Alex in Africa

Alex Alper...is back in Africa

2010-01-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

“I’d really like to get something to drink, if you could help me. Euros are fine,” says the nice, cleanly dressed young man who has been “disinterestedly” helping me put my stuff in a cab at Senghor Airport in Dakar, Senegal at 2 Am.

I shake my head.

“Then how bout some kisses.”

I shake my head, and offer my hand out the window.

He shakes it, closes the door and disappears.

“Ugh” says the driver, in visible disgust, starting up the ignition.

“What,” thought I, “an ally in the driver, someone appalled by the opportunistic young man, cooly requesting nookie when money was denied?

“He didn’t shut the door.”

I chuckle, open and close my door again, and regain a little realism.

But everything is right. People are friendly, slow-moving, relaxed. The night air is soft, just barely cool and smells of the sea. The driver never forgives me for getting a bit of a deal (8 bucks for 10 minutes is hardly a deal, but less than the 10 bucks that are the norm for white passengers after midnight) and even tries to charge me another two bucks for the receipt. At no point, do I feel in danger.

I peel off my black clothes, meant to make me fit in during a day’s layover in Madrid, and instantly forget the chagrin at having had no boots like the other girls. I throw on a sundress, with bear arms, uneven seams, ready for sweat, wispy tangled hair and the translucent sunscreen that brings the scent of American drugstores with you everywhere. I pay for my room, head up for my shower. Even the cold water is pleasant, startling and a little harsh like getting clean should be. I’m back in Africa.

Condor Crew:The Interviews

2009-08-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

Meet the Condor Crew

2009-08-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

6 minute film I made documenting a day in the life of Condor Crew Biologists at Pinnacles National Monument. Through tracking, health checks, food supplementation, etc, they work to create a condor flock that is wild, healthy, and self-sustainin. Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center sponsored it. Forgive me for the music. It was free.

A Flat Tire

2009-08-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

The frogs in the pond between Ikea and the outer loop of the Beltway are singing. The streetlights tower above us as the cars whiz by loudly, until there’s a pause in traffic. Then you can hear my footsteps and the frogs.

The shoulder is loaded with fascinating stuff--a belt, a credit card, a wrench, pieces of tire, stuff left on purpose or inadvertently by all those people who had some reason to be walking along the side of the beltway at night.

I am walking back to my car. It’s blinking, with a flat, somewhere up ahead, past an overhanging bridge where the shoulder narrows to a foot, and just beyond the spur for highway 95, whose two lanes I will again sprint across. This, unfortunately, is where the AARP will send a car repairman to meet me.

It’s 12:20 a.m. At 10:00 p.m., when I had heard the grating noise, I parked and walked back up the ramp and into the first business I saw, a Holiday Inn, for a phone. No pay phones, but a sense of public duty got the concierge to offer me his. I called my dad, and asked him to call AARP (the policy is in his name).

“Can they meet me at the Holiday Inn and we can go to my car together?”

“No. She says it’s against policy rules.”

“What? So I have to cross the beltway again? It’s dangerous.”

“I know. I asked twice, she says absolutely not. Just be careful.”

The cars are whizzing at my back as I make my way up the shoulder. It’s not as scary as on the way there, when I had gasped every time a car seemed to lock me in its headlights, head towards me murderously, and veer off course at the last minute. I chided myself for thinking these silly things. I also tried not to look back.

At the bridge, an eighteen-wheeler seems nearly to clip me and I scramble up onto the embankment. Maybe I’m not being silly. If so, why is AARP, an organization that purports to aid stranded car-owners, permitting me to be in this roadside peril?

My thoughts travel unavoidably to Africa. The time I biked through a village that had saved a water bottle I had left for trash months before. The reliable supply of unofficial mechanics who fixed my bike with pieces of rubber they found on the road. A world where you felt like, penniless and unknown, you could show up anywhere and find strangers to help you, and that they in turn would expect the same thing of you, showing up or your doorstep with a broken bike or a missing water bottle.

At the same time, I remember my revulsion at Blanche Dubois’ famous line from Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire: “I always rely on the kindnesses of strangers.” How awful to feel so assured of help from strangers that you excuse yourself from taking necessary precautions. I felt slighted the other day when it rained and I walked 50 yards from gym to parking lot beside a fellow student with an umbrella who didn’t share it. “How absurd to have the power to help and not use it,” I thought at the time. And now walking along the shoulder to my car, “how absurd to expect others to help you!” Had Africa made me needy? If I had been able to fix my own tire, wouldn’t I have been able to avoid this beltway promenade, not to mention ire towards AARP’s hypocritical policy?

The answer, of course, is somewhere in the middle. If fear of relying on others prevents you from taking risks, you are missing out on lots of safe adventures and the opportunity to discover the truly genuine kindness of most strangers. Alternately, if you are constantly making forays into the world without taking precautions, you are taking advantage of them, asking to be disappointed, and exposing yourself to needless danger.

I arrive at my car. The repairman is waiting, his blinking yellow lights trained on my car’s bumper. I open the trunk, he pulls out the donut, hands me the flashlight to illuminate his work, and begins.

A police car pulls up. “Was that you running up the road?” he asks. I nod. “You in trouble?” I look at my watch. It’s almost one a.m. I wanted to say, “I was at ten,” but I thank him for asking.

He parks and walks over, pointing a flashlight at the wheel I am already illuminating.

“This isn’t the kind of stretch where, you know, people get out and help you,” he says.

“Planning” a Trip to Guinea

2009-06-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

(written April/2009)
I am sitting on my bed pouring over the Guinea Chapter in The Rough Guide to West Africa, like it matters. There are notes in the margins, highlights, even comments scrawled in my binder, as though the facts about prices, decent hotels, and good bike rides will make my trip better. I close the book. I’ve been to Guinea, why am I doing this? Nothing I could possibly do with a guidebook—place it under a wobbly table or memorize it--could affect my trip in any way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Western world, what they tell you is true: bad things happen to good people who don’t plan. A thriving community of conniving, unscrupulous evildoers pounce on good people who don’t check their tire pressure, don’t book hotel reservations in advance, don’t buy luggage insurance or those handy, irredeemably tacky money-hiding fanny packs.
In Guinea, no one believes in this adage, not because they are backwards, but because it doesn’t hold true there. Plan and spend as you like in Guinea, unaccounted, bizarre things, often of a biblical character, occur that can subvert your plans, big time. Dust storms, floods, pre-Islamic ceremonies, sudden deaths, snakes, strikes, inflation, illnesses, any sort of element from a Magical realism novel, could smite you without warning, humbling you into phrases like “It is in God’s hands,” “Man proposes but God disposes,” and “if it happened, it must be for the best.”
Once on the way from my village to Kourrousa, the barge that usually carried us across the river ran out of gas and began slowly to float down the river, thudding against the banks of the Niger as the women screamed and grasped at branches. Twice that same night, muddy roads and a steady downpour caused me to fall under a motorcycle. A few months later, my neighbor was bitten by a snake while milking a cow and promptly died.
Bad things occur with no warning, but the opposite is true too. You can impulsively jump on a notion to travel across the country with no money, and no plans and magically, through the goodness of people you meet, and thanks to the absence of unscrupulous evildoers that pounce on hapless adventurers elsewhere, it works out. That same night on the Niger, I slept at a stranger’s house many miles short of where I had planned on ending up, and made one of the few Guinean friends with whom I am still in touch. A world without consequences, a world where saying “it’s in God’s hands” is not a cop-out so much as a statement of fact.
I exaggerate, of course. There is a time when the “It’s-in-God’- hands” mentality is a sorry excuse for inaction that perpetuates the awful things that do occur so regularly. Once, very early in my Peace Corps service, traveling by bush taxi to Conakry, our car puttered to a halt as we came upon a bus slanted into a ditch. Several dead bodies covered with cloths lay beside it. Flies buzzed and landed. The bus’s other passengers cried quietly, or sat and stared at the road, waiting for Conakry-bound cars with vacant spots. My car took one of them. It had been a collision, she explained. Among the dead was a woman who was traveling to Conakry to meet her fiancé, who was arriving from France after years abroad. “God didn’t will it,” she explained, and I grimaced.
Peter Hessler, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in China and writer of River Town: Two Years on the Yangzte River, posits that this is why volunteers go on to “achieve” little in life. Forced to adjust to regularized chaos, he says, they can no longer see action as tied to results, nor failure as the result of inaction. In this world, struggling to prove a correlation between input and output is too frustrating. So volunteers often give up, sit back, and (ironically) prove the rule, that man is mostly powerless to determine his destiny.
But hope exists and, wonderfully, it is irrational. The people who do manage to change things manage to forgo reason, the reason that tells them their efforts will likely fail. Instead they rely on their convictions, irrational gut-instincts that their efforts could change something. (And while these convictions ARE irrational, the only guaranteed way to fail is never to try). So we have heard of these people: the Steve Jobs, the Bill Gates, the Isaac Newton, the Louis Pasteur, etc.
So when will someone demand or undertake to ensure better roads, better drivers, safety standards for cars and cargo carriage in Guinea? When will there appear journalists, op-ed writers, politicians and NGO’s that draw international attention to these awful accidents in a way that foments action, in a way that allows most Guineans to mock those who say “It’s in God’s hands” for blinding themselves to their own agency? If Peace Corps volunteers themselves, the supposed change-agents, can adopt these attitudes themselves, the magnitude of the challenge is clear. But hope, wonderfully, is irrational, and though I will soon give up on planning this trip, I hope that Guinea will one day become a place where all manners of planning are richly rewarded.

Obamanos! to Africa

2009-06-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't vote for Obama to make it easier to tell people in Africa that I am American, but it sure has helped. Here are some indications of his mass appeal from my whirlwind trip through Mali, Guinea, and Senegal this May.

Ziguinchor, Senegal (Basse Casamance) 05/09

2009-06-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

Ziguinchor, Senegal (Basse Cassamance) 05/09

2009-06-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

Oussouye, Senegal (Basse Cassamance) 05/09

2009-06-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Faranah, Guinea 05/09

2009-06-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Bamako, Mali 05/09

2009-06-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Dakar, Senegal, 05/09

Life After Peace Corps? Grad School Essays

2009-05-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

These are excerpts from essays I wrote to apply to Columbia Schools of Journalism and International Affairs, where I will be attending this fall.

Why Journalism:

Three plumes of smoke rise above downtown Kankan, Guinea, from burning truck tires lit by protesters. I am standing on the Peace Corps’ sagging plastic water tank, watching. Abou, our guard, in sandals and a silk shirt, leans against the mango tree, smoking.
Shots are fired nearby. I slide off the water tank, and crouch behind the tree. A military vehicle charges up the deserted street, turns, and heads downtown.
* * *
Peace Corps volunteers are by mandate apolitical. But after two decades of corruption and growing poverty under Lansana Conte, Guineans had organized in opposition and we were exhilarated, even if it meant a premature end to our service.
Two strikes earlier that year had led to clashes only in the capital. In my village, where agriculture was the crux of every conversation and news arrived at the weekly market, violent protest seemed implausible. Then, in December, Conte released two cronies jailed for state embezzlement, and sector-wide strikes erupted in cities throughout the country.
The six volunteers who had gathered in Kankan listened to the radio and neighborhood hearsay to try and piece together what was happening.
I had joined the Peace Corps with ambivalence. Internships at a radio station in Napa County, an environmental newspaper in Ecuador, and a political media website in San Francisco convinced me I wanted to be a reporter. Curiosity and a predilection for interviews as a complement to textual research drew me to journalism. I also love writing: ordering facts analytically and hooking readers creatively proved eternally intriguing and challenging.
What troubled me was my desire to advocate. “Can I dedicate myself to informing alone when enormous social, environmental, and health problems affect the world’s poor?” Introducing soil improvement techniques and providing nutritional training to villagers fulfilled this desire to contribute. The frustration of watching passively as Guineans protested decades of unaccountable government confirmed it. While I loved journalism, could I spend an entire career in compulsory neutrality, when part of what drew me to news was my desire to influence it?
Coverage of the strikes transformed the question. The French BBC reported, “Protests in Dalaba, Pita, Kankan and Labe, resulting in one death.” The English BBC mentioned no death, and protests in Kindia and Zerekore, but not Kankan. Radio France Internationelle (RFI) offered still more conflicting accounts. One prized visit to Kankan’s only internet cafe revealed that googling “Guinea” summoned more pages on Guinea pigs than the country.
Strike coverage was so faulty or nonexistent that to reveal the facts accurately to the rich world was itself an act of advocacy, an essential precursor to socioeconomic change. A career in journalism could both advance humanitarianism and fulfill my passion for reporting.

Why International Relations:

“How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.”
-Karl Kraus, Austrian Journalist and Press Critic

Cape Verde’s economy appears to be weathering the global credit crisis and record oil prices well. Based largely on remittances (34% of GDP in 2007), foreign aid, and a growing tourism sector, it is less vulnerable to global credit trends. As recently as September, Cape Verdean GNI per capita was a robust $2,430 US, more than twice the average for sub-Saharan countries. At a glance, economic indicators are positive.
However, a closer look at the community level reveals a different picture. The cost of bread--and other foods that require energy to produce--has increased significantly. Power outages, due to oil shortages at the national electric company, envelope the capital in darkness periodically. Water, much of which comes from oil-guzzling desalinization plants, is cut frequently. “If it’s not water, it’s electricity. If it’s not electricity, it’s water,” one resident complains.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I am uniquely positioned to know and document the impact of domestic and international forces on Cape Verdean lives. With a good grasp of local language and a mandate to integrate, I have enjoyed privileged access to the problems behind the World Bank figures, which I have documented through my blog, radio programs, short films, and published articles.
When reporters break domestic and international news, they too must include these stories for the macro-trends to have significance. How can one communicate the meaning of a higher gas price, without a bus driver’s worries, or the significance of scarce credit, without a small businessman’s struggles? For readers, macro-trends are meaningless without case studies. Peace Corps service has rendered this journalistic responsibility intuitive, which will serve me well as I pursue a career in international reporting.
Nevertheless, equally fundamental to good reporting is an understanding of the international political and economic framework that causes, contextualizes, and is ultimately affected by these daily struggles. What underlying factors provoked the high oil prices internationally that led to bus strikes locally? One bus driver’s struggle is poignant, but meaningless, if not couched in the broader issues that represent, cause, and are shaped by it.
I seek admission to garner a sound framework that extends around the world and into recent history; one that encapsulates markets and governments, as well as people, cultures and languages; one that will allow me to become a balanced, responsible, international reporter, with an emphasis on environmental, energy and social issues in Africa.

Rewiring Pedro Badejo

2008-11-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

It’s Saturday and there are no students in the courtyard of Pedro Badejo’s Vocational Education School. The sun is shining on a series of Greek arches---the final exams of the school’s stone masonry students--giving the school courtyard the odd feel of an ancient mosque. Andrew is standing beside a table saw talking to the wood shop professor.
The wood shop teacher flips the switch and the two excitedly watch as the saw begins to spin: Pedro Badejo’s technical school hasn’t had electricity in about a month, which hasn’t exactly made it easy for Andrew to begin teaching electrical wiring to his students. A strong wind blows through the courtyard and the saw slows, stops, and begins turning in the opposite direction. The two chuckle. No more power.
Andrew is a first year Peace Corps Volunteer, a recent electrical engineering graduate of Drexel University, and the son of Columbian immigrants, who wouldn’t have made it to the United States if it hadn’t been for the Peace Corps, Andrew says. “Like all other volunteers, I guess, [I joined because] I wanted to help out…I really saw the impact first hand of another generation of Peace Corps volunteers.”
His mother and father, Aura Maria Rosa Vernaza and Jorge Enrique Vernaza, immigrated to the United States in 1976, eventually settling in Mount Laurel, New Jersey to raise their two sons. His father learned English from an ESL volunteer at the Universidad de Valle in Bogotá where he studied engineering. His excellent English skills aided him in his embassy interview and subsequent transition to America. His mother, from the rural suburb of Tenza, watched as an irrigation volunteer helped her family greatly improve their farm’s efficiency. “We still go back there for vacation and eat the tomatoes. They’re really good,” says Andrew. “The reason the farm is still in the my family is probably because of that Peace Corps Volunteer…My family really understands the impact Peace Corps has had on their lives.”
Andrew joined the Peace Corps to give back, a decision he is still committed to, though his job isn’t always easy. “I’m not a teacher, I engineer things,” he says. As he glowingly describes “cool circuits” like burglar alarms, it’s easy to imagine he is happiest when working on his own experiments.
Teaching, he explains, “is so frustrating sometimes. Once we were doing this problem with the equation V=IR. Its like the most important equation of electricity.” He writes it, voltage equals resistance times current. “I gave the students simple numbers for resistance and voltage, but they couldn’t come up with the current. They hadn’t learned that you could divide both sides of the equation by the same number. A lot of them didn’t go to high school and don’t have basic math skills.”
Nevertheless, there are definite eureka moments.
A student once confessed to Andrew after class that she still didn’t understand an equation. “I just couldn’t explain it again, so I asked this other student if he could.” The student answered that he thought so.
“And then he just totally nailed it,” Andrew recalls. “He derived the entire equation perfectly, and the girl got it, and I hadn’t said a thing. I was like, ‘oh my god, I think I have just built capacity.’”
We leave the school and head down the road to the stadium where his students have a soccer match. Half-clad children run across the cobbled road, which narrows to a few feet in places where most of the stones are missing. Unpainted rectangular cement homes line the hilly, winding street that descends towards the expansive ocean, which eats up most of the horizon. A few women wash clothes in cement basins. Most people sit on stools and stone walls along the side of the street that still has a sliver of shade.
While Cape Verde is one of the most prosperous countries in West Africa, Pedro Badejo is among the poorest towns on the island of Santiago, with frequent power outages, high unemployment, and poor infrastructure. “It doesn’t make sense that the only school specializing in electricity is in this poor town with bad power.”
But Andrew is working on that. In the evenings he repairs broken street lamps with some of his motivated students. He is writing a proposal to install a wind turbine at the school that would generate power to offset the malfunctioning generator, and allow him to teach his students about renewable energies, an increasingly important field for a country with no petroleum resources and growing electricity demand.
For other challenges, Andrew turns to his parents. “I was complaining to my mom about not having running water. And she was like ‘you should do what we used to do—soak a towel in water and shower with that.”
Many of Andrew’s anecdotes about Columbia are funny or touching. But when he explains that drug-related violence claimed the lives of his father’s two brothers, you are reminded of the real suffering that Columbia’s infamous problems mean for its people.
And yet, knowing what his parents escaped from--and seeing how far they got—gives Andrew a clear sense of what he can achieve in Cape Verde. “The Peace Corps gives hope. If we weren’t here, they wouldn’t know their abilities. When I leave here they will say, ‘Oh I can do that.’”
When other volunteers second-guess the Peace Corps’ potential for making a difference, Andrew unthinkingly replies, “Volunteers have an impact. You probably won’t ever get to see it, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Twenty years from now, someone may do something because of something you said and you will have no idea.”
We reach the stadium, a cement, walled-basketball court on the edge of town. Andrew’s students, the red shirted “biscuits”, file by and greet Andrew before the game starts.
“See that one, number eight?” He points to a player. “That’s the one I was telling you about, who explained the equation. He is super motivated. Sometimes he asks if we can go fix another lamppost and I am like, ‘how about tomorrow, ok?’”
Andrew leans forward as one of his student shoots on goal, and then continues.
“Maybe he won’t get to America. But he will get a good job, give a good life to his kids, and maybe they will be able to go.”

Less Water, More Grandma Underwear

2008-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

It’s summer in Praia and it’s so hot I can barely keep my clothes on. There are several shirts strewn around the floor, tossed down around 1:00 pm each day when I get home for lunch. Yesterday’s is still soggy.
Today is Saturday and I am back from the beach, sandy and hot. I open the faucet more out of curiosity than hope or expectation. Still nothing. Not even the trickle of the last few days. I peer into the blue plastic barrel that holds our water reserves. The shimmering circles around my reflection are far away, four feet down and maybe a foot up from the bottom. By Monday, it will have been two weeks without water.
I look around the kitchen, prioritizing. The dishes march across our spacious counter. At mealtime, we either eat out, or on chopping boards and Tupperware tops. Still, dish washing is not a priority. The kitchen floor is covered with brown blotches, from the days when there was enough water for it to spill from the sink and mix with the ubiquitous dust. This muck too is not a priority. I have two more pairs of grandma underwear—the kind you almost throw away every few months but for some clairvoyant voice that warns you of it would be rash. Looking nice at work is getting challenging… but laundry is still not a priority.
It’s the murky smelly toilet, the vacuous drinking water filter, and the bathtub—oddly devoid of water droplets--that have to come first. The two of us—my roommate and I, sworn joggers, who easily chug several 1.5-liter-bottles of water a day, who dump copious amounts of it down our long tresses, and who always gut up for mysterious street food only to repent before the porcelain god later that night—use a lot of water. Drinking, Bathing, Sanitation. There they are, our water priorities in descending order.
The reason for our water problem, we learned finally, was a neighbor’s unpaid water bills. But water outages arbitrarily afflict different neighborhoods in Praia on a fairly regular basis. 58% of urban residents are connected to the central network. 88% of the water from the networks comes from desalinization. Desalinization, the process of turning salty seawater into potable drinking water, is the country’s main response to low rainfall and dwindling subsoil resources. It is energy intensive, requiring 2-3 kilowatt hours to produce a cubic meter of water. When Electra, the national electricity and water company, runs out of diesel fuel to power desalinization, water is cut intermittently in different neighborhoods to ration use. Periodic malfunctions in the pipes also provoke cuts. When you’re not in the mood to tackle last night’s dishware, it’s awesome. When you’re fresh out of even the most inelastic of underwear, it’s infuriatingly uncivilized.
Lack of resources, insufficient financing, and poor management are clearly at play here. But there is a greater significance. It’s relative water consumption. My roommate and I--two Americans accustomed to infinite sprinkler systems, bountiful toilets that flush at will, and faucets left running while teeth are brushed-- can’t make a barrel of water last a week. A barrel contains 240 liters, or just under a quarter of a cubic meter. How long could a Cape Verdean family make that barrel last, without ever having to forgo clean dishes, floors, and snugly fitting underwear?
On average, rural Cape Verdeans consume 15-25 liters of water in a day. City dwellers consume roughly 40. It is thanks to residents’ conservative use of water that Cape Verde’s water situation is even tenable.
But what would happen if our Praia neighbors suddenly began to consume like Emily, me and other Americans? Americans consume 200-300 liters per person per day, for domestic use alone. That’s between five and twenty times as much as Cape Verdeans. Such an enormous growth in consumption would overwhelm a system that already struggles to meet current water needs.
Ok, but is it likely that 500,000 Cape Verdean residents suddenly start using 20 times more water? Nope. Electra has registered only modest average growth in demand of 4.4%, per year over the past five years (and actually recorded a 3% drop from 2006-2007). The world financial crisis may serve to slow growth further.
Still, our hypothetical situation is not off the mark for global trends. In quickly developing countries like China and India, more and more people are reaching a point of affluence that allows them to consume like Westerners. In one sense, it’s wonderful to see high standards of living reach previously impoverished countries. On the other hand, the earth can barely support the excessive consumption of one America. How can it support the excessive consumption of many?
In “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” Tom Freidman quantifies the problem. “Not only will the world’s population grow from around three billion in 1955 to a projected 9 billion by 2050, but—much, much more important—we will go from a world population in which maybe one billion people were living an “American” lifestyle to a world in which two or three billion people are living an American lifestyle or aspiring to do so.”
Jeffrey Diamond breaks down the numbers in a fabulous January, 2008 New York Times article. The 1 billions people who live in Japan, Australia, Western Europe and North America consume about 32 times as much water, metals, and oil as most people living in developing countries. So, for example, when Kenya’s population balloons, as it is expected to, it will still take 32 Kenyans to consume as much as one American. That’s grossly unfair, but it means we can worry less about the impact of population growth impact on global resources, right?
Wrong. China and India are catching up quickly. China’s 1.3 billion people, according to Diamond, currently consume at a factor of 21.

