Thursday 17 November 2011

October 2011

So I arrive back in Cape Verde after a 6am check-in and 6 hour flight. What show of tenderness did Tony arrange? A quiet café meal before the kids got home from school? A bottle of bubbly to celebrate my return? A bottle of vodka to commisserate my biopsy results which I hadn’t received at that point in time?  A relaxed afternoon with the children I hadn’t seen for two weeks? Yes, Capoeira class in town. I get to see two of my children performing martial arts all evening in a power-cut. Let’s pretened he didn’t get a roasting for that one.
Well, I got back to the apartment and sitting in my living room is a lovely granita ice sorbet machine sitting on top of a newly-imported-from-the-United-States tricycle bike. Alan Sugar, watch out.


We have been planning for quite some time to try living here more permanently. (For anybody who is kindly storing our stuff in England, please note we will be back in July 2012 at the latest to come and get it back. Fingers off and stay away from the car boots, please!) I just realised, is that Olympic time? Will our flights be really expensive?
We are going to start two businesses as you really need to be earning quite decent money both to live here and also jet-set back and forth between  England and here. So that’s idea number 1… glammed up slush puppies. We didn’t waste our Uni degrees, oh no.
So we’ve had all sorts of meetings, reviews and visits since I returned here. The Department of Health wanted to ensure we wouldn’t posion anybody. Tick.  The Department of Tourism wanted to make sure we weren’t lowering the tone of the island. Tick. The Department of Growth and Economics wanted a look-in, too. Tick.
We just have to wait for the paper permit and off we peddle. Strawberry cheesecake sorbet anybody?
So the kids think we’re cool. They don’t worry that were aren’t proper grown-ups like doctors or teachers anymore. They just want us to earn some cash.
So we found out last Friday that our business has been approved. I celebrated with some jammy donut and fish fingers. Daniel hasn’t eaten prepared food since March (apart from lots of pizza) and when presented with a fish finger butty, he replied in his best Southern accent “What is this fing?” Imagine the fun he’s going to have with a McDonalds Happy Meal.
We also returned to the turtles on Saturday- I did a sunrise walk with Holly and we saw babies hatching naturally. A ranger showed us a dead baby that had been decapitated and stabbed through the heart by a peckish crab, hungry for a spot of breakfast. Holly loved that bit.

One of the saddest moments of the month is that Daniel’s last link to babyhood  disappeared. Wicked mother that I am,  I bought some of the disgusting anti-nail biting liquid. We have been using it on Daniel’s thumbs and he is no longer the cute thumb-sucking little person anymore, just a big lump of pre-teen boy.
Sunday was Halloween prep and games here. No trick or treating, but loads of childrens activities. We also watched”The Goonies” thanks to Kitty’s loan. A great Sunday afternoon chill out. Holly decided she would be the pretty cheer leader, Joey the cute little brother, I was the wicked Italian Fratelli mother of the bad guys, Daniel wanted to be the Chinese inventor kid and we unanimously pictured Tony as Sloth –the physically and mentally challenged giant beast of a man. Sounds fair.
Today is Monday, Halloween and the day I received my biopsy results. Several vodkas havealready been swiftly necked and I’m ready to celebrate with a strawberry jam blood pancakes and a big bar of Duty Free Toblerone (the creamy white one). So excuse me. You only live once!

September 2011

This month has really been about waiting – the Cape Verdean national sport. We are waiting for a cargo boat from England to arrive on the island. The freight company has six boats and only one currently works, so we have been getting postcards from our beloved boxes in Lisbon and the Canary Islands along their journey.
Big school finally re-started on Monday 12th, but one day later, after a plumbing emergency, it closed down and re-opened the following week. After spending a small fortune on new school textbooks and uniform, they are back to work.

One thing we didn’t mind waiting for was our apartment water and electricity supply. The bad news: we were cut off for over a day as there were major generator problems (ie the builder swapped our spanking nice new generator with the broken one from the nightclub he owns. This is all hypothetical of course as he is of scary Italian descent). The good news: our builder also owns an all-inclusive hotel. Two days later and a very kind gesture from the said builder, with bulging bellies we rolled out of the complex and back to our own apartment. We have generously been allowed to use guest facilities in the future, so we have our tennis racquets and ping pong balls ready for the weekends. Result!
Other events so far include Joe losing a front tooth today, and I’m sitting here right this minute wondering how many escudos the tooth fairy brings- if it’s a typical CV one, she will arrive with funds sometime around Christmas.
We have lots of Italian acquaintances out here, so I’m trying to learn Italian, but am totally useless at engaging my brains. Their words are soooo long.  I’ve learned a couple of gems, such as “piano, piano,” meaning “slowly but surely”, but sadly revert back to a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, and matching their creative hand gestures  with molto gusto.

Last weekend was the island’s Independence Festival weekend – a kind of Glastonbury-by-Sea. We were extremely lucky as the venue was on the piece of beach outside our apartment. The same Sophie Ellis-Bextor group erected a huge covered stage and marquis. Locals from Santa Maria said they don’t go to the party as groups from other islands come across to party and cause trouble.
On the Friday concert, meek Europeans that we are, we headed out to see the start of the concert at 9pm, and duly trudged home at 10pm before it got too raucous. I woke up at 3.30am when they cranked up some amazing dance music, so I put on my baseball cap (incognito) and headed out to the beach for some action. At 3.45am I arrived to see thousands of partygoers in full swing, and the guy on the microphone said “thanks for coming guys” and hundreds of youngsters trooped my way, like a herd of very slow stampeding wildebeest. I skiddadled back to my apartment, annoyed that I had missed some good music, when lo-and-behold a new band got on the mike and carried on the party. I gave up and sat on the balcony to watch the sunrise.

