Sorry, I Have Make an Official

Shortlists

2011-08-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Three books that I think all Peace Corps Volunteers should read before leaving the U.S.:

1. Island by Aldous Huxley
2. The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick
3. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

And three songs from the sixties that capture the zeitgeist of the era of the Peace Corps' creation:

1. "Volunteers" by The Jefferson Airplane
2. "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" - Melanie
3. "With God on Our Side" - Bob Dylan

Her Sweet Poison

2011-08-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Here's how the songwriting process works (in a nutshell).

First, something awful happens. More often than not you get your heart ripped out and devoured whole by some boy or girl you thought you were in love with. After a few days of booze, junk food, illicit drugs, or otherwise just catatonic melancholy you wake up a bit. Then you come to that guitar or piano or maybe bagpipes that you've been tooling around with. "What have you done for me lately?" you ask the seemingly inanimate object. "I'm in real pain here."

"Play me goddamn it, you fool," it says.

You pick it up or sit down at it or strap it on and start fiddling on the thing and hey, wait a second, this feels good. Strum, plink, honk. And wait again, this isn't the Beatles or the Stones. This is you, pouring your busted little soul into some clever little chord progression that somehow got beamed down into your brain from the gods of young heartbreak. You start to sing a little melody over it. Doobie doobie doo. It locks into your brain and you couldn't forget it even if you tried. (Or if somehow you ever actually mastered the art of musical notation you can write it down, but let's say this is unnecessary; the most distinct songwriters you can think of usually never did.) If you give it a week or so those other bits will come - the verses (if you didn't start with them already), and, if it's truly meant to be, oh baby here we go a nice little bridge after the second chorus to tie everything up in a nice pretty package that would make your uncle Elvis Costello proud.

OK, so it's not really that easy. That very first song will probably suck balls so you best keep it to yourself; it'll take years of wading through your own stinky cheese to get to something even remotely suitable for the masses. But the fact is, songwriting is pure, short-form craftsmanship. The perfect turnings of phrase combined with a backdrop of colored chords can achieve more in 3:30 than most books can in 50 pages. Or so says I. But what's the use of writing about music anyway?

I can't claim to know what made Amy Winehouse the way she was or the singer-songwriter she was. I can only guess as to how she was probably a natural wild child, a born rebel, and how as such no schoolhouse walls or social mores could ever have kept her roped in. Maybe she felt real pain from the beginning. Maybe someone hurt her deeply early on or later or both. Maybe her natural recklessness caused the vast bulk of her complexity. Which maybe in turn produced such personal turmoil that thus begat Back to Black, her masterpiece. Regardless, that voice, those goddamn smoky, soulful, slap-you-in-the-face pipes, singing all those fantastic songs that somehow melded the Great American Songbook, jazz, Brit pop, classic R&B, and even ska and reggae into something wholly contemporary and meaningful. Something that could get away with such deliciously droll lines as "What kind of fuckery is this?" That one.

There are those who have called (or are still calling) her a spoiled brat or a pig or a whore or a junkie or any number of awful things that she may or may not have been. But no matter what the haters say, Amy Winehouse was vindicated through song. And her song will live on.

Unfortunately for her and all of us who loved her music, however, it just wasn't enough to keep the woman herself with us here for very long.

RIP, Amy Jade Winehouse, 1983-2011

Original artwork by Joanna Wallace

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 3a): The Wedding

2011-04-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

November 6, 2010
Without too much effort my New York roommate John found a subletter to take my room for the entire month of November. Being the only official lessee in the same attractive Hell's Kitchen triplex for over five years, he has mastered the art of filling any vacant rooms via newyork.craigslist.org. The main perk is that he can claim any rent he deems reasonable on these rooms, leading his own rent to be significantly subsidized. After all, in a place like Midtown Manhattan, the cost of living is whatever people are willing to pay.

I had so many social and family obligations in Chicago that month that it made much more sense to just stay there instead of flying back and forth. And it's not really like I had a real job to worry about. My Peace Corps readjustment money was still going fairly strong and I would avoid rent entirely by staying with my sister, in Wicker Park.

The first of the events was the wedding of an old friend to a young lady we went to grade school with. The funny thing was, on both sides I had a fairly deep connection beyond just having grown up in the same town. The groom's mother and her siblings - also 100% Italian-American - all grew up with my mother on the Northwest Side of Chicago from the 60s to the 80s. The girls all went to Mother Guerin (now co-ed, I'm told) and the boys - my uncle and the groom's uncle - both went to Holy Cross. They played football together. In fact, the two pairs of uncles and aunts were all good friends. Our grandparents were fond acquaintances. My mother was a cheerleader with another of the aunts. And yet another aunt is a surgical nurse that, through the Chicago medical community, knows my father as well as my brother, the med student. Just one of those small world things. And as for the bride, her paternal uncle is married to a woman who is the sister of my dad's brother's wife, my aunt. Got it? So I have cousins who are cousins to her cousins. Confusing? A stretch? Sure, but it's always nice to know you have connections, even if they are a bit circuitous.

The wedding was a traditional Chicago Irish-Catholic affair. The ceremony was at Old Saint Patrick's Church, in West Town/Streeterville, just north and a little west of the Loop. My friends Ben, John, and I all showed up about ten minutes late so we snuck into the back pew, relatively unnoticed. I was excited to see some old faces after so many years. I had recently made a slew of customized pins with an old typewriter and a bit of crass humor, so I relived my Catholic church-going days by silently placing one that said "Do me." on my friend's leg. There's nothing like stifling laughter during mass when you're 27.

The reception was held at the exact same place as my brother's, Galleria Marchetti, though his patently religion-free ceremony was held there as well. Which reminds me of the final words of my maternal grandmother as the door on her ride home to Glen Ellyn was being closed: "I don't think that was a Catholic mass!"

All in all, it was a great time. The food and drink were superb. We danced like maniacs. Everyone was in great spirits and I was reminded that I do indeed like where I come from. Another friend's future father-in-law asked me several very thoughtful questions about my Peace Corps experience. After I told him about it, he said, "We're all so proud of you young people."

But the best, most memorable moment of the night didn't happen until the wee hours of the morning. As things wound down for most of the wedding guests, I found myself accompanied by not only Ben and John, but three other old classmates whom I hadn't seen in a while. All three are known for their hard-partying and wild behavior, which I have joined in on more than a few times over the years. The six of us together was essentially about the most potent group of mischief-makers that you could hope to assemble out of my graduating class.

Long story short, here's what happened (pretty much as I recalled it to a group of friends only three days later): As the bars all closed we were forced to take refuge from the cold November night at my sister's apartment. She, however, was in the suburbs that weekend, babysitting. Only one of her two roommates was at home, ostensibly asleep as all six of us stumbled in at around 5:30 am. One of the members of our group - I'll call him Steve - wanted to prove to my sister that he would make a good dogwalker to her little mutt, Birdie. Apparently he was so bored during his sabbatical from the world of finance that doing this regularly seemed like a good temporary career move. So I, hoping to also take care of my duties as caretaker in my sister's stead, of course agreed.

Walking down North Avenue, Steve was soon stopped by two Amazonian figures of dubious gender. "Hey, baby! Wanna date?" asked one of them. Steve declined, but as he attempted to move on, they stopped him and kept him from passing. He tried to break free, but to no avail; these were particularly muscular transexual prostitutes. "Give us your wallet or your doggy gets tased!" One of them, on cue, produced a police taser, its current cracking in the dawn light. Steve looked on in terror. "Don't hurt the dog!" he retorted, honorably stepping in front of the small, clueless animal. Sensing danger, however, Birdie got out of her harness (recall that it had been put on by a very drunk man at a very obscene hour) and ran away down the street. As Steve turned to run after her, in his full groomsman's regalia, he was maced. At this point his wallet was also stolen, although there's a chance they had already swiped it when they clotheslined him moments before. Despite his maiming, Steve chased after Birdie and managed to get her back into her harness. With the help of a friendly cabbie who had witnessed the scene, he then reported the crime to the police.

I had been wondering what was taking him so long so I looked out the window to see the flashing blue lights of a squad car. I ran down to the street to find Birdie safe and Steve attempting to explain the situation to the bemused officers.

As of yet there have been no arrests made in connection with the incident. Steve made a full recovery from the assault after a few days and will soon be attending business school. Birdie remains unfazed by most things except food, petting, and fighting the neighbor's dog. My sister eventually forgave me.

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 2)

2011-04-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

So what about the closure on my two years in the Peace Corps? I know MF is still wondering. I'll just get down to it.

Basically, I feel like it's not over yet. It's a hard order to fill, summing it all up, I'm finding.

For one, I might be going back to Cape Verde pretty soon for a job. So, in a way, I can't really talk about "closure" because the country I served in still plays a role in my life. And if I keep going with graduate study of Portuguese (thinking seriously about it), it will likely be a place that I can think of as a second home for many years to come. I think one mistake a person could make in this kind of situation is to think of it as a discrete event just because of the semi-official status involved. A lot of times people that I knew in Cape Verde didn't even know what the Peace Corps was, much less that I was a part of it. I was just Rob(erto), or to those who didn't know me, kel branku la. I think that it's a lot easier and natural for Volunteers who serve in really remote, particularly non-Western countries or regions to think of their service as a truly discrete event, completely separate from their lives before and after. But Praia is a fairly modern city and I was constantly in contact with the outside world. Which had its pros and cons, I should add.

Anyway, what more can I say really? I feel like I'm letting any interested parties down. I did have a lot of interesting experiences there. I learned how to speak a couple new languages. I helped some students get better at speaking and teaching English. I made a lot of friends, from not only Cape Verde, but also Luxembourg, Brazil, Portugal, France, and, why not, the States. If you want to see the official document on what I did and achieved, feel free to check out my Description of Service.

I guess what people want to hear about is a wild African adventure, maybe with some spear-wielding tribesmen and a crazy old British guy with one of those safari hats and a big mustache. I would've loved to see some zebras and lions myself. Cape Verde is its own little island world though, with much more in common with the Caribbean than the archetypal "Africa" of places like Kenya or Botswana. So I guess that's one thing I learned: The world is big. And it changes quickly from place to place. At times I felt like no one noticed anything particularly foreign about me as I walked around Praia...as if I was just another Portuguese tourist or businessman. And since I mostly worked in an office, I can't say that anything that exciting happened on most days. Other days I felt so out of place that I should just hide in my apartment and not come out. Some days I loved the quiet. Other times I couldn't believe how loud and inconsiderate my neighbors were. Some days I loved being a part of the ruckus downstairs at the bar where the same neighbors hung out bullshitting all the time.

There are a lot of moments. One time I met a monkey and he bit me, but only because I tried to get him to wear my ugly orange shirt. One time I kissed an island lass. One time I climbed to the top of Santiago Island's highest peak and crowed like a mad banshee after a nine hour hike in the baking sun. One time I sang the de facto national song, "Sodadi", along with a local singer in front of a hotel restaurant crowd. And then they let me play a few of my own. One time I had a lovely family home in the mountains, full of smiling kids. One time I had a second mother, whose sweet smile and kind nature were among the most genuine things I've ever known. One time I made it half-way up a volcano before having to run down, screaming in joy but mindful of the downpour now preventing our ascent. One time I met Charles Darwin's great great grandchildren and showed them around. One time I wrote an article about it in Portuguese and had it published. One time I brought my dad the doc and my brother the med student to the city hospital and when I came back they had done surgery on a girl. One time I saw a passarinho bird - the grey-hooded kingfisher you see above - as I walked past the shimmering ocean and I knew it was going to be a good day.

One time I had an adventure. But it won't be the last.

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 1)

2011-04-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

My friend MF visited me and my roommate John in New York City this past January. We got to talking about this blog and how, as one of its many millions of loyal readers, he felt that I hadn't yet captured my final thoughts on my Peace Corps experience. Nor how the transition back to the U.S. was going. He was looking for some closure, he said, and I agreed. Only problem was, I don't think that I was ready to write about these things yet. Until maybe now. Before I do that, though, allow me to catch you up on my last know whereabouts.

So it's April already and the flowers and life in general are starting to slowly peek their heads out from a long winter's coma in Chicago. I've been back here in my native city for about a month now, bouncing between my brother's and sister's apartments in the Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park neighborhoods, respectively. I kept my return from New York fairly secret and really only told my closer friends, the ones who I really wanted to see, that I was back. So I guess now that cat's out of the bag. Although I'm not sure how many people actually read this thing anymore. As opposed to the last few times I've passed through this city while living in either Praia or New York, this time felt more like a quiet, almost silent homecoming, much less like a boisterous celebration of my adventures abroad.

Coming back here was filled with mixed feelings. When I left Cape Verde, I was drunk with wishful thinking. I had spent so many long days and nights in silent contemplation and feverish creative output that I was like a horse out of the gate, furious in my ambitions forward. By moving straight to New York City, I hoped to achieve a few things.

First, get the girl. I had been pining for the same one for a long time, ever since college. The proverbial dream girl. The one with the magic smile and the cool taste in music and the eyes like turquoise atom bombs. The college DJ's greatest fantasy. The one that everyone's been writing songs about. She had already traveled the globe and was friends with what seemed like our entire campus by sophomore year. She was the most outgoing, worldly, life-affirming person I had ever met. Naturally, and as I had met her when I was an impressionable nineteen-year-old, I was smitten. She was the one who I thought would validate me. The one whose approval I sought and whose attention I wanted more than anything else in the world. The one who - because I thought it would prove I was worthy - made me take the plunge and join the Peace Corps. I think it was partially all the songs and novels and shows and movies that I had consumed over the years that had warped my mind into romantic mush. But whatever. I had fallen in love and there's no use justifying or quantifying it. I just had to go through it in my own weird way. My only apologies are to every single friend or family member who's ever had to listen to me carp about this over the years. You should've slapped me.

But as I reconnected with her in New York, it was clear that she still wasn't into it. Totally get why, too: I was like a fawning little puppy dog around her. Who would want to date that? I don't know, maybe I was out of my league but it was also annoying because I would revert back to being nineteen every time I saw her, as if every cool thing about me that had emerged in years since was wiped clean from my persona. I put way too much stock in getting her to see the real me, so much so that I failed miserably at that very goal. But I finally got the picture and even I know when to stop beating a dead horse. It was okay. I was okay. We're still friends. She really is a great person. But now what?

Snapping back to my senses, I sucked it up and moved on. I couldn't give anyone (who?) the satisfaction by leaving the Big Apple just because some girl I knew from college wasn't interested in dating me. So I focused on the next task: Start pre-production on the screenplay I wrote while in Cape Verde. Well, long story short, I accomplished a good amount. In Brooklyn, in late October, I held a table reading of the script using friends and family as stand-in actors. It went well enough, more importantly leading me to make some big changes in the dialogue and plot flow. Later, in December, my partner, a friend of a friend who has some directing experience, hooked us up with a line producer. She went through our newly re-drafted and re-formatted script with a fine tooth comb and, for a fee (thanks again, Mom and Dad), produced a fully functional working budget for our film. That said, if anyone has around $4.5 million just lying around, let me know. You can be the proud executive producer of, what I feel, is indie flick gold. The name of the movie, by the way, is My Priscilla, and if you're a fan of the Coen Brothers, Polish or Korean people, Chicago, the Cold War era, or Elvis Presley, I think you'd enjoy it. It's a fun story with a lot of heart.

So the movie didn't get made. But it certainly still could be. I'm proud to say that I took what was once just a half-baked story outline, gathering dust in the mind of my gloriously ADD uncle, and turned it into an actual workable script. And it only took me three years to do it! I'm a writer, though, not a filmmaker. I feel like my work is pretty much done. I just need to sell the thing now. Any takers?

I should mention that in the meantime, I was working as both a temp and a moving man's assistant. Neither paid very well nor was there ever enough work for me to dream of supporting myself and paying $1,000 a month to live in Hell's Kitchen, on Manhattan's west side. The approximately $6,000 I received from the Peace Corps as readjustment allowance was gone by November. But by that point I had found a subletter for my room and headed back to Chicago for the entire month. All in a row I had a wedding, my parents' divorce, a christening, Thanksgiving, a bachelor party, and other such events where it seemed like either a violent brawl or another round of drinks was about to flare up at any moment.

If you like what you're reading stay tuned. To be continued.

On Whiteness

2011-04-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

I once read in a college textbook that, in America, being "white" simply means you are someone who is "not non-white." What? I thought. So this definition is based wholly on what it is not? Kind of a mind-bender. But then I thought about it some more in terms of my own experience as an American.

I am, as far as I know, considered white. I usually check the "Do not wish to disclose" box on forms asking me what I am. But I like to think of myself as a realist. And since all of my ancestors came from Europe, the motherland of whiteness, I guess I have to concede that, yes, I'm white.

I am from the suburbs. This is not necessarily a direct corollary of my whiteness, but there certainly seems to be a general preference among many Caucasians to dwell in such places - near a city, but not actually in it. I was born in downtown Chicago, Illinois. Soon later my family lived in Wilmington, Delaware, where my father was a surgical fellow at the DuPont Institute. About a year after that, we moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where my younger sister was born and my father had his first position as an attending physician. Just before my fifth birthday, we relocated again to Glenview, Illinois, just north of Chicago. Glenview is fairly affluent, but not the most affluent of the northern suburbs. And, since it does not abut Lake Michigan, it is technically not part of what's known as the North Shore, bastion of rich whiteness in the state of Illinois. But it's certainly a place where you can find some very nice houses and a top-notch public school district. Ironically, North Shore Country Club is located in Glenview too, an institution so steeped in "tradition" that even Mr. Michael Jordan himself could never even dream of becoming a member. Although he did play golf there as a guest, I'm told.

As my father quickly rose in his status as a well-respected and sought-after pediatric surgeon in Chicago we pretty much fit right in there. At least on the surface. I went to Catholic grade and high school with the children of Chicago's titans of industry. My high school was one of only two in the state to offer rowing as a club sport. The point is, I had a relatively very privileged upbringing. I could try to make excuses about other factors that might exempt me from the more negative connotations of "the suburbs", but I'm not going to do that. I grew up in the suburbs. It is what it is.

When I think about how white I am or am not, I always think about how I also have a sense of ethnicity, and how many white people that I know don't think about themselves in those terms. My mother is 100% ethnic Italian. And although neither she nor her parents speak the language, celebrate more than a few stalwart customs and holidays, nor really identify as anything other than "American", I still feel like I'm slightly less "white" than, say...See, I can't even think of someone who is so Anglo and lily-white that there's no doubt about their whiteness. And herein lies the affirmation of that at-first baffling definition of whiteness mentioned above. Is being white really just the condition of being unable to be classified as anything but white? What kind of identity is a non-identity?

During college I also once read in a book that once they first started to flood the U.S. in the mid-19th century, Italian immigrants were in fact not considered white, but their own variety of "Latin". As more and more Italians started to assimilate themselves in the major cities, filling vast economic niches and branching out into the nicer neighborhoods and suburbs along with the Jews, Irish, Germans, Slavs, and various other peoples of European origin, it seems that the status quo began to accept them as simply "white". So much so that when I brought this up to my mother, she seemed perplexed and said, "We're white."

Part of me wants to cling onto this badge of ethnicity, as if it relieves me from any possible claims of accessory to injustice. As if it makes me this plucky, slightly swarthy, brown-eyed man of the people. Someone who could just as well be Brazilian or Middle Eastern. I don't think of myself as close-minded when it comes to these things. But maybe that's a luxury in itself? When I think about it, I find that many Italian-Americans (especially those who self-identify as only Italian-American) are among some of the most racist people that I know. Maybe the fear is still there that we'll somehow be re-categorized with the non-whites and lose our place at the table of plenty that is Rich America? That we better be careful and not mingle with the wrong crowds? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing).

But now, it seems, the tables are turning, at least in terms of sheer number. Today I read this article in The Economist about the results of the latest U.S. census. That data clearly show that in the last ten years, the growth rate of "Whites" has barely broken into positive figures. Among those currently under 18 years old (aka "white kids"), the rate has dropped 10%. And everyone else? Blacks: 11% growth among all age groups. Hispanics and Asians, both around a whopping 43%. That brings the total number of minorities in the United States to 111.9 million, quickly trailing the Whites' 196.8 million. That corresponds to a 36/64 split, respectively.

I have to be brutally honest here: At first, my reaction to these figures was one of slight anxiety. Lest you think I'm a racist, please allow me to explain.

I believe that each of us, as an individual, cares about other people in this order:

1. Self;
2. Significant other/children;
3. Immediate family (parents, siblings);
4. Close friends (possibly tied with immediate family);
5. Extended family;
6. Work peers, acquaintances, friends of friends, etc.
7. Strangers

I don't think too many people would dispute me on this. It's almost painfully obvious. But with that hierarchy in order, it stands to reason that if people who I am not related to and don't know socially have something that I want, regardless of their background, their likelihood of helping me get it is pretty much going to be based on one thing and one thing alone: money. That's how a market functions. Since most of the people I know are white and a subset of those white people have also been either directly or indirectly responsible for the livelihood that I try to remain perpetually grateful for, you can forgive me for having an instinctive pang at the prospect of a changing of the guard. But of course I'm not so myopic as to actually go on living my life based on knee-jerk white anxiety for longer than a few seconds...

Now, to get things back on track and to complete this risky line of thought, extreme social exclusion is something that minorities have been dealing with since before this country was a country. The Native Americans felt it first, quickly and brutally. Let's face it: An entire race of people was literally decimated; that is, their numbers where reduced to literally less than a tenth of their original population. As for Blacks, slavery - next to outright genocide the most horribly inhumane practice imaginable - was a backbone of our economy for hundreds of years. As for other, more recent groups, they have been spared the unspeakable horrors inflicted by the majority White population in earlier years, but they certainly have not been given anything easy, either.

Lifestyle clearly plays a large role in the changing face of America and this hits pretty close to home. (Many) white people don't have that many babies anymore, and when they do, the couple is usually over 25. Statistically, this is simply not the case among minorities. I will avoid any value judgments of these kinds of trends (who am I to pass judgment?). But when you break down the fact that, on average, whites simply make much more money than members of any minority group, the latter is becoming - again, on average - younger, more in number, and not necessarily any better off financially. So where does that leave white people? As the Village Voice so adeptly explains in this article from September of last year, they are still rich, but as a group are getting older, more bitter, paranoid, and, apparently, clearly "losing their minds."

