Calheta Funda.

It’s morning.

The air is slightly cold. I can hear the muffled sound of ocean waves periodically crashing against the shingle beach not far away.

The ground is brown and dry. The desert sand shimmers in the bright Sal-island morning sun.

It’s a new day. I spent the night out in some strange concrete-block enclosement out here in the desert, off the island’s highway. It feels like a balcony, but on the ground floor. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

It provided considerable shelter from the wind, so that was good. Rain practically never falls on Sal island, so I didn’t have to worry about a roof over my head.

I’m wearing my fancy rain jacket. The dark-green and brown one I bought at a thrift store in San Francisco. It has like ten different zippers. There are honestly zippers on this jacket I haven’t yet figured out how to use.

I’m actually not sure why I bought it – maybe I thought it would prove useful for winter in San Francisco. Maybe I thought it would snow or something. It didn’t, and I don’t think I used the jacket at all that winter.

It ended up becoming my camping jacket. During random night walks in SF, I would end up nestled up in the hills at Corona Heights- entranced by the interesting view of the city from above – the sparkly streetlights and the prominent visual outline of Market street.

Or snuggling up on a bench amidst interesting flowers at Golden Gate Park. The hooded rain jacket with endless zippers and pockets, proved immensely useful then.

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I’m walking along the shimmering brown desert sand, wondering how the day will unravel. I see a tent up in the distance.

What, a tent?

I thought I was the only one here.

I walk towards it, wondering what’s going on.

Hello!

It’s a cheerful-looking Caucasian man who looks like he’s in his forties. He’s rolling up some stuff around the tent.

We exchange a few pleasantries.

From what I can make of his significantly-accented English, he’s Polish- He and his friend sailed to Sal island (sailed, Wow). I’m not sure where he says they sailed from, but apparently they had a pretty thrilling journey via the ocean, and it wasn’t entirely smooth. Interesting stuff.

He had to have pitched his tent after I fell asleep last night – there was no one around when I got here.

We keep talking. There’s this book he’s very excited about – some guide book for travellers. “Reise Know-How” or something. He has the edition for Cabo Verde – Reise Know-How Cabo Verde something. Apparently it gives a comprehensive outline of interesting activities in Cabo Verde, for travellers. I flip through the book – I find the pictures and the graphics very interesting. It’s all in German though, so I can’t make much of it.

We talk some more as he packs up his stuff and prepares to leave. I’d say he’s a bit shorter than average, but his camping shoes look a little large – I find the look somewhat comical. Chatting excitedly while he prances about in his big shoes. His elation is contagious, and I’m smiling throughout.

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It’s a different day.

Night. It’s night. Night of a different day.

I’m headed back to Calheta Funda from Murdeira, where I went to get some supplies. The past couple of days have had their ups and downs. I found this really interesting small cave right by the ocean – just big enough for me to snuggle into. It felt really cool- curling up in a cave, surrounded by the numbing crashing of ocean waves, and staring out at the reflection of the moonlight in the water.

A few days ago I headed to Espargos to get some food supplies. All of my stuff was by the cave at the beach. Clothes, shoes, other stuff. It was to my utter dismay that I returned and realized that the tide had risen immensely in the hours I was gone.

My stuff was everywhere. My Vans sneakers were completely missing. I could only find one leg of my formal leather shoes. I had to walk dejectedly along the shoreline, rethinking my life decisions as I trudged along the black pebbles that populated the beach, picking up whatever of my belongings the ocean had heartlessly strewn about.

The tide rose and the ocean threw your stuff all over the place- some never to be seen again. Who do you get angry at? You can’t exactly begin to pump your fist at the indifferent ocean, can you?

As I head towards where I have my things, I come across a pickup truck. There are two people in it. They look like European men. From the company logo on the truck, I know the guys in it are a bunch of surfshop entrepreneurs from Santa Maria. Sal has got a number of great beaches, and so there’s the trend of surfing enthusiasts from Europe with access to capital, setting up surfing and kitesurfing schools for tourists.

As I walk by, I say hello to the surfer guys. We exchange pleasantries. The man in the driver’s seat is eating something from a bowl. He says his wife prepared it ahead of his road trip.

“Good wife right?” He looks up from his food and smiles at me.

I laugh.

We exchange a few more pleasantries as I head on my way.

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It’s a different day.

I just woke up. I’m looking around, wondering how this new day will unravel.

There’s someone staring at me. It’s a dark-skinned man. He looks suspicious. Like he’s wondering what to make of me.

I wave and say hello.

At some point I walk over to exchange a few sentences.

He’s Senegalese. Or Guinean. Or Gambian. Honestly I’m not sure.

But generally there’s a specific kind of problem I have with these kinds of people: They never understand what I’m doing. They never understand my life.

The idea of “camping by the beach” makes absolutely no sense to them.

They generally do not understand why anyone would spend the night outdoors, by choice. That’s just how the (non-Cape Verdean) African people here tend to think. I don’t know why.

I think another factor that makes things more confusing for them, is that I’m black. If they see a European person spending the night outdoors, they’ll probably think “Okay there’s just a white person doing white person stuff, nothing to see here”.

They see me doing that and they’re thinking “Hm, what is this person trying to do? Is he trying to break into a nearby building? Is he trying to bury a body? Is he trying to ambush passers-by? What could he possibly be doing there? I think I should call the Police, I do not understand what is happening.“

That is exactly the sort of misunderstanding that leads to me getting picked up by the police here. Officers at the Santa Maria station know me by name now. I alight at the station from their Police van, and the people inside are like “Oho, he’s here again”. Hah.

I’m conversing with the Senegalese/Guinean/Gambian looking guy. He works as a security guard in the area. As we talk, I see the suspicion on his face gradually melt away. He progressively warms up to me.