Determined not to miss out on the big glamour Saturday concert, we dragged the kids and our Tesco two-man tent to join the other revellers (well, middle-aged families) on the nice bit of beach by the sea. We listened to the biggest of Cape Verdean acts (who?) and ate our popcorn and drank our wine.
For me, there were three highlights:
1.       An African Michael Jackson wannabe, complete with military jackets, wowed the younger crowd, who went wild.
2.       A man came along with his family and tent about 11pm, and decided to park his substantial tent into a small space between two other tents. (Imagine fitting a Jeep into a parking space made for a Smart car). It was hilarious. Lots of tugging and pushing and frowning at his totally embarrassed teenage son later, he settled in. After attaching his rain canopy on top and weighting down the tent with empty coke bottles filled with sand and burying them in the sand, (in case of a sudden unexpected tropical storm) he sat down contented. Followed by…
3.       A family of four, with a big mamma matriarch heading the reconnaissance mission, decided to plonk her sons behind Mr I’ve-got-a-spanking-big-new-tent (see above), and plumped her big ole backside literally on the edge of his tent. Mr I’ve-got-a-spanking-big-new-tent began scratching his head, but Moby Dick would not be moved. She then fell straight asleep and missed the concert. She did wake up about 4-ish when the deep-fried food lady passed by with some essentials, but then returned trance-like back to her beauty sleep.
The concert was really chilled and it was definitely great to see how the Africans celebrated their identity. I did feel a bit of a fraud when the headlining act came on – an imported French /African reggae band. I couldn’t really chant along with “Freedom for Africa” and “Power to the Rasta.” They were really funky and played until sunrise, after which we woke up the kids and schlepped home for a shower and bed.
I saw the full circle of my turtle season, when I did a turtle walk and we released 22 baby hatchling turtles back to the wild. These two inch cuties had hatched in an artificial nest , as their eggs were originally laid in a dangerous spot. So when they ripped their way out of their egg, they were taken in a bucket to their exact nest site in order to give them a kind of spiritual birthplace for their own future nesting instincts.
They looked like the little wind-up bath toys in a sort of Wacky Races romp to the waves. An amazing experience for me.
The rest of September is a blur really. The following morning I woke up with a large lump in one of what Holly likes to call my piggies. After visiting my local doctor I went back to the UK for two weeks  to get tests done. Five weeks later I received my results today, and the results aren’t malign.
I am obviously  really relieved, although I still don’t have a 100% answer as to what it actually is. I have never slept so badly (since the kids were babies) or drunk so much alcohol (since my travel repping days) or been so stressed (since my Uni finals). It was all I thought about from the second I woke up until I drank myself into sleep at night.
My thoughts , and actually my life, was a blur of trying to switch off my head. It sounds dramatic, but I had quite a few doctors’nurses appointments in clinics/by email or by telephone, where I had to brace myself for hearing those dreaded words “I’m sorry Mrs Salter…”
I truly feel sorry for my friends who have heard those words and are struggling to find their way out of it. I am so sorry that you had a different outcome from me.
Saying that, on a lighter note, I did have some fun in the UK. My unthoughtful parents decided to go on holiday the day before I found my lump so I stayed at my lovely cousin Julie’s for a week, and then with my brother for a few days.
Here’s the condensed version of my trip:
Red wine, chinese takeaways, conkers, rose wine, school friends, clothes shopping, home-cooking not prepared by me, TV, sparkly rose, Morecambe Prom, spiders, Dunelm Mills, my brother’s white wine & OJ cocktail, chicken tikka kebab (fabulous), rain, brie, launch of the new Strictly Come Dancing series, Mars Bars Limited Edition triple choc bar, Xmas shopping, taking shed-loads more money out of the bank  and plain old-fashioned “me time.”
So I returned to Cape Verde with two bursting suitcases and a second hand bike.  The carriage for my 15kg bike was a flat £15 fee, with no weight restriction. So, I padded the bike to make sure it was nice and safe, and was most surprised when the check-in lady at Manchester airport told me that it weighed  38kg, and she couldn’t accept it. They conversation went something like this:
Nice lady: “What’s in that box?”
Me: “A bike”
Nice lady: “There’s more than a bike in there. We can’t accept a 38kg box – the maximum is 34kg. What else is in there?”
Me: “Some crisps.”
Nice lady: “Let me talk to my supervisor…tick tock… ok Mrs Salter, that’s all ok. Have a nice flight.”
Bemused, but extremely grateful, I skipped to security  control and the stack of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars waiting for me at WHSmith.
I flew back on October 12th, so I’d better start putting the blog entries in order...

