Day Four: Sunday, January 10 – The White People Become the Red People

We got another morning of fun with the kids today, though we have been struck by some minor illnesses and injuries that have a few of us taking some time to rest.  Shawny took the tip off her toe by stubbing it on a strange-sized step, Gianna’s bike just drove itself into a low wall along the road and made her take a big chunk out of one of her toes, and Marcia and Jared are both feeling a general sense of weakness that means they need to rest.  Brie had an inexplicable spell of nausea that has corrected itself now, so we have a 25% casualty rate.  Because we each expect to get a little bit sick or hurt at some point on the trip, we are not too alarmed that some of us have already reached that moment.  We’ll just keep our focus on making these setbacks as small as possible and as comfortable as possible for those who suffer them. 

The morning started with a mad search for a way to pump up our under-inflated bike tires.   We found a gas station that had a pretty fancy rig that monitored and controlled the pressure for us.  Gary has become the go-to guy for every form of bike repair, so he was raising and lowering seats, fixing chains, and even reversing the fork on one bike in a totally ingenious and labor-saving way.  He and Jared are going to have plenty of work to do keeping our fleet rolling for the rest of the trip.  No matter what, we are glad to have the bikes because they save us tons of walking time and allow us to get more work done. 

Once at the beach, we met with a bigger group of kids than yesterday, including some more returners from last year’s group, including Rebeca and Domeciano.  The kids were really happy to be doing art, playing volleyball, tossing the ball around, or just trying to communicate with us.  We worked on English lessons with a few of them and a couple of them really started to speak clear English sentences for us. 

The kids are available at different times this year because some of the schools were on strike for two months during the school year.  Our friend Josialda is still in class even though she should be halfway through a two-month break (but that doesn’t keep us from seeing her every day).  The kids come and go at different times now, but we are ready and willing to adapt to their schedules.

Today we got a definite sign that they have accepted our newcomers: they dragged us all into the river at the end of the day.  They did a similar thing last year as their way of (literally) immersing us in their world.  In both cases, we were terribly hot and covered with sand, so we didn’t mind a bit. 

We took a short siesta after lunch and then took some time to explore a local beach called Maracanã.  It was lovely to see a whole different face of Santarém at the beach and the weather was perfect for our short visit.  We arrived at the beach at 4:00 or so and knew that we could only stay for about two hours so we got tables right up by the water and just soaked in the fun and beauty all around us. 

We got lots of looks from the locals, none unfriendly.  They were curious about us though, especially after Brian pulled out his Frisbee and several of us started to throw it.  A few kids came to watch and we eventually got them to join us.  They got pretty good at it pretty fast even though we feared they wouldn’t catch on and that they might get frustrated.  Instead, they got more curious about us.  They eventually started asking questions, the most hilarious of which were about the red on our skin (sunburn).  They didn’t understand why some of our guys had white bellies, but red shoulders and faces.  It took us awhile to figure out what “red stuff” they were asking about, but Ana’s fluent Portuguese helped us understand.

We left the beach, went back to camp and regrouped for our next excursion, in which we went downtown to check out a local art fair.  We hopped on our bikes and went to meet Georgete, Jaime, Josy, and Alex at the fair.  It was a small event right on the orla (riverfront walk), with some hand made dolls and jewelry, as well as Amazon souvenirs and keepsakes.  We won’t go into detail about what we found there because some of you readers might be the intended recipients of our purchases. 

We came home for a late dinner and then gathered on our porch to get oriented to the week and to conduct our own mini worship service.  It is Sunday after all, but our attempts to clarify what time we could go to mass at the church in the main square were fruitless.  We didn’t want to get out of bed and bike downtown to learn that no service would be held at the time we expected.

So instead, we gathered on our lovely front porch and discussed the ideas of blessings and gratitude.  Then we talked about things that inspire a sense of blessedness and gratitude in us here.  Some of us were grateful for the ability to be in Brazil, especially if our parents (or travel scholarships!) paid the costs.  Some talked about the people that we have met and how gracious they have been.  Some talked about their teams and how smoothly things are going.  Some talked about Jesse and Ana as our capable translators or about Marcia, Quincy, Jenn, Bryan and Brian as our capable supertechies.  Some acknowledged the great food we have eaten while others talked about our place of lodging and its wonderful staff.  Others recognized the importance of our support systems back home, who keep encouraging us by email and other messages that they see what we are doing and are proud. 

