My homestay family

I don’t want any of you to get the impression that everything has been absolutely wonderful because you would then grow to resent me and my experience in the Peace Corps. I want to maintain a high readership and I know that people just love to read accurate accounts of my life here. So in an effort to keep things real, here we go….

If you ever do decide to join the Peace Corps, be warned… you will be living with a family for at least 9 weeks. Here in Cape Verde, we have a shortened training, some places have a full 3 months of training! Now, living with a family is really not all that bad. On the whole, my family is pretty kind and fairly generous. However, my family is LOUD. I really don’t mind people speaking loudly. I myself speak rather loudly when I get excited. I grew up in households where there were always lots of people and everyone liked to talk a lot. So, in theory, volume doesn’t bother me. In this particular homestay situation, there is never a quite moment. My host mother screams like a fisherman’s wife to get your attention. She screams at her children, she screams at her neighbors across the road, she just never speaks quietly, EVER. As a result of her screaming, most everyone in the house responds in kind. The youngest, Luisa, is the spitting image of her mother and never, ever speaks quietly. She is a six year old, spoiled brat, who constantly cries and pouts and yells at everyone about everything. It’s a bit much. My homestay mother pretty much does the same thing, she pouts and cries and yells when things aren’t going the way she wants. My grandmother isn’t much different, she’s just old. So, she can’t actually scream as loud, it might kill her. She just is fairly grumpy or sick most of the time and bosses everyone else around.

Living in my house is like living in a circus. There is never a dull moment. Everyone talks extremely quickly, so I can only understand about half of any given conversation or set of directions. I’ve been here for 7 weeks and my mom still hasn’t learned to slow down when I don’t understand. She simply repeats herself as quickly as she did the first time and I stand there trying to figure out what she wants from me. It’s pretty great.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, I go to bed at 9 or 9:30 every night. I get up at 5:30 every morning. I have done this since the very first day I got here. My family stays up a little later than I do, so they typically stand near my bedroom door and talk loudly knowing that I’m asleep. They also like to do dishes (the sink is right near my room) at about 10 at night, so that tends to wake me up on occasion. When I wake in the morning, all is quiet, no one is awake, thank goodness. I generally get dressed and head out for my run by about 6 and return home at 7. Now the interesting thing about my living situation is that I happen to have a room in the center of the house, which means that I am locked in the house until someone who lives on the exterior of the house wakes up and lets me out. This presents a problem each morning when I wake because I can’t get out of the house. I originally was able to exit through a large metal door near my room that leads to the garage, which will get me out for my run. My grandmother found out that I was leaving this way and decided that she didn’t like that because she couldn’t monitor my every move, so she now deadbolts this door! Thanks grandma. Now, I’ve resorted to leaving out the back of my house which requires that I open a door where the pigs, dogs, and goats stay. Then I have to go through another door, which is where the old scary stuff is kept, then I have to exit out the very back of the house, which is a heavy metal door leading to the corn fields. Then I have to hike up the corn field and into the school yard next door, down the road and onto the main road for my run. This is absolutely the most absurd thing in the world. I am 100% positive that my grandmother doesn’t know I do this because she would probably find a way to keep me from doing this as well. She is extremely crazy and most difficult to live with.

I really hate to sound ungrateful for their allowing me to stay in their home, but it is very difficult to be 27 years old and so closely monitored. I feel like a teenager sneaking out of my house to go for a RUN! Okay, enough complaining from me. I’ll try to find more positive things to post soon. I miss everyone soooo much. Txau, ti logo.