Sunday, October 17, 2010

Only in Cape Verde...

[Just a few of my favorite Cape Verdean quirks]

1. Can you buy one hamburger bun

2. Can you wear jellies and look cool

3. The customer is never right

4. Can you arrive two hours late and be on time

5. Can you carry an umbrella when it’s sunny

6. Can you be labeled “ingratu” if you don’t visit, and eat, with everyone

7. Toilet paper is more important than your wallet, when traveling here to there

8. Can you page someone to call you because you don’t want to waste your cell phone minutes (txoma-m)

9. Can you enter a checkout line that is dedicated to the purchase of rice, and only rice

10. Can you squeeze 23 people into a van (squatting room only) and still recruit more passengers

11. Can you buy a concert ticket for an artist who has never heard of Cape Verde and who has no plans to perform in Cape Verde

12. Rain is an excuse not to go to work

13. Can you compete to see who can hang up the phone first

14. Can you have a five-minute conversation using various synonyms of “I’m good”

15. Can you sweat while taking a cold shower

16. Can you fry dinner for breakfast and call it by a different name

17. Can you eat eggs, yogurt and milk that have never seen the inside of a fridge

18. Can you play Cydni Lauper’s Time After Time on repeat and think people are enjoying it

19. Can you find an item in the grocery store one day and never see it again

20. Can you learn how to effectively sit on a three-legged chair

21. Can you wear the same shirt all week because you're a constant ball of sweat, whether you wear clean or dirty clothes; and every time you think about hand-washing and ironing all those articles of clothing, you calculate the growing height of that laundry pile

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