All of us agreed that we are also blessed to have such a wonderful group with whom to share this experience.  We talked about how lucky we are to get a feel for what a totally fulfilling life feels like.  We even wondered if our experience here will teach us to create similarly meaningful situations when we return home, whether they be at work, at home, at play, at church, or something else.  We all agreed that we are very fortunate to experience such blessings here together in Brazil. 

From there we kicked into collecting photographs and working on our video (which will post tomorrow, as the video team needed sleep more than it needed to finish that video tonight).  We also wrote in our reflective journals and checked email, etc.  For those who stayed up the latest, we got to see one of the biggest hairiest spiders ever (though we understand that we will find even bigger ones on our boat trip).  Brian and Neil took one for the team and transported the huge spider (see bottom photos below) outside of our cabin and back into the forest. 

As we cleaned up the porch a light roar came up in the distance and then a heavy rainforest rain fell (and fell really hard!).  Those who were awake watched in awe of how much water was falling from the sky all at once.  Before long the rain subsided and now it is time for sleep.  Thanks for keeping track of us over here . . .

Alex, a previous student of Georgete, makes a phenomenal save while playing soccer.

Quincy and Brian with Gabriela and Josialda on their shoulders while playing chicken.

A group of us playing with Josialda and Gabriela in the water.

Josialda and Scott playing a new game we learned, called Taco, on the beach.

Neil trying a quail egg that we bought from a vendor on the banks of the Tapajós River.

Brian does an epic front flip. The landing was questionable.

When we're playing with the kids on the sandy beach, we usually go barefoot. Here's the leftovers.

Gary chows down a delicious banana popsicle, a much appreciated refreshment after a long day in the sun.

Matt Beutner fancies himself a tour guide of the Tapajos River. And doesn't he look the part?

Maracaná beach is popping for the locals and their new Americano friends.

One of the kids, Lucas, has turned out to be quite a photographer. He took this picture of Jenn today.

The kids threw everyone into the Tapajos.  This is a bunch of the girls dragging Dani to the water.

This is when everyone was in the river, it was one of the first real bonding experiences between St. Mary’s students and the kids.

At the end of the day, all of the kids lined up for a snack of bananas.

This is downtown Santarem, looking out onto a square we have visited twice.  The blue church is the Matris of Santerem and is named Nossa Senhora Conceição.

Day Three: Saturday, January 9 -- Beginning Our Work

Day Three: Saturday, January 9 – Beginning Our Work

We heard a bit of rain in the night, but it had stopped before we awoke at a time that will eventually become normal for us: 7:00 a.m.  We’re still dragging a bit but we can’t wait to see what happens next so we just keep moving. 

In the morning we met at Jaime and Georgete’s house and gathered up some equipment and materials to carry to the beach.  Once there, we connected with some of the kids that last year’s group met and loved.  The kids were asking about all of the people from last year who hadn’t returned.  We assured them that all of the veterans sent their love even though they were unable to be with us. 

The kids showed that they missed the folks from last year but they also immediately opened up their hearts to the newcomers as well.  It didn’t hurt that the newcomers had studied the names of the kids pretty meticulously, so they could pick up the names and family relationships really quickly.  (Hey SMC Amazon 2009 vets, did you ever know that Alicily, Alcicléia, and Auricelia are all sisters?  They are!  And non-vets, can you even imagine how hard it is to keep these names straight?) 

We spent quite a bit of time constructing the portable canopies that provide shade for the art activities.  Whoever wasn’t working on the tent started connecting with the kids by kicking around a soccer ball or lobbing a volleyball around before we located the net.  Every form of motion is more difficult than we might have guessed, partially because of the Amazon heat and sun, but even more because of the deep, coarse sand that envelopes our feet whenever we try to move.  The sand makes it hard even to walk, but we are trying to play soccer, volleyball, and tag; we’re getting a good workout to say the least.

