Craftsmanship is the art of living; it is linked to our cultural identity. We find the social values that characterize Cape Verdeans in the solidarity expressed in djunta mom, "the spirit of joining hands," at the time of house building, and in the aesthetic values of materials collected from the land. Traditional crafts preserve the precarious environmental balance in our developing society, in which irrational construction practices and the use of imported raw materials aggressively strive for dominance.