Episode 09: C is for Cabo Verde

In this episode we explore how 10 uninhabited islands became the nation of Cabo Verde. The Portuguese established it as a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade but in the process, the people created a unique and beautiful cultural melange!

References:

 Link to Call me Neguinho by Selim Harbi: Call me Neguinho by Selim Harbi - YouTube

Come on Explorers!  Let's journey through Africa, one nation at a time!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Archipelago An archipelago is group of islands in a body of water. It's just a simple concept, but it's a beautiful word. Now archipelagos are usually formed after a volcano has erupted and the lava creates the islands and the body of water that archipelagos are usually in are oceans. They don't have to be. You could have smaller archipelagos in different bodies of water, but in general it's volcanic islands created in an ocean. And they're in a group. So think of Japan, Hawaii, Zanzibar. These are all archipelagos. Welcome to Africa A to Z, the podcast where we explore Africa. Fifty-four countries, one country at a time. I'm Gina from Sankofa Sojourns, where we travel to places impacted by the transatlantic slave trade, reclaim our heritage, and bring joy to those spaces. We transform trauma into power. Follow us on all social media platforms at Sankofa Sojourns, S-A-N-K-O-F-A, S O J O U R N S. And travel with us. We'll be sojourning to Africa Town in Mobile, Alabama. We're also going to be doing some sojourns in the New York, New Jersey area this summer. So sojourn with us. Now explorers, today our journey takes us to that African nation, which is actually an archipelago made of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Today we explore Cabo Verde. That's hi, how are you? In Criolu, the language spoken by the people of Cabo Verde. Their official language is Portuguese. And their official name is the Republic of Cabo Verde. Changed from Republic of Cape Verde in 2013. So let's get the Jeopardy facts and figures out of the way. So the capital city is Praia. That's the capital city. It's on the island of Santiago, one of the ten islands, because remember, Cabo Verde is made up of ten islands. It's the 50th largest country in Africa out of 54 countries. So that tells you it's very small. It's a small island. And it's bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and it's near the nations of Senegal, Mauritania, and Guinea-Bissau on the other side, on the African mainland. So these are islands off the coast of Senegal. The currency in Capo Verde is the Escudo or the CVE, the Cape Verdean Escudo. The average age is about 30, so it's a fairly young population, but not tragically young. There are about 524,000 people in all the islands. The region, remember, we talked about regions in the continent of Africa. So this these islands are in the West African region. And the archipelago consists of 10 volcanic islands, and their combined area is 4,033 square kilometers. That's pretty small. Because remember, we have a formula for doing the math and switching, you know, back and forth between square miles and square kilometers. And that formula, I'll give it to you one more time, is you will either divide the value by 2.59 or multiply it by 0.386. Okay, so you can see it's a pretty small surface area when you combine all those islands. Now it's called Cape Verde or Cape Verde or Capo Verde or Cap Ver. Everybody has their different way of pronouncing it. And until 2013, they sort of let us do whatever we needed to do. But then in 2013, they said no, our name is actually the Republic of Cabo Verde. That's the people on the islands, and that's the decision they made. And we support Kuji Chagolia, so I will always try to refer to the island as Cabo Verde, but sometimes I may switch it up because I know that's how our minds work. That's how mine does. Well, what is a cape, right? Because we call it Cape Verde. So if you speak any of the romance languages, you will figure out that means Green Cape, right? So but what's a cape? We've heard of capes before. Cape Canaveral, Cape Cod, right? The Cape of Good Hope. We we have we've had this word. A Cape is just a small piece of land that juts off the coastline and changes the landscape. So that's Cape Fair. Cape Ver juts off of the coast of Senegal and changes the coastline. And these islands are off the coast of Cap Vare in Senegal. So it's off the coast of West Africa, and it forms part of something that I have never heard of. So I'm going to share it with you. It forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion. So we might have heard of Micronesia. You may have heard of that. No, I'm talking about something else. This is called Macaronesia. Now that's along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Savage Isles. The Macronesia is a biogeographical area made up of different archipelagos. And Cabo Verde, Cabo Verde is one of them. And it's actually Senegal's westernmost point that sits on Cap Ver. So shout out to Yoff. Shout out to Dakar. I'm