My last weekend in Cape Verde was fairly low-key. On Saturday I headed off to an interview on the Plateau at Café Sofia, a place that if I lived in Praia would be one of my favorites. I was to interview a playwright that Christina had warned me might seem a little crazy, with interesting ideas in regards to the use of Creole in artistic expression and the future of the language. I forget if he had any other professions, as it seems everyone else has a few. I wouldn't be too surprised to meet a playwright, musician, neurosurgeon, who dabbles a bit in chemistry. I exaggerate, but not by much.

I was running a little late because I caught the bus, so I sat and waited, hoping that I hadn't arrived too late. Thus is the difficulty of arranging interviews with a common meeting point. You don't necessarily have a yearbook picture of the person you're meeting up with, so all you can do is show up, sit, and give the appearance of waiting. Hopefully the person you're supposed to meet will show up and notice that you're waiting. It's worked so far. Knocking. A few minutes later, Sabino showed up. We ordered and started talking. He jumped into the link between language and identity in Cape Verde , specifically in theatre. Works in Creole function as a constant reaffirmation of identity and serve to remind people of the importance of maintaining that identity in a globalized world where the traditional values of a society are being supplanted.

Not only this, but the use of Creole was something that actors could fool "in their blood" as he put it. He'd translated a play that he'd originally written in Creole to Portuguese at the behest of the director of the Instituto Camões in Praia . The performance had been awkward, the dialogue stilted, because no one felt comfortable with the language. Its soul was lost in the translation. The actors had no connection with the words they were speaking, and it was evident. The same is true in school; learning is disconnected from the students, because it's not in Creole. And it's not for a lack of talent, he was quick to point out that there are no arts, music, or dance schools in Cape Verde , yet the country abounds with artists of the following persuasions. He leaned in and said, "How much more could we accomplish with those institutions? How much more could we accomplish with our language?"

Conflict as it used to be was of a physical form. One group would overtake another, and the defeated would be absorbed into the victor, the traces dissipating over time, eventually disappearing. In post-colonial Cape Verde the conflict has moved on from a physical to cultural warfare, via language and economic influence. The only way to survive is to give stature to the culture of the country lest it be absorbed and diluted. He spoke of a work he'd written about the results of officializing Creole. Five hundred years in the future, after the fact, Creole is taught as a foreign language in the universities of Europe and the United States, it's one of the official language of the United Nations, and vastly important in the world. É um exagero, he admits, but it stems from the time he spent in Lisbon for school. He said that Portuguese students wouldn't listen to Portuguese music at parties, or when hanging out. Instead, they'd listen to Cape Verdean , or Mozambican, or American music, but overall the estimation of their own culture wasn't very high. This play, entitled Profesia do Crioulo , was an extrapolation of this trend he said in a very serious tone, and then smiled again, admitting, that yes, it was a bit of exaggeration. I couldn't help but feel that he was advocating a subtle cultural warfare, on a massive scale, a sort of reverse colonialism that would eventually prevail, with a grain of salt.

With a caveat: he said there should be no intention of such a thing, if it happens it happens, but this should not be a war, but rather a defense and a reaffirmation of culture. You must "do well what you do, but also know what others do as well, and respect it"; mutual respect being the most crucial component, in his opinion.  I couldn’t help agreeing with him.  We said goodbye and I caught the bus back to Achada de Santo Antonio.

The next day I worked at the pool again.  What sloth.  Sunday night, the landlords of the building I'd been staying in threw a little despedida, going away party, for myself and Christina.  We had a great dinner of a rice and lobster dish, salad, and wine.  After this I borrowed Christina's computer in hopes of being able to connect to the internet and finish some outstanding work for school that needed to get done as soon as possible.  There was an Ethernet cord that snaked its way from the far wall of my bedroom to the desk in the adjoining room.  I'd discovered that the internet could be accessed through the above mentioned connection, which brightened my day, as the only internet cafes nearby subtracted time by bandwidth transfer, as opposed to time, your time left would descend rapidly without much warning.  I plugged in the computer and tried for several minutes to connect, it didn't work then, which was frustrating, yet I was not one to despair, at least not yet.  I figured I'd sleep for a few hours and then get up early morning and try again.  This didn’t seem like it would be too difficult, as the bar/club across the street was in good form, and would most likely be going strong till the wee hours of the morning.  I flopped onto the bed, half-covered with my initial attempts to pack, and dozed lightly.  Much later than I'd expected I was awoken for the second time in a week by Eminem being played rather loudly right outside my window and an argument in Creole and a little bit of English.  I showered and tried again.  This was the time for despair, or more sleep.  I resigned myself to the fact that I'd just to have to find another way to get it done, which wasn't impossible, just less convenient.  I woke up again, this time around nine in the morning, palming the Tupperware container that's carried my toothpaste and other things for me, as if it were the Holy Grail.  My dream had something to do with climbing a mountain, vaguely.  A shower didn't really help me wake up, but I figured I could sleep once I got on the plane.  I just had to make it through the joint interview that Christina had managed to arrange.

The office of this writer was a quick five minute walk from the apartment.  Christina stopped off at the supermarket on the way to pick up a bottle of wine to give to him to demonstrate how much we appreciated his time.  This, however, left me as the sole person to communicate with him, something I find to be increasingly difficult, the two: lack of sleep and lack of language skills, foreign and native, I find to be directly proportionate.  I wandered into the office and asked around till I was directed to a door without any markings on it.  I knocked, a voice told me to come in, but it was locked, so I waited outside.  Eventually the door opened and T.V. DaSilva opened the door and let me into his office.  After a brief introduction I explained my project to him, and Christina arrived soon after, which was a relief.  In my sleep-deprived battle with language, reinforcements were a welcome arrival.  We started talking, and I subtly paused my recorder until he stopped giving a list of all the books he'd written and the years and publishing snafus that occurred, then we got to the part that interests me the most, the language used in these works.  He's written them in Creole, not Portuguese, which makes them accessible to the entire Cape Verdean population, barring minor variations between Creole from different islands.  This is vastly important when it comes to the language politics in any given country.  We'll take a pause here to step out of the fabric of time, and abstract, for a moment and jump through some theoretical hoops.

Starting out with the grand purpose of the study, "grand".  What we're looking at now is the state of the Portuguese language in some of the former Portuguese colonies, specifically examining the co-existence of different languages and standard and non-standard dialects in an official capacity, in education, and in literary expression. Within these three areas we are examining what contributes to legitimizing any given form (we’ll be even vaguer than “dialect”) and/or separate languages i.e. Creoles.

I'll take another moment here, tangent within divergence, to clarify and perhaps illuminate more accurately the description of the research project.  From my original proposal, due to various reasons, I removed a few countries to make things feasible.  With this trimmed list of countries the investigation includes the politico-linguistic situation in these countries.  In fact, the only country where a Creole is currently spoken that I've been to is Cape Verde .  A Creole was spoken in Macau , but was decreolized throughout the twentieth century with the resurgence of Portuguese as the official language and the further influence of Cantonese and English.  There was also a Creole spoken in  Goa , which has long since disappeared.  A variety of Portuguese is spoken in Mozambique , but it is not a Creole. A better description to sum up the project would be “Language politics in the former Portuguese colonies: Creoles and non-standard dialects”. I’m glad we got that cleared up; it’s all in the name, now we return to the previous paragraph.

