Santo Antão - First Impressions

Just as we were becoming comfortable with the people, food, language, and landscape of the island of Santiago, we made a move to Santo Antão where life is quite different. Although our training host family lived in a rural zone, we were very near Assomada, the 2nd largest city in the country, and were able to experience many of the conveniences of urban life as well as the hustle and bustle that comes with crowds.

My first impression of Santo Antão was, "Where are all the people?" There are no aggressively pleading van drivers. The streets are wide and relatively free of vendors carrying goods on their heads. Even the music is calmer. Rather than funana, which reminds me of accordion players on crack, a style called morna is more popular. It has a slower, more romantic sound.

When we arrived to the island it was raining heavily and we were unable to ascend to our town. In fact, we couldn´t even see our future home from Porto Novo (pronounced Port Nove) because the mountain top was completely shrouded in clouds. We stayed with another volunteer for several days waiting for the place to dry out.

A week ago Monday we rode up the cobblestone street that twists and turns as it climbs from sea level to 4300 feet. The desertous, balmy coast transformed to grassy ridges and ravines and then to cool pine forest near the pinnacle.

Our home is property of the Forest Service and is used to house workers that sometimes need to stay the night for assignments. It´s huge. It´s a little dark and damp, but Scott excitedly compared it to the Berenstein Bears´cave house before they moved into their tree. We´re enjoying the irony that we were assigned to one of 2 pine forests in the entire nation and quite possibly the only place where you need to sleep with a blanket. For all of you who prayed that we´d be somewhere green- thank you! It would be impossible to more fully grant that request.

Our biggest adjustments so far have been learning the new dialect of Kriol (imagine speaking pig latin in a foreign language) and adapting to life without a refrigerator. We have electricity for a few hours each day near lunch and dinner time. Since there is only one little store up there, we have to go into Porto Novo at least once a week to stock up on goods. I´m learning creative cooking with non-perishable foods, and we´re looking forward to the day that our neighbor clears his rabbits out of our chicken coop so that we can have fresh eggs and more frequent meat.

For the next 2 months our work assignment is simply to get to know the community. We´ve been enjoying the time to settle in.

Bad news for those of you who were fans of Scott´s mustache; it was a one day deal for our swearing in. Although the stache is all the rave in Cape Verde, Scott couldn´t handle me laughing at his face every time he turned to speak to me.

PS- Thanks for your comments and interest in how we´re doing. I look forward to responding personally when we get an internet routine down.