gonna try it in Wolof. You guys let me know if I'm saying it right. That is also what we would call Cape Ver, Cap Vir, Bopunatek. Because we always want to try to use the African words when we know what they are, versus the language of the colonizers, because we are always decolonizing. So Cabo Verde has a semi-arid climate, right? So it's not desert, it's not desert, but it's also not so tropically humid all the time either. And that's because it's in the Atlantic. These, you know, this nation is islands, and it's just in the Atlantic, and there's always these trade winds blowing. So the temperatures are pretty stable all year round. About 20 degrees Celsius is low, and about 30 is its high. So we're somewhere between 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That sounds pretty heavenly to me. That's like a sweet spot. The short rainy season runs from August through October, and it's mainly on the western islands with the mountains. The eastern islands get less rainfall, a lot less rainfall. They can actually go years without getting even as much as half an inch of rain. So you can see that drought is an issue there. Long drought is probably Cabo Verde's most natural hazard, most um most dangerous hazard is long drought. Because we know without the rain, things don't grow. If things don't grow, people can't eat. The best time to visit for the most consistent weather is between November and July. So there's no rain, and you're just gonna be somewhere between 68 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. You're gonna be sunny, there's beaches. It just sounds really, really lovely. I can't wait to visit. Their form of government is called the Unitary Semi-Presidential Republic. So they have a president as head of state, a prime minister runs the government, and parliament is there making laws. Cabo Verde is renowned as one of the most democratically stable countries in Africa. Every time they've had to move from one regime to the next, it's been through peaceful change, you know, peaceful transition of power from based on elections, democratic elections. Now they came from a one-party state, then they moved into a two-party state, but even still, they've not had any sort of issues when it came time to leave after your term limits are reached. Because they also have term limits there. So you can be president for two terms, someone else has to run for office, and then you vacate the seat. I'm gonna sip on some warm lemon water. And it's ranked as one of the most democratic countries. There's an organization, it's called freedomhouse.org, and they rank countries as far as how democratic are you? Cabo Verde is one of the most democratic nations. The main industry there is tourism. Tourism is their livelihood, it makes up about 42% of the jobs on the islands. It is right in the ocean, so the government is doing things to prioritize marine life, an ocean economy. Sailing has always been a big industry in Cabo Verde, but they're looking to the ocean and the sun for renewable energy as well. And they're working with uh information and communications technology sectors, and they're trying to increase those things. So air transportation is also a growing sector, a key growth sector. If you're into aviation, aerospace, perhaps you want to investigate Cabo Verde. Now let's talk about the people and life on Cabo Verde's ten islands. So strangely enough, these islands were uninhabited. So the Portuguese sent out sailors, Italian sailors, and to search around and see we want new places to come. We want to inhabit different places. Remember, we talked about the plague that was going through Europe. So people were trying to find other ways to live, other places to live. And also the Portuguese wanted to become more powerful, they wanted to expand their empire. So they sent people out. They had already been exploring Africa's coastline, and so they sent people to explore more. Now there were some, there's legends we don't know because we're talking 1400s, but some believe that nearby sailors from Senegal and Sierra Leone and those areas had explored these islands. They just never settled on them because they were islands and they were rock islands, volcanic. And so they would come perhaps on fishing expeditions, maybe spend the night there, maybe spend the day there, but they didn't go there and relocate and try to settle those islands. There's also legend that a Venetian sailor sailed past those islands, but he didn't stop. He didn't stop, he didn't leave any evidence that he had done so. And apparently, in order to quote unquote discover a place back then, there were certain things you had to do. And one of them was you had to stop your vessel, you had to disembark, you had to get off your boat, you had to explore the area, you had to see if you could bring something back from the area to show proof that you were there, and you had to leave something there to show that you had been there. So if you don't do all of those steps, you didn't quote unquote discover anything. So it wasn't discovered until the Portuguese