My anxiety about a world wherein I wouldn't have as much precious clout as I currently cling to subsided when I thought about a few things. First of all, I thought about how important race really is. Actually, first I thought about the old Richard Pryor bit: "There's a shortage of white people. What happened? Y'all stop f***in'?" And then I laughed and told myself to relax. But then I thought about what race means and how it doesn't need to be considered as important in the grand scheme of things, even though, of course, it is important. And as someone who likes to think of himself as a realist but also an idealist, I tend to believe that people are people and good things happen to them for being good at something useful and kind to others. Sure it's simplistic, but why not hope for the best?

Secondly, things change all the time and have so over the entire course of human history. Read enough books on shifts in politics, language, and culture and I think anyone will come to the same conclusion: Things simply can't stay the same and those who can adapt, survive. (Or else they go down in a fury of angry confusion, as many in the aforementioned article are currently doing. But who wants to die angry?)

Thirdly, I know a few and know of many more in the whiter circles of this country who have a lot of trouble with the idea of "minorities" and what should be done about such people. But really, this idea of "minority" is a construct that is based on, among other fairly arbitrary things, skin color. And unless you really are a racist, you know that the presence or absence of pigment is not a corollary of personal merit. And, okay, so Spanish is becoming more prevalent. Deal with it.

In sum, I have to believe that there's some truth to what this nation was founded upon, namely, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We've come a long way, but clearly there are some serious discrepancies in access to education, housing, healthcare, jobs, and overall quality of life. Maybe it's for the best that this current economic downturn is shaking things up a bit, making us really think about what it means to be of value in society. I think something good can certainly come from that kind of reassessment. I just hope that the old, angry white people of the world don't ruin it all for the rest of us.

Book Idea/Proposal: "Adventures in the Modern Lusosphere"

2011-03-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I submitted this idea to the website Kickstarter.com. It was rejected due to not being a "right fit" for that particular organization, but I still think it's a viable project. So here it is. Feel free to get in touch if you're interested in being a part of it somehow.

Funding Goal

$20,000+ (mainly travel costs)

Project Description

My goal is to write a travel narrative exploring the "Lusosphere" - the 8 nations and several territories spanning the globe where the Portuguese language is spoken. Considering Brazil in particular, the Lusophone world is a burgeoning bloc in the world economy. From Brazil to East Timor and all stops in between, the Lusosphere is culturally and ethnically diverse yet bound by a common official language and a maritime history dating back to the 15th century.

I plan on bringing to the rest of the world a better understanding of these countries' histories, peoples, economies, and futures by traveling extensively in them and then producing a well-researched and accessible work. There is currently nothing like this on the market, but I plan to change that. Obrigado!

Links

Here is an excerpt from the draft on the chapter regarding Cape Verde: http://ihavemakeanofficial.blogspot.com/2009/10/in-footsteps-of-darwin-encounter-with.html

And here is some information about the Lusosphere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusosphere

Found Item: Best. Resume. EVER.

2011-03-02T19:25:00.000-08:00

So long, NYC! It's been a pretty fun few months, but I best be moving on. Although...it's tempting to think that if I hold out just a little longer I could become even remotely as sweet as this guy (click on the image to zoom in)...

Kringlish

2010-12-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a perfect example of why I was brought in to Cape Verde as a celebrated English professor:

Cape Verdean person writing on Facebook: "you is that they do well,i had a lot to cape verde in order to drink a few glasses with you,and evening to go to dance steps and draw some new..i loty Ny you and more......"

And back in America? I am a celebrated bar-back!

As you can guess, demand for my teaching and translating services as a native English-speaker was fairly high in a developing non-English-speaking country. (I recommend that anyone feeling the pains of our current turd of an economy go abroad to teach English. There's no lack of jobs there, that's for sure.)

I honestly don't mean this to just make fun of someone's incredibly crappy English. If I had written the equivalent in Portuguese or any other language I would honestly hope that a native speaker would call me out on it. Maybe there's no point to me having posted this other than my fascination with the way the whole world has taken at least some ownership of the English language without necessarily having learned it properly.

I replied to the above post (which was itself a reply to another Cape Verdean friend's much more lucid message) as follows: "Folks, I don't mean to spoil the fun, but there are some major problems going on with your English here."

And here's what a fourth-party observer replied: "F**** YOU".

You'll note that the "F****" has four stars in it, perhaps implying emphasis in the form of a second "K". Or maybe a second "F", as if the word were being spoken in slow-motion.

Again, not trying to be mean or insensitive. But in general I think that non-native speakers of English need to respect English as a Foreign Language more. Just because it's a humongous whore-monster of a globalized phenomenon doesn't mean you have to use it like one. I know it's really hard to learn a foreign language, and that English is totally wacko bonkers in many ways, but that's no excuse to be lazy. Students of English need to recognize that this language also has its social context in places like the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, etc. and if you've never been to those places, you might be out of your element contextually and culturally. Just like I was at first in Cape Verde.

Conversely, a vast majority of Americans need to stop being so horribly bad at every single other language on Earth.

This kind of thing is inspiring me to go into the field of linguistics; the thing is, people know why they should study language (work, travel, romance, etc.), but they don't know how to study it. Linguistics is the science of language. It can help us understand what is going on in a given language as well as on a universal level. I am no linguistic genius, but having studied linguistics as a subject gave me a lot of tools to be a much better learner.

That was my rant for the day. I hope you liked it. Please don't be offended if you are Cape Verdean and reading this. It was just one example but could've been from any number of countries where English is not prevalent. My Creole and Portuguese have both been thoroughly mocked (much less sensitively as I have done here) as I was learning them. I never took it personally and instead used those moments as stepping-stones to improvement. I will now shut up.

Reading List

2010-12-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

This is a list of all the books that I read during my Peace Corps service in Cape Verde. That is, from July 2008 to September 2010. Also included below it are books that I read considerable portions of. Most in that category were not really meant to be read in one sitting anyway, if you ask me, but are all definitely worth checking out.

In retrospect, I'll just say that I had a lot of distraction-free time on my hands during those 26 months. And that reading is awesome if you can find the time.

1. Island, Aldous Huxley
2. Disclosure, Michael Crichton
3. The 55 Rules, Ron Clark
4. Breaking the Language Barrier, H. Douglas Brown
5. You Shall Know Our Velocity, Dave Eggers
6. Lonely Planet: West Africa, Tim Bewer, Jean-Bernard Carillet, Paul Clammer, Emilie Filou, et al.
7. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
8. It, Stephen King
9. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
10. A Social History of English, Dick Leith
11. Sociolinguistics, Richard A. Hudson
12. Empires of the Word, Nicholas Ostler
13. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
14. Mutiny on the Bounty, James Nordhoff and Charles Norman Hall
15. Men Against the Sea, Nordhoff and Hall
16. Pitcairn's Island, Nordhoff and Hall
17. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
18. Banandog, Brian Newhouse
19. The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell
20. The Power of Babel, John McWhorter
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. O Alquimista, Paulo Coelho
23. Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
24. What You Can Do for Your Country, Karen Schwarz
25. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
26. Sting: Demolition Man, Christopher Sandford
27. Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman
28. A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke
29. Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander
30. Selections from Walden, Henry David Thoreau
31. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
32. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
33. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
34. And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft, Mike Sacks
35. The Post-American World, Fareed Zakariah
36. The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
37. Miguel Street, V.S. Naipaul
38. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
39. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
40. The Razor's Edge, M. Somerset Maugham
41. Darwin em Cabo Verde, Filipa Vala
42. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
43. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
44. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
45. Bird by Bird, Annie LaMott
46. Eaters of the Dead, Michael Crichton
47. Stitches, David Small
48. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
49. Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman
50. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, John McWhorter
51. Ad Infinitum: A Natural History of Latin, Nicholas Ostler
52. Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, Randal Keynes
53. A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn
54. On the Death and Life of Languages, Claude Hagege
55. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
56. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins
57. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
58. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
59. The Mission Song, John le Carré
60. Wrath of God, Edward Paice
61. The World without Us, Alan Weisman
62. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
63. In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick
64. The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
65. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne

---

1. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
2. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
3. The Essential Chomsky, Noam Chomsky
4. O Profeta do Castigo Divino, Pedro Almeida Vieira
5. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
6. The Lusiads/Os Lusíadas, Luis de Camões
7. Language Evolution, Salikoko S. Mufwene

Duluth

2010-11-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

Greetings from lovely Duluth, Minnesota, where the temperature is currently 18° Fahrenheit. There's about 5-6 inches of snow on the ground and it's still November. Everyone hunts deer and drives pickup trucks and collects agate stones. Bluegrass music fills the radio airwaves.

I love it here.

After living on a tropical island for two years, recently people have been asking me if I now hate the cold of the northern U.S. On the contrary; I love the cold and can't tell you how much I missed the Midwest winter while I was away. Seeing snow for the first time in about two years as I left the Duluth airport yesterday to be picked up by my old friend Adam, I breathed in the cold wintry air as deeply as I could. And then I hopped in his pickup truck. First task of the day: Get me some long underwear.

A little about my friend Adam. He's a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology. He also is one of the funniest, most interesting, and most down-to-earth people that I know. We met at school in Madison and I always looked up to him as a kind of mentor and role-model (he's exactly two years older than me to the day). We've had a lot of great adventures over the years, including psilocybin-assisted spirit journeys (more on this seriously profound topic some other time), a road trip to New Orleans (pre-Katrina), countless cans of the world's best cheapest beer (Mountain Creek), and even more countless discussions about life, love, happiness, spirituality, and why farts will always be funny. He is a great man and I'm extremely happy to have stayed in touch with him over the years. And even more so to count him as a good friend.

Adam described Duluth to me in this way: "It's about 50/50 granola-eating hippies and gun-toting rednecks. I fall somewhere in between." When Adam's girlfriend Kayla isn't on call as a traveling x-ray technician, she's hunting deer and grouse with her dog, the sweetest pit bull I've ever met, or collecting agates and other gemstones. She was raised as a freethinker in a small town on the north shore of Lake Superior and is about as kind and unpretentious of anyone I've met. Adam and Kayla are both examples of why this whole red state/blue state thing is a gross and ridiculous over-generalization of America and Americans.

This morning Adam and I went to his gym and spent a good while sweating it out in the sauna. At one point there was a lean, 40-something-year-old guy in there with us. As Adam and I were leaving the locker room, he pointed out that the drummer from Duluth's-own Retribution Gospel Choir had just come in. (It's a pretty small town so everyone knows who everyone else is.) That guy, I had noticed, had been talking to the same guy who was in the sauna with us. Then I put 2 and 2 together: The guy in the sauna with us had been Alan Sparhawk, the frontman from Low, a band I really like, who is also in Retribution Gospel Choir.

So yeah, today I saw Alan Sparhawk in the nude.

On top of that, I have also eaten the following venison products made from deer that Adam and Kayla have hunted themselves: 1.) jerky and 2.) soft-shell tacos. I listed them because I am pretty certain that there will be several more food items that I eat here made from deer meat. How do I know? Because Adam has a dead dear carcass hanging in his garage that he accidentally hit with his car and then brought home to be butchered. I have a photo of it, but I can't send photos from my phone because my cell phone service doesn't work up here. Which leads me to another reason why I love Duluth: No cell phone service!

Jolene

2010-11-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

I've been really loving singer-songwriter Ray Lamontagne a lot lately. Particularly these lines from the song "Jolene":

A picture of you
holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
I still don't know what love means
I still don't know what love means

Happy Thanksgiving!

Awesome Mix Tape #2: Songs for a Troubled Sex Life

2010-11-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

Another one from my temp days three years ago. Just the right amount of creepy and sexy.

1. Limp - Fiona Apple
2. First Orgasm - Dresden Dolls
3. Bird Gerhl - Antony and the Johnsons
4. Too Much Time on My Hands - Styx
5. Sunday Sun - Beck
6. Human Behavior - Björk
7. The Empty Boat - Caetano Veloso
8. Let It Die - Fiest
9. Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
10. Chicks and Dicks - Junior Senior
11. Sex Changes - Dresden Dolls
12. Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
13. Cue the Strings - Low
14. Parasite - Nick Drake
15. Fairest of the Seasons - Nico
16. Let's Trade Skins - Great Lake Swimmers
17. Creep - Radiohead
18. The Delicate Place - Spoon
19. Innocent When You Dream - Tom Waits
20. Ambulance - TV on the Radio
21. Lonely Nites - Vic Ruggiero
22. The H.I.V. Song - Ween
23. We Suck Young Blood - Radiohead
24. I Remember When I Loved Her - The Zombies
25. The Crying Game - Culture Club

Apparently I had great musical taste in 2007. Now I'm just kind of old and confused.

Awesome Mix Tape #1: "Songs to File Documents By" aka "The Great Weekday War"

2010-11-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

[First compiled Summer 2007 while temping at Mesirow Financial as a file clerk]

1. Rise and Shine - The Cardigans
2. Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up - LCD Soundsystem
3. One Cup of Coffee - Bob Marley and the Wailers
4. It's a Beautiful Morning - The Rascals
5. Welcome to the Working Week - Elvis Costello
6. Train to Skaville - The Soul Brothers
7. People in the City - Air
8. Elevator - Hot Hot Heat
9. This Place Is a Prison - The Postal Service
10. Everything in Its Right Place - Radiohead
11. Making Time - Creation
12. File Me Away - Badly Drawn Boy
13. White Collar Boy - Belle and Sebastian
14. Step into My Office - Belle and Sebastian
15. Bright Future in Sales - Fountains of Wayne
16. Power Lunch - Har Mar Superstar
17. A.M. 180 - Grandaddy
18. Information Error - The Slackers
19. A Day in the Life - The Beatles
20. Death of a Salesman - Low
21. Freedom - George Michael
22. Away from the Numbers - The Jam
23. Coming Home - John Legend
24. Free Time - The Aggrolites

Awake

2010-10-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

I think...I think, yeah. I just woke up from the coma of an eight-year unrequited love.

So...hi, everybody.

I would be bitter and say it was a colossal waste of my time if not for the approximately 8,467 things I learned about life from trying to fill the hole in my heart that it caused.

Stranger Cole sang, "Life can be beautiful." It can. And it will.

From Praia to Manhattan

2010-10-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

Some Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) travel the world after their service. Some go straight home and live with their parents. Some go back to school. Some (miraculously) get good jobs.

I moved to New York City.

Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons, really. Most of them are fairly romantic and involve getting into the arts in a serious way. I don't want to reveal too much, partly because talk is cheap and conjuring up dreams for the masses (ha!) is not only a bit tacky, but also somewhat unlucky. Especially when you have your sights set on several dreams at the same time. You may say I'm a dreamer...

But I also have wanted to live in New York City since I first came here at age 15, so in a sense this was just one of those gut feeling things that I felt compelled to do while still in Cape Verde. There's a real energy here that everyone of course always talks about but is also actually the way it is. There's something about walking down the street and hearing six different languages within earshot, delicious food from all corners of the world, art and music and comedy and business and crazy, schizo everything else at once that screams: "Be here!"

Anyway, I like it here a lot. I'm living with an old friend from grade and high school, which has made the transition from my Peace Corps life not only easy, but downright pleasant.

When I got off the bus just 8 days ago at the Port Authority and walked myself and all my worldly possessions over to this place, I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a swell of hope, excitement, and just plain freedom. I deserve this time for myself. I'm in a position in my life where I am not only wholly unencumbered, but also open to whatever feels right. I want to say "yes" as much as I can to the people and the opportunities that I meet. This is a feeling that I've never quite felt so strongly before, so I have to take it as a sign that I'm on the right path. I realize that I will also have to hustle and fight for my dreams, but I am 100% willing and able to do this.

Stay tuned.

Description of Service

2010-09-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

Robert Sarwark

Sector: Education

Cape Verde

After a competitive application process and intensive training, Robert Sarwark was invited to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the West African nation of Cape Verde. Mr. Sarwark began the requisite 9.5 weeks of Pre-Service Training on July 17, 2008. During this time he lived with a Cape Verdean family, which facilitated and expedited his cultural integration and enhanced his understanding of life in the country. He swore in as a Volunteer on September 20, 2008.

Mr. Sarwark successfully completed 25 hours of instruction in Cape Verdean Creole (national language), 85 hours in Portuguese (official language), 100 hours of technical training, 29 hours of cross cultural training, 15 hours of health education, and 6 hours of safety and security training. Mr. Sarwark was chosen to be the chairperson of the Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) for his group soon after swearing in. He also served as Administrator of his post’s Volunteer newsletter, which showed marked improvements under his editorial guidance. During Pre-Service Training 2009 and 2010 and In-Service Training 2009, he facilitated training sessions in the areas of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Teacher Training. During Pre-Service Training 2010, he served as Trainee Orientation Liaison during the incoming group’s first days in country.

Mr. Sarwark was placed in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. As both a Teacher Trainer and TEFL Volunteer, he worked at the country’s national public university, Universidade de Cabo Verde (Uni-CV), which was founded in 2006. There he performed various tasks in the capacity of both a faculty member at the English Studies Department and as English Language Consultant at the University’s central office. He taught courses in the areas of sociolinguistics, linguistics, and practical teacher training. Regarding the latter, he observed and worked closely with six Uni-CV student teachers at the Escola Secundária Constantino Semedo in Achada São Filipe, Praia. There he focused on heightening his interns’ professional capacity and overall abilities as current or future English teachers in Cape Verde. At both the University’s central office and main campus, he tutored University staff in basic and intermediate English. He translated various documents and interpreted meetings and conferences between English and Portuguese. He coordinated and served as liaison to many of the University’s foreign exchange programs, in particular with Bridgewater State University (Massachusetts), which maintains scholarship agreements at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In this capacity, he assisted local students in all aspects of selection, pre-departure (including the visa application process), and other logistical and travel considerations. Mr. Sarwark worked diligently and led by example, which encouraged his local colleagues to participate and take ownership of their organization’s successes and failures.

In both 2008 and 2009, Mr. Sarwark participated in Uni-CV’s World AIDS Day events, including a very popular t-shirt design contest, distribution of HIV/AIDS information, free condoms, and a film screening on the topic of prevention (2009).

In 2010, Mr. Sarwark also coordinated a Peace Corps Partnership Project. He raised funds, selected inventory, placed international orders, and organized a small English-language resource library for Uni-CV students and staff. The resources chosen included language learning software (Rosetta Stone), periodicals, textbooks, and workbooks.

On his final Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), held in Portuguese, Mr. Sarwark was rated with a score of Advanced High. Throughout his service he conducted all professional conversations and presentations in either Cape Verdean Creole or Portuguese and composed all written correspondence in Portuguese.

Pursuant to Section 5 (f) of the Peace Corps act, 22 U.S.C. Paragraph 2504 (f) as amended, any former Volunteer employed by the United States Government following his Peace Corps Volunteer service is entitled to have any period of satisfactory Peace Corps Volunteer service credited for purposes of retirement, seniority, reduction in force, leave, and other privileges based on the length of Government service. This is to certify in accordance with Executive Order 11103 of April 10, 1963, that Mr. Robert Sarwark served successfully 24 months as a Peace Corps Volunteer. His benefits under the Executive Order extend for a period of one year after termination of Volunteer service, except for that the employing agency may extend the period for up to three years for a former Volunteer who enters military service, pursues studies at a recognized institution of higher learning, or engages in other activities which, in the view of the appointing agency, warrants extension of the period.

Jive-Talking Robots, Squawk Boxes, and the Dream of Universal Intelligibility

2010-09-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever tried to learn a foreign language as an adult, you know one thing for sure: It’s hard. Though indeed capable of amazing feats of cognition, when it comes to language there are some constraints on what the human brain – and especially the adult human brain – can achieve.

For starters, one important factor is exposure. If exposed to only one system of human language throughout a lifetime, a person will not learn another. That’s the main reason why (most) Eskimos don’t speak Tagalog. This much is pretty obvious. But another important limiting factor is that of age.

Both intense scientific study and empirical common sense have confirmed time and time again that after the onset of puberty, several significant changes take place in the human brain that reduce the ability to master a foreign tongue. Even among fluent non-native speakers, the age at which they picked up their second language is oftentimes imprinted in the form of interference from their native language. Take Henry Kissinger’s German-accented though otherwise flawless English. That’s a textbook example of a bright student who learned a new language as a teenager.

As we advance in age, it’s safe to say that our language-learning capacity decreases inversely, especially if we’ve never had much foreign language exposure during our formative years.

During two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Portuguese- and Creole-speaking Cape Verde, West Africa, my apartment-mate, a well-educated retiree from Florida in his early sixties, never managed to learn more than a few words and very short phrases in either language. In my mid-twenties, I myself never became what I would call “fully fluent” in either language. But the difference between my elder colleague and the rest of us mostly twenty-something Volunteers is clear. In simplest terms, I can talk to our laundress when she comes over for our clothes; he can’t.

It turns out there’s some serious scientific truth to that staid maxim about old dogs and new tricks…at least when it comes to teaching those dogs a new way to bark.

There have been, of course, countless numbers of people over the course of history who have managed to master multiple languages, especially in multi-lingual regions where such skills are simply a way of life. A personal favorite example – though it appears in a work of fiction, it’s entirely plausible – is the character of Bruno “Salvo” Salvador in John le Carré’s 2006 novel The Mission Song. The product of a brief tryst between a Northern Irish missionary and a Congolese peasant woman, he grows up to be a much sought-after interpreter, fluent not only in French, English, and Swahili (East Africa’s lingua franca) but also various smaller tribal languages such as Shi, Lingala, Bembe, and Kinyarwanda. As a direct result of his unique linguistic toolbox, he becomes intensely embroiled in a multinational scheme to exploit the eastern Congo’s precious mineral deposits.

Then there are cases of displacement and complex immigration patterns, producing such amazingly multi-cultural and -lingual individuals as the controversial Somali-born human rights activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Having lived in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands all before the age of thirty, she fluently speaks Somali, Amharic, Swahili, English, Arabic, and Dutch.

Personally, I’ve always dreamed of being able to speak (and understand, and read and write, for that matter) as many languages as I could get my hands on. But as it stands, I’ve never strayed much farther than intermediate levels in Spanish and Portuguese, with a bit of (Portuguese-based) Cape Verdean Creole thrown in for good measure. That’s three genetically closely related languages, all basically distant cousins of English. But there are currently around 5,000 languages spoken in the world, give or take a thousand, depending on whom you ask, all of those spread among a few dozen or so genetically separate families. Sometimes it’s daunting just to know where to start.