“China's catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent...If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).”

So what to do? How can we eliminate socio-economic inequalities---that leave Kenyans consuming 1/32 of the water we do---without destroying the planet? Moreover, how can we convince developing countries, eager to finally achieve the high living standards we have enjoyed for so long, to pitch in and fight the environmental problems that we created pretty much on our own? Says Freidman: “As an Egyptian cabinet minister remarked to me: ‘It is like the developed world ate all the hors d’ouvres, all the entrees, and all the desserts and then invited the developing world for a little coffee’ and asked us to split the whole bill.”
We Americans can, at the very least, set an example, by reducing the consumption that so many poor countries seek to emulate. As Freidman says, in his book,

“I certainly don’t blame the citizens of Doha or Dalian for aspiring to an American lifestyle or for opting to build it on the same cheap-fossil-fuel foundation that we did….We Americans are in no position to lecture anyone. But we are in the position to know better. We are in a position to set a different example of growth. We are in a position to use our resources and know how to invent the renewable, clean, power sources and energy efficient systems that can make growth greener.”

It is going to be hard. Neither prices nor government legislation have forced us to do it yet. Most Americans today have never had to limit resource use and cannot directly observe the effects of unequal consumption or resource depletion, which could shock us into behavior change.
Emily and I are lucky: each period of forcible grandma underwear use has ingrained in us the preciousness of water, and other resources that are already scarce in parts of the developing world. Will we retain this awareness, when we return to the land of sprinklers and motion sensor toilets? Will we effectively communicate it to other Americans to bring about behavior change? Who knows? But it’s the 9 billion person question.

How to Spell his Name

2008-10-09T09:38:00.000-07:00

It was just a B. I had drawn them many times with the standard Cape Verdean blue pen—four white rings around the base and tip, a pinched top, in the hands of students or guards or secretaries. This particular pen belonged to the U.S. Embassy in downtime Praia. A thick glass separated the waiting room from the office. It would have made any American convenience store owner weep with envy. There was a cooler with amazingly cold water, posters about visas in Portuguese and English. And now a blue “b” drawn on a write-in ballot.
President/Vice President. Home address. Date of birth.
I liked writing his name, but it felt silly. After so much pomp, it had come down to this? To me, holding a pen, trying to remember how to spell his name? I thought about chads, about how the devil is in the details, and how “e” misleadingly comes before “i” in “Hussein”. That our hallowed democracies should depend, even in part, on the orthography of its dyslexic citizens abroad!
I also had butterflies. My bizarre Peace Corps extra-curricular—of plopping down at the internet to watch debate footage in buffering jolts, to scan opinion pages, and forwarded op/eds—had been silly, when my daily conversations were about corn and rain and zouk songs. But suddenly it was relevant. I was a part of that strange parallel universe of "bailouts" and "surges". So much so that though it affected me little, I could affect it. No matter how far away, how uninformed, or how dyslexic, I got to help pick.
B.
A-R-A-C-K.
Barack Hussein Obama/Biden.
(Joe, right? Yeah, Joe.)

Teneh's Cold

2008-09-22T08:03:00.001-07:00

Mariama looks at me.
“You suck at this,” she says.
She is seated on an overturned mortar, removing chunks of ginger from the caldron of juice. It is pungent and opaque, almost ready for the children who will purchase it in plastic bags after school.
“I know,” I say.
My job is to peel open the baggies for the juice. It is like prying a piece of masking tape off a sheet of plastic wrap, except less fun. My fingers are red, my eyes ache, and I’ve opened about ten bags.
Teneh laughs and leans towards me. The mayor’s wife, her hair is elaborately braided, her complet new and starchy. Today she has a bad cold. Her eyes are small and watery. Seated on a stool beside me, she sniffles and snot droplets fall on the dust.
“Tubabu,” she rolls her eyes, smiling. “White people.” She snatches a pile of unopened bags off my lap. She grasps one and blows deeply into it.
“TENEH!” I yell.
She is startled. Mariama stops stirring. They stare at me.
“Uh, bad things, the cold, bad, in the thing there,” I say in Malinke. “Person drink juice, bad thing there, cough cough bad.”
Teneh stares at me and then she gets it. She starts to laugh. It’s deep and throaty with phlegm. Tears of mirth and cold germs dripping down her cheeks, she turns to Mariama, who is still confused.
“Listen to this: tubabu is saying that if I blow into this bag, and someone drinks the juice--are you listening?--Then they are going to get sick, too.”
Mariama jerks forward. “Get sick? From drinking juice? No way! Are you serious!?!”
Teneh yells to a group of farmers who have appeared around the corner. “Mamadi! Sidi! Come listen to this!” They file over to her and form a wall of loud ridicule.
“Germs cause disease! Germs cause disease!” I keep insisting. Western science is as useless to me here as my usually potent powers of persuasion. To them, I am hysterical, absurd. I am funny to look at, I lose half a bucket of water every time I carry it home from the pump, and my prepositions are a mess. And now this.
A childlike petulance wells up inside me. Where is teacher? Who will tell them I’m right? Just think how they’ll feel when they find out I’m right!
But there’s no teacher. The doctor is out of town. Educated Guineans, other volunteers, America, are too far away to tell them I’m right.
I run to my hut and I sulk, with a profound sense of entitlement. I came all this way to help and no one listens! If people won’t even trust me on basic western science, how will they ever be open to my other ideas?
These issues grated, but what really upset me was that nobody liked me. My best friends, Mariama and Teneh, thought I was a fool. They would tell their families that night over dinner and have another good laugh. From then on, people would surely laugh and retell the story every time they bought juice.
I lay under the mosquito net, contemplating early termination. Strangely, what popped into my head were those painfully obvious adages from anti-drug campaigns and the biographies of great men. “You have to believe in yourself.” “There’s no guarantee people will accept you even when you are right.’ “You mustn’t rely on the approval of others.” So this is what they meant. Those vacant, hackneyed phrases from so many mandatory middle school reading lists actually meant something quite valuable.
How strange to learn it in a village in Africa! How strange to let the opinion of foreign villagers matter so much that I might learn it here!
But it really makes perfect sense: being inescapably absurd for two years to strangers (who can’t help but become your peer group) is arguably the best lesson in strength of character. If everything I do is crazy, I must give up on being sane. If I give up on being sane, I can promote crazy new ideas, weed out the open-minded people in town, dance miserably and unabashedly in a drum circle. Maybe I can even go back to America and do the same thing.
It wasn’t easy being the lone believer in germs in Banfele. I got a cold, along with everyone else, a few days after the vendors started sneezing. I got ridiculed if I suggested the existence of disease vectors, and I never knew if anyone changed their minds. All I know for sure is that so many needless episodes of sinusitis resulted in my acceptance of being unaccepted, arguably the best outcome of Peace Corps service---and excessive phlegm--ever.

On Not Discussing Africa

2008-08-03T04:41:00.000-07:00

“So there we are, cleaning the gutter, and Mary looks in the drainpipe, and guess what?” Bob leans forward. The sweat on his forehead matches the condensation on his margarita glass. It is 8 pm, a muggy summer evening in Austin, and the sky above the deck is still bright.
“You’ll really never believe it!” Mary stands behind his chair.
“What?” Brenda asks.
“It was our cat! She had come back!”
“No!” Paul says. His bite-size carrot stands erect in the hummus bowl.
“She had come back?! Ah, I bet you were just…” Brenda searches the deck floor for the word.
“Just flummoxed!” Mary says. “What was it, four weeks, five weeks later?
Bob nods. “We were really surprised.”
All pause, relishing the significance. Minutes before, I had told them of my Guinean village, how my friends get skinny each rainy season, when last year’s harvest has been consumed, but this year’s crop is just being planted, and Ramadan keeps them from eating all day anyway. They had paused with the same solemnity.
Luckily, I didn’t need people to be curious about Africa. After a year of unpaid therapy from Volunteers in Cape Verde, I didn’t have the urge to pour my heart out about Guinea anymore. Cape Verde, to which I would be returning shortly, didn’t elicit the same nostalgia in me that begets long and painful monologues...
..which was fortunate, given my stateside reception: “How was Africa?” people typically asked. “Good,” I replied, and we moved on to gas prices, i-phones, the fist bump, and other topics currently transfixing the American psyche.
I honestly didn’t judge: it’s human nature to be uncurious about things beyond your worldview, I reasoned, things about which you know so little that it’s hard to formulate good questions. Americans, with its economic might, vast territory and autonomous entertainment industry, may be a bit more prone to it. But for that very reason, it's even harder to condemn. And besides, I was thrilled to talk about the iphone myself (you can use it to turn on your itunes!).
So when a few curious guests approached me at a homecoming party and requested a speech, I declined.
“If people are interested, they will ask me privately.”
“But will have to repeat yourself!” they protested.
“Trust me, I won’t,” I smiled. “Since most aren’t interested and since I don’t need to talk about it, it just doesn't make sense.”
Then someone asked what I would pursue after Peace Corps.
“Journalism.”
“Why?”
“Because I think the first step in human rights and economic development is getting more attention to suffering people. The media does a great job at spurring awareness, and that is what leads to government and NGO projects, and ultimately change.”
I started. I’ve just stated why I needed to give the speech, I thought. I was so proud of myself for not needing attention that I was actually undermining an opportunity to get Africa attention.
“So I’m just going to talk a little bit about what I’ve been doing in Guinea and Cape Verde and then I’ll let you ask me questions if you have any.”
To my surprise, with a bit of background information, people asked great questions. The guests I had imagined least curious thanked me sincerely as they left. Perhaps ignorance and not lack of curiousity was the real reason for the apparent disinterest; even the iphone had to be hyped a bit before we cared about it.

Homecoming

2008-07-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

Looking down at the tray table in front of me, I see the wad of neatly folded American dollars peaking out of my bra. For two and a half years I have guarded my money this way. In Guinea, Mali and Cape Verde, this improvised wallet had done good by me.
But what’s there is crisp and green now, the color of money spent in a country where currency is placed unthinkingly in wallets, where unclasp purses are swung carelessly on city streets at night, where crime happens but I do not stand out, and where abundance—so unfair among nations and so destructive to the environment—is uplifting to behold. I am going home, home to America!
Escalators, hallways, baggage carousels. Things are vast, shiny and efficient. The softly lilting Cape Verdean Creole of the other passengers mixes with the harsh Boston accent of my language spoken everywhere. English, you all speak English! I watch customs officials and janitors. “Tudo bom?” escapes every time I try to greet someone.
“Hi, how are you?” I say as the customs official takes my passport.
“Good. You?”
“I am so good!” I breathe. “I’ve been in the Peace Corps in Africa for two and a half years and I am so happy to be back in America!”
“You sound like your nose is stopped up,” he says, turning to another official with a look of “crazy”.
Don’t be too warm with strangers in America
In the baggage room, a stream of antsy passengers circulates from the carousal to the Dunkin’ Donuts. Its 10 pm. Could the Americans be hungry? Or do they eat because they can’t sit still?
I approach the check-in counter for my flight to Austin. An idle attendant directs me to a row of computers. You’re human, and unoccupied. Can’t you help me? The computers, manipulated expertly by travelers, are daunting.
“Good morning,” my machine says disarmingly. “You will need your airplane ticket, license, or passport to proceed.”
I have all of those! I am totally gonna rock this.
Grasping all three documents, I pass them under the machine’s red-lit scanner. Nothing. I flip them over, alternating circular motions with left-to-right jazz-hand movements. A few travelers glance over, but my machine relentlessly wishes me a “good morning.”
You see, I’m not from here. It’s a lie, but it doesn’t seem like it is.
We board, and Massachusetts’ deep forests, curving rivers and neat suburbs open up below us. New England---not even our nation’s greatest environmental treasure--is astoundingly vast and lush, dwarfing the images of Cape Verde’s miniature barren peaks and sandy planes that slip into my head.
But surprisingly, instead of awe, I am reminded of an essay question from US History class: How was the North’s civil war victory predestined from before the war? The North, enfeebled by its comparative agricultural weakness, was forced to develop the industry—for roads, railroads, arms—that allowed it to prevail in the war. The South, blessed with long growing seasons and abundant harvests, was never compelled to build the technology necessary for military success.
Cape Verde—barely larger than Rhode Island, with a population smaller than Albuquerque’s, whose list of natural resources is topped off with “salt and basalt rock”---is investing in renewable energies. Its government has pledged to attain 50% renewable energy by 2020. The US has not signed the Kyoto protocol. Renewable energy accounts for 6% of total US energy consumption. Has American timber, hydraulic power, oil, and arable land rendered us complacent, an ironic victim of incidental gifts, as the long summers rendered the Civil War South?

Ag, Energy and Water: A Brief Overview for Cape Verde

2008-07-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

“Salt, basalt rock, limestone, kaolin, fish, clay, gypsum.” So reads the finite list of Cape Verde’s natural resources, giving insight into the tremendous challenge that existence here has always posed. And yet, in a world where the price of fossil fuels climbs ever higher, Cape Verde has at least been blessed with the need to innovate. Critical deficiencies in water, agriculture and energy are compelling the country to become an innovator, and maybe a leader, in exciting new technologies, from growing plants without soil, to capturing water from the fog.
But the difficulties are formidable, and the lack of water is perhaps the most. Rainfall averages 200mm per year, barely enough to replenish the natural springs that supply much of the rural population with water. As the springs slowly dry up, salt water is seeping into the aquifers, contaminating the sources that remain.
Desalinisation technologies provide water to the majority of urban residents but is very expensive (see box).Agriculture presents challenges also. Throughout Cape Verdean history, severe droughts have caused epic famines, killing thousands and driving many abroad. Erosion, caused by agriculture, grazing, and wood-gathering in a delicate ecosystem, has decreased the quality of the soil, while much of the country was originally sand and rocky mountain slope anyway. Indeed, only 10% of Cape Verde’s 4,033km2[[?]] of land mass is arable and home-grown food provides only 10-20% of what is consumed. Nevertheless, a large number of Cape Verdeans are still involved in agricultural activities, planting corn, beans, peanuts, squash, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, bananas and other crops each year. Some farmers plant corn only for animal fodder, knowing it will not reach maturity.
The rest of Cape Verde's food is imported, and transportation requires energy --another scarce commodity for a country with no fuel reserves. The country also needs fuel for depends on electricity, for cooking (butane gas) and for desalinsation (see box). Cape Verde spent EE54.4m on petroleum derivatives in 2007 alone, and domestic fuel taxes are high compared with other African nations. When local prices for gas and diesel climbed to EE1.28 and 1.32 per litre [[?]]respectively in early 2008, hiace drivers on Santiago called a strike, protesting at the government’s high gas tax. In the meantime, rural Cape Verdeans rely largely on dwindling forest resources for their cooking needs to supplement expensive butane gas. This constitutes a great pressure on Cape Verde’s fragile ecosystem. With the rising tourism, and population growth of about 2% the demand for cheap, abundant energy will only rise.
Precisely because of the gravity of these challenges, Cape Verde, with the help of foreign governments and NGOs, is trying to pioneer green technologies. The country has promised to achieve 25% renewable energies by 2010, a figure that should rise to 50% by 2020. Cape Verde also hopes to have one island with 100% renewable electricity by 2020. It is offering tax deductions for expenses related to renewable energies.
With 3,000 hours of sunlight per year, Cape Verde has promoted solar energy to pump and heat water, and to illuminate homes in remote areas. The Cape Verdean government and the European Union have begun a campaign to disseminate solar water pumps to 30 rural communities on Santiago. That will go far to help rural Cape Verdeans, most of whom make up the 40% of the population that still lacks electricity.
In one rural community in Serra Malagueta, a pilot project sponsored by the Protected Areas Programme is underway to disseminate more efficient wood stoves. It aims to reduce wood use among residents who can’t afford butane gas for cooking, thereby protecting the endangered forests.
Wind energy is another promising technology (see box). In consultation with the Danish company Wave Star, the government also began exploring the possibility of wave technology for electrical power generation. Still in the test phase, Wave Star’s machine consists of 20 half submerged hemisphere-shaped floats that float upward when a wave passes. Ocean waves offer a more potent and constant energy than wind. Still, wave technology must overcome the formidable challenge of keeping costs low while resisting storms and salt damage over the long term.
The government has also begun considering a floating nuclear island to supply 70 megawatts of energy, which would meet Santiago and Maio’s total energy needs. The nuclear material would be provided by the Russian Company Rosenergoatom, who would also be responsible for removing and treating the waste. Though it would provide cheap and abundant energy, the proposal is vcontroversial and still in the early stages.
Cape Verde is also innovating in water, in part, through fog collectors (see box).
Agricultural innovations are perhaps even more promising, with the advent of hydroponics and the spread of drip irrigation. Drip irrigation, called gota-gota or “drip-drip” locally, utilises a series of plastic tubes running the length of plant bed. They feature tiny holes that allow water to pinpoint the plant roots alone, bringing water use down by 80%, and diminishing weed growth. Materials are somewhat expensive and must be replaced after 3--5 years. However, the technology allows for year-round cultivation, and local governments and NGOs are helping to fund it so, of the 17% of farming families who use some sort of irrigation, 45% use gota-gota.
Soilless culture, or hydroponics, incurs astronomical start-up costs but cuts water use by 90--95% percent, land use by 90%, and produces much healthier crops (see box). Cape Verde is still far from the paragon of green technologies it could be, and may need to become, to deal effectively with rising fuel prices and its own historic lack of resources. Hopefully by 2020, the efforts underway now will be paying off.

Cucumbers in the Desert

2008-06-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

Deep in the heart of Sal’s desolate moonscape, amid boulders and barren sand dunes, you might just come across a 30-centimeter cucumber. A desert mirage? Hardly. Robust cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and other crops are harvested year-round from Milot’s 15.500 kilometer farm thanks to a promising technology called hydroponics.
Hydroponics is soil-less culture (“hydro” water, “ponos”, labour). Developed by Germans in the 1860’s, it features the use of nutrient solution in place of soil, which allows for more robust yields and greatly reduces water use. While hydroponics is practiced widely in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, it is nascent in Cape Verde, where low rainfall and little arable land (only 10% of total land mass) make it an ideal candidate for the technology. Hydroponic farms currently operate in Sao Francisco (Tom Drescher’s “VenteSol Cultura Hidroponica e Turistica” ) and Sao Domingos on Santiago in addition to Sal, while adult education classes in Santiago aim to expand it.
While techniques vary, one of the most popular is the Nutrient Film Technique (NFT). In this system, a shallow stream of nutrient-rich water flows constantly along a slightly tilted trough, which holds the plants. A non-soil medium like gravel may be used to anchor the plants, while a mechanized pump ensures a constant flow of nutrients, air and water. Usually a mesh enclosure covers the crop, retaining moisture and protecting against insects.
The advantages are tremendous. Water input is reportedly between 1/10 and 1/20 of that necessary for normal agriculture, even less than drip irrigation. That’s because no water is wasted through soil absorption or excess evaporation, and because water can be recycled through the trough. Hydroponics also uses only 1/10 the land required for normal agriculture. Indeed, it can be implemented anywhere, year round, and calls for no weeding or ground preparation. Crops are usually healthy and mature quickly, because the microbes that cause weak plant growth reside only in soil, and hydroponics allows you to control the ratio of nutrients in the solution exactly.
Still, overhead costs are high. One farmer estimated spending 6,000-7,000 euro to set up his 500-meter farm. Nevertheless, monthly yields were so good that he had recouped his investment after only seven months. Operation costs are also a factor since NFT requires constant energy to keep the water flowing. In fact, with no soil moisture reservoir, plants are prone to die quickly if watering ceases even briefly. Certain plants with deeper roots are more challenging if not impossibly to grow hydroponically.
While hydroponics is still novel in Cape Verde, diminishing rains, rising import costs, and a growing tourist market may render it essential. As the technology grows, don’t be surprised to find cucumbers in the country’s most barren landscapes.

The Answer is Blowing...?

2008-06-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Sweeping across the Caribbean and Africa, the alize trade winds have brought ships to Cape Verde’s shores and dust into newly swept homes each summer for centuries. But today, these winds may prove more useful than ever, fueling a clean, renewable energy that powers homes and businesses, and reduces dependence on foreign oil.
Wind energy has a long history. For centuries peoples have harnessed the wind’s power to sail ships, crush grain, pump water, and cut wood. Fossil fuels virtually replaced it by the 1930’s, but oil shortages in the 70’s forced many countries to revisit it. Today, just over 1% of world energy comes from wind, but wind generates 19% of energy in Denmark, while Germany, the U.S. and Spain each produce more than 15,000 Mega-Watts of wind power.
In sharp contrast, only 3-5% of Cape Verde’s energy comes from wind. But with wind speeds averaging 5-9.7 m/s2, and electricity demand increasing by 8-15% per year, wind has huge potential. Electra built its first wind park on Sao Vicente in 1989, and today there are three functioning wind parks on Sal, Sao Vicente, and Santiago. In concert, they contribute 15,000 kW to the electricity grid.
Each of these wind parks is composed of 2 or 3 wind turbines, each with a rotor, a generator, and a tower. The rotor captures the kinetic energy of the wind through blades designed to be lifted by the wind, similar to airplane wings. The motion then drives the generator to produce electricity.
One major constraint is financing. With each turbine costing many thousands of U.S. dollars, and producing at best 322 kWh per month, each one will pay for itself only after 4.5 years. Fortunately, Infraco, a US company, in collaboration with the Cape Verdean government with invest 40 million euros to build new plants on four islands, increasing the power to 17% -25% of total energy production. Wind power will then total 20-25MW.
Wind is highly erratic--changing direction and intensity---wind energy is difficult to store. That makes wind an “intermittent generator”, meaning its guaranteed output must be valued at zero, and therefore that diesel capacity must be able to meet 100% of demand. Wind’s intermittency is what prevents it from supplying more than 25% of any country’s total energy.
Current efforts aim to address these difficulties. A proposed Thermo-Wind-Solar Power Plant could provide constant, storable energy by generating thermal energy. Wind would be used only as a cold source, while the soil, oceans or warm water sources on Santo Antao would provide the warm source.
Proposals like these are promising, but their implementation is urgent, if Cape Verde is to meet its goal of 50% renewable energy by 2020. If they do, it will be worth catching wind of.