sent the Italians back, and they've they actually got off and did all of those things. They sailed from Genoa, but in the service of the king of Portugal. And they discovered it in 1460. So they wanted to use these islands as a shipping hub and a storage place. They also wanted to grow sugar cane and cotton on these islands because that's how you could make money. And so we also know what else the Portuguese were really, really into back then. Africans were trafficked in from West Africa and forced into enslavement on the islands that made up Cabo Verde. So we're talking the Wolof, the Mandingo, the Baifala, the Papel, the Bainuk. These people made up the majority of the Africans forced to settle and work this land. But others were enslaved there too. The Fula, we've talked about the Fula quite a bit, the Serer, the Jola, the Susu, just to name a few. Many other settlers, convicts, and exilees came from all over. They came from the Dutch sent people, the Spanish, the British, the French, Arabs came, Moroccans came down from North Africa, Jewish people escaping the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions also came. People came from all over the globe, and that became the people of Cabo Verde. A mixture of many cultures and many ethnicities with an African base. So as I said, the language that most people speak there is Creolu. So it's Creole in English, right? And we know a Creole is a mixture of things. That also is the biggest ethnicity on the island, Creolu. So most of the people that there are Creolu, meaning they are mixed with different Europeans, mainly Portuguese, and different African genes. So you have this mixture of people. Now Portuguese is the official language and it is widely spoken. And I'm told that once you go to school, you learn Portuguese. When you do business, you do business in Portuguese. But when you're at home, you're at home, you speaking criolu. Now about 28% of the people there are various other African ethnicities. Now that may be due to migration, because as I said, it's near so many places. You could get there from Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau. So there's migration to Cabo Verde. And then there are the people who have been there, whose ancestors came, and maybe by some miracle were not forced to reproduce with colonizers. And so they maintain their African genetics and African identity. But that's only about 28% of the people there. And about 1% of the population is European from different European nations, mainly Portuguese. The religion is Roman Catholicism. That's what you have there. You have Roman Catholics. Some research I found said 72%, some said 85%. So you have Roman Catholics. And you have Protestants, about 4%, and 4% of other Christians. 1% of the people practice Islam. And then there's still a handful of people practicing the Baha'i faith, people practicing Judaism. I read where they try to have a national Passover celebration where all of the Jewish people of Cabo Verde can get together and have a Passover Seder. And I'm all for anything that brings people together. And that just sounds beautiful to me. And then you also have your atheists, your people who claim to not believe in anything. And then you have syncretism, right? We talked about syncretism where you blend religions. And so these people came from all different parts of Africa, mainly West Africa, but different countries, different ethnicities with different beliefs, different indigenous beliefs. And then there's that syncretism of those indigenous beliefs in with your Roman Catholicism. Because if you think about the ceremony of Catholicism, it kind of does lend itself to being blended with indigenous religions, in my opinion. You have the candles, you have the incense, you have that solemnity, you have this the singing, the chanting, the praying. I can see it. I can see the connection, and I can see how you could roll in some of your indigenous beliefs, uh, your veneration of your ancestors with the veneration of saints. It's not a big stretch. So who came? Who colonized Cabo Verde? The Portuguese. They came in 1460 and they stayed. They never left. They stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed. Even during the Berlin Conference, they maintained control of that whole area. Portugal were the colonizers. Cabo Verde became a key part of the transatlantic slave trade. Because as I said, they wanted to grow these crops and things, but they found that the land didn't really want to grow those crops. It was green and it was arable, but it was just not amenable to sugarcane and cotton the way other parts of the continent were. They realized early on they're gonna have to do something else if they want to make money here. So Portugal, as I said, wanted it to become a shipping hub. It became a hub where you stopped off. You got fuel, you did some trade, it was duty-free. There were no taxes, no tariffs. So it was a duty-free shopping zone, and you came here to fuel up before your transatlantic journeys. And we know what those transatlantic journeys meant. And