The emphasis of this interview fell within the range of literary expression, but it would serve us well to examine how these three are connected. The official language, in most cases, is the language used in education, and the language learned through education is most often the vehicle of literary expression. Literary expression feeds back into education. Think about the “classics”, how they’re taught, and how this influences the way people learn a language. The link between educational policy and official status is usually hand in hand. The official language is most likely to be the one used in education, and the normal functioning of a government requires a certain percentage of the population proficient in the language. Notice that we have to use “most often” because the correlation is not always complete. Regardless, one can imagine the three in a row, A) Official, B) Education, C) Literature. Lines AB, BC, CB, and a BA as well, if we were to speak geometrically. This would be a simplified diagram, but it serves our purposes.

Now we can move on to another important question: what does it mean for a language to be legitimate? This term is not to be used in a linguistic sense, as it is, languages are all “legitimate”, if they can be used to communicate. The sense in which we can use the word is political. And for quite a long time the word dialect serves a pejorative denomination of a form of a language that is non-standard. In some of my interviews in Cape Verde people referred to Creole as a dialect of Portuguese itself. So, what does it mean for a language to be “legitimate”, for these dialects and flawed forms of Portuguese” to shed this mark of artificial inferiority? In the political sense, a language’s legitimacy comes from its use in government, and in expression both everyday and literary, hinging crucially upon native speakers’ opinions of its efficacy in both.

Here we enter back into time….hold your breath…1…….2……….3………and back again we are. Back to an office in the City of Praia , on the island of Santiago , in Cape Verde floating in the Atlantic off the coast of western Africa . Cape Verdians want Creole to be an official language. You will rarely hear Portuguese walking the streets of Praia . Sitting in the same room as me was someone acting out the last part of that trio. The opinion that Creole can be used as a tool of government, as well as in literary expression is of the utmost importance in terms of making the language legitimate in the political sense. If anything, the state functions in Portuguese, and the Nation in Creole. Reconciling the two should be the goal, and the way to do this is by making the language that people actually speak the official one, the rest follows from there. Authors writing in Creole serve as the vanguard of such a movement, choosing consciously and publicly to convey their own belief in the pliable, versatile, and adaptable nature of the language to whatever needs may present themselves.

The interview came to an end, and we thanked him, gave him the bottle of wine, thanked again, and took off. In my room with the fan as high as it could go, I sat, contemplating the best way to stow everything back into my bag. I can’t tell how exactly, but it feels like I’ve accumulated things. Each repacking seems a little bit more of a stretch, or push I should say, to mash everything back in. Never fear, gravity is also my friend. I ended up lifting it several time to shake and help everything settle. I said one last good bye to the landlords and Christina and headed outside to catch a cab to the airport. There is a perfect period of time to stay in each place on a trip like this, and I think it had been just enough in Cape Verde . After check-in I sat at the gate marveling at how easy it was to trick my eyes into believing that the ceiling was really only three feet away from me. Self-induced optical illusions are a sufficient way to pass the time.

Next stop was Brazil , Fortaleza to be precise, because it is the only direct flight to Brazil with the only airline flying out of Cape Verde . Not being one to complain, I settled into the seat, which was by far one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of occupying in my lifetime, and napped between the meal and a movie. Crossing the Atlantic in about four hours is pretty amazing.

Funny story, well less of a story, and not really much more than an anecdote, I’ll try that over without setting it up to be humorous, or more than it is . . . let’s call it an explanation of sorts to explain my sentiments upon arrival in Brazil. In high school I made the ever so practical decision of studying Spanish. It wasn’t a very complicated decision as the only other language offered was French. The association of people who were having existential crises at the age of sixteen, or hopeless romantics, and the appalling lack of congruency between orthography and pronunciation ( maintenant ), weighed heavily as deciding factors. Although, as a native speaker of English I can’t hold the latter against them, as I always pause to think of rodents when spelling separate . There weren’t many French speakers around, but you could hear plenty of people speaking Spanish in the halls. My Spanish teacher for the last two years of high school gave us the following advice to immerse ourselves in the language, “watch telenovelas, read books, newspapers, date a Mexican. I married one.” The last two would be said in a tongue-in-cheek manner, but they all resulted in a better understanding of the language. At the end of four years I took a placement test, and then headed off to school. Incoming freshmen don’t register for classes until new student week, and after the rest of the student body has had their pick of courses. Not a single class at the level I would have tested into had an opening by the time I sat down to register. At this point in my college career I didn’t understand the malleability of class size, or the intricacies of working the system by just showing up to class and convincing the professor to let me take the class. I resigned myself to taking another language course, but I didn’t want to start over anew, so I looked at the other Romance languages offered. French? Jamais! Italian? Forse. Then my eyes wandered to…Portuguese? Talvez. Aren’t they almost the same? The common perception. You just change a few accents, move some vowels, add a bit to your vocabulary, words like pineapple and prepositions, and voila....you have made the transition from Spanish to Portuguese in short. I thought about it, and, without any other strong candidates in the picture, enrolled in an intensive course for the fall quarter. That’s how I started learning Portuguese, the long version, an answer to the question Onde aprendeu Português? More importantly, I learned Brazilian Portuguese, which means that it hurts my brain to ask where I can apanhar o autocarro instead of pegar o ônibus . Throughout my trip, most prominently in Portugal , I noticed this, and it was with enthusiasm that I walked into the airport in Fortaleza . I had arrived.

Not one of the customs officials seemed to recognize the stamp that was my visa from the Brazilian consulate in Chicago . On the other side of this line was a tropical land blessed by God, as the song says. I can’t remember which song, but there is one. I called a friend of a friend from my Portuguese class to see if I could perhaps bum a place to sleep. He was in the middle of a date, and thought I would be arriving the next day, what miscommunication, eh. We arranged to meet the next day, and I headed to catch a taxi and find a place to stay in the meanwhile. It was late by the time I finally got settled in, but I found a small place to eat and then slept.

The next day I called to meet for lunch. The walk to the Shopping center where we’d arranged to meet was along the seafront avenue. It could have been Miami for all I know, but for my ability to hear. After meeting at the doors of the Shopping , which was eerily similar to any analogous one in the United States , I headed with Mike, and a friend of his to a nearby restaurant. The system, one of my favorite things of Brazil , is per kilo. In other words, you pay for the weight of what you eat, and while the price seems a bit much at first, the beauty of the metric system then kicks into gear, and you realize that that’s a whole lot of food. Thankfully this epiphany came before I passed by the buffet, and I loaded my plate. We talked about Brazil , the two having lived there for months at a time, for study, and at the present working for on a project to distribute napkins with natal care information on them. The girl, whose name escapes me, took off to work on some things for the quasi-NGO that the two worked for, sponsored by a grant from their university to implement a social service project that they’d drafted. Mike and I stayed for a bit and talked about his impressions of the country, and his experiences living there for extended periods of time. Deadlines were pressing so he had to leave, but he told me that if I were only in Fortaleza for a day I ought to go to Praia do Futuro (Beach of the Future), and he directed me in the direction of the bus that would get me there. I’d seen the name on the map that I’d picked up at the airport, and had thought the name a strange place in between amazing and absurd. I wondered if everyone there would be wearing grey tone uniforms when I got there. It seems like that happens a lot in the future, from what I’ve seen in the cinema.