We keep talking. A lady walks up to us – she’s asking him some questions and asking about me. There are a bunch of kids behind her. And a dog.

He says she’s his brother’s wife. He probably doesn’t mean literal brother. Maybe “fellow Senegalese/Guinean/Gambian person”. Probably.

He offers me some food. He’s eating bread and something.

We keep talking. I take a bunch of selfies with the lady and the kids and the dog.

Thankfully there’s no misunderstanding today.

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Image: Somewhere in the desert of Sal island.

White Rice, Olive Oil, and the “Of Course?!” Guy.

Some guy just joined me at the table. He is dark-skinned, dressed in conspicuous flowing white, and has a medium-sized beard.

He eats like one who is almost late for an appointment. He is not evidently in a hurry, no. Not really. But sitting across the table: hearing his perfunctory greeting, seeing his head bowed in total concentration on his food, watching his spoon grab mounds of rice in diligent cycles, and experiencing the incisive ferocity with which he munches, I can tell he has somewhere to be.

This is my first time ever seeing him. In the next few weeks I’ll learn he’s Senegalese. He’s a member of the Senegalese Islamic sect at whose meetings I’ll happily receive free rice and chicken during Ramadan. But that’s still to happen in a few months. I don’t know any of that now.

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I take my time with my food, taking care not to let the Senegalese guy’s justification-bereft haste rub off on me.

I didn’t know people added olive oil to rice. Like, while eating. There’s a small bottle of olive oil right next to my food. I didn’t know sprinkling some of it on rice, was a thing.

In Nigeria I only ever saw olive oil being used by the super-abundance of superstitious churches in the place. It was usually employed as some sort of a supernatural weapon- To cast out demons and ward off evil spirits.

To the extent that your impression of reality and what is real and what is normal and what is natural; To the extent that all of that is dependent on the human beings around you and your immediate society, growing up in some parts of Nigeria teaches you that Olive oil is manufactured to cast out demons. That is why olive oil exists. And that olive oil advertisements proudly quote stats on demon fatalities, just like how disinfectants claim to kill 99% of germs, etc.

And so it definitely feels very absurd for me here, seeing almighty Olive Oil being used for something as mundane as seasoning rice.

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The Senegalese guy is done eating.

Of course he’s done eating.

In a few weeks I’ll be at this restaurant with a new acquaintance from the Netherlands who studied Mechanical Engineering.

We’ll meet on the sunny beach at the southern end of the island. We’ll talk about Holland’s ingenuity with dams and dykes, and he’ll explain the physics of sailing. He’ll attempt to explain the physics of kitesurfing to me, but I’ll have too little experience with the sport to get what he’s saying.

I’ll tell him about some of my interests involving the representation of words and ideas in general, as co-ordinate points in multi-dimensional space. Initially he’ll be skeptical, but at some point he’ll come around and find it exciting. He’ll tell me about the Bauhaus- say I’ll be interested in the philosophy behind it. I’ll open up a mobile Safari tab to check out later.

We’ll talk about his work at KLM. About his bosses and how they receive very fleshy salaries, but aren’t doing all that much work. We’ll talk about his intention to move to a larger apartment- one that costs about two thousand euros a month. The salary is capable of handling it, he says.

I’ll introduce some girlfriend talk. I’ll be surprised to hear he has never had one. I’ll be going through some wrenching heartbreak at the time, but I’ll still suggest that he think about getting one. He’ll appear receptive to the idea.

He’ll tell me about his friends in Holland and their recent trip to Thailand. He’ll ignore phone calls from his mother, wanting to know how he is doing in Cape Verde. He should be old enough to handle himself, he says. I agree. At the time, I myself will be embroiled in some brain-scalding disagreements with my parents in Nigeria.

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In a few weeks we’ll be at this restaurant, and he’ll point out to me that you slant the beer glass while pouring the beer. So the foam accretes on top. Apparently that’s the cool-guy way of pouring beer. I’ll realize it also looks better.

In a few years I’ll message him on Facebook, but he will not respond with the enthusiasm I expect. There’ll be too little information to discern why. It’ll probably have to do with the possibility that he has forgotten most of what happened on that day.

That’s something I’ll become aware of in the next few years. That people generally forget pretty much all of these things, and so I shouldn’t immediately attempt to pick up a conversation we were having years ago, because they usually don’t remember ever having that conversation. Sometimes they don’t even remember having ever met me in their lives before.

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And so in a few weeks I’ll be at this restaurant with a new acquaintance from the Netherlands, laughing and having conversation he’ll most likely completely forget before long.

I’m done with my food. I call over to the waiter-cum-manager of the place. I ask him a polar question about his opening times. He responds with a vigorous “Of Course?”, that is accented to sound like a question.

This is like the fifth time this guy is going to respond to my questions with “Of Course?”. Initially I thought he was somewhat offended by my question- that it meant I felt the need to ask for something that should simply have been assumed.

Now I’m beginning to perceive this behavior differently from when I initially met him: I don’t think he’s a native English speaker. He’s black, and generally feels like someone who originated from somewhere on the continent, but I don’t think he’s Cape Verdean. Probably from a non English-speaking African country.

I think his English lexicon is limited, and “Of Course” is one of the few expressions in his vocabulary. That’s probably why he says it so often.

I pay for my food and get up to leave. The “Of Course?” guy is heading out to serve some chicken. I let him know I enjoyed the meal, and that I’ll definitely be back sometime soon.

He appears to appreciate my compliment, and wishes me goodnight.

There’s a hearty “Of Course?!” somewhere in his response.

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Image Credits: https://www.origanico.com/product-category/food/extra-virgin-olive-oil/