Wednesday 14 September 2011

August
It’s been a game of two halves, this month. We have been teaching the children English curriculum, and Portuguese language. Daniel is now reading, Holly can communicate in Portuguese, and Joey can say “Shut your mouth” in three languages now. The main insult for pre-teens is “chat”, meaning either “shut your mouth” or “you’re an irritating little show-off.” The ultimate insult, however, is “dois chats”, meaning “two shut ups” or “you’re a really irritating little show-off,” and so on. Can you imagine someone telling you to “bugger off” and you just turn back and say “two bugger offs to you” and you continue until you both get bored.
We’re having typical holiday fun in between the schooling. The first school holiday night, we prepared a midnight feast of donuts, chocolate pancakes, sweets etc. For this, we usually wake the children up at midnight, they eventually rouse, then scoff for half an hour in silence, as they are too tired to talk and then go back to bed comatose. Then they wake up in the morning and rave about it. Whatever floats your boat.
Our daytime activities have involved a lot of boogie board action lately, riding the waves. Have I told you that the waves here are brilliant- our bit of the beach is “calm” – there are constant breaks of up to 2 metre high waves.  Round the coast (about 15 mins walk away) is a hot international surf beach called Ponta Preta with waves that average about 6 metres high in the Winter (I hear). We are really lucky.

We watched Joe go out of his depth last Friday (quite scary as we were actually watching him and didn’t realise he was in trouble). Tony asked me to tell you that we both waded in fully clothed, “Baywatch”-style. Perhaps, he considers himself David Hasselhoff. Daniel had his first major wipe-out in my arms, and was suitably unimpressed. It’s amazing though, as the whole family is water-competent now and we can have some big fun.
A lovely couple from Chelmsford, with two daughters, came to their apartment last week and we had a great time with them. We found out all the UK gossip, and had some “normal” chats.
Iker’s birthday. We have a Mexican family in Block A (it does sound like a prison, doesn’t it?) The youngest boy is in Joe’s class at school, so we went to his birthday party. It was fantastic as they had tons of traditional Mexican fiesta games and treats sent over. Joe actually played a real life Mexican piñata party game. Typically Cape Verdean style, we grabbed the nearest stick made from a broken brick palette, and whacked the piñata. The only downside – I half-expected Dora and Boots to turn up, with Swiper the Sneaky Fox close behind. They didn’t.

Tony wants me to tell you about his turtle walk. We helped clean the beaches of rubbish and fishermen’s nets in May, ready for the loggerhead turtles who nest on our beaches from July onwards. He went on a ranger patrol 9pm – 1am, and hiked up and down the 4km beach  to monitor any turtle nesting and deter poachers (a few old school blokes still try to kill the pregnant mums and put the unlaid eggs in their grog booze as an aphrodisiac). He saw a turtle scrape a nest and lay her eggs, and came home with a huge grin.

I went on a walk a week later, and foolishly thought the full moon would entice a multitude of turtles to come ashore to nest, with some voodoo-type nature force at work. In reality, they have enough moonlight to see a crazy group of humans traipsing up and down the beaches, and think “I’d rather not” and wait until they have the peace and calm of a dark night. So, no turtle-nesting for me.
The rangers complain of light pollution from the hotels affecting the nesting rates. I do agree slightly. Our apartment complex is made of five blocks, called Djadsal Moradias, three of which are fully constructed, each with their own pool. At night-times we get some really low airplanes over our apartment, and so I have a theory that in the dark the pilots say “Get to Djadsal, turn right and keep going for three minutes.”  I’m very proud of this, being a plane-spotter.
More children’s antics: Daniel’s is proud of his new talent – sticking his finger up his willy. All children can do a James Bond eyebrow, with varying degrees of success. (Daniel looks more like Popeye, but he has no sense of humour on this point, which obviously makes it funnier for us).
Do you remember the BBC1 advert where the two men did gymnastic/martial art fighting, wearing white trousers on top of a building? That’s capeoira. Danny is learning it at playschool and has to perform tricky manoeuvres like the gorilla - swaying side to side whilst looking mean & moody at the same time.

A nearby hotel offers a weekly local Capeoira show, so we thought we’d check it out. They said “come Saturday night”, and on Saturday night, in true Cape Verdean disorganised style, they said “oh, it was last night.”
So we went to see a different hotel’s production of “Grease” instead.  I was hoping for some French entertainers with Japanese karaoke-style singing, hilariously mis-pronouncing Sandra Dee etc.  Our treat instead, was twelve Cape Verdean entertainers miming badly to the original songs.
The following Friday we snuck onto the courtesy bus of a local hotel and went to a Capoiera night out. It was wonderful. A team of ten or so islanders performed some back-breaking “fighting” demos and topped it off with a powerful rhythmic drum session of a sort of African/marching band feel. Typically, Daniel covered his ears from the noise and fell asleep in the armchair like an old man.
Joe saw one of the guys with a Mr T haircut doing a headstand whilst skidding along the floor on his head. He’s signed up to local capoeira classes straight away. (I haven’t had the heart to tell him that his fine European hair won’t let him skid along like Afro hair, but he’s bang up for it)
Friday night 20 August/Saturday 21st, the rain arrived. It was a warm but torrential rain for most of the night and day. Usually there is only a monthly rainfall of a few spots lasting for a minute or so, which means that the infrastructure is totally unable to cope with any flooding. It is pools and puddles everywhere.
Cue my second turtle night walk on Saturday 21st ! It was only hours after the rains had stopped. I imagined two scenarios: the turtles thought “bugger it” and stayed put, or secondly, some natural life-force power would entice them onto the sand dunes . Miraculously, it was party time on the beach – I saw three turtles pootling around. The first female had just laid her eggs and we measured her and prodded her a bit before she dragged her 50cm carapace and huge head to the water’s edge, then disappeared under a breaking wave. The last turtle had made a series of Picasso sketches on the sand and decided to come back another day; we glimpsed her gliding away in the breaks.

