Saturday in Cachaco

My dreams were abruptly ended as I opened my eyes to my dark room. Pulling the sheets back up to hold back the chilly early morning Cachaco air, I heard a noise which can not be given justice in writing, something similar to a deep woooooo, whoooooooo, wha wha wha whoooo, which I quickly realized was the reason I had woken at this early morning hour. In my drowsy state, the sound was identical to what, I imagine, a disc like spaceship hovering outside my window with its tractor beam searching for me would sound like. The noise was getting louder and louder and I was getting more and more terrified. So I peaked out the window to find the source of the sound with no luck, but this movement had restored some sort of sense to me. Not that spaceships and aliens are impossible, but I am pretty sure, and decided at that point, that they are unlikely to find me here in Cachaco. And so I laid back down and huddled under my covers to enjoy my last bit of sleep before the real threat, my alarm clock, found me. I kept thinking about the noise and trying to figure out what could have made such an odd sound.

Waking up again with a start to the annoying ring of my cell phone alarm I swung my arm blindly out in search of it, with hopes of hitting the snooze button so I could steal a few more minutes in my warm bed. But there again the sound started up, and so I got up after 1 or 2 snoozes in search of the source of the sound in my house. I found nothing and started getting dressed completely perplexed…

Today I had been invited to help Frank my neighbor go and work a field not too far from Cachaco. He had said we would go a little after 6am and that his daughter would come a little later with breakfast and coffee, and so I quickly ate a bit of bread to hold me over. It was a Saturday and I was very excited to have the chance to experience work in the fields with a friend. While eating the bread I relized one reason I was so resistant to getting out of bed. I had gotten 2 kilos of pork and someone had lent me a grill the day before and my little grill-out had turned into a few shots of grog and a couple of beers with my neighbors who hung out playing cards until late. A good time, but left me tired and wanting more sleep in the morning.

I headed outside to meet Frank, who was surprised to see me. He had decided I probably would not get up that early(because I had laughed about the 6am start time when he invited me) and figured I would just come along with his daughter when she came with breakfast. But there I was, and luckily he reminded me to grab a knife. As we walked down the road with the sun rising providing light to the beautiful backdrop of Monte Gordo, I heard a loud “My Mother!” (similar to our use of “My god!”) which was Frank’s wife showing her amazement that I was up so early and actually going to the field. This exclamation was followed with rolling laughter as she no doubt imagined what this experience would be like for me.

So we strolled down the hill to work. We stopped to talk to a bunch of our neighbors, explaining why I was tagging along.

Frank is an interesting character. He works, as many others, for people who own fields and need people to work them for them. He cleans, prepares, and harvests fields. This has left him a very hardened man, who has no need for shoes or sandals, ever, could probably run a knife across his own hand and never cut it. An old man that will never tire, can work 12 hour days and still have a smile on his face. In town when not working he normally has a small homemade cigar hanging from his lip, which muffles his already fast and hard to understand Krioulu.

So during our chat along the way to the field I decided to ask Frank if he had heard the sound that had perplexed me in the early hours of the morning. To Franks amazement I started asking him if he had been worken up by a sound similar to a whoo wha whoo wha. Something similar to that of “people coming from another world” outside…. This no doubt provided a chuckle from Frank, who was probably questioning his decision to bring the crazy American along to the field at this point…. Wow.

He had not heard anything like this noise this morning…

So Frank, another worker, and I took to the field, and picked the corn. The landscape of Sao Nicolau does not allow for vast flat farms like the US. The tiered hills of farmland would never allow a combine or vehicle of anytime to work the rows. It is all done by hand with knifes and “enchadas” (hoes). So we split up one person per tier plucking corn and throwing it in different piles as we walked along. After the corn has been plucked from each stalk, the stalk is broken or cut down, so that the areas that have been harvested are more easily identified. I quickly remembered how different the corn here in cape verde is from what I had grown accustomed to in the US. The corn is rarely the big yellow ears which we find in the supermarket. It is usually an ear less than 5 inches, multicolored(like the kind we use for decoration in the us) hardly filled completey in with kernels, and being eaten by a fat caterpillar. The corn is left for a long time to dry on the stocks, allowing the sun to do the work before it is put in large homemade barrels for storage.

So after a few hours we had covered the entire field and had small piles of corn throughout the field. At this point the woman who owned the field arrived, and the daughter of my neighbor arrived with breakfast or “lanchy” as they refer to a snack here. I was glad to pound down some coffee. My neighbor had sent along some plain black coffee which she knows I enjoy drinking more than the typical sweet and milky coffee the majority of Cape Verdeans drink. My taste in coffee usually shocks most hosts and requires many assurances that this is the way I take my coffee, and that no I do not take sugar, really…

So we took a quick break to snack. The corn was then stuffed into old rice sacks and carried to a central location. Then the husking started. The maybe 5 percent of the corn that was considered large, was tossed to the side and the rest of it was husked by hand.

The couple of hours that this lasted were exhausting on my hands.

By the end of the whole day my feet and hands had been cut to pieces and my shoulders and face were sunburned.

We rode back in style in a truck to Cachaco, thankfully not having to carry the heavy sacks on our heads all the way up the hill.

I grabbed a shower and walked across the street to my other neighbors house to help with the finishing of their roof. To my amazement almost the entire town had turned up to what could be approximated to a old US barn raising. The machines for concrete making don’t really exist here, and people cant afford to pay everyone, so there is a wonderful snese of community as everyone shows up to help. The amount of energy on the roof top was amazing. Piles of concrete were being mixed and moved to the be set on the new roof, rocks sand and water were being carried quickly up the stairs, water was being thrown, shovelers were throwing the concrete around, food and grog and punch were being handed out, and within what seemed like no time the 50 or so people involved had covered the entire new roof with the concrete, and the owners brought up our reward, more drinks and food! I was exhausted after this...chilling and eating with everyone, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to come and help build a wall later that night. I thought he must be joking, who would want to build a wall in the middle of the night?!?!

So I said ya why not, and strolled home to relax a bit.

The word I mistook for wall actually means little party or cookout. So My night ended with a little cookout of pork and beans and potatoes on a street up the hill with some friends.

What a day.