Catholicism is the main religion of Cape Verde with around 85% of the populace claiming to be Roman Catholics centering in the dioceses of Mindelo and Santiago de  Cabo Verde.  Other religions reported in the country are Protestants including Evangelists and Adventists, Mormons and Bahá’í.

There is a small but growing Muslim community, many of which are  Senegalese traders or other immigrants from North Africa and around 1% of Cape Verdeans are atheists who profess no religious belief at all.

The scholarship is intended to support an undergraduate student through his or her higher education with an award of up to US$100,000 spread over a maximum of two years.

To be eligible the applicant must be between 23 and 32 and a graduating student with a Baccalaureate from a four-year, accredited college/university, or its equivalent.

For other eligibility criteria and to learn more about this sponsorship opportunity please visit the OPIC website.

Fog nets have been considered for Cape Verde before. In the 1960’s Portugese engineers looked into the possibility of using fog nets to capture potable water and ten years later, a group of Dutch companies revisited the idea.

Neither of these projects or any subsequent ones seemed to stick. That is until 2005 when a fog net system was set up for families of Serra Malagueta on Santiago island. Previously reliant on fresh water being trucked to them during the dry season at a cost of 2 cents (US) per litre, the fog net families can now ‘harvest’ their own drinking water.

Despite the great boon the access to clean water has on the lives of these families, there are objections. Some say tourists will object to the sight of the fog nets and find them ugly but as water engineer Antonia Sabino says, ‘The objective of the project is to produce water to give people to drink. Not to take pictures.’

Of course, digging up the national park to lay miles of water pipes would be a damn sight uglier so I guess the tourists should just be happy that the local community is getting fresh water.

For more information on this particular Cape Verde project please see the complete Fog Harvesting article at Africanloft.com.

For more on Fog Nets and communities where they are in use, visit Fog Quest, a charity which focusses on fog collection and rainwater harvesting

This thread concerns Mar e Morada de Sodade but you can hear and join in discussions about the barefoot diva’s other songs by looking at the links top right on that page  or by typing Cesaria Evora into the search box at the top of the page.

Enjoy!

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=8kSvZJx7v7Q]

The mornas that Cesaria sings can be roughly equated to the Blues. Usually sung in native Creole and encompassing a feeling of yearning, longing, profound sadness and regret, it is said that the term morna is taken from the English ‘to mourn’. It is more likely however that the term is taken from a Portugese word which means ‘tepid’.