table) this year and there was foods galore. That got us cakes, tortas, pastels, popcorn, crackers, chips, 3 pizzas (made by yours truly and having a crustal consistency just this side of granite) and about one litre of pure-sugar soda per kid. (There are, no doubt, parents cursing my name as we speak.)

At the party there was singing, poetry recital, a reading of The Christmas Miracle in Portuguese, traditional dancing, and, in an attempt to follow up on the AIDS Day information, a question and answer session regarding methods of transmission and avoidance. In general it was a huge success and we were there for about 4 hours yesterday, just having fun.

All did not go perfectly well however. I spent most of this month’s bandwidth downloading Christmas music. (Aside: Did I tell you that in CV you pay for internet per megabyte...4CVE per Mb...rather than just per month...although you pay that too?? Pray that this never happens in the States or you will be forced to seriously curtail your internet usage as 10 minutes skimming the news amounts to about 40 megabytes, or 160CVE...but I digress.) Anyway, I made the school mistress a CD of all that good music and expected to hear it during the party. You may imagine how uncomfortable I was when at the party I instead heard the latest in shitty American rap music to slither its way into Cape Verde. In a particularly creepy moment I watched as dozens of 7 and 8 year olds writhed and undulated and even sang along to lyrics that went: “How you feel me now baby, cuz I can go deeper, I can go deeper, all night long. You already know I’m gonna f*%# you.” Yikes. (Under other circumstances, this phenomenon of Cape Verdians singing the lyrics to English songs they don’t understand is actually quite entertaining, but not so in this case.)

Another problem errupted towards the end of the festa. My 16 dollars got enough balloons for everyone in the school, and despite Beni’s urging to the contrary, I distributed them at the party. Well ael tinha razon (she was right), as that turned into a disaster when the older kids starting popping or stealing those of the little kids. Kiddy-fights broke out, tears were shed, pandemonium ensued, and in the end, I made a quick and unannounced exit, leaving the teachers to deal with the aftermath.

Other than that, the only new thing is the weather. Although it has lately cooled considerably (it’s in the low 60s during the nights) it doesn’t feel anything like Xmas weather. You wouldn’t know it from looking at Cape Verdians though, as people in town can often be seen shivering and walking about in full-on, fur-lined winter parkas made for Antarctic exploration. It’s a nice change form the heat though, and I’ve been happy to get to use my one sweatshirt I brought with me. I think all of the other volunteers from my group that live on my island have already left and gone home to the States for Xmas so now I’ve got the place more or less to myself, moda m kizer (which is as I like it). Later today I’m making a wooden sign that says “You have arrived at the Western-most part of Africa.” Tomorrow I’ll start the day long-hike to get there, plant it in the rocks, spend the night there, hike back, and wait for the tourists to start queueing up.

Pics of stuff below.

Low 60's qualifies as "bone-chilling" in CV.

Djon making good use of the new B-ball court.

Note: This is all Rhett's video/project. All I did for this project was help him edit the film he shot.

Rhett Scarbrough, a Boise State Construction Management program alum and Peace Corps Volunteer, is a civil construction teacher in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. In collaboration with the Construction Management Association at Boise State and several friends from college, they were able to collect, donate and successfully import modern concrete tools to his school. The whole project took over a year to complete.

Here, Scarbrough's students showoff their newly acquired tools and give thanks to the people who contributed to this effort.

So today was definitely one of my most interesting in Cape Verde so far, and there was bokuat moviment (a lot of activity) in Cha de Igreja, which is rare, to say the least.

I guess the first thing is that my valley got our very own ambulance today, courtesy of a really varied group of non-profit organizations working together, including a group of Jeep and 4x4 enthusiasts in South Africa, various hospital coalitions in Portugal, and a professional sports team from Brussles. Amazing really. Their deal is buying old model Land Rovers, restoring them to mint condition, and then donating them to countries in Africa. Pretty friggin’ cool. It’ll serve all of us living in Cruzinha, Garça and Txangreja, and all the scattered houses in between. Anyway, the president of the kamera was out to inaugurate it, (they’re coo-coo for inaugurations in the country. Last month I witnessed the inauguration of a crate of wheelbarrows.) and to officially swear in the new class of Bomoberos Voluntarios (volunteer firemen) de Frequesia de Sao Pedro Apostolo.