Different ones of us attached ourselves to different kids and they to us.  Two boys were playing on their own and kept resisting our invitations to join us; Schuyler pulled out all of his best big brother moves and eventually lured them in.  Each of us really rose up to demonstrate what strengths we had to offer to the group.  Everyone gave all of the energy he or she had.  Even though we are only on the first day of our relationship with the kids, things seem to be going perfectly. 

Before heading home for lunch, we added a special treat to our itinerary: a quick boat ride through the lake right off our beach.  Four catraeiros (boat handlers) carried us on low wooden boats with small motors through a channel that is used by the locals to pass from one part of the area to another.  Beautiful waterfowl, flowers, and huge plants surround the canal and a few folks along the shoreline methodically work on their boats all day long.  The whole scene was very tranquil in comparison to the high energy of the kids on the beach, so it made for a nice transition from our working morning into our unscheduled afternoon. 

On the way home from the beachfront, we stopped at Seu João’s house to sing Happy Birthday to his wife Joana.  Josy was there too with a brand new puppy.  Before we got a chance to sing, Seu João talked about how pleased he was to see us return and how much he looked forward to forming a relationship with the newcomers to the group.  We made sure he knew that we feel very privileged to be welcomed into his family’s home and to be treated with such hospitality by them and everyone else we meet here.

Some of us stopped to sample some new ice cream flavors today, including Coco (coconut) and Castanha (nut).  While there, we got the word that our brand new bikes had been delivered to Jaime and Georgete’s house so each of us stopped by and rode one the rest of the way home.  The bikes are a mix of colors and styles (we bought almost all that the store had available) so we are now an even more colorful group than we were before. This group contains two experienced bike techs, Gary and Jared, so we are convinced that our daily bike problems will be minimized, if not totally eliminated. 

Once home, we ate another lunch that was indescribable, especially due to the flavors that Louro was able to draw out of baked chicken.  We also enjoyed a range of fresh-squeezed juices, including cupuaçu, maracujá (passion fruit), and watermelon.  A late siesta followed, then we awoke and began thinking about topics for our multimedia ethnography assignments. 

We also opened up a suitcase full of percussion instruments that we hope we can incorporate into our lessons with the kids.  We messed around with drums, tambourines, triangles, cowbells, shakers, and other noisemakers until we were about to call the cops on ourselves.  (Fortunately, there is no one nearby for us to annoy, except maybe the staff of the camp, who seemed pretty amused by it all.) 

Things have been so fun, so rewarding, and so easy here so far that we wonder if we can sustain this level of synergy throughout the whole trip.  Based on our experience so far, we have every reason to believe that we will continue to shine. 

 

On our first day with the kids, half of us began setting up a tent for shade and drawing while the rest of the group began playing with the kids.

 

One of our youngest students, Vanessa.

 

Two boats experiencing our canoe trip on the Tapajós.

 

Gliding along in a canoe on the Tapajós river.

An anaconda eyeing its prey…just kidding, it’s only Neil’s camera!

 

Dani, Noelle, and Brie with our new friend Luli.

 

Local women rowing on the Pacucu.

 

We got the privilege to explore the Pacucu.

 

 Local father and son setting up to go fishing.

 

Our group getting off the boat after a successful adventure.

Fishing boats hailing our current hometown of Santarém.

 

Brian makes the boy in a spiderman shirt a true superhero by flying in the air.

 

Brie and Soliane bond on their first day on the beach together. Photo taken by Sabrina, age 8.

 

 The whole group comes together to play a counting in Portuguese game like "Concentration".

 

 Matt takes a nice, little dip.

 

 Seu João captains one of the canoes on our water excursion.

Day Two: Friday, January 8 -- Into Santarem

Today is Ciara’s birthday! Happy day to a beloved teammate!

Our sleep patterns are in such a state of disarray that it is ridiculous to have used the word “patterns” in this sentence. Most of us went to sleep and woke up as many as five times in the last 24 hours, but almost no one actually got anywhere near five hours of sleep. For most of us, Monday night was the last time we slept in any normal way. We are definitely sleep-deprived, but we are also so fascinated and full of awe that we aren’t really suffering.

