One Is the Loneliest Number?

As a former napper during the Oprah show, I managed to pick up a few tidbits of advice for ensuring my emotional well-being. One such pearl of wisdom is that spending time alone is necessary for maintaining a healthy life balance. Slipping away for “me time” is necessary to “recharge my batteries.” Oprah, the national expert on mental health and make-overs, told me that being around other people is draining and something that I need to regularly take a break from.

This is not a point of view commonly held in Cape Verdean culture. People here spend their time in more constant and closer physical proximity to others than Americans are accustomed to. Folks in my community have grown up as part of large families in small dwellings and generally seem to feel most comfortable being surrounded by people. They rarely participate in solitary activities. They handle chores together, cook together, sleep together, bathe together, and congregate in common places to sit next to one another- sometimes without saying a word.

With so much emphasis on togetherness, my Cape Verdean neighbors were perplexed by my willingness to spend some time alone while Scott was on a trip last week. Knowing that my husband was out of town for several days, my neighbors seemed to take shifts making sure that I would not get lonely. They were genuinely concerned that I would feel sad and afraid- especially at night. Multiple families offered to loan me a child for the week so that I would have someone to sleep with. Since my friends here find that sleeping in a bed alone is a sort of punishment- perhaps something that they’ve never done once in their lives, they couldn’t fathom that I actually enjoy the luxury of a whole bed to myself.

What could have been a lonely (or healthy “alone time”) week, turned into a bit of a social marathon. I am grateful for all the meals, shared cups of coffee, and conversation. I am now also grateful to have my husband home, ironically, so that I can spend a little time to myself.

Scott’s trip to the capital was part of an exciting development. He was invited to participate in an “Inception Workshop” with United Nations representatives and members of the Cape Verdean Ministry of Environment in order to take steps in developing five new national parks. This is the project that Scott was initially assigned to, and he is hopeful that he will be able to assist with technical expertise. He’s also hoping that his work load will pick up.


A couple more high points since I last posted:

1. Our chicks have hatched! We currently have 7 tiny, squeaking balls of fluff running around the coop.

2. We borrowed a video projector and hosted a film night for our community on Saturday. There are no movie theaters on our island or the next, so it was quite a social event. Over 100 children and adults packed into a room roughly the size of my mother’s living room to watch a nature film. It was narrated in a foreign language, but no one cared since they were all too busy giving their own commentaries to hear the words of the announcer. It is refreshing to know that certain images are universally entertaining: mating lizards, jumping gazelles, a chameleon catching flies with its tongue, and a baby monkey clinging to its mother’s back. When the baby monkey struggled to lower itself from a tree branch, the group yelled, “Forza, amiguinho!” “Strength, buddy!” Watching a movie with a screaming crowd of people has never been such fun.