The second lady had the X Factor. She crashed her way over to the mossy sand dune plants and tried scraping them away, mistaking them for sand (turtles are not too bright). She then changed location and dug a hole in full view of the lights of the street lamps and housing in the distance. Half an hour later (really quickly apparently), with the job done, she heaved herself back into the safety of the sea.
We had to move the nest as the hatchlings would have come to the surface and headed in the wrong direction to the street lights, so we jabbed a painted bamboo stick into the to find the egg chamber (very scientific) and collected the eggs – like soft ping pong balls. Once they were in the bucket, we moved them to somewhere safer.
During this hoo-ha we saw a group of men approaching with dogs. My two teenage/20-something female ranger colleagues calmly positioned  themselves to stop the potential hunters as it’s illegal to use torches on the beach, and they seemed to be pesky no-gooders. As an older family person, I was inwardly panicking, expecting knife-point confrontation with poachers (Yes, we’ve all watched “Crocodile Dundee”). They weren’t hunters though, just your average bunch of twenty year olds hunting for crabs in the early hours of Saturday morning.

And the next weekend, we all went camping, this time… off to see the turtles again. We trekked four hours across the scenic sand dunes to a mountain range with a turtle ranger campsite right on the beach. It’s basically a gurd-style cooking/relaxation area, with a large circus-style sleeping tent, which sounds romantic.  There was a pet kitchen rat scavenging about, and bedroom crabs clambering up tent poles at night-time, so it seemed better sense to sleep under the stars.

Until nightfall we played in the waves and dug up an egg nest which was long over-due for hatching. (The Rangers use GPS systems to help them monitor when & where the nests will hatch). The kids loved looking at unhatched mouldy eggs with small embryos inside. Holly wanted to keep one for a pet.

At 8pm our entire family trekked up and down the beach, with not a hint of turtle. There were these amazing mini-star tracks in the sand called phosphorescence, which is essentially glow-in-the-dark plankton washed up on shore. It was fantastic. At 10pm, I put the kids to bed and an hour later, Tony woke us up to come and watch a turtle nesting. The kids were in the firing line of the main sand-flicking and she was magically silhouetted by a clear sky bursting with shooting stars.  Very Disney. She had the phosphorescence all over her. As she was untagged, the children were allowed to name her : Glowy.
We swapped shifts at 3am, and I felt awful when I woke up. I hadn’t drunk enough water during the day and felt nautious and headache-y. I bravely carried on walking up and down the beach, but managed to be sick on the main turtle landing beach. Classy. I had a nap on the beach at sunrise then I made a last patrol circuit at 7am. No new nests, but a mature nest had hatched and there were 20 or so 5cm wide teeny hatchling trails heading to the beach. It was amazing, as I had witnessed the full nesting cycle. Unfortunately a few had headed towards the mountain-side and a group of crabs had attacked them, too, which is natural. I saw one track of a baby who had been dragged on her back away from the others by crabs. This was incredibly saddening, but I know that she was just one of the 1000 or so turtles who never make it to adulthood.
It was a profound experience for all of us.
After breakfast, we marched two hours home, the quick route.  Holly is desperate to do it all again, so credit to her. Actually, she really clicked with one particular teenage Ranger called Lydia, and has been affected by the glamour. Knowing my Holly, once she realises they earn peanuts she’ll be back to wanting to marry a prince.
I had foolishly agreed to a girlie happy hour pub crawl the night after camping. Muita cerveja later, I staggered to bed, with the room spinning. Pretty much like the night before, but with alcohol.
Our UK English friends came over again, so we really have given up on the schoolwork and headed for the surf.
One last turtle blog (no, we’re not in a turtle cult, although it sounds like it – we are just enjoying peak season and school holidays). The charity organiser asked me to come to a children’s turtle activity yesterday morning to paint faces – good PR for the charity. Several busloads and one hundred children later, we were marching through the streets Rio-style with whistles and drums  booming. It was mentally shattering, but a heap of fun.

It has been quite an eventful summer – one that will never be forgotten and I hope will have shaped the children in their views about life. Today is the 1st September, and I don’t have that musty damp feeling that I always have when Autumn approaches. The flies are in full breeding season  after the rains and the sweat is dripping down my back at midday. It’s our home though and in balance, it’s where our heart is.
I hope everyone with children enjoys a new and fruitful School Year.
Love Gill and the gang xxx

Friday 19 August 2011

July 2011


The 1st of July started with a bang – it was Daniel’s End of School Year play. His role was fisherman, and he seemed quite happy with that. Until he had to get on stage and do his bit. I don’t like to let everyone know that he was a bit hesitant, but he did bawl his eyes out like a big girl, until we promised not to make him go on stage.
The following night, the other two kids had their End of Year School Show at the main theatre on the island, with a similar feel to High School Musical, the Graduation Show.  I hope to download it somehow, as we have some fantastic footage of Joseph belting out a Portuguese song, with a passion Shirley Bassey would have been proud of; and Holly performing traditional Cape Verdean/ African courtship dances (we thought she was the best, naturally). Of course, she danced with innocence, but the Beyonce booty-shaking would have been banned in Hollywoods/Crystal T’s/Dukes/Palms/local townie nite club (delete as appropriate). She was amazing.