For those of us native English-speakers, our mother tongue is undoubtedly growing in its hegemony as the world’s lingua franca. This can come as an easy excuse to many of us for remaining monolingual. But with global politics constantly and rapidly in flux, I would argue that, at the very least, being somewhat familiar with a foreign language is as important now as it ever was.

****

Growing up, I was a huge fan of the original Star Wars trilogy. Though not my favorite character (way too much of a weenie), I always had a soft spot for C-3P0, the skinny golden robot classified as a “protocol droid.” “Threepio” could, for all intents and purposes, perfectly speak any language in the known Galaxy, from Jawa to Huttese, to the various droid languages, to plain old English (“Basic” in the Star Wars universe). My favorite moment came in Return of the Jedi, when he regaled a crowd of Ewoks about the recent adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia, fluently in their exotic (and adorable) native tongue. (Incidentally, I always wondered why C-3P0 never spoke to Chewbacca in Wookie.)

Where can I get me one of them fancy droids?

Another intriguing moment in linguistic fiction appears in the more recent film Synecdoche, New York, savant writer/director Charlie Kaufmann’s beyond-meta study of narrative and parallel realities. In one scene, the protagonist, theater director Caden Cotard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, communicates with his estranged, German-only-speaking daughter on her deathbed. This is done through a microwave-sized machine that produces instantaneous, fluent translation, ostensibly in the speaker’s own voice. It’s a freakily amazing moment in cinema, at least from a linguistic perspective.

What power to wield, to be able to fully and instantly communicate with any other human (or robot) on the planet. Just imagine what you could do with that power; among other things, you would be perhaps the most powerful diplomatic liaison in the world.

Nowadays we have fairly effective language learning software such as Rosetta Stone and the recent Google Translate online app. And of course there are still also skilled professional translators and interpreters, as there have been ever since members of different language groups started meeting diplomatically.

But Rosetta Stone is still, in many ways, just a very interactive (and expensive) primer – an introduction to a language, ideally to be supplemented with years of real-time use.

And Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/) is instant but by no means perfect – often hilariously so. Essentially, it works using a probability algorithm that “merely” matches words and phrases found in archived diplomatic texts on the Internet. But this means that the results can be variable, to say the least, considering the dearth of mutual source material between certain pairs of languages. Case in point: My sister recently used it on the text of a Finnish friend’s Facebook posting to try and figure out what on Earth he was on about. Here’s what it came up with: “Noi faces is yes legendary! Language and point of i’s on.” This was the caption of a picture of two bulldogs cuddling, by the way. Yes…legendary!

And wait, then there’s just plain common communication breakdown even between speakers of the same language. Men and women; the old and the young; jocks and nerds; liberals and conservatives; sometimes even best friends. One time in college I thought a guy was calling me a hog when he was really calling me a hoss, which apparently is Coloradoan for “cool dude.” Kind of a big difference in perceived meaning there.

Can anyone really communicate? There’s so much emotionally- and culturally-charged nuance to the way we express ourselves linguistically. Any given dialogue in real-time is hardly just two talking heads perfectly swapping data.

****

It looks like none of us is going to acquire, much less become, a human protocol droid, fluent in over six million forms of communication, any time soon. Even the British linguistic polymath and writer Nicholas Ostler admits that his own working knowledge of twenty-six languages is a bit of publishers’ hyperbole. “I’m not averse to learning the odd language,” he told me via e-mail last year, “– but 26!? Ah well, at least it gives me a level of aspiration.” I like to believe that though he was being humble and is indeed functionally familiar with so many idioms, common sense dictates that he’s right: complete mastery of 26 languages would be an unprecedented feat of human genius.

So C-3P0 is a very clever invention of George Lucas’ curious mind. Charlie Kaufmann’s squawk box seems a little more technically feasible, but still far off. Even John le Carré’s more plausible Salvo would be an extremely rare find outside of fiction. In the meantime, we’re going to have to learn new languages the old-fashioned way: as early in life as possible with plenty of exposure and daily necessity, or, barring that, with a whole lot of perseverance, study skills, and humility.

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART THREE: This Part Has a Monkey

2010-08-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

"Yeah but the shirt is ugly." -- Mom

Okay, so by now things have possibly gotten a little out of hand. I've spent a large portion of the last two weeks collecting photos, conducting surveys, and writing these posts. Friends and family have started to get annoyed and possibly genuinely concerned. As for these postings themselves, whether anyone besides Annie actually enjoys them is up for hot debate. I even went so far as to create a pie chart. A pie chart! That's a first for me. "Hasn't this whole orange shirt business just been one big waste of time," you might ask?

No! Shut up your face and keep reading.

As the Saga of Ol' Orangie began to come together and its narrative unfurled, I thought it wise to remove myself from the somewhat static domain of the Internet; I would take it to the streets! Fortunately, Cape Verde is a land in which "the streets" is synonymous with beach parties, a national drink strong enough to shock a grizzled pirate, crazy pick-up truck rides, slumber parties, and, yes, those furry, banana-eating beasts known locally as macacos.

Speaking of grizzled pirates (and their monkeys), my friend Andrew Vernaza recently closed his Peace Corps service here and returned to the U.S. He spent his two years teaching electrical theory, fixing broken electronics, installing solar panels, and supervising the maintenance of his town's lamp posts and other light fixtures. On top of being one smart and upstanding fellow, Andrew is also what you might call, in the parlance of our times, a savage. What this means is that this fool knows how to party down, fight a bear, have a laugh, and grow a man-beard that would put Fidel Castro to shame, all in a day's work.

See what I mean? A man among men. And monkeys.

So it was only fitting that when it came time for Mr. Ver-Nasty to depart from the Land of Morabeza that he do so in true filthy style. With several vehicles-worth of wild young vocational students in tow, a steel drum full of food, and a green monkey named Txiku, we sought to give our pal a despedida to remember.

The night before, a group of us stayed at Andrew's house in a town called Pedra Badejo. I knew that if I presented Ol' Orangie to my friends in person, that they would have a better chance to react honestly with their feelings about him. For example, Andrew himself immediately responded, "That shirt is awesome!" The man knows style. As for the others in attendance, frankly I couldn't keep Ol' Orangie off of them.

Jon, for starters, found Ol' Orangie to be supportive and stylish. For the record, those armpit sweat stains were difficult to attribute to anyone in particular. They in fact added to the night's spirit of tropical exuberance.

Next, Rachelle applied her powers of creativity to reimagine Ol' Orangie as he might have appeared in the classic film Risky Business. Or Flashdance?

Elyse added some of her Virginia charm to the mix in what I like to call "Orange on Dirty Blonde".

The next morning, after a slight delay of three and a half hours, we hit the road with the aforementioned gang of reckless youths for Praia Baxo, on Santiago Island's west side. When we arrived, so did the party.

I wanted to spread the power of Ol' Orangie around. First, to Txiku the Monkey. He sniffed him. For some reason or another, though, he refused to actually wear him.

Then, the little scamp bit me on the hand. Not a good sign.

So I moved onto more humans. Cape Verdean humans! Branco here needed some convincing at first, but eventually he agreed to give Ol' Orangie a try. Under one condition...

That I wear his favorite shirt, "Azulinhu Bedju". That's "Ol' Bluey" to you, Yankee.

Manuel and his animal friends seemed to heartily approve of the switch. After this photo was taken, Txiku fortunately restrained his primate rage enough to not gnaw on my face.

Ol' Orangie rules.

THE END

Disclaimer: No monkeys, dogs, Cape Verdeans, or Peace Corps Volunteers were harmed in the writing of this blog.

PC Partnership Project Update

2010-08-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a quick break from the silliness that is the "Saga of Ol' Orangie" to make sure you all know that your US tax dollars aren't being completely wasted.

So, back in July my Peace Corps Partnership Project, "English Language Resource Library", was fully funded. This was thanks to three very generous public donors and either one or several very, very generous anonymous donors. He or she or they contributed upwards of $900, which was a very large portion of the total partnership grant request. I really wish I could find out who that was. Anyway, I'll just say this now to all of my donors: THANK YOU.

The total amount made available was (approximately, due to fluctuation in currencies) $1,410 USD from US ("partnership") donors and $520 pledged by the University of Cape Verde (the "community donor"). This comes to a grand total of about $1,930.

I'm now in the process of implementation. In my case, this mainly means ordering and managing books and other materials. It's amazing how complicated ordering things from the US, UK, and EU to Cape Verde can be, I'm realizing. I've had to explain more than once exactly where I was calling or writing from to perplexed sales associates. Apparently lots of folks have the tendency to confuse "Cape Verde" with "Cape Town". Add to that a dose of homegrown, post-colonial bureaucracy and things end up taking a bit longer than you'd expect. No complaints from me, though. Things are really coming together nicely as of late. I should be able to get everything ordered and accounted for by the last weeks before my COS ("close of service") date, which is Thursday, September 23rd.

This will be a very small "library" at first, but hopefully will be expanded by future and current Volunteers also posted at Uni-CV. The idea was to very strategically choose resources aimed at helping adult, professionally-minded English learners to help themselves learn and take ownership of their own education.

With that in mind, here's how the inventory list is shaping up:

Books
504 Absolutely Essential Words
ESL Guide to Business English
Idiomatic American English workbook (2)
Let's Speak Business English!
Writing for Academic Purposes

Software
Rosetta Stone: American English, Levels 1-3
Rosetta Stone: American English, Levels 1-5

Furniture, etc. (TBD)
Dry erase board (2)
Dry erase board easel (2)
Bookshelf or cabinet
Dry erase markers (2 sets)

And now, here's a photo of me hard at work trying to manage my budget and keep track of all this incoming gear. Thanks to my friend and colleague Chissana for taking it.

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART TWO: Orange Crushed

2010-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

"Orange, a close relative of red, sparks more controversy than any other hue. There is usually strong positive or negative association to orange and true orange generally elicits a stronger 'love it' or 'hate it' response than other colors." -- www.squidoo.com/colorexpert

On Thursday, July 29, 2010 a friend took a photo of me wearing Ol' Orangie in the town of Assomada. Unfortunately, due to technological limitations, I have been unable to acquire this particular photo to share with you today. But take my word for it that I didn't look too sharp. I looked so absurd, in fact, that the image haunted me throughout the day and I had trouble sleeping that night. Is this what I really look like? I thought, over and over again.

Lest you think me vain, I'll remind you that you know the kind of picture I'm talking about; we've all taken them at least once in our lives. It was the kind of picture for which the "remove tag" button was invented on Facebook.

Like most of my crackpot ideas, a fresh one came to me in such a fit of insomnia. I grabbed my notebook and scribbled down some thoughts. Maybe, I pondered, just maybe Ol' Orangie had something to do with me looking like a circa 1973 Milwaukee bus station loiterer.

The next morning, I e-mailed Annie to ask for specific details on why she disliked Ol' Orangie so much. Within the hour, here's what she replied:

Subject: An open letter to orange shirt

Orange shirt, where to begin. I guess with...I hate you.

You not only offend me with your cut and color, but I genuinely dislike being around you. Looking at you makes me angry and fearful. Angry because you elicit a certain sense of curiosity about your origin and purpose when the last thing I want to do is look at you AND think about you. And fearful that there are more out there like you.

Although I am tempted to admire you for your hue - which I'm sure is impossible to reproduce - I wonder if maybe this is because there is no other article of clothing in the world that would wish that upon itself.

You appear to maintain a certain level of dirtiness at all times, yet never appear to be clean. This is intriguing to me. And that makes me mad. STOP making me think about you, shirt.

Your sleeves are too long, making the wearer's arms appear too short. This is unfortunate when the wearer also happens to have hands in the likeness of a child's drawing. On the other hand, it can be argued that your sleeves are entirely too short, because short-sleeved button downs are for old men, perverts, and gang members. All of which I am pretty sure your wearer is not.

If I didn't happen to know your one and only friend, I would think he was some kind of sexual deviant. Not necessarily anything too serious, I mean, I wouldn't cross to the other side of the street, but eye contact would definitely be avoided.

And this leads me to my final point. There have been others that have owned you before. They obviously came to their sense and gave you away or sold you to a homeless person. But they did make the decision at one point in their lives to purchase you and bring you into your homes and that is something that will live with them forever. After all, it is our actions that define the type of person we are. This means that there are other ambiguously menacing orange shirt wearers out there, making the world a scary and threatening place where no vacation picture is ever safe, first dates are sabotaged, and little children are taught to stay away from strangers.

Signed,

Anne
Chicago, IL

Well let's see...

Old man?

Yeah, but a really stylin' old man.

Pervert?

Okay, maybe she's onto something.

Gang member?

Don't you know I'm loco?

Gang member who's also a pervert?

Uhh...

And what's all this about sabotaged first dates? What about fifth dates, which was, about four years ago, the first time Ol' Orangie was revealed to a certain ex-girlfriend?

Everything was going great at first. At this point in the night my sweater almost entirely covered Ol' Orangie's blazing glory...

But then things got weird...

He couldn't be contained. The sweater came off. By the end of the night, I admit that I most certainly did look like "some kind of sexual deviant"...

"I don't have the heart to tell him, but I think Rob is about to get cock-blocked by his own shirt."

I never saw that girl in person again. About a week after these photos were taken, she dumped me like a bag of dirt over the phone. The day after Christmas!

Maybe you're onto something, Annie.

****

In the spirit of true scientific research, I thought I'd elicit the opinions of my peers as well. I posted this short survey on Facebook soon after receiving Annie's letter.

What are your thoughts on this shirt?

a.) I love it.
b.) I hate it.
c.) Meh.
d.) I have no idea why you're asking such a random question.
e.) both a.) and d.)
f.) both b.) and d.)
g.) Goddamn it, Rob, shut the f*** up already.
h.) (fill in the blank)

The responses:

Jeanine: I'm going to go with d.) and g.) because honestly I just don't give a s***. And I much prefer men's shirts to be in the blue family as a general rule.
Andrew: e.)...lol
Steven: h.) Stop having your sister pose as your girlfriend.
Laurie: c.) all the way.
Peter: b.) I opt for destruction.
Tricia: h.) At least the pervert shades match the pervert shirt.
Andrea: c.) The color washes you out.
Ashley: h.) I see you're trying to show off some chest hair.

Kelly: h.) You must be at the end of your PC service with nothing to do because school is out for the summer. I guess this is one way to pass the time.

And in pie form (click on image to enlarge):

Just as I suspected: The results are inconclusive. And it appears that squidoo.com was absolutely right about the color orange. Some people hate it. Some people love it. One thing's for sure: It makes us all crazy.

What will become of our hero, Ol' Orangie? Check back here soon for the shocking conclusion!

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART ONE: Blaze Orange Rising

2010-08-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

"Orange is the happiest color." -- Francis Albert Sinatra

Like I mentioned, I don't remember exactly when I found Ol' Orangie. Or, perhaps, when he found me. But I'm fairly certain it was sometime around the turn of the millenium. This would also be around the time that I finished high school and started college.

My clothing issues were, then as they are now, troubled. Part of the problem stems from a severe aversion to shopping. Another from the fact that I very well might be an eighty-year-old man trapped in a twentysomething's body. So ever since becoming an adult I've managed to hide my shame and weather the elements primarily through scavenging. During this era, my brother John's closet in our childhood home in Glenview often proved to be a dependable source of vintage styles.

I think the initial attraction to Ol' Orangie came from what I like to call the "cabana-wear factor". This is to say that a certain article of clothing would well accompany the lifestyle of a salty, bearded castaway on a desert island. In this sense, Ol' Orangie's appearance in my life takes on added meaning as a distinct foreshadowing of my time spent as a Peace Corps Volunteer on a certain arid, African archipelago.

But I digress. I agree with Old Blue Eyes about orange being a very happy color. But I was soon to find out the other emotions that it evokes. The cut and style of my new find - later to be revealed as a discarded component of John's last Halloween costume ("old man") - suited my self-perceived dynamic nature. It appeased my second-hand nostalgia for the mid-century while also fulfilling my burgeoning sense of laissez-faire, pseudo-intellectual pretense. Thrift store chic was my M.O. and I thought it made me look like some kind of funky beatnik. Okay, yeah. So I was kind of a douche. Give me a break; I was eighteen.

Neverthless, a bond was quickly formed between us. I look back fondly on all the times I've had with Ol' Orangie. He's been with me through thick and thin.

Here's us at Brat Fest 2006 in Madison, when we entered the "I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner" jingle-singing contest...

And while on a Midwest roadtrip later that year with my good (human) friend, Lunkes...

When I was going through Peace Corps training in the summer of 2008, my homestay mother, Ivete, graciously mended my old buddy when he lost a couple of buttons...

Here's us more recently with Cape Verdean pop star Tó Alves and his ukulele...

And here we are on vacation in Portugal last summer...

I loved Ol' Orangie very much. Our mutual admiration was all-engrossing. And so it came as a complete surprise when, on this same trip to Lisbon, my sister commented, "God. I hate that shirt, Rob."

"What? Why?" I responded, shocked at her ire.

"I just hate everything about it. I hate the sleeves. I hate the color. I hate the way it hangs down in the back. I hate it."

"I love this shirt, Annie. This shirt is awesome," I retorted. "Shut up."

"Okay. Sorry," she said, clearly not wanting to offend me further. "Whatever. I don't really care. It's fine."

But the damage had been done. Her true feelings had been expressed. Clearly, this element of my life that had become so integral, so loyal and steadfast, was beginning to - or perhaps already had - come between me and at least one of my loved ones.

Things had changed.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of our saga...

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PROLOGUE

2010-07-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

"The clothes maketh the man." -- Ancient Roman proverb

I've often wondered about the topic of perception. More specifically, the perception of the self versus that of the collective masses. But I don't want to get too abstract or philosophical here. I'd rather focus on the fact that humans are very much visual creatures; more often than not, we do judge a book by its cover. I know I do. I mean, why would a good book have a crappy cover?

It's also been said that there's no accounting for taste. But what if certain things really do just inherently suck? And, more importantly, what if for the last almost decade I've been regularly wearing a shirt that makes me look like an absolute, complete a-hole?

****

Yesterday, like almost any other weekday morning, I rose, washed myself, and got dressed.

At the moment, I'm really broke and can't afford to buy clothes that often, even at cheap African market prices. I could probably be much better at budgeting, but to be honest, with less than two months to go here I don't really care.

So my wardrobe is paltry, to say the least. Only the most robust of garments have survived the weekly onslaught of old-style board and basin washing by my empregada. My shoes are constantly breaking down against the elements of cobblestone and sand. Nor do I own an iron. What has resulted over the last two years has been an ever-shrinking rotation of shirts and pants that can somehow resist not only wrinkling, but also food stains, becoming completely threadbare, and just falling apart. I've often considered foregoing the stress and trouble of it all and just donning a loincloth everyday instead.

My pickings were particularly slim yesterday due to the recent breakdown of three of my most cherished cowboy-style, long sleeve button-downs, so I opted for an old go-to. He goes by the name of "Ol' Orangie," and he's the short sleeve number you see in the photo above.

Me and Ol' Orangie go way back, more than seven years, I reckon, but his vintage must be much greater than that, stretching back to perhaps the early 70s, if I had to wager a guess. Ol' Orangie and I have been through a lot since we first crossed paths, but his fate is now uncertain.

Submitted for your consideration is the forthcoming story - the saga, if you will - of the rise, fall, and ultimate demise of one of the world's most controversial semi-casual garments.

Stay tuned for more.

Other Places Travel Guide to Cape Verde

2010-07-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

Other Places Publishing, which exclusively employs Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) in writing low-impact, pro-social travel guides to some of the world's more exotic and under-represented destinations, has just released its guide to Cape Verde. It was written over the course of the last two years by RPCVs Callie Flood and Brittany Kuhn and very well might include a little somethin'-somethin' from yours truly about the Cape Verde-Charles Darwin connection. (I honestly can't 100% confirm this since I haven't gotten a hardcopy yet, but you should buy one nonetheless.) Lots of other contributions from returned and current PCVs are included as well.

Check it out: http://www.otherplacespublishing.com/cape_verde.html

Hey. That was something.

2010-07-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

I wrote this piece a couple of months ago. I was originally going to submit it to our post's Volunteer newsletter, but at the last minute decided against it. But I figure that it's a pretty accurate portrayal of how I've spent some of the quieter, more contemplative hours here in Cape Verde, so here goes...

I’m thinking now, here in the darkness. As I begin to type, it’s just after 10 on a Friday night, May 14, 2010 to be exact. Pretty much a normal Friday night for me lately. There’s not too much excitement on my social radar here in Praia, mostly just a lot of time spent listening to This American Life podcasts, reading, and playing the guitar. And actually, I’ve been enjoying it. I think that it’s okay. There’s exactly four weeks until I get on a plane and go to Chicago for my big brother’s wedding and I have to admit that this has had something to do with my recent apathy towards upholding the Peace Corps directives of “integration” and “intentional relationship building.” I’ve been waiting lately. Waiting, waiting, waiting. My mind has often been elsewhere. I’ve come to think of this period of the second half of the second year of service as akin to “senioritis” back in high school. I have mixed feelings about this x-ing off days on the calendar, though I don’t think I can stop doing it.

But for now, at this moment, I think it’s best to say that I’m just thinking. Well, writing this piece too, of course. But ultimately just enjoying the darkness. Even though the power is on (for now) and I could have light if I wanted, I leave it off and the laptop’s glow suffices.

There are the same familiar yet annoying sounds from above and below my apartment window. The fluffy frou-frou dog barking up on the roof, perpetually tied there, its poor idiot voice echoing down to my unit through one of the quintals. The middle-aged men down below at the watering hole of Dona Tê-Tê’s garagem, seemingly also tied there, by habit, their jolly but argumentative Creole with nowhere to go but straight up to me, bouncing between the surrounding buildings’ walls and completely incomprehensible by the time it reaches my ears. The incessant whistling of questionable young dudes trying to get my teenage neighbors’ – their friends’ – attention. (No, they can’t come out to play.) The soft drone of crickets and wind and cabs prowling. These are my normal night sounds. It’s a mixture of calming, heartbreaking, frustrating, (still) (very) foreign, and, yes, by now familiar.

