Vegan on Cape Verde

I'm not doing much cooking (or eating, for that matter) at the moment since that bug is still plaguing me. My husband (who, fortunately, can cook really well) makes himself the most delicious meals and then I sit there, drooling over his food and munching away on my dry toast. Fun fun fun...

So, to get another food-related post in here a quick account of feeding yourself on Cape Verde as a vegan. The people on Cape Verde mainly eat vegetables, corn, and squash. The most popular dish on the islands is cachupa: freshly ground corn, beans and vegetables (sweet or white potatoes, tomatoes, squash) cooked together. Unfortunately, in restaurants they only serve this cooked with meat though I'm sure in their homes it is mostly prepared vegan. On every corner there are women selling veggies, but we hardly ever saw people selling meat. Not because they are all vegetarians, but because they simply can’t afford to buy and eat much meat.

This is the how the women and girls carry their produce to the market and home. We even saw a women carrying a stove on her head...

Fortunately, the hotel devoted an enormous (and I mean ENORMOUS) portion of their breakfast buffet to fresh fruits. Fully-ripe, aromatic bananas and sweet, deep-orange papayas (both local) as well as kiwi, apples, oranges and so on. And then there was always bread, margerine and jam. For lunch we usually snacked on the nuts I brought and fruits and bread we took from the buffet.

The hotel also offered buffet-style dinner. They always had a huge plate of steamed veggies, then bread, rice, salads and - again - fresh fruit. I must have eaten a ton of papayas in this week. Maybe what I have is not your ordinary diarrhea but a more serious form of papaya-poisening? Who knows?

A Glimpse of Cape Verde

Cape Verde - the (not so) green islands off the coast of wester Africa. They were uninhabited until they were discovered by the Portuguese. Portugal then used the archipelago as a stop-over on their way to Brazil.

The Portuguese brought people from Africa to the islands to work as slaves. Later the white and coloured people mixed and a creole culture was born. However, the majority of the population still has a very dark complexion.

Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975.

The islands have a very peculiar climate. There is an absolutely steady Northeastern trade wind and it hardly ever rains on the islands. Therefore, potatoes and grains don't fare well, and corn and squash are the staple of the poor.

The bustling market of Praia, the capital on the island of Santiago. The women mainly sell vegetables. However much I like this fact, it is nonetheless a sign of great poverty.

On the few islands suitable for growing anything (here Santiago) every inch is planted with corn.

Of course the people who can afford it also keep animals. One day we were driving through a mountain village when I saw a litter of piglets. I had never seen piglets in (relative) freedom. It was amazing. They were running at great speed and gamboling and playing around like puppies. And so agile, too.

I got out of the car and immediately they stopped playing and eyed me curiously. Finally, the boldest of the group cautiously started approaching me, the others followed him (or her? who knows). They inched closer and closer and then suddenly they scurried off, scared by their own courage. This was the cutest thing... Their eyes so intelligent and curious, their lively play, their agility... Everybody ought to see what wonderful creatures pigs really are!

Their mother btw. was pink. Now this leaves room for speculation as to their father, hehe.

One of the few things the archipelago has to offer in terms of products is salt. Here the view of an (almost) abandoned saline. (Other products include real good wine and superb coffee).



Before, when I saw pink bath salts in shops I always thought how corny. But apparently, natural sea salt really has a pinkish hue due to iron oxides (I don't know how well it comes out in this photo.) We were also able to bathe in the saline. With its salt content of some 86 percent we were floating on the water - Heaven!

Sunset seen from our hotel window that was overlooking the bay.