we know what they meant for the African people that were in the hulls of those ships. Cabo Verde was a place where you more than likely stopped on your journey to the other side of the world. Now, Cabo Verde and Guinea were ruled together by Portugal. They took both of those areas and they ruled them both, and that was their Portuguese African colony. Now then, as I said, slave trade was their business and it boomed and at its height from 1475 to 1575. There's estimates that about 28,000 people were captured and shipped through Cabo Verde and off into what we call the New World back then. The Americas, South America, Brazil, and some to Britain, of course, to Portugal, Spain, and what would later become the United States. Now this slave trade continued until the 1870s, and they were shipping out on average about 3,000 Africans every year through Cabo Verde. So in addition to people coming to the island to settle it and coming in as enslaved people, there were also intermarriages between the settlers and people who were passing through the sailors and the Africans who were brought there. So we know about the forced miscegenation. So I'm just trying to use a little bit of a gentler language because it's really a harsh history. You know, it's really a harsh history to look at the people and think of what what it took to create them. Of what it took to become the Creolu people that they are. It's not like the Massey people. The Massey people, right, that we learned about in Burkina Faso. No, the origins are different. Because the Masse people are also mixed, right? They're also mestizo people. But it was mestizo in under different circumstances. So here we did have some times I can envision that there may have been some times when it was a relationship, more so than just being forced into these acts that created these children that became the Creolu people. But that ethnicity was created. And if you don't remember, go back to episode seven, listen to Burkina Faso, where we talk about the creation of the Mosi people. Now there was also a free Creolu community because sometimes the enslaved were given freedom and they moved around the islands and they made a home and a life for themselves there. So you did have a free community as well. And eventually in 1878, slavery came to a very slow end. They did a gradual thing where they were like, okay, any childborn will not be enslaved, but not the mother. The mother will still be enslaved. And then any birth person under this age, or if you become Christian and then your godparent pays out your enslaver, then you can get free. They were doing it real slow, but finally by 1878, it came to an end. Now life was hard because the land, as I said, it wasn't the best land for cash crops that the Portuguese wanted to grow. And also because of those droughts. The droughts would be long, and during those long droughts, nothing would grow. So a lot of Cape Verdeans joined sailing expeditions because remember, this was a waste station. Ships were coming in through here all the time. A lot of the younger men decided to take their chances on the water and joined on with ships and whaling expeditions. That was a way of people getting off the island to try to make a living. Now New England, specifically Rhode Island in Massachusetts, they have a large Cape Verdean community that descended from the many immigrants who made their home here as early as 1824. We've had Cape Verdean people documented as immigrating here that early. There are some who are alleged to have entered even earlier. Now there was a big revolution in 1853. People were tired. They were tired and they were trying to get out from under the yoke of enslavement and colonialism. There's so little written about this big revolt. The main thing that I could find about this big uprising against the Portuguese by the people of Cabo Verde was that it was met with extreme violence by the Portuguese. That the Portuguese shed a lot of Cabo Verdian blood to put down this revolution. They were already brutal, but this increased the brutality. But the the fire of freedom was already lit, right? It's just once people get that desire, it seems that there's not enough violence in the world to hold people down. And so people continued. They continued to revolt in different ways. Some acts that maybe there was not a big concerted effort, but people continued to resist, resist, resist. And in 1856, a committee was put together to explore how they could eventually slowly abolish slavery. And as I was talking about earlier, they did, but it was a slow process. They started talking about it in 1856. They didn't finish it till 1878. They had to put together a whole committee. And the main thing that they were concerned about was paying the people who owned the enslaved for giving up their enslaved people. That was their main concern, making sure those people got paid. Slavery was abolished, but the Portuguese stayed in power. They were still the colonial power, they were still the sovereign state over those islands. The Cape Rideans began to rise up