****

Last night I went to an event at Uni-CV’s business school, organized by Daniel, the U.S. embassy English Language Fellow. This small panel discussion brought together the consular officer from the embassy, the head of the Millennium Challenge Account here in Cape Verde, and Hank, our boss. In English – as this was programmed in part as a chance for the students to practice their skills – all three panelists introduced themselves and then answered questions about their respective agencies and roles here. It was nice, I thought. It was what I think people want to know in a small country like this; that America isn’t only a fantasy or a behemoth or a machine. That what it really comes down to is people. Or at least that’s how I like to think of things.

Hank brought a six-minute movie to show on what the Peace Corps is and does, one that I had already seen once before because it’s included on the Partnership Program CD. In a way, this video stole the show for the Peace Corps. The audience watched intently. Everything positive about our kind that one could possibly put in six minutes was there: the idealism, openness, friendliness, both street and book smarts; the worldliness, leadership, sticktoitiveness, and frank sensitivity. This film makes us look like superheroes that most certainly will change the world.

And so I felt very proud, naturally, to be a part of it, to remember that, Hey! I’m technically one of those people that this very inspirational promotional tool is making direct reference to. That I’m a descendant of the idea that being a good citizen doesn’t stop at America’s borders. I am a good boy!

But residual Catholic guilt will still always haunt me, I fear. In a way, like many of my Italian forebears, I’m a born fatalist. Oh sure, I thought, those people they picked to be in the movie are superheroes. That’s why they made they cut. Meanwhile there’s people like me, who’s not sure that he’s been doing things to the fullest over the last almost two years. Or if he was really even cut out for it in the first place. What if I’ve been, in fact, a plain bad volunteer? After all, I don’t currently have a smiling local child perched atop my shoulders.

I’m exactly 43% serious here.

I think where I’m going with this, though, is about how none of us is perfect and, in our daily lives as Peace Corps Volunteers, we face the fact that we have to spend every single waking hour of our lives with, well, ourselves and our own perceptions of what it means to be a PCV. And that’s not to mention the scrutiny and expectations we come under from almost all other sides. So that’s where I’m going with this: What does the Peace Corps really look like from the inside perspective of each of us as an individual? What if our service ends up looking nothing like we had imagined?

For me, one of the hardest things, regardless of the place, is meeting new people. I just feel weird, especially if there’s no pretext. It’s not that I don’t like making new friends. I really do. And I have here. Let’s just say that I’m a bit cautious to let new people into my life. Or maybe I’m just kind of awkward. Or a snob? Who knows. I know people who can make friends with complete strangers, seemingly in minutes, and it completely awes me. How do they do it? How do they know the other person won’t steal their identity and start buying L. Ron Hubbard books in bulk on Amazon? (Now I’m just making myself look plain paranoid.) In my case, it helps to be introduced by a mutual friend, but, as my mom says, I’m “a little slow to warm up.” (She’s one of those crazy/amazing stranger befrienders, by the way.) Once I do warm up to someone, though, I like to think I’m an extremely loyal and involved friend, one that will pick you up from the airport because, honestly, I just need to see you in the flesh as soon as possible so we can catch up. I might even write you a little song if you play your cards right. One thing that I am incapable of doing, though, is making a friend just for the sake of making a friend. Herein lies my lingering sense of guilt, because ideally, I should be friends with every single Cape Verdean citizen that I meet, right?

But here in Praia, not just a Peace Corps post of course, but a city in a country in the world, I have had trouble breaking through the final frontier. Language is one obvious constraint, since no matter how functionally fluent I’ve become, I’m still not really me in a foreign language. I’m not even Creole Me or Portuguese Me, like most truly bilingual people have that fully-formed and distinct alter ego. I’m just me, the guy who knows enough to get around but isn’t funny or really all that interesting, normally. And of course along with language comes its inexorable twin, culture. There are certain things that I don’t think that I’ll ever understand or embrace here (see the aforementioned pastime of incessant window whistling). I also have no interest in futebol or Akon. Then there’s the fact that it’s Praia, the big city, the Manhattan of Cape Verde. There’s tugis ("thugs") here, and casubodi ("cash or body", read: "muggings"). There’s polite standoffishness even among neighbors. You have to play it cool, moç. And finally, there’s the professional distance of my job at the main office of Uni-CV. My coworkers are all very nice people, but let’s just say I don’t normally hear them calling me to txiga ("come on in") for a plate of katxupa at their air-conditioned office space.

And so this brings me back to my feelings of – to put it in less fatalistic terms – the figurative plateau that I reached very early on in service (incidentally coinciding with the literal downtown plateau of Praia that I have commuted to almost every day for work). I find myself with feelings of receio, of holding or being held back. The words and motions come out okay. I know where I’m going. I have my friendly faces around town that I’ve grown to know a bit. I get what I asked for. I do what I think I’m supposed to be doing. Once I even dated someone from here. But am I living up to the Peace Corps ideal?

What I really want to say, though, is that it’s not necessarily good or bad, just how it was for me. How it has been for each one of us. I think that sometimes we all need to acknowledge that things are never a nonstop barrage of suspense and rapture, especially not once you get into any sort of routine. Life is not a six-minute promotional video. It’s life, just one that’s been transposed to another continent. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s great. What I think really matters about this experience – one that half of us are about to conclude – is that we really did put ourselves out there. We taught and learned and mixed it up every once in a while, occasionally did a little island-hopping, and maybe even made some good friends at site, bridging the gaps of culture and geography. And that’s not to mention the deep friendships forged among us Volunteers.

I do have some feelings of regret about the amount of effort that I’ve put forth with my neighborhood community, but maybe this is just that good, old-fashioned Catholic guilt come back for more. Ultimately, I think I’ve changed for the better throughout my almost two years here. In fact, I think that it's impossible not to have gained some truly valuable perspective from this kind of experience.

And so as I lately daydream of being reunited with the family that I appreciate now more than ever, of potential love, of career and life prospects, all waiting like specters across the great sea, I have to remember how things go sometimes. That once I’m back there, smack dab in the noisy middle of something I can point to as my life, that I know I’ll often stop and remember my time as a quiet, lonely American living on a strange little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by tranquil and heartbreaking sounds. And I’ll think to myself, Hey. That was something.

Help out a Peace Corps dog in need!

2010-05-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

To any dog lovers in the Chicagoland area:

Bindi is my Peace Corps colleague Dacia's dog. Dacia found her on the street and raised her from a tiny puppy here in Cape Verde. Since Dacia will be travelling after her service ends, she recently sent Bindi back to the U.S. to live with her mother, but is having trouble adapting to U.S. life in a house with other dogs. She would be great for a small family with no other dogs, especially one with people who can spend time with her. She has all her shots and paperwork. Please let Dacia know if you're interested in either fostering or adopting her - dacia_davis@hotmail.com.

Thanks!

PCPP proposal APPROVED for funding

2010-04-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

I was just approved to start raising funds for a Peace Corps Partnership Program. The goal is to help support my host institution, the University of Cape Verde, with a small English-language resource/reference library. Check out the details of the project plan below. If you can support this in any way that would excellent. My goal is $1,374.63. Thanks a million!

GO HERE: English Language Resource Library.

Bert and I have more in common than just half a name.

2010-04-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

Good ol' Bert...fighting the good fight for us packrats and collectors of strange items.

If you know me, you probably know that I geek out about a few somewhat random things. Charles Darwin, foreign languages, shipwrecks, world geography, and mid-20th century Jamaican music are among them. But you might not be aware of the fact that I also love bottlecaps.

Yes, I go crazy for 1" circular bits of aluminum, aka "garbage" in most people's eyes. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that being a packrat is in my blood: My Grandpa P.J. has been a collector of records, musical instruments, and other great found objects for years, which his career as a Chicago garbage collector certainly didn't discourage. His basement is a wonderland of vinyl from the 50s to the 80s. On the other side of the family, my dad is actually a pretty serious neumismatist, which is to say that he's a big time collector of American coins. But I don't know where this particular affinity for caps comes from exactly.

I can remember that I liked them as far back as when I was five. I recall playing in a sandbox in a park near my new house in Glenview after my family had moved there from Kansas City. Some teenagers must have been partying there shortly before because after a little digging around I came across a whole bunch of Budweiser caps buried there in the sand. I remember I just liked how small and concise the things were, almost like coins, but more colorful and, unless rusty, shinier. It was always weird to me that they got thrown away so readily. So I started collecting them.

Now, over twenty years later, I've amassed a pretty decent collection from both the U.S. and my travels abroad, also with the help of some friends who've collected for me on their own travels. I must have about 200 or so at this point, I figure, but I haven't done a count in quite some time. In my constant musing and daydreaming while counting down the clock 'til the end of my Peace Corps service, I've started thinking about what I can do to take my geekdom for "crowncaps" to the next absurd level.

The below mosaic by Michigan-based artist Adam Kempa has particularly piqued my interest. I recently got in touch with him about doing one of my own and he was amazingly helpful in giving me tips on how to get started. The real trick? Collecting metric f***loads of bottle caps of the right colors.

This is of his younger brother, who had passed away a few years before. It uses 2,635 caps and measures roughly 6 by 4 feet. It took over three years to complete. As you can see, to get any kind of resolution, the final product needs to be pretty big. But the pay-off is something grand and cohesive that comes from many, many small and disparate items. I like the thought of that. Anyway, I just think it's really cool and I really want to do one of my own.

SO in the meantime, I've been poking around the streets of Praia looking for interesting caps. There are really only a few brands on sale here sold in bottles - Coca-Cola, Sprite, a few varieties of Fanta, a couple of Strela beers, and Super Bock. Plus several brands of malt beer, which I find disgusting but Cape Verdeans absolutely love. If you happen to be in a foreign country where glass bottles still abound, I'd be much obliged if you could hold on to them for me. Even if you're in the U.S. that would be great too. Who knows, your findings might make it into my future mosaic masterpiece.

Newsletter and World Map Mural Project

2010-03-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, as committee administrator, my team and I put out the latest issue of Nobas di Korpu di Pas, Peace Corps/Cape Verde's volunteer newsletter. Not to toot my own horn, but I think it's the best one that I've seen since being in country. In addition to the quality submissions and crack editing, the final product is especially great thanks to the ace formatting and photography work done by Josh L. out on Fogo Island. Today I got an e-mail from PC acting Africa Regional Director Lynn Foden, who also agrees that it's "awesome." Here's a link to the pdf version if you want to see it and judge for yourself: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3814165/newsletter_2_-_final.pdf.

In other news, the ball is really rolling on my plans to do a world map mural project in the community of São Francisco, just outside of Praia. This is the site of 1st year volunteer D Jan. I'm looking forward to getting outside and doing something more typically Peace Corps-ish during my last three months in country, which will be from June 29th to September 26th or so. (The rule says you have to stay at site for the last three months of service and since I'm going to Chicago for my brother's wedding in mid-late June, I have to stay here later than most of my colleagues.)

Below is a sample of the world map mural, which has been a staple of Peace Corps secondary projects since the late 1980s. There are two ways to do it: either by grid or by overhead projection. D Jan and I have to meet to discuss which will be the most feasible. The one below is pretty good, but my goal is to make ours even awesomer. More as it develops...

[The photo got deleted. Take my word for it that it was pretty good, but ours will be really good.]

songs: dreams (i'd be that for you if you'll be mine)

2010-03-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

On the Wall (2007)

Over- and underwhelmed by
stars in their own hidden daylight
keeping the synnergy while
you're overwhelming me

Robins are calling me so
I'll open up this old window
Songs for my humbled outside
linger and mark where my youth died

On the wall
On the wall
I'm on the wall
and I dropped the ball
on the wall

Tinder and kindling wood burns
quick as the tide of the day turns
somewhere; it's not so warm now
but that's how the sun keeps its head down

On the wall...

Slipping on rocks in rivers
waters grow deeper and shiver
until the depths that go nowhere
then force me ashore with a dead stare

Darwin is haunting me here
guarding his heart from his last fear
X marks the spot while I tremble
and note all the stones I resemble

On the wall...

Waiting on the Day (2009)

You're not letting me down
if I'm still standing
crawling back to my senses
digging up from the ground

Picket fences
fruit and wood
Threadbare cloth we'll have mended
and swear it's for our own good

What's certain in my dreamtime
is it feels like home
So wonder in your meantime
if it's something you'd consider
albeit unknown

So name a figure
on your well-bred love
I won't dare pull a trigger
loaded up with a dud

What's certain in my dreamtime
is it feels like home
So wonder in your meantime
if it's something you'd consider
albeit unknown

Waiting on the day for you to realize
that I'm holding my breath 'til I might die
Banking on a way that I could somehow be your prize
and I'd be that for you if you'll be mine.

Dreams (2010)

I thought that I might
cuz I thought I'd done right
Days, days after days
all of my cheap imitations were just such a waste

But now that I know what I do I'm sure
and now that I'm fat off the land land land
shipwrecking has its allure
but this is out of hand

Dreams are just what they seemed:
meaningless hallucinations that no one can glean
You might think I'm wrong
but I've got the guitar so that means that I've got the song
(doop doobie doo)

But maybe I'm wrong and for once you're right
and maybe my thorns are a tease
and maybe your dreams are out of sight
so much that I'll never ever
see what you can see

But I know, I know what dreams may come
and that you're there in every one
and in the back of my mind
you're keeping time
you're keeping time.

songs: island fever

2010-03-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

Eminent Domain

here upon the mountain
both fire and the night.
will it be forgotten
when i held you to me till the morning light?

are you free now?
can you say how?
i'll awaken when and only when it's real.

down here on the islands
held captive in a dream.
harbors beckon sweetly
more nowadays than we have ever seen.

these titles pull no water
just the weight of their parchment
so soon turned to dust.

who's the hero?
what's a villain?
alter egos caught between good deed and sin.

what is godhead?
where does time end?
old dominions lost to eminent domain.

Mercenary

I am cold and dark,
come sing me to sleep.
I have played my part,
this is not mine to keep.

The sea that surrounds us
flooded by tears.
the mercenary found us
been coming for years.

YOU CAN'T GO IT ALONE.

Surrenderers, Informants, Sneaks, and Spies

We can work together,
we can war and thieve,
we can take forever,
we can make believe.

Why can't I recall
the whites of my enemies' eyes?
Turncoats we are all,
surrenderers, informants, sneaks, and spies
betrayers of our own

Friends that once surrounded
beggars for empathy
in countries left unfounded
claimed by you and me.

let's make the rules,
let's make a flag
and keep things pure till they go bad
well we can always dream.

Why can't I recall
the whites of my enemies' eyes?
Turncoats we are all,
surrenderers, informants, sneaks, and spies
betrayers of our own lies.

damn your eyes tonight.

Leaving Losing Lost

hey lady
you're a hummingbird
you're a golden child

take warning
I've lost control
you drove me wild

your glory days
are not with me
you get a horizon

in simple tasks
I thought we'd do
not a single one

you slip between my fingers
and you're gone
your scent no longer lingers
in my room
I almost don't believe
you ever were
You must think you're
clever, coy, demure

leaving losing lost
leaving losing lost
heads we split the difference of the cost
tails we play the coin as it gets tossed
leaving losing lost.

Hot out of the oven

2010-03-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

Pretty fast turn-around on this one.

RIYL: morna, goodbyes, islands, or possibly also the band Beirut. Very likely to be debuted in its musical form during my group's upcoming COS (close of service) conference.

In the Hour of Fond Farewell

Dream with me
of islands in the sea.
They're not exactly what you'd think
and they might be on the brink
of anarchy.

So now it's time for leaving.
We knew this day would pass.
And though all our hearts are grieving
you know I must go on believing
that if you don't go you never can come back.

CHORUS
We've been through limbo not hell
just long enough for us to tell
that these stories we've earned might not sell
if we stay in the hour of fond farewell.

And for the longest time I hated
how your loss cut like a knife
and in letters clearly stated
but neither post-marked, sent, nor dated
that I need you back here in my life.

REPEAT CHORUS

Standard Breakup Fare

2010-03-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

From back in November, post-pikena. I admit she still makes my heart beat at about a 94 tempo.

Native Tongue (me)

Ease it away
but come back.
Come back so we can fall apart again.
It's so innocuous
to have no words to say
that I'm in love with an abstraction in your eyes...

And they're looking distant now to me
now that you are back within arm's reach.
I just forgot the perfect tense to say
that I wanted you -
that I'd have wanted you to stay.

You're so mysterious
with your life,
O with your native tongue.
And we were delirious,
so high on young bluffs,
but yours were younger and all the air was trapped within your lungs...

And you're sounding distant now to me
now that you are back within arm's reach.
I just forgot the perfect tense to say
that I wanted you...no -
that I'm wanting you...no -
that I've wanted you...no -
that I'd have wanted you to stay.

A E I owed you a chance
to tell me that it's over
but my ear's weren't
keen enough to hear drums breaking.
So if you want to speak your mind
speak slowly so I'm sure
and you won't hear my voice again.

The Devil's Resin/Updates

2010-03-11T04:39:00.000-08:00

Am going to lunch in about 40 minutes with two American college kids that Misty, Jon, and I met lest night at Café Sofia and then invited over for spaghetti dinner. They're sailing around the world doing research on how much plastic garbage there is in the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently plastic has been called the "devil's resin" for good reason. I'm going to take these two lads to Casa Bela, the Plateau district's finest (and only) bistro. Delicious, relatively cheap food, Billie Holiday, an old rusty tenor sax on the wall...where I go to start almost all of my lunch breaks this year, followed by reading under a tree in Praça António Lereno. Best part of my day.

T-minus: almost exactly three months until the start of John and Jessi's wedding season and my visit to Chicago. That means I have my deadline for finishing the first draft of my screenplay, which, if you don't know already, is called My Priscilla. Story by Patrick C. Panico, aka Uncle Pat.

After that, from late June to September, Mr. D Jan, PCV of São Francisco, and I are planning on doing a world map mural project. The idea is to mobilize his community to help us paint the whole world on a local wall. With luck, at least some Cape Verdeans might discover that China is, in fact, not located within Japan. Also, Cape Verde might actually be somewhat smaller than Brazil.

We finished another PCV newsletter last week and, thanks to Josh in Fogo, the formatting is incredibly professional looking. Misty and Chase did a stand-up job with the editing the large harvest of material too. Waiting on the bossman for final approval. With me as administrator, that means two newsletters down, two to go.

I need a camera! Anybody? I also want weird bottlecaps that you might find in your current location. Unrelated requests but both came to mind. They actually might be related, on second thought, as I figure out what I'm ultimately going to do with those bottlecaps, which would then probably result in some kind of photo documentation. A world map made out of bottlecaps from around the world?? Yeah, that ties this whole post up quite nicely actually.

It has begun...

2010-03-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Dearly Beloved,

So I currently know...let's see here...according to my most recent tally, I currently know 10 couples that are engaged. That's 20 individuals between the ages of 24 and 28 bound for holy matrimony. Nuts, right?

Before about six months ago I was always wondering when the great wedding season of my twenties would begin, and now I have my answer. What sucks is that I am going to miss a couple of the upcoming ones because of Peace Corps, but I'll try to swing as many as I get invited to after that. Party!

First up: Brother John and Jessi, June 19th, 2010. My capacity: BEST MAN. See you in about three months, Chicago!

A coupla tunes and some exciting news...

2010-01-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

Since learning how easy it is to use (Obrigado, Ricardo de Deus!), I've been spending a lot of my free time using GarageBand to record music in my apartment. Also, thanks to Dropbox software, I've been able to share these files with my brother John, who is adding his own touches of glory from across the great sea. It might be a little while until I think these demo tracks are ready for the public since they're missing some important elements, like bass guitar, for example. And drums that aren't fake drums. But I've also recorded some "solo" material that has turned out fairly decent. I wanted to share it with you, should you happen to miss my unschooled caterwauling.

Follow the links to listen. The first is a cover of a song most famously sung by Cape Verde's very own undisputed queen of the morna, Cesária Évora. It's called "Beijou Roubado," which means stolen kiss. Normally she sings in Creole, but this one's in more or less standard Portuguese because it was written by a Brazilian.

The second song I present to you is one that I wrote called "Cowboy Island." It's an instrumental and its melody came to me from inside a little seashell that I found one day. Thanks, seashell. To answer your question after you've listened to this song: Yes, my favorite parts to record were the claps 'n' snaps.

Here's my translation of the lyrics of the first song (I swapped the genders for my purposes as an homem!):

"Beijo Roubado"
(Adelino Moreira)

They say that a stolen kiss,
Even if out of love,

Is a crime on Earth;
In Heaven, it's a sin.
And each man
is a criminal and a sinner.

To me, that's all wrong;
A stolen kiss has got more heat.

How many kisses
have I gotten from my love?
I never counted.
Neither did she.
But not one of those kisses
was more of a kiss than
the first kiss,
which I pretended to deny
and she stole.

I actually got a chance to meet Cesária for a brief moment last year when she was dining at the same restaurant as me and the rest of my PC colleagues after a training conference. Here's a picture of her with some of my pals. Note the way she is intently staring at Adeyemi, who is Trinidadian-American, but she couldn't believe he wasn't Cape Verdean. She's a character. And one cool lady. If you have the chance, check out her new album, Nha Sentimento. It should be available in the U.S. by now and is the bomb.com/awesome.html. Highly recommended listening.

In other news, I'm going to be published! My friend Callie, a Returned PCV, has been writing a travel guide to Cape Verde for Other Places Publishing over the last year or so. She has graciously decided to include a shortened version of my Darwin article from this past October, and for this I am very excited. Not to mention that the whole book should be awesome since it was written by someone like Callie, who knows Cape Verde and understands both its intricacies and beauties. It'll be out in late February or early March, she tells me. Find out more about it here.

!!!!

On the Surfing of Couches

2009-12-23T09:44:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are regular visitors to this blog may have come across one of the three links down yonder on your left-hand side. No, not the Peace Corps or the World Factbook on Cape Verde. Those are pretty self-explanatory. I'm referring to the other one, CouchSurfing.

If you know me, you might have heard me ramble on and on about this website before. Or perhaps you already knew about it without me and for that, I commend thee. But for those of you not privy to those particular honors, CouchSurfing.com is a non-profit online community based on, you guessed it, "surfing" or crashing on people's couches. "Sounds like a bum's dream come true!" you might say, you grizzled old codger you. But actually it's pretty legit.