We landed in our new Amazon home before sunrise and we already could tell that we were surrounded by a wondrous context even if we couldn’t see all of the details. By the time we got to our camp at the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), the sun had risen and we stood and drank in all of the sights and sounds. Birds and insects chirped and squawked all around us and plants that we had seen in small pots in our own homes and others’ stood six feet tall right in our courtyard. Eventually, a four-foot long iguana ambled along and munched on some discarded pineapple peels with us watching from about three feet away. (For veterans of last year’s trip, it is important to note right away that we have seen no sign of our pet jungle cat, Zilly.)

We emptied the bus in no time by using a tried-and-true bucket brigade method, where we spaced ourselves out and just passed the bags down the line until they got where they belonged. Our huge volume of baggage literally weighed more than a ton, as each of our 20 travelers checked almost exactly 100 pounds of luggage and carried some smaller bags onto the plane as well. Half of the bags were “school bags” full of tools, teaching supplies, percussion instruments (we’ll get to those later), and comfort foods like peanut butter, Ritz crackers, Clif bars and M&Ms.

We spent all morning organizing our Santarém lives. Some of us actually took apart furniture to rearrange things so that our party would fit into the cabin-like alojamento more comfortably. When we realized that one bunkbed had a janky joint that might make it unstable, we pulled out our powersaw and rebuilt it.

We also had to deal with some luggage explosions, including the inexplicable explosion of some spray-on sunscreen and the highly unfortunate (and pungent) destruction of a large bottle of Tapatio hot sauce in an army bag full of Clif bars. We didn’t want to lose the Clif bars because of the hot sauce on their wrappers, so we took the unusual step of handwashing (and drying!) individual Clif bars by the hundreds. The absurdity of the task made it ten times more fun to perform.

We were really dragging by about 10:00 a.m. (which felt like 9:00 p.m. or so to us), so we took a walk in the neighborhood to meet some of our hosts and work partners. Jaime and Georgete’s house was our first stop and we got a feel for two important things: 1) their commitment to the environmental education agency they founded (Águas) and the children who participate and 2) the scope of the construction project that we think will be one of our main undertakings.
As for the Águas program, we will have more to say about that after spending Saturday with Georgete, Jaime and the kids. The construction task is hard to explain, but involves the conversion of a garage/storage area at their house into a possible storefront for local artisans to exhibit (and sell) their wares. As we learn more about the plan, we will provide more details.

We then visited the beach that was the site of much of the work of last year’s crew. The veteran members of our group (Ana, Marcia, Jesse and Shawny) were shocked to see how different the beach looked. The waterline is in a completely different place than it was a year ago and the paint job on the boathouse underwent severe damage in a flood last spring (though the structural work is still intact and strong).

We saw our friend and co-worker Seu João, his daughter Josialda and the rest of their family. Josy cried when she saw us and those of us who had not yet met her felt like we were reconnecting with an old friend because she is so familiar to us from last year’s blogs and multimedia projects. Connecting with our community partners helped us to feel connected to the work we are about to do, even if it hasn’t yet begun.

We returned to our camp for lunch and were completely blown away by how delicious the food was. Our cook for today, Louro (last year’s trip’s full-time cook; this year’s part-time one) created fried chicken that cannot be explained using normal adjectives. We probably looked like we were having an eating contest as we went back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and more. He also made a flan with chocolate syrup that might be one of the best desserts we will ever eat in our whole lives.

From there, we got to have just ninety minutes of glorious sleep. Shawny was convinced that we needed to get up and stay up until dark to help us make the full transition into our new time zone (five hours different from our California home). It took us awhile to muster up our energy, but we walked the two or so miles into the city center and took care of some important tasks like exchanging currency, buying hammocks for our porch, and getting a feel for the place we will call home for the rest of the month.

We sampled Brazilian ice cream in two forms: sorvete (scoops in cones or dishes) and popsicles (we tried açai and avocado! Both were great!). The texture and flavors of ice cream in Brazil are different (and better?) than what we are used to eating in the U.S. We then jumped in cabs (some of us took moto-taxis) to hurry back home in time for dinner.

