Entry 98

Written 11:30am, 16 June 2020 Tuesday:

I’m in a Yace or Chapa (what people call a minivan used for public transportation in Cabo Verde and Mozambique respectively). It gets full of passengers. There’s this CV or Moz woman across me who comments about how my hands are dirty. I’m sure I understand her. I thought about telling her I’m a professor, translating the words in my head, but then corrected myself: Fui (I was) um professor na Uni-CV. Ensinei ingles. I thought, maybe she meant my feet are dirty because I like to walk barefoot on the beach. I didn’t know how to say “barefoot” in Portuguese, but thought “sem sapatos.”

Then I’m walking through the backyard of a big white house. My family’s house is just next door, but I have to walk through the neighbor’s backyard first before getting to our house. The tree-lined walkway was obscured by some branches, and as I held on to one, it broke off. I didn’t want to just leave it there, so I take it with me. The neighbors were having a bbq, the dad grilling, the mom with a baby on her hip. There’s an older daughter, maybe, in the house or just getting out of the glass-sliding doors. The end of the broken branch I was holding had a piece of broken-off cement attached. I pulled off this cement part, left it at the end or bottom of the walkway. As I pass by the family I tell the dad I broke the branch off and didn’t want to just leave it there like rubbish. The dad said, “Thanks, buddy.”