A Cabo Verdean Christmas 2012

 

This last Christmas Season completed our only full year in Cape Verde. This holiday season, we decided to have a Cape Verdean Christmas with a few long standing traditions mixed in. We found the above nativity scene tucked away in a corner of Cha de Alecrim. The figures were made by a local resident and erected by the local community. It highlights the fact that Cape Verde is a Christian nation. And the fact that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ.

We did start the season with one of our traditions of many years – my snowflake wall. And once the Christmas tree was set up, it started to feel like Christmas.

We received our Danville Ward Christmas package with a new tree and messages of support and love from the young men and women and their leaders. We certainly feel the support of our home ward and appreciate so much that they remembered us. We had kept a similar tree from the previous Christmas and put that up as well! We had Christmas trees all over the apartment.

For us, one of the most important parts of Christmas is opportunities to serve!!  This year, we were blessed to participate in several service projects, all showing some of the challenges that members face in this country.

One challenge for new brethren converts to the church is to have the traditional white shirt to participate in their priesthood duties. With the help of our children and some of their extended families and ward members, we were able to purchase 51 white, short sleeved shirts for young men from ages 12-20 and received 7 used shirts in the mail. We split them between the 6 branches in our district. We have seen a dramatic difference.

Another service was to help an older widowed sister wash her clothes. She has no water (or electricity) and it is a struggle to get water just to drink and cook with besides the work to wash clothes all by hand. I was feeling so blessed with a very nice washing machine and we haven’t run out of water yet!! It was a blessing to have that opportunity to serve.

Another opportunity was our Sub-for-Santa for a family with many struggles. The children are so sweet and I wanted to make sure they had a Christmas. It was SOOO fun to go shopping for toys. Of course, the toy section was about 2 aisles, 6 feet long. But I found something for all. Two of the presents came from our White Elephant gift exchange at the missionary dinner (see below!)

Cookie Decorating Party!!

We brought back this long standing tradition after skipping it last year. I felt confident enough to bake sugar cookies. The main problem was the stores hadn’t carried granulated sugar for months. So, I made my cookies with the large crystallized sugar and it had interesting spots in the cookies. I wasn’t patient enough to spent hours dissolving all the sugar into the butter. But, they tasted fine!! We took the left over cookies we decorated to a Family Home Evening and the young adults ate them all!

We invited Arlinda  and her son, Kevin, to the party. (Names have been changed) So, it was a small group but Kevin made up for it by decorating with gusto!! I found a few sprinkles-type decorations and he used them all in full measure!! It was just like old times!

Christmas Dinner for the Missionaries in the Northern islands

The mission president and his wife joined us to  provide a Christmas dinner and celebration of the birth of Christ. The missionaries from Santo Antão came but the missionaries (2 companionships) from Sal could not get a flight to Mindelo that day. We were very disappointed!

After I had spent the weekend baking cookies and bread, Sister Oliveira came over Monday morning to help with the last minute preparations. We held the dinner at one of the Church buildings because our apartment was too small to comfortably handle 24 (or at first 28) missionaries. We made the desserts, fruit salad and breads.

And then we ordered pizza – that was the missionaries request!! The zone leaders found a pizza place run by an Italian and used real Italian ingredients. He said it was the best pizza on the island and Cape Verdeans like pizza!

Dennis met the zone leaders at the store and watched him make the pizzas. Enjoy the still picture, because the video is at double speed!! Even so, at his normal speed, he turned out 25 pizzas faster than I can make 1!

Making Italian pizzas at warp speed

After almost a whole pizza a piece, the missionaries are looking happy!

Seconds, anyone??

An important part of the program was a time to ponder the importance of Christ’s birth. This part was introduced by a beautiful medley of Christmas songs by 6 of the missionaries. The sister is giving everyone their pitch for the perfectly blended acapela rendition.

We than watched the Bible videos on the birth of Christ from the lds.org site followed by testimonies of several of the missionaries.

Dessert time! Missionaries love dessert!