The only blip in the events was that Joe graduated from his academic level, but this obviously wasn’t the problem, as I was incredibly proud of him. He was, however, the first pupil in his whole school to be in line for a rosetta and diploma as a reward for his achievement. Sitting happily in the auditorium watching  the projector slideshow beaming out photos of a happy Joe in his classroom, I didn’t realise the Head Teacher was calling for me (in Portuguese)  on the microphone to go on stage to present him with his award. What a fantastic way to present myself for the first time to the school mums and teachers. I think there were lots of patronising “aw, bless”es  going around that evening for me.


It’s very usual for any kids party to include everybody – Nan’s, aunties, the dog…  We all had to take a cake/pudding/snack for the post-show party in the playground/function room next door.  Our cake got smashed in the cab on the way to the show, so my idea was to hide it carefully under the contributions from other parents. Unfortunately, my husband walked straight up to the head teacher, beaming with pride and showed her the cake.
Tony then dragged us down with a bit of a tummy bug a few days later. The Cowper approach is typically northern – just get on with it and don’t think about receiving sympathy. I’m pleased to report that he is fully recovered.
Since then we’ve changed gear a little as the kids broke up for school holidays mid-July. After two glowing school reports, we decided they needed….more school work. They spend 9-4pm every week day learning English Curriculum with a sprinkling of Portuguese. They love it. We’re not so bad really, as we’re doing the whole hippy parent thing. The kids are learning lots of day-to-day life skills…washing-up, boiling eggs, loading the washing machine, cooking basic dinners, taking the rubbish to the tip. Upon consideration, life seems quite relaxed. Seriously, they’re having loads of one-to-one time swimming, doing arty stuff, making playdough, learning to bake cakes by themselves. It’s great.

Our general free-time is getting more and more beach-based. We still love the jetty and watch the fisherman haul in their catches. They sometimes catch a shark, and then cut it to bits, slashing the jaws from the head to sell to tourists. It’s definitely an education. I hear the sharks are tiger sharks, but only “babies” at 6 foot! Who knows. We also see them bring in puffer-fish , which are really ugly fellas. They then stick a balloon in its mouth (when it’s dead) and blow the balloon up. This inflates the fish and they leave it to dry out, and then sell a puffed-up puffer fish to tourists. As usual, there’s the usual tourist tat, too – wooden carvings of semi-naked ladies with baskets on their heads, and wooden carvings of totally-naked men in an “I’m-peeing-thank-you-very-much” pose. Which leads me nicely to…
Another Joey gem. He saw a photo of the Black Eyed Peas (American black music group) in a magazine and he shouted out: “Look, there’s the Beatles.”
We still don’t go out much, as we’re STILL not earning. So we go to the beach on Fridays for the start of weekend at 5pm. It’s full of cool Cape Verdeans playing frizbee, beach volleyball and football. For once, it’s the ladies who get a lovely treat on the beach, as the local men really do look after their bodies. It’s all manual work out here, so there’s six-packs a-plenty. Yum yum. So, reminding myself about my Friday night beach story, we’re trying to make that ever so subtle leap, and asking the cool kids if we can come and play with them. I mean a topless Tony, three small children and a wrinkly nearly 40 year old wife. We’re an essential addition to anyone’s beach party.



Before I forget, the home-made yoghurt is coming along nicely. We now have yoghurt cook-offs to see who’s the best yoghurt maker. Oh, the fun we have.
Mid-July was National Mosquito Day. Yes, we had to check our environment to make sure that there was no stagnant water in car tyres (there are no cars except taxis), and a reminder that we shouldn’t over-water our potted plants, again avoiding stagnant water. However, we have a large swimming pool outside our balcony, and pools of foetid water around the new road under construction outside our apartment. Que sera sera. The bad side of all this, they are afraid the Dengue mosquitos will buzz onto the island one day. As I’m the one who gets bitten most, the kids are really excited about the possibility of me swooning in agony some day soon.
Just a bit of honesty here, really. A friend recently said that she enjoyed our blog and we seem to be living the dream. I just told her that we put the best bits in there as no-one wants to hear about mundane days. We have lots of them, for example, my Face Painting scheme is now on hold as the council authorisation has been removed. They can’t entertain the responsibility of me running around resort with some child-friendly paints and paintbrushes in my hand. They can, however, let incredibly underpaid Africans work on building sites without any safety restrictions. In fact yesterday Tony saw the classic accessory to any family snapshot on the beach yesterday – a baby monkey.  So we just put in the fun stuff in the blog, really. However, if you talk to the kids its all about cockroaches and mosquitos.
Anyway, this particular friend  is struggling with ill-health in life, as are others like my Dad and I think they’re the ones who I’m in awe of. They just get on with it. My Dad’s the original Bionic Man, victim of hundreds of knee/hip/shoulder/elbow…operations, the origins of which he blames on building his own house extensions pre-Health and Safety mania. I blame years of trotting up and down the rugby pitch myself. Well, I’m rambling a bit here, but I just wanted to say how proud I am of my family and friends, and I miss you. Bless you all.
More Joey: this month so far, he has managed to walk forwards and look backwards, thus walking straight into a lamppost. He also hit himself on the head with a frying pan, whilst drying the pots. He is now labelled “Joey clonk”.


