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

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.

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 39^th 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!

Week 6 - 18 April 2011

Week 7

We have come to the decision that the holiday is coming to a close, and we actually have to start earning some cash!

Tony is brilliantly teaching English to two children and their mum, but it isn’t a long-term career unless we decide to set up a school. He’s gaining some great experience, though.

I am as usual playing the housewife card and trying to divert all income-related responsibilities onto Tony. Kidding. I do delegate careers well, however.

This week really flew by as we are doing a lot of internet research into opportunities here. Unfortunately, when I get really into the inspirational genius zone, I need chocolate, so the Toblerones are disappearing fast. To stop me devouring all supplies, I’m asking all people who are reading this blog to email us with a multi-million pound guaranteed business idea.  Ta.

Aside from this, the swimming pool is officially up and running. My neighbour is a Czech ex-World swimming competitor. I’ve seen her swim, and reckon I could thrash her. Failing that, I could definitely beat her at an underwater handstand comp.

We’ve had some monster baking sessions in anticipation of next week’s birthday extravaganza (whose? mine? Oh my, I did forget). Anyway the last bottle of honey grog (whisky) we bought didn’t have any whisky in, and was just honey syrup, I think. The kids have really enjoyed “honey” muffins all week. Hic!

Best quote of the holiday so far … Daniel is pretty tanned and has gone blonde again. He turned around one day and in a worried tone said “I’ve got no eyebrows now”. (His face and hair now blends as one sunshiney light brown colour.)

It’s Easter Sunday in two days. Tony broke the Easter eggs he brought back from the UK and Holly saw the bag of Cadburys mini crème eggs we brought out at the start. The Easter Bunny was stuck for ideas until he saw a huge glamour box of 100 Chupa Chups in town.  Glamour.

Saturday was of course St George’s Day and we did celebrate in style. We said “Goodbye” to our  UK friends, and hope to see them again in the Summer. After that, we joined the rest of the English expats in our local British pub for pints of beer.

Sunday, we were woken up for an Easter Egg Hunt round the pool at 5.45 am. Our neighbours invited us for Easter lunch Cape Verdean style – 8 dishes followed by fantastic home-made ice-cream. Dinner was Czech-style at our neighbours i.e. basic food and lots of wine and fire-breathing whisky/vodka type shots, whilst they sat around laughing at us choking. 

Salut and Happy Easter to all!

Week 5 – 11 April

Tony arrived back on the island on Monday, laden with goodies. We met him at the airport and a family from Holly’s gymnastics club in Bishop’s Stortford walked through arrivals, so we’ll head off to catch up with them later. It’s a small world.

On Tuesday we met with the headteacher at Holly and Joe’s school. After an expensive trip to the uniform and bookshop (coincidentally owned by the school headmistress!), we headed home for some peace and quiet.

Tony has started using his TEFL qualification and is teaching some local kids English, and I am still keeping up with the Portuguese tuition for our children. We started verb conjugations and they went down a treat (NOT!). We did resort to I stink, you stink, he stinks … and much worse, but I think it worked ok.

A friend popped by with a phone number just as the local workman came to do DIY by my apartment. I was caught in a "there really is an innocent reason for standing in my towel at my front door chatting to older men moment." I’m sure I’ve lost my gentle English lady reputation. Oh ok, I’ve never owned that title!

The swimming pool has been filled – a sad day for all of us.

On Saturday we went to see the crabs and lunched at a local eatery – great apart from the cockroach in my beer bottle. On the way home, we bought a kilo of wahoo/tuna at the harbour. Fish stew for Saturday’s dinner and tuna steak for tomorrow. A great game of Scrabble last night – I mucked around with words like "eggy" and "jetee", then got serious with a "quad" and "cod" in one go. Still lost, but a fun sesh.

Jogged off the hangover with a mega-run, then met up with the gymnastics bunch on Sunday – Anne, Alex, Amy and Ethan, with whom we spent a lovely day at the beach. I forgot to put suncream on (major D’oh moment) and I am sitting at the PC this very moment, yoghurt and aftersun piled thickly everywhere. I’m using this as a lesson in "this is why you need to put suncream on."

Tony is at the pub and "networking."

Week 4 – 4 April

Happy Mother’s Day to all, including my own Mum. Hope everyone had a lovely day, although if it’s like my home, you were probably ignored until you received a box of choccies and the kids got all lovey-dovey in the hope of a choc or two.

Monday was the going-out anniversary for Tony and I. We have been seeing each other for 14 years, and next month we’ll celebrate 10 years of marriage. OMG! Knowing Tony, I’ll be showered with gifts and exciting nights out. Alternatively, it’ll be "here’s a box of Black Magic m’dear".