 

Next was the White Elephant exchange! The limit was 400 CVE (or about $5) and it was an interesting array of gifts.

 

I wonder what is next?

 

 

 

Just what I wanted!!!

Unfortunately, we took it away from him as we wanted it for a young girl we knew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone interested???

This one???

Here is the whole group of us (except Dennis and the President who were taking the pictures)

Old Folks Christmas Party

This was sponsored by the Red Cross of São Vicente for the residents of their old folk’s home. They also invited several of their partners and participants in other Red Cross programs.

It started with a live band playing traditional music. I enjoyed it but it was loud. Here the president of the local council of the Red Cross addresses the group.

The party included a delicious lunch of various Cape Verdean foods.

The elderly enjoyed the music with some dancing. But mostly they sat and listened, ate and watched.

These young women are in the 2nd sewing class that we helped support with sewing machines and supplies last year. All the dresses are designed and made by each using the sewing machines that were donated to the program.

Presents!!

A missionary’s joy!! A package from home. Thanks, kids, for your support and love to us.

 

We love our 2013 calendar with pictures of all the children and their families.

And we have many  pictures of the temple and the leadership of the church to share with our young adults. it is hard for them to get these pictures.

And speaking of presents. We got a very special present when we learned that the Friday before Christmas, the city of Mosteiros, Fogo, was having a celebration for the first 15 water connections in their county – and the first in all of Fogo. Our Fogo water project is launched!!

 

Doce de Natal

Arlinda invited us to learn a traditional Christmas treat from Santo Antão – Doce de Natal.

We went to her house on a Sunday evening. She mixed milk powder and egg with a little bit of water then dipped large bread chunks that had been sitting out for a day or so in the mixture. (Think French toast, but larger chunks and the egg mixture only on the surface. It doesn’t need to soak in. In fact, Arlinda was very dexterous to get the chunks out of the mixture quickly. Kevin soaked his a bit more and she ran out of egg/milk mixture. She had to borrow an egg to make more mixture to finish the cooking,)

 

 

Then, it was fried in oil. Elder Broderick was the expert cook!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fried bread was then patted with paper towels to get as much of the oil out as possible and then rolled in a cinnamon sugar mixture.

Kevin’s assessment of this: He adores it!!

The tradition in Cape Verde on Christmas Day is for people go visiting friends and family. The doce de Natal is offered to all who come. She sent us home with a small bag for those who came to visit us.

 

 

 

Christmas Eve

For our Cape Verdean Christmas, we invited Arlinda and Kevin to come to our house and make feijoada, a delicious bean and rice dinner. We had been given some feijão verde from Santo Antão, which even though it translates to ‘green bean’ they are more like large ripe peas.  With that and the other ingredients, Arlinda with me as her willing assistant made dinner. She showed me how they chop up chicken legs – bone and all. I am sure it added more flavor to the dish, but the only thing I don’t like about feijoada are the pieces of chicken bones you find. The beans are served over rice and it taste wonderful!

After dinner and dishes, we read the Christmas Story, sang some Christmas carols and then played Uno! To top it off, we had our traditional Angel Thumbprint Cookies (which Kevin and Arlinda helped us to make) and our Cape Verdean version of Christmas Eve slush punch with mango, papaya, pineapple juices and pureed bananas.

It was a very good Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day

We enjoyed a very relaxed morning. I made a traditional Christmas breakfast of Strueselkuchen. It was yummy!! And we had enough left over to share with any who visited us that day, along with the Doce de Natal.

Christmas Day in the mission field means calling your family. We enjoyed Skype calls with all our children between Christmas Eve & Day. The best present of all is to know your children are doing well.

And we offered our Skype capabilities to the young missionaries with the president’s permission. We had several express interest, but most of them did what they needed to do – have an activity with an investigator. We did have one elder from another zone who enjoyed visiting with his family!

Not necessarily related to Christmas, but it happened during the season. We were walking home at night and saw the moon hanging upside down. We tried to think if we had ever seen the moon like a bowl! So, we had to take a picture to prove it happened!