against Portuguese rule. Portugal responded by sending over troops. Cape Radians and other Portuguese colonies started building together, nationalizing together. Cabo Verde and Guinea, Mozambique, these were all Portuguese colonies. Cabo Verde and Guinea were close to each other, so they started working together. And remember, Portugal looked at them as one body anyway. They just treated them like that's one colony. So they started working together and exploring how they can nationalize, how they could become a nation, and how they could have ownership of themselves in their own lives. And they even started exploring communism as an alternative way of living that allowed them to be free. Then in 1926, a fascist government took over Portugal and they began the work of dismantling all the communist parties and any resistance. And people were shipped from other colonies to Cape Verde because they had some of the most brutal policing policies and the most brutal prisons. So incarceration on Cabo Verde was a real serious problem for you. So it's like you don't want to get shipped off there. But that's what they did. So that's what the Portuguese would do. But the people eventually came together. They continued to fight and nationalize, and it may have taken them a hundred years. But in 1956, they formed a political party. And it was the Partido Africano de Independencia de Guinea e Cabo Verde. So the Party of African Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde. And they were led by Amelcar Cabral. And the party was founded by Amelcar Cabral and his little brother Luis Cabral. Now they were both born in Guinea, but their parents were both from Cabo Verde. So that's how the islands were lumped together in a colony. And in this case, it worked. And they used labor strikes to push back against the Portuguese. But then in 1959, the Portuguese murdered 50 dock workers who were on strike. And the Portuguese answered their request with murder. That made the PAIGC become militant. Because before that they were using words and they were using strikes. Now they started using weapons to let the Portuguese know how they felt. So that started in 1959. Amokar Cabral was assassinated in 1973. And it was by someone in his own party, someone who was disgruntled, went to work with the Portuguese government. They tried it. They tried to divide and conquer. But this time it didn't work. It didn't work. In episode four, we in Angola, we talked about the Carnation Revolution that took place in Portugal in April of 1975. Remember, Portugal was facing fights from all their African colonies, Almucar Cabral and them. They were up in arms. So they had Guinea and Cabo Verde, and then you had Mozambique, and you know, you may have heard this expression, right? A luta continua. Right? So that's the struggle continues. That's what was going on for Portugal at the time. They would everybody was struggling for freedom against Portugal. And then inside Portugal, the people stood up too. The military said, enough. And the people said, enough. And they had this carnation revolution. And then Portugal said, okay. And they let go of all their colonies. They let go of all of their African colonies. And Cabo Verde won her independence on July 5th, 1975. So Cabo Verde and Guinea considered becoming one nation because they had fought together to get there because Guinea also got independent, as did Mozambique when Portugal said, alright, enough. But they had some differences of opinion and each became their own country. Guinea became Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde became the Republic of Cabo Verde. Or back then the Republic of Cape Verde. They formed a new country and then they formed a new party. The Partido Africano de Independencia de Cabo Verde. So they just dropped the G. They dropped the Guinea, because Guinea went their own way. And their first president was Aristides Pereira, and the first prime minister was Pedro Piresh. So the government was nationalist, they were about the people and also socialist. So they aligned themselves with Cuba, the USSR, Libya. And so we're talking the 1970s. But if you were alive in the 1970s, which I was, you might remember that those countries that they aligned themselves with, Cuba, Libya, Russia, people felt like these countries, these communist countries, the ways that they did things was contrary to democracy and freedom. So even the Kabulvadians who didn't live on the island anymore, who, as I said, they started exploring the world by ship a long time ago. So there was a wide diaspora already, a big diaspora. So a lot of people in the diaspora said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not the nation we wanted to build. So there was a lot of friction, but it was peaceful. It was peaceful. They had no military coups. They had nobody taking over the government. They changed government by election. Now, of course, some of the elections some people say were not fair. When you look at uh statistics on satisfaction, that's some of their lowest satisfaction rates are the transparency