My experience in Cape Verde was sort of mixed, as I experienced many great things, but also had to deal with a lot of complications. The largest complication was the neighborhood I lived in Cidadela. It was by no means a terrible neighborhood, rather a gated community where everyone kept to themselves.
Cidadela had a lack of basic infrastructure. While the roads were paved, they lacked sidewalks, streetlights, public transportation routes, and were of poor quality .It was a four or five minute walk to catch a bus and get groceries. Even without those basic amenities, I never felt isolated from everything or felt danger while walking home at night. All this lack of infrastructure was odd to me, as Cidadela was a planned neighborhood, viewed as an upscale development. I would think that street lights would be a first step in the development process, but I guess it isn’t a priority.
My host family was very loving and willingly accepted me into their household. Paula and the other roommates treated me as a family member, but were very busy and didn’t have as much time to bond with me as I would have liked; I’m sure they felt the same way. There were times I felt bored at home because there really wasn’t much to do in my house. I found myself spending more time away from my neighborhood than with my family. When I did see my family they were happy to see me, but conversations never last longer than five or ten minutes. I never got an opportunity to really know each roommate, in fact I only really knew Paula.
Another interesting thing about being in Cidadela was that we had all plumbing fixtures, but none of them worked. They were basically there for show and it ended up being very similar to the other informal neighborhoods because I still had to wash with a bucket of water. Luckily the water cistern was right outside of my house so retrieving the water wasn’t very agonizing. At one point the cistern was close to being empty, but oddly my family used it as if the water was unlimited, something I wasn’t expecting. I also never got a chance to see it get refilled, so I’m not sure if they still had water issues; although it did appear to have more water. When I arrived there were three people living in the house, but when I left there were five or six, and I had no idea where everyone slept. It seemed to change on a weekly basis, so I was thoroughly confused the whole time.
The two largest aspects of life I had to adapt to were the lack of water and the language barrier. It was quite interesting to see the vast differences with water supply and water utilities in every part of the city. Some places you would have to walk about five minutes to get water, and in other areas there was running water. Surprisingly enough it was consistent everywhere regardless of money. Luckily bottled water was very affordable, by US standards, so clean drinking water wasn’t an issue. For the vast population of Cape Verde there were many ways to get clean water. If well water was used in cooking it was boiled first to eliminate any contaminants. It was relatively easy to purify the water; it just took a little longer than normal. I’ve noticed that I tried to cut down on my water usage (other than the first shower when I got back) and it is mostly subconscious. It won’t really make much of a difference to the people in Cape Verde but in the future it might help me design my buildings with the intent to eliminate wasting drinking water, as well as save me a few dollar on my future water bills.
I found my overall experience to be very positive as the food was wonderful. The people seemed to be very accepting of us, even though there were some instances where some school kids would talk about the “Americans” and Caucasian members of the group. Other than that we were well received. The food was wonderful and all the natives wanted to continuously feed us. It was both good and bad but there was never an issue with the food. One thing I wish was present in the United States is the sense of community I experienced throughout the whole city of Praia. It didn’t matter where you were, at some point you would know somebody somewhere. You could go to a neighborhood and ask for a person’s house and someone could direct you there. I’m not sure that would happen anywhere in the United States. I guess it is a cultural thing that may never transfer or has already come and gone, but it is something I wish was still around. I would like to return one day to Cape Verde to see how Cidadela turns out when completed or nearly completed because it is a mess right now, with the potential to be very nice. Hopefully the sense of community will build as the community grows.
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