So I’ve kept you waiting, yet again. I know, I know and I apologize. As the rain is falling down here in Kedougou and I can’t get back to my site quite yet. I’ll give you all an update.
Where did we leave off again? Ah yes, Matt had spent his two weeks here with me and then continued on back to the states. That left Casey and I to make some plans for what we would do with the remaining two weeks.
First words I noted in my journal on January 30th were “Sad day. Matt is gone.” Casey and I were bumming that he couldn’t stay longer but we had a much needed day off sitting around our Dakar regional house. Originally, I had planned to take Casey back down to my site for the extra two weeks and possibly do a small nutrition project with him. Alas, he was exhausted – as was I – and I don’t think either of us could handle doing all of that travel across the country again.
As Casey and I were walking around downtown Dakar some guided force seemed to push us into the Senegal Airlines office and within 30 minutes we walked out with tickets to spend the next week in Cape Verde! It all happened so fast and suddenly we would be leaving in two days.
Oh, you haven’t heard of Cape Verde? I’m sorry… it’s only the hypothetical love child of New Zealand and Hawaii (both of which I haven’t visited) that exists as the westernmost part of Africa in the Atlantic ocean.
Like, if you were to say, “I’d like to retrace Peter Jackson’s vision of the Hobbits’ trip through Middle-earth and into Mordor but with a much more tropical atmosphere.”
THIS IS WHERE YOU GO TO DO THAT!
So anywho, we got super excited and I turned in a last minute vacation request form with the Peace Corps. Called some friends of mine who have already visited the islands, gathered together some travel info from said friends and then laid out a budget. All of our materials said that everything was super affordable (like a double room in a hotel for around $30). We were all set to go so we packed our bags and headed to the airport on Saturday morning.
Upon arriving at the airport and bringing out our tickets at the check in counter… our first problem arose. This was a bad omen, only to be discovered later – meaning that very evening.
Due to our oversight and a misunderstanding at the Airlines office when purchasing the tickets. Our flight wasn’t supposed to leave until the following Saturday. HOW DID WE MISS THAT? I mean, Casey is our resident space cadet and I wish I could share the blame but this was totally my fault. I mean, the transaction was in French and I handled everything. On Thursday morning when the tickets were purchased I clearly stated that we would be leaving that Saturday. Whatever. A flight change fee later after a bit of arguing with the office at the airport saw that our bags were on the flight and we were waiting to board.
Landing in Cape Verde was surreal. I no longer felt that I was in “Africa” as I have come to know it through Senegal, but I wasn’t in the states or Europe either. This land was magical and, as I soon found out, confusing.
For instance, 500 West African francs in Senegal is the equivalent of $1.
In Cape Verde, 500 Escudos is the equivalent of $5.
I, on the other hand, look at both of those and just see this:
(It doesn’t help that the bills are relatively the same size as the monopoly stuff either, so I can’t be blamed too badly for that).
Seeing that in Senegal, 500 cfa is only a dollar, that’s not as big of deal, but then when you get to Cape Verde, IT CAN BECOME A BIG DEAL REALLY QUICKLY. Remember, I don’t speak any of the languages here; therefore, I don’t know how to barter. Heck, I don’t even know if they have a bartering culture.
We get our car into the capital city of Praia and proceed to seek out any open hotels or hostels. This turned out to be a bit more complicated than expected, after circling around the city center in search for those $30 hotel rooms we heard about, we found most of the institutions to be closed and the ones we did find were around $70 a night.
Did I mention we wound up there the week before Carnival/Mardi Gras and that Cape Verde apparently hosts the biggest one outside of Brazil? Oy vay.
In our search we happened upon some Austrian gauged and tattooed punk rockers who couldn’t help reminding me of my brother so I got along real splendidly with them. We actually found a large apartment for rent and talked the guy down to about $15 a night per person as there were 6 of us in the group now. SCORE.
We got the keys set our stuff down and went out to get some dinner as we hadn’t eaten much all day: it was about 9 or 10 at night.
The waitress gave us some Portuguese Creole lessons while we were eating:
So Casey and I left from dinner and went in search of a bank. To our surprise, the city was empty. We couldn’t find any night life or bars or anything to go do. I had some friends there around the same time who did not have this problem and I still can’t figure out what we were doing wrong. We were disappointed, but found an ATM to get some money out for the next few days and then proceeded to walk back to the apartment at 11:30 or so.