and fairness of their elections. But elections take place peacefully there, and power changes hands peacefully. Education, they're a very educated society. The literacy rate in Cabo Verde is 91%. Education is mandatory for children ages 6 to 13. It's mandatory. It's available before that. They have preschool for children 4 and 5, and you can go all the way up through university. But it's mandatory from 6 to 13. So they have a very educated people. Now the government gives you tuition free and universal education, right? From all the way through eighth grade. Secondary education, that would be like high school in America, is not necessarily free for everyone. But it is free if you don't have the means to pay for it. So if your family's annual income is below 147,000 escudos a year, you can get free education. So that would be about $1,575 a year. And that's quite a few families whose income falls below that. So they have a high literacy rate, but they also have a high poverty rate. School is free all the way up through higher education. And it's also free for you in private schools as well as public schools. But that's if you have a condition that's considered a disability. Cabo Verdi has one of the best educational systems in Africa. They have a very, very educated populace. That's one way that they learn things. They also have a very rich oral tradition, which is a thread that I can see running through so far all the countries we've examined. Now they have fables, these tales of Nolobo. Nolobo tales are fables that teach and entertain. And they have counterparts in West African folklore that demonstrates the continuity of these traditions, these African traditions on all the different islands. So Cabo Verde is now a leader in African renewable energy. 20% of their energy comes from renewable sources right now. And their goal is to increase that to 50% by 2030. The government has introduced a digital economy strategy because they want to change the nation. They want to become a digital hub. Remember how they were a shipping hub and a transatlantic slave hub. Well, now that the people run the country, they want to become a digital hub. They're giving out incentives for renewable energy, tourism, and the information and communication and technology sectors. So this is where they're headed. And they've got the education to do it. Because as I said, they're an educated populace with a 91% literacy rate. It's very impressive. But they're also well versed in the ancient technology, that technology of making something out of nothing that can only come from a people who have survived what they have in Cabo Verde and in places where the same thing has taken place. They're into their arts there, and we're going to talk about, of course, the culinary arts. And the national dish is called cachupa. So it's a hearty stew made with hominy, beans, vegetables, fish, and meat. And it's any kind of meat. So it could be not any kind, but lots of different kinds: corned beef, salt pork, chorizo, pork ribs, meat. And it simmers for hours and it drives you wild with anticipation. Just imagine smelling that, cooking for four hours, five hours. Just ask no lobo. Remember, I said he's a character in their fables. There's a whole fable about no lobo and how what happened to him because he wanted some kachupa. So you can look that up. It's really entertaining. Now, of course, with a dish, a main dish, there's always gonna be a lot of feelings. And there's a lot of feelings around kachupa. So there's the controversy over is it kachupa or manchupa? How do you pronounce it? And also what do you put in it? Ask different generations, they're gonna give you different answers for what they put in theirs. And going to different islands, it's gonna come a little, it'll be a little different there. And people on the diaspora might want it one way, whereas people who are on the island do it a different way. So it sounds like a dish that when you get to Cabo Verde, you have to try. So I'm gonna ask now, I'm putting in my order for some fish kachupa, please. Please leave out the salt pork and the pork ribs, and you can leave out their meat altogether. Now, Cabo Verde is not just known for their culinary arts, they're also really renowned for their textiles, their panu. It's legendary. They have this cotton fabric that they produced right there in Cabo Verde, and it was a technique that they brought over from Guinea by the weavers that they stole. Those weavers from Guinea brought over this technique of weaving this cotton and creating this fabric. And then, of course, where you land where you are and you work with what you have, and so you created something new. So they got the panuditera, and so that's this like the cloth of the land, the cloth of the land, right? So that became what they're famous for, one of the things they were famous for, and they exported that all over the place, and also the people who could make it went around the world, you know, in chains, but they brought that technology, they brought that art form with them. Then there's also