Louro had cooked another feast and we added an extra special flair: two birthday cakes for Ciara, complete with trick candles. We celebrated the greatness of our day and the greatness of Ciara as one of our teammates. She is always two steps ahead on what needs to happen around here and has been (by far) the most reliable manager of our various resources (food, first aid, tools and other supplies. We are very fortunate that she is here with us and that we have the privilege of spending this important birthday (she’s not a teenager anymore!) with her.

In our meeting tonight, we talked about our day and about the way we feel about our undertaking and each other. We realized that we have taken some pretty big travel challenges in stride over the last two days or so and that we have all adapted rather graciously to our circumstances. As we flew from Manaus to Santarém, we were scattered throughout the crowded plane in pairs. Shawny pointed out that it was quite unusual for us to be in a group so large and still be able to be perfectly comfortable about landing next to absolutely anyone else in the group. We are really happy that we’ve achieved this state of unity so quickly and smoothly.

We already feel so settled here that it seems like we have been here for weeks already, even though we haven’t yet been here for 24 hours. We’re all really proud of ourselves and each other and we really appreciate how important each one of us is to the experience that we are all having. Stay with us; we hope you enjoy the journey as much as we are . . .

Reconnecting with old friends from last year after being welcomed into their home.
 

Our home for the next 3 weeks in Santarem.

Our local neighborhood a few steps outside of camp.

 

Getting familiar with our new working environment.

 

Exhausted and swollen after being awake since 1 AM.

Sweet embraces exchanged between old friends near the Tapajos River.

Shawny hates bartering, but it was necessary. We got a good deal on two hammocks for our patio.

 

Ana spotted this iguana in a tree. One of four some we spotted at our home.

 

View of the lake from the bank of the Tapajos river in Santarem. 

 

Von Housen capturing the video footage of the beach trek on the Tapajos river. 

 

Adventurers cruising the neighborhood around Santarem.

 

Jared exploring an abandoned building overlooking the beach.

 

Sunset from the pier in Santarem.  

Day One: Thursday, January 7, 2010 – Manaus

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After a smooth trip to the airport in San Francisco, an easy flight to Atlanta, and an equally easy flight to Manaus, we are happily in Brazil. Our 4:30 arrival (local time) left us in a weird position as we tried to imagine how our day would unfold. We headed straight for a hotel in the city center and some of us decided to nap while others couldn’t help but explore the area around our hotel, no matter how strange the hour.

For those who slept, re-awakening before noon was a highly disorienting experience. For those who explored, being an obvious stranger in a foreign land was a slightly disorienting – but also invigorating – experience. The explorers broke out a Frisbee on the plaza of the Teatro Amazonas (see below) and seemed to mystify a few Brazilians who apparently hadn’t seen this particular piece of sporting equipment in action before. If the disk took a wrong turn and landed near a local, that person would pick it up and walk it back to us rather than attempting to throw it “correctly.”

Either way, we all gathered at 11:30 and took a quick tour of the Teatro Amazonas, a very impressive local landmark that was built during the rubber boom of the nineteenth century. Though it looks entirely European (and therefore somewhat out of place in the region in which it stands), it is understandably a point of pride for the locals and therefore a necessary stop when passing through Manaus.

Once we finished our tour, we hurried down into the town center to catch a city bus toward a distant neighborhood in which our new friend Moises runs an environmental education program for children (and adults) of the Amazon. Our fabulous translator/co-instructor, Jesse Wheeler, connected with Moises before the rest of us arrived and arranged a meeting during which we might begin a new partnership.

When we showed up at the house at which Moises’ group runs its program, we were met with an unbelievable spread of home-cooked food, including local fish, an excellent rice dish, farinha (a manioc flour topping to sprinkle on food), a dish of minced vegetables that seemed very similar to pico de gallo, a bowl of homemade pepper sauce, and a freshly-made dessert from the unique local fruit called cupuaçú (pronounced coo-poo-ah-SUE).

We hadn’t yet gotten to know our hosts at all, but they offered us their fullest dose of Brazilian hospitality nonetheless. The fish just kept coming and coming, freshly prepared by our gracious hosts. We were eager to meet the kids who were swarming all around the building, along with their parents and/or program leaders. We talked to each child individually to try to learn their names, though we definitely lost track of the mental list of new names pretty quickly. Still, we were happy to be able to connect at all, especially with our generally poor Portuguese language skills. The kids were sweet and warm and welcoming, as were the adults that surrounded them.