How it works is that once you set up a profile and show the whole community that you're more or less on the level, you can request to "surf" another member's couch, floor, extra bed, hammock, pile of hay, or whatever. This would most likely be in a fairly distant place where you otherwise would have to shell out big bucks for a hostel, hotel, or other lodging. The idea is that if you don't know anyone in your intended travel destination, there are plenty of people out there that would be happy to meet, greet, host, and, in some way or another, introduce you to the wonders of their specific homeland. What a concept, right?

You might still have doubts; I can tell by that look on your face. I'll get to those in a second.

According to ancient Internet lore, many moons ago the site's founder was planning a trip to Rekyavik, Iceland. Not knowing anyone there personally, he didn't think he could get to know the place very well just by staying in a hotel and wandering around town with his face in a tourist guidebook trying not to fall into the ocean. (For the record, before CouchSurfing, I have been such a guy.) Somehow (and I imagine this part might be related to his mastery of the webly arts that later produced CS), he got a hold of an e-mail list of students at a local university. Like a mighty blue whale in the open sea he sent out the call to the youth of fair Iceland. He simply asked if anyone would be interested in hosting him and showing him around from a native's perspective and, to his surprise, he received dozens of responses. He ended up staying with a wonderful host who showed him the real Rekyavik. None of those boring cod fishery tours for that intrepid wanderer! And voila, through a modern-day Viking saga CouchSurfing was born.

On the site's main page, the statistics show there are currently over 1.57 million members on the site, with over 1.6 million surf or host experiences. Most heartwarmingly, 113,875 "close friendships" have also resulted. Aw. Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside around this time of year to think of all those new pals across the globe, all united under the simple philosophy that hospitality is universal. I know I can count at least a dozen new friends - both American and international - that I've made as a result of my membership.

So to address those doubts you may still have lingering...I know, I know. Letting a stranger into your house? To sleep?? Why would anyone want to even hang out with a stranger, much less, house them? I can actually think of at least a couple of close friends of mine who I know would rather burn their house down than let a stranger sleep in it. But the system is more or less self-controlling, I've found. OK, so say you sign up. What next? Well, the first thing you can do, after putting up a picture and filling in some info about yourself, is become my friend. You can find me at couchsurfing.com/deejay_rigo. Then, if we know each other (and I hopefully like you in that case), I will gladly write you a reference to state some or many of your positive qualities, keeping in mind your potential role as both a host and guest. After awhile, especially if you actually go out and break your CouchSurfing cherry by hosting or surfing, you will start to both give and accumulate enough good feedback to really not have to worry about being considered a sketchball. Conversely, you'll know based on their many positive references (not to mention interests, personality, and other considerations) that a person requesting to surf with you will in no way, shape, or form try to molest your housepets, sniff your undies, or anything even remotely creepy. If you get really involved, other people will start to vouch for you and after you receive three vouches, you can start giving them out to people you deem worthy yourself. There's also a feature that confirms members' physical locations by sending a confirmation code through the snail mail.

Another great thing is that if you don't want to or simply can't host anyone, no one will oblige you to do so. For example, my status is currently "available for coffee or a drink," which means "I can't give you a place to stay right now, but I'm more than happy to meet you and show you around." Cape Verde being a little tricky to navigate for some foreigners, this is something I actually enjoy doing. No pressure, no worries.

Needless to say, there are much more dangerous ways to go about traveling the globe.

The only caveat that I would give to a would-be surfer is that sometimes hosts and guests, like anywhere else, can be a little much. As the saying goes, two things begin to really stink after three days. And I'm not talking about the halibut. For example, not long before joining the Peace Corps I hosted a very friendly, very outgoing, and very present young lady. She was in Chicago from out East checking out grad schools, but she didn't really know the city that well so signed up with CouchSurfing and threw in her lot with me. Now, her weekend-long visit was just fine, albeit a bit intense, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little happy to see her off on Sunday afternoon. Her seeming a-OK with basing a close friendship on one weekend, she stayed in touch, so much so that she even got me to agree to planning a roadtrip together. Me being a sucker for fast-talkers, I went along with it. I figured it would help subsidize the costs of the roadtrip I was already planning with my best friend, whom I've known for over a decade. Why not, right? Roadtrips, CouchSurfing? New friends, old friends? Same hippie-dippie gravy train, right? Well, I can now safely say that going on a cross-country roadtrip with someone you hardly know is akin to somehow being called in to perform open-heart surgery after your first week of biology classes as a pre-med. It just won't work out. Trust me. As a result of our close-quartered ordeal with that psycho hosebeast, my best friend and I are even closer. A very positive spin, yes, but the truth is that if I hadn't been about to commit myself to two years of governmental service overseas, the Oregon highway system would've had one very ornery hitchhiker on its hands.

But other than that little glitch, I highly recommend this weird little experiment in cutting out the middle man while traveling. Since I joined in 2005, I've been a host (in Madison, Chicago, and here in Praia) much more often than I've surfed (only three times, in Winnipeg, Boise, and Kansas City), but I look forward to staying involved and getting as much out of this as possible.

I won't say much else, since if your interest has been piqued by my endoresement you should just go ahead and sign up. Then you can get the details of my many great experiences from my profile. Don't forget to leave me a good reference.

Happy holidays and surf's up!

"Running" back to normal

2009-12-02T06:21:00.000-08:00

After reading some other Cape Verde PCV's amazing blogs, I'm realizing that my own postings are much too few and far between. I guess that it's in my nature to kind of binge and purge - in the sense of binging on experiences and then purging in long, detailed articles (see the Darwin post) - but I still want to keep friends and family in the loop, as it were. That said, I'm going to try to write shorter, more frequent posts on this badboy.

So what's new with ol' Robjob? Things are going fine here in Praia, though there have been a couple rough patches lately.

Firstly, my girlfriend and I split up about a month ago, on Halloween actually, though I like to think that didn't have much of anything to do with it. Or did it...? That damn Frankenstein is a wily bastard. Reasons? Well, sometimes things just run their course, especially when two people are in very different points of their life and, what's more, separated by pretty huge gaps in language, culture, and future plans. That's the most adult way to put it, I guess. Overall though, I'm just grateful for having had the experience dating such a sweet, beautiful person, not to mention the fact that it was a relationship conducted entirely in Creole. That was a challenge that I'd never encountered before, and I learned a lot in the process. As a language geek, I felt like a hero, to be totally honest. And clocking in at about six months, I now have my world record length in relationships on the books. Go team!

Another sad thing that happened soon later was finding out that my family's last living cairn terrier, Maggie, had died. She was my favorite of all the 5 dogs we've ever had because she was such a character. I'll miss her a lot. Thus ends the Sarwark family's 20 years of owning members of that particular breed of small, strong-willed goofballs. Here's a picture of her cute, smelly head, taken by my sister not long before she passed:

R.I.P. Margaret T. Dog-Sarwark, 1997-2009

After a few days of being pretty bummed by these things, I decided to snap out of it and stop being such a sadsack panty-waste. So I did what I do best - hang out with myself and enjoy the company. What I mean by this is that I started to channel those not-so-pleasant feelings of "what just happened?" into my creative and professional work. As a result, I'm proud to say that I've completed and/or contributed to the following:

1. A very admirable and comprehensive World AIDS Day program at Uni-CV (more on that soon)

2. At least 4 completed new songs, with more in the works

3. A revival of work on my screenplay, which I started in May 2007 and swore I'd finish during my freetime in Cape Verde

4. The latest PC/Cape Verde newsletter, of which I'm the administrator

5. A business plan for my hypothetical company in Chicago

6. More progress on the Kriolu-English phrase book project, though I've more or less handed the reins over to an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who now lives and works in Cape Verde and isn't constrained by PC regulations

7. A pretty decent beard

8. Making sure (mainly using "I" statements) that my roommate and I can make it the rest of our service without resorting to blows

I've learned that if you have any kind of emotional pain inside you, the best thing to do is to get it out through good works, be they creative, physical, social, intellectual, or whatever else contributes in some way to the world around you. There's no use to sitting around brooding about things and becoming more and more bitter as time goes by. Just like having a bad case of the runs, your body is telling you that there's a change in need, a catharsis that you must embrace (tee hee). Thus, in a manner of speaking, in times of turmoil or challenge, you better poop or get off the pot, buddy.

And that, my friends, is how you go from talking about a break-up to using poop as a metaphor for better living. Ta da!

More soon.

Recipe: Porky Panico

2009-10-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry, little buddy...you gots to die!

A little back story: This is a recipe that was passed on to me by my mother. Despite her Italian ancestry, I think it’s actually more Midwestern than anything. It was, in turn, passed on to her by her own mother so I guess you could call this an heirloom dish. It was nameless until recently, when I thought I’d honor both of my forbears, as well as our semi-famous relative of the same name.

Frank “Porky” Panico, or “Uncle Porky”, was married to my grandma’s first-cousin Claire. Coincidentally, both cousins married men with the last name Panico who were both professional musicians (my gramps is himself quite the accordion god). Porky was a celebrated jazz trumpet player, composer, and arranger in Chicago, active throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I actually own a cassette tape of him playing, most notably, alongside a very young Wayne Newton in the early ‘60s. No joke. He was absolutely brilliant.

But let’s get back to the food. When asked about the recipe’s ultimate origins, my mom always says, “Umm, Grandma says it’s Japanese or something.” Maybe on account of the rice? This seems unlikely though, unless Grandpa P.J. somehow picked it up and then brought it home to Grandma from his tour of Okinawa during WWII. Either way, this was the first dish I ever learned to make by myself while in college, and I’ve found it’s very doable here in Cape Verde as well. Obviously it’s not for the veggie set, but I think all you carnivores out there will really enjoy it. Try it and let me know what you think. Make Uncle Porky proud.

Ingredients:
3-4 pork chops (costeletas de porco)
2-3 cups ketchup
1/2-1 cup water
5-10 drops Worcestershire sauce (molho inglês)
2-4 drops lemon juice
1 pinch salt
pepper to taste
1/2 medium white onion, sliced
1-1.5 cups mushrooms, sliced or whole
1 tbsp salt
1-2 cups rice OR 3-4 cups egg noodles (either one is equally tasty)

To make the sauce, in a separate bowl mix the ketchup, water, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, pinch of salt, and pepper. Put this to the side. Slice the onion into strips. Prepare the mushrooms to taste. Put to the side.

Lightly salt a frying pan, just enough to cover the bottom. On medium heat, place the pork chops in the pan. Add the onions and mushrooms. Flip the pork chops when lightly browned. Sautee the onions and mushrooms lightly in the juice from the chops mixed with the salt. When the chops are browned on both sides and the onions and mushrooms are sautéed, cover the contents with the pre-prepared sauce and bring the heat to low. Let simmer for 30-40 minutes. Stir regularly to prevent pork chops from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

While simmering, put a pot of water to boil. Add the rice or noodles. When they reach your desired tenderness, drain the water (you know the drill). Place the pork chops, onions, mushrooms, and sauce on a bed of rice or noodles. Garnish with a sprig of cilantro and enjoy, you hungry so-and-so!

In the Footsteps of Darwin

2009-10-05T04:31:00.000-07:00

An encounter with the famous naturalist's descendants rekindles a small nation's sense of historical significance

Young Darwin: Journeyman

Since the start of 2009, the world has been celebrating two very significant and related events: both the 200th anniversary of naturalist Charles Darwin’s birth (1809) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species (1859). Here, 375 miles off the coast of West Africa in the small island nation of Cape Verde, the observation of the International Year of Darwin takes on a certain degree of additional resonance. In 1832, the young Darwin visited the principal island of Santiago at the start of his famous five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.

This early point in his career marked where Darwin began to formulate many of his ideas on natural selection and the theory of evolution, which came as a direct result of his first-hand observations of the plants, animals, and geology of the many places he visited. Over the course of the worldwide journey, he began to note the crucial relationship between organisms and their habitats, most famously in the case of various species and subspecies of finches found throughout the islands of the Galapagos archipelago. What is also clear is that as a result, Darwin came to more fully grasp the vast diversity of life on Earth, otherwise a difficult conceptual task for someone constrained in his or her knowledge of only one ecosystem or climate. The voyage would ultimately be Darwin’s only time spent outside of Britain.

Under somewhat different circumstances, I arrived in Cape Verde in July 2008 as a trainee in the U.S. Peace Corps. By September I had sworn in as a Volunteer in the education sector and had moved to Praia, the nation’s capital, on Santiago. In the midst of settling in to the rhythms of a new and foreign environment, I failed to recognize what 2009 would mean in connection to Darwin. Not long after the New Year though, a friend casually handed me an article that had appeared in the national weekly newspaper A Semana.

“Here,” he said, “You’re into Darwin, right?” I remembered Darwin’s connection to Cape Verde. To be honest though, I only skimmed the text. But it had a lot of great old pictures and drawings too, so I hung the two-page spread on my bare apartment wall, where it remains. We Peace Corps Volunteers are masters at interior decorating on the cheap.

Around this same time, in the weeks following Darwin’s birthday on February 12th, various programs including lectures, presentations, publications, and other activities were also announced for the year. The vast majority of these have been organized under the aegis of the University of Cape Verde. But groups as varied as local primary and secondary schools, the municipal chamber of Praia, and the Brazilian and Portuguese cultural centers have also joined in the observations.

Banner announcing 2009 as the International Year of Darwin, on the façade of the University of Cape Verde’s main campus in Praia, Cape Verde’s capital.

Back in March of 2008, when I was invited by the Peace Corps to serve in this country, I read Darwin’s account in The Voyage of the Beagle. Almost immediately, Cape Verde, then a sleepy outpost of the Portuguese Empire, takes center stage in the narrative. It was the ship’s first port of call. The 22-year-old aspiring naturalist arrived at the Port of Praia on January 16th, 1832, only sixteen days after leaving Plymouth, England. He goes on to speak of a dry, rather forbidding place, one that, “viewed from the sea, wears a desolate aspect.” Hoping to find more encouraging remarks, I read on. He soon steps back from first reactions and puts things into perspective: “The scene, as beheld through the hazy atmosphere of this climate, is one of great interest; if, indeed, a person fresh from sea who has just walked for the first time in a grove of coconut trees can be a judge of anything but his own happiness.”

I was intrigued by this sense of contradiction, as I am still today – part tropical island oasis, part volcanic desert, Cape Verde is anything but easy to categorize. Due to close links with Portugal and the lack of tribal conflict, the islands have always fared relatively well. Today, only 34 years after independence, Cape Verde by far boasts the highest standards of living of the West Africa region. In 2007 its status was raised by the United Nations to “developing country” from that of a “least developed country.” Nevertheless, now, as it was in Darwin’s time, there are still severe limitations on the nation’s growth potential due to the lack of natural resources and, thus, employment. The Cape Verdean diaspora is considerable and far-flung as a result. For example, about an equal number of Cape Verdeans lives in the United States as in the entire archipelago itself (around 500,000).

Darwin further describes a visit to the village of São Domingos, north of Praia. He notes “the scenery of St. Domingo (sic) possesses a beauty totally unexpected, from the prevalent gloomy character of the rest of the island.” Indeed, as you ascend to the island’s rugged interior, the volcanic wastelands give way to verdant mountains and valleys. There he also witnessed and remarked on a form of dance and singing performed by the local girls and women: “As soon as we approached near, they suddenly all turned round, and covering the path with their shawls, sung with great energy a wild song, beating time with their hands upon their legs.” Although unnamed by Darwin, this was undoubtedly an example of the still very popular style of batuku, a quintessential element of Santiago’s traditional culture.

In a place so overlooked both in Darwin’s time and at present, even these brief comments gave me valuable perspective on what would soon be my reality. Reading more about his adventures, my vague wanderlust became more focused. I found that his sense of seeing things as a part of a whole, as a part of the intertwining cosmos of both the organic and inorganic, would be an important notion to hang onto.

Darwin’s Legacy

The main part of my assignment is at the reitoria (“dean’s office”) of the University of Cape Verde. Here I’ve often found myself in the role of liaison between the Portuguese- and English-speaking worlds. What this means is that in addition to tutoring, interpreting, teaching courses in linguistics, and corresponding with other institutions, I also translate some of Uni-CV’s online news bulletins into English for wider readership. In early September, as I read through a new batch of Darwin-related events, an obscure Portuguese word made me do a double-take. Its root, neto; “grandson” or “grandchild”, was familiar, but its specific meaning was unclear. I consulted my dictionary. Tetraneto; “great-great-grandchild”. Two of Charles Darwin’s direct descendants were en route to the islands, and Uni-CV would be there to receive them.

I knew that I could be of help to whatever was planned for the two of them – Randal Keynes and Sarah Darwin, both of London. I was not explicitly assigned to do anything, so I made my availability and interest clear. I sent an email to a colleague about it and she quickly put me in touch with the point-person, a Uni-CV biology professor named Ana Hopffer Almada.

“Who will be acting as interpreter?” I asked, knowing that fluent English speakers (outside of the English Studies Department) are few and far between. This seemed to strike a chord and I was given the OK to meet Ana and Mr. Keynes at a local elementary school on the following day, Thursday, September 17th. Keynes would be there with her to make his first stop and visit with the young students.

Randal Keynes is the author of the book Annie’s Box, which details the important relationship between Darwin and his youngest daughter, whose early death shook his religious beliefs before the publication of On the Origin of Species. It was adapted for the screen and just recently released in select countries under the title Creation. Keynes also holds a chair on the Darwin Trust and lectures extensively on conservation and the life of his famous ancestor. As of late, he’s become the de facto ambassador of the extended Darwin clan. He is deeply interested in forming a bond with places like Cape Verde as well, he says, in the form of an international network of schools in countries that Darwin visited. “But we want this to be open to all students, everywhere in the world too, of course,” Keynes announced to the children of Nova Assembleia primary school. “We want every student to have the chance to explore his or her world through science.”

Ana Hopffer Almada and Randal Keynes study a calabaceira, the fruit of the large baobab tree in the background.

Later that day I met Sarah Darwin, Keynes' distant cousin. A biologist herself, she is currently circumnavigating the globe on board the Dutch clipper ship Stad Amsterdam. The project is a joint collaboration between a Dutch and a Belgian television station and is following the route of the Beagle over the course of 2009. The idea is to revisit Darwin's stops and take note of what has changed and what has remained the same since his time. The results are to be released in the form of a documentary series on both stations.

I helped translate – I hope not too amateurishly – for Mr. Keynes over the course of his two days here. I assisted Ana in introducing him to Cape Verde in general. I joined him and Sarah as they visited and measured the very baobab trees their forebear did at a village called Trindade. I met Sarah’s two young sons, who drew colourful pictures of the same. We literally walked in Darwin’s footsteps.

On the second day, Friday, Mr. Keynes, Professor Almada, and I made our own visit to São Domingos. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay long enough to seek out some batuku dancers, but he did have a chance to speak to the faculty of the local high school. He spoke about the town’s importance to Darwin’s visit, and the importance of science education.

It had rained recently and the hills were a bright green as we quickly made our way back to Praia. “It’s a shame he couldn’t have seen how lush it looks in the wet season,” Keynes commented. Darwin had only seen the landscape during the dry season that dominates most of the year.

“This is the time when Cape Verde [‘Green Cape’] actually lives up to its name,” said Professor Ana, through me.

“Well, at least the ‘green’ part,” I added. Due to a historical fluke, this country’s name has almost nothing to do with its actual characteristics. Think about it: How can an archipelago also be a cape? Such is Cabo Verde.

“This is an interesting place, isn’t it?” said Mr. Keynes.

Footsteps

As I witnessed the whirlwind of classroom visits, field trips, and interviews, I felt compelled to take a step back and consider the implications. What does Charles Darwin really mean to a place such as Cape Verde, one of many lands that he visited and commented on between 1832 and 1837 – over 170 years ago? Should the average Cape Verdean, for example, be expected to care about this whatsoever? What should educators or administrators try to impart about him in particular, if anything? And, moreover, what does Charles Darwin really mean to the world of 2009? In sum: Why should we care?

Much of this came to light on that Friday evening, the 18th, at the inauguration of a street dedicated to Darwin’s visit to Praia. In true West African style, the event began about 45 minutes late, but the mood was loose and lively like a block party, perfect for an early Friday evening. Some women and a throng of small children mingled as the Cape Verdean Army band assembled, enjoying the festive ambiance. Semi-stray dogs poked around, on the perpetual search for scraps. As the band began their fanfare, Randal and Sarah finally arrived from another excursion. They gathered around the covered blue signpost with a few local dignitaries, including the Vice-President of Uni-CV and Praia’s mayor. The veil was drawn and the simple, unassuming placard was revealed to a round of applause. Everyone looked happy.

But once the local news reporters and photographers had captured their sound bites and snapshots, I felt a nagging impression of a disconnect, that the local people, the residents of this humble neighborhood, would be looking up at this sign for years and years to come, possibly with only the slightest notion of who this Charles Darwin person was. Add to that the rantings of a dreadlocked street preacher on the evils of this white man and his “racist” teachings, and I wondered if perhaps the sign was not long for this world. Professor Ana admitted to me that she felt that she had failed to properly inform the locals about the sign’s placement in their community and what it meant. But to her credit, she spent a good half hour after the ceremony talking to anyone interested, happily explaining a bit about Charles Darwin and why they should be proud to be a part of this slice of history.

Sign marking the newly christened Avenida Charles Darwin. It reads, “He passed through the City of Praia in January 1832.”

Darwin and Keynes with local dignitaries and residents of Lém Ferreira, Praia, site of the sign.

Perhaps I’m just used to Darwin’s name alone sparking caustic debate in the U.S., but I hope that the right impression is imparted here, be it in the schools, through the media, or by word of mouth. He was not a racist monster. He was not a soulless robot whose goal was the end of religion. Nor was he anything close to a nihilist or a fatalist. Above all, Charles Darwin was a beholder to the awe of nature.

After the unveiling, I headed to Quintal da Música, a downtown Praia restaurant famous for its live music. I sat down for the buffet dinner and a drink with the Dutch film crew, an interesting lot of chain-smoking thinkers and adventurers. Along with them was their own guide and interpreter, a middle-aged man who reminded me a bit of a Cape Verdean Jimmy Buffett. I had met him the day before at the baobab trees, but I hadn’t caught his name, so I asked. “Munaia,” he said, which was his nickname. He told me that he was a SCUBA instructor and gym teacher. He also mentioned his full name, of which I honestly only caught one part, Charles. I remember this because I thought maybe he was translating the common name Carlos in order to make a connection to Darwin.