Our exploration of the island is on hold until Tony comes back to share it with us, but I am finding out bits and bobs locally. The hotel across the road has a great sandy playground and doesn’t mind us using it. The quaint old port part of town hosts a fab deli/café, so I’ll be having a delicious brunch here next week to celebrate Tony’s return. The kids will be on the stone jetty wall, watching the crabs scramble about.

It’s the local Secondary School holidays here. I now run an unofficial creche in our empty swimming pool for a 1,2,3,6,8,12 and 13 year old. In true local style, I do it in a relaxed way, from my balcony with a book in my hand.

I’m getting to know the expats now, and there’s a hell of a lot of Brummies and Northerners here for the sunshine, I guess. Steve is a landscape gardener here and has helped me scrounge some nice plants from other people’s gardens for our own apartment block.

I wish my brother would visit here, as he would fit in straight away. Please take note, Steve, if you’re reading this!

This week has been even more chilled as I have a good routine. Danny now goes to morning class instead of afternoon, so he does more grown-up play, instead of tennis etc. Still not sure what exactly that is, as he informs me on a need to know basis. On Thursday, his class was filmed by a Portuguese TV crew, for a program called "Pearls of the Ocean," and he even denied a camera-crew being there.

Joseph has left Murdeira Infant School as he’ll join Holly in the more formal Letrinhas International School after Easter. So both elder children have learnt lots of Portuguese in the mornings and we’ve all played in the afternoons. Now they are established with friends, I can sit back and get on with jobs (reading, cooking, learning Portuguese…). There is a daily play-out time with friends around 4pm until dinnertime at 6.30ish, then games until 8ish and bed. Joe and Holly are fully-fledged whist experts, except they like to save all their trumps until the end for a big ta-da final flourish. Don’t know where who they got their show-off genes from!

On Saturday, the children just wanted to play inside with their toys, and we made Easter Bunny Masks etc. Muffin-making has also become a core activity- there is no squash/cordial juice here, just sachets of powder mix, so we have tried a variety of cupcake flavours – cola, guava, strawberry…

Today is Sunday, and we’re heading for one of the best surfing beaches on the island. Our island of Sal has produced a world champion windsurfer, and professionals of other hard-core wave sports. I’m hoping the kids will be inspired today by the fun out there. It really wouldn’t bother me if the children were happy surf-dudes or successful business-folk when they’re older. I just hope they apply themselves to something, unlike their drifter Mum. (Although, I must admit that I’ve had a lot of fun drifting!)

Tony returns to Cape Verde tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to his suitcases coming home.

Week 3 – 28th March

Tony is still in England – lots of tedious course work I’m sure. He is staying with his old Uni flatmate, Mark, so I’m not sure it’s all work like he tells me.

We had the usual dramas this week- Joe tripped headfirst into the empty swimming pool, Daniel sprained his ankle…

It feels like we are really settled here at the moment. The Lucky Lucky Men know our faces now and no longer tout their catchphrase "Nice Family" at us, or maybe they just watch the boys being loons and have decided that we really are not a nice family.

Our route to school means we often walk by a new road under construction outside our apartments into town. Health and Safety doesn’t really exist here, so we walk on the pavement-less road and stop a couple of metres from the men swinging their pick axes and operating their CAT diggers and JCB tank-things. It really is Enid Blyton boyhood adventure-time. Joe is never happier than scrambling on mounds of dirt on a building site.

On the way home from school, we mostly walk along the beach and watch the windsurfers, kite-surfers and the boats. A favourite is the Neptunus yellow glass-bottomed boat which looks like a submarine.

There are between 50-90 British expats here depending on who you talk to. A lovely Chigwell man has offered to take Joe fishing on his boat, but he really has his sights set upon shark-fishing. He’s also desperate to try quad-biking. Holly fancies the island-hopping tour and Daniel just wants to play Lego.

It’s now weekend and a bit cloudy, so we went to the cake shop for brunch, and the kids are watching "Phineas and Furb" on Portuguese television with Walter and Maira. I have a nice chicken thigh in the slow-cooker for a scrummy Thai curry later on. It’s a huge monster leg, so I think they have some unmentionable poultry mutating here. Also, I’m not tempted by goat yet, but my Dad has an amusing goat curry story from Goa to tell you if you ever meet him.

We do have a few concerns here- the children worry if the Easter Bunny will come here as they aren’t sure that he visits Catholic islands. It will also be nice when Tony returns, as I’m sure people think I’ve been deserted out here- the Cape Verdeans keep asking where my "man" is!