pane de obra. Pano de obra is still fabric, it's still a cloth, but this one is a little more intricate, and it's sort of um letting you know how laborious the work is to create this particular type of cloth. But these cloths became currency, that's how valuable they were, that's how beautiful they were. They became a currency, barofula, and they used that to trade with countries on the African coastline, and it brought a lot of money to Cabo Verde. If you could get your hands on some panu when you go there, I think you would be very, very lucky. Now they have an art form called morna. Morna. It's music, it's dance, it's poetry, it's it's a it's a whole thing, and it's a beautiful package, and it's how you celebrate different things. You'll hear morna and you'll dance mornas at weddings, at christenings, even at family reunion. There's also uh other musical traditions, and one of them is batuko, which is African rhythms call and response performed by women, and funana, a fast-paced accordion type of music. It's just different. I would say just go on YouTube, put in, you know, Cop Verdian music, or put in specifically morna, batuko, and funana. Now they have the world-renowned Cesaria Evora. She is Murna's most famous performer. She's Cabo Verdian. Her name is synonymous with Morna, and they call her the barefoot diva because she sings in her bare feet. That just makes me feel good. Now, there's like I said, also Funana, right? Now that's different. That might be more everyday stuff, everyday things that they're talking about, but they're also gonna be talking about the sorrows and the happiness of life there while weaving in social criticism. And it's also not straightforward, it's not a direct so there's gonna be a lot of proverbs, there's gonna be a lot of figures of speech. You're gonna have to think when you're listening to a Funana, because it's very artsy. And now the literature and the poetry of their country flourished during their fight for independence in the 50s, 60s, 70s. There's a lot of it, and they got a journal out of it, a journal called the Claridade, and that came in 1936, and that was all about the country's freedom, their fight for freedom. And it was Cabo-Verdean thinkers and writers, and they wrote to share about Creolu culture and their life experiences, and to expose Portugal's role in their oppression. Because remember, in 1936, they were still a Portuguese colony. After independence in 1979, Cape Verdean literature continued to expand into newer territories, and you get new popular authors like Eileen Barbosa and Vera Duarte. Cape Verdeans have a wide array of folk arts. Crochet, weaving, all of this are practiced by women. Men generally engage in wood carving, ship models, and they make instruments, musical horns out of shells because they're islands. Cabo Verde is proud of its many diasporan descendants, and they joke that there's more Cape Verdeans outside of Cabo Verde than there are in the country. So some of their most notable descendants include U.S. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, actor Michael Beach, jazz composer and performer Horace Silver, RB singer Blue Cantrell, and the late left-eye Lisa Lopez. Remember, she's Lopez with an S, so you know there's some Portuguese in there. So the traditional home in Cabo Verde is multi-generational. You'll have several generations living communally and being raised by all the different generations. One of the things that I found out was that at the birth of a child, it's customary for the parents to throw a party seven days after the birth of the child, and that the guests gather in the baby's room at midnight to pray for the child's safety and success. This all sounds very familiar to me. It's very African. The people of Cabo Verde are known to be very hospitable, very generous in nature. If you come to their house, if you're a guest, they're going to lavish you with food and drink and attention. And it's actually considered rude not to eat the food that's been presented to you. And not because sharing is part of who they are. And if you're eating, you have to also share your food, always. That's why they don't eat in public. Like in America, we will eat a slice of pizza walking down the street. That would be considered rude there. Because now, what if you pass somebody? Do you have pizza for them too? No. So you wouldn't do that. Just these are things to bear in mind when you travel around the world. They also hug and kiss each other in Cabo Verde, right? They will kiss each other on the cheek. They do the double kiss, get a kiss on each cheek. And greetings take a while. It's not just gonna be hi, how are you? Right? It's gonna be hi, how are you? How's your mother? How's your aunt? How's your son? How's your daughter? How's your cousin? You know, how's work? What's going on with this? Are you well? Did you how would you how did you sleep? They're gonna care about you. And you're gonna ask the same questions of those people too. It's lengthy because they want to know how you're doing because you're all connected. And if