“My main interest,” he added, “is shipwrecks. I wrote a book about the ones off the islands of Cape Verde. They’re everywhere. You just have to know where to look.” I could see why he had joined up with the equally inquisitive Dutchmen; he was a lifelong learner and teacher, a man fascinated by his own country and its biodiversity, history, and culture. “I’ve always felt a connection to Darwin,” he said. “He always asked questions.”

I went home soon later. Before turning out the lights, I took a glance at the now months-old newspaper article on my wall. I figured that it was about time I read the whole thing. As I did, I thought about everything that had happened during the previous two days, about Darwin and nature and long voyages of discovery. I thought about Cape Verde and everything I’d learned about it in the last year. Everything that I’d learned about myself in the process. And then I noticed something for the first time: the name of the article’s author. It was the very man I had just been chatting with; Charles was, in fact, his middle name and not a translation. On top of everything else, he is also one of Cape Verde’s very own Darwin experts and, I recalled from our conversation, an occasional contributor to A Semana. I let out a chuckle of realization, smiled, and then turned out the light.

So does Charles Darwin matter to a tiny group of salty islands in the Atlantic? Does he matter to the average person? Absolutely. He’s available to anyone who seeks him out. He’s there for anyone who wants to broaden their perspective on this planet Earth. For anyone who wants to appreciate the diversity of life that exists and, hopefully, be a part of keeping it that way. His ideas are for anyone who wants to keep asking questions. And in a place just awakening from the shadows of colonialism and obscurity, now full of potential and possibilities, that kind of critical thinking can make all the difference in the world.

More on BSC exchange program...

2009-08-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here is another nice little article about the four students who today, after a decent amount of airport drama on Wednesday, are finally set to leave for a semester at Bridgewater State College near Boston, MA.

http://www.unicv.edu.cv/ltimas/estudantes-prometem-aproveitar-estadia-na-bridgewater-college-3.html

Bridgewater State College

2009-08-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I've been working with four Uni-CV undergrads on getting prepared to leave for a semester abroad at Bridgewater State College, near Boston. Here's hoping everything goes as planned for their departure tomorrow; I never realized how difficult it is to get to the U.S. for most foreigners, until now.

Check out the below article from unicv.edu.cv for all the details. Translation compliments of yours truly (with help from my new best friend, google.translate.com).

Uni-CV students to depart for study abroad programs at Bridgewater State College

Written by Arminda Barros, Gab/Imagem Uni-CV
Monday, 24 August 2009

Two groups of students from the University of Cape Verde - four undergraduates and three post-graduates in English Studies - will depart on Wednesday, August 26th for Boston, Massachussetts, where, at Bridgewater State College (BSC), they will attend a semester and one academic year, respectively.

Until December 18th of this year, the group of undergraduate students will participate in an exchange program with the American university, which is dedicated to specific courses for foreigners with the goal of the improvement of teaching English as a foreign language.

According to an American professor at Uni-CV, Robert Sarwark, this exchange is an opportunity for these students to live for an entire semester in an English-speaking country. This is the second time that undergraduate students from the Uni-CV will have benefitted from this program, which was first implemented under the cooperation protocol between BSC and Uni-CV. In 2008, five undergraduate and three post-graduate students participated.

At the master's level in English Studies, the Uni-CV is sending three students for an entire academic year. They will attend BSC with the purpose of improving their skills and knowledge in the areas of methodologies and new methods of teaching English as a foreign language. All are English teachers and will also take this opportunity to write thesis works.

As explained by Professor Robert Sarwark, the selection of these students followed certain criteria, namely having a very high level of performance in the English language, being an overall good student, good behavior and maturity, in addition to filling out an application form. Also in discussion are plans to bring U.S. teachers to Cape Verde to improve their skills in teaching the Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese languages.

Bridgewater State College is one of the premier U.S. institutions in technology and higher education. It has allied itself with Uni-CV to help further develop its technology. Its president, Dana Mohler-Faria, is an American of Cape Verdean descent and a distinguished figure of the Cape Verdean diaspora in the United States. He is the only African-American among 11 presidents in the history of Bridgewater State College and is the second Cape Verdean-American to ever preside over an institution of higher education in the United States.

President Mohler-Faria visited Uni-CV as the head of a delegation from BSC at the end of March of this year. It was at this point that he signed and renewed the cooperation agreement which thus provided spots for undergraduate and postgraduate Cape Verdean students in education and computer science.

Cape Verde in the news

2009-08-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Quickly now, before they both disappear from the ether of world news coverage, here are two interesting articles regarding Cape Verde.

This one is about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the CV island of Sal last Thursday and Friday:

A SEMANA: Hillary Clinton departs from Cape Verde enchanted - Primeiro diário caboverdiano em linha - A SEMANA
Fonte: www.asemana.publ.cv

And this one is about international piracy and/or the suspicion of piracy, wherin the involved vessel was found relatively close to the Cape Verdean archipelago:

NEW YORK TIMES: INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE August 18, 2009 Russia Says Ship and Crew Are Found Safe By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Travel Recap, Part 1

2009-08-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a good long while since I've updated this badboy, but now that I'm back in Praia and have internet access at work, what better time than now to fill you in?

After an 18 hour delay, I finally left dusty Praia, Cape Verde on the morning of Saturday, July 11th. Fortunately, the airline, TACV, had the courtesy to call me and alert me of this change in schedule before I ever left for the airport the day before. As is common here, TACV is notorious for their lack of punctuality. Apparently it was due to "bad weather" near Boston, the flight's destination, but upon checking the weather for the region it was 78, clear and sunny. I suspect it might have had something to do with the pilot just not feeling like leaving right then. I was happy to spend one last night with the pikena, though. I'm also happy to report that after a couple months of typical male commitmentophobia on my part that things are going very well between us. Unfortunately she'll be away on her home island of Santo Antão until mid-October, but more on that in a bit. Who knew that being in a relationship could feel so nice? Leave it to my twisted ass to take 3 months to realize it.

On the flight, an 8-year-old Cape Verdean kid was sitting between me and a nice young mother at the window. He was a little trooper, considering it was his first long flight. Amazingly, the young scamp stayed put and hardly complained at all during the entire seven hour flight. He never even got up out of his seat. Wait, that's kind of odd, don't you think? Now, don't even try to put this on me; window seat lady and I had repeatedly asked him if he had to go "fazi xixi", or at least stretch his legs a little. His guardians on the plane, by the way, were damn neglectful and seemed to be distant family members. They were, furthermore, huge dickheads for leaving this kid with us, total strangers, also by the way. But he said no the several times we asked, he did not need to go. What can you do? Force a kid to go take a leak?

We were so damn close though; only in the last ten minutes in the air did it finally begin. The squirming. The looks of pained discomfort. The tears. The desperate holding of the crotchal area. Just as we were landing at Logan, mere moments from the fasten seatbelt sign being turned off, it all came to a head. Seven plus hours of regular beverage service inflicted on one tiny bladder...

So we arrived in Boston sometime that same afternoon, around 4 or 5 pm, but I had missed my original flight to Chicago by several hours already. I made it through with only a cursory questioning from customs: "Ya comin' from Cape Verde [pronounced VEH-di in Bostonian], huh? You're not bringing in any of that tuna, are ya? None of that GROG? Ok, good." The Peace Corps-issued passport certainly helped expedite things as well. But I'd stop me too if I were a customs officer watching a planeful of Cape Verdeans getting their bags and out walks this possibly Portuguese-lookin' dude dressed like a 1970s backpacker.

Not being in any particular rush, I checked in on stand-by on the last flight out that night and then treated myself to my first meal on American soil in a year. I splurged on a Maine lobster sandwich and a microbrew at the terminal's finest brew-pub. Adding a touch of authenticity to the scene, a couple of genuine Massholes screamed at the Red Sox game on the bar's TV.

At last, I was back in the land of my forefathers.

More to come...

Link: Cape Verde's Cidade Velha is declared UNESCO World Heritage Site

2009-06-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

A very auspicious occasion. Check out this link to a recent article found on the Uni-CV website (it's in English):

http://www.unicv.edu.cv/ltimas/cidade-velha-declarada-patrim-nio-mundial-da-humanidade-3.html

Phrase Book Project

2009-06-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

First of all, I want to let the world know that I'll be back in States from Friday, July 10th until Tuesday, July 21st. Most of this time will be spent in Chicago, so if we're pals and you live there, make sure to get in touch so we can catch up, have an adult beverage or two, or just shoot the breeze. I promise not to bore you with pretentious tales of international adventure. Mostly I'll just be glad to see home, I figure. Wing me an e-mail: rmsarwark@gmail.com.

As for the month and a half since I last wrote on this blog, I've definitely been pretty busy lately. Some of this time has been spent dealing with pages and pages of Portuguese to English translations for an upcoming conference, sticking with tutoring obligations, working on developing international partnerships, and finishing up the semester with my linguistics class.

But speaking of the latter, one of the things that we've been doing as a part of the class is a project that you might find interesting. Below is the run-down. I'm hoping that it will continue into the summer and next year, as the preliminary results were very promising and constructive. Also, as I am pretty sure I won't be doing any more classroom teaching next year due to an influx of new teachers, this seems like a very strong candidate for a secondary project. More news on this as it develops...

English – Cape Verdean Creole Phrase Book Project

Objective: To research, compile, translate, and compose materials to be included in a handbook of useful Cape Verdean Creole phrases for English-speaking tourists, visitors, and resident foreigners in the Republic of Cape Verde. If possible, this work could be published for mass consumption.

Inspiration: For such a young and relatively small nation, in the past decade or so Cape Verde has seen much growth in development, tourism, foreign investment, and other contacts of an international nature (not to mention emigration/immigration). In order to harbor a deeper appreciation and understanding of Cape Verdean culture, people, needs, and other important considerations, resident foreigners in particular must be familiar with a more advanced level of phraseology beyond simple grammar, commands, or other basic linguistic items.

Due to the large population and cultural influence of Brazil in particular, Portuguese-language grammars and phrase books are readily available. However, as anyone who has visited and/or lived in Cape Verde knows, the “language of the heart” and furthermore that of day-to-day discourse of almost all Capeverdeans is their own creole tongue, Kriolu, and not Portuguese per-se. The current lack of existing materials in Kriolu phraseology at an intermediate/advanced level has heightened the demand for such a work.

Focus: Therefore, the focus of this work will be idiomatic expressions and pertinent phrases pertaining to events and situations such as:

- dining out;
- telling jokes;
- socializing (e.g., making friends, romantic situations, etc.);
- insults (user discretion to be advised!);
- maxims and proverbs;
- day-to-day needs (e.g., getting a hair cut, shopping, having a phone installed, paying bills, etc.);
- body language/other forms of communication;
- other useful real-world scenarios

Other considerations: As Kriolu is not yet a completely formally standardized language (although it is currently in the process), its variants exist on a dialect continuum throughout the Cape Verdean archipelago. As such, consideration will be given to these variations while also acknowledging the somewhat higher probability of users travelling, working, or living in the Sotavento (southern) islands due to the importance of the strategic location of Santiago Island and furthermore, the importance of Praia as the nation’s capital.

Execution: After covering the most important concepts of linguistics, we will effectively put them to practical use as lexicographers, dialectologists, and “phraseologists”, also keeping in mind the needs and expectations of the potential reader/user as well as the potential recipient (native speaker/hearer).

We will break down sections according to related situations and scenarios (see “Focus”) in which certain common phrases might come up. Each section will be assigned to a small group, which will work with me to isolate specific situations and then translate accordingly. The sections will then be edited and compiled in manuscript form.

POP QUIZ

2009-05-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

1.) You are giving a review session for an upcoming exam in your Intro to Linguistics class. One of your students passes a copy of the Portuguese translation of Women, Charles Bukowski's 1978 semi-autobiographical, sexually charged novel, to another student.

Do you:

a.) Confiscate the book;

b.) Ask the student to please pay closer attention;

c.) Both a.) and b.);

d.) Ask the student to please put the book away;

e.) Watch as your own brain explodes from the knowledge that 1. Bukowski has been translated into Portuguese, 2. a Cape Verdean is actually reading for pleasure, and 3. not to mention a book you yourself have highly enjoyed in the past;

f.) Give the student a high-five; OR

g.) Both e.) and f.)...then quickly followed by a.)?

The mother of all blog postings

2009-05-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

So what's to report today, on this most maternal of holidays? Well, needless to say, I'll be calling the ol' materfamilias later tonight. It sure would be nice to see her in person, of course. To say the least, my mom is very special to me and I owe her a LOT of gratitude, not just for raising me into the reasonably well-adjusted person I am today, but for being such a cool, interesting, and delightfully complex person in general.

My mother is the product of a mid-century urban America, a still - at the time - very much Italian-American Chicago from which I have been somewhat removed throughout my life. Regardless of having grown up in the much more nondescript northern suburbs, this association has always been an important part of my identity, one which I'll always relate to no matter where I find myself (for example, here in Cape Verde, a country most Chicagoans or Midwesterners have likely never even heard of). I owe her not only that kind pragmatic but world-weary sensibility, but also my sense of humor, moderate level of "street smarts" (she'll always have me beat in this, I admit, especially in terms of knowing how to "read" people and think quickly on her toes), and furthermore the understanding of how important it is to follow one's heart in all things in life. No one else has been so important in this regard, and I don't know what I would have turned out like had I not had that kind of no-BS, realistic, yet always hopeful influence on my life. You're the best, mom, and I love and miss you a ton.

A very Happy Mother's Day to my mom, Mimi, and all the amazing moms of the world.

Props for the Translation Team

2009-04-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

This article appeared on the Uni-CV website (http://unicv.edu.cv/) last Thursday...you can check below it for my English translation. It was written by my colleague Chissana, who has just been promoted to doing more press/PR work for the university. She's also a pretty darn good English speaker herself.

For the record, I also realize there's some interesting meta-level stuff going on here too, considering this is a blog post that includes a translation of an article about translating articles. Where's Charlie Kaufman when you need him?

Alunos do Curso de Inglês traduzem o site

Quinta-feira, 09 April 2009

Um grupo de alunos da Uni-CV, do terceiro ano do Curso de Língua Inglesa, está a trabalhar desde Janeiro na tradução deste site.

Segundo o coordenador do grupo, o professor Robert Sarwark, a ideia de formar com os estudantes este clube de tradução do site veio na sequência de outras actividades extracurriculares que ajudam os estudantes deste nível de ensino a por em prática os conhecimentos adquiridos.Foi uma questão de unir o últil ao agradável, o site precisa de ser traduzido para chegar a outros públicos e os estudantes precisam de praticar a tradução.

Para Edson Santos, um dos alunos envolvidos neste projecto, a iniciativa é “muito interessante, não só para a Universidade como também para o aluno. Proporciona-nos a oportunidade de praticar duas línguas (português e Inglês) ao mesmo tempo”. “A nossa participação nesse clube dá-nos ainda a possibilidade de nos familiarizarmos com diversos temas académicos, como palestras, conferências, etc.”, acrescenta.

A ambição do grupo é que este exercício público lhes permita ganhar calos na área da tradução e assim chegar ao mercado de trabalho com um nível acima da média.

Para conferir os resultados desta parceria entre a Uni-CV e os seus alunos só tem que ir ao canto superior direito do site e clicar onde diz EN.

TRANSLATION:

Students of English program translate site

Thursday, April 09, 2009

A group of Uni-CV students in their third year of the English Language Program have been working on translating this site into English since January.

According to the group's coordinator, Robert Sarwark, the idea to recruit students for this translation club came as a result of wanting more extracurricular activities that could help students at this level to put their new knowledge and skills into practice. It was a question of killing two birds with one stone since the site must be translated in order to be accessible to a more substantial readership, as well as since the students had a need to pratice their translation skills.

For Edson Santos, one of the students involved in this project, the initiative is "very interesting, not just for the University, but also for students. It has given us an opportunity to practice two languages (Portuguese and English) at the same time. Our participation in this club gives us even more chances to become familiar with various academic subjects, such as workshops, conferences, etc.," he added.

The group's aim is that this public exercise might allow them to gain headway in the field of translation and thus enter into the job market with a level ahead of the curve.

To check the results of the this partnership between Uni-CV and its students, all you have to do is go to the top right bar of this site and click on "EN".

The Feeding Habits of the North American Man-Lizard

2009-03-10T10:38:00.001-07:00

I've decided I'm a cold-blooded vertebrate. And I mean this in the most pleasant of ways.

Every day I go into work at the reitoria at about 8:00 or 8:30 am. Most days I start first thing by tutoring one of the nice people that work here, which is the main administrative office of the University of Cape Verde. In most cases, these tutees are the equivalents of deans, assistant deans, or other such administrators who want to improve their English skills. If you remember a recent post that was in Portuguese, after the New Year I more actively recruited students in order to better fulfill my job description as per Uni-CV's needs. Despite a huge response, many have not been able to actually follow through on meeting regularly, but two or three have shown themselves to be real rock stars, if only in the sense that they make an effort to keep our set class schedule. I prefer to focus on those who meet me half-way than worry too much about folks who understandably just don't have much time to study a foreign language, for some more or less from scratch. So it goes.

Anyway, these sessions typically last about an hour. We go over things - depending on the student's level - like irregular verbs, new vocabulary, interesting idiomatic expressions, or, many times, just basic conversation in English. I usually have fun and I think my tutees do too. I like to draw and doodle on the blank page I use as an impromptu chalkboard. I've found myself drawing a lot of crazy timelines lately to illustrate the differences in sense between, for example, the simple past tense and the present participle:

Fig 1a.) Simple past: I----------0--------->

"I danced an Irish jig for you, sir."

Fig 1b.) Present part.: I--------0--------I>
"I have danced Irish jigs for you for the last hour, sir. (Now please release me from your office.)"

In all seriousness, I want them to be proficient in actually using the language in real-time instead of just having a dormant knowledge of the basics. In one case, we actually use the time to kill two birds with one stone: my student and I talk about projects that I'm assisting on that are usually related to American universities, so she needs to communicate with these people in English anyway and thus takes advantage of her time with me to practice beforehand. These are the times that I feel the most productive and useful as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

After this typical morning session, sometimes I have some time before I tutor some one else. I've just begun working with a government employee at the Ministry of Education during the mid-morning, for example. I have a small office that has internet access, so I usually first check my work e-mail, mostly to see if the translation club that I formed last month has completed any Portuguese to English translations of articles and updates to be uploaded on the university's website, http://www.unicv.edu.cv/. While doing that, I anticipate with the bated breath of a girl waiting for her junior prom date for any interesting personal e-mails from friends and family back home. Of course the prospect of G-chatting with a lone insomniac friend up at 4 am their time is always present...and welcome (there was a five hour time difference between here and Chicago/the Midwest; since the time change last weekend, it's only four hours).

So then I either edit and then upload the aforementioned translations to the website OR, if classes are in session, I prepare for that. This past semester, the class I taught was on the other side of town from 2:00 until 4:00. I think it will be the same once the new semester starts up again next week. For the government dude I tutor, I have to either get a cab or just take a stroll over to his office. I walk a lot.

But getting back to my realization of certain reptilian characteristics, one of the best things about my work day is the two hour lunch break. This might seem absurd to you yankees out there, but it's all but mandatory to the Afro-Iberian sense of well-being here in Cape Verde. Having studied abroad in Spain one semester, I came to appreciate this tradition of big, filling lunches followed by plenty of rest or even straight-up nap time. (By the way, it all works out in the end, I figure, since the work day starts earlier and ends later than in the U.S.; why not just break the day up?) Okay, maybe people are more productive if they're more or less forced to focus on work all day without much interruption, but I still dig the two hour break.

Here's how my lunchtime routine works:

12:05-12:20. Finish up whatever I'm working on and close down computer. Pack up crappy faux-professional attaché case. Use restroom.

12:25-12:30. Dodge traffic and survive crossing to opposite side of the Plateau. Descend old stone stairs carefully to Sucupira market.

12:30-1:00. Eat 9.5-10 pounds (estimated) of delicious beans, rice, salad, and chicken (sometimes turkey), only 150$00 CVE (approx. $2.00 U.S.) at Elsa's, the nicest Cape Verdean lunchlady in town. Highly recommended.

1:00-1:15. Ascend back to Plateau. Dodge traffic again. Survive. Head to Praça Alexandre Albuqurque, Praia's largest public square (I think). Purchase one (1) cigarette for 10$00 CVE from a girl who gives me strange looks when I ask how she's doing. Smoke said cigarette on a bench. (To all you squeamish, health-conscious types: For the record, I'm not really a smoker, I just enjoy a butt after the big meal of lunch. Relax!)

1:15-1:55. Sit in the glorious, glorious sun. If I'm not wearing any socks, I slip off my loafers. Sometimes I read a book or talk to random strangers. For example, today I talked to three little kids, one of which told me he has both a guard dog and a guard pig that protect his house from ladrões (robbers). I, for one, found that to be a very prudent choice and as such commended him.

1:55-2:00. Go back to work, whether on the campus or at the office.

And this, my friends, is why I love the two hour lunch break. And why my life for those two hours is not unlike that of a large, two-legged, hungry reptile. Me want foooood!!!!

Comedian Eugene Mirman briefly chimes in on the Peace Corps...

2009-02-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

From the website Decider (http://chicago.decider.com/articles/eugene-mirman-answers-your-questions-about-sex-lif,23663/)

[Dear Eugene,]

Congratulations on a book. Saw you open for Stella back in New York, good stuff. Mr. Mirman, I must ask you the question whether or not you think it would a smart life choice to enroll in the Peace Corps. Now, I am only a high school senior. But when I go to college I want to just travel abroad. I'm going to attend college but afterward, instead of getting a job right away would joining the Corps seem reasonable? Thank you. —Brian

Dear Brian,

Sure. It seems fine. Luckily, I think you’re asking what you should do five years from now—I can’t tell, because some of what you wrote is either in broken English, or a coded message for help. Good news! You can decide later. Joining the Peace Corps is totally reasonable, unless it changes by then and instead of educating and empowering disadvantaged peoples, it is solely an organization that sends upper-middle-class 20-somethings to Kenya and Mongolia to have sex while poor people watch.