New Year’s Eve

Since the Christmas decorations don’t come down until New Year’s Day, the year’s end is part our our holiday season.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration began with hosting 4 missionaries to a Thanksgiving feast! We had bought a turkey for Christmas Eve and then decided to have a Cape Verdean dinner. We had given coupons for a dinner as our White Elephant gift and they redeemed it with this meal. The turkey cooked well, the rolls were the best I had ever made  and the apple pie turned out really good. It was a good way to end the year! I have, sort of, finally figured out how to bake successfully in a stove without a thermostat.

There isn’t much left!! The missionaries came hungry!

I was very pleased how well my pie turned out!

And, like all good missionaries, they cleaned up the dishes!

A New Year’s tradition in Cape Verde is New Year’s Eve caroling. It is a mix of Halloween trick or treating and Christmas caroling. They mostly come in groups of 2-4. They ring the doorbell, and when you answer they shake their instruments and sing a song. The song is specific to the event, though we didn’t understand any of the words. Then they expect you to give them money. We ran out of change pretty quick and then offered them oatmeal cookies. I suspect they would have preferred money, but willingly took the cookies!

Our friend, Mila came with her 2 brothers. Click below to hear their song!

Get your coins ready

We ended 2012 and welcomed 2013 on the roof of our apartment building where we watched the annual fireworks.

It was a good year – with things learned, much work done and many prayers answered.

This next year will be an eventful one. We look forward to returning home to see our family. But we will miss the fun Cape Verdean traditions!

Happy New Year!!

Padaria (Bread Bakery) Alecrim

Nearly every morning around 7:20 we head out the door for a 25 minute exercise walk. These walks are for exercise, yes, and for sharing. They aren’t the same as Janet’s walks back home with her girl friends, but they are time to talk as we walk.

They are also time to explore our city of Mindelo, at least areas within walking distance of our house. I (Dennis) lead the exploring and we have covered a lot of different neighborhoods. And we find interesting things, like Chicão’s house.



Within the first week we were here we discovered the Padaria Alecrim. We had walked down to our beach, Laginha, walked past Electra’s water desalination plant and electrical generating facility, and immediately picked up the aroma of fresh bread.


It was too good to not go inside and explore more, so we entered the store and saw the shelves of fresh bread. I don’t recall if we had money to buy any bread the first visit, but if not we were back in a day or two and bought some coconut or cinammon rolls and we also saw a whole wheat loaf of sliced bread. We bought some of that too.

Fresh Bread Shelves inside the Padaria

 

Our favorite sliced wheat bread

 

The rolls were good, but the real prize was the wheat bread. It was better than any other bread we had found in town, It was better than most whole wheat breads back home. It reminded us of Janet’s bread. This was an exceptional find.



That was 19 months ago. It is still our bread staple. We have two loafs in the freezer right now and every week we buy two to four loaves. We use it mostly for our sandwich supper, but also as bread and butter with other meals and french toast for breakfast (that is one of my meals to prepare).

Young Adults making tuna sandwiches from the basic white roll

We do enjoy other breads. The basic white bread rolls are tasty as an occasional bread. On Fogo that is all we can find. Praia has Pão Quente which has a 3 cereal bread which we like as a multi-grain bread, and another store close to Sister Mcknights that has a good whole wheat sliced bread, but nothing is as good as Padaria Alecrim’s whole wheat bread.

Like in many countries, Capeverdians are accustomed to buying fresh bread, almost for every meal. During our morning walks that take us past mini-markets or bakeries, we see is a flow of children and adults heading to the store with their bread bag for their morning bread. None of the breads have preservatives and generally are meant to be purchased and consumed now.

Our wheat bread comes in two sizes, medium and small. The small is too small for me, so we buy medium.



While it is not a long walk to Padaria Alecrim, about 10 minutes, it is out of the way for normal grocery shopping. Fortunately our favorite grocery store, Galina and Silva’s sells various breads from Padaria Alecrim, including our whole wheat bread. We know if we go after 11:30 AM they will (or should) have our bread on their shelves. They normally get 3 loaves a day of this bread. There have been days when we bought all three loaves.