you think of an island or a group of islands where everyone was enslaved and they had to create a culture out of several different cultures, it was really important to know how everybody's doing every day for everyone's survival. As far as the movement and the memory, we talked about the different music forms: the morna, the funana, the batuko. There are also filmmakers in Cabo Verde. There's a short film that I found online, and I put a link in the description. So wherever you found this podcast, just um go look for the description, and there should be a link to Call Me Nengino. And it's a film by a filmmaker, Selim Harvey. He's a Cabo Verdian, and he confronts Cabo Verdi's painful past of enslavement, sexual assault, and subjugation. And he won Best Documentary at the Accra Indy Film Festival in 2020 in Accra, Ghana. Their art talks about their displacement, it talks about the slave trade, it talks about a longing for being home, and that's what he talks about in this short film, is very powerful, and it's only about eight and a half minutes long. Please watch it. So as we wrap up, I would say Cabo Verde, Cape Verde, Cape Ver. All these names for these ten little islands made up by so many different people from so many different nations. Cabo Verdi is very unique in the world, and I'm grateful that I had this opportunity to learn more about them and share it with you. And in Criolu, it will say Ami e Grati. Ami e grati. I'm thankful. Now, as I told you before, we're still here. We're in 33 countries. I won another country. Okay, it's been 33 countries for a couple of weeks now. So share it with your friends in another country now. And we're on six continents, and I'm satisfied with that because maybe they don't have good Wi-Fi in Antarctica. I don't know. But I do want to say share the podcast, like it, follow it, email me at Sankofa Sojourns at gmail.com. Let me know what you think of it. Rate it if your platform allows such a thing. Comment there too if you would like. But if you'd like to talk to me directly, email me. And I'd love to hear from you. I really, really would. And thank you. Thank you to all my listeners in the US. Because they never miss a beat and they never miss an episode. And thank you, thank you, thank you to my listeners in Tower Hamlet in London, England. Okay, I'm not gonna do a British accent because it's really bad. Thank you, Tower Hamlet, whoever you are, you are holding things down. I see you every download. Thank you. As well as Dublin, Ohio. Now I know who you are. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for sticking with it. You said you wanted to learn, and you're here every episode. So you're gonna keep showing up. I'm gonna keep showing up. And now, Middletown, New York also. Shout out, shout out, shout out, and thank you to all my listeners around the world. And I see New Zealand is back in swing. So is that you, Nick? Hey Nick. The Explorers Club is growing. It is so just keep sharing the podcast, keep inviting other people to listen to so we can all do this work together. So now today we're gonna do something else. We're gonna do some breathing. But we're gonna do some thinking while we're breathing, too. Some people call it meditating. So I want you to just close your eyes. Put your feet flat on the floor if you can. I don't know. Are you walking? If you're walking, keep your eyes open. But just pay attention to your breath. No. Breathe in through your nose. And let that breath go up, up, up into your skull. And just let it roam through your skull. And you're breathing into your brain. And you're letting that breath just circulate and let it come out your mouth. Now breathe in again into your brain. And this time send the breath. Looking. Searching. Searching for a powerful memory that you want. A memory that you want. Now breathe out. And breathe in again. And find that memory. And as you breathe out, see what you can use from the memory that you chose. Because it was your choice to pick that memory. You wanted it. So see what you can use from it. Right here, right now, today in your life. Maybe you found the memory from when you learned how to ride a bike. And maybe now you've got that skill. But maybe you that thrill that you got the first time you did it. Maybe that's what you want today. That feeling. See what you found and see what you can take from what you found and use today. You're gonna sank hoffa. You're gonna sank hoffa. You're gonna go back and fetch something and bring it forward and use it today. Now breathe out one more time. Relax your shoulders and open your eyes. And if you already had your eyes open, just come back into a sharper focus. Liggle your fingers, wiggle your toes, and carry whatever you need forward with you. Because the Cabalverdian people, they make me think like that. They were placed in horrific conditions and they had to create community and culture where they found themselves. So what can you create for yourself or the world just with what you already have in your own mind? And what can you use where you find yourself right now?