 
Finally, the kids nearly got their wish. I’ve had a flu-ey thing for over a week, and really didn’t have the energy to get out of bed. It was ace. I read three books. No Dengue Fever though, so they’re still wishing away.

I did get some sympathy from the kids (yes, I’m a hypocrite). We do something called three stars and a wish every week. We all have a turn at saying three stars – things we’re proud or happy that have happened during the week, and we ask for one wish- something they would like to happen or change. Normally, it’s “My three stars are… I caught a crab, I made a Lego spaceship by myself and I killed three mosquitos,” followed by “ I wish for Nanny to send more Haribos from England.” (No hint there, Gloria, but we are also running low on coffee). Well, this past week, their wishes have all been that “Mummy gets better.” I love my children immensly. xxx

PS. Couldn't resist this one...

Sunday 3 July 2011

June 2011

  
Gill in the UK Gill went to England, me and kids walked up main road and down tam tams pub holding arches with balloons on following some drummers for ‘children’s day’.  On way home cut through novo, a women had dropped some balloons, I got them for her and we got invited to a childrens day party in the afternoon.  Greta fun, kids made multi coloured salt bottles, had pizza, sweets and coke etc.  Then they had games in the pool.  Then the restaurant bought out a big chocolate cake for one of the kids birthdays.  No famous faces, but a cheeky freebie nonetheless.
Thanks Tony, for finally contributing to the blog.
My version of the UK. I flew to Brussels, slept in the airport that night- locked in the ladies loo cubicle –nice!   It was like being a student again. Then I visited Brussels for the day, flew to Heathrow, coached to Gatwick, collected our car and drove to my mum-in-law‘s house in Romford. A breeze.
In the UK, I did shopping, shopping, shopping, funded by selling the car, with the help of my Mum and Dad. Bye bye X reg Picasso, sad to see you go. Tony now wants a quad bike instead of a car out here, so the joys of mid-life crisis are now affecting both of us.
I had great fun in England – eating Indian takeaways, going to Jonah’s birthday party, eating Chinese takeaways, shopping at Asda, shopping at Tesco, shopping at TK Maxx, and finally the mecca of shopping- Lakeside, Essex. I had tons of enjoyment with the credit card at Lakeside, until I discovered it was a two hour bus journey to get home to Chelmsford, Essex, (via a change of bus at Basildon bus station). Luckily, my perfect hostess, Georgina, was on hand to save the day and rescue me.
My jolly to the UK was the first time I have left the kids, and excepting the odd hour or two, I didn’t miss them. I didn’t have time.
I arrived back to Sal on Holly’s 9th Birthday and was met at the airport by Daniel, performing Capoeira like a demented cockroach at the Arrivals lounge and Tony thankfully not following suit.
We made a spontaneous decision to collect the elder two kids from their school, which is next door to the airport, and taxied back to the apartment. (I’m not quite sure what gallons of airplane diesel dropping on them from overhead on a daily basis is doing to their health, but they’re happy spotting planes at playtime). One hour of unloading two suitcases full of Haribos later, Holly dived into unwrapping her presents. Again, there is not much to buy here on the island from the cheap Chinese warehouses, except a plastic jeep or dolly’s make-up set. However, Holly seemed over the moon with her Enid Blyton Malory Towers bookset and Horrible Histories book collection. Or was it the onset of the Haribos sugar rush kicking in?


We had a perfect family day in, and a welcome relax. Her birthday party was a day trip to Waikiki Spa for a hand and foot nail paint with her school friend, Daniella. Life seemed more than idyllic, until the nail technician told me about a 50 kilo hash drugs bust the night before.  Apparently it had something to do with Cape Verdean fishing waters, Chinese fishing boats, Brazilian fishermen and the man from the Italian ice cream shop down the road. I hear the islands are a good source of trafficking certain items, but luckily they seem to pass in and out of the waters, without being offloaded onto the islands. So I’m OK with that.


Back to Holly’s party, we had nails done, then ice creams at the ice cream parlour (the owner wasn’t there), back to ours for pancakes and eggy bread. What a party! I bought one of those huge silicone muffin tins in England, expecting a glamour swirly, whirly buttercreamed masterpiece of a cake to pop out of my Halogen oven. In short, it looked like a big lump of manure. Inspiration saved the day, with a scattering of edible silver balls and some 100’s and 1000’s sprinkles. I have always taken photos of the home-made birthday cakes I have made for my children. On my deluded wavelength, I see it as a token of my love for them. Aged 1 years old, I started with woodland-inspired creatures surrounded by an array of rainbow-coloured icing sugar sculptures. Now, it’s any kind of traybake, smeared with a mountain of sparkly icing or sprinkles. Do I love my children less? It seems so!