A Sip of The Sea

2008-06-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

What could be less thirst-quenching than a mouthful of salty seawater? Perhaps nothing, thanks to desalinization plants that are turning salt water into one of the most widespread sources of drinking water for Cape Verdeans. With 965 kilometers of coastline, and dwindling underground sources, the arid nation has reason to seek solutions to its water problem through desalination. Plants on Sal, Boa Vista, in Praia, on Maio and on Sao Vicente--managed by Electra, the state owned energy company, and Aguas da Ponta Preta, a private enterprise--produce roughly 4,109,229 cubic meters of water annually. That supplies almost 30,000 Cape Verdeans with water and means that ocean-bathers are not the only ones drinking seawater regularly.
While plant technologies vary, the preferred, and most pervasive method in Cape Verde is Reverse Osmosis (RO). In regular osmosis, the solvent (in this case, salt) moves from an area of high concentration to a lower one through a semi-permeable membrane, equalizing the substance’s distribution. In contrast, during Reverse Osmosis, the salt water is pressurized to encourage highly concentrated salt water to separate from clean water, which collects on the opposite side of the semi-permeable membrane. Once this water’s salinity has decreased from about 38,500 mg of salt per liter to 400, it is treated and sent to a holding tank. RO Plants in Cape Verde produce between 1,000 and 5,000 cubic meters of water per day respectively.
RO boasts lower installation costs and is cheaper that Vapor Compression Distillation, and Mult-effect distillation, two other desalinization technologies used in Cape Verde. Still, operation is far more expensive than other water collection methods, like drilling and rainwater collection. Even modern RO plants that recycle energy require between 2 and 3 kwh per cubic meter of water. That is an enormous amount of energy for an island nation that must import most of its energy, especially when a single kilowatt hour costs about $0.30 US dollars. For a 1,000 cubic meter capacity plant, that’s about $600-900 dollars a day.
Moreover, because only 43% of the seawater is converted to potable water, the remainder—a highly saline “brine”-- is dumped back into the ocean. Scientists assert this saline concentrate is very harmful to marine life.
Other forms of desalinization are being tested to address these problems. Two Peace Corps volunteers, Brian Newhouse and Nick Hanson, are working with students at Assomada’s technical school to develop solar stills that use sunlight alone to convert seawater into fresh water. As sun light filters through a glass pane, the salt water heats and evaporates within the hot black box. Fresh water condenses on the glass, dripping down into a catch basin. While construction costs are low and materials readily available, so far the prototype produces only about two liters a day.
Nevertheless, Cape Verde is counting on desalinization for the future. Two new RO plants are under construction in Santiago’s Interior, which will produce a combined total of 12,000 cubic meters of water per day. Public-private partnerships modeled on “Aguas do Porto Novo”, established in 2007 on Santo Antao, will likely sprout up elsewhere, while private golf courses and hotels will continue to run their own private desal plants. If all goes according to planned, underground water sources will be left exclusively to agriculture and Cape Verdeans—ocean-bathers and otherwise--will drink seawater everyday.

Have You Ever Drunk a Cloud?

2008-05-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

High along the jagged cliffs of Serra Malagueta Natural Park, a series of green nets billow in the wind, like a half erected modern art installation. They are, in reality, fog collectors that harvest water from the clouds that shroud the park in almost year-round mist. The technology is simple: water collects along the mesh surface, forming droplets that fall into a gutter below. The water passes through a tube, arriving in a tank to be distributed to communities.
How much water could that possibly provide? More than you might think. Fog contains .05 to 3 grams of water per cubic meter. Serra Malagueta, which receives only about 900 mm of rainfall per year, has a semi-permanent layer of “stratocumulus”—low lying clouds—pushed upwards from the coast by the mountains themselves. Thanks to these clouds, Serra Malagueta’s 120 meters of netting (8 installations) produce approximately liters per day, with production reaching 75 liters per meter of net per day in the rainy season. That’s a big help for the park’s 488 families, who rely principally on local springs, wells, and private cisterns for their water. As rainfall diminishes and ground sources dry up, 80% of the community continues to work in agriculture, making fog water a much needed alternative.
Fog collectors were first developed in Chile in 1987. Before researchers installed nets in Chungungo, this high-fog, low-precipitation community had always depended on trucked-in water. Now it is able sustain itself and even grown crops and trees. South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Israel, the Canary islands and Nepal are also benefiting from this ingenious technology.
The benefits are manifold. Fog water is free from microbes that contaminate ground water, requiring no treatment. Construction materials—mesh, plastic tubing, and wood or metal poles--are cheap and readily accessible worldwide. The most challenging aspect is positioning the nets accurately.
Despite the enormous potential, fog harvesting does not constitute a major source of water in Cape Verde. While 1133 hectars are considered sufficiently foggy, fog is currently harvested only on Santiago (though experiments have been conducted on Fogo, Sao Vicente sao Nicolau, Santo Antao and Brava as well). With steep desalinization costs, dwindling sub-soil resources, and abundant foggy areas, fog harvesting may yet become a viable solution for highland areas. National output potential is estimated at several million meters cubed of water per year. At that rate, a lot more people may be drinking clouds in the near future.

Slaves, Victualling, and Tourism

2008-05-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

Eking a living out of these dry islands has never been easy: with no rain and no natural resources, existence has often been precarious in Cape Verde. Still, there were certain points in Cape Verde’s history when it did make economic sense for people to live here. In the 16th century, the lucrative slave trade along the Guinea coast turned these islands into an important trading center. Slavers who wanted to avoid the dangerous coast could pay a higher price for pre-selected, baptized slaves here.
Years after the decline of slavery, the coal-powered transatlantic shipping of the 19th century made Sao Vicente’s natural port an important victualling station. Its deep, calm harbor, halfway between Europe and South America, was an ideal spot to stop for provisions.
When steam, and later airplanes replaced coal on the world stage, it seemed Cape Verde had again lost its financial base. But in reality, a new era of industry was emerging with tremendous economic potential. Mussolini built an airport on Sal in 1939, for better access to Latin America. It returned to Portuguese hands in 1945, but a powerful phenomenon was underway.
Thanks to the airport, Sal became the major refueling point for South African Airlines, which was barred from most African countries, in protest of its apartheid regime. To lodge SAA staff, Georges Vynckier, a Belgian businessman, built the “Pousada Morabeza”, a small guest in 1967. Europeans began visiting and discovered the endless, white beaches of Sal, more lodgings were built to accommodate them, and the tourism industry began in earnest.
Hotels, condos, resorts and golf courses continue to sprout up on Sal today, but this promising industry—which registered 11.7% growth in 2007--is spreading to other islands as well. Boavista now draws some of Sal’s devoted beach-lovers, while hikers marvel at the stunning topography on Fogo and Santo Antao. The music scene and colonial history draw others to Praia and Sao Vicente. If carefully managed, tourism may herald an era of unprecedented prosperity for these infertile, windswept islands.

"Badiu with Cracked Feet, Sanpadjudu with Potato Bellies"

2008-05-04T02:28:00.000-07:00

Ethnic conflict may be the story of many countries in Africa today, but this old saying is perhaps the extent of ethnic rivalry in Cape Verde. It compares the Badiu, who inhabit the southern islands, to their northern counterparts, the Sanpadjudu. Both are descended from the same mix of African tribes and Portuguese that settled the islands 500 years ago. They speak dialects of the same Creole, root for the same soccer teams, and vote for both political parties.
Yet there are notable differences. The quaint farmhouses, the lighter complexions, more lusophone Creole, and Portuguese-influenced morna of the north indicate the more “European” aspect of northern culture. In contrast, the darker complexions, more African Creole, and the thriving traditions of continental origin—from the raw beats of the batuk dance, to the intricate patterns of the pano de terra weaving—denote the vibrant African traditions still alive in the south.
It is said that Sanpadjudus look down on their southern counterparts as less “sophisticated”. Badius would counter that their culture is more authentically Cape Verdean, pointing out that singers from both regions usually choose to sing in Badiu Creole. ALUPEC, the current Creole alphabet, is modeled on the Badiu dialect.
These time-old stereotypes are rooted in the very origins of the names. Badiu most likely comes from the Portuguese word “vadiu” or “lazy”. It is said that the Badiu slaves ran away from their masters to farm their own plots along the steep ridges. When Portuguese masters would demand their labor, Badius would refuse. Their subsequent label “Badiu” persists as a proud symbol of defiance, even as their alleged “cracked feet” belie the truly formidable Badiu work ethnic (or lack of sophistication, as the Sanpaduju might say).
The origins of the word Sanpaduju are more obscure. Many think the term comes from the phrase “são pa’ ajuda”, “they are for helping.” This may refer to the Santiago-inhabitants who were convinced to emigrate northward, to populate and cultivate the Barlavento islands, which did not garner a sizeable population until centuries after the settlement of Santiago. Their “potato bellies”, according to Badiu lore, refer to the only crop that they managed to cultivate, despite their alleged laziness.
These stereotypes mostly serve as fuel for good-natured teasing. As Heavy H, a Sanpaduju rapper sings, “Sanpadjudu ku Badiu, nos tudo, nos e kul” (Badiu and Sanpaduju, all of us, we are cool”).

Cooking With Rambam: Improved Stoves and Jewish Values*

2008-03-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

“I like it. It’s a great stove.” Maria repeated.
We stared at the cement structure, built by an “improved stoves” project over a decade earlier for residents of Cape Verde’s “Ribeira Seca”. Barely visible in the blackened kitchen, it was covered with cobwebs, scrap metal, and wood for the fire that was blazing in the traditional three-stones stove nearby.
“So why don’t you use it?” we asked again. “If the improved stove cooks faster, uses less wood, and produces less smoke, why do you still use the three stones?”
She smiled bashfully and glanced at the cachupa, the national corn dish bubbling above the stones. “It’s a great stove,” she repeated. “It’s just that.. it has a small opening. You have to cut the wood to use it.”
We peered at the wood opening. It was small, but of course it was: the point of improved stoves was to maximize wood combustion, heat retention, and heat transfer to the pot. All that would cut down on unhealthy smoke, decrease pressure on dwindling forests, and limit the arduous task of wood gathering. A small opening was fundamental to achieving these ends. Clearly, for maximum effectiveness, the well-financed team of engineers would have added such a feature.
Nevertheless, these engineers created a stove less effective than even the three stones, simply, profoundly, because no one would use it. Community rejection of an efficient stove renders it worthless, just as acceptance of an inferior model renders it optimal, if it convinces residents to abandon the inefficient traditional model. Unbeknownst to those well-intentioned engineers, one clever design feature precluded the stove from having any impact at all.
* * *
Winding up the cobbled road, past the shingled farm houses that dot the climb into the jagged mountains of Serra Malagueta Park, one instantly grasps the Park’s two major goals: to protect one of Cape Verde’s few remaining forests and to reduce poverty. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I reckoned an improved stoves project had enormous potential to tackle both of these problems. But Maria’s comment troubled me. How could we ensure that our project would sustainably impact the community and the forests, and not become another forgotten wood box in a blackened kitchen?
Judaism offers uncanny wisdom on these complex questions, which continue to baffle aid organizations today. When Rambam organized the Talmudic teachings on tzedakah into a hierarchy, he placed at the top: “enable the recipient to become self-reliant.” This idea paraphrases one of the hottest concepts in the development world: sustainable development, defined by the Peace Corps as improvements that can continue on their own without outside support. Our goal--to equip locals with a lasting way to cook cheaply, that protects their health, the trees, and saves time--serves as a good example of both concepts. But how?
Judaism might offer an answer here, too. Israel means “he who wrestles with G-d.” The Torah is filled with examples of Jews fearlessly negotiating with an all-powerful G-d. Abraham bargained for mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah, and Moses asked G-d to reconsider his punishment for the sin of the golden calf.
Perhaps from these brazen heroes emerged the Jewish value of dialogue, a fearless commitment to uncensored debate between parties at all levels, based on the assumption that good solutions only result from a truly free clash of ideas.
In the tzedakah context, this value could be interpreted as a call to consult the beneficiaries on the best way to foster self-reliance. Who, after all, has better insight into successful project design than those for whom the project is designed, even if that means building stoves with large, inefficient openings? It is still preferable to golden calves.
With that in mind, we designed a pilot project featuring several stove models that will be given to the community to test. Only after locals discuss their impressions, following a month-long trial, will we decide jointly which models to produce on a larger scale. As long as there is no actual wrestling, I think Rambam would be proud.

*Written for Panim El Panim's May Newsletter
Sources:
Using Participatory Analysis for Community Action, Peace Corps, 2005
Jews are Different by Virtue of Their Values, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, www.shmuley.com

From Sugar to Moonshine: Getting a Buzz in Hortelao

2008-03-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

“I was raised in grogue,” Budinho says as smoke billows from the lambique—distillery—behind him. Bubbles of Cape Verde’s historic moonshine shimmer in the coconut shell he has poured with confident strokes to check the quality. “This stuff is ready. It’s not too strong, not too bland. Have a sip.” As I let the camera face the ground, and take the shell to my mouth, I wonder what “too strong” could possibly taste like.
But grogue wasn’t always “forte”. Here in Hortelão, one of Santiago island’s more fertile valleys, grogue began as idyllic fields of sugar cane. After months of watering, the tall stalks bloomed feathery flowers, locals took machetes to their fields and grogue making season began in earnest.
In January, when I visited, bundles of cane balanced on the heads of women and children were already making their way to the trapiches. These oxen-or motor-powered machines crush the stalks to extract sweet cane juice. “A lot of people think it’s too expensive to use oxen, but some still do,” Budinho explains. When we can’t find a traditional one in action, he good-naturedly demonstrates the monotonous circular trek of the oxen as they crush the cane. “Its tiring,” he says. “And they work all night.”
After the trapiche, the cane juice is placed in barrels to ferment into an unappetizing beige liquid. After a few days, the liquid is poured into a tremendous stone caldron, the lambique. A fire lit below heats the liquid until it evaporates and passes through a tube. The tube enters a vat of cold water that converts the gas back into liquid, that is, into a clean, incredibly potent alcohol, that was first called “grogue” by English sailors some 500 years ago.
‘Its about getting a good buzz and drinking a little,” Budinho says. “You drink too much, your head spins and you fall.” Laughing, he demonstrates the motions that are not uncommon sights at the corner bars that dot towns across Cape Verde.
That good buzz depends on an ever-scarcer Cape Verdian resource: water. From cane irrigation, to lambique operation, water is an essential ingredient. With poor rainfall and salt water flooding the aquiver, access to this vital substance is increasingly threatened. “The majority of grogue is water,” Budinho says. “If you have more water, and the water is good quality, you will have more grogue and it will be high quality….If water is lacking, nothing goes well.”

Patrick Kennedy Visits Peace Corps Cape Verde*

2008-02-29T17:23:00.000-08:00

Just outside Serra Malagueta’s Protected Areas office, a cluster of volunteers and Cape Verdean and American officials milled around a massive bus. Inside it, on an obscured seat sat congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island), nephew of the illustrious founder of the Peace Corps. With each moment of waiting, the gulf between his family’s enormous legacy of service and our own comparably paltry Peace Corps projects seemed to grow.
He dismounted, a sandy haired young man with a sincere smile. As introductions were made, thunderous beats emerged from the office. The batukadeiras of Serra Malagueta had begun pounding rhythmic beats on improvised drums to coax their leader to dance.
Suddenly, Kennedy jumped into the circle and with good-natured abandon, tied a scarf around his waste and began to gyrate himself. Batukaderias, volunteers and officials all relaxed and smiled.
The whole entourage clustered at the door, to watch: Roger Pierce, the U.S. Ambassador to Cape Verde; Patrick Dunn U.S. Chargé d’affaires; Fatima da Veiga, Cape Verdean Ambassador to the U.S.; Maria de Resereção Lopes da Silva, the Deputy of the Cape Verdean Diaspora, Dr Stahis Panagides, Director of the Millennium Challenge Corporation; Cristano Barros, the Vice Rector of UniCV, and Dan Murphy, congressional aide to Representaive Kennedy. Representing the Peace Corps, Country Director Hank Weiss, Education APCD Yonis Reyes and volunteers Nick Hanson, Courtney Phelps, Brian Newhouse, and Alex Alper also attended.
As the drumming ceased and Kennedy untied his improvised pano de terra, Maria Teresa Vera Cruz, National Coordinator of the Protected Areas Project, briefly presented the project’s history, goals, and current works. Early that morning, he received a similar briefing at Assomada’s Grão Duque Henri technical school, where he learned about Newhouse and Hanson’s solar still project, and received general comments on technical education in Cape Verde.
“It was clear he didn’t just want to know what projects we were doing,” Newhouse, ’09 said. “He wanted to talk to the técnica students and really see what kind of an impact we were having.” Beyond the successful construction of the still, for example, Kennedy wanted to know if the students were really involved in the project and could apply their knowledge elsewhere.
“What I liked best was how intuitive Kennedy was with his questions,” said Nick Hanson, ‘08. The Representative, according to Nick, cut to the heart of the schools’ current challenges. He touched on issues like employability of graduates, the need for teacher training, use of hands-on teaching techniques, and sustainability of volunteer projects.
Courtney highlighted his egalitarianism. “He didn’t direct his questions only to the highest officials, but rather to the people who could answer the question best—to students, volunteers, or to the School Director.”
For Hank Weiss, the visit had a more personal significance. “I was a young man when Patrick Kennedy’s uncle created the Peace Corps, and when Robert Schriver became its first director. Knowing Patrick came from their family was very powerful.”
As Kennedy held out signed copies of Rhode Island souvenir books to us at the visit’s end, we received a souvenir of much more lasting impact: He told us that Washington was not currently promoting and supporting programs like the Peace Corps. Despite that, the Peace Corps volunteers of Cape Verde had chosen to serve of their own volition. He promised to do what he could to improve the current situation, and commended us for our selfless choice.
“Its like what your uncle said,” Hank said. “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”
“He sure knocked that one out,” Kennedy responded, smiling.
*For PC CV Newsletter

Corn is for Horses

2008-02-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

“I mean, what’s culture? People live their lives,” Kyle, a Peace Corps volunteer on Sal explains to me. “They go to work, they go home. They go drinking...” He shrugs. “Just like anyone anywhere.”
“What about music,” I ask. “Do they listen to Cape Verdean stuff ?”
“There is some mourna and zouk. But, its pretty awesome: a lot of people like rock.” We pass a house that’s blasting Linkin Park. “I mean, that’s pretty awesome.”
We find a table outside on Bom Dia’s patio. The sun beats down on umbrellas adorned with beer ads, icy beads dripping down each oversized bottle. Silver belt buckets, cell phones, and sunglasses glint amid the white and black faces, smart suits, plates of chicken and tuna garnished with lettuce and fries. We could be anywhere.
“What are you doin’ here, Jackass?” Joe says flawlessly. “I come here to have a beer, and get away from these Jackasses.”
Kyle grins. “We didn’t know you would be here.”
Joe is a native Salense who has returned after 40 years in the shipping business in Florida, Massachusettes and Rhode Island. He’s building a house, but his workers got in a fight today and left. ”Where does that leave me?” he says.
The waiter, also a jackass according to Joe, comes over and we order cachupa, the corn stew found on Cape Verdean tables countrywide, morning and night, steamed or fried, garnished or straight up.
“Corn is for horses,” Joe laughs.
* * *
Perhaps on Sal it is. Sal, Cape Verde’s flat, sandy, and most easterly island, was discovered by Italian tourists early on and serves a lot of pasta. The island, which is home to around 10,000, was populated only 150 years ago when salt mining became profitable. Through the 1930’s, as the salt industry declined, Moussilini bought the rights to build an airport, and the tourist industry began. Joe says he was “raised by Italians”.
What drew them is clear: the entire southern half of Sal is bounded by white sand beaches that descend gently into calm bright waters. Colorful salt mines, nesting turtles, a giant crater, a lava pool, scuba diving, wind surfing, and deep sea fishing, are additional draws. The international airport and great restaurants cater to visitors, but the boom is only getting started: en route to Santa Maria, the upscale tourist town, along one of Cape Verde’s few asphalt highways, massive hotels, a golf course, and apartment complexes are being erected in large tracts that evoke mining boom towns. Hilton Hotels is set to begin construction here, the first international hotel chain to set up shop in Cape Verde. In Santa Maria itself, the windows of real estate offices are plastered with pictures of current projects and appeals to invest.
Outside these real estate offices is a conspicuous absence of Cape Verdean culture. Without the woven pano de terra and rhythmic batuk of the southern islands or the quaint farmhouses and sorrowful mournas of the north, Sal gets aptly described as “that island that doesn’t belong to Cape Verde.”
And yet, when employing a liberal definition of culture, Kyle is right: if people are living, they are doing so according to certain commonly held beliefs, practices, ie a culture. If this “culture” happens to evoke suburban Maryland more than subsaharan Africa, who’s to judge?
In fact, perhaps we should celebrate: whatever lack of “authentic” Cape Verdean culture is directly tied to the tourism industry, which is prompting unprecedented prosperity. Sal boasts the lowest unemployment rate of any island. People from Sao Nicolau, Santiago, and Senegal migrate to meet the labor demand in hotels, restaurants, and construction. Pockets of rural and urban poverty don’t seem to exist like they do on other islands. “Tourism has been here forever… Its good,” one older local explains to me in Palmeira, a port town far from Santa Maria. She rubs her thumb and forefinger together. “Its money.”
The growth does have downsides that aren’t purely cultural. Sex tourism is flourishing in Santa Maria and crime is on the rise. The wells and sole desalination plant barely meet the demands of locals and the ballooning tourist population. Kyle says, ”Tourists come and take 30 minute showers, like they do at home. If they use too much water the city shuts it off for the town.”
But the cultural issues are worrisome, too, because of their applicability: it’s easy to imagine Sal’s story becoming a paradigm for the country—a tourism boom spurs grow and quietly obliterates the country’s unique blend of African and Portuguese cultures, which has withstood centuries of migration and foreign influence. All the investment ads that tout Cape Verde as “Europe’s nearest tropical islands” begin to seem prophetic and one can imagine the birth of another Bermuda.
* * *
Next to a Santa Maria real estate office, tourists stroll into an Italian ice cream shop advertising sundaes. A group of white teenagers finger non-descript tee-shirts that read “Cape Verde Zone” in a clothing boutique. A restaurant called “Kretcheu”-- “my love”--and a business called “Cachupa” remind you are in a creole-speaking country, but I haven’t seen more than a handful of Cape Verdeans on this street.
On each corner, West African salesmen lounge in front of makeshift craft stands, occasionally calling out “Hello, my friend, Bonjour mon ami” to passing tourists. Their shelves are lined with ebony statues, tie-dye dresses, and sand paintings of angular black women, pestle in hand, backs laden with babies, or heads burdened with jugs of water. Inconceivably, “Cape Verde” is painted across the bottom.
* * *
Perhaps the prosperity caused by the tourism boom justifies the decline of local culture. If Lincoln Park is on the rise, and corn is for horses, so be it, if the locals are healthy and employed. Beach tourists aren’t likely to mind either: they aren’t known for their patronage of museums and local poetry readings. And yet, where there is tourism, there is money to be made in souvenirs. Sal might be wise to offset its beaches and preserve and market its culture, combating tourism’s culture-killing effect in order, ironically, to further the industry. If Sal doesn’t get on it, some more enterprising, and not necessarily indigenous, vendors will.

