Quick Month Overview

Sorry for the lack of blogging. Legit excuse, though. Our internet was cut at the youth center and the internet cafe wouldn't let me post my blogs. But, I'll give y'all a quick update on what I'm up to.

We've started a compost pile behind the youth center, and I'm taking to it like a 7th grader with his science-fair project. It's awesome. I've already read books about composting. However, it's a slow process. I might start pouring my urine on it to speed up the process (it provides nitrogen to activate the bacterias that are doing all the decomposing) If it works out well, we might try to expand it.

Also, I'm starting another computer class on Wednesday. So, I'll be busy for the next month or so.

And, my roommate and I now have our own radio show every saturday. I'll try to post the shows on here later.

Read a good book last month that another volunteered had recommended to me, Wendell Barry Jayber Crow (and actually lent to me). In it, there is a quote about life; "And os when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?" Thought it was a good quote, humbles you and I'm not even religious. Just shows that there are somethings greater than us.

Peace

A little language goes a long way

So, I'm back at home, in Cape Verde. Life's a lot more relaxed. Don't have to worry about confusing airports, customs and all that stuff. For my flight back to Cape Verde, I actually arrived at the airport 5 hours before my flight just to lighten the stress-load. Airports are definitely not my niche. Felt good though to just chill, watch people and read. I'm definitely a better chiller since arriving on the island. But, the main topic of this blog is going to be language and it's importance. On Cape Verde, Cape Verdeans and I speak Kriolu. For most people in the world it probably seems a useless language and one that will probably disappear as globalization progresses and colonial languages assert their dominance. Globalization is an incredibly powerful force that has a head of steam, however, I'm going to argue that these languages are extremely important in providing diversity amongst humans and empowering the people that speak these languages. Kriolu has been the key to my success in Cape Verde. It creates smiles for young and old cape verdeans when they hear this white guy speaking THEIR language instead of portuguese or just trying to get by in English. I'm sure that gives them pride as well to know that a foreigner has taken the time to learn their language. The same was true in Guatemala. Where I lived, the language was Katchi´kel (excuse the spelling) and just by saying the few words that I knew, rather than speaking Spanish; it brought by smiles to old ladies selling flowers in the streets. But with globalization's power, this linguistic road is more of a one-way street, granting more weight to the colonial languages: english, spanish, portuguese and french (I'm sure there are others, but my history isn't great and I like hating on europeans and americans. So, I'll stick with it). So, we are slowly moving toward a world with fewer and fewer languages. And this effect is felt in the `developing´countries, where everyone wants to learn English, the lingua franca of the world. This is a terrible shame. Without this linguistic diversity, I believe that the world could become less diverse in many other way, eventually, leading to a homogenous population that shares Western values and beliefs. Causing us to appear more like robots than we already do (I can remember looking at the people lining up to take the escalator in London and looked like some other force was controlling everyone and they had no mind of their own). Consumerism would take over the world. Think of the weight of the word "economic" in our language. I hardly hear this word spoken here, and I'm sure it's the case in other languages like Kriolu. This puts more responsibility on us in the western world. We need to take an interest in more of these seemingly unimportant languages of the world. The Kriolus, Foolas, Waloffs and Katchikels that without incentives from the western world could disappear. Buy music, books, take lessons. Use globalization against itself. I imagine that the loss of language diversity could be similar to the loss of biological diversity, on different scales. With those words, Fika fixi (be well) And this coming from a guy who's about to start teaching english. Ah the world is a complicated place, full of contradictions.

NO THOUGHTS, JUST TUNES!

So, I thought that I'd loosen things up by providing some links to some of my favorite tunes. Hopefully, they provide some smiles, a little dancing and maybe some booty shaking. Here they are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf91bs8PVoE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14DBc5j1vmE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7e0n6H7jak&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNgbQv7BJws

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGJ17-A_v4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1dm91kWZ2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-13luIq8vI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Gmaurug0I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJoMMGaPzYs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ0BpzVRQPc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGh_k0Y99Oo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1kKewkvqE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXAicoEsWdU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o5Bujo5kWk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4BTLoHSGMk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uy-qD5Mr-c&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5_Fusasy2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQqTxK7VhSk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fginS6uhw-8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1w0syylZI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_5hQ8cEE7Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehu3wy4WkHs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J85QrbR5oUE

I think that's enough for now. One love

Additional Thoughts

Thank god for children. At least they smile without needing a reason for doing it. Also, I tried to start conversations whenever possible, for the most part. In Cape Verde, I've developed the habit of sort of staring at people for a little longer than we normally deem acceptable; it's normal there. So, I practiced this on the metro, but did not receive a response. Something would've been better than nothing. "What are you looking at freak?!?" "Why don't you take a picture it lasts longer?!?!?" Anything. At least, I would've have felt acknowledged.

From what I've learned and seen, life seems to be an upside-down bell curve in terms of happiness. Meaning all throughout our infancy and childhood, life is great, not a care in the world. Everything is new and appears to be the shit, as a result we smile on a whim. Your slipping on ice is the funniest thing that ever happened to you. Life is great. Then as we grow out of childhood and youth, graduate college and start to think about "making money" and "a career". Your life immediately goes into the shithole. You start wearing suits, acting like a douche-bag, honking your horn in traffic, basically being a huge ass-hole because you realize that your life sucks. This is a terrible stage in life; one that needs saving. We only care about ourselves and our situation. The world doesn't exist outside of our bubble. This stage is can be saved by major events, births of children, marriage, etc. But sometimes these things can complicate the problem and worsen things. And as we grow old, we see the bottom coming up, causing us to be a little more cheerful. In general, elderly people seem to be more open to conversation and start to value their time a little more. As a result, I think that they begin to value the people around them a little more.