Um bocado da língua portuguesa

2009-01-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Boa tarde. Ai vai uma carta que eu acabo de escrever no português para uns dos meus colegas aqui na Reitoria da UniCV. Também é só para os meus leitores anglófonos poderem ver como é que parece na escrita esta língua tã bonita. *

Caros Colegas:

Boas entradas!

Sendo um novo ano com novas oportunidades para alcançar os nossos objectivos, eu queria oferecer para todos vocês os meus serviços como tutor de língua inglesa da Reitoria. Isto é só um aspecto do meu trabalho aqui na Uni-CV mas eu quero assegurar que todos saibam que estou disponível para ajudar se há uma necessidade.

A única coisa que eu vou requerer para começar trabalhar com quem que gostasse de aproveitar desta oportunidade é um horário mais ou menos fixo para nos combinarmos. Eu recomendaria duas sessões por semana, mas pode ser só um se você quiser.

Também por favor leve em consideração que eu dou uma aula no Campus Palmarejo nas terças e quintas das 14:00 às 16:00 e outras sessões de tutória nas quartas e sextas das 08:30 às 09:30. Então: as segundas durante todo o dia; as terças pela manhã; as quartas depois das 09:30; as quintas pela manhã; e as sextas depois das 09:30 são os meus tempos livres.

Se você tiver interesse, antes de responder, por favor consulta o meu horário acima e também o seu para termos certeza da possibilidade de combinar com frequência.

Por favor esteja a vontade de reencaminhar esta mensagem para qualquer outro que talvez tenha interesse.

Muito obrigado!

Robert

P.S. Desculpe quaisquer erros no português que eu fiz nesta carta!

*Good afternoon. Here is a letter that I just wrote to some of my colleagues here at the dean's office at the Univerity of Cape Verde. It's also just so that my English-speaking readers can see how this beautiful language looks in its written form.

More Hot Pix

2008-12-30T02:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't uploaded many new pictures lately, so feel free to check out the new Facebook album's worth of random Praia and other goodness. You don't have to be on Facebook to see them, by the way...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=197863&l=8fcd6&id=556280054

Life Skillz

2008-12-27T08:25:00.000-08:00

Here are some things that I have learned about life since arriving here in Cape Verde:

1. Never leave home without a handkerchief.

These simple scraps of cloth are endlessly handy, especially in an arid, dusty place like Cape Verde. Whether for dabbing sweat, blowing noses, wiping hands clean, drying rinsed market fruit, picking up abandoned kittens, or slinging sprained elbows, having a hanky in your back pocket will make you that much more prepared for facing the challenges of your day in any land.

2. Never assume that ambient strangers can't speak or at least understand English.

I'll just say that if you're going to talk about prurient matters with friends over a few beers, even in a foreign, seemingly non-English speaking country, make sure you either keep your voices down or, if anything, don't announce loudly, "It's great, because no one can understand all the gross and perverse things we're saying!" These days, what with the hegemony of American culture and the worldwide spread of the English language, chances are at least somebody understands you and probably doesn't care to know about how many times you went to the bathroom that one day after you ate some bad oysters.

Conversely, all you Navajo speakers out there pretty much still have free reign anywhere outside of the Southwest proper.

3. Race is more or less an illusion.

The history and modern reality of this country together have convinced me that most ideas of "race" are quite arbitrarily based on things like skin color, which, in all reality, hardly correspond to any kind of accurately qualitative traits. In other words, within our species, there is certainly a spectrum of diversity, but where one society draws the lines of inclusion/exclusion is by no means based on anything universally steadfast.

4. Cooking (well) is a challenge with great rewards.

I noted this yesterday after a botched attempt at creating a new recipe for pancakes, thus the "(well)" and "challenge" aspects of the above statement. But all in all, I have really surprised myself with my newfound ability to make edible, even tasty meals more or less from scratch. I contrast this with myself as I was back in the States, where I ate much pre-packaged, preservative-laden food that I'm sure was the reason for the 20-30 pound difference in body weight from then to now.

Special thanks to whomever put together the Peace Corps/Cape Verde Cookbook. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to my mom and grandma for their always delicious pork chops in red sauce over rice recipe that I've used since first attempting cooking in college. I've even given this dish a new name: "Porky Panico", in honor of both my mom's family name and my grandma's pseudo-famous, trumpet-playing prodigy of a cousin-in-law who passed away with much too little recognition for his genius.

5. Television is poison for the brain, body, and soul.

I'll throw in the caveat that, yes, of course, a little boob tube never hurt anybody, but I now stand convinced that one of the most antisocial, counterproductive elements of modern society (besides having Internet access at work) is cable T.V. Read a book, ya bum!

6. Providence exists if you make yourself available in the right ways.

OK, this might seem extremely vague and cryptic, possibly even religious, but I'll explain. The word "providence" indeed has strongly spiritual/religious overtones, but in the sense that I mean it, its Judeo-Christian connotations are more or less anathema; one's relationships to the world around him or her and the people therein constitute the most important factor. I find myself constantly amazed by the ways in which things just work out for the best here in this country: I get where I need to go in a reasonable amount of time; I am able to afford a basic yet healthy diet; people are friendly when I want to be social and polite when I want to be alone; I can do the job I have been given fairly well and with room for learning and advancement.

In part, I think the fact that my life is so simple here means that in the absence of ultimately needless complications and modern stressors, hours and days can indeed flow together smoothly for long stretches of time. I also realize that as a PCV, I am here because someone asked for someone more or less just like me to be here doing what I'm doing and being around the people I'm constantly around. In that sense, it has to do with having a niche in one's community, I suppose, which is an extremely basic and essential element to attaining any kind of happiness in life.

7. Teaching is one of the hardest things in the world to do well, and if you don't love the subject you're teaching...you're screwed.

This one pretty much speaks for itself. I feel very fortunate to be teaching something that I am infinitely interested in and passionate about (also see my previous post, "Speaking in Tongues"), and in all honesty I couldn't have it any other way.

That's all I've got for now. Check back in a few months for any more little nuggets of life truth that I may have stumbled upon by then. In the meantime, the best of luck to you in whatever path your own life might be leading you on. As always, feel free to share...

rmsarwark@gmail.com

A/C Corpo da Paz

C.P. 373-Praia
Republic of Cape Verde (Par Avion/Via Portugal)

An Open Letter to the Mosquitos of Praia

2008-12-19T02:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Mosquitos,

Dude, guys, seriously. Come on now. This is getting ridiculous. First of all, you know that I'm still taking malaria meds (which could more aptly be called "crazy-insomnia-acid-trip-dream-inducing pills") to prevent against your kiss of death. So you could, if you really wanted to, just discretely suck my blood while I sleep and I wouldn't really care because it won't kill me. But you have to buzz right in my G.D. ears just as I'm falling asleep after tossing and turning, ironically, because of the pills that are supposed to protect against you. Have some tact.

Just the other day I grudgingly put up the mosquito net that I was given at the start of training in Santa Catarina. I didn't think that it would be necessary here in the big city, but I guess I was wrong because even that hasn't stopped you from infiltrating my fortress of solitude and buzzing in my ears. Now I need to somehow readjust the net so you can't get in. Your commitment to annoying me to no end is admirable, but has grown tiresome.

See, I honestly don't mind if you come into my room and stand on the walls waiting for prey or whatever it is you like to do with your time. My walls are open for your convenience. And, again, I really don't mind if you quietly drink my blood while I'm asleep. JUST SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT!!

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

That Large Food-Filled Lump

The Ballad of the Sin Eater

2008-12-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about Ted Leo's song "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" lately. It has really interesting lyrics on the topic of U.S. foreign relations and, according to an interview with Ted himself on his live DVD Dirty Old Town, he was inspired by many ideas from the book The Ugly American. My good friend Lunkes - himself no stranger to life abroad - kindly went out of his way to make sure I got a copy of this book before I left the U.S. and started in the Peace Corps. I recommend it to anyone interested (read: everyone) in how our country relates to the rest of the world.

Regardless of your political views, it's a pretty kick ace song and there's a lot to digest and analyze in his references. I think I specifically understand maybe 45% of what he's talking about.

I wish I could find video footage of his performance of this song at the Pitchfork Festival 2006 when Ted played it and nailed himself in the head with the microphone so hard that he started bleeding all over the place. I was there, man. I saw it. But you bet your beans he didn't miss a measure. Whether it was intentional or not, we may never know.

"The Ballad of the Sin Eater" (T. Leo)

When you run, digger, runner
Listener, thief, you carry it all with you

Today I woke up uncertain
And you know that gives me the fits
So I left this land of fungible convictions
Because it seemed like the pits
And when I say, "conviction" I mean it's something to abjure
And when I say "uncertain" I mean to doubt I'll not turn out a caricature
So I set off in search of my forebears
Coz my forbearance was in need
But the only job I could get in dear old Blighty
Was working on the railway between Selby and Leeds
So I took a ferry to Belfast, where I had cause to think:
They wanted none of my arm-chair convictions
But nobody seemed to mind when I was putting on the drinks!

And you didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
Ah, but they hate you, and they hate you 'coz you're guilty

So...I stayed out all night in Ibiza
By way of San Sebastian, where they said
'Yanque, you better watch what you're saying,
unless you're sayin'It in Basque or in Catalan!"
So all the way east to Novisod
Where narry a bridge was to be seen
But mother Russia, she laid her pontoons on down
So I crossed over, if you know what I mean...
Then on the road to damascus, yes
The scales, they fell from my eyes
And the simplest lesson I learned at the Mount of Olives: everybody lies
And the French Foreign Legion
You know they did their best -
but I never believed in T.E. Lawrence,
so how the hell could I believe in Beau Gest?

And you didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didnt think they could hate you, now did you?
You didnt think they could hate you, now did you?
Ah, but they hate you, and they hate you 'coz you're guilty

So...I spent a night in Kigali in a five diamond hotel
Where maybe someday, they'll do the Watutsi on down in Hutu hell
And I fell in with a merchant marine who promised to take me home
But when I woke up beaten and bloodied
I couldn't tell if it was Jersey or Sierra Leone!

And you didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didn't think they could have you, now did you?
Ah, but they hate you, and they hate you coz you're guilty...

And the knocking in my head, just like the knocking at my door
And maybe it was me or maybe it was my brother
But either me or me and him went down to the bar
Where I got seven powers in me for to give me the cure
But when seven powers failed to spin meI had to get me seven more
And when I say "me" I mean my brain
And when I say "give me the cure" I mean to kill the pain
And when I say "kill the pain" I meant to get the devil out
And when I say "devil" I mean the manifestation of doubt!

And you didn't think they could hate you now did you?

You didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
You didn't think they could hate you, now did you?
Ah, but they hate you, make no mistake - they hate you...

Translation Sensations

2008-12-03T04:14:00.000-08:00

I just translated some more articles for the new University of Cape Verde website. Some of them are kind of interesting, particularly the ones about the Vatican "going green" and the evolution of turtle shells under the NO MUNDO ("in the world") section.

I should add that the above picture is a depiction of the turtle ancestor in question, although it looks like it has a bottom shell and not a top one, which contradicts what I was given to translate. That said, I claim no responsibility for any inaccurate information reported in the original documents on which my translations are based.

Check it out: http://www.unicv.edu.cv/index.php?lang=en

Astronauts!

2008-11-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

I finally just posted some songs on the MySpace page that I started for my own "solo" purposes over a year ago. I wrote all of them except for "Last Defense", which was co-written with the illustrious Steven Serra of s.t. monroe. Here's the link: myspace.com/rigoaugogo. These songs are the product of several months of otherwise being a waste of space during the fall and winter of '07-'08.

Also, today I translated the following article from the Portuguese. You can check out the original below it. What it's for I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that it's eerily similar to the opening scene of the movie Waterworld...

Astronauts to Drink Water Recycled from Urine

The space shuttle Endeavour, which NASA launched on November 14th of this year, possesses a machine for recycling urine and converting it to potable water. The agency aims to double the number of astronauts living on the International Space Station from three to six and thus will require more water resources.

“We’ve conducted blind tests with the water,” said Bob Bagdigian, NASA engineer and project head. “No one has made any objections after trying it, except for a slight taste of iodine. It’s just as refreshing as any other type of water.”

The reuse of water will be essential for NASA in the next few years since the agency plans to decommission its current shuttles in 2010 – these vehicles produce water as a by-product of their electrical systems. In lieu of ejecting the water NASA will transport it to the International Space Station.

With the new equipment installed, NASA hopes to process approximately 23 liters of water per day. The process of recycling is done by various means of purification, including distillation, filtration, oxidation, and iodization. The final step is to add iodine in order to control the growth of microbes in the water.

Source: Reuters/Folha Online

________________________

Astronautas vão beber água reciclada de urina

A nave Endeavour, que a Nasa (agência espacial norte-americana) lançou dia 14.11.08, possui uma máquina para "reciclar" urina e torná-la apta ao consumo humano. A agência quer dobrar de três para seis o número de astronautas vivendo na ISS (Estação Espacial Internacional, em inglês), então precisa elevar o fornecimento de água.

“Fizemos testes cegos com a água”, afirma Bob Bagdigian, engenheiro da Nasa responsável pela máquina. “Ninguém fez objeções, apenas um leve gosto de iodo. É tão refrescante quanto qualquer outro tipo de água.”

A reutilização da água será essencial para a Nasa nos próximos anos, já que a agência vai aposentar seus ônibus espaciais em 2010 – esses veículos produzem água como um subproduto de seus sistemas eléctricos. Em vez de despejar a substância, a Nasa a leva para a estação espacial.

Com o aparelho, a Nasa espera processar cerca de 23 litros de água por dia. O processo de reciclagem é feito por meio de técnicas de purificação, como destilação, filtração, oxidação e ionização. O passo final é adicionar iodo, para controlar o crescimento microbiano.

Fonte: Agência Reuters/Folha Online

Lunch, Life, and Death

2008-11-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

Speaking of lunch, today I had kind of a weird one here in downtown Praia. As I do about two or three times a week, I went to my normal lunch counter down in the Sucupira market below the Plateau, which is where I work. These counters are real Cape Verdean home-style and you can get heaping helpings of traditional beans and rice dishes with savory chicken or turkey for pretty cheap (about 200$00 CVE - or US$2.50 - for a plate and a drink). The twist was that as I descended the stairs from my office to the market, I did not know if Elsa, the proprietress of my favorite spot, was alive or dead.

See, Elsa's the one who reeled me in and made a loyal customer out of me a few weeks back with her friendly - albeit incomplete - smile and overall congeniality. Being an estrangeiro that sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of Cape Verdeans about their daily business, I really appreciate the gesture of kindness, even though it is also sort of just being a shrewd businesswoman.

Last week she wasn't there the second time I stopped to eat, so naturally I asked one of the other ladies who works there where she was. Due to my still relatively low level of comprehension in Creole, I understood that either a.) she, Elsa, died or b.) she took the week off to mourn the death of someone else. I at least got the death part down for sure. Anyway, I played it safe and didn't really say anything in response like "my condolences" or anything like that. The other lady herself didn't seem to be in mourning (even if you're not related and you don't necessarily even like each other you at least sort of mourn the death of a coworker, right?), so I pretty much just kind of nodded that I understood, which was obviously bull.

So as I approached the market today at high noon, I knew not what I would discover; if she was still not there she must be dead, which would of course be sad. Otherwise, well...

When I turned the bend and saw good ol' Elsa was indeed there, smiling away, only then did I know: Nope. Not dead. Alive.

Then there was this weird vagrant dude with what I'm pretty sure was a live millipede on a string, dangling it over the face of a stray dog who didn't really seem to care either way. Weird! I gave my leftover rice to the other guy milling about and not to Weirdy McCreeperton.

Election Night '08: Praia!

2008-11-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

I received a beautifully embossed formal invitation in my mailbox at the Peace Corps office about three weeks ago. It was written in Portuguese, and the great thing about invitations in Portuguese is that they are incredibly formal and fancy. The addressee is referred to as Excelentíssimo/a Senhor(a), which is weird because in America I'm just a dude, at best a mister. (I can also be referred to by the title Doutor simply because I have a Bachelors degree from the U.S. and teach a class, but I'll save that for another posting.) I felt special immediately. The invitation was for an election night party at the U.S. Embassy rec center, which I've mentioned before. The center is like a big backyard without a house that has a pool, a tennis and volleyball court, and a nice big cobblestoned patio area for events such as this. As trainees we had a party there, right after getting to Cape Verde in July. It's nice.

Being a small country, the American diplomatic community in Praia is equally pretty small in number, although important due to the large Cape Verdean immigrant population in New England. The Peace Corps is also a federal agency and even though it's separate from the State Department, it's been very easy to get to know some of the nice folks who work at the embassy. The consular officer graciously invited me and some other volunteers that happened to be in town to dinner at her house a few days after I had received the invitation to the election party. The plan was, she told me, to host the national and international diplomatic community as a way to educate non-Americans about our electoral system and also let them take part in a mock election. A nice sentiment and as good a reason as any to throw a party, I figured. As she gave us a lift up to the Platô in her Rav4, she asked me if I would help in another aspect of the mock election: Would I wear a mask and walk around the party in the role of John McCain?

Hey, why the hell not?

I got home from teaching my class at about six o'clock that day, this past Tuesday, and immediately changed into my suit, which is what I like to call "Tom Wolfe style". Alan and I got to the rec center and I was given my mask, which was very rubbery and, I thought, looked more like Johnny Carson than John McCain. I've had a cough this week, so in addition to the stifling heat inside, I also was breathing in my recycled germs. Other than that, though, I didn't mind it too much. I actually really like dressing up in costumes and acting like a fool. That's why I love Halloween so much. Escapism is fun sometimes. At a formal party like this, I figured it would loosen things up a bit too. There was another guy too, a Cape Verdean, the boyfriend of an embassy employee, I think, who played Obama. We were positioned by the front gate by somebody else from the embassy whose name I forget, with instructions to greet the guests as they entered.

The fun begins.

At first, it was kind of awkward standing there like a clown, but then I figured I might as well have some fun with it, so when all the people started showing up in their nice, formal attire I would greet them with "Boa noite! Eu sou John McCain! Vote em mim! Obrigado!!!" along with a firm yet tender handshake. Then I busted out some karate moves on Obama. It's amazing how easy it is to get a laugh out of people when you sacrifice just a little bit of dignity. Some people were kind of weirded out at first, it seemed, especially, for example, the embassy representatives from China - who, by the way, said, "Buenas Noches!" (Spanish) when the came in - but I just hammed it up and most if not all of the fancy people were genuinely entertained by our shenanigans.

About twenty minutes later the party was in full swing. It was great to see some of the people who had helped train me during the summer in attendance, even though they didn't know who I was at first. The mask really was hot as hell, but it was more or less tolerable. I continued my gallivanting. The U.S. ambassador to Cape Verde gave a nice speech about the two candidates and we stood there, flanking the podium in effigy. I did lots of thumbs-upping and victory gestures. The crowd ate it up. Then everyone was encouraged to vote in the mock election.

Now that's what I call de-mock-racy in action!

The results were in soon after: Obama: 237; McCain: 5. Damn, the fake Mack Daddy got no love in Cape Verde. Of course we all know how the actual election went, and as a PCV I'm supposed to be apolitical, so I'll just leave it at that. Regardless of the outcome, everyone was in high spirits, including yours truly, fake McCain, so we decided to take some more pictures! The perfect end to a lovely evening. Thanks, America! Enjoy!

Unfazed by his defeat, John McFeign parties on.

Sometimes the Senator just needs a beer break, damn it.

"Excellent idea, guys! Patriotic top hats were a great touch!"

Victory!

Johnny likey!

Speaking in Tongues

2008-11-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote this short article for the Peace Corps/Cape Verde Volunteer newsletter.

I’m not going to lie; I’m a huge nerd for all things linguistic. Even the incredibly technical and dense stuff by Noam Chomsky that I can just barely understand gets me jazzed up...at least in theory. To give another more specific example, the fact that the Portuguese language has both a future subjunctive and a personal infinitive tense has kept me up, trembling in a state of mixed fear and awe, on many a lonesome Cape Verdean night. And don’t even get me started on the etymology of the word N in Creole.

So I realize that to most people these things are incredibly arcane, which is fine. Everyone more or less has a thing that they geek out about, and this is mine. I can understand that most people tend to focus on language and language learning for practical or survivalist purposes and not as an intellectual pastime. But for me, and despite my own challenges as an adult learner, my interest stems from the idea that if one language represents one manifestation of perception of the human experience, each other language (or variety of language) is in a way its own universe of perception and expression. In other words, linguistic diversity is pretty cosmic, man.

Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, I admit that this interest in linguistics has been more of a hobby than a serious academic pursuit. Until now: As an unexpected turn of events, my Peace Corps assignment to work in the main office at the newly consolidated University of Cape Verde in Praia has also presented me with a chance to teach a course in Sociolinguistics to third year students. What’s great is that in this country there a lot of sociolinguistic issues worthy of classroom discussion. For example, we can see a textbook example of diglossia (the use of two languages, each one for a different societal context); the politics and challenges of nationalizing a creole language with many variations; and the dynamic relations to the rest of the official (Portuguese) language community; among other pertinent phenomena. And that’s not even mentioning things like whether “love” is an abstract or a concrete concept (thanks, class). I think that at the very least in terms of lively debate we should be in for an interesting semester.

To be honest, I still can’t believe I’m actually teaching at the college level (wasn’t I just in college?), but you know what they say about experience being something you don’t get until just after you need it. One of the most significant things about the Peace Corps, I’ve found, is that it matches Volunteers with situations wherein they can develop general interests and basic skills into actual, productive work experience with communities that can really use it.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a little nervous about explaining to my students – and pardon my French – what the hell the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ is supposed to mean. Wish me luck.

~

Photo: Guilherme, the coolest four-year-old in all of Cabo Verde.

Requests

2008-11-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

Me with my homestay family in Chão de Tanque, Santa Catarina, Santiago Island

It's hard to find the following items here, even in the big city. If you have the means, feel free to ship them on over to me. My address is listed below.

-Dental floss (ran out!)

-Date book/agenda (nothing fancy)

-Grade book (you know, for school)

-Wood and/or Elmer's glue

also...

-Macintosh laptop computer

-One (1) convertible sofa

-Two year supply of Skittles

Robert Sarwark, PCV

A/C Corpo da Paz
C.P. 373-Praia

Republic of Cape Verde

(Par Avion/Via Portugal)

Obrigado!!

