Tarrafal

Now, I think that Praia is great. They have pretty beaches and beautiful scenery. In Praia, you can get just about any food and participate in a lot of cultural activities. I’m very excited to get to live there. BUT, this weekend, all of the volunteers went to Tarrafal. Tarrafal is on the Northern-most part of this island. It’s about a 2 hour car ride from Praia.

Tarrafal is absolutely amazing. It is breath-takingly gorgeous with stunning beaches, the most clear water you’ve seen and awesome mountains all around. The ride there is sweet because you go through several mountain passes with really cool canyons on either side of the road. I have some pictures of this, so if I ever actually get my pictures posted, then you’ll see what I mean.

Our first event in Tarrafal was a trip to an old concentration camp. This camp was used from 1936 until 1974 by the Portuguese to imprison anti-fascists in Portugal. The Portuguese would send these men to Cape Verde to get them out of the country and avoid their possible revolution. The camp believed in slow death for those imprisoned; the camp was modeled after the Nazi interment camps. In 1950, the camp closed and then reopened in 1961 to house captured independence fighters from Angola and Guinea (side note: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea, and Mozambique were all involved in a war for independence from Portugal from 1950 until 1974). In 1974, Portugal granted these countries independence and the prisoners were released.

We were lucky enough to have ex-prisoner give us a tour of the camp. The man who was our tour guide, Fernando, showed us his cell and told us about his experiences at the camp. He was a political prisoner from Angola and lived at the camp for 3 years. The ministry of culture is restoring the camp currently with plans to create a Resistance/Cultural Center. It is pretty amazing to get to see so many relics of recent historical/political struggle.

After our interesting and extremely HOT tour of the concentration camp, we got to go to the beach. It was awesome. We were able to swim in the ocean and jump off of some rocks. It was pretty sweet. We were fed some great food and got to hang out in the sun for a few hours. It was all in all a great experience. I’m definitely going to head back that way soon. Also, when I have visitors (hint, hint) I’ll take them there as well. It’s really, really worth the 2 hour car ride. Alright, I’ll keep trying to post pictures. Maybe one day soon I’ll get them to work. Txau, ti logo.