Why do we let our younger working years and middle aged years blow balls? These are seemingly are most productive years, but what is it that we are focused on producing? What is our ultimate goal? We change this, maybe will find a little more happiness.

Again, these are my opinions and may be completely wrong. There are probably a lot of crabby old people who don't care about anyone but themselves. But, in general, I think life breaks down as I've explained.

One love

City Blues

So, for the last couple of weeks I've been on vacation: 10 days in London/English Countryside w/my parents and lil sis and the last few in Barcelona by myself. But, after these few weeks the city has got me down. I just got off the metro here, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a depressing sight in my life. No one was smiling. They looked like lambs going to slaughter. Complete indifference on their faces as if not another human was on the train. What does that say about the jobs and lives that they live? They must be cleaning toilets or some shit like that. It doesn't seem human the way we treat each other. There has to be something more to life than our own sort of personal bubbles. I wish that people could just take a step back from their busy lives and look at how they're living. I realize that I don't face most of the constraints that many working people face, being a Peace Corps volunteer. But we must allow time for ourselves to act like humans and use the abilities (speech, higher thought, etc.) that we were either given or have evolved. Hopefully, I don't have to eat my own words when my Peace Corps stint ends or start a family. But, así es la vida. Something to put a smile on your faces http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfXwmDGJAB8

One love and keep it real

Mo' Money Mo' Problems

What up to my 19 followers and others that periodically view my blog. Thanks for making me feel better by reading my blog. Geniunely, though, thanks; support is always good.

Life is good. Just got back from In Service Training, which was awesome. Got to see all the volunteers that I've failed to keep up with. Hopefully, I'll do better at staying in touch now that I've been reminded how cool my fellow SED (small enterprise development) volunteers are.

During the training a lot of interesting discussions came about, some techinical talks about rumpshakin' and others that were a little more serious. The one that I felt was the most provoking was about monetizing a homestay. Two (actually a very cool married couple) of the volunteers from another island brought a story of how families in their village had housed tourists and had refused payment, which then led to the discussion of whether they should charge or not.

This argument had come up before in previous economic discussions that I had at college. It's obvious that there is a market for the good (shelter), but should they charge? My argument was that they shouldn't. If they were absolutely desparate for money, then it's another story, but it seemed as if they were doing alright, relatively speaking. The point that I always brought up was by charging for a good does that inherently change the good/service; in this case, I think it does. It changes a genuine act of compassion, providing shelter, to just another business transaction with people "looking to get ahead in the world". I don't think that it would be wrong to charge, they are providing a service, but I think that it would change the service/good. Once we start to turn everything into a business transaction, human relations turn colder (if they haven't already in many parts of the world). Sometimes accepting a gift is just as important as giving one. This family in Santa Antão (the other island) didn't have much to give, but they had space in their house for the tourists. Being nice and compassionate, they offered it without any real benefit to them. To offer money in this case would be extremely awkward, to say the least, it may even be considered rude. Who's to say the family needs the money? The best thing to do, accept it. Be grateful that they're people like that in the world. Then, return the favor somewhere down the line to some tourist/homeless person. In Small is Beautiful, Schumacher uses Gandhi quite a bit, especially this quote, "The world has enough for every man's need, not every man's greed." Our generation needs to heed this statement because who knows what's going to be left for our kids. Or maybe our generation can take some of Sean Puffy Combs wisdom:

I don't know what they want from me
it's like the more money we come across
the more problems we see.

Truth, this coming from a man who has a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S.A!!!

Talk to some stranger today.

One Love and Peace

Loneliness, who cares?

Dear followers,

While trying to create a new post, I got lost (pretty good for a computer teacher, right?) and somehow found out that my blog has had only 34 views. Dang, my blog must be lame. But, I don't give a hoot; it's good for the soul, like chicken soup. This sort of segues into my topic of interest: loneliness. It's dumb.

I used to get very lonely in college. My freshman year was hell for me. I thought that no one understood me nor was it possible for anyone to understand me. I was an impenetrable wall in my own mind, wouldn't let anyone in and I wouldn't let anything out, not even to the school therapist.

But my experiences living in other countries has left me immune to loneliness. Living now by myself in Pedra Badejo, the setting is perfect to feel alone: no friends (more or less on an intimate level), a foreign language that still isn't dominated and a foreign culture that makes for some awkward moments. But, in all honesty, I don't feel lonely. I think loneliness is created by how we think others perceive us. If you think that everyone thinks that you're a dork, oddball, idiot, dweeb, nerd, loaner, etc. then you're going to feel like one. If you don't care then you truly are the master of your domain. It seems to me a part of the maturation process, a step towards adulthood: not giving a f. (Sorry mom, the f is solely for emphasis) That's right I consider myself an adult now, boo yah.

But, there are consequences of kicking loneliness's ass (sorry mom). I think it could cause a coldness or indifference in one's behaviour. Not caring about other's perceptions of us could lead to a straight hermit lifestyle, which has entered my mind during my stay in Cape Verde, indifference towards friendship, and other loaner-type behaviours. Friendship is really important though. A true friend is a hard thing to find, but makes life much better. So, I'm stuck. I'm convinced that I could go on living my life as a hermit. No prob. Easy peezy japaneezy. But, I'm not sure it would be a fulfilling lifestyle. Friends are a good thing. Maybe if I could get some friends to live with me as hermits. Anyways, I know that I won't need to buy some luxury car to impress the Jones'.

Other news:

- 2 liter warm baths= da bomb
- New Year's resolution: to not turn on the lights for the remainder of my service and to not use running water unless for filling up my barrel and other water bottles.
- Meat from a can= also, da bomb


Welp that was my ramble for the day, good luck deciphering it. Peace

Jeff