Yet another weekend of festas.

Though I am losing money and sleep, I figure I might as well party it up, since this level of activity does not usually happen in Mosteiros, and I know in like a month, there will be nothing going on. This is a bad time for me to be losing money, since I need to pay for my Africa trip, which is ever so slowly taking shape. In my trials and tribulations of trying to establish if there is a Beninese embassy or consulate in Dakar, I’ve ended up calling PC/Senegal, the U.S. Embassy in Senegal and the Senegalese foreign ministry, which finally got me the number for some kind of Beninese diplomatic representation in Dakar. Of course, with the Senegalese foreign ministry, I had hope that someone there spoke English, which they did. But with the Benin folks, I was sure I wouldn’t be as lucky. I ended up having one of the Senegalese street vendors – and the boss of the youth center – translate a few phrases from Kriolu to French for me (it was interesting to note how they wrote totally different things for the same phrases that I presented them in Kriolu). But of course, that wasn’t enough to help me. When I called the Beninese embassy or whatever it is, the lady laughed at me, and then laughed some more when she said something to her colleagues, probably along the lines of “hey, there’s this dumbass on the phone trying to speak French to me.” But thanks to Farafa, we got one of the French teachers at the high school to come over and make the call for me. So, it all worked out in the end.

Since I was out till 3am one morning at a festa, my body actually was kind enough to let me sleep in until 8:45am, which is practically a miracle. As time has been passing by, I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier. I don’t know if it’s the mosquitoes or the sunlight or the fact that the water only seems to want to come on early in the morning, but my wake-up time continues to get pushed earlier and earlier in the morning.

Even though these past few days I’ve found myself becoming more and more pessimistic about my life here (due to lack of sleep, I think), I’m also watching Darney O’Malley go through his COS papers. I’m starting to get anxious when I realize that I’ve already been in country for 10 months, and in 14 months, I’ll be leaving! Of course, since I practically have no friends and have not done anything to advance the development of Cape Verde, I am not sure exactly why I would be anxious about leaving for. Maybe I’m nervous that the stink of failure that I am sure will be following me as I get closer to COS, and look back at the last two years of my life. Or maybe as tough as it is here sometimes, I actually like it here and don’t want to go. Or perhaps I feel a bit nervous about going back to America (though I am excited to be in a place where I can actually communicate with random strangers on the street).

Work continues to be the same pit of nothingness. I finally got a list of community associations in Mosteiros, and plan to visit them sometime soon. Though my APCD was not able to introduce me to the microfinance people, I now know about their existence, and need to head over there sometime. For some reason, I am more nervous about approaching them than I was with BORNEfonden, which I knew nothing about and just randomly walked up into their place one day.

When I was hanging out with Lady N’s family, I was complaining about much hassle it was to transfer money from the U.S. to Cape Verde, and I let slip how much money (in Cape Verdean Escudos) I am wanting to bring over to help pay for the trip. Though it’s not really that much of an astronomical amount for the kind of trip that has been planned, it is an astronomical amount of money for most Cape Verdean families. I really didn’t think about it again until a few days later, one of Lady N’s cousins, Emanuel, started going on about how rich I was. So I am assuming the family was talking about me all the crazy amounts of money I must have. Then he got all pissy at me because I had once showed him this Coke-Cola pen, and then didn’t give it to him. Of course, I barely remember him asking me about it then, but it must have stuck in the back of his mind or something, because he kept going on about it. After toying around with him about it for a few days, I ended up giving it to him (at this point he was saying how much he didn’t want the pen).

So, a 10-year-old getting mad at me is what passes for drama in my life right now. As for Mosteiros as a whole, Juliano recently painted the front of his house with various words and phrases – in Kriolu, Portuguese, Latin and a few other languages. On his wall includes the names of PC/Mosteiros (though my name is spelled as Jender) I will take pictures of it soon, and it should be up before I go to Africa.

I’ve been hanging out more with the Chinese people (to my father’s horror, if he knew) and I’ve been helping the husband of the married couple learn a bit of English. I spent some time over at his loja these past few days translating words into English from Portuguese. I now need to teach him pronunciation, which will be fairly difficult, but we will see how it goes. If I can do this with him, I may actually start working with people in the Câmara, who have been asking for English lessons.

Those who are interested in a green card to America have started to press Darney O’Malley about his post-PC plans, and are trying to figure out if they will involve him taking anyone back with him. So, that is interesting to hear about, since this is something Faraffa and I will have to deal with when we go.

I am sure there are a few more interesting to say, but I cannot think of them. You should email me or send me a letter, and I will tell you.