I stopped at the bust stop, plenty of people waiting, a good sign. I waited for a bus going to Papicu . I climbed in at the front door of the first bus that passed by with the name on the sign at the front. I told the driver I wanted to go to Praia do Futuro , and he told me that the bus didn’t go there. The next bus, I asked again, and he told me to go atrás , which means back, I thought he meant to another bus stop, which I did, waited a few minutes, then realized that he’d told me to get in at the back of the bus. You enter at the back doors, pay the Cobrador sitting back there, throw yourself through a turnstile, and try to make the short, jolty, way to an open seat, while the bus jerks back and forth at the will of the maniacal driver, whose only goal in life, it seems, is to hurl people against each other, and occasionally metal poles. It gets easier with time, you build up some bus legs.

Papicu, was, in fact, a bus terminal, from which I caught the bus out to the beach of the future. Half an hour later, and well away from the center of the city I found myself on a gorgeous beach and took off my shoes to stand at the edge of the surf. Warm water oceans, que beleza . I wandered along the beach and sat at a drink stand till the sunset. Catching the bus back was quite a bit more complicated. Horizontal rain burst from the darkening sky and I ran along a brick wall that led from the beach to the nearest road. Two guys who worked at the stand, and who lived near the beach helped me flag down a bus that would take me back. I would not have known where to begin finding the bus back, and was relieved to find that people are always willing to help. Air-conditioning at full blast and the rain left me moving in my seat to warm myself. We passed by street after street that I couldn’t find on the map that I’d brought with. We hit the historic center and I breathed a sigh of relief at knowing where I was, and then realized that we’d overshot where I was staying, and that if the bus didn’t turn back around I’d be in a situation. I asked someone sitting across the aisle from me if it was turning back around, and after consulting the bus driver he gave me a thumbs up and I relaxed yet again and put away the giant map that I’d been looking at occasionally. On the curve back I spotted the street that I’d been waiting for and hit the button to request a stop. The vehicle continued for a bit, and I backtracked and grabbed another shirt to replace the one I was wearing and went to eat dinner by the sea.

Even at night the avenue was filled with people, every other one jogging or drinking a coconut (excellent if you get the chance). I walked as far as it seemed there was an area. The end a fish market, and then made the return, walking up and down the aisles of stalls selling souvenirs and other good. I saw a shirt that displayed the regional dialect of Ceará, the state in which Fortaleza resides, and their equivalents in the rest of Brazil . “The rest of Brazil ” isn’t an accurate way of saying it though. Pretty much everywhere you go you’ll find a certain way of saying things, and a manner of saying them that leaves you wondering if you’ve perhaps gone to a different country. Everyone loves imitating the accents of everywhere else, for your edification and amusement, “In Rio they talk like thish, in São Paulo the r ’s are assím.”

There is a cliché (paraphrased from an articles in Língua Portuguesa ) that says that Brazil has 180 million soccer coaches, técnicos , that all have their own opinions and critiques that abound in any conversation about futebol . In the same sentiment the country has 180 million linguists as well, each person a self-fashioned expert in dialectology and anything else that may arrive in conversation. At times it may tinge upon comical, but it also reveals an enormous pride in both the language and the regional manner of speech. This goes far beyond the ubiquitous pop/soda conversation of freshman year students.

The next day I headed to the airport via a bus back to Papicu and yet another to the airport. Flights within the country seemed like flashes compared to the ones I’d endured in the first month. The plane landed in Salvador and I called Jorge. An explanation of how I happen to know him is in order, and it is a wonderful coincidence that made navigating the way from the airport to a bed simple. My grandparents are from Austria , but have lived in New Jersey for quite a long time. They belong to a group called Austrians Abroad, which is an internet group for Austrians living abroad. No surprise there. Upon learning of my upcoming travels for the summer, my grandparents sent out an e-mail to this group with the list of places I’d be headed, to give me someone to call once I got there if I needed help with anything. Jorge has lived in Salvador for the past seventeen years, speaks German, English, and Portuguese, is married to a Brazilian and has a young daughter. Some previous plans of mine in terms of lodging had fallen through, but I got an e-mail before leaving Fortaleza from Jorge saying that he’d asked a friend of his who works in the same architectural firm if I could stay at her apartment for the time I’d be in Salvador. I called once I got to the airport, and despite being cut off, and the difficulty of communication without a cellphone, he gave me directions on how to get to apartment, and arranged for another colleague of his to meet me there and take me to the apartment.

I asked the bus driver if he could advise me when we arrived at the point, so I could descend and go from there. The airport is rather far away from the actual city, and it took about an hour to get there, but when I did, I stepped off and met Alexandre, who’d been waiting at the Ladeira de Barra for a few minutes to guide me to the apartment. We walked the few minutes to the apartment, and buzzed up. We headed up and I met Aline, who was preparing to head out on a trip for work to Natal at midnight . Alexandre took off, and Aline showed me a map of the neighborhood she’d drawn for me and a list of friends to call if I wanted to go out to see the city with people. I met another friend of hers, Delana. After some soup, they headed out to go to her Aunt’s house for a bit, and I settled down to relax. Aline returned soon after and we sat and talked, waiting till the taxi came to carry her to the airport for her late flight. She’s completing her master’s degree in Architecture, while working at the Architectural firm at the same time, leaving little time for sanity or relaxation. The seemingly interminable hours that you have to wait, especially when it involves not sleeping are the most difficult, but soon enough it was time, and she headed downstairs, leaving me with an apartment to myself for the weekend. People are amazing, were my thoughts as I fell asleep.

The next day I headed out for lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then to the grocery store. Foodstuffs deposited, I headed out to explore the neighborhood. I took the first street that would lead me to water and walked along the street to the lighthouse and sat looking at the water, and enjoyed the weather. Winter in Salvador feels like a beautiful summer day, never too hot when there’s a good breeze, summer, I’ve been told is pretty miserable though. Watching the waves was incredibly soothing, the sunset beautiful. It seemed like I’d been able to watch an inordinate amount of sunsets since my arrival in Brazil , even though it came to a grand total of two.

I arrived back at the apartment with every intention of cooking some food, but instead I fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up again, but I made myself sleep again, without knowing how, but it worked.

The next day I hit up an internet café to send e-mails and set up interviews. I’d been in contact with the office of the faculty of letters at one of the Universities in Salvador , and had been told to send another e-mail when I got into town. I resolved myself to relaxing, enjoying the weekend, doing less formal interviews with people, also known as talking. I called up one of Aline’s friends from the sheet, picking fairly randomly, I decided to call her friend Valdir, who is from Praia himself. We arranged to meet in a bit of time down the street at the bus stop. I wrote for a bit, and then started reading a copy of Dharma Bums in Portuguese, translated as Illuminated Vagabonds . The title alone had me. Hopping on freight trains, and climbing mountains, it strikes a chord with my inner transient.

We headed to an atm and then to catch a bus north along the shore to the historic center to meet up with more people at Pelourinho. We met up with a group of people, and walked along the streets of the historic center, stopping to get some abará, which is made of black-eyed peas, amazing. Eventually we settled at a table outside of a restaurant before the rain forced us inside for the rest of the night. We all jumped into one car and soon enough, without recognizing any of the route, I was back at the apartment. The conversation had been about the independence movements in Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. Valdir was Cape Verdean , and another friend was from Guinea Bissau. The question of language arose quickly, and it always makes me happy when I can hear peoples’ opinions without having to sit down with them and a notebook.