Another Reason to Face the Hanging Chad

2008-02-05T03:24:00.000-08:00

Tucked snugly into the folds of a woman’s large bag, as the minivan sped out of Praia, I craned to chat with the nice man flanking the left side of her bundle.
From the driver’s poor taste in zouk* we came to my nationality.
“I’m from America, but I didn’t vote for Bush.”
(Usually people shake their head and say “Now, Clinton, that was a good president”).
“You are from America, ok!” the man smiled. “I have two sons, actually, who are---“
I was not listening. Brockton, New Bedford, or Pawtucket would get mentioned, I would refocus, and say “Oh, I actually went to school around there.”
“Iraq.”
I turned back towards him, vaguely aware that here was not a suburb of Boston.
“Iraq?”
He nodded.
The woman stopped smiling and stared down at her bundle. I stared at my own empty lap.
“My friend, her Fiancé is there and she is having a hard time,” I fumbled.
He nodded, unoffended. “Every morning I wake up, my heart goes like this.” He
pounded his chest.
* * *
Its election season and we are all getting complacent. McCain is old and sang a mediocre bubblegum song about bombing Iran. Romney prays to a God who condoned polygamy, but he is not sure about gay marriage. Money has been poured into ad campaigns at unprecedented levels, state primaries have been held so early as to disqualify their votes, and Republicans are turning out in unusually low numbers.
And yet, far away from New Hampshire and Iowa, on buses in developing countries, nice men chat about their sons, who may die at the hands of a president they couldn’t pick. Further from Washington than Cindy Sheehan, there are some 60,000 sets of parents whose chests pound each morning as they picture their kids in unprotected army tankers, but whose only recourse is to watch the international evening news roundup (there are roughly 60,000 “immigrants” in the U.S. Army).
Sure, it doesn’t make sense to give the vote to the parents of U.S. citizens, just as it doesn’t make sense to give the vote to the Iraqis and Afghanis, whose lives are even more directly affected by our President. But before we become totally immersed in the election apathy that may appear at times to be totally justified, we must recognize that it is a privilege to be part of the process of choosing one of worlds’ most powerful leaders. With the privilege might come a moral obligation, to exercise it on behalf of the millions who lack it but who may be more affected by the election outcome than ourselves.

Drinking Corn and Other Wonders of Cape Verdean Cooking: An Interview with Joana Guincho*

2008-01-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

“Things made of corn, they are all good foods,” Rekina explained, hushing her three grandchildren in the living room overlooking the valley of Ribeira Cuba. “Cuscus, cachupa are good,” she said, referring to the steamed corn bread and corn stew popular here. Camoka--the toasted corn flour enjoyed with milk as a breakfast beverage--and Sheren--ground corn served like rice top the startlingly varied list of corn-based favourites, which, combined with beans, rice and fish, constitute the local diet. But behind this seeming diversity is one unpleasant reality: the mortar and pestle. For cachupa, “if you are good at grinding, you can grind it in ten minutes,” she says. “If you are not, you will take a long time….Me, I can’t do it. With my arm, I will start and then fall down on the floor” she says laughing.
In her sixty-eight years in Serra Malagueta, Rekina has cooked for children at the local elementary school, as well as her own nine kids who now live in Assomada, Praia, France, and Portugal. Rekina, whose real name in Joana Guincho, currently fixes lunch for the Protected Areas project staff three days a week.
She first started cooking when she was about twelve. “Sometimes it would burn, sometimes it would turn out good, sometimes it would be a little off,” she says, “but it always worked out.” When it didn’t, her mother would show her again. “Did she hit you?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” she responds, smiling. Some of Rekina’s specialities—like squeezing a bit of lemon on her cachupa, may have come from her mother.
But the diet has changed a lot in Serra Malagueta over the last few decades. “We didn’t have noodles, flour for bread, oil. Crackers came from far away…Even rice came in small quantities. Poor people could only eat rice during festas.” Today, these imported foods are essential supplements to the insufficient corn and bean harvest: Cape Verde produces only about 20% of its food, even though 80% of its population are employed in agriculture.
In the past, when rain was more abundant, local farms were able to grow a wider variety of crops and maintain more animals. “Almost everyone had animals,” she says, “cows, chickens, goats…We didn’t need oil, we had animal fat,” she mentioned, in addition to eggs and milk. At the same time, “we had lots more sweet potatoes, and manioc. We even made cuscus out of manioc. Now it costs 360 escudos per kilo.” This greater abundance and variety of produce flavored the Feijoadas (meat-bean stew) and cachupas of the past.
These local dishes are what she prepares for the Serra Malagueta staff three times a week. Not long ago she couldn’t have imagined serving local dishes to foreigners; “Ze [the local coordinator] and Iacopo [an international volunteer] visited me one day and asked me to make them lunch. I begged their pardon, because I didn’t have anything. But he said to just prepare cachupa, feijão, congo [beans]…Now I think its good when foreigners like you come. You get accustomed to our food. And now I don’t think it’s strange to prepare a cachupa, a beans, sweet potato for you.”
It is in this spirit that she has contributed her recipes to this book, a careful compilation of Serra Malagueta’s favourite dishes. Enjoy them while you are here and after you have left.
*Written for Serra Malagueta Cookbook

Good Will and Nothing Else? Comments on Too Many Innocents Abroad

2008-01-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

I cornered a current volunteer named Amanda* at PC Guinea’s welcome party. Decked out in one of those sundresses that combine African fabrics with American immodesty, she regaled us newbies with fabulous tales of diarrhea, gens d’armes encounters and parties.
“Do you feel like you have an impact?” I asked.
She looked at the floor like she didn’t want to lie, then raised her beer a little and smiled.
“You’ll have a really great time.”
* * *
Robert Strauss, Cameroon’s former Country Director, eloquently criticized the Peace Corps in a New York Times Op/ed on Jan 9th:

“…Too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century….In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school.”

As an “Agroforestry Volunteer” who barely even puttered before arriving in country, I felt uneasy about this very issue. How could I give agricultural advice to a community of lifetime farmers? Perhaps they had not yet discovered the virtues of watering? If not, could anything other than arrogance or apathy drive an organization, ostensibly committed to development, to send me there to suggest such a thing? When, one month in, I uprooted twenty healthy teak seedlings--that would look like weeds to any liberal arts major--my uneasiness and Strauss’s point were confirmed.
Yet his point is overstated. The notion that youth and inexperience preclude effectiveness is based on a lamentably untrue assumption: that the world is far more developed than it was in 1961. “Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates.” Unfortunately, in Guinea, where literacy is estimated at 30%, a college degree is a powerful development tool: critical thinking skills and the scientific method alone make you an asset. Plus, we can compensate somewhat for our lack of expertise through our information access—the fact that we can pay for and use Internet. Google knows what a Teak seedling looks like, even if I don’t.
Another argument is simple practicality. Old professionals would trump young Googlers for skills, making for a more effective Peace Corps. But how many well-paid adults want to take bucket showers and pooh in a hole for two years? At least in the countries that need us most, perhaps only rookies will consent to the conditions.
If we must rely mostly on tenderfoots for our development staff, skills must be enhanced in other ways:

1) More Selective Admissions: As Strauss notes, hard skills, not just good will and interest, should be, but aren’t, requirements for acceptance. “The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not….What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do…”

2) More Rigorous Training:the 9-12 week training at the beginning of service should teach highly specific, technical, skills tailored to the country’s stated needs. Methodology should be hands-on and there should be tests and consequences for bad performance, like a real school or job. Currently, vague tech sessions get lost amid a barrage of culture, language, health and security info.

Peace Corps effectiveness requires other organization changes, as well:
3) Performance-related incentives and disincentives—“Men are not angels,” Madison writes in Federalist # 51. Neither are volunteers. In keeping with our beloved capitalist doctrine, we must use rewards and consequences to encourage good work. Currently, lackluster volunteers and overachievers get the same pay, privileges, and (lack of) chances for advancement. Media recognition, invitations to relevant conferences, or some sort of promotion could serve to motivate capable volunteer and pressure slackers.

4) Partnerships with big NGO’s: Peace Corps volunteers are never going to have technical expertise or funding comparable to big NGO’s. We do, however, offer the best grasp of local language and culture, because one of Peace Corps’ unique doctrines is that we live, not just with, but at, the level of those we serve. That makes us ideal local point men for busy, large-scale development projects. Such partnerships would also give tangible jobs to the many bright, motivated volunteers who achieve little for lack of job structure.

5) Impact Evaluation: “The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth,” Strauss notes. Quantifying impact in development is hard, but any organization serious about achieving its goals must try. “Perhaps…the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries.”

* * *
If Strauss were right, and an objective assessment revealed that volunteers generate goodwill and/or broaden their own horizons while achieving no impact, Peace Corps would still be accomplishing two thirds of its goals:

1) Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
2) Helping promote a better understanding by Americans of other peoples.
3) Helping promote a better understanding by other peoples of Americans.

In other words, Peace Corps plainly acknowledges something that Strauss forgets: that saving the poor is only part of the mission. Besides ineffective development workers, we are a cheap diplomatic corps (transmitting happy US thoughts to the poor Muslim countries that might hate us) and a Democratic campaign rally (exposing the human side of poor would-be immigrants to young Americans). That’s not bad for 300 million dollars—half the cost of the Army’s recruiting office. As Senator Christopher Dod, a former Volunteer writes:

Every American of good will we send abroad is another chance to make America known to a world that often fears and suspects us. And every American who returns from that service is a gift: a citizen who strengthens us with firsthand knowledge of the world.

With taxpayer dollar ever more tightly stretched, these intangible goals may still seem trivial. But watching Amanda sob as she kissed her sobbing host mom goodbye, I personally felt how broad and amorphous the notion of “impact” can be.

*I changed her name to remain popular
See Strauss's Article

Save Trees, Save Money, and Lose the Waist-line: Maria’s Sawdust Stove

2008-01-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

It is the third day of Assomada’s famous “festa da Santa Catarina,” and there is a large goat strung up in Maria’s courtyard. American rap music blasts from her empty restaurant. A duck, its young, and a small pig amble by Maria’s girls, who are hacking up the meat. “Goat’s meat and ground corn….Its going to be a good party,” she says, watching as Nin, her daughter-in-law breaks its right leg with a small axe.
But more customers for the holiday doesn’t mean a steady source of income. “Business is slow, and I don’t have any money,” says the 46-year-old mother of two. High cooking fuel costs and few alternatives make her situation even more difficult.
Wood, the first option, is a scarce commodity in Cape Verde’s arid, over-harvests savannahs. Inhaling wood fumes from the inefficient traditional three stone stoves can cause serious health problems, in addition to environmental damage. Wood cooks slowly. However, it is cheap or free and is supposed to produce yummy food.
Gas, the more usual choice in urban areas like Assomada, burns clean and cooks quickly. But prices are prohibitively high for some families: around 1,700 escudos per 12 kg tank, or a roughly 20 dollar purchase more than once a month. Food cooked on gas stoves is not supposed to be as yummy, either.
Maria has an innovative solution. “I have a stove that my friend taught me how to use…that saves me a lot of gas” Her stove, which requires three large sticks, one six dollar metal canister, and sawdust from the carpenter next door, allows her to cook virtually for free. She fills the metal canister with sawdust, packing it down compactly with one stick and a little water. The other two sticks are positions in a L shape through the center to create a temporary chimney. She lights it with a match and some paper, and can cook a large elaborate goat dish and heat bathwaterfor the family for a net fuel cost of zero.
The price isn’t the only benefit. “It cooks quicker than a gas stove…It doesn’t produce smoke…and the food is tastier than with gas.” Nin, after doing most of the butchering, cooking, and serving customers, is certainly ready to sample it. She places a large pot of water on the still-steady flames. “This is to heat water so I can take a bath…now lets go clear their plates so we can eat.”

PORTUGUESE VERSION!

Maio: Ohio with an "M"?

2008-01-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

“So, I got in!” I said the day my transfer came through for Cape Verde. “I can’t believe I am going to ditch you guys for an island paradise.”
The only Guinea Volunteer who had been to Cape Verde glanced at me with palpable gravitas.
“You know, Alex….”
“What?”
“There is…
“What?”
“…one ugly island.”
“Nah-uh.”
“Yeah. Maio.”
Maio. Maio is Portuguese for May, named as such because it was spotted on May 1st,1460. May day: poles and ribbons and virgins. Julie Andrews singing about “the lusty month,” and all the hot love scenes with Lancelot that that might conjure up. These are not things that bring to mind ugly islands. Clearly this was just another volunteer with preemptive jealousy of my nascent caramel tan. That’s ok. She would have lots of character building experiences in her hut that would teach her to love her pasty complexion.
But perhaps she wasn’t so unspeakably jealous: Maio’s interior, when I visited, looked more like an overgrown parking lot, in places, than an ocean idyll. Possibly an extension of the African mainland, the island’s flat, rocky 268 square kilometer expanse is covered in sparse shrubs, reforested acacia, some coconut palms and pebbles of varying shades of brown and black. One virtually bald mountain, Monte Penoso (437m), shoots unimpressively out of the deforested savannah, flanked by sections of well built stone walls. The walls seem to indicate a not so distant past in which something—animals—was kept from eating something—crops. But today flora and fauna is decidedly puny: the moon may rival Maio for biodiversity.

And yet Maio’s coast is arguably the loveliest Cape Verde has to offer. Pastel blue and green waves roll up on spotless white and black sand beaches. The least developed of the country’s beach islands (over Sal and Boa Vista), virtually no trash or tourists mar the beauty, and sand abounds because it has not been sold off for construction. Plodding around the delightful ocean-side patch of sand dunes fulfills all your Laurence of Arabia fantasies. Learning how the historic salt flats are mined is engaging, and may explain why Maio’s cachupa (the national dish) is tastier here. Throw in the charming, reasonably equipped port town, Vila do Maio, and its friendly residents and you have the makings of a charming beachside getaway.
But the aridness of the interior reflects the daunting water problems that call into question whether Maio can support its own population, much less a tourist one. In the days of greater rainfall and lesser human pressures, underground sources sufficed. Now wells are drying up and yielding salty water. Two desalinization plants distill up to 4000 liters of seawater into potable water every day, supplying Vila do Maio and outlying communities. Another one under construction will supply Figueira, the Island’s only vegetable farm, now that Mount Penoso’s deep sources are drying up too. That’s well and good for the easterly areas, but what about everyone else?
Calheta, 11 kilometers west of Vila do Maio, is everyone else, a quiet town, off the guidebooks. Its wells are virtually dry. It used to rely on water piped in from Mount Penoso, but competition from Figueira for its dwindling supply precludes this as a long-term solution. Its only option currently is the veritable sloppy seconds: now that Vila do Maio is completely served with desalinated water, Calhetans get Vila do Maio’s well water.
“Calheta needs clean water. People get sick to their stomachs when they drink this water,” Ricardinha, a Calheta school teacher says. “You would think that being so close to Praia would give us an advantage in these types of issues,” she adds, referring to the 23 kilometer, two hour boat ride to Praia. “But the government forgets about us.”
Water problems damage the economy, as well. Maio, historically a supplementary grazing land for wealthy Santiago landowners, is famous for its meat, milk, and cheese. No rain means less fodder, hungrier cows and goats, and the deterioration of this important local industry. “What do you do if you don’t have enough plants to feed your animals,” I asked one local. “You kill them,” he said simply.
The animals that do remain mostly eat the stunted corn and bean plants. While Maio was never a breadbasket, these staples used to offset food imports, back when the rains were better. Now these crops, still planted but rarely growing to maturity, go almost exclusively for fodder, while pricey food imports from Praia supply nearly 100% of local demand. Other industries that don’t depend on rainfall---fishing and salt production—are sustainable, but only support a few. Maio’s youth emigrate to Praia, Holland, Portugal, to send back the critical remittances that meet the high cost of living on this island. Keeping them here may require turning this island into the tourist destination that does conjure up may poles and virgins.
* * *
But can Maio really draw tourists, despite its arid interior?
At a British-owned café in Vila do Maio, “stir fry” is scrawled in English on the menu a few lines down from the local “churrasco” (and the mysterious entry “crack” which we just can’t figure out). An Italian resident, mustering impressive Creole, greets the waiter who has just served us the English breakfast. Locals and foreigners walk by at a pace that evokes permanent vacation, while cars speed in from the port. They loop back enough times to demystify the false sense of hurry. A group of Cape Verdean men lean against the beachside wall, watching the cars loop. A few meters up several Italian men do the same.
This could work. This quiet spirit of unending vacation could agree with many foreigners, whose investment would boost the economy and help finance badly needed infrastructure improvements. And perhaps “May” is, after all, the perfect metaphor for this pleasant atmosphere, virgins and may poles or not.

Fish for Christmas in Rincao

2008-01-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

“Why are fishing towns here always dirtier?” I asked a Cape Verdean Peace Corps staffer. “Are they poorer?”
“Fishermen don’t care about the appearance of their homes like farmers do,” he said. “It’s always been like this.”
Rincão, Mike’s fishing town, embodies the stereotype: Waves crash against the black basalt rocks littered with human feces. There is no sand on the wide beach that holds several wood fishing boats because people have sold it. Climbing the trash-strewn hill up from the ocean, you see rows of unfinished cement houses, shaped like boxcars, which blend into the matching grey rock beneath them. Rusted bent wires jut out of the roofs where people plan on building a second story. Construction is unlikely and maybe unnecessary; the roofs are perfect for drying corn, washing and hanging out laundry, and chatting with the neighbors.
Mike’s balcony sits a bit higher than the neighbors’ roofs. From its railing, you can sea the ocean, absurdly lovely above the grey unfinished homes. Beyond the ocean, is the mammoth silhouette of a black cone—the volcanic island of Fogo, even more incongruously magnificent.
Mike is not here. He is looking for fish for dinner. It’s harder than usual because its Christmas and everyone in Rincão is eating meat tonight. He walks by once with a child strapped across his chest. He walks back a little later with the same child strapped across the other shoulder and two more in tow.
A girl with a massive Tupperware of pasteis on her head stops in front of him. “Mike, what are you going to give me for Christmas?”
“Want one of these?” he says, throwing the child towards her. She laughs. The kid screams with delight.
Mike doesn’t have his notebook with him. Usually he does when he goes out. It’s for writing new words he hears to improve his Creole, but he doesn’t write much now, because his language is excellent. “This is all I do,” he says. “I really do nothing.”
He is not exaggerating. Each day, after swimming and/or soccer and/or a jog, he sits in different parts of town and talks to people. One day he is down by the local bar where the half drunk men tease him about getting a local girlfriend. Most days he is in the eating fresquinhas with a group of kids or talking to the vendor-women about the price of transport to Assomada. Unlike most volunteers he rarely goes to parties with other Americans, or even takes private time at home to read or write.
“I haven’t read in so long.” Mike says, as I leaf through his books. “Maybe I should, I must be getting so stupid.” He looks off thoughtfully for a moment. “It’s funny, you know, ‘cause I used to study so much.” He was a physics major at the University of Wisconsin, and later worked at the University of Texas, Austin. In both places he published original research.
Studying doesn’t further his current goal: “I just want to know how people think; understand the limitations and the benefits of thinking like them.”
To know how people think you need to integrate: Is integration really possible? “Do they ever really forget you are white, American, different?” I ask.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, they totally forget I am different,” He says adamantly. “Its just the money. If I weren’t richer than them, they would totally forget.”
At the beginning especially, the money issue was hard, he says. People would demand gifts and money and get angry when he refused. Kids would steal stuff. Even now, food items sometimes go missing when he has people over for dinner.
Mike doesn’t see it as malicious, or personal, though. “Its really just that here richer people are expected to give stuff out. Its part of the culture.” Now when he goes out, he brings only change, and keeps a coin in each pocket, so it won’t clang.
Although he’s loath to talk about it, Mike does take advantage of his integration to do development work. He taught a daily English class despite poor attendance, he is working on a business skills training, and he compiled a concise Creole manual for new volunteers. When an American NGO funded an elaborate irrigation project, installing a huge water tank fed by a distant spring, Mike tried to mobilize people to take advantage of it: they needed to buy tubing on credit to install drip irrigation systems to hook up to the water tank. With this free water, they could sustain year-round vegetable gardens that--in a community that subsists on fish and imported rice-- could fetch a good price locally and improve nutrition. So far, few people have jumped at the opportunity.
Experiences like these confirm Mike’s view on development; to succeed, projects require a substantial contribution on the part of the beneficiaries. Just that morning, a car-full of Christmas presents came down from the local government for Rincão’s kids. Mike was visibly disappointed. “They get so many presents, so many handouts, that it’s really hard to convince people to work.”
“So you think it undermines your projects here?” I asked.
He nodded. “I don’t even think they should even have electricity,” he said, explaining that the community has recently been electrified through a completely subsidized generator-run system. “They would kill me if they knew I said that, but its true. Handouts make sustainable development a lot harder.”
Mike doesn’t have any illusions about the marketability of the knowledge he has gained in Rincão. “It is probably the most useless skill ever,” he says, smiling.
If he is right, it’s the large NGO’s and communities like Rincão that stand to lose. Successful development projects do require the things that most NGO’s have in spades: big money, skilled technicians, structure, deadlines, and incentives for employee excellence. But they also depend on what the Peace Corps may have in spades: People like Mike: integrated enough to know what locals think, and yet able to communicate effectively with project heads.
Sure, a local with this skill set would be the ideal community liaison. But with their unique knowledge derived from their unique community intimacy, plus decent educational backgrounds, Volunteers should not be overlooked as potentially vital point men in projects like the irrigation system.
A little while later, Mike comes back with two bright orange, frighteningly-fanged Galopa. I have told him I don’t know how to prepare fish. “Here, come cut this one,” he says, pulling two buckets and two knives into the light outside his host family’s house. “I mean you don’t have to. But if I were you, I would want to learn.”

Peace Corps is Good and Fish is Yummy: Two Years of Talking like You’re Three

2007-12-31T18:29:00.000-08:00

Sitting in my thesis advisor’s cramped office at Brown, the requisite stacks of papers and esoteric book titles lending authenticity to the moment, I receive a nugget of wisdom for the future of my Latin American Studies:
“Why take Portuguese? Its just Spanish with a bad Russian accent.”
He was mostly joking, but I would learn he wasn’t entirely wrong, when I traveled to Cape Verde as a Peace Corps transfer. On the Dakar-Praia leg, armed only with half-forgotten Spanish and my Guinean French, I felt palpable relief as I eyed the flotation device instructions on the seatback in front of me:
No caso de emergência use-se o seu assento como aparelho de flutuação.
Oh. Okay. We can do this.
I flipped through the in-flight magazine and experienced a similar, understated glee.
Sure, there were the pretentious tails-on-the-c, the swiggley flourishes-atop-the-a, and the Latinate “m’s” at the ends of words. But these only denoted a language of unsurpassed classiness. Mostly it just looked like methodical doodling around the misspelled Spanish that could show up on any seventh grade exam.
And it should be just so: I had been accepted to this country because local staff thought that with good Spanish, I could learn Portuguese without training. Doubt faded. I thought about all the Cesaria Evora songs I would translate and send with a note of gratitude to my wise thesis advisor.
“A senhora gostaria de beber alguma coisa?”
“Huh?”
The stunningly handsome flight attendant tried again. “A senhora não fala Português?”
The nasal humming and the laborious “sh” flustered me. This was not Spanish. Putin didn’t sound like that either. The seat cushion in front of me had lied. Everyone had lied!
“Vous voudrais boire quelque chose? Would you like something to drink?” he ran by me in most of the major languages spoken at the U.N.
I muttered something in French, Spanish and Malinke.
“Ok, so you want a coke?” he said, in English.
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t ask for a refill.
If Cape Verde was in fact a former Slavic colony, this was going to prove more challenging than I had thought.
So Portuguese was not going to be a piece of cake. But my deflated ego was not the worst of it: it was being compelled to speak with the eloquence of a precocious three-year-old that was going to be the rub. Gracious people who had never learned a second language would have a hard time believing you weren’t as dumb as you sounded. Conversations with thoroughly fascinating people--who would manage to sense your subterranean non-dumbness—would still be relegated to subjects like food, hobbies, and the weather; politics or culture were simply too painful to broach without the proper tools.
Dona Malucy, the sweet Peace Corps nurse, asked me a my check up that first day if I liked Cape Verde. I wanted to tell her that despite being a few miles away from West Africa, it felt surreally like Latin America. Instead, I said “yes”. I could have added “me no like shots”, but the needle would have been in before I remembered the word for shot.
Reverting to this infantile state was even more excruciating, because my Malinke was only now entering puberty after a year in Guinea. The grueling regimen of gestures and monosyllabic responses was finally giving way to humor, ideas, multi-clause sentences, and the occasional comprehensible third party conversation. People would ask me if I brought them a present. I could say it died on the road. They would ask me if I woke up with four legs. I could say, “no, just two, you know I don’t have a boyfriend.” I could even sing a song about the name of my hoe (its name, like everyones’, was “hunger is bad.”) Not top 40 material, but triumphant nonetheless.
As it turned out, I got off easy: Portuguese was, in structure and vocab, quite similar to Spanish, once you learned to pick it out of the Russian that got spoken to you. The only problem was that, barring formal events, no one speaks Portuguese. Cape Verdeans speak Creole, the hybrid African-Portuguese language adapted by the slaves of multi-lingual origins brought here by the Portuguese from the late 15th century on.
Admittedly, Creole would be much easier to learn than Malinke. Malinke, with its mysterious excess of prepositions and its wholly foreign structure, was spoken by people who mostly knew no French. Thus progress was snail-like. Creole, on the other hand, is based overwhelmingly on Portuguese. Its structure is simple, its grammar rules fluid, and most Cape Verdeans also understand Portuguese. That means you can get direct translations and advance quickly. The large number of Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants who have picked it up is testament to that fact.
And yet a serious malaise prevented me from really undertaking to learn it. Portuguese got me by at work, I spoke English with my roommate at home, and even in the market and on buses people understood Portuguese. One year and three languages into my Peace Corps service, did I really need to talk like a three-year-old in a new one?
I did. Language is not just about communication. It is about good will. The Peace Corps is founded on the assumption that before you can do development work, you have to integrate: to integrate, you must gain people’s trust, get to know them well, learn the profound and subtle bits of their culture. All this depends not just on communicating effectively—for which creole is helpful--but on demonstrating a willingness to learn, for which Creole is essential.
This is one of Peace Corps’ most unique and worthwhile philosophies. In a world of aid organizations that rely on translators and barely get to know the communities they serve, it is bordering on revolutionary. And in a country like Cape Verde where tourism is fast becoming a major industry, it is more important than ever for aid workers to distinguish themselves from vacationers. Learning Creole is the best way to do this.
The difference in my interactions, now that I speak it, is overwhelming. Talking to Dona Malucy is just one of the benefits. Of course, knowing the word for shot does not necessarily get you out of them.