Birthday season is over in our house, and the balloons finally come down. We went back to daily life. Joey has been having lessons from Tony in how to be a strapping Cape Verdean brute of a person. (Yes, I know this is a bit hard to picture). Joe is a lovely, happy boy who is always surrounded by a throng of friends, and never happier than doing something 1970’s-inspired like hopscotch or spinning a hoop Enid Blyton-like…  Well, no, that’s my motherly rose-tinted spectacles, but he’s just not the hard-tackling rugby playing type, we all know that.

So, he’s been learning to not only punch back, but get in there first, if you feel a tussle is on the cards. This being Cape Verde, this is most of every play-time. Cape Verdean life and its people are just tougher. Kids can be out selling bananas from their early teens onwards, the Catholic families are large and you just take what you can from life. So, teachers don’t mediate playground power struggles. They just leave children to get on with the natural activities of finding out the pecking order of life.
Nowadays, Joe is still the happy-go-lucky court jester, but with a hint of Rocky Balboa wherever necessary. Holly gets stuck in there, too. Although she’s a pretty mature, grounded girl by European standards, she’s perceived here a little bit like Sharpay from High School Musical – over-confident and spoilt – a show-off. She’s having a small issue of jealous/immature catty schoolgirl pettiness you’d normally get in Secondary School, but she’s doing really well and riding it with her usual maturity and positive outlook. Daniel, is also intergrating better, in that he actually likes people beyond the family circle now.
He’s also discovered girls.



I don’t really know what happened to the rest of June. We had class friends over to play and the children settled back down again into regular school life. We attended  Daniel’s Parents Afternoon. The teacher says he prefers to talk in Creole (local Portuguese dialect) rather than Portuguese. That’s Danny taking the easy option as always. It did make me laugh as we took his drawings and other school work home with us. In nearly every picture he drew the five of us and two houses. Mummy and Daniel stay in the big one and the other three are relegated to the small one. They often have to draw a picture of something they like and also something they don’t like. Sport seems to be a frequent dislike, and Tony is quite often in there, too. Mummy’s boy never puts me in those negative pictures, so I will continue to bake cakes and let him lick the bowl out etc and Tony can carry on making him finish his plate off. It works for me!

On a final note, we were pretty upset as we had Take That tickets, which we sold as we really couldn’t justify not earning AND spending £1000’s on a flight to the UK. To those of you who did go to the concert, I hope you had a brilliant time, and we’re both very envious.
So, we decided to up our stakes on the entertainment out here. We got out the Monopoly board and the Cluedo and decided to enrol the kids on a higher plane of family fun.  Easing them in with Monopoly (yawn), Joey kicked our butt and made Holly cry. Just explaining my children, Holly is mega-competitive and fairly money-orientated, which will make her very successful in life combined with her intelligence, beauty, optimism and level-headedness… (just in case she reads this blog)… Joe smiles his way through life and karma ensures he wins any game involving a dice, 99% of the time. So he duly thrashed us.
Next stop, Cluedo. How a six year old can work out it was Mrs White in the Kitchen with a revolver before two adults and a 9 year old is beyond me. But he did! Last stop, Chinese Checkers, a game of strategy. Whooped our sorry backsides once again. Snakes and ladders, Frustration you guessed it. He’s never going to Uni, I’m just taking him to a Casino when he’s old enough.


This being my very final note, I have to commend Tony on his cookery skills, as he is now the best (packet) cake mix chef in the house. It takes six minutes of whisking by hand, so I think he’s got an unfair advantage. A tad annoyingly, he has christened himself “Captain Cakeman”, and spends many a time chortling to himself on that one.

We have moved on to trialling home-made yoghurt recently, so keep your eyes posted for the next exciting July instalment of our blog, and find out whether we successfully perfected it or not.

Lots of love to you all, Gill and the gang xxx

Saturday 11 June 2011

May 2011

Tam and Jenny’s BBQ. Well the BBQ went great. Eight hours later we stumbled home via the pub. We didn’t arrive home until after 10 p.m. so it wasn’t the most responsible thing we’ve done as parents, especially as Holly and Joe were to start their new school the following day. It was, however, Cape Verdean Mother’s Day, so all children party for the day and night, so I was in good company.

School for Holly & Joseph. Week 1 - the children are having lots of fun at school. It’s their first taste of school routine and playground life since the end of November, so they’re enjoying their new girl/boy life. We chose the school as it teaches in Portuguese and we figured it’s an amazing opportunity in life, so long it wasn’t us doing the hard graft of turning up to lessons in a language we totally don’t understand. They are picking it up, but again there’s lots of pointing and gestures going on there. I wasn’t too keen on Joseph’s hitting-his-willy-with-his-drink-bottle one, but he assured me all the boys were doing it. My worry was that Joe instigated it all, and we look like a bunch of chavs.
Don Pedro.  We spoke the developer of our complex today – a Don Pietro. He is part of the Italian big boy society out here, and Tony revelled in his status as amigo to the local Don Corleone figure.  Then went off to the supermarket for some potatoes, and realised how small a fish we are in this pond.