On Saturday I headed into the interior of the island, Assomada, with Evan and Lisa, an American couple on vacation to the islands. She’d spent two plus years here in the Peace Corps a few years back and he was looking into interviewing Cape Verdian deportees for a dissertation project in anthropology. After living the majority of their lives in the US and only speaking English, some of these Cape Verdians have been deported back to Cape Verde and have a tough time readjusting. The bus to get there, called a yas (I assume that’s how you spell it), was waiting in another part of town, so we walked there in the glaring sun. Upon arrival we scoped out which one looked the prize pony for our venture.

This was another thevehicledoesn’tleavetillit’sfull system, with a twist, however. The driver would have several of his friends sit in the van, making it look oh-so tantalizingly close to departure, but once you get in, they all get out. And then you’re the new bait to lure people in, but you don’t leave. All in all it’s a good system, it just leaves some poor person waiting, hoping, and praying for a long time that everyone else be as foolish and naïve as they. Luckily we only displaced a few friends and the vehicle was not too long in departing. If nothing else, this ride was pretty sweet. It appeared to have been a guest on the hit show Pimp my Yas . TV screens in the driver and co-captains headrest showing some music videos on loop, music blaring through the speakers, and bright red Adidas seat covers. Lisa later told us that this was by far one of the nicest she’d ever seen, let alone ridden in.

Behind us sat a mother and her children, who kept on making this noise, the kind you would to get a dog to heel . No dog in sight, I thought this a little bit strange, but there was a baby sitting on her lap, so it seemed to make sense. It made even more sense when a puppy about the size of my foot or smaller wandered its furry way up to Evan’s foot and did its business. I wondered if the sharp turns as we climbed our way up the mountain would carry it too far in my direction. It didn’t before we got out.

We headed through the market in the center of the city, and stopped for lunch at a small restaurant. Lisa figured we might run into some Peace Corps people doing their orientation, but it being a weekend she realized that they were probably off on their own adventures around the area. I was glad to get out of the city and to be able to talk to people in English, I’ll admit I was growing a bit tired of speaking Portuguese at this point, and most people there just answered in Creole when I asked questions in Portuguese. Point being, I was glad to be able to put aside any concerns of mutual understanding for the afternoon. It was amazing how much a forty five minute ride made a difference in the geography and the climate. Getting there you find yourself in the midst of mountains cradling the promising green stubble that only looks to grow with the continuation of the rainy season. In between these, hundred feet drops that wind their way through earth till they find the sea again. The weather was cooler and it rained while we walked, eventually prompting us to catch a ride back to Praia . This one was no where near as swank as the previous, but it did get us there. Arriving back in Praia you could feel the difference just in the weather: bright sun, almost uncomfortably hot.

We walked along an overlook of the ocean. The beach below is called Quebra Canela , which in translation either means Break your Shinbone, due to the rocks scattered in the shallower reaches of the water lurking to punish the inattentive and presumptuous, or Break Cinnamon. If my memory of spices in Portuguese holds. Up a long set of stairs there is a public park and playground that was built to commemorate the visit of the pope to Cape Verde . The park is immaculate, despite being constructed several years previous. Five minutes afoot and we were almost back at the apartment. They ducked into an internet café and I stopped at a real café with Jeff, a friend of Christina’s, who happened to be in the area. We sat for a bit talking about the country before Lisa joined, and Evan headed back to the apartment because he wasn’t feeling well. The final addition to our conversation was Pete, a counselor for a musical exchange program for American and Cape Verdian students, through Wesleyan College in Connecticut . They’d been living in the neighborhood for a couple of weeks and taking songwriting classes from both American and Cape Verdian teachers. This guy was intense, genuinely unaware of how incredibly, twitchily, intense he was, still, of course, being an excellent person. Jeff went off on a tangent about the oldest instrument of the islands and soon it was getting dark. Lisa didn’t quite trust my ability to appear threatening enough to ward off would be assailants so we took off.

The amount of Kasabadi’s (here I assume spelling), this being the rough translation of the English Cash or body (never heard before). Some people blame the rise in crime on Globalization, some on tourism, Peace Corps and missionaries, and others on the deportees returning from Boston where there is a huge Cape Verdian population. Regardless of who’s to blame, the country is not the same as it used to be. Places that were safe at any time are now no longer advisable to traverse at night. Some neighborhoods are to be avoided altogether. I can’t help but feel that I’m arriving a few years too late.

I headed back to the Instituto Camões on Monday and looked through more works concerning the use of the use of Portuguese. One of the best finds: Estão a Assassinar o Portugûes . The cover is a drawing of a man after facing the firing squad, several bullets having found their marks, yet the blindfolded body still stands. Besides the morbid description of the cover art, a translation of the title itself is in order. Cognates and a working knowledge of romance languages in general eliminate most of the leg work, and it only falls to me to illuminate the tense.

A rough translation: They’re killing/murdering Portuguese (choose the verb you like the best)

Something even more interesting, at least in my mind, is the way one would express the same thought in different forms of Portuguese. Consider the following.

European PT: Estão a assasinar o PT.

Brazilian PT: Estão assassinando o PT.

Pardon the tangent.

The book was the collection of the responses of several authors to the question put forth by a publishing company. The ambiguity of the they that is slaughtering the beloved language is never specified, and the open-ended nature lends itself to a variety of interpretations and responses. Some took it to mean the uneducated, noting “on one side there is the tendency of the ignorant to alter, abject to their comfort, the linguistic instrument. On the other side, the efforts of the educated ( letrados ) to maintain untarnished the same instrument.” A rather harsh condemnation. The most important question in regard to this statement is who the author considers to be ignorant: the uneducated, or everyone outside of Portugal . Nor will I make that clarification, at least at the moment.

Another author, taking the assassins as synonymous to Brazilians responds by asking, “how many of our best [Portuguese] authors are indebted to Brazilian authors and their use of the language?” and that “[the language] is not impoverished, nor does it degenerate with the controlled incorporation of ‘new blood’ coming from other linguistic ‘bodies’”. I can’t help but coming back to the term “A nossa lingua” and whether it refers to the population of Portugal or the wider Lusophone world.

To sum it up:

“At its base, the question reduces to that vague idea of ownership, which precisely because it is imprecise, with so much decided arbitrarily, yielding to some and protesting others, that lends itself to authoritative and restrictive solutions.”

Who’s killing Portuguese? Depends on who you ask.

On Wednesday morning I called up António Silveira Pires, mild-mannered IT specialist by day and publisher of a Creole-Language newsletter by….night, to meet for an interview.

Before talking about the interview, I’ll relay some things of the answers I’ve seemed to find so far in response to many of my questions in a paraphrased form. When it comes to the question of language and identity the short answer is that of course Cape Verdians speak Creole, they’re not Portuguese (this response is usually accompanied by a look that asks, “have you spent the last few minutes before starting this interview seeing if you could break those bricks with your head?) Then again, sou Estadounidense mas falo Inglês. Should Creole be officialized? Of course, and here is how it should be done. Why isn’t it an official language yet? (Various answers).

