Todu dretu na Cabo Verde

After a brief Peace Corps orientation in the capital city of Praia, Scott and I along with about 20 other volunteer trainees, parted for the country side. We are now living with a host family in a village outside of Asomada on the island of Santiago, Cabo Verde.
We’ve been with our family for 6 days and between our broken Kriolu, Spanish spoken with a French accent, and gesturing, we’re able to communicate on a basic level. Elena is our “mamai,” and wants everyone at home not to worry because we’re being well taken care of. She’s right- we’ve been very well fed and have nice accommodations. Elena manages the work around the house along with the care of a dog, a cat, some pigs, some goats, and a whole bunch of chickens. There are always people dropping by the house to chat and neighborhood children come and go as they please. In fact, it took us a few days to figure out which ones live here.
Right now each day consist of a language lesson (3 of us with one instructor), technical training (English Ed. and Community Development), 5 meals, and a bath. Over the weekend we went to a wedding, a school year celebration, and a village festival. Between parties and classes, our days have been pretty packed. Each night a neighbor’s donkey has a little wheezing fit around the time we get in bed, and in the morning the roosters start crowing at about 5:00- otherwise, we’ve been getting good sleep.
The other volunteers training with us have been really pleasant and so have all the people in our village. They’re very friendly. As long as you are in earshot they’ll holler your name in order to wave and confirm that “Todu Bon” or “all is well.” The proper response is something like, “yeah, really good!” or “a whole lot of good!” These few phrases are what we spend the majority of our time saying.
In keeping with theme, I’ll end our first real blog entry on this note: Todu bon- xeu dretu.