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...
