February 4, 2002

Everyone will be pleased to know that my life is looking up again. One of my lowest points in Peace Corps last week was followed by a nice high during our In-Service Training (IST) of 4 days in a nearby beach resort. I was able to talk one-on-one with volunteers from my group that came last July. Many are frustrated by work, and hearing the nightmares from roommates made me happy again that I lived alone. My job is one of the most flexible, considering most volunteers have 8 am - 5 pm jobs with the local government or schools. Volunteers have been pigeonholed into positions, such as teaching computers or English, that bore them, and they live for the weekends or travel. As one of the first rural volunteers, I have the ability to really shape my experience, and I want to take advantage of that.

One section of our IST was based on income generating opportunities, and I came up with a great idea to combine my artistic experience with entrepreneurship to open a micro enterprise with women in my valley painting eggs with traditional scenes of rural life. I have recently been buying Faberge like eggs at the San Francisco Women’s Crafts Fair, and the same technique could easily be replicated with local chicken eggs. We could buy sturdy small cardboard boxes or use wood scraps to make boxes lined with cotton and covered with satin to protect the eggs once purchased and carried abroad. A Russian painter in the capital city is willing to give trainings on basic painting of landscapes and people. I could, of course, continue helping the woman after the workshop with my own personal knowledge of painting, composition, and color. I think that the eggs or painted coconut shells would have a huge market with the rural tourist industry, and could even be sold in the capital or on other islands. Right now, the dilemma is how to find someone who knows embroidery and crochet if they want to pursue that instead, or moving ahead with the painting idea. Mancala, the wooden board game, is also very popular here. We could paint rural scenes on them, and then lacquer them. I saw an example of this in the ‘Aid to Artisans’ catalogue, a non-profit in the USA that helps artisans produce viable products for the world market.

Last Saturday, we also held a Women’s Information Exchange Conference for employees at different social organizations on this island. About 20 women attended, in addition to twenty Peace Corps staff and volunteers. Because of the conference, I was able to make two very good contacts with the Red Cross and MORABI (family planning focus), both of which have trainers who can go to rural areas and do workshops. This week, I am writing two proposals to get a group of teenage girls from the Red Cross to attend a large scouting event this Sunday where they can present theatre skits on teenage pregnancy, drug use, and health. I also want these girls to come out to my valley to present skits to each of the villages I work with. They spoke for twenty minutes at the women’s conference and were very mature and good public speakers. MORABI has two female nurses who are also able to come give a series of mini informational workshops for my three villages on family planning and pregnancy. They have access to many resources and can educate the women and teenagers on options for treatment and prevention. I am hoping to get funding to pay for their transport and catering throughout the day for a full day of workshops in March.

Next week is Carnival, and I was supposed to take a boat to Sao Vicente Island where Mindelo is located. Mindelo is the only city in Cape Verde that throws a traditional parade and celebrates Carnival like in Brazil. After four days with volunteers from my group, I don’t know that I can stand another week with them at Carnival. Most volunteers are going to stay with two male volunteers who have an apartment there, which will mean about 15 people in sleeping bags on the floor with a dirty bathroom and partying all night.

I am thinking that I may avoid Carnival in Mindelo this year and opt for a more relaxing vacation on the island of Maio, just a 10 minute flight or 3 hour boat ride away! One of the volunteers who I really connected with during In-Service Training lives there. She has had similar dilemmas adjusting to living on her own at site and feeling very isolated. Another male volunteer lives on the same island, but they rarely see each other. She was really the only person who could relate to my rural experiences besides Kevin, who is the other rural volunteer. Kevin’s experiences are even drastically different than mine because his neighbors cook almost every meal for him, and he is treated differently – as a powerful man in a machismo society. Patricia, a fellow volunteer from Praia, wants to go to Maio, too, so we will probably go together and just spend three days, two nights there. The island is half the size of mine, so it won’t take long to see everything. You can check out its location on the map in the ‘Cape Verde’ link. When viewing the map, remember, I live on Santiago, near the town of Tarrafal.

My cats are doing great, and one of them loves to creep under the sheets at night and sleep with me, purring incessantly for an hour until he falls asleep. He is also the same one who jumps onto my lap each time I sit at the dining room table, meowing for any food that I might throw his way. His brother sleeps at the end of my bed, which I prefer because I get more uninterrupted sleep. I no longer have rat infestation problems, but, yes, it appears to be the flying roach breeding season, starting this week. I go outside, and hear the flutter of wings as roach mount each other, and then they fly towards my house. I even killed my first centipede last night that was not eight inches long and black, but a gray, smaller version at five inches long. I had to give my chicken away because he had crawled under the chicken wire covering my seedlings and pulled out all of my Burpee lettuce from the USA. The lettuce was already two weeks old and two inches high, but he entered like a tornado and ripped it to shreds. The tomato seedlings, of which Burpee only gives you 20 seeds per packet were also largely destroyed -- only 3 seedlings survived.

This week looks good so far, and hopefully in the next email you will find me with the same positive outlook. I hate to seem so moody, but the past six months have been a whirlwind of mixed blessings. Even when I feel like I am not accomplishing much, I remember my neighbors who have formed friendships with me. They had never spoken with a foreigner in Kriolu before I came, and now they eat dinner with me on a regular basis. Sometimes I forget that my sheer presence means a lot for people who may never have the chance to travel more than an hour outside our valley in their entire lifetime.