Most of the movimento was surrounding the one-day training event that one must undergo in order to become a member of that prestigious group. The ambulance came roaring into town at about 10 this morning light blazing and horn blaring and I thought we were at war. It actually came straight to my house where his Excellencio Senor Commandante de Protecion Civil asked me if I would take pictures of the day’s training, which of course I was happy to do. I was very interested to learn how one goes about fighting fires in a country that has no water.

Except that, apparently, the main thing you have to know how to do if you’re going to be a firefighter on Santo Antao is repel off of cliffs...which is a handy skill indeed in these mountains, and not one easily mastered, as I can now tell you from firsthand.

Now, it should be mentioned that by the time my dad was my age, he’d probably jumped out of a couple hundred planes, and I’ve never done anything like that, and I’ve always been a bit jealous of him about that, so I REALLY wanted to try it out. I wasn’t sure what the Peace Corps policy is regarding volunteers going repelling, so, I did what every good volunteer would have done in the same situation, which was to check the Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook, where I found nothing specifically prohibiting it, and so at the insistence of the president of the kamera, and under the guidance and expert tutelage of Senor Commandante and his staff, I took the plunge, and it was excellent. It would have been perfect but for the fact that we were descending into the town’s garbage dump at the end of the ribeira. I was subsequently told that this exercise was to practice for the event of a garbage fire, which didn’t make much sense to me since there are garbage fires every couple of months here and I’ve never seen an ambulance or a firefighter come rushing to put those out, at which point it was explained to me that the firefighters have to repel into the crevasse in order to SET, not PUT OUT the trash fires. Ohhhhh…of course.

Anyway, getting back up was, for me, difficult, to say the least. I saw all the other guys (and girl) doing it and it involves putting of one foot through a loop in the rope, and your hands together on a sort of climby-clamping slider and then orchestrating a fluid, graceful, caterpillaresque movement to pull yourself up the line. It is a movement that my body is apparently unable to perform. What took them 8 or 10 minutes took me 20 and by the time I made it to the top I was drenched with sweat, heaving, exhausted.

Some hours later, having recuperated, I came out to see the whole town in the plaza to watch the kamera president swear-in and congratulate the new group and inaugurate the ambulance. He spoke for 39 minutes. Afterwards, was the Simulaçao de Emergencia. The object was to simulate a fall victim (which was good, since that happens all the time here), and here’s how it went down.

Sgt. Sabino (see photo below) hollerd out some things and four of the guys jumped in the back of the ambulance and another guy jumped behind the wheel. They started up the truck, fired up the emergency light and siren (did I mention it’s an old-timey hand cranked air-siren?) and, in a cloud of blue smoke and dust, drove about 20 meters down to the bottom of the steep hill in the middle of town, where another fireman (the simulated victim) was laying. The town rushed to watch the four in the back jump out with a stretcher, and in a careful and practiced manner, load him in the back on a stretcher stand, which was when the trouble started.

First, to get itself pointed back towards town, the ambulance had to make a 26 point turn. (something I’d think you’d want to do before you loaded the victim) It stalled out a couple of times. The back door popped open twice. The air siren blared throughout. In short order they got it running again and about halfway back up the hill, the driver, apparently, dropped into 4-wheel drive on the fly...which caused the truck to make one huge, rather violent jerking motion...which apparently caused the “simulation” victim to be thrown from his stretcher in the back…at which point he became an “actual” victim by breaking his collarbone and being taken directly to the hospital in our new ambulance. I wish I was making this up.

Anyway, it was the first day with the thing, and you know how some clutches can be tricky, especially on an unfamiliar vehicle, and they’ll have plenty of time to practice before next month’s trash fire. Everyone in town is happy to have an ambulance in town (you used to have to pay the 3000$00CVE it costs to rent a hiace out if you were sick or hurt and needed to get to the hospital). I’ve also been made an honorary volunteer firefighter (I got a hat and everything!)

Pics Below. What’s new at home?

This volunteer freaked out a little bit (and with good reason) when he looked down.

Without Further ado, I present the Sao Pedro Apostolo Bomberos Voluntario (Volunteer Fire Department), of which I am now an honorary member.

Sabino (on the right) is far and away my best friend in town, and probably one of the best I'll ever have. Tony on the other hand, was responsible for three pregnancies buy three different women in this town (of 397 people) alone, all during the last year. Night and Day.