Dorky Linguistic Addendum:

2007-12-31T18:20:00.000-08:00

Malinke is an ancient language spoken throughout areas of West Africa that once made up their 13th century empire, including eastern Guinea. Free from outside influence, there is a remarkable harmony to it; that is, words for related concepts sound alike. If they don’t seem related, but sound the same, that sheds some light on the culture (what malinke culture sees as related):
o baara is work, and office is baaradiya, the work place.
o Fin is charcoal. It also means black. Farafin is black person or literally “skin of charcoal”
o Sanji is rain. San is year. Malinkes, mostly farmers, mark the year by when the rains come. Caro means both moon and month, just as teleh means both day and sun by similar logic.
o Human body parts account for a lot of other related words, especially location-prepositions. Kun is head. Kunti is the head of the village.
o Kono is belly. It also means inside. Mobili-kono means inside the car.
o Some words that relate to religion and writing are Arabic, since the Muslim conquerors brought both of these to the Malinke. Allah is God. Ka makaran means to learn and has the word “koran” in it. Karandiya is school, or the place of study, place of koran.
o The only other foreign words I know in Guinean Malinke are inventions the French brought: car (mobili), spoon (cuyeri), window, (fineteri), Saturday (simiti-lon) and Sunday (dimanshi-lon).

Creole on the other hand is so worldly, that despite being based mostly on Portuguese, it contains vocab that comes from many European languages. At the crossroads between Europe, Latin America and Africa, slave traders, pirates, merchants, colonists and sailors from all over passed through, leaving their mark on the language.
o Badja, Creole for dancing, comes from bailar, the Spanish word for dance.
o Boite, Creole for nightclub, comes from the French.
o Grogu, the word for Cape Verde’s national moonshine, comes from early contact with English Pirates (include Sir Drake).
o A lot of words relating to “cool” come from American English, because of large Cape Verdean immigrant communities there, especially in the Boston area. Tug Life (thug life) and tuggi (thug) are used among youth to refer to da glamourized gangsta life. “Fishi”, which allegedly comes from the English word “fish” means “cool.” I have no idea.
o A lot of imported goods take brand names: razors are “gileti” and minivans are called Hiaces and trucks Hiluxes after their Toyota model names. Oh yes, and “daipis”—diapers.

Before They Disappear: An Old Cape Verdean Farmer Talks Traditional Plants

2007-12-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

“You used to be able to find all types of plants,” says Joao Sanches, a seventy-one year old farmer from Serra Malagueta. “Lingua-de-vaca, Tortolio, Eucalyptus…But the rains gave out…and people have gathered so much wood. Now the plants are gone.”

Born in Tarrafal but residing in Pedra Comprida most of his life, Sanches has witnessed first hand the degredation of Serra Malagueta's forested mountains. But even as the plants become scarcer, their unique, traditional uses come to life when he recounts them.

“When I was born”, he says, “I saw that my father lived without kerosene…He never had kerosene and he never had a match.” For fire, oil could be extracted from the Pulgeira (Jatropha curcas) seed and could be used like kerosene. But its usefulness did not stop here: “Pulgeira gives you oil, kerosene soap or milk….if you drank the milk when you were sick it would make you well.”

Indigo (Tinta indigofeira) could be pounded and soaked to create a dye. This dark dye was used to color the renowned pano de terra, the traditional cloth of Santiago. Cotton (Gossypium Barbadense), woven on looms to create the panos, also grew abundantly on the island when rain was more plentiful. “It was all made here,” he says.

Karapatus (Forcraea foetida), one of the park’s most aggressive invasive species today, was perhaps easier to control, when it was used for such a wide variety of purposes as Sanches describes: “You could cut it, pass is through a machine, and make thread. With the thread you could make bags.” Alternately, it could be dried and used for roofing, or woven into a bit to keep a young coat from nursing too often.The bits, Sanches joked, were not just for goats, though. “If you had a really annoying son you could use it on him, too.”

Hearing his stories breathes life into the landscape. The ingenuity with which Serra Malaguetans fulfilled most of their basic needs through plants they grew and harvested is awe-inspiring, especially given our own reliance on modern conveniences. But most of all, Sanchez’s stories remind us of the importance of preserving Serra’s endangered flora, which offers us beauty---as well as utility--if we protect them.

Reward Poor Governance or Save the Middle Class: The Development Dilemma

2007-12-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

It was lunchtime and I was sitting in Minga’s unfinished cement house. She pulled a bottle of imitation orange juice out of her refrigerator and set it down next to the generous helping of fish, beans and rice on my plate. She had cooked it over a wood fire and reheated it on a gas stove. Photos of her daughter in Portugal stood on the tv, while her other daughter pounded corn outside.

“I hope you like the food,” she said. “You know we are very poor here, not like in America. “ I glanced at the gas stove, gulped as I always do, and said the food was very good.

“The economic progress Cape Verde has made…ironically may affect the country's eligibility for…development assistance. For example, Cape Verde is not eligible for the recent programs for debt relief decided by the G8 because we have always honored and serviced our national debts.”, said Jose Maria Neves, Cape Verde’s Prime Minister, in a guest column last year. “Because we honor our commitments, Cape Verde is now compelled to spend more on servicing past debts than it does on education or health.”

Neves brings up an interesting point, one that might be even more relevant now as the UN strips it of its status as a low income country this January. Although the specific reductions aren’t yet clear, WFP has said it will end support for its school lunch program , and in 2005, a UN rep promised to cut aid by 30% upon Cape Verde’s 2008 transition.

But if Minga’s country is less poor thanks to its own good governance, should it lose its aid money? If Cape Verde is still not wealthy, and if aid money is guaranteed to be well spent here, why should this arid island nation lose its aid?

Regardless, it must be acknowledged that Cape Verde is graduating to “medium income country” for a reason: it’s doing pretty well. According to the Millenium Challenge Index, per capita income is at $2,130, primary education is nearly universal, even among girls, and corruption is exceptionally low. While Cape Verde has achieved the UN’s standards for human development and income, the country remains economically vulnerable, relying heavily on remittances and international aid. But economic growth for 2007 is expected to have increased by 7% , mostly in the tourism sector. For a country with no natural resources, that is required to import around 85% of its food, this is all very impressive.

Moreover, Cape Verde is still slated to receive plenty of aid. Patricia de Mowbray, the UN representative here, recently promised that “in the next few weeks and months we will mobilize between US$2 and 4 million for the country’s development.” Meanwhile, the Millenium Challenge Corporation’s five year $110 million compact with Cape Verde does not expire until 2010. Portugal has promises 140 million in infrastructure development. This kind of money goes along way for a resident population of 506,807 .

Perhaps most importantly, though, prospects for private sector growth—the ideal basis for economic health—are excellent. On December 18th, Cape Verde became the 152nd member of the WTO . A new partnership with the EU, whose terms are still unspecified, will broaden and deepen economic ties. Trade with China is currently estimated at $10 million. Meanwhile, international property investment experts, such as Tom Foster of Conti Financial Services, foresee a boom in the Cape Verdean property market over the next year. The country’s “holistic” approach to growth, combined with the growing popularity of island destinations, has made Cape Verde “the name on everyone’s lips,” Foster says. Visitor numbers have already increased from 67,000 to 280,000 between 2000 and 2006, and are expected to reach 320,000 this year . Infrastructure improvements—such as a road, a port and airport projects to be financed through Portuguese loans—will further facilitate growth in tourism and property sales .

Such admirable success begs the opposite question: why give money to a country that doesn’t need it? With so many seriously impoverished countries 500 kilometers away in West Africa, where malnutrition is rampant, people perish from curable diseases, and capital cities lack running water and electricity, why are scarce resources being sent here?

Precisely because of Neves’ point: good behavior must be rewarded in order to encourage its replication. Merit-based incentives ensure that it is still in a country’s best interest to fix its problems, regardless of the legitimacy of their existence. Ultimately, of course, good behavior should reward itself, by spurring the kind of private sector growth Cape Verde is now seeing. But if we can sweeten the deal--without neglecting the critical pursuit of healthcare, education, and food security for the really poor --then maybe we are having our refrigerated beans and rice and eating it too.

I don’t blame Minga for thinking she is poor. Lord knows most Americans would balk at the idea of pounding corn with a mortar and pestle everyday. But on the strength private sector growth bolstered by rewards for good governance, maybe she will get that cuisinart after all.

References:

Cape Verde: Is Good Governance Rewarded? Neves, 4-10-06 allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200610040364.html

Cape Verde: UN guarantees that support for country will continue after graduation in January 4-12-07 Cape Verde Portal http://www.capeverdeportal.com/The_News/Latest_CVP_News/04%1012%1007__UN_guarantees_that_support_for_country_will_continue_after_graduation_in_January/

Cape Verde First Year Accomplishments 4-10-06 Millenium Challenge Corp. http://www.mcc.gov/press/factsheets/2006/factsheet-100406-capeverdeyearone.php

Cabo Verde beneficia de 140 milhões euros para infraestruturas 25-11-07 Panapress http://www.panapress.com/freenewspor.asp?code=por010473&dte=25/11/2007

MCC 2008 Country Score Card Millenium Challenge Corp http://www.mcc.gov/documents/score-fy08-capeverde.pdf

Cape Verde signs up to become 152nd WTO member 19-12-07 Business in Africa http://www.businessinafrica.net/news/southern_africa/52844.htm

Cape Verde: Where Investors Dare 29-11-07 Assetz Property News Service http://news.assetz.co.uk/articles/3881.html
Cape Verde’s Tourist Market Set to Grow 10-12-07 Property Showrooms http://www.propertyshowrooms.com/capeverde/property/news/cape-verde-s-tourist-market-set-grow_1563.html

ONU garante continuação de apoio a Cabo Verde 12-4-07 Panapress http://www.panapress.com/freenewspor.asp?code=por010661&dte=04/12/2007

IMF Country Profiles http://www.imf.org/external/country/CPV/index.htm

Innovating with Water in Serra Malagueta: Domingos Monteiro

2007-12-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

A lot of people think of alcohol as a social problem. For Monteiro--an innovative farmer who lives in Santiago’s Serra Malagueta Natural Park--it’s an environmental solution.
“Beer bottles are something we have a lot of,” he explains pointing to the wall of horizontal bottles that serves as terracing on his mountainous farm. But it does more than just prevent erosion: “During the rainy season, water seeps through the soil into the bottles and is trapped. Then, in the dry season, that water seeps out, humidifying soil.” It saves money on irrigation costs but also on building materials: Bricks, the standard construction material, “cost 80 cents a piece these days,” he explains. “Bottles are free.” And just in case you thought it might reflect a serious problem, it doesn’t: at least for Domingos, who swears he did not drink all the beers himself.
The plant beds above Domginos’s bottle terraces feature long black strips of tubing with pin-size holes. These are part of his drip irrigation system, which strategically directs water to the stem of each plant. Despite the big overhead cost, such precise watering saves lots of money in the long run. “If you need 1000 liters of water a day to water your field, with drip irrigation, you can use just 200 liters…You can make up your initial investment in no time.” It also cuts down on erosion, helps preserve soil nutrients, and minimizes labor costs.
And Domingo’s irrigation system doesn’t just economize water: it economizes fog. On the steep rocks above his home, a series of huge synthetic nets anchored to wood frames face the blustery wind that whips through the highlands. The wind is actually a dense fog that deposits moisture on the nets. Droplets of condensed fog fall into horizontal troughs below, before passing through a filter into a holding tank that can direct water home or to the garden. The two-by-three meter nets can produce between 600 and 1000 liters of water a day, depending on weather conditions and net quality. While Domingos did not discover the system, he became intrigued by it when he noticed condensation forming each morning on his chicken coop. “If Serra had another 10 of these, we would be completely self-sufficient in terms of water,” he said.
Even more impressive than the ingenuity behind these projects is the fact that Domingos is trying new approaches to old problems.“I think as people start to see these projects succeeding, they will start to try them, too,” he says.

15 Seconds of Rain: Cape Verde’s Water Problem

2007-12-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

“According to local lore, when God was satisfied with Creation, and brushed his hands together, the crumbs that fell unnoticed from his fingers into the sea formed Cape Verde.” With this image begins The Bradt travel guide to the Cape Verde islands. And frankly, this desolate, island-extension of the Sahara, with its jagged brown peaks and windswept beaches, its tragic history of droughts and famines, seems aptly likened to crumbs.

Even today, despite being one of the most developed West African countries, water is arguably the number one problem. Most comes from underground sources, but salt water is flooding the aquifer. Fuel-dependant desalinization plants are ingenious, but expensive. A four million dollar dam has rendered 65 hectors of previously arid land productive, but springs downstream have all but dried up or become salty. Meanwhile, the scarcity of water, among other factors, makes Cape Verde reliant on imports for over 80% of its food, which arrives on boats at inflated prices from Portugal, Brazil, and beyond.

At the height of the dry season, when our own tank went dry, a truck brought an emergency 2.5 tons of water from a far off coastal down for 25 dollars. It lasted eight people only a week. Everyday, to the thousands of homes with no running water, women and children languidly walk, balancing large containers on their heads atop wadded-up handkerchiefs. Their bodies undulate to keep the water from sloshing when they pause or turn their heads.

“How thrilled everyone is going to be when it rains,” I thought. “How thrilling those two months, those 260 milliliters that are going to fall on all this dust.”

* * *

My first rains were in the beach town of Tarrafal.

Powerful streams of water--pouring out of roof-spouts destined for empty basins below--splashed instead off the sidewalks and flooded the cobbled streets. Tarrafal had recently gotten running water, I learned. Out of town, the corn, usually vivaciously green against the shaley brown earth, looked oddly withered and dry against all that wetness. The stalks stood in pools of swampy brown water, brittle and drowning. Further ahead, the cliffs that mark the climb to the highlands had sprayed rocks across the roads. A driver in a large station wagon paused, wondering whether he could sneak between the widest-set stones or if he was really going to have to get out and move them. Below the road, a waterfall of chocolate milk, as if cut from a Nesquick ad, spilled over the road’s edge into the cornfields. “Erosion” was the caption below every image.

Most people crouched under awnings, watching, impassive. As we reached the highlands, with no central running water, a few had placed basins below roof spouts, or stood, satisfied, beside full containers. Every now and then a woman stood glowering beside her ruined laundry. No smiles. Eventually a little girl, quite serious and rather dry, appeared in a wheelbarrow, her underwear hanging loosely from her scrawny legs. Her brother sat unsmiling on a stone wall nearby. “Frolic!” I ordered silently. “Children are supposed to frolic when it rains!” Especially, I thought, when they live on a crumb.

* * *

Frolicking not being that viable a solution to the water problem, some have turned to harnessing Cape Verde’s not immediately obvious assets--wind, fog, and salt water—to pursue small-scale, affordable, sustainable solutions.
Students at the technical school 100 yards from my house were a little less bored yesterday. Some eagerly shoved cement-laden trowels between the wood panels. Others turned pebbles, water and cement powder together with shovels on something like a giant plastic sandbox. “You’ve got to make sure the cement is really packed down around the wire so there’s no air bubbles,” Nick Hanson, a Peace Corps Voc Ed teacher told them.

They are building a solar still, which for roughly 40 dollars apiece, should clean about 4 liters of water a day using only solar energy. When it is a done, and a big glass sheet is placed across the top, it will look like the front of a minivan’s upper half, flush to the ground with a tube running into an imposing black barrel.

Why clean water when there isn’t any? Actually, one of the only raw materials that coastal fishing towns here have in spades is salt water. Just four liters of it cleaned could meet a family’s daily drinking needs. Make it more efficient, or build a few more, and you could plan year-round agriculture, using a super-efficient drip irrigation system (that directs water only to the root of the plant, through pin-size holes in plastic tubing). The initial investment could be recuperated in a few years while the still might last twenty, and a new generation of tech school grads will know how to install it.

First they have to get rid of the air bubbles.

* * *

So that might take care of the coasts. What about the highlands?
Several wood-framed vertical nets rise out of the mountains behind my office in Serra Malagueta. They look like a half-erected, uninspired outdoor art installation. They are, in fact, fog collection nets, that pluck water out of the thick, wet mist that whips through the highlands almost year round. First set up by the Portuguese before independence, they have been renovated and replicated by the Protected Areas Project.

The fog water runs down the synthetic green netting into a flimsy plastic trough that extends lengthwise along the bottom. It is tilted only slightly, so the water will trickle into a tube headed for the filter, the tank, and finally for the elementary school or the community spigot, from where a bucket will carry it home on somebody’s head. Collection rates vary with wind speed and moisture, and the wind still whips plenty from the trough before it can be channeled. But each net—six meters tall and two meters wide—collects up to 1000 liters of water each night.

“It’s very good,” says Domingos Monteiro, a local farmer who has erected his own nets. He first considered it when he saw condensation collecting on the walls of his chicken coop. “With another ten of these, each catching 1000 liters a day, Serra Malagueta could have plenty of water.” His own nets will be feeding a brand new drip irrigation system for his garden this dry season.

* * *

So weirdly enough, having been a crumb may yet prove to be one of Cape Verde’s biggest assets. While we are still struggling to reduce reliance on increasingly scarce, traditional sources of energy and natural resources, Cape Verde is being forced to figure some of it out now. In the not so distant future, Domingos and the tech school grads may be our most prized consultants, and some Peace Corps volunteers may be out of a job.

Pano de Terra: A little piece of cloth with a long history*

2007-12-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

(See below for Portuguese)
The looms were “more irregular than you can imagine” João da Silva Feijó said in 1797. “They were created spontaneously, from pieces of stakes, sugar cane, tied with cords from banana trees, which--once the work was finished--would be used as firewood by the very same weavers.”
But these makeshift looms, operated by slaves captured from the Guinea coast, produced an excellent quality cloth. Pano de terra would become a centerpiece of Cape Verdean culture, transform its economy, and revolutionize the Guinea slave trade. Most of all, it is an astonishing example of cultural preservation: in a developing country where cellphone ring tones echo through cafes and boys sport 50 cent gear, women young and old still tie an elegant pano around their heads and waists. Panos still accentuate a dancer’s gyrating hips in the traditional batuk dance, and women’s jeans sometimes feature a little strip of pano.
But its survival was not always assured. “In the‘90’s...Cape Verdeans started watching television, listening to the radio, reading the journal and they started borrowing other cultures that aren’t ours,” explains Sabino Lopez, a pano artisan from Picos. “They stopped wearing pano de terra.”
To prevent its disappearance and to grease the local economy, Serra Malagueta Natural Park hired Sabino to train fourteen park residents in pano production. After three months, quality cloth--in bright colors as well as the traditional black and white--began to appear across the students’ looms, thanks to Sabino’s patience and skill. “[Pano de Terra] is a practice that comes from our land and we can’t forget it,” says Zilena Furtado, 26, one of the trainees. But success will be attained only when the new weavers establish profitable businesses. “[The training] is also for us to succeed in our lives and earn some money to make our lives better,“ she adds.
How did this unique tradition emerge from barren, uninhabited islands? Not long after Cape Verde’s discovery by the Portuguese in 1460, cotton cultivation was widespread throughout the southern islands. The slaves who worked the fields also wove the cotton according to the practices of their own peoples—the Jalofos, sereres, mouros, tucrores, mandingas, and fulas of West Africa, all renowned for their weaving. Thus the birth of pano de terra.
But the practices still had to be adapted to the new, harsh climate of erratic rains, and fragile ecology. To make dye, Women gathered the islands’ own local plants ---tinta or indigo (indigofera tinctoria), urzela, and urucu -- but it was risky business: “Gathering urzela was prohibited by the king because many people died,” Sabino explains. “[The plants] were located on steep slopes and only the young had the physical ability to collect them.”.
Indigo leaves, easier to gather and more commonly used, were still no walk in the park to process: first pounded into balls, they were soaked in hot water until larvae formed. The leaves were then strained through a bamboo and sand filter, and mixed with the ash of banana leaves, purgeira, or espinho branco. Now the mixture was ready to dye thread or completed panos, which were quickly becoming the focal point of local culture.
At funerals, women would “cover their heads with a large pano” and wipe their tears on the cloth, Sabino recalls. “When someone was going to ask for a girl as his fiancé, he had to bring her pano de terra…And when a girl was about to get married, her mother-in-law… would offer her the pano de terra so she could carry her babies on her back.”
Meanwhile, demand on the Guinea Coast was soaring. Lemos Coelho tells us in 1684 that along the Rio Nuno, “Good high quality clothing from the island of Santiago of Cape Verde…was necessary for all those people [the Bagas].” African slave traders all but refused to exchange the slaves they’d captured for anything but panos from European slavers. João Pereira Corte Real, a governor of Cape Verde, said in 1641: “He who might wish to take slaves from there [The Guinea Coast] must also be a lord of the Island of Santiago, because of the panos of cotton, which are a great part of the cloth used for ransom.”
But at home, pano de terra was not just a hot commodity, as on the Guinea Coast; pano was currency. By the end of the 1600’s, as the Crown imposed harsh trade laws and the slave trade changed hands, the islands fell on hard times. Hard currency all but deserted Cape Verde. Thus, Functionaries’ wages were paid with panos. “Those who paid the local government [in panos] were declared worthy. If sentenced by the courts…the defendants were condemned to pay fines accrued in [panos].”
These same trends that made pano a currency were simultaneously threatening to destroy it. Throughout the 1700’s and 1800’s, the pano industry and the Cape Verdean economy reeled under Portugal’s repressive trade laws. One in 1687 mandated the death penalty for anyone selling panos to foreigners . Harsh laws doubled the price of slaves—cotton’s labor source—virtually extinguishing cotton production. Several historic droughts and resulting famines did not help either.
But pano’s coffin was not sealed until 1850: industrialized America began exporting cheap paulin, “definitively [killing] cotton cultivation on the majority of the islands.”
So how did pano persist? “It was generation to generation,” Sabino says, recalling his own experience. “I produced pano de terra on a loom and then it was transferred to my sons and my cousins.” He learned from his father: “My father worked a lot…Everyday, he did nothing else. From eight to six in the evening, getting up maybe to eat breakfast and then sit back down again….I would take advantage of those opportunities to give it a try.” In this way, according to Carreira, through the 11980’s small-scale pano production continued, most notably on Santiago-- through Santa Catarina, Engenhos, and Tarrafal counties, mostly with imported thread.
But it was not enough. “There was a moment in which pano de terra was really declining. No girls were having panos made to wear….With this lack of orders, we had to do other things to survive.” Sabino found work as a guard, a gardener, and a manager.
But government and NGO sponsored trainings are helping to rejuvenate the industry. Sure it’s no substitute for father-to-son, but the trainees seem to appreciate the history: “I…think our training was important because it is something that generates income in a place where there is no work.” Ermelindo, 31 says, adding, “For me it was very important…it’s part of our tradition, it’s from our land, its something old that’s covered with so much history.”
Looking at the twelve female faces, many framed in multicolored panos, all intently studying the panos slowly forming across their looms, one of the most exciting aspects of the Protected areas training emerges: A women’s apparel industry always dominated by men is finally opening up to women. “Something that you see for so long you want to learn,” says Bia Sanchez Lopez of Serra Malagueta, age 27.