His answer was that the government, or at least those in the position to make it happen, are, in vulgar terms, lacking in the testicular wherewithal to bring about such changes. He also mentioned the outside pressure of the Portuguese government in regards to this, which made him sound a bit far afield a la conspiracy theorist, but it’s not inconceivable by any stretch of the imagination. We stepped through the process of objections and responses, trading back and forth the devil’s advocate hat.

-Why not make Creole the official language?

-If we do so, we’ll lose contact and trade with the Portuguese-speaking world. We’ll be isolating ourselves.

-Alright, let’s say Creole is officialized. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we toss Portuguese out the window, baby with the bath water. We’ll make them co-official.

-Alright, that makes sense, but if everyone can use Creole in any situation they’re not going to use Portuguese. Even if they’re co-official won’t we still be eliminating Portuguese de facto if not by de jure, and thus isolating ourselves.

-If we take it one step at a time. What will happen if we officialize Creole? It will be used in schools as the language of education. Children will grow up with a better understanding of their own language, and this solid foundation will only help in terms of learning a second language. As it is people cannot “express themselves well in either”, not in Portuguese because it isn’t their first language and not in Creole, because they aren’t accustomed to using it in a formal context.

-Well, what if children have a knowledge of Creole, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll learn Portuguese.

-True one doesn’t entail the other, but it does facilitate. The economic opportunities provided by being able to speak Portuguese should create enough speakers of Portuguese. The ability of government jobs can only help the process of creating bilingualism. The linguistic situation, as it is, is clearly not satisfactory. So why not change it?

-Is that a valid reason? “Why not?” Shouldn’t such a shift be motivated by something a little more substantial than this?

-Substantial? Let’s speak of substantial. Creole is the native of language of the population. It should be an official language. Shouldn’t children have the right to learn in their own language? Rhetorical question. Of course they should. In fact, it’s one of the biggest failures of the educational system in Cape Verde : students’ (and Professors’): the lack of familiarity with the language of instruction. It doesn’t even have to come to rights, it makes sense at the most basic level as well. Teaching in Creole will make the system more successful.

This is most often the train of conversation (with a few parts added post-interview). Almost as if it were the party line. So why isn’t Creole an official language? Let’s skip forward to Monday, to a joint interview with Christina and Tomé Varela da Silva. The Cape Verdean population is immensely diverse between the islands, and very proud of what makes them unique, and that includes the way they speak Creole. Choosing one form of Creole to officialize, inconveniences and offends the speakers of the others. This author, who has spent years putting into writing the oral histories and traditions of this country, showed an incredible lack of sensitivity, and not the let’stalkaboutourfeelings kind, more along the lines of let’snotstartanunecessaryconflict kind. The rough equivalent of “to the victor go the spoils,” in terms of population. Meaning that the form of Creole with the most speakers, that of Santiago , should be the official dialect of Creole because it’s simply a matter of numbers. I’ve yet to hear the same opinion from anyone outside of Santiago . This, however, is the sticking point it seems in getting anything done.

Back to normal time. Without anything scheduled for Thursday, Christina and I headed to Cidade Velha, the former colonial capital of olden days. Ships returning from Africa , the Americas , or going to those two found a perfect harbor at Cidade Velha. Due to its strategic position it was heavily bombarded by pirates of many a European country, if pirates can be from any given country, the English, French, Dutch, all sorts. The constant attacks prompted the movement of the capital to Praia . What’s left of the city isn’t much, but you can see it al from the fort overlooking the harbor that lay at the end of the rode that the yas from the city had dropped us of at. Dangling prepositions and embedded clauses which that sentences was full of. Not fragments though.

We headed down the cobblestone path until we reached the fort and walked the ramparts. Perhaps the only time I’ll ever use that word outside of singing the national anthem.

In the past months I’ve seen more churches, forts, and giant statues of Luis Camões, than the majority of the world’s population sees in several life times. Vinho, fortaleci, e escrevi uma poema épica.

From here down to the city it was a steep walk down a stairway that at points made me regret wearing sandals, and others was a joy almost falling down. We walked along a stone wall for a bit and were about to climb down into a ditch that looked to be the continuation of the trail when a woman yelled to us that we were climbing into a ditch, the road was in the other direction. A bit confused, but thankful for not having climbed into a ditch that had a disturbingly conveniently laid predecessor of paving stones before it, we walked the rest of the way down into town. Pelorinho, the slave trading post that was central to the trans-Atlantic traffic and the growth of both Brazil and the United States, is a stone’s throw away from the water.

A brief pause and we headed off to the oldest church in the country. I was waiting for a statue or a copy of the Lusiadas to fall out of the sky on my head. I hoped for the latter, preferably paperback, and abridged.

Climbing the stone stairway to the chapel was interesting; we passed by the grog factory, and a long drainage ditch, not necessarily in that order. The church is a small chapel nestled on top of a small hill. The gates were locked, but you could see the entire interior from the outside, so it was back down. Kids asked us for pens, not money, pens. There are lots of Mormons on their missions here. I guess they give the kids candy and pens to get them interested. In Assomada Lisa had gone on a bit of a tirade against this practice of giving with ulterior motives, philanthropy is one thing, bribery another…A brief pause to ask if I was Mormon, and then on… She did feel bad that the church made sure that people coming here on their missions learn Portuguese. Because, in reality, no one speaks Portuguese unless they have to (i.e. for school, official business). The previous week I’d asked people questions in Portuguese and people had fired answers right back at my blank look in Creole. Patience is a virtue, or the perseverance of the saints. Most likely the… .. Latter…… …… ….day……… …… ……Saints. No?

Once back in Praia (read: hot and sunny) I napped and turned off my brain while watching old time superman cartoons, subtitled of course. Brief summary of all of them, because there were several due to their brevity: villain has a scheme that endangers the world in some way, Lois Lane becomes embroiled in this scheme and put in peril while trying to get the scoop for the Daily Planet, Superman saves her and the world in the process (priorities?). Later Clark compliments here savvy journalism, and she says something along the lines of, “I owe it all to superman.” Clark gives a knowing smile to the audience and it ends. We’re just left wondering how no one ever put two and two together. Are glasses really that convincing a disguise? I’ll have to give those a try the next time I’m a fugitive from the law, or a superhero. Whichever comes first.

Post dinner antics included a trip to Quintal da Música, a restaurant with an interior courtyard and live music. An expression in Portuguese that doesn’t quite have an adequate translation in English, tenho saudades de… means roughly to miss something, but it’s something more. I’ve never quite understood what it means. It’s a certain kind of longing, but if you ask for an explanation it usually gets a pause and you come back to the point that there isn’t a translation. Regardless, tive saudades da minha violão. One of my least favorite parts of traveling, if there can be any, is not having music with me. I could have easily brought my computer along with me, but it saved me much stress and left me much more at ease the first half of my trip. I headed to bed soon after getting back, there was a present under the interview tree and it had my name on it…..and I woke up almost too late to open it, and just made it on time to the Instituto Superior da Educação (ISE) to speak with the director of the Department of Portuguese and Cape Verdian Studies. I’d been penciled in to a small window of time in between other meetings, so the interview was short and a bit of a question and answer session more than an interview (the difference between these two often eludes. Along the lines of spotting five things different between these two pictures).