The Writing on the Wall (or Bus)

2008-10-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

So I take the number 6 bus from my neighborhood to the Plateau every morning, back home for lunch, back to work at 2:00, and then home again at about 6:00. Since about last week I've noticed a weird thing written in Sharpie on the driver's big, rectangular sun blocker thing:

I'M THE ONE WHO WILL

ENJOY YOUR TRAVEL TKS.

What can this mean? This is not a translation from Portuguese or Creole; it is written exactly like that. My first interpretation is to just read the bottom line independently as a poor attempt at "enjoy your trip", but that's not really doing it for me. Does the driver want his passengers (despite the unlikelihood of their understanding English) to know that he will enjoy driving the bus more than they will enjoy riding on it? If that's the case, it's kind of a pompous thing to communicate to your paying customers, right? It's kind of like that one Atmosphere album, You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having, but, you know, not so much in an underground hip-hop context as...on an old city bus in Praia. At the same time, though, I do guess it's kind of nice to know that the driver likes his job so much.

And then there's the matter of the "TKS". Is that supposed to mean "thanks"? Or maybe "tickets", in the sense of attempting to say "I am the one who will give you your bus ticket [after you pay me]". Perhaps this was the frustrated response to one too many confused, English-speaking tourists messing up the whole bus payment routine. (BTW: They raised the fare from 35$00 to 37$00 CVE to ride the bus in case you were wondering.) If this is the case, it's just kind of a passive-aggressive move, Bus Driver Man. Don't be like that, dude. Or at least get some help with your translation. I'm confused.

Anyway, I guess this is one for the ages. Hell if I'll ever figure it out. You win, cryptic Cape Verdean bus driver...this round...

In other news, been a little bummed lately on account of what I guess is the sneaking suspicion that I'm not as linguistically and culturally savvy as I thought I was during training. It's really hard to feel integrated here in Praia on account of it being the biggest city and people being somewhat standoffish. But I guess I'm just being kind of impatient with myself. It's only been three months since I got to this country, after all. Dunno...starting to hit a wall maybe. I hope teaching my class will be a good opportunity to meet new people (in a non-creepy way, of course). The hardest thing is that I'm really boring when I speak foreign languages because I don't know any knock-knock jokes or delightful puns, so my normal first language charms go unnoticed. Maybe I should start doing some physical humor like slipping on bananas to win the people's favor. Hell, the banana lady comes by my place practically every morning!

Inner City PRESSURE

2008-10-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

Howdy. It's been almost two weeks since I swore in as PCV and moved to Praia. All is well as I write this post from the lovely volunteer lounge at the PC Office. Just to help set the scene, I'm currently wearing my beloved Jackie Mittoo "The Maestro" t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops - you know, "business casual". I just watched High Fidelity on VHS and got a little nostalgic for Chicago, particularly my former Wicker Park stomping grounds. But mainly I was drooling in ecstasy just to watch a movie (and in English!) after two months of training way out in the fora of Santiago's interior without access to such luxuries, much less consistent electricity whatsoever. Speaking of movies, I still haven't had the opportunity to watch the DVD of Dark Knight that my sister sent me in August in a care package, so I still have no idea how I look in my big screen debut. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'll only see this goddamn movie when and only when the Chinese bootleg gods will it to be so.

So now I'm basically just waiting for my job at the University of Cape Verde to finally start. Since consolidating all the previously independent institutions under one nationalized aegis, there are a lot of administrative and logistical changes underway so everything's on hold for a couple more weeks. Plus, you know, it's Africa. Things sometimes take a little while to get going. My colleague and roommate, Alan, and I have had about three meetings with our contacts at UniCV so far, all of which have been pleasant and encouraging. They seem really excited and almost relieved that we're here to help them develop their English department and curricula. I am pleased by this. Yes. Excellent...

On the homefront, it's been rough, you know, but I've been managing to dull the pain and stress of all of my travails at the beach and U.S. Embassy Rec Center pool with such leisure activities as scrubbing my undies in my bathroom's bidé. It's all about balancing the good with the bad, after all.

I went on a date with a Portuguese bird from Luxembourg the other night and we're going to dinner tonight. She's very sweet and pretty and speaks like 7 languages or something incredible like that. In an effort to not jinx myself, that's all I'll say for now, you little gossip mongers out there.

Overall, I think that I have a great assignment here in Praia, which is a very decent but reportedly somewhat dangerous capital city. My neighborhood is nice and, dare I say, almost kind of bourgeoisie. I'm not really roughing it the way most would imagine Peace Corps Volunteers do, but I'm sure the work I'm about to begin will be pretty challenging regardless. Compared to the PCVs from the Gambia that I hosted the other night, it's a pretty drastic difference in lifestyle. Just learning and getting around in 1.5-2 foreign languages is challenging enough, so shut up, all right! Really though, now that Mr. Alan and I have our apartment fairly settled in and looking less like a germophobic Florida retiree's sunroom, I'm ready to get going with my job. Yet I am also really enjoying the amount of free time I have to relax after two months of non-stop training and cultural integration. That said, I have to get back to eating SweeTarts and reading a beat-up paperback copy of It while not wearing a shirt. Bye.

Where I'll Be, What I'll Be Doing

2008-09-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

Big news: Tomorrow, September 20, all of us trainees will officially swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers and then almost immediately head for our permanent sites. As for me, I'll be staying here on Santiago Island, specifically in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. I'll be working as an English language instructor, translator, teacher trainer, and possibly in other yet-to-be-determined capacities at the University of Cape Verde. The school has only been in existence since 2006, I think, and is currently consolidating and nationalizing some other previously unaffiliated campuses. Basically I get the impression that I'll be the campus' resident native English speaker. Originally I was going to São Nicolau Island up in the north to teach in a high school, but another trainee and I decided that we should switch because each other's assignment was much more appealing in almost all ways.

I'm looking forward to living in the capital, although there's supposedly a lot of crime there. I'm trying to figure out how it might compare to Chicago, because it can't be much more potentially dangerous than that. It always depends on the neighborhood of course.

So today, on this incredibly rare day of free time and leisure before everything gets crazy again, I finally have a moment to reflect on the last two months of training. It's been a whirlwind, to say the least, but a great one at that. I'm going to miss my Cape Verdean family here in the concelho of Santa Catarina (especially their cooking for me), but I won't be too far away down in Praia. I'll also really miss some of my training classmates who are headed to different islands. Carnaval up in São Nicolau seems like it's in the cards and should be not only a blast, but also a great reunion with my Txan di Tanki brothers, Nelson and Brett who were assigned there.

Tomorrow at the swearing-in-ceremony, a group of youths from our village, under Nelson's sage direction, is going to give a capoeira/samba performance, which should be great. The 15-or-so participants that were chosen to represent have really gotten into it and hopefully will continue practicing capoeira after we're gone. For those unfamiliar with this, in a nutshell it's a Brazilian martial art that includes music, dance, and chanting. It's pretty damn sweet.

Also, I was picked to possibly give an interview about our swearing-in on Cape Verdean TV. I'm a little nervous, but my Portuguse and Kriolu are both fairly good and I think the reporter will be this really nice guy Silva Roque that we know already, so it should be fine. I just hope my voice doesn't crack or someone depants me while on camera.

Much more to come as I get settled in Praia (still don't know exactly where or with whom I'll be living) and start my job.

Tchau!

PHOTOS!

2008-08-18T05:27:00.000-07:00

I finally got a chance to upload all the photos I've taken over the last month. Below are some highlights, but definitely check out the full albums by clicking on the following Facebook links:

Part I: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=148104&l=75492&id=556280054

Part II: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=148107&l=5e205&id=556280054

Part III: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=148112&l=94229&id=556280054

Part IV: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=148114&l=74d9a&id=556280054

More to come!

How to contact me...

2008-08-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

Send me email at rmsarwark "at" gmail.com. Snail mail would be even better. You can send anything and everything to

Robert Sarwark, PCT
A/C Corpo da Paz
C.P. 373-Praia
Republic of Cape Verde

(and also mark "Par Avion")

This will be valid for the next month until I swear in as a volunteer and will have a more permanent address.

If you have the means, it would make my life that much nicer to get some of the following American things in a care package:

-HOT SAUCE (any kind, the spicier the better; they use very little spice here)
-Candy (e.g., Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Starburst, SweeTarts, etc.)
-Chewing gum
-Any books that you might recommend

I will love you for eternity if you follow through on a care package.

In country for two weeks!!

2008-07-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings, anyone who might be reading this. I only have a little bit of time to write, but I should document for the Rob-starved masses that I've been here in Cape Verde for two weeks today and I am alive, well, and pretty happy. We arrived in Praia on Thursday, July 17th after three days of intense staging and registration activities just outside of Boston. We spent a few days in Praia, the capital, for our "bridge to Pre-Service Training". We got to Assomada, in the concelho (municipality or district) on Sunday, July 2oth and from there went pretty much straight to our PST homestay villages in the surrounding area. So basically all 29 of our training class are living in one of I think 5 or 6 villages for our 9-week Pre-Service Training where the focus is language (both Portugues and Kriolu) as well as learning other important skills for our volunteer posts, which might be pretty much anywhere in the who Cape Verdean archipelago. 9 of us will be teaching English as a foreign language, 2 will be teacher trainers, 3 will be vocational ed teachers, and the rest are working in some way or another on Small Enterprise Development.

I live with a very nice and large family, the Moreiras, in a tiny town called Chão de Tanque about 20 minutes west of Assomada.

Sorry this is so brief but I have to be getting back to my temporary home very soon. More to come!

Where is Cape Verde?

2008-06-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

Why, right here.

O que eu estou fazendo? Estou estudando português. Fixe!

2008-04-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've blathered on and on about my motives for wanting to serve. I think I got a little too caught up in my own head, as I do. I'm a little neurotic sometimes, sue me. The point is, though, I'm happy and excited to be doing what I'm about to do, so I'll just leave it at that and shut up on trying to rationalize myself too much.

So as a soon-to-be trainee/volunteer, I get free access to the Rosetta Stone online language learning center. It's pretty awesome. All three levels would normally be something like $600 retail. Thanks, Uncle Sam! I've been using the Brazilian version of the Portuguese program, so apparently that's closer to what they speak in Cabo Verde than what they speak in Portugal. However, I'm going to be learning Kriulu during my first three months anyway, and I'm guessing it's a good deal different from standard Portuguese, so a good portion of what I'm learning might go straight out the window. I guess the deal is that the more standard Portuguese is used for official purposes and as a means to communicate with other Lusophone countries in Africa and elsewhere and Kriulu is the language spoken in the home. The first week of April I was puppy-sitting for my brother, so I used the free time and quiet apartment to start learnin' me some Porto.

Here are some interesting things about (Brazilian, but I'm guessing also Continental) Portuguese that you might not know:

- Rs are pronounced like Hs if they come at the start of a word, e.g., my name would be spelled Roberto but pronounced "Hobertu", which brings me to the next interesting thing...
- Os are pronounced like Us at the end of most words. So the fazendo (doing) in the title of this post sounds more like "fazendoo".
- The definite articles are o, a, os, and as. The indefinite articles are um and uma.
- Here's how to count to ten (this is particularly for Beth, who can count to ten in several languages already): um, dois, três, quatro, cinco, seis, sete, oito, nove, dez. Very similar to Spanish, but the pronunciation is a bit different.
- Sometimes tildes (~) go over the letter "a". For example, the word não, which means "no" and sounds like the English "now". They can only ever go over an "n" in Spanish. This is madness!
- Dogs sweat through their feet. I always just thought that was kind of weird.

Anyway, I also got invited to a Peace Corps event here in Chicago later this month. I don't know what to expect exactly, but the current PC director, Ron Tschetter, will be there. Snacks are likely as well. I will bring my brother and in the event of delicious snacks we will eat some of them.

Why would anyone ever want to spend two years away from home in a third world country?

2008-04-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

I've had to think about the above question more than you could imagine over the course of the last year and a half, so I'm happy to explain myself in this regard. According to the great Stephen Colbert, "The Peace Corps identifies the people who hate America, then ships them overseas." Let's explore this prime example of "truthiness"...

A lot of people I know seem anywhere from a little to extremely confused as to my inspiration(s) for becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer. There are a lot of stereotypes in the mainstream public consciousness about what a Volunteer is like, mostly centering around the image of the recently graduated, overly idealistic, bleeding heart liberal off trying to save the world while living in a thatch-roof hut in the middle-of-nowhere, Africa. I don't know if this isn't me or if I just don't want to think of myself as a stereotype. Regardless, if I really cared that much about what other people think, I definitely wouldn't have made it this far, but I still acknowledge that we all shape each others' realities with our ideas, attitudes, and actions, be they positive or negative. Clearly I'm not surrounded by many other people that would be prone to taking this kind of thing on, but that's all right.

I think the initial inspiration to start the application came from a guy named Joe who I had met only briefly over a year and a half ago. He was a friend of my then-roommates in Madison and took my place in our apartment when I decided to move out and come back to Illinois. He had just returned from about 10 months as an AmeriCorps Volunteer and seemed to have gained a lot of valuable perspective and experience from the work he did all around the country. That was enough to pique my interest in doing something like that while I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do with myself for the rest of my life. But I felt that having already had some amazing times traveling in several foreign countries, I was more interested in an international experience. Like it or not, the world we currently live in functions on a scale that requires cross-cultural competence and, simultaneously, an understanding of the universals of humanity, so I plan on preparing myself within this reality.

I also get the feeling that some people might think of my decision as the result of being fed up with everyday consumerist American life. This is true, to an extent, but it isn't the whole picture. Sometimes I think about my lifestyle and I realize that in a lot of ways it's a scramble to just get by, and unhealthily at that, in both the physical and psychological realms. I think living more simply with real purpose and a stronger sense of community is the remedy for this societal ailment and I am definitely hoping and expecting to find greater access to it overseas. Of course, it's easy to think highly of this kind of self-imposed ascetism while I still am living comfortably in the richest country in the world, but based on my travels to places like India I'm confident that I can survive harsh conditions.

Part of me really considered just making a serious go at "show business" while biding my time doing menial office work as a temp or whatever other gig I might fall into to just make some scratch before being successful. I don't know. That one was really hard because since getting the gears rolling for the Peace Corps I actually did start making a go of music, comedy, writing, and more and will essentially have to put these things on hold for two years while I'm away. Which is kind of weird because I've always combated my parents and more conservative peers who contend that arts and entertainment should just be an amateur hobby on the side and that a white collar, professional job like lawyer, doctor, or financial sector drone is what's expected from a respectable adult. That, then, leads me to ask myself if I signed on to Peace Corps service to sub-consciously pander to my parents' and (some) peers' rationale that this experience would possibly lead to becoming a diplomat or something formal and official like that. I can't really answer that question with a simple yes or no though because the thought of working in the foreign services is actually pretty appealing to me. I would love to be a part of something so much bigger than my own self.

Putting that all in its place, throughout this process I've always come back to the very simple fact that I like to travel, learn languages, and moreover live my life as a world citizen. I like to help people when I can, but even more so I like to be helped by the same people I'm helping. This makes the most sense to me, actually. There's obviously a certain set of traits that most, if not all, PCV's share, and in my mind this includes a curiosity about the world-at-large, a willingness to live simply, and a desire to be a positive member of whatever community one might find oneself in. I'm not even in country yet and I feel this already.

I have to admit that in a small but significant way I do harbor the desire to give a big, self-righteous "fuck you" to several elements of my life here in Chicago, including the few people who have really chapped my ass lately; my "safe" suburban upbringing; the crippling complacency and stoned or drunken despair I see many people my age living within; and moreover the attitude that this life is just one big disappointment after another and nothing can be done about it. Plus I feel a lot of people my age and younger that I know are actively forfeiting their free will and livelihoods in exchange for the cheap thrills and convenience of modern technology. Yeah, I know, this coming from the guy who has three blogs. But I do feel that once the bottom falls out, my generation will be left with little to no strong moral values to maintain ourselves in whatever future we'll have created. These are all things that in some way or another I just can't abide and if it takes going to another continent to shake off their psychic residue so I can better combat them with my own actions, then so be it. I don't really want to dwell on spiteful feelings too much though. That's not a good reason to do much of anything.

Another sort of random factor is, I think, something that people might see as either completely romantic or completely idiotic. All I can say without embarrassing myself too much is that I expect the girl I end up with to have the same sort of worldliness that I've defined myself by over the last few years. I'm reading this and thinking I'm sounding kind of pretentious, but the hell with it. I'm pretty sure this person is not currently in the proximity of my life nor will be unless I put myself somewhere drastically different. This is really just one aspect of wanting to make a meaningful life for myself and the people around me. Hopefully that makes some kind of sense. Probably sounds a bit nuts, but it makes sense in my mind.

To sum up, here's an equation that represents all the precedeing rambling:

[(Boredom + Wanderlust + Romanticism) - Show Biz Aspirations] X Humanitarian Ideals/Career Self-Interest = Peace Corps Service

I hope this helps explains things to those who might be wondering.

Gearing Up

2008-04-05T17:25:00.001-07:00

So I figured it was about time to start writing some content for this new blog while I'm still in Chicago.

On March 10th, 2008, at some time around noon, I made the phone call to the Peace Corps National Office in Washington, D.C. to officially accept their invitation to serve as an English teacher in Cape Verde, West Africa. Just to put things into perspective, I began the online volunteer application in early January of 2007. That's right; I was an applicant for more than 14 months. That said, if you're reading this and at all interested in ever applying to serve, patience is pretty much mandatory. In addition to the 5-8 hours you'll spend filling out the application (which includes two personal statements), trips to the doctor and dentist to receive clearance can also be very time consuming, if not downright frustrating in their scrutiny. This is all understandable, of course, since the point is to ensure prospective volunteers are legitimately prepared to serve. I recently read that 1 in 3 applicants is invited to serve.

Sometimes I felt like I was on auto-pilot bouncing back and forth from my doctor's and dentist's offices, filling out pages and pages of paperwork without any idea where I would be going or exactly what I would be doing once it was all sent in and processed. It's tough being in the dark like that with no definite goal in sight, but something inside me kept me chugging through these bureaucratic motions and, at times, through the weeks and months when I had all but decided to cancel my application. Whatever that "something" was, I feel pretty confident in saying that it was the self-realization that this is the right move for me and my life. I am definitely excited to go. I leave for Cape Verde on July 16th, which is coincidentally also my birthday.

I think my letter to friends and family from the day I accepted explains where I stand at the moment pretty well too:

Dear Friends and Family,

After more than a year of seemingly endless application paperwork, constant bouts of almost crippling indecision, and intense soul-searching, I'm happy to say that I have officially accepted an invitation to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the West African island nation of Cape Verde. I'll be serving for the requisite 27 months starting this upcoming July in the capacity of a middle and high school teacher of English as a foreign language. I'll also be immersed in learning both standard Portuguese and the local creole dialect, Kriolu.

Even though my life has recently stabilized into a pretty damn ideal situation in many ways - a great apartment and roommates, steady and flexible employment as a temp, progress as an improv comedy student at Second City, burgeoning involvement in the Chicago music scene, and several other creative endeavors - I feel that my life would just not be complete without this kind of experience. As hinted to many of you already in person, this has probably been the hardest decision I've ever made in my life and I thank you all for your constant support and insight. Being away from such wonderful people will be among the most difficult realities of this commitment, I'm sure. But of course you're all welcome to visit!

I'm looking forward to seeing you all (or at least keeping in touch) as much as possible over the next four months, including some sort of going-away/25th birthday bash in mid-July, so be on the look out for more on that soon.

Sincerely,

Your dude,

Rob

P.S. My big debut as a "featured background artist" in Batman: Dark Knight will be July 18th when it hits theaters nationwide, so make sure you go see it on my behalf since I'll be gone already!

I have a handful of pretty significant loose ends to tie up before I leave, so more on that in the next few postings.

Sorry, I Have Make an Official

Shortlists

Her Sweet Poison

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 3a): The Wedding

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 2)

Last Known Whereabouts (Part 1)

On Whiteness

Book Idea/Proposal: "Adventures in the Modern Lusosphere"

Category

Funding Goal

Project Description

Links

Found Item: Best. Resume. EVER.

Kringlish

Reading List

Duluth

Jolene

Awesome Mix Tape #2: Songs for a Troubled Sex Life

Awesome Mix Tape #1: "Songs to File Documents By" aka "The Great Weekday War"

Awake

From Praia to Manhattan

Description of Service

Jive-Talking Robots, Squawk Boxes, and the Dream of Universal Intelligibility

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART THREE: This Part Has a Monkey

PC Partnership Project Update

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART TWO: Orange Crushed

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PART ONE: Blaze Orange Rising

The Saga of Ol' Orangie: PROLOGUE

Other Places Travel Guide to Cape Verde

Hey. That was something.

Help out a Peace Corps dog in need!

PCPP proposal APPROVED for funding

Bert and I have more in common than just half a name.

Newsletter and World Map Mural Project

songs: dreams (i'd be that for you if you'll be mine)

songs: island fever

Hot out of the oven

Standard Breakup Fare

The Devil's Resin/Updates

It has begun...

A coupla tunes and some exciting news...

On the Surfing of Couches

"Running" back to normal

Recipe: Porky Panico

In the Footsteps of Darwin

More on BSC exchange program...

Bridgewater State College

Cape Verde in the news

Travel Recap, Part 1

Link: Cape Verde's Cidade Velha is declared UNESCO World Heritage Site

Phrase Book Project

POP QUIZ

The mother of all blog postings

Props for the Translation Team

The Feeding Habits of the North American Man-Lizard

Comedian Eugene Mirman briefly chimes in on the Peace Corps...

Um bocado da língua portuguesa

More Hot Pix

Life Skillz

An Open Letter to the Mosquitos of Praia

The Ballad of the Sin Eater

Translation Sensations

Astronauts!

Lunch, Life, and Death

Election Night '08: Praia!

Speaking in Tongues

Requests

The Writing on the Wall (or Bus)

Inner City PRESSURE

Where I'll Be, What I'll Be Doing

PHOTOS!

How to contact me...

In country for two weeks!!

Where is Cape Verde?

O que eu estou fazendo? Estou estudando português. Fixe!

Why would anyone ever want to spend two years away from home in a third world country?

Gearing Up