The people at Galina’s know us pretty well as very regular customers. One day several months ago we went in and there was no bread on the shelves. I turned to ask a sales clerk what was up and she handed me a loaf of our bread. I asked her if she had two and she handed me a second. They try to take care of us.

Another time it wasn’t on the shelf we were told that the Padaria was having trouble with their slicer and couldn’t make it. They thought maybe they would have the uncut bread at the Padaria. We made a trip to the Padaria only to learn that there was none of the bread. I seem to recall that it was more than the slicer that was the problem, maybe they were out of the whole wheat flour they used.



Given their bread is something very special, we had discussed our interest in taking a tour of the Padaria to learn more how it is made. With our exit from Cape Verde looming ever closer we decided to give it a try.

On a recent Saturday we got our house work done, dressed in our missionary dress, and headed over to the Padaria. They were a little unsure about us taking a tour at first and insisted we talk to the manager. In the mean time we learned that the woman who told us to wait was one of the owners. This was a little odd.

Two of the owners, the manager on the left and the daughter of the baker on the right

While we waited we began a conversation with this “owner” and learned the following:

• She and her husband are joint owners with another couple. She and her husband live most of the time in Holland. Thus the other couple manages the business.
• They got started about 9 years ago when an opportunity came up to buy the bakery equipment at a discount and the two couple decided to join forces.
• The woman we were talking with had grown up on Santo Antão, the daughter of a bread maker. Her brothers still run the padaria on our sister island. She feels right at home in the business.
• The other couple made a trip to Brazil, early on, to learn bread making. They brought back recipes for various breads, including our wheat bread.

About at this point the manger came out and we expressed our interest. He seems a little doubtful, but we looked innocent enough. He gave his permission and our new friend handed us hair nets and took us down stairs where the main operations are.

We were both a little glad it was not high summer and pitied those who had to work down there when the heat of the ovens would combine with the heat of the sun outside.

The Giant Mixer and the Bread Chef, a Potent Team - The water cooler is right behind them

The basement was large and provided plenty of space for the making of bread. They had one giant mixer where all the batches were mixed up. It put a lot of work into the dough so it was critical that they use chilled water in the recipe to avoid overheating the yeast and the dough.

A batch of white roll dough being weighed out for final cutting into rolls

We watched as they made a batch of white flour rolls. We didn’t get to see the raising and baking, just most of the prep work. This video shows the primary steps we observed.

Get in on the fun action of the dough boys and girls

Another crew had premeasured all the ingredients besides the flour into the plastic containers shown here. They were ready for a number of batches of various breads. Janet noted that one of the ingredients was wheat fiber to increase the gluten content.

The main padeiro (baker) oversaw everything. He put his hand in the mixer a couple of times to check the dough as it mixed. Janet commented that she does that all the time. A bread baker knows what a good dough feels like.


The last steps we saw were the weighing out of the dough for cutting into roll size balls. The roll dough will go onto trays in large racks and into the raising oven (below on the left). From there the rack will go into the baking oven (below on right) then out to the cooling area before being taken to the store for sale or onto one of their two delivery vans. Some bread, like our wheat bread, must first be bagged.

The rising oven on the left and the baking oven on the right. Open the door and roll the racks in.

Here is a photo of a delivery van from another padaria making the rounds.



We learned of one other product Padaria Alecrim makes – bread flour, a very fine bread crumb. They take old bread, slice it in thick slices, lightly toast it in the oven, then grind it into bread flour, package, and sell it to cooks that use it when a recipe calls for bread crumb/flour.



There you know a little about bread in Cape Verde. Go ahead, enjoy a roll or slice from your local padaria.

Irmã Chicão

Some people are hard to miss and hard to forget. Irmã (Sister) Chicão is all of this, but above all she is a friend and fellow saint.

In the photo above Chicão is in one of her favorite places, Praça Nova. While she has not lived her whole life in Mindelo, she has spent a considerable part here and is part of the history of the place.