References
1) Feijo, Joao da Silva, Memoria sobre a urzela de Cabo Verde; II—Ensaio economico sobre as ilhas de Cabo Verde em 1797. Memorias da Real Academia de Sciencias de Lisboa 1815 (pp. 145-154 e 172-193)
2) Carreira, Antonio—Panaria Cabo Verdeano Guineense (aspectos Historicos e socio-economicos. Ciclo do algodao e a transicao para o ciclo da panaria 1983 (pp 23-72)
3) Coehlo, Francisco de Lemos Duas Descricoes Seiscentistas da Guine. Edicao da Academia Portuguesa de Historia. Anotacoes historicas por Damiao Peres. Lisboa, 1953 (1669 e 1684)
4) (João Pereira Corte Real, 1641) Arquivo Historico. Conselho ultramarine. Cod. N 30 fols. 107-109
5) Barcelos, Cristiano Jose de Senna—Subsidios para a historia de Cabo Verde e Guine. Tipografia da Academia real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1899 a 1912
6) Arquivo Historico Ultramarino. Cod n 93 fl 427 v. Treslado do alvara em forma de lei, de 23 de Janeiro de 1687, por que S.M. ha por bem proibir que nam pssam vender aos Estrangeiros os panos e roupas que se fazem nesta ilha [de Santiago].

*Written as part of Serra Malagueta Natural Park´s Ecotourism Project

Pano de Terra: Uma faixa pequena com uma história longa
Os teares eram “mais irregulares que se podem imaginar” disse João da Silva Feijó em 1797. Foram “formados espontaneamente de pedaços de estacas e canas atadas com cordas de bananeiras, que concluído a obra, passam a servir de combustível aos mesmos tecelões.”
Mas estes teares improvisados, usados pelos escravos capturados na costa de Guine, produziram uma faixa de alta qualidade. Pano de terra tornaria a ser o ponto focal da cultura Cabo-verdiana, transformando a sua economia, e revolucionando o tráfico de escravos. Alem de isso, é um exemplo incrível da preservação cultural: num país muito cosmopolita em via de desenvolvimento, onde móveis tocam por cada lado e os rapazes vestem roupas de 50 cent, mulheres e raparigas ainda atam um pano elegante na cabeça e na cintura. Panos ainda realçam a anca vibradora da batukadeira, e os jeans as vezes mostram uma fitinha de pano.
Todavia, a sua sobrevivência não foi sempre assegurado. “Nos anos ’90…Os Cabo verdianos começaram a ver o televisão, a ouvir o rádio, a ler o jornal e começaram a arrendar outras culturas que não eram nossas.” Explica Sabino Lopez, um tecelão de Picos. “Deixaram de usar pano de terra.”
Para previr a sua decadência e para melhorar a economia local, O parque natural de Serra Malagueta contratou Sabino para formar 14 moradores no parque e arredores na produção de pano de terra. Depois de três meses, faixas bem feitas---tanto de cores brilhantes como do preto e branco tradicional— começaram a aparecer nos teares dos formandos, graças a paciência e habilidade de Sabino. “ [Pano de Terra] é uma prática que veio da nossa terra e que não podemos esquecer,” disse Zilena Furtado, 26, uma das formandas. Mas êxito só será constatável quando os novos tecelões estabelecerem negócios vantajosos. “ [A formação] é também para nos sobressairmos…e ganharmos algum dinheiro para melhorarmos as nossas vidas,” acrescentou.
Como emergiu esta tradição única de ilhas áridas e inabitadas? Pouco depois do descobrimento de Cabo Verde pelos Portugueses em 1460, o cultivo de algodão foi estendido pelas ilhas. Os escravos que trabalhavam na terra também teciam o algodão de acordo com as práticas dos seus povos— Os Jalofos, sereres, mouros, tucrores, mandingas e fulas da África do Oeste, renombrados pela sua tecelagem. Assim o nascimento de pano de terra.
Sem embargo, as práticas tinham que ser adaptadas ao novo clima duro de chuvas erráticas e ecologia frágil. Para produzir tinta, as mulheres recolheram as plantas locais da ilha— tinta (indigofera tinctoria) urzela, e urucu — mas foi um assunto difícil.” Apanhar urzela foi proibido pelo Rei porque muitas pessoas morriam.” Sabino explicou. “ [As plantas] ficavam em lugares difíceis e só os jovens tinham capacidade física para apanha-las.”
As folhas de tinta, mais fáceis de apanhar e mais usadas, ainda não eram fáceis de processar: primeiramente pilado até formar “pães”, foram metidas em água quente até que larva formou. Depois, as folhas foram passado por um filtro de bambo e areia, misturado com cinza de folhas de bananeira, purgueira, ou espinho branco. Agora a mistura estava pronto para tenir tinha os panos completos, que estavam a converter-se no ponto focal da cultura local.
Nos funerais, as mulheres “cobriam as suas cabeças com panos grandes” e limpavam as suas lágrimas nele, Sabino recorda.” Quando alguém ia pedir uma menina como esposa, tinha de traze-la pano de terra…E quando uma menina estava para casar-se, a sua sogra…ofereceria um pano de terra para carregar crianças na costa.”
Ao mesmo tempo, a demanda na costa de Guiné estava a crescer. Lemos Coelho nos diz em 1684 que ao longo do Río Nuno, era “necessário para toda esta gente [Bagas] boa roupa alta desta Ilha de Santiago de Cabo Verde.” Os comerciantes africanos apenas trocavam escravos por algo mais que panos dos negreiros europeus. João Pereira Corte Real, um governador de Cabo Verde, disse em 1641: “Quem quiser tirar dali [costa de Guiné] escravos há-de ser também senhor da ilha de Santiago em razão dos panos de algodão que é grão parte da fazenda para este resgate.”
Mas no contexto doméstico, pano de terra não era só de moda, como na Costa de Guiné; pano era a moeda. Ao fim dos 1600’s, enquanto a corona impunha leis e o comércio de escravos trocou de mãos, as ilhas decairiam. A Moeda quase desapareceu das ilhas. Portanto,”Pagavam-se vencimentos aos funcionários” em pano de terra. Declararam-se “beneméritos os indivíduos que subsidiaram o governo local com [pano de terra] …Nas sentenças dos tribunais…os réus são condenados a pagar multas avultadas em [pano de terra].”
Essas mesmas tendências que converteram o pano em moeda ameaçavam, simultaneamente, destruí-lo. Durante os 1700’s e os 1800’s, a produção de pano e a economia Cabo Verdiana sofreram sob as leis comercias repressivas de Portugal. Uma, promulgada em 1687, condenou a morte a qualquer indivíduo que vendia panos aos estrangeiros. As leis duras dobraram o preço dos escravos— a fonte de mão-de-obra de algodão— quase acabando com o cultivo de algodão. Alguns sequeiros e fomes resultantes não melhoraram a situação.
Mas o pão foi condenado em 1850: Os Estados Unidos, recém industrializados, começaram a exportar Paulino barato, matando “em definitivo o cultivo do algodoeiro na maioria das ilhas.”
Então como perdurou o pano? “Foi de geração em geração,” disse Sabino, recordando a sua própria experiência. “Eu confeccionei pano de terra num tear e então foi transferido aos meus filhos e primos.” Aprendeu do seu Pai: O meu Pai trabalhava bastante…Todos os dias, não fazia mais nada. De oito as seis da tarde, levantando-se talvez para tomar o pequeno-almoço, e sentar-se novamente.” Desta maneira, Segundo Carreira durante os’ 80’s, a confecção de pano de terra continuou, a pequena escala e notavelmente em Santiago – em Santa Catarina, Engenhos e Tarrafal, com linha importado.
Mas não era suficiente. “Houve um momento em que o pano de terra entrou em decadência. Nenhuma menina mandava fazer um pano de terra para atar... com essa falta de procura...já fomos fazer outras coisas para poder sobreviver.” Sabino trabalhou como guarda, jardineiro e gestor.

As formações promovidas pelo governo e os ONG’s estão a renovar a produção. “Eu acho que a nossa formação era importante porque é algo que dá dinheiro onde não há muito trabalho,” diz Ermelindo, 31. Acrescenta: “Para mim, foi algo muito importante... faz parte da nossa tradição, é da nossa terra, é antigo e coberto com tanta história.”
Olhando as 12 caras femininas, muitas encerradas em panos multi-cores, todas fixando nos panos formando devagar nos seus teares, salienta um dos aspectos mais emocionantes da formação de Áreas Protegidas: uma indústria de roupa feminina sempre dominado por homens está á abrir-se finalmente as mulheres. “Algo que olha-se por tanto tempo quer-se aprender,” disse Bia Sanchez Lopez de SerraMalagueta, 21.

Cheap Therapy: Calcium on New Years

2007-11-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

It was eight pm on New Year’s Eve. All across America my friends were debating whether to drive or take a taxi, to bring beer or champagne, to go with the strapless bra or none at all. Even elsewhere in Guinea, where I was serving in the Peace Corps, volunteers were gathered at regional capitols, pouring cheap vodka mixed with fosters clark into plastic bags and setting up ipods to transport them briefly back to those same taxis and liquor stores.
I was sitting on a rice sack bed in a hut. Drumbeats echoed from around a fire in some local official’s yard. It was the beginning of the cold season, and a big wind gusted through the gap between the mud wall and straw roof, dimming the candle and rustling the mosquito net. Every now and then, one of the termites I battled daily would scurry across the floor in an effort to “take the fight” from the wall to the wooden furniture.
The sinking feeling was beginning to overtake me. Starting as an acute sadness in my stomach, it would spread a numbing weight into my arms and a foggy numbness into my brain. In other circumstances, I could treat this feeling with exercise, socializing, a drink or a movie. But in a hut at night—the night of New Years Eve—it threatened to render me inert, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and yearning for sleepiness.
It wasn’t that I had this feeling often: Rounding month eight at site, I had several projects underway; my malinke finally allowed me to crack intelligible jokes (“Did you bring me a gift?”—“Yes, it died on the road”); and a couple of friendships seemed libel to progress past the “take-me-to-America” stage. So boundless existential angst had me in bed by eight a couple times a month.
But tonight promised to be bad. I had stayed at site to attend a meeting that probably would not advance my project or maybe even take place. If it did, after two hours of waiting for the important people to show, we would fastidiously grill each other as to presence of evil in our homes, work, and families. When we had established that there was none, (there was never any) we would entreat God to prevent it, and adjourn. As I pictured how this would play out, vivid images of my volunteer friends—getting down to our recycled top 40 playlist until the generator died---installed themselves around the hut, and stirred my budding self-pity.
Plus, all my trusty weapons were out of commission. My beloved discman, which provided hours of shakira-inspired dance sessions, was broken. My usually sizeable stash of smooched, stale and/or doused-in-shampoo chocolate from America was depleted. And Maimouna, my closest friend in the village, (not coincidentally the only French-speaking female) had just transferred to a teaching post in another town.
I got to thinking about the debate I had been having since arriving at site. Besides a few sincere village friendships and some promising development work, I was more bored and lonely than I had ever been in my life. Eighty-five kilometers down a rough road from the nearest volunteer, I would go four weeks at a time with no English, sarcasm, philosophizing or salad. Sure, I wanted to make a difference, but could I hack the loneliness for two years?
“Alex,” I said, careful not to address myself too often in public, “the pursuit of good and important things is not necessarily pleasant. Let site be hard and productive, and travel can provide you with fun and leisure. You can have both, but you have to compartmentalize.”
Easier said than done. When the sinking feeling had set in, it was nearly impossible to slog off to a farmer’s field to extol the virtues of composting. I had read somewhere that your IQ decreases when you are sad. Watching my Malinke suffer in tandem with my moods, I began to seriously question the feasibility of my solution:
“Maybe it is unnatural to compartmentalize happiness and effectiveness. Certainly one does not beget the other, but happiness could be a pre-requisite for productivity.”
If this were true, then in order to help my village, I was staying miserable, which prevented me from helping my village. Awesome.
I rolled over in my bed on New Years Eve and felt I was confirming this view. The weathered copy of War and Peace lay next to me but I knew I wasn’t going to read any more. The drumming had started up again close-by and you could hear the kids shrieking at the breaks, but I knew I wouldn’t go. At this rate, would I even go to the meeting? Would I possibly complete a project?
It was almost nine. I was still awake and sick of feeling doomed. I grabbed my short wave radio and found a faint salsa station. Hooking it into the wire that snaked eight feet up to the crest of my hut, I began to dance.
I danced slowly as if by compulsion. The doom was still palpable and everything seemed to suggest that I belonged on the bed, inert. But my steps elongated, the music grew richer, sweat beaded on my skin and suddenly I was dancing with real joy. Shakira would have been mortified. As the second hand clicked past 11:59, I slumped exhausted onto my bed and toasted the New Year by devouring an extra chocolate chew calcium supplement.
Tucking in the mosquito net, triumphant, I thought, “This is adulthood.” With the simplest tools—a radio and some calcium—I had fashioned a makeshift happiness, one that would (hopefully) sustain me in the pursuit of an elusive, rewarding goal. Sure, for the long haul real happiness might be necessary for achievement. But realizing you can marshal contentment on your own—that you can choose it in the face of seemingly fated wallowing—was transcendent. Certainly more so than drinking vodka and fosters clark out of plastic bags. And it meant no hang over for the meeting I would attend the next day.

Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman

2007-10-31T07:57:00.000-07:00

As she croons these words, sauntering through a cavern in leather mini skirt and mid-drift, Brittany seems to contradict herself: One look at the buxom curves banishes any doubts you might have that Ms. Spears is “not yet a woman”. Puberty is a much better metaphor for Cape Verde, the former Portuguese colony in West Africa where I have spent the last eight months. The island nation is currently “graduating” from the UN designation of “underdeveloped” to “developing,” sans the awkward discussion of acne cream and depilation methods, of course.
Cape Verde’s transition is exciting to watch. As I wandered down a misty road through the Serra Malagueta Mountains, I felt I had entered medieval Europe. Along stone terraces, men and women struggled to plant corn with wooden hoes as they had for half a millenium. Farmhouses with orange brick roofs dotted the slopes below. But when I finally found my friend Minga’s field, she was busy, grinning into the mist and telling her daughter about this year’s rains. Her daughter was in Portugal, and you could almost hear her exclamations through the glinting, silver cell phone. A few months earlier, electricity was installed in Minga’s community. A new dam recently built in another town is rendering 65 hectors of formerly barren plain productive cropland.
These structural improvements are irrefutably cool to behold. Compared to poorer, continental West Africa, from where I arrived, Cape Verde’s quasi-freedom from life-threatening poverty issues---such as malaria, AIDS, and malnutrition---is inspiring, and begs emulation. But there are worrying traces of first world cultural issues trailing these positive developments.
It’s not just the obvious stuff: the American pizzas that seem to emerge more regularly onto tables at civic events alongside the gritty, bland and beloved cous-cous. Nor is it the ever-growing number of 50 Cent tunes that mercifully punctuate the (still painful) 17-song zouk sets.
It is the far subtler and more substantive stuff. It is the fact that, when I designed an improved stoves pilot project based on old converted gas tanks, the local gas company warmly embraced the idea. But just before handing over the tanks, it had a change of heart: they would be held liable, they feared, should explosions result from people trying to convert tanks on their own. Obviously safety is important, and their concern deserved consideration. And yet, watching what appeared to be the extension of our legal culture—whereby liability fears halt potentially fruitful collaborations between the private and NGO sectors--was unsettling.
The next day I went to a local funana concert: what better way to escape the intrusion of the first world? And true to form, the infectious redundant beats blared from the speakers as the star, the best friend of the video storeowner’s uncle (or so he swore), serenaded us about the vicissitudes of love and partying; it felt pretty authentic. Turning to look at the audience, however, I glimpsed another face of culture globalization: No one was dancing! Elegantly clad in jeans and black turtle necks, most sat, sipping a beer, nodding their heads and tapping their feet, with that look of barely repressed yearning observed in bars across the West.
Admittedly, this was a fairly upwardly mobile crowd, more exposed to Western culture. Still, as another round of infectious tunes went undanced, I wondered:
Can we globalize selectively? Is it possible for the first world to export its living standards and retain its Britney Spears? Could we broadcast our roads and schools and medicine throughout the developing world and hold on to our over-consumption, our litigiousness, and our unwavering determination to NOT have fun at concerts?
Instinctively, my answer is “no”. The meeting of cultures has never been neat and orderly, even for the conquerors. Beyond the anticipated positives--gold and slaves, say, for the Portuguese in Africa, always came the unintentional negatives--like disease and bloodshed.
Plus, what is unique to globalization, what distinguishes it from any previous era of accelerating international contact, is the unprecedented freedom with which goods and people move, dictated more than ever by personal whims and market forces (not governments). Drugs enter Cape Verde on the way to Europe, despite modern technologies and global initiatives to stop it—how could we stop pizza?
Then there are the challenges of deterring the spread of a wealthy country’s culture: without a developed entertainment industry, Cape Verde cannot compete with Hollywood, whose images advocate for things as diverse as certain foods and certain gender attitudes. Add to this, the unsettling propensity of marginalized people to idealize the culture of the “haves” and the picture is bleak, indeed.
But all is not lost. Foreigners--ironically, the very purveyors of globalized culture--can and do help. When we travel to Cape Verde, we visit trapiches--traditional distilleries--to watch vats of sugar cane bubbling over a fire, as a swig of last year’s grogue burns a hole in our stomach lining. We attend batuk concerts to see women’s butts seemingly detach from their bodies to the beat of mournful chants and drumming on whatever’s around. And we buy pano de terra, the intricately woven bands of cloth these women tie around their hips that were once the prized export of colonial Cape Verde.
Pano de terra, in fact, may be the best example of cultural rebirth: According to Jose Sabino, a Cape Verdean weaver, throughout the 1990’s “Cape verdeans watched television, listened to the radio…and started to borrow other cultures that weren’t ours…They stopped wearing pano de terra…Now we are revaluing, returning once again to our culture.” Government support and international demand, he says, are both causes of the renaissance.
Of course, if it is going to work, preserving local culture has to be a local priority. But as globalization merges and dilutes cultures in the developed world, we will be ever more willing to shell out to experience the well conserved ones.
So pubescent or otherwise, Britney Spears may not yet be entirely welcome in all developing countries. But even if she kicks off a world tour in this one, as long as the audience is dancing, all won’t be lost.

2007-07-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

From Termites to thermostats: PC Guinea to PC Cape Verde

Moral anguish ceased me. At four in the morning, the “night” before joining the Peace Corps, having shoved the essentials into a bulging duffle, I stood hesitating before two piles of extras radiating with symbolism: In one, the great books, the War and Peace, Madame Bovary, the stuff that, while not nursing VIH infected babies with grape seed extract, I was supposed to tackle during Peace Corps service. In the other, the shameful girlie products: the mascara, the foot scrubs that had unwittingly crept into my routine and seemed damn near essential for Guinea, a poor West African country where toilet paper would be a specialty item.
Noteworthy in this latter pile was Bedhead Control Freak by tigi: a hair gel which promised to “fight the frizz, stomp the curl” and “control my freakin hair”. It always delivered on this promise (at the somewhat unreasonable price of about one month Peace Corps salary per ounce), so I pondered: Could I forgo this for two years? Would the ruggedly handsome freelance photographer who would snap telling portraits of the children I nursed, learn to love me despite my natural “freakin’ hair”? Or, if I ripped out the first 100 pages of War and Peace and left the rest, to make room for my beloved Bedhead, wouldn’t I still get the gist?
Stumbling onto the bathroom scale with the newly bloated duffle, my moral anguish subsided: less than seventy lbs. I could bring both. Bewitch the freelance photographer with silky locks, captivate him with Russian literary references. Score.
Little did I know that I might as well have brought Anna Karinina, too. In my remote village near the Sahel--a dusty labyrinth of indistinguishable huts and mango trees --I never undid the plastic wrapping on my Bedhead. It never made it out of the duffle--along with the footscrubs, the toner, the facemasks--which sat beneath my rice sack mattress under a sprinkling of yellow termite dust. Of vital importance to me here were sports bras, sunscreen, bleach to treat my water, and Pepto-Bismol to treat me when it didn’t work.
I was enduring all the hardships that horrify and thrill Peace Corps Applicants: Dodging the ubiquitous cow poop and mango pits, I carried water home on my head from the village pump. At night, I lit candles, which officially lost all romantic value when my table cloth burst into flame. I biked 85 kilometers to town for salad and toilet paper, and was delighted when the mystery meat that sometimes showed up in my nondescript rice dish was less hairy than my legs.
Hair gel was superfluous to such an existence, and not just because you couldn’t afford it: poverty simply made pretense impossible. A padded bra to conceal a flat chest, a mascara-embellished eye to distract from a big nose, could not prevent the neighbors from walking through your yard--which doubled as kitchen, salon, outdoor shower, dining room, and suburban throughway--and finding out what you really look like, who you really are, how you treat your family. (And yes, when you are watching your neighbors grow visibly skinny during the season of hardship, perishing from curable diseases like malaria at the health center, frizz is the last thing on your mind.)
As an American it was hard, to let go of the privacy that lets you fix things discretely: the psychiatrist’s office with the side door, the night time corrective braces, the flesh-colored bandaids. And yet, part of the appeal of village life was giving up: no matter what I did to stake out a private life, an unrelenting band of loving surrogate mothers absolutely refused to let me have one.
* * *
But just as my privations and lack of privacy were becoming comfortable, a violent nationwide strike drove the Peace Corps to evacuate Guinea. I was transferred to Cape Verde.
If God or Peace Corps Washington had felt guilty about my austere life in Guinea, they made it up to me with this transfer. Wedged between the interior mountains and the endless sea, the capitol Praia is clean and quaint. Street lights illuminate cobbled roads swept daily for the squeaky white taxis--2005 corollas almost without exception--that zip past colonial homes, neatly landscaped plazas. Locals in spotless western attire eat pizza at clean, well-lit cafes, fiddling with new ringtones on their cell phones.
My new roommate’s house was the icing on the cake. In the glare of the halogen bathroom light, across from the flushing toilet, the washing machine, and the eternally mysterious bidet, sat a half-used bottle of Bedhead. “Oh no,” I thought, picturing my wonderfully unused bottle in Guinea. “Am I back in a Bedhead country already?”
I was: as if to confirm it, my new APCD pointed to my tattered patchwork purse, the beloved masterpiece of a village tailor, which had literally lost its flap to a hungry Guinean cow. “Buy a new purse, throw that one away, or I will,” he said, half jokingly.
So it was to be silky locks and neat purses: Posh Corps indeed. And yet, behind the gleaming veneer of Cape Verde’s pizza and ringtones lurks widespread inefficiency and malfunction that are all the more shocking. Candles dot our “penthouse” apartment because electricity cuts out several times a week. Gleaming bathroom faucets and plumbing, stand—as decoration only--beside water basins schlepped daily from the public cistern atop women’s heads. In the quintessential world of smoke and mirrors, someone clears a field to plant corn beside a fully vamped shell station and a heap of trash and human feces.
Still, Cape Verde, with its ample toilet paper supply, is a mid-developed country, according to recent UN designations. And with it has come that distinctively first world estrangement. I buy my vegetables from a different lady each week and she thinks I am a tourist. When, in Guinea, I knew what my neighbors had for dinner (and it wasn’t vegetables), in Cape Verde, rounding month two, I haven’t met them yet.
This is the challenge of “Poshe” Corps Cape Verde: creating an “authentic” Peace Corps experience despite the relative luxury and first world fences. Is it feasible? Many Volunteers here would say no. Entering the marbled, air conditioned airport for the first time, many were as shocked and disappointed to find an Africa without huts and latrines as I was. “I came here to be deprived of things and I have to dress nicer than in the U.S.,” one said.
But Peace Corps, as stated in its mission, is not about privations: what is essential here is the thrill and the utter discomfort of adapting to a new culture. It is dealing with the well-intentioned host family that force-feeds you carbs and the local drivers more interested in practicing English with you than watching the road. It is that ascendant moment when you understand your first unmemorable joke in local language, or that unexpected chat when you open someone’s mind. All of this is Peace Corps, its essence and its challenge, entirely independent of socio-economics.
So I will start it again. I will crack open the bedhead, and introduce myself to the vegetable sellers who think I am a tourist. But the coins I hand them for the juicy carrots are coming out of a flapless Guinean purse.