Most of the adults then organized themselves to give a brief presentation of who they are as an organization and what they aspire to do. They told us about a recent scavenger hunt/competition that they held, during which the kids were assigned to find discarded 2-liter bottles in the four blocks immediately surrounding their meeting space. Surprisingly, the searchers were able to gather more than 800 such bottles in less than three hours!

The tendency to throw litter (if not outright garbage) into the canals that run throughout the city is one of the problems that Moises’ organization is trying to solve. They know that children will eventually be the ones to address growing concerns about environmental stewardship in the Amazon basin, so they are hoping to raise environmental consciousness among young people in order to improve the practices of future generations.

Thus, the kids collect the bottles, learn about the problems caused by an abundance of such castoffs in public spaces (including massive flooding when the clogged-up canals overflow), re-purpose them into art projects or for other uses, and then talk about the need to contain the pollution problem in the near future to maintain current ways of living.

After presentations by the adults in the program, the children asked to hear from us. We talked about what we are doing in Brazil this January and then we asked to see some of the art projects that had come out of the pile of 2-liter litter. From the moment the actual products came out, things took a turn for the silly.

The kids asked all of the women in our group to compete in a singing contest to “win” a purse fashioned out of discarded 2-liter bottles and pull-tab rings. After a rousing chorus of “You Are My Sunshine” sung in unison, Quincy won. They then set up other games by which our female students could win earrings that had been made from seeds and stems from the rain forest. Four different people won those.

From there the men in our group were called forward for a dance-off. Quickly, the group of ten narrowed to two finalists: Jared and Neil. Both men truly gave the contest all that they had, but an adult female in the “audience” broke the double-overtime tie with an enthusiastic (and loud!) vote for Jared as the champ. He won a truck made of 2-litter bottles, which were even used to construct the wheels. The laughter and joy that accompanied those games brought our two groups together remarkably quickly. Though we had to leave to beat the coming dusk, we agreed that on our long layover in Manaus when we leave the country at the end of the month, we will meet again. We look forward to it.

We fly out of Manaus at 3:30 Friday morning to arrive in Santarém (our primary destination for this trip) just in time to acknowledge our teammate Ciara’s birthday. Sleep isn’t going to stabilize until at least Saturday. Oh well.

We have all commented on how remarkable our journey has already been. Seamless. Problem-free. Safe. Easy. Invigorating. Empowering. Heart-warming. And we’ve only been gone from California for 30 hours.


We recognize that we might be due for some trouble spots, but we are ready and willing to meet them if/when they come. Something magical seems to be happening here, so we are open to let it unfold however it may.

Thanks to all of you out there who have helped to get us to where we are right now: parents, colleagues, friends, significant others, veterans of SMC Amazon 2009, the January Term office, the Business Office, and many others. Extra thanks to Renee Egan.  We can tell that we are in for something special here . . .

The boys had a dance off to see who would win a prize the kids made of recycled two liter bottles.

 

The delicious fish that was made for us in Manaus.

 

When we met a conservation group in Manaus, they served us an amazing lunch of

fish, rice, and a desert made of local fruit called cupuacu.

Quincy in front of the statue in the plaza in Manaus. 

View from the balcony of the opera house overlooking the plaza in Manaus. 

These are the kids we met in Manaus who collected 800 2 liters bottles in 3 hours. Because they are a green organization they will be reusing these plastic bottles such as toys and crafts.

 

Quincy and Jared received these prizes after a sing and dance off  a few hours after being welcomed into their family.

Locals on the right, foreigners on the left.

A ceiling mural of the Eiffel Tower in the Opera House of Manaus

 

Our fearless leader connecting with the local children of Manaus.

On our first day in Manaus, Brazil, this statue was across the street from our hotel in front of the opera house we toured.

 

Neil makes a new friend while playing with toys made out of recycled bottles.

 

Dani is holding Bruno, the 4 month old son of a member of the community group in Manaus.

 

  Ana explaining a Portuguese game to us to play with the kids. 

We were generously taken in by a community group in Manuas and offered us hospitality and this delicious fish for lunch.