Now for the good stuff, upon our arrival to the street where our apartment was and in front of the restaurant where we had dinner. Two guys came out from behind the restaurant and decided that OUR crisp bills from the ATM were going to be THEIR crisp bills… along with my camera with all of our photos of the prior two weeks, my fricken’ moleskin notebook with so many brilliant ideas in it that I can never share with the world now, my senegalese phone with all my contacts, and the entirety of my wallet (Senegalese bank cards, American bank cards, ID, and keys to the apartment we were renting).
I mean we could have fought them I guess but hey, the guy had a steak knife and kept poking me with it… if your gonna stab me just stab me already it’s a better story than getting aggressively poked by a steak knife.
Casey somehow got his wallet taken, they guy mugging him had no knife, politely took just his wallet, extracted the crisp bills, and offered him back the wallet. WTF MAN!?
We were quite thankful for that (as Casey still had bank cards to get us through the trip) and weran to the restaurant when the guys left, they called the police and then got to go to the police station for two hours waiting and then attempted to explain this mugging to staff that spoke neither English nor French. It was quite dramatic and there was a lot of picture drawing to explain myself (a skill I have developed being in my village).
Finally, we arrive back at our apartment having had to yell at a police officer to drive us back there rather THAN WALKING THE SAME STREETS AGAIN AT 2 IN THE MORNING!
They got the picture when I whipped out the sass. We yelled up to the Austrians hanging out on the balcony and then proceeded to have one of the worst nights of sleep of my entire life.
THAT’S THE END OF DAY 1 IN CAPE VERDE EVERYONE!
Upon waking up we packed our things up and got out of that apartment. We headed over to the $70/night hotel that felt a bit more safe and explored the city of Praia by foot. The city is incredible, it looks more like something in South America left over from Portuguese colonialism and I soon discovered that the islands were uninhabited before the Portuguese came and became a major port of the slave trade. The nationals now are beautiful golden haired golden skinned and golden eyed descendants of the Portuguese and West Africans. There are more Cape Verdeans living outside of the islands than there are in them and there’s a high concentration in the Boston area. This means, whenever you get to speak English with someone, it comes with a Boston accent and it’s awesome.
I couldn’t believe that our Peace Corps program had only graduated there less than 5 months prior to our trip. The level of development far exceeded Senegal and the public infrastructure was incredible.
That being said we bought our tickets to explore at least one other island and got ferry tickets to the island of Fogo.
Fogo is a just to the west of Santiago, where the capital is located, and the ferry ride is a nauseating up and down of four hours time where even the nationals get sick. Everyone gets some dramamine and a plastic baggy. Many people use multiple baggies. After that torture – with your only comforts being the air conditioning and loop of Beyoncé music videos on the 3 flat screens in front – you get the pleasure of landing on the island pictured below. We stayed our night on the shores and took the next two nights to stay in the volcano’s crater and climb to the top. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!
Getting up to the summit is a bit of a struggle and it’s more of a hike than a climb, but did you see?
“IT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE LABYRINTH OF RAZOR SHARP ROCKS!”
And, going with the metaphor, I guess it is our volcanic equivalent to Mordor… but things ended better for us than they did for Gollum.
After exploring the top, you literally run down the side of it on volcanic rock which gets in everything you’re wearing and not much fun to faceplant in.
We spent but a few days on the island of Fogo. It was fantastic and exhausting as we were walking around and hiking all day every day. We decided to get the ferry back to Santiago and instead of staying in Praia we booked it out of there and made our way to the north side of the island to stay in a little beach town called Tarrafal.
We stayed three nights in this peaceful beach town, explored the city center but it was really just some time to relax and recuperate. Our beach bungalow was fairly cheap but, at this point, food and lodging had been way more expensive than expected so we decided to lay low there until we made our way back to Praia for our flight back to Senegal. Bring on all the seafood you have, we said. Actually, I said that way more than Casey did.
When we got back to Senegal, Casey and I had one last day together which was really just spent eating delicious seafood in Dakar and packing up all of his things before going to his late night flight out of the airport.
Dropping him off was hard and I needed Matt and Casey’s visit more than ever. It was a wonderful taste of home and such an incredible display of friendship.
When talking to my dad, he said that he never thought these guys would get the money together and drop it all on a visit to Africa. I mean, it’s a lot of money to spend. Upon hearing that they had the tickets and they were in fact coming, dad said, “You really should keep these guys around.”
Don’t worry dad, I plan on it.
A man without a country 