She speaks often of Eden Park, an old movie theater that faces the praça but is currently closed. I don’t remember all the connections, but her father worked there and she loved to go to the movies there. She remembers when our church group met there, and seems to know a lot about the past owners of the place.



I believe it was our first Sunday here that we saw her. I’m not sure we met her, but you couldn’t miss her and we heard her regular name, not the name Chicão that everyone knows her by. She is around 86 years old, has a quick temper and sharp tongue, knows who she likes and who she doesn’t like, but smiles like a baby when in a good mood, which is most of the time.


When she prays in Church or bears her testimony, you can predict most of the things she will say. She prays for her only son who seems to have forgotten her since she last saw him at least 20 years ago. Her prayer is that she will see him again and be reunited, if not in this life, the next. The two little boys in this photo are from the neighborhood.

She lost her mother when she was about 13 years old and was raised a lot by her father, but it was a hard life. She earned her way through life mostly as a cook. Now she doesn’t care to cook much, except to live. She is the daughter of a white mother and a black father, has one sister and brothers which are lighter skinned, lighter hair, and blue eyes, and she was black. She was made to feel like the servant rather than the sister because of her color. In this photo you can see photos of family members and of a latter-day prophet.

But Chicão has stated on several occasions her absolute faith in God’s plan for his children. She is glad to be black because she is happy with everything that God has given her, everything because it comes from God according to His will.

 

Chicão and her brother in front of her house

We started to develop more of a friendship when we happened upon her little three room house on one of our morning walks. It sits next to her brother’s house, her closest family member and faces the corner of the neighborhood soccer field. The house is hers, as far as we can tell. She must live off of a government pension like social security as she likely has no other source of income.

She has no water in her home and is a candidate for our water project. We keep watching for her name to show up on the next list. She has no electricity in her home. We have seen a oil lamp which she must use some of the time. Other times we have seen her neighbors two houses away, string a power cord over to her house for night-time lighting. They are recent converts to the gospel and have offered considerable help since joining.



Within a few months of discovering her place, we learned that the branch compassionate service leader and Relief Society President wanted to organize a project to help improve her home with painting, cleaning, and adding a floor to the third room which was just dirt. They wanted to install a bathroom, but that hasn’t been possible yet.

We got some good photos of the groups working on the house. Here is a series with some commentary.

Turn out for the first day was wonderful, with fresh paint on everything, everything…

The sister front right is the compassionate service leader, and an aggressive organizer

 

The young missionaries were a reliable source of help even without a lot of concrete skill

In December the Relief Society wanted to help out again with cleaning and laundry. Without water, or the strength to carry that much water, doing laundry is next to impossible. When Janet learned of the situation, she volunteered to use her new washing machine to help with that part.

Chicão and a young man from the branch

We didn’t quite anticipate the quantity or quality of the work required, but Janet took it on and managed at least 5 loads with an extra pre-wash for each one to get the job done right.

On December 24th we took the second load of wash up to her house and visited with her. Janet read the Christmas story from the Book of Mormon, and she shared some of her stories, again, but with a focus on Christmas.

She doesn’t know how to read, but she has seen the movie of the nativity at Eden Park, and probably since then from Church videos, and bears her testimony of this event based on what she has learned from video. Another prayer of hers is to learn to read before she finishes this life.

Here is a video clip from our time with Chicão on Christmas eve day. It shows a little of the inside of her house, including her dog, Jamarie. You can hear her talk about her testimony.

Chicão does not read, but listens intently as Sister Broderick reads to her

She loves the gospel, is so very grateful for the help given by church members, but can’t quite accept our new branch president because he doesn’t live as close and can’t offer as much help as the previous president. He lived just a block away and had his own mini-market from which he could offer quick help.

Chicão with members of her Church family, who love her

The last few Sunday’s her dog has followed her to church as she walks the mile or so, and causes a bit of a commotion at church. Chicão has been a little more out of sorts lately, but life is not easy for her, never has been. But she openly expresses her faith in God and her thanks to Him for taking care of her day in and day out.