Schmoozing with the stars - Mid-May an apartment complex was launched with a long weekend of party, for the well-connected. All sorts of dignitaries turned up- the President of Cape Verde, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Diversity, the Salters. We had gone kiting on the sand-dunes which are located about five minutes around the bay from the hotel, and heard the party music blasting. We asked the Security Guard if it was open to the public. He said,”yes.”  A few hours later and several beers happier we were sitting at a beach party DJed by Sophie. Needless to say we got caught by the manager of the hotel (who inconveniently is a neighbour in our own apartment complex). Free lunch central, thank you.

For anybody interested, we have a great email photo of the kids with Diversity we can forwaard to you. (Although that would be a bit weird!)


Turtle-nesting. The following weekend, we were invited to clean up the main sea turtle-nesting beach, as it gets a lot of fishermen’s rubbish swept in from the sea – I blame the dirty Brazilians! A few hours of hard work and the children learned about conservation. There are also poachers on the island who try to kill the turtles for their paws, so Joe and Danny played with their “boomerangs”, until we explained they were old turtle bones from decapitated victims. There’s a team of ex-pats who ranger the beach from poachers at night-times during nesting season in a couple of weeks. We’re hoping to get involved in that. The downside of the whole day was that I got a driftwood mega-splinter in my leg, which had to be cut out with a razor-blade at the clinic. If you ask Tony, he will say it was only a centimetre long, but I’m claiming matchstick-sized!

School update. The kids have now completed three weeks at school. Holly has come on magnificently and has got settled with her class mates. Joe has already acquired the reputation of “crazy boy”, which he himself feels an appropriate evaluation.  Both are learning Portuguese and Creole – a kind of lazy-man’s Portuguese. In Spanish, generally add “o” or “a” to the end of the word, as you know. In Creole, you just don’t say the end of the word at all. All “no stress” as the islanders say.

10 year anniversary. How times flies... We "bought" wristbands for the local 5 star hotel and indulged in an evening of all-inclusive food and drink.


Daniel's birthday. As with everything concerned with child number three, it was very low-key and dare I say it ...cheap. We went to the beach, ate lots of cake and ice-cream. The party was a pool party with some local English children, and generally playing in the sunshine. I had gone to playschool with a lovely hangover the day after the anniversary indulgence and painted the faces of 25 three-year olds, in two hours. So that was his party-bag treat for his school friends. He had a great birthday.  

Face painting. I have finally got myself a little income-earner, although I've only done freebies so far! I painted face at a kid’s party last Sunday, and am going to set up a little stall on the prom! I have learned that orange colour on Cape Verdeans, with their lovely olive, doesn’t show. And the one I was dreading - dark black African faces come out really well!




Fidel Castro. We are looking into a few business ideas and our contact  in town is none other than Fidel Castro. I went to Espargos by myself and ambled from council building to council building searching for this man, sure that someone was giggling behind me. He does exist and is a very nice man.
That is May 2011. It has been full of hard work (for the children) and fun (for the family). We’ve had lots of experiences of a lifetime.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Week 7 - 25 April 2011

 
Monday: A subdued day. Danny’s first day back at school after Easter and he wasn’t impressed. I  made him grog muffins to calm him down.
Tuesday: The search for an authentic African drum. Tony had to take part in a drum jamming session in each drum shack, and ended up with more rhythm than Bob Marley.
Wednesday: Bongo wake-up call at 7am and Happy 39th to me. Cachupa (bean stew) breakfast- they do put all sorts in it to bulk it up – green bananas, butternut squash, fingernails… kidding.  I forgot they put shredded coconut in it until I found my second chewy piece of fingernail. Lunch was Tony’s home-made banana loaf, saved by our friend Loite’s home-made ice-cream left over from Sunday. After a pool-side chillax we went for a burger and bacon sandwich for dinner at a beach shack. It’s run by a Brazilian family and the guy reminds me of my brother  - ponytail, tanned, big smile, everybody’s friend… a bum, but a lovely bum! The evening was just as good as sitting on a beach in Thailand. A perfect birthday.

Thursday: I woke with the energy of someone who has just had a birthday and wants to do things in life. So we Spring cleaned the apartment. We swapped our big double bedroom with their small 3-bedded room. We then had meetings with an importer and an accountant. I bet my family never thought they’d hear me say such mature words!


Friday: We watched the Royal Wedding – 9am kick-off down the aisle. We were really privileged to watch it at a beach bar, with a bottle of champagne in one hand, and scones in the other. It was an amazing and emotional day. It really made you look back at your own life, and wonder where your own Prince Charming disappeared to! One siesta later and we were ready for Friday night out. A fantastic day. Long live William and Katy!


Saturday: we headed for a lagoon beach about 30 mins walk away. We found urchins, crabs and shrimp. It was really beautiful. On the way, we walked past the local “superstar” singer’s house, which was a wonderful Little Mermaid palace version of Hansel and Gretel’s house. Slightly OTT, but I think I’ve sold it to you. Later, Tony walked home from a boys night at the pub, and got himself work teaching English to the local hotel security staff. When I say security, I don’t mean that the place is wild and crime-ridden, it’s just that hotels are all-inclusive and use the coloured wristband system, so these guys check your wrists. I’m trying to think of a way round their system, to get access to the restaurants, but maybe Tony can wangle something now.

Sunday: Happy Cape Verdean Mother’s Day! We’re planning on a bit of gardening today, and then we have a beach BBQ to go to.
What a bonanza of a week, and I like being 39 years old.  I’m drinking more wine than Soft Mick!