Po De Terre

Stories from the island, part 1.

Po De Terre

(phrase/noun) “tiny ground”; a Cape Verdean expression for a dust layer carried over in spring winds from the Sahara Desert. A seasonal haze that would make one want to nap on the fine white sand, as it softens the vibrant Atlantic ocean hues.

Off the coast of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean sits Cabo Verde, an archipelago of ten volcanic islands. São Vicente—the home of my father’s side, is marked on the map.

These are 2 of 4 oral stories I transcribed, specially picked from a plethora of family lore I gathered last March on the island of São Vicente, Cabo Verde. If you see the term “Cape Verde/Verdean,” it refers to the same island country, used informally & with less syllables.

For context, my father’s family line on São Vicente bridges back decades before the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, and even decades before that. A country that is truly self-made, borrowing and blending cultures during the occupation and racial oppression of West Africans by the Portuguese. Outsiders simply understand it as a “little Brazil” with its racially mixed residents and extravagant Carnaval celebration much resembling the one in Rio.

The language they speak is called Creole or Kriolu. If observed closely and intimately, one might discern Cabo Verde is not particularly Brazil-reminiscent, but a singular place with an identity that could only be its own, and its coined genre of music Morna trails across the ocean singing, “Sodade, sodade, sodade d'es nha térra Saniklau…” (I miss, I miss, I miss my hometown São Nicolau). This is a culture that values beauty in the ache of great loss; the portrait of the writer and songstress of Sodade, Cesária Évora, is printed on their currency.

Family brunch taken on Olympus Infinity Stylus.

Across The Island

1989. Grandpa Vasco, Papim, teenage David (my dad) and 20-something Vasco Jr set out on a journey across the island of São Vicente, a 14 kilometer (8 mile) journey in a white ford pinto in first gear. “It saves gas,” Papim was convinced. He also never filled up the gas tank all the way, and instead, always kept a milk gallon jug full of gasoline in the trunk to pour into the always nearly empty tank through a homemade funnel by cardboard and duct tape whenever he needed it.

The four of them left the main city of Mindelo in the northwest for a small fishing village called Calhau (call-ee-ow) on the east side. There they would meet primo Jorge among other family and friends for a few days of fishing, eating and “chin chin”-ing a shot of fresh grog.

Calhau’s first full-time inhabitant was Grandpa’s older brother in the 1950s. The way you established your property then was by collecting enough rocks to make a border around your house.

To make it halfway across the island in Papim’s 1st gear style took around 45 minutes. The boys always pulled off the dirt road (now paved in cobblestone) and hiked up to the top of a hill because from there you could see both sides of the island and feel its quaint grandiosity. “Shhh,” (Cape Verdean for wow) the men would say, and “shhh” the younger boys repeated.

Jorge’s request when we come to the island from Lisbon (there is no direct flight from California) is always to bring chocolate. When we arrived with a suitcase full of hand-me-downs and chocolate Jorge said “shhh.”

The First Car

In the 1940s, when my grandmother was a young girl, the first car was introduced onto the island to an aristocratic-type man and the first moment of motorized land transportation occurred. Shortly thereafter, the second car was introduced to another man of the same status. Both cars were huge news, and regular people gathered to watch them motor by and drum up clouds from the dirt paths now transitioning to accommodate the two anomalies. For an amount of time, it was only these two vehicles on the entire island, and one day, at around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the drivers crashed into each other. “You never come here this time of day!” yelled one to the other, waving his watch in the air.

*Part 2 coming soon.