Story Behind the Photo II
December 14th, 2005 by Sarin
When I lived with my homestay family in Sao Domingos, I complained that “Sao Dao” is in the middle of nowhere because it didn’t have a functioning internet café and actually only has one road. But we took a field trip to see the town’s one (and only) water pump, and soon realized my standards for isolation were very high. This, my friends, is what parts of Cape Verde actually looks like. Lifeless brown for miles and miles. Boy did I feel better when I got home.
Not to be confused with the desert, most of Cape Verdeans live in very green villages in towns. I took this shot, because literally 2 weeks ago, the whole thing was brown. It’s amazing what 3 rainstorms in the rainy season can do to the land.
All of us Peace Corps trainees were invited to a birthday party for one of the trainees on one Sunday. What made it awesome was that, it was the 3rd party that I had to show up for that day and it was a somewhat costume party. Some of the trainees dresses as each other, and even one of the guys came in wearing a skirt. I also got a haircut recently (a sign that I have been in the country too long) that left me with more hair in the middle causing a weird type of mohawk. After waking up that morning, looking like that Chris Carraba dude from Dashboard Confessional and that dude from that Tad Hamilton movie, I decided to keep it in for the day. At home much later and still buzzed, I took some scissors and corrected that awful hair. Those guys weren’t superstars anyway.
With a shot that almost looks like it came out of a magazine. On my second trip to the beach at Tarrafal, the day made the trip so much better. It was hot, clear, and I was with all the other trainees to make it another perfect “beach corps” experience. The only thing that made the day better was telling stories and playing cards on the busride there and back.
I took this picture because, well, I think Ana and Steve were a little tipsy, and after playing cards for 5 hours straight, a drunk climb up a tree is just as good as a walk in the park. We were also on our way to a hopeful last movie night, but once we found out that our contact was probably still occupied with the city of Praia, we had to settle for Portuguese novella. Although before novella time, that same day I first learned how to use a Portuguese ATM. I dunno what idiot designed it, but when it asked to withdraw money, the default denominations are the equivalents of 50USD, 100USD, 150USD, and 200USD. I asked myself why I would ever want anything more than 40 at a time, but instead actually pushed the button for the 200USD equivalent. Costs of moving and my trip to Fogo next week were justification for the cause. If there was any time to jump me in the town of Sao Domingos, that would have been a perfect one.
If you were to replace Brent (Caucasian male with glasses) with me, you will end up with Team Chaco. Brief history: One day on a trip to the internet café in the capital city of Praia, the 4 of us soon realized that we all wore Chaco brand sandals. Soon, it was every weekend or so that “Team Chaco” made a trip to Praia for a heavy dose of high speed internet (there is a 5th Chaco sandal wearer in our PC group, but she wasn’t included on our Praia outings). Team Chaco almost become Team Loweprowe, (Loweprowe: famous maker of sporty small camera bags), but my Wal-Mart knockoff prevented that from happening. Also, 3 quarters of Team Chaco (all excluding white Rebecca) also form the FBA. Otherwise known as: the Full Blooded Asians.
Everybody who visits the island of Fogo and heads to the volcano will always remember the time they spent at the Caldeira, the crater of the island. It is a community that lives in somewhat blast distance, should the volcano were to erupt again, without water or electricity. The community somehow makes a living through coffee & wine production, and providing homestays for tourists. My friend Cliff and I stayed at a family’s house and after our nap we went right to wine sampling. A slight mistake considering we were both still tired from traveling and still dehydrated from our hike earlier in the day. Later we headed to dinner at this bungalow estate owned by this Frenchman. It only has about 8 rooms but its best features are the pretty courtyard and the dimly lit restaurant. We had some curried pork (which was delicious) and the big bottles of water we ordered quickly cured the headache from consuming wine too fast. A couple of moments later, several tour guides that Cliff knew come and join us in a conversation…half in Creole, half in English. And then it hit me again, I’m a little buzzed off of wine, eating fine curried pork, in a dim restaurant playing French tunes, having a conversation in Cre-English with a stranger, on a volcanic island (whose name, Fogo, means fire in Portuguese) in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. The wine and the curried pork carried me to sleep later that night, while a smiling Frenchman was the last thing I remember.
After hiking from the Caldeira back up to the campsite of Monte Velha, it was still halfway to Mosteiros, and the second half would consist of downhill twisting and turning paths in wet forest. I would still insist on using my Chaco sandals and I luckily did not have any major slippage. Just a little before we reached the town, we enjoyed this view from a gazebo overlooking the town. It was good to get a bird’s eye view of the area and rest up for the last 10 minutes of our hike. After I was taking this photo, Cliff thinks he sees a hiace (bush taxi) coming in our direction that is heading down to the town. He starts running towards the street while I’m packing my camera in a hurried rush. After hiking about 6 hours, I somehow find the energy to run and almost trip on a misplaced rock. After correcting myself, I hop into the hiace, enjoy a bumpy ride that almost had me falling out, and a minute later was walking on the streets that I was just admiring up the hill.
Upon returning home from Fogo, the power in my town went out for 4 straight days. Since the town water pump needs power to operate, we were out of water too. I think on the 2nd day of the outage it started to rain heavily. Considering I haven’t showered in 2 days, I stood outside in the rain in shorts and prayed for heavier rain. It came. It came hard and soon everybody left their homes and started showering. I ran inside and grabbed shampoo, soap and got right to work. Afterwards, our neighbor and my Portuguese roommate started playing some soccer in our courtyard area and we were having a blast. The rain not only cleansed our bodies, it also cleansed us of utter boredom.