165 Kilometers to Kankan

2007-02-25T14:21:00.000-08:00

The passenger behind me slumps forward, her folded forearm sticking me between the shoulder blades. I shove back hoping she will move. She doesn’t. Someone’s hipbone is jutting into my right leg, which is asleep, and the exposed window nob is sticking me in the lower back. I try to listen for malinke words I know in the pop songs so I won’t drive my elbows into the passengers beside me and start ranting about consumer rights and accountability and cars that open from the inside and out.

I glance down at my rumpled Economist from August. A Chinese telecom’s lawsuit for patent infringement was to be decided last month. I have no idea what happened. I turn the page and fix my eyes on the road as we slow for a pothole. The passenger beside me peers at it, a block of text beside a picture of a businessman stepping gingerly on banana peels. It’s an ad for pension plans, but the notion of retirement strikes me as impossible to explain.

“Amasa”, I say instead, the word for banana, pointing at the peels. The man nods, and smiles.

“Are there bananas in Europe?” he asks.

“I am from America, that’s not in Europe. I’ve never been to Europe,” I lie to make the point clear for the millionth time. He nods.

“Are there bananas in America?”

“Yes, but they’re not as good.”

He smiles, and offers me peanuts.

A cold trickle of sweat runs down my calf from behind my knees, to where my feet incinerate against the rusted tin shell covering the motor. I motion for the driver to hand me the window handle. He passes it back, and then reaches across the boy crammed into his seat to downshift. Aroused by the loss of speed, a few passengers glance out the window at the cow standing motionless in the road.

Now the wind blusters in loudly through the window. I fold up the Economist, ripping a few of the pages. Craining to glimpse myself in the rear view mirror--which is adorned with a pealing image of Madonna from her “like a prayer” album--I adjust my bandanna.

“Theif,” the driver says smiling, motioning for me to pass the handle back.

“That’s a lie,” I say, “It was a present.”

Two old men chuckle and a young woman smiles at me shyly. Someone asks what I said. Someone else repeats it. There is more laughter and I pass the handle forward.

The passenger behind me awakens and she shifts. Everyone settles into new positions, and feeling returns to certain parts of the body. I am less uncomfortable. 165 kilometers to Kankan.

Agronomy and Me

2006-09-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

TEAK
During our first In-Service Training (IST) this July, Agroforestry volunteers complained earnestly to our trainers of a subtle, difficult-to-articulate, and arguably irrelevant feeling that we don’t know anything about agroforestry. “You’d be surprised how much that negatively impacts our work,” we explained.
“Let me just say one thing,” began our APCD, who is known, on the contrary, for saying many things without really saying much at all. “It is merely your unfounded sense of inadequacy, not your lack of knowledge, that causes you to think this.”
But as much as we might want him to be right, one plant stubbornly confirms our uselessness time and time again. That plant is Teak.
An expensive hard wood, whose seeds were easy to collect in Forecariah, it seemed a logical choice for a Reforestation Pepiniere. The 2006 Agfo Manual offered no pictures but assured it was a fast growing, sun-loving plant. Heady with optimism, I planted thirty, mercilessly stuck them outside the shade structure, and didn’t even pre-germinate them.
Weeks later a miniature forest had bloomed in my Pepiniere and still no sign of life among the “fast-growing” teak.
Big decisions had to be made. Squatting before the thirty sachets at dawn --before any groupement member could stop by and witness my deplorable ignorance—I uttered a solemn question to the Banfele morning: “Is that bizarre dandelion-looking-thing teak?” “No no,” I reasoned, “I see it growing in the Lengue sachets, too. There might even be a picture of it in the dictionary under ‘Weed’ .”
“What about that piece of grass there, is that teak? You know, rice looks like grass, but it’s not grass, it’s rice!” Leaning forward, I peer at it carefully. “No, no, it is not in the center. I planted all the tree seeds in the center of the sachets. Plus that plant is all over my lawn.”
Impatient, I finally size-up the lettucey-shrub busting ambiguously out of four of the teak sachets. “THAT doesn’t look like a tree,” I say derisively, glancing at the mango tree towering above my hut, which, by comparison, is undoubtedly more tree-like. “Impostor,” I mutter, glaring at the plant that unkindly evokes memories of Ceasar Salad.
Deflated, I weigh the options: leave the obnoxious little plants to grow, in the hopes that all the weeds will die and thirty trees will blossom in their stead, with the words, “I am a teak tree” scrawled on their bark—very plausible. But in the meantime, the groupement members will see my weedy Pepiniere and think I am negligent. Plus, its possible the teak won’t grow at all because I didn’t pre-germinate them, and I will be living in a constant state of anguished uncertainty for naught.
I voraciously rip out all the plants, pre-germinate another 30 teak seeds, and get to work watching them grow.
A few days later M. Kelema, Community Secretary and Agronomist, stops by. I smugly show him the progress among my other trees in the Pepiniere, careful not to boast because my work really speaks for itself; who ever dreamed of planting Guanaba in Banfele, and just look at them, defiantly robust and vivacious in the evening light. We approach the 30 replanted teak sachets.
“As you can see, the only plant that is under-performing is the teak. Really, a very challenging species to germinate. The other day, I pulled up the weeds, tried a new germination technique and replanted.”
Kelema bends down and surveys the planting. “That’s funny, ‘cause the last time I was here I saw some teak growing in there.”
My eyes widen. “Damn that lettuce-looking shrub. Trees are not supposed to look like that!” Several excuses flash through my mind to maintain credibility past month two of service. “Yes, of course, I just figured it would be best to start from scratch and regerminate them all.” Next time, Kelema is going to weed before I so much as look at the Pepiniere, I think. “Nice boubou, by the way, is that new?”

MANDIANA
“Compared to the rest of the world, Africa is behind. Compared to the rest of Africa, Guinea is behind. Compared to the rest of Guinea, Kouroussa is behind.”
Ever since MC—president of the Banfele Vacationers, and ardent advocate of reforestation or of courting white women (I’m still not sure)—pronounced these words in a speech to his Banfele fellow youths, I have wondered: Could Kouroussa (my prefecture), and not Mandiana—generally seen as the poorest and worst prefecture--be the actual armpit of Guinea?
Mandiana volunteers would fervently disagree. Mandiana, they say, is unequivocally the most unappealing prefecture of Guinea. Their upright candles “wilt” in the midday heat, their roads are impassable in the rainy season, in the dry season everything is brown, and once when they saw a banana in the market they nearly had a cow. Listening to Mandiana volunteers debate the virtues of corn verses cassava TO—something they do frequently and for hours—does much to substantiate their claims.
Still, I had my doubts, so I did a week-long tour of Mandiana. Vast rolling hills, green and picturesque against an expansive sky, belie the red gravelly earth that supports only a few species of sparsely planted trees. During the rainy season, Mandiana trees are submerged in a sea of elephant grasses that disappear for the rest of the year. Degraded land forces Mandiana farmers to cultivate fields an immense 40 Km from town, where they actually live for the duration of the rains.
Amid the characteristically highly centralized Malinke villages of Mandiana are a few that sprawl like midwestern towns. These are the settlements of the Wasaloo, the hunter-herdsman descendants of the Fouta Peuhls, who set out into the dessert after their leader feuded with a fouta King, then intermarried with the Malinkes and settled in Mandiana.
At first blush, you don’t quite get why they are so proud of their Peuhl last names; their marginal practice of Islam, fluency in Malinke, and lack of Pular makes them seem awfully Malinke. Still, they don’t dance quite as well, have very refined features, and live in sprawling uncentralized settlements like the Puehls they descend from.
Ultimately, you can’t help asking yourself what they’re doing there. The feuding brother of the Fouta king who said, “let’s leave this green fertile land to go eat TO and learn to drum”, was probably destined to perish in the desert…or spend a lifetime dreaming of legumes and feeling really stupid.
Nevertheless, Mandiana, I concluded, is in fact no armpit. It is, perhaps, some lesser sweat gland, an inner thigh maybe, a bit like New Jersey: disparaged by all but in reality only half as bad as Kansas. Compared to Kouroussa, Mandiana boasts a higher French level among its villagers, slightly better quality roads, more abundant water pumps, and what seemed to me like more widely practiced sustainable agricultural techniques (intercropping and live fencing). In sum, I fear chez moi, Kouroussa, is the legitimate armpit of Guinea.

Cosmo's Steamy Summer Tips on Keeping Your Man in Guinea

2006-08-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

MEN
Far from anxiety-provoking, ardent pleas by would-be suitors are so hapless as to inspire amusement, annoyance, or pity.
One market day, like so many others, a random young guy enters my yard without knocking to get a look at the white girl he’s heard about. And, as it turns out, they weren’t pulling his chain, I AM white, quite white, in fact, and all over, as far as anyone can tell. Unfortunately for him—despite the veracity of their claims about my skin color—I shat about thirteen times last night and am sitting on my tarp, reading about amoebic dysentery in Where There Are No Doctors. I am in no mood to discuss the burgeoning romance that clearly exists between us.
But he is an adult, so it is not socially acceptable to ask him to leave. It is thus my mission to employ passive aggression so decisively as to destroy the seemingly impenetrable wall of Guinean Male Obliviousness.
“So you are in Banfele.”
“Yes” I grumble, sigh heavily, look at my watch and resume reading all at once—that efficient multi-tasking approach with which only an American woman can blow you off.
“You have been here for a while?”
“Three months,” I say, repeating the same timeless multipronged tactic.
His obliviousness irritates me and agitates my bowels, enfeebled after a night of intense activity. It is time to abandon the time-honored passive-aggressive approach for an all-out land offensive.
I shut the book and rise. “I need to go pack my bags. I am going to Faranah today. See you later.”
But he can contain himself no longer. As if passion itself had spoken, he beseeches me, “Attends! Je t’aime, quoi.”
I think this roughly translates to “Wait, I like sort of love you.”
I don’t know what he was expecting; perhaps, “I like sort of love you, too.” But as was already abundantly clear, it was not his day, and his blatant inattention to my increasingly belligerent hints had only succeeded in preparing my intestines for round 14.
“Jen e t’aime pas” I say hotly, sure as I disappear into my latrine that if my words could not dissuade him, round 14 would.
* * *
Then there was that illfated trip to Belencoro, a small town whose muscley old groupment leader had impressively sought me out in person to work with his groupement. Despite the usual gastrointestinal irregularities, I biked the crappy ten km road to meet him. He received me warmly, but the trouble was he spoke not a word of French. After lounging around his hut all day, waiting for a French-speaker to show up, it came time to decide whether to bike home or stay the night.
“You must stay,” he said, his luminous eyes shining brightly, “Really, you must.” I hesitated, considering his nice family, my aching belly, and the rough ride home.
Then, as if to tip the balance in favor of staying, or to clarify his offer, he extended his pointerfingers side by side, and began knocking them together—the Guinean sign, or so I gathered, for not-so-platonic development collaboration. He continued to knock them against each other, grinning at me suggestively and glancing meaningfully over at the bed.
All of a sudden I remembered that that very evening I needed to charge my palm pilot, hadn’t charged if for quite some time and the contacts menu was coming up rather slowly. Plus I still hadn’t taken out the storm windows though it was mid July, and lord knows it had been ages since I’d washed my hair. Belencoro’s much sought after solar dryer would have to wait for another time.
* * *
Then there is Ibrahama, a short, skinny, kind and not-so-bright member of the Woroco groupement. A great dancer and an expert lumberer, he’s one of those well intentioned guys whose touches—innocuous from anyone else—are so infused with yearning as to creep you out.
We are sitting in his hut for the first time. I sit on the very edge of the bench looking out the open door to appear disinterested. He painstakingly rewinds an Espoirs tape by hand and places it in the windowless cassette player. The song is good but I figure I shouldn’t dance.
Above his bed there is a 2005 calendar with a picture of a boustier-clad blond strattling a chair. He points to it. “White women,” he says, smiling, as if to express his interest in, or familiarity with us. I nod, wondering if I’m supposed to say, “ Ah, yes, my sister Tanya, quite a looker, and who would think, they’re real.”
Long Pause.
He pulls out a piece of paper with a lumber order on it from the Banfele school construction project. “I cut wood, I’m good at it,” he says, reaching proudly for his chainsaw. I nod politely, amused that he is trying to impress an agroforestry volunteer with a lumber order. Silence.
He grabs a mask from the wall, puts it on, and pretends to scare me. He laughs nervously. “We dance a lot here. Lots of whites come to learn. I am good at it.”
He hands me a photo of an interracial couple smiling from behind a clean table in a first world country. “My brother. He plays the drums. That’s his wife, Koi. She took him back with her.” Silence.
He says quietly, “I always try, but so far none have taken me.” Silence.
He grasps a strand of my hair that has come loose and fumbles to put it behind my ear. I recoil. “White people have such nice hair,” he says, laughing sadly.
“Let’s go back to Sekou’s,” I say.

PAGNES
There are those female figures that can sustain a huge blow in the form of a long shapeless curtain wound multiple times around them without losing all semblance of feminity. Then there is my figure. Unfortuantely for me, the name of said shapeless curtain is the pagne, and it is the single most common article of clothing among Guinean women, knowing no distinctions of class or ethnicity. From Conakry to Banfele, women wear the pagne like its going out of style (except that its not) and they look good in it.
It is exactly what I described—a two meter long swath of brightly colored cloth, rarely embellished even with a hem or a tie, that starts its life as a skirt, but which inevitably evolves into a curtail, sheet, towel or—if its really lucky—menstrual pad.
Pagne designs feature everything from exotic traditional forest patterns, to cell phones and political party insignias. Bargaining for the perfect one is as momentous for the affluent Guinean woman as finding the perfect Kenneth Cole heal for the American set, according to many a self-proclaimed penniless Guinean functionaire (who always manages to have one of those useless musical noisemakers for his bike).
One can only be impressed by the deftness with which women here manage so unruly a garment in a culture where a woman’s legs are considered sinfully erotic. Pounding rice in a wooden mortar, balancing a basin of water atop the head, or getting down in a drum circle, only rarely does a Guinean woman glance discretely sideways, briefly expose her underwear, and perform a quick “re-wrap”.
To say I look mannish in one, would be an undeserved compliment. I look like a pole. A thick one. One of those Grecian columns, whose forward-thinking architects have imbued it with the strength to support huge temples for centuries.
But that’s not the only reason I abhor the pagne. Like that Newt Gingrich mask you cannot keep on for a whole Halloween party, I can’t seem to make it to the water pump and back without incident; after sweating, spilling, and tripping on it, I may yet lose it entirely—and the 20 Liter container of water sloshing and pitching on my head—to a hardy Guinean breeze.
Thus, I am generally at peace with my decision to boycott the pagne. As I see other PCVs returning from the marche with progressively bolder fabrics—fabrics that do nothing for their “jewel-toned” complexions and which cause them to look more like big Greek poles with each passind day—I feel vindicated. My compromise with Guinea has been as follows: I will cover the parts of my body that offend you, but I will do it in a way that is most comfortable for me, by wearing capris.
But innerpeace is not without its price. The pagne is a bit of a symbol of integration for volunteers and I have heard from more than one Guinean woman that So-and-So PCV at Sandenia was “SOOO Guinean,” she didn’t wear anything but pagnes. “That’s good,” I say but what I’m thinking is she probably looked like a pole.

GIFTS
Sekou Kourouma sits across from me at a small wooden table and rinses his hand in a bowl of water. Now we attack the large plate of steaming chicken and rice. He is tall and thin, uneducated and softspoken, but so clearly bright and genuinely generous it really does transcend language. Scrawled on the newly mud-covered hut wall behind him is my name and his, and an advisory not to smoke in pigeon French. We painstakingly remudded the hut together last week, and my shoulder is still sore from smacking globs of sand, soil, and water mixture against the wall. This expensive and symbolic meal (chickens are gifts of great honor) is a token of his gratitude.
He quickly eats some rice and a little chicken, gnaws on the bones I leave behind, and says he’s full. “That’s a lie,” I say gregariously, “eat, eat.” “No, Aicha, this is for you.”
Every handful of peanuts, cluster of bananas, or super honorary live chicken I am gifted makes me uncomfortable, rousing a mixed sensation of guilt and suspicion. I fear the gift is either designed to elicit some bigger gift, or that in prime starvation season this imprudently selfless hut-dweller is condemning his family to smaller helpings of TO (an utterly tasteless and unnutritious ball of sandy mucous made from steamed pounded cassava), so that my already volumptuous love handles can grow more curvaceous still.
With Sekou—who stubbornly sends me off with cookies each time I leave Woroco—I usually worry about the latter. But this time I am uneasy for both reasons. He points to the hay-and-bamboo-thatched ceiling and says “tin is good, but ‘je n’ai pas les moyens.’” This phrase, “I don’t have the means”, is the classic lead-in for an enervating, unabashed request for money.
My fears of zealous generosity and tactical giving—that arise as I stare at the remaining leg of chicken beneath Sekou’s thatched roof—come up constantly here. My host mom SENDS me a bowl of rice instead of inviting me for dinner because her family eats only TO. At the same time, a groupement leader has brought me a bowl of milk and asks for a tractor (because like most white people, I have five).
These situations are painfully awkward. But everytime I am ready to condemn Guinea for rudely singling me out (like when a guest of my host mother tells me she likes my shirt and then asks for it), I am forced to recognize that Guinean culture endorses shameless requests, and equally shameless refusals. Throughout market day, Guineans unabashedly demand, “bring me back a gift,” to which Guineans coolly respond, “I refuse”. The woman who requested my shirt only laughed amicably when I said “no, but can I have your pagne?”
Still, even if its socially acceptable to refuse requests—even those preceded by gifts—I don’t want to broach it with Sekou. I also don’t need to gorge myself on his only shot at protein this month.
Sitting in the hut after lunch that day I am still uneasy. “Come here,” Sekou says, and leads me to a storeroom I’ve never seen before. He points to the two massive slumped bags of rice and proudly explains he’s been saving them in order “to build a tin roof for my family.” In a country where inflation is a constant, but where the price of rice climbs steadily every month, putting your savings in rice sacks is every Guinean financial planner’s dream. I leave Woroco content, the chicken sitting better than ever in my tummy, even the feet.

INDUSTRY OR BETRAYAL? Banfelian Termites Remain Active Through Strike (07/24/06)

2006-07-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

EVENTS
THE STRIKE-what can I tell you that your comprehensive minute-by-minute BBC coverage has not expertly conveyed? Perhaps that Guinea saw a massive national nine-day strike in June. Teachers and other public officials protested stagnating salaries, and soaring pricing of rice and gas (34% in three months), resulting in student-led protests across the country. Twenty students were killed in Conakry, 4 looters in Labe and Zerekore combined. On day nine, the unions agreed to “suspend the strike” contingent on Government promises of salary increases and a decrease in the price of rice.
The strike in Banfele was quite a different story. Cows mooed, goats bahed, women were marginalized. Men discussed the World Cup and termites feasted on my hut and fence.
We did feel it, though. The price of black market gas soared to over 10 mil a liter, sold in honey colored whisky bottles in wood stands on the side of the road. The Doctor worried how he would complete his vaccination tournee to the villages, and radioed Faranah and Kouroussa daily to check on gas supplies. French-speakers listened religiously to the radio, relying on the BBC, the international news source, for the most accurate information on what was happening in our Capitol (although we listened to the state news as well). It was surreal to hear bulletins like “negotiators for the Guinean Government and Trade Unions have yet to reach an agreement after Monday’s violent protests.” Those remote, repetitious reports of violence and social unrest in Africa were happening in my Capitol, so near, and I was drinking tea and working on a pepiniere in Banfele.
Peace Corps Admin declared a standfast, requiring that all volunteers remain at site, the safest, if loneliest, place during social upheaval. I lived for my 30-minute radio conversations with Annaliese, the kind Health APCD (Asistant Peace Corps Director), who diligently called me on the Haute Guinea Frequency to give status updates every few days (I did not have the Peace Corps Frequency yet). I desperately wanted to mull over the possibility of evacuation with fellow PCV’s and felt my distance acutely.
We are naturally relieved that service has not been truncated and violence has ceased. But there is an ambiguous quality to it, an interlaced sadness; not to suggest that violence is the only or best way to effect social change, but it merits acknowledgement that the same lack of resentment and class consciousness--a certain complacency--that suspends the strike, and allows the Peace Corps to flourish peacefully, perhaps also prevents Guinea from moving forward.

