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 21^st, 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 21^st ! 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 1^st 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