The program is aimed at graduating professors of Portuguese (we’ll avoid the ambiguity and difficulty of creating Portuguese Professors). I asked her whether it wouldn’t be better to teach people to teach Creole, and she responded by saying that that was a valid point, but countered with the fact that there was such a vast material support for teaching in Portuguese. We’ve already got the books. Alright, I responded, pausing for a moment, and what if you had books in French. Would you teach in French just because you have them? No, of course not, nobody speaks French. The question to end this, does anyone really speak Portuguese? Technically, yes. Practically, I’d be less inclined to agree.

The rest of the day I spent transcribing interviews at the pool in the US embassy. Justification, I was going to be doing it anyways, I might as well have done it in an agreeable atmosphere, anywhere outside my stuffy room that refused to grow cooler even with windows wide open. I’m not sure if I was even allowed to be there, Christina told me that there are always Peace Corps volunteers coming in to use the pool. I scribbled my name on the sign-in sheet and wrote PC in the “Purpose/Reason of Visit” column. For some reason I always thought the two words synonymous. I doubt they cared, or even noticed. Even if they’re onto me I can always wear glasses the next time I go back.

Favorite headline in fictional newsprint history:

Extreme precautions taken in case of flying mechanical monsters.

(Context: Millions in gems moved to jewelry museum exhibit )

Can you blame the flying mechanical monster, or the villain behind the curtain, for stealing when you make it so easy? Can you Metropolis?

Saturday morning found me in the lobby of the University residence hall with a juice box of, not juice, but chocolate milk, waiting.  I'd been invited to join Alex, Teresa, and Francisco down at the beach, the whole family minus the eldest son.  Alex popped his head in and we took off, with a few stops to gather the necessary provisions for such a trip.  The drive was quick.  I can't help but remain transfixed during car rides to the passing scenery.  It always gets me how the roads and sights are so familiar to some people, but just don't make sense to me.  I just think about the stretch of 94 between Grayslake and Evanston, down through and out to I-80.  Refusing to use the onramp at 120 because I'm just that used to getting on at 137, I'll admit it.

The neighborhood we pulled into was a mix of post-war single-family homes, beach community, and basalt.  I stress the basalt, because it is, as I was later informed by Alex's dad, also Alex, used in the construction of the majority of these houses.  After stopping at the house, we headed down to the beach.  I slept to make up for the lack of it from the night before.  I can't remember exactly why my body was so reluctant to rest, but it had also forgotten as I fell asleep for somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour.  I realized later, and felt pretty foolish for it, that I had been burnt in a small roughly diamond shaped patch in the center of my back, which I had not reached.  After a good lunch the eldest Alex, Francisco, and I went for a bike ride of the neighborhood that wound its way through the neighborhood, making it seem much larger than I'd originally thought.  This is where I received the architectural lesson.  A few stretches of the trail were pretty sandy, and knowing my cycling skills and natural feeling of ease on the pedals, it was a wonder that I didn't fall and break my face.  Probably wouldn't have been fun, there seemed to be quite a few broken tiles along the way, one of the things my face has proven to be allergic to.

We had dinner, an excellent fish barbecue, and at points I was unsure of whether or not I'd wandered into Italy with all the admonishments to eat more (stereotypes aside).  I also took a nap, and I can't quite place it chronologically, that just shows either how good the food was, that it induced a coma, or that the sun got to me.  Either way we all ended up watching an exhibition game between FC Porto (not the real team) and Boa Vista.  Francisco informed me that he thoroughly detested the latter.  Eventually I was the only one left in the family room, watching a movie about, I assume, Mozambique , but a few minutes in, without any dialogue, I realized I would fall asleep and thought it better to do so in my own bed than on the couch.

The next morning I said my goodbyes and the two Alex's drove me to the train station.  They waited for the train to arrive to see me off.  The trains in Portugal have the wonderful habits of having the time of arrival of the next train flashing on some sign, and of being on time.  If I were a millionaire, an eccentric one, I think I'd donate a large sum of money to the CTA to renovate the el system and make it efficient, cheap, and generally pleasant, with the stipulation that my picture be placed on all the trains.  This would all be in hopes that people, upon seeing me, would invite me into their homes for dinner, lunch, a cup of tea, because the remainder of my fortune after bailing out the calamity that is probably wouldn't suffice to buy Tic-Tac's.  But after all, I was eccentric, and what else is money good for if not free meals and gratitude?

Across the platform two metro security guards were throwing the book at a man they described as a pickpocket who made a mad escape when they let their guard down.  The train arrived and after a second round of goodbyes I was off.  My plan was to get to the train station that ran trains to Lisbon , buy a ticket, stow my bag, and explore the city.  I got to the most central station of the city, which would have been an excellent place from which to make my foray down to the river, yet they had no facilities to maintain my luggage.  I headed further down the line to the stop that had the inter-city trains.  I checked out the schedule, picked a train that would land me in Lisbon at a reasonable hour, found the luggage storage lockers, and then started trekking up a hill that seemed to be leading me in the direction of the river.  I paused after about a minute of slightly-uphill laboring.  If I took the train back to the central station I knew that I could walk downhill and get to the river.  I was sweating something mean at this point, and gravity sounded like lasagna's unheal…my best friend.

An extended period of downward inertia later, I found myself at the end of a large open space that seemed to be on the edge of the plunge down to the real thing.  I stepped into a small caf é to see if I could get something decent to eat for lunch.  I tried, not the results I hoped for, but I had little time to worry about such things, for I was destined to explore the old part of the ci ty.  The river is lined with all sorts of caf és big large, small, touristy….touristy, all offering about the same thing, but all I really wanted was some water, so I ordered up a large bottle and sat and watched, people, water, boats, you name it, if it's in Porto I probably watched it float by.  The afternoon passed by quickly, and I had a chance to think more about my project, but, sadly I'd left my notebook in my backpack at the train station.  It was close enough to departure time that I figured I'd head over just to be on the safe side.

I made it back to the station with plenty of time to spare.  It had slipped my mind that for trains there is no check in, security check, and only minimal boarding time.  To pass the extra minutes in between I bought a used book in Portuguese from a book fair outside the station.  They had put into the practice the importance of location.

The train made quick work of the space between Porto and Lisbon, stopping occasionally, but always returning to a good clip within a minute or so.  Backpack strapped to me again I trundled through the Lisbon Metro system to the hostel I'd stayed at last, hoping there would be an open bed when I got there.  There was, and I said a quick thank you to unreliable people under my breath and stowed my things away in a dorm room.  I grabbed some food to eat and slept to prepare myself for the following day of preparation to leave Portugal.