WORLD CUP—World Cup in the Village is a bit like slap bracelets in my middle school (so cool). With the newly installed satellite dish in the community center, fortuitously but not surprisingly procured the day of the first match, functionaries struggle to (and succeed consistently at) fitting daily viewing into their tight schedules and budgets. Even without the incessant BBC updates and despite never attending the viewing, I know what’s happened: When any country whose inhabitants are not black loses, Banfelians walk by me grinning smugly, or outright gloating. Similarly, when a “non-black” team wins, quietly resentful or fullblown vindictive glances give instant insight into the final score. “I really have no feelings for Czechoslovakia one way or another,” I assure Kelema, the Secretaire Communautaire, who is convinced I am grief-stricken by Ghana’s surprise win over this country whose name I can’t spell. “I swear, I am really not here to colonize you,” I say. He laughs.

ANECDOTES
HOME MAINTENANCE--The rains here are not that odd relic of the power of nature, that makes your morning drive to work a little more annoying. The winds bluster thru the tallest mango trees, women quickly pull laundry off fences and place tin buckets in their yards for water collection (and the pump line is mercifully short the next day). The mosquitos cower somewhere pleasantly far from your ankles and a dark bulbous purple cloud or a grey sheet visibly approaches the town. A couple potent droplets fall and everyone runs inside to grab umbrellas, inappropriately warm “dead tubabu” sweatshirts and coats, and I am gleefully liberated from Guinea for the rest of the day. And then something falls down.
After one night of impressive winds and rain, I emerged at 4 AM to a typically silent dry morning in my typically scanty sleeping attire to pee. As in one of those deliberately farfetched finales to a comic movie, I am blinking in the half light, toilet paper in hand, and what used to be my highly functional eastern-themed bamboo enclosure—that surrounded my tree nursery and my hut—is gone, a post-hurricane pile of debri. Just behind it is Banfele, and unexpectedly close, there’s my neighbor’s hut, with smoke rising above it. “So Mamadi’s second wife starts breakfast before 5 o’clock prayer, I had no idea,” I think as it also occurs to me how ABSURD it is to be standing naked in the middle of a Guinean village with toilet paper at 4 AM.
Since this fateful night, the groupment has helped me to temporarily re-erect the embattled fence, but each morning I wisely quell the urge to pee just long enough to don a tee shirt.
Home maintenance woes do not stop there. As I listened to a particularly morally noxious Bush White house move on the BBC—I think the suicides of three Guantanamo inmates were being described as a “PR stunt” by a top staffer—I suddenly found myself possessed of the strength and will to completely eliminate the terror--, err, termites that prey on certain innocent American civilians. I lit into one of my old war zones in the wall, and as sweat dripped to the floor in the pre-rain humidity, I reached an exciting never-before-seen inner core of the termite mound. Bright and white, it looked quite a bit like daylight flooding through a hole in the wall of a particularly retarded Peace Corps volunteer who had just dug a hole in her mud hut in prime rainy season.
“I just put a hole in my wall trying to get rid of a termite mound, what should I do?” I cried to potentially interested local government officials and groupements members. They smile, as if to say, “that was dumb,” and mention something about the World Cup. Finally someone says something about cement. “Cement sounds great!” I say, realizing that rainy season work demands combined with Guinean motivation levels might make “adding a new vent” a better option. I have fully expected the termites, with their stellar history of industry in my neighborhood, will have it patched up first. (Since I wrote this, my awesome motivated, now-departed Peuhl friend borrowed a dowel, some stones, and some cement from the Center-de-sante builders and we patched it up).
My sense of neglect in Banfele was heightened by a poorly timed trip to Wassaya to learn about Beekeeping (project started by a supervolunteer back when the Peace Corps gave out funding). Visiting Wassaya, the old Peace Corps site between me and Kouroussa, was a little like running into an old boyfriend when your marriage is falling apart: I stayed in a large hut directly within a family’s compound, furnished with THREE shelves, a functioning STOVE, a RUG, and, envy of all envies, a COVERED LATINE complete with foot stones and cover!! I received heated bath water and hot meals three times a day! The family corrected my Malinke! Does the Bellagio offer its VIP clients such treatment?
Wassaya is also half the distance to a city. But the biggest benefit is Mamadi Conde, a miraculously motivated, knowledgeable, French-speaking Counterpart who, while threatening to charge me five mil per question, patiently answered all of my questions about Apiculture, Agroforestry, and Peace Corps service. Downsides are many--leaving work I’ve started, dealing with a community accustomed to big ticket Peace Corps projects, and loss of privacy. Still I am thinking about switching sites.

WAR AND PEACE--Like many prison inmates and Peace Corps Volunteers, I have taken up War and Peace. Thoroughly put out with characters in OTHER novels who consistently DESERT me after several weeks of “conaissance”, I figured no matter who I became acquainted with in War and Peace, they would be in for the long haul. So far that has proved true, and “la lecture” is surprisingly like gossiping about a group of beautiful wealthy superficial people with someone far more erudite…sort of a cross between a dictionary and a People magazine. Patronize your libraries! Men will betray you, characters in Big Russian Novels will not!!

WORK
SOLAR DRYER-Wood for my sechoir has been peaking out at me from under my bed for some time now. “It is too late in the season,” I said, noting my frizzy rainy-season hairdo, ”I shall wait til next year.” But in keeping with my new anti-fear-of-failure motto, “Staying-busy-is-a-legitimate-goal-cuz-lord-knows-I-can’t-read-anymore-War-and-Peace,”and also because I kept hitting my foot against it at night, I pulled out the six beams, plastic sheeting, nails, and rice sack. I broke a quality Guinean hammer—luckily not over the head of the Kind Forestiere Carpenter who, like me, hadn’t a clue where to attach the rubber cords—and in two days time, was the proud owner of an odd sort of sarcophagus-thing, fit for any cult worshipping its mummified leader.
I sent some kids who should have been in school to get mangos and pealed them til I swore I’d never touch another mango sorbet (not that this is a big issue in Guinea). Amid puzzled glances and laughter, I set the contraption up in the hospital cloture on a sunny morning, with strict instructions to keep children, goats and invalids away, using rocks if necessary (some volunteers have surmised that the main role of goats here is as something to throw rocks at, athough they’re reprotedly for sacrifices).
Passing through the soccer game that evening, I eagerly approached the result of my first public development effort: a swarm of flies hovering above a small grouping of fermented mango slices sprawled across a slackened length of rice sack. Goats had gained entrance to the Hospital yard, jumped up in my sechoir, and eaten the mangoes that apparently would not have dried anyway. There were maybe two dried mangoes among the remains, and despite lengthy coaxing, no Banfelian would taste them (I’ll pull out my friend’s expertly dried mangos during the “saison de manqué” and give it another shot. Show your support by boycotting Mango Sorbet thru August).

MORINGA-If Moringa were Avon, I would have a Pink Puegot and really big blond hair. This fast-growing, hardy tree has highly nutritious leaves (loads of calcium, vitamin A, B, C, protein, iron), good for sauce or as a dietary supplement, and has a long tap root (instead of spreading roots), which makes it perfect for live fences or alleycropping (its also nitrogen fixing, which means it improves the soil). I have made it my mission to plant this tree widely and, when it’s grown, “sensitize” widely on its awesomeness (such an easy way to equip these kids immune systems to better fight malaria, which claims an unsettling number of youngsters chez moi). I have direct seeded it at the hospital, planted a live fence for a neighbor, sowed it in sachets in my nursery, and made an intensive production bed. I have given seeds out on vaccination tournees in conjunction with parasite medicine and vitamin A, and am planning to name my firstborn “Moringa Alper.” Not Hyphenated. Expected next January.

PEANUT BRITTLE-Barring clean water, electricity, education, what do Banfelians need most? If you guessed Peanut brittle, then you should probably not go into development work, but you’re right! A supermotivated Education volunteer taught me how to make it in Kankan, and I excitedly brought baking powder and butter (available but expensive in the village) to Bana, the groupement president. Wild gesticulations, minor skin burns, and useless orders in English aside, the sugar and peanuts bubbled up in her wok and my dream of buying peanut brittle in the marche each week, er I mean, providing a viable business option to a motivated cook, bubbled along side.
While Banfelians eagerly purchased our tasty creations, and my newly exposed domesticity briefly increased the number marriage proposals I received (always good to have options), Bana only earned about mil franc per tray (when I had purchased the expensive ingredients), selling at the going “bon-bon” rate of 100 franc a pop. If she just sold her peanuts raw, she would make 3 mil. Capitalism shmapitalism. The invisible hand is like, totally invisible in Guinea.
(While I admit I have gone to bed at 7 pm nights after some of my more stinging failures, or drowned my sorrows via classy behaviors like licking fallen hot chocolate powder off my cement floor, in general I have stayed pretty motivated (knock on the remains of my bamboo fence). Malinkes are famoulsy forgiving, I disentangle my ego frome each venture by making my base goals “staying busy” and “learning”, and frankly have s@#t else to do. )
MISCELLANY: Am being sent Amaranth seeds by Mexican NGO Puente a la Salud to sow here, starting a humor Magazine “The Water Method”, member of peer listening group JET, editing the Agfo Manual, fundraising for Girls Camp, teaching an Agfo cross-sectoral session for Education training in September, trying to start a milk coop, utterly giving up on growing things.

TRAVEL
SIGUIRI-Siguiri is a hot dusty little oasis of wealth smag dab in the harsh haute brush and the most brutal malinke poverty. Despite communal Giardia after the July Fourth hamburgers proved unamerican and unsanitary, a group of us ventured the 130 k north from Kankan to “faire le tourism” and grace the latrines of Northern Haute Guinea with our ailments. Overlooking the city from atop the posh airport hill, Siguiri looks almost like a new souless working class agricultural town in Utah or Kansas. The sun shines brightly on clean new tin roofed cement houses, so uncharacteristic of the huts that proliferate throughout the region and even in Kankan (cement structures with tin roofs are mostly in the cool prosperous Fouta region). Centre ville, pleasantly removed from one of the nicest highways in Guinea and situated beside the broad unexquisite Niger river, feels a bit like the old west, with porches and some stone buildings. While all foods brown do proliferate (tasty beans, rice and nuances in dough balls more pleasant than expected), the comparatively clean, brightly colored market features avocados. How does a region where Industrious Rob can’t get one Papaya tree to grow, and where Amy must douse herself in “Paradise Powder” (menthalated baby powder), to sleep with the heat manage to offer imported avocados? The prosperity comes from SAG, a Ghanian-South African Gold mine located 30 K outside the city, whose alleged .4% contribution to the Sous-prefecture (15% to the Feds, the rest for the company) still makes the city stand out as a rare example of Haute Affluence, a place where volunteers buy silver jewelry and patronize the SAG pool and first world grocery store. So hard to remain unbendingly anti-mining—despite the horribly destructive environmental practices involved in gold extraction--when you witness a refreshing touch of affluence in the Haute.

Alex becomes a Republican and her listserv readership miraculously descends to “0” (5/29/06)

2006-07-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

First off I want to apologize for my last email—editing, I realize, is a good thing, like iced tea on a hot summer day, like a sentence with only two clauses. I know you're tempted to minimize that outlook screen with the cumbersome email from the increasingly unpopular friend/niece/ex-girlfriend/fpreferred electrolocist, and turn to more product pursuits like beating your score at Snood, but bear with me. I will not disappoint.

I write you from Conakry where I have been sent on a top secret mission to dance the dundunbah for a visiting Washington peace corps official. When I got the invitation via radio, I was quite sure they were looking for another Desmond-Tutu-esque speech, and my employment at the state department would soon follow. Such is my disappointment, but can you imagine what it must be like for the official? Thirteen hours in a plane to Africa to watch WHITE women dance the Dundunbah? He will surely sever ties with Guinea.

This month, I have accepted neither desiring nor being capable of being a Guinean villager. While it is unfair that I am so unaccustomed to hardship that I reject it, I can neither feel guilty nor superior for this being the nature of things--i must accept it. Yes, its snobby and privileged, but damn it, I am too smart to spend two hours a day knocking termite mounds off the wall, as I delude myself that I am stimulating my brain by listening to the BBC, which offers to following degree of brain food: "The UN Security Commission decided today……at least 50 dead and many wounded although…the latest reports of bird flu in Africa indicate that…"

I thought it angrily at the end of last month as hay dust fell in my mouth from the very heavy bail I carried on my head to someone else's field, as wide eyed villagers gawked: "this may be authentic, I may want to be authentic, but screw it, i could go for a really inauthentic pedicure about now."

At the same time, and somewhat hypocritically, one of the American cultural traits I am most determined to communicate is our comparative dislike of privilege. Take chairs and pumps: As a "patrony" white person, I get ceremoniously shuffled from chair to chair during house calls, irrespective of whether the repetitive squatting exercise is far more of a pain in the a@# (bad pun) than remaining on the initial stool, a stool that is inevitably a full 6 inches lower than the mini chair I now occupy, after having dislocated half the family, several goats, a few chickens, the occasional cow, and a village elder. Earnestly desiring to avoid special treatment, I firmly insist on the crappier chair, which seems to tickle my groupement. I pat myself on the back at this sensibilization on the justice of equality (but who is self important).

Conversely, when it comes to the pump, I guiltily assert my colonial privilege--I glance at the long "line"--line being a euphemism for bickering swarm of barefoot women with 5-8 plastic liter containers, three wash basins, and notably gi-normous biceps--and I think, "sit here for two hours while women grab my breasts, ask me how many children I have, why I have no husband, and tell me its cuz I can't cook, or make like Pizarro and cut in line?" I usually cut, guiltily balancing my bedon next to the water spout and pump furiously amid the awed gasps (seeing white women working is still quite a coup), while I berate myself for being so hegemonic. But damn it, I am American and while part of "the American Way" (at least in theory, and at least compared to Guinea) is anti-privilege and pro-equality, my American standard of living makes me anti-waiting in lines for two hours each day for something that should come out of a faucet…

Another uncomfortable realm of privilege is stuff I own—until present, I have felt guilty about having a Peace Corps multi-speed bike, that can get a she-man like myself up hills that way stronger Guineans must dismount to tackle—but I'm as "unresponsible" for being lucky enough to have a Bike as Mamadi--who asks me for one almost daily--is for not being able to have one. Its not always easy, though. One day I was going to the field with a real bad open blister. Warned by the Peace Corps to steer clear of becoming a village medicine dispenser, I wondered if I should wear the sorely-needed but frankly opulent bandaid. "What is the point of having first world medical supplies if you're not going to use them," I said, thinking of a U.S. friend (we'll call him Shmarvin) who's "Beemer" is so nice he refuses to drive it out after 7. I wore it, and hauling well water all morning, I needed it. But sure enough, a few days later, Mamadi, who has helped me pummel cow dung with a bat for my pepiniere for several hours, holds out his calloused hand and points to a sizable open cut. Then he points to my bandaid, asking for one. What can I do? He knows I have them, he's injured himself by helping me all day. On the other hand what will I say when his cousin Herb Mamadi the fourth comes over with a scraped knee tomorrow and wants? I decide to give one to Mamadi, and enter my house to find it, shutting the door as I do habitually to prevent my visitor from seeing my belongings. Then I lie the next time he asks for one that I'm all out.

Along with my embrace of Pizarro and my acceptance of my own privilege, I have revisited the functionaries who I rejected so summarily when I got to site, eager as I was to get to work and clank beer glassed with the proletariat (err, the Muslim proletariat who kicks back by drinking tea or unhomogenized milk). They may smoke too much and feel superior to everyone by the accident that made them literate and fluent in French. But literacy, and the degree of worldiness that inevitably accompanies this, makes them an undeniable ally in this incredibly insular, frankly primitive world.

This became evident when I returned from my she-man-esque bike ride to Kisidougou (more later) with the highly sought after improved pre-germinated Oil Palm seeds from Cote d'Ivorian laboratories. Oil Palm seeds are already like iPods to Banfelians, and this variety, which produces a crop weekly instead of yearly, is well, just a little bit like the Nano (google it, dad), and just as "cher." "How do I give these to my groupements without them thinking I am going to fund them like USAID?" I ask Jaque, the cool Doctor, and Kelema, the kind Secretaire Communitaire. I sought their advice in light of my difficulties explaining the Peace Corps mission: "Unlike other NGO's, I am here to provide "assistance technique" and not funding, although I will look for grants for you." "We understand" says bright, enterprising groupment president X. "So what seeds are you bringing us? Where are the watering cans, the chemical fertilizer? Say those are some nice windmills I've seen on your "Scenes of Vermont Calendar". And Didn't Bush recently give India some nuclear generators?" (I have taken some liberties translating the Malinke, naturally)

"YOU MUST SELL IT TO THEM" both Jaque and Kelema insist to me separately. "Once you start giving, you create an expectation of charity forever, which does more harm than good. You will be expected to give everytime, and everyone will get jealous and demand the same gifts." "But how have I assisted, how am I any different from a vender?" I ask. "You have facilitated the purchase by eliminating the cost of transport to Kisidougou," They say.

Nervous, and feeling like my ancestor Shlomo Goldstein-insky, who sold many a stale loaf of challah to an unsuspecting Guinean Goy, I arranged meetings with the Woroco forestry groupement and the Banfele forestry groupement and tell them of my acquisition and my terms: they were under no obligation to buy, the price was "mil franc" per plant (what I paid, roughly 20 cents but worth a plate of rice here) and they needed to pay me by July 15th. Woroco, a groupement that's formed around my coming and has already lost a member due to the lack of funding, took it well: "We'll collect mil franc from everyone in the groupement every market day," they explained without being asked. My own groupement was a little less warm—the guilt trips were unspoken, but as they grudgingly accepted my terms, I could here them thinking, "we cook for her, built and furnished her house. She is a rich white lady with a bike that's nicer than the sous-prefet's son's, she pays passage to Kankan every month and her flashlight is damn fine. We thought she was here to help us, but look how much she has and yet how unwilling she is to give. May allah smite her with a big goiter and lots of termites!" (the latter came true, will keep you posted on my thyroid, send salt)

Difficult as this interaction was, my eyes have opened to a new almost Republican guilt-free appreciation of sticking it to the poor. I had thought the Peace Corps had it all wrong—what can you accomplish with community trainings and sensibilizations if you don't BUILD the school, BUY the condoms, IMPROVE the roads?…But the reverse is at least as bad—some NGO's here have built schools that sit vacant because they never found or trained teachers, dug pumps without spreading the notion that handwashing is as important to health as good water, etc. Both must go hand in hand, I thought, to make an impact.

But in a country where examples of entrepreneurship are few, where wealth is acquired through personal connections or inheritance, where corruption is rampant, gift giving is the norm, where there is very little formal economy, and where a new class of college graduates compete each year for a few prized NGO jobs (an entire economy based on heavily-funded Non-profits, which have eerily replaced industry), it is very hard, I am finding, to give assistance, and expect bottom-line profitability, to aid without creating dependency. Anne, a third year PCV who works at an NGO in Kankan reports that when her NGO began receiving serious funding, motivation tapered off: now personnel won't attend meetings if there's no per diem. A French Carpentry-Workshop Director with the Catholic Mission in Kisi told me the Church has been looking for a Guinean to replace him in his position for twenty years, but that no Guinean is interested/capable; the Frenchman offers to show the carpenters and apprentices how he keeps books, but no one has ever expressed interest. So much money is poored into this country and so little sustainable development has taken place. I seriously questions whether most Guineans, given their aforementioned cultural milieu, are capable of receiving monetary assistance and simultaneously pursuing market sustainability.

I will heretofore be campaigning for Condeleeza for 2008, and I'll make a dollar donation to the Heritage Foundation for each scathing liberal retort I receive. Keep em comin'.

90 km from Banfele to St Petersburg

2006-06-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

The first part of May was all about Alex encouraging Guinean private sector growth by buying rice and sauce in every town except Banfele…I biked all major roads into my site: Anne, a Kankan-based third year, and I biked from Kankan to Baro for the semi famous “fete de la mere”(50 k), then to Kourrousa (23 k) and on to Banfele (75k). We then headed down the crappy, stunning Kisidougou road (2 day 140 k) parted ways in Kisi, I visited a Volunteer in Faranah and biked home from there (85 k done at she-man warp speed).
Cruising down what for all intents and purposes was a small cliff, across a river and up a deeply grooved sand-and-bedrock mountain, I wondered aloud to Anne what exactly they meant by ‘Kisidougou “ROAD”’. Skinny athletic Anne could practice yoga-lotus position, munch on her paranoidly large stash of cookies and sardines, and contemplate signing up for the tour de france, all while careening down a gravelly gorge. Alex, on the contrary, handlebars gripped with unseen force, eyes boring into each menacing, death-trap-concealing pebble, wondered if she shouldn’t have sought out more benedictions from her village chief before heading out. But that grueling first day of 90 km the scenery changed instantly from dry brush to bright green sub-tropical forests, with baobab, coconut, and nere trees climbing so improbably high as to dwarf villages into dolls houses, and infuse an aura of magic into each first glimpse of village. Tucked into a hill, framed in the trees, a cluster of conical huts emerges with not a single relic from this era. Naked kids dance around, yelling tubabu to announce our arrival to any unobservant 2-year-old who are not already having a cow, women carrying long bamboo polls for mango harvesting stop and stare, and a requisite cluster of proudly indigent men look up from their intensive tea-drinking, smoking, and radio-listening to “saluer” from their bench beneath the stunning village baobab tree. With characteristic generosity, we are given pump water, mangos, and the always-delectable unhomogenized milk with sugar (although the preponderance of this last one might cause me to pass a kidney stone by the time you receive this).
At dusk, nearly catatonic from exhaustion, Anne and I roll into Albariah and muster our remaining charm. Following some exemplary malinke salutations, we banter about our Superhuman feats of strength---the 90 k we’ve just biked—, the incomparable beauty of the Albariah Sous-prefecture, the unparalleled and FRANKLY nationally renowned Centre de Sante, oh, and the fact that we need a place to stay. “Uh, HUH” is the consistent response, that incredibly validating, highly contagious, but not necessarily promising Guinean affirmation sound.
It gets dark and begins to pour. Some kids make a move towards Anne’s money pouch. A smiling official approaches us but demands an “ordre de mission” (official work papers). He leaves when we can’t produce them. “We might have to bribe them,” Anne whispers, uneasy, as we huddle on the bed lent us by a vender-lady as rain pounds the tin roof.
Presently we are lead to the Sous-Prefet, who motions for us to jump in his stunning, I-play-the-DC-lottery-and-win-or-steal-from-the-federal-coffers-and-walk 4 X 4. I am elated. Anne is still nervous. And with reason—instead of heading into town, the Sous-prefet calmly turns off the main road into the brushy darkness as the rain obscures the headlight glow.
“This is one of those Peace Corps-cover-up-Volunteers-deaths that my mom writes me about, (when she’s not asking about the food or whether I’ve met a nice Jewish boy with Medecins Sans Frontiers),” I think. In fact, this is the part where I profess my ambiguously platonic love to Anne(drew?), we disappear, our images are broadcast the world over while our families launch a Natalie-Holloway-esque search except not for as long because we are not nearly as attractive.
Just then, a gate appears in the headlights with a Cyrillic phrase written on it, like the label on a cheap Russian vodka bottle (always a good omen for recent college grads). We have arrived at a Russian gold mine where a tough, energetic old Director, and a kind, lonely, doctor receive us warmly. At that moment, the tragedy/hypocrisy of accepting shelter from the very sort of enterprise I vehemently opposed in Ecuador was only vaguely apparent to me; relief—mixed with the comforts of ELECTRICITY, RUNNING WATER, SALAD, and CLEAN SHEETS--all but purged me of my ideals.
After a lovely breakfast, sore but well rested and relieved of the cumbersome weight of social conscience, we knock off the remaining 50 k with ease, and arrived in Kisi by early afternoon.