The next morning I spent time catching up on e-mail and then climbed narrow switch backing lanes up to Bairro Alto and found one of the rare calm public spaces in Lisbon and sat collecting my thoughts.  So far I'd approached the theme of language variation via various means, and my mind had started to feel a bit muddy on how to fit all of the methods, places, and results together in a coherent manner.  Sitting still for a few hours always helps.  I stopped back at the hotel, and yet again, they had another bed for me for that night, thankfully.  I'd been playing it by ear, without any backup plan, but everyone working there definitely wanted to help, it just depended on their ability to actually do anything without screwing over someone who had had the foresight to make a reservation.  To guys working there were Brazilian, one from Rio, and the other from outside of Sao Paulo.  I'd talked to the first while I was eating breakfast, and I think he appreciated the fact that, as he put it, "You speak my kind of Portuguese."  He explained that people give him guff for speaking the way he does in Lisbon .  I haven't used that word in ages, but it brings to mind the definition of being an adult that someone once told me i.e. being a real adult means not taking guff from anyone.  We talked about the implications of accent in a cross-cultural situation, also known as he complained about the way he gets treated because of the way he talks.  It served as a reminder of how quickly how you speak says where you're from and who you are.  I still get a kick out of the comparison of US and British English to Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese.  On both sides of the pond, there are plenty of jokes and imitations, ours being of proper accents and cockney, and theirs most likely being of a nice southern drawl.  It all, however, comes back to the fact that we don't share the (exact) same culture and history.  As nations we're separate and autonomous, and we certainly wouldn't concede that fact, let alone how we speak.  The idea of who owns the language, and who has the authority to determine how it's spoken and where is still a rather contested issue in the Lusophone world.  Should Brazil , as the country with the largest number of native speakers set the precedent?  Or should the Portuguese, as it is the nation where the language was born, determine the way it should be spoken?  Countless hours have been spent over this question of lineage versus population, and I feared I might fall victim to another, so I cut through the debate with quite possibly one of the most important questions of all:  Is there a proper way to speak Portuguese?

The question is most often followed by a pause on the side of my interlocutor, whether a tenured professor, the director of the branch of an International Institution, or someone you meet over breakfast.  Because, as the first person I interviewed, a professor at the University of Macau put it, "When you mess with language, you mess with a person's sensibilities, and you just don't do that."  This had been in response to a rather pointed and political question of whether he thought that Chinese students learning Portuguese in Macau should learn from Europe (EP) or Brazil (BP).  Being a Brazilian as well, he had a certain bias, but he could also answer based on two criteria.  The question in the bluntest form demands the election of which form is better.  Here we can only hope to use the term "better" loosely because if we look at any two variations, both serving the communicational needs of a given community, then we cannot, on any basis say that one is better than the other.  If the need for communication is met, then what more is there to discuss.  Fair enough, if there is nothing more to it, then why ask the question at all?  This is the second criterion, the political one.  People will still answer the question, but the answer will vary depending on who you ask and how you ask it.  I preferred the slap-in-the-face approach, it often gets the quickest and best results, but he suggested a more tactful roundabout way of getting the same answer without offending peoples' sensibilities.  What I asked my friend in Lisbon was a subtler form of that wonderfully loaded question.  After the universal pause, he looked at me, looked back at the table, picked up the coffee, set it back down again, picked it up, set it back down again.  He responded with another question, "What's the right way to juggle three elephants while riding a unicycle?"  I shrugged because I wasn't quite sure what the word for juggle was.  He pantomimed it while asking again.  I shrugged again, "I don't know."

"Neither do I, but if you do it then you must be doing something right."  It seems as though I need to find an even subtler way of asking.

The answer to that question, regardless of what choice is made, is crucially important.  Even more important though are the actions that occur based on that choice and how they can shape the future of a language.  I thought to myself, and perhaps this was influenced by the breakfast items available, that butter and bread are butter and bread, regardless of the location of the butter.  Although I always wondered how butter would stay on if you put it on the bottom side of the bread.  Perhaps you just spread it on the top and flip the bread when you're ready to eat.  Either way, I'd take a catapult (Better Butter Battle ..I forget the rest of the title, but the illustrations in that book are amazing, hence my desire for a catapult.  Video games aren't causing sieges; it's that Ted Geisel fellow, filling the imagination of the youth with fangled, but not new, crazy ideas).  I headed out to the post office and made some phone calls before lunch.

That night my bag already packed for the next afternoon, perhaps a bit early, and then I had an excellent omelet with cheese, ham, green peppers, and onions fries and some sort of fruit juice, I want to say pineapple, but I'm not sure.  I asked for juice expecting to hear the available options, but at this particular restaurant there is one and only one kind of juice, so if you ask for it you just better know what kind it is.  Good thing I'm not deathly allergic to pineapples--or am I?  Perhaps I've just spelled my own doom, when years later, after being chosen by the voters of the fine state of Oregon to represent them in the United States Senate, winning a re-election, and stirring up some controversy that rubs the wrong kind of people the wrong way, that someone decides to assassinate me via a drop of pineapple extract in my iced tea at a power lunch with the party leadership.  Or perhaps I'm not allergic at all, and I'm just sifting through the would-be assassins a bit early, wary of any and all that offer me pineapples, or artificially flavored pineapple products.

I headed out a little bit later with a New Zealander studying environmental politics in Spain, Portugal, Romania, and Hungary and a Finnish guy, who punctuated his English with several yea's a sentence, to Bairro Alto.  For a Monday night the entire neighborhood was packed.  It seemed as if the entire of Europe had decided to visit Portugal on vacation: Let's go to Portugal , I've never been, it sounds like it would be nice.  Do you know anyone who's ever been?  No?  Me neither.  Might as well.  We ducked into a bar that was blaring Pearl jam and was populated by a few Portuguese guys who seemed to know most of the words, but who spoke no English, as we found out when they tried to talk to us.  I would, if I could, go back in time, and start a running tally of every time after I've explained to someone while speaking Portuguese that I'm an American of the look of disbelief or confusion.  I believe I'd be well on my way towards the world record of incredulity caused.  It's disturbing, however, the perception of the states that people have.  I'm not even sure what the stereotype would be, a bunch of people sitting around in cowboy hats, eating McDonalds, drinking some Starbucks?  Clearly they don't speak other languages that them there forners use.  I explained to these guys the same thing that I've explained to many people and they responded with a thumbs-up, grin, and departed into the buzzing party that was the street, plastic cups in hand.  Again I found that I appreciated the saving grace of the design of Lisbon, gravity.  We made it back to the hostel in a few minutes of the downhill-sandal-wearing-loud-awkward walk. 

I tried to sleep once back, but it was far too hot in Lisbon on the fourth floor in a room without ceiling fans or any other means of air circulation.  Instead I tried to imagine how one would go about learning how to juggle elephants.  Steep seems the learning curve for that vocation.

Tuesday morning I woke up and stowed my pack in the storage room behind the reception desk.  The owner of the hostel had pretty much given me free reign to use the room whenever after I'd helped him pacify a girl from Pennsylvania who had rather a big problem in the fact that she didn't want to loose her books and she couldn't leave the hostel but she wanted to go explore the city, but she didn't want to leave her stuff, and overall she was being very loud, angry, and persistent.  I offered to help her quickly move her stuff into the locker I was vacating, solving the problem, and gaining the gratitude of the owner in the process.  From this point on I don't think I could do any wrong.  There wasn't much time left to do so anyways, I relaxed on a couch in the main room of the hostel with my notebook for a bit before heading off to catch the bus to the airport.

This was the first time I had to check my backpack.  Two airline employees informed the person in front of me in line that their carry-on luggage wasn't going to make it on board, it was far too large.  My backpack made it look like a box of tissues.  I tossed it into a spare duffel bag I'd brought with for this exact situation.  I brought a book with for the flight; I figured I'd sleep a bit, read a bit, and magically wake up in Praia .

Cape Verde , is an archipelago of Islands off the coast of Western Africa, think Guinea , Guinea Bissau, Senegal.  Of the ten major islands, the Northern, Barlovento group, and the Southern, Sotavento group.  I landed in Praia , the capital, on the Island of Santiago in the south.  The descent was abrupt.  You're uncomfortably low to the water, no land in sight, and suddenly reddish-brown dirt rushes into view and the plane shudders its way down through the last hundred or so feet briefly touching the pavement before the brakes and reverse engines screech and roar to life to slow the progress of the whole thing.  Upon landing, the cabin burst into applause.  While I found myself clapping, I couldn't help but feel a bit unnerved at the jubilation surrounding something that I hoped was a normal everyday occurrence.

A friend of mine met me at the airport.  We took Portuguese class together at Northwestern, and she is currently in Cape Verde on a Fulbright to finish her dissertation on Cape Verdean Theatre.  We caught a cab back to the house she was staying in.  She'd been able to arrange with the landlords a stay for me in another one of the apartments for the time I'd be in Praia , including meals, which is quite the bonus.  I dropped off my bag and we went on a walking tour of the neighborhood:  bus stop, bank, other bank, embassy down this street, super market, internet caf é another bus stop, internet caf é and video rental store, and finally another caf é with e xcellent ice cream.  I should have drawn a map, because I certainly didn't remember it all, but I'd figure it out in the upcoming days to be sure.  I relaxed for a bit in the apartment/studio that I'd be inhabiting for the next two weeks before heading over to the landlords' for dinner.  Turns out, it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and they'd invited some friends over to celebrate it.  I felt a bit of an imposition, but they were certainly welcoming and the entertaining hosts.  One of their friends was an English professor at the Instituto Superior da Eduacacao, and got off on a bit of a Shakespeare tangent that lasted much longer than normal Shakespeare tangents do.  Still, I couldn't help but appreciate the fact that he spoke English with a painfully proper British accent, the kind that you find in Victorian period pieces.  You'd have to give a Londoner time with a dialect coach to get them speaking like this.  Around the table you could hear Portuguese, Creole, French, and English, and some interesting opinions about all of them.  Most importantly, I realized that Portuguese is certainly not the first language of Cape Verdeans .  The English professor told me, in his opinion, that people speak Portuguese terribly here, my hosts replied that of course they do, it's not their language.  Ask someone if they speak Creole well, and they'll most likely give you a look like you fell of the bike one too many times despite the training wheels.

After dinner Christina told me she would give me a crash course in Praia the next day.  In the morning I got up, ate some breakfast, and prepared myself.  We caught the bus to the national library past the soccer stadium, and then headed over to the national archive for a bit.  From there we headed up to the Plateau, the oldest part of the city that was the concentration of Portuguese development back in the olden days.  We hopped off the bus and walked past the open air fruit market that stretches from street to street.  Christina was explaining to me that I really need to meet Jeff, an American who'd been living in Cape Verde for quite along time, seven years I found out later, spoke excellent Creole, and knew pretty much everyone.  We bumped into him walking down the street.  Cape Verde , at least Praia is like that.  It seems as if everyone knows everyone, and that's not limited to just within the artistic community here that Christina and Jeff are both heavily involved in.  The phrase "Heavily involved", usually sounds of something illegal.  We brainstormed over lunch additional people and places that I could interview and visit outside my original contact list.  It's certainly a great help to have people who have lived in the country for years.

Christina headed off to run some errands, and Jeff and I headed out to get some post lunch coffee.  We ran into some more people he knew, and I sat at a table trying to understand Creole, without much luck.  The newly founded University of Cape Verde was next on the docket.  Jeff had met the Rector, and wanted to set up an interview for me.  The first thing you do when you meet someone in an official context..speak in Portuguese.  This was the advice Jeff gave me.  "It makes them feel like you're not just somebody coming in off the street trying to get an appointment for no particular reason."  Two important terms to note here: bilingualism, diglossia.  I'll use some rough definitions, compiled from several sources, and the homebrewed response that everyone seems to have.  Bilingualism defines a situation in which two languages, neither being given a status of prestige higher than the other, are used in.

I was excited.  Little did I realize that I that little progress would be made on that front.  I followed up several times with the secretary there, but to no avail.  August in Cape Verde is not the time of the year to be setting up interviews.  Everyone's either on vacation, or getting ready to go on vacation.  We left the University, which at this point in time is a single building on the Plateau, with hopes to consolidate and expand the higher education system on Santiago as a start.  For the past couple of years, Jeff has been the producer for a Cape Verdean dance group, Raiz de Polon.  We headed over to their rehearsal space where we were to meet up again with Christina.  I hung out in the office, a room next door to the two dance rooms, I assume would be the proper terminology.  I met some of the members of the company and waited for things to start.  The heat inside got to be too much, so I sat on the step outside of one of the studios, that's the word I was looking for, from which I could see both the street and the rehearsal.  Christina showed up a bit later and we were talking outside when one of the members of the group came out, looked at us, took us into the other studio, and sat us down in two chairs along the near wall.  He ushered one or two more in, and then shut the door, turned off the lights, and went to man the audio equipment.  What followed was an interpretive solo dance piece about Don Quixote, Sancho, and the history of Cape Verde .  These themes and characters did not jump immediately to my mind, but Christina assured me that she'd seen it several times, and was still figuring it out.  She'd even had lunch with the creator/performer of the piece and had discussed it with him, and she was still figuring it out.  We sat, after a brief session of critical feedback, some given in Portuguese, I believe in order to include me in the conversation, with the guy who'd been flinging himself around the room, twirling books on the ends of strings, and using rocks as sandals for the past couple of minutes.   Christina posed a question about the identifiably "African" parts of the piece, and he went in to a drawn out explanation of how he was "not African, his mother was Portuguese, he had a brother who was white like [us]."  I don't want to say that race is a touchy subject here, because most everyone has both European and African ancestry, but identity is hugely important.  As a whole the country has been struggling for quite a long time to define itself based on a cultural allegiance to Africa or to Europe .  There are proponents for both sides.  I wouldn't necessarily say proponents, because it's a mindset more than anything else, but the idea comes across.  We left the building and headed back to the house.  I ate dinner with the landlords; this meal was decidedly less festive.  I believe they've become after a quarter of a century one of those married couples that don't need to talk to each other.  I didn't realize this at first, and tried to dispel what I thought was an awkward situation with small talk in Portuguese.  The weather, the city, history.  You name it, I tried.

Thursday morning I woke up and headed back to the building where the dance group practices.  The other side of the building is a restaurant called Quintal da Musica, a large courtyard with a stage and a bar.  Mario Lucio, my contact for this interview is a playwright, and musician.  Quite possibly one of the best known musicians in Cape Verde .  I got a chance to listen to his music later, and it was pretty good.  He seemed antsy to do the interview and be on his way, so we started.  His views, when simplified to a word, pluralism.  As long as people can understand each other, then what difference does it make how you write a word?  Creole can be standardized and made the official language, people are going to be able to understand each other just fine.  I asked if picking one (Barlovento or Sotavento) to serve as the model of standard Creole would be a problem.  He replied that they were equivalent to US and British English, and that if people could communicate in them, then that was all that mattered.  I think he missed the point.  I think everyone in the use would be a bit rankled if they were told to use British English and vice versa.  The question here is not a linguistic one, of mutual intelligibility, but a political one.