SMC Amazon 2014: Day 20
Day 19 is finally up. Day 17 (which was missing) is there too. Today is our last
day in Brazil and we are doing our last minute shopping and
sightseeing. We sadly got struck by some weird bug that meant that
about half of us have thrown up, some enough to get pretty dehydrated.
Our doctor friend in town has set us up beautifully to get us
everything we need but, unfortunately, she cannot prevent anyone from
getting sick in the first place.
Everyone who got sick
rallied and is up and about except for one, whose late-breaking bout
with the bug has her symptoms going on longer than the rest. That
person is on fluids now and should be up and about pretty soon.
We
have one last excursion planned for today for those who are feeling
like it: a trip to a zoo hospital to see the sick and injured animals
that have been brought from all around the region. Though it might
sound depressing to visit sick animals, they are all on the mend and
definitely worth seeing. The last time an SMC Amazon group was there,
we got to touch a baby jaguar. We will report in later if we can to
tell you about this visit.
ADDED INFO: We made it to the zoo hospital and we are REALLY glad that we managed to make it happen. We got to go even though the facility was technically closed because we had some connections that helped us to get in. We started at some enclosures that held injured alligators, birds and turtles, then visited one of the staff areas where some of the recovering animals are just around and outside of any enclosures. These include huge birds like macaws and toucans and -- perhaps best of all for some of us -- cute little monkeys! The monkeys were shy at first when our big group arrived, but soon they jumped from one shoulder to another and let us hold them and pet them (and, of course, take pictures with them). One in particular preferred women to men (and long-haired women in particular). We all took down our ponytails to attract that monkey to us and it would swing in our hair and go from one of us to another, making hilarious little monkey noises all the while.
We then walked the trail to a number of different enclosures, where we got to see lots of different kinds of monkeys, all of whom reached out to us with their hands, feet and tails to connect with us. We saw lots of birds, including the biggest bird of prey in the world, called a "gavião" in Portuguese. We saw different kinds of small cats and strange rodents (?) with a special guide telling us of the details about why the animals are there. There were two big cats in the main part of the zoo hospital that looked pretty much like mountain lions.
We then went to the quarantine area where some of the more injured animals were. We saw lots of manatees in specially built tanks and we saw a beautiful adult jaguar and an adorable baby one. We saw lots more birds and oversized rodents and we even got to get really close to an injured sloth. We had to hurry away from the zoo to get home to pack but we have no regrets about finding a way to fit this trip into our last day's agenda.
We fly tonight and arrive
back in California on Tuesday. We will hole up in a computer lab for
awhile to finish our projects so you might not see us in person until
the weekend.
Thanks again for following our travels
and for letting us feel you "out there" as we explore this beautiful new
world. We look forward to seeing you soon!
The DIRT (Dismantle, Immerse, Reflect, Transform) team is returning to the Amazon for the ninth time! 16 of us are returning to our SMC home away from home in the Brazilian Amazon for Jan Term 2020. This page helps us to tell our story and -- even more importantly -- helps us to tell the stories of our friends and hosts in the Amazon . . .
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Vilas Amazonas
SMC Amazon 2014 Day 19
Our fishing expedition
never happened, as we saw huge thunderheads gathering at just about the time
that we were supposed to head out in five rowboats in search of piranhas. We decided to wait until the rain passed but
by the time it did, darkness had fallen.
Those lucky piranhas! We’ll get
‘em next time!
We decided to spend our
boat time catching up on unfinished videos and we premiered some of the ones
that have gotten finished over the last few days. We awoke to a cloudy but rainless day, which
was a perfect combo for us, as we were taking our last excursion into a new
community, this one called Vilas Amazonas.
Vilas Amazonas overlooks
the actual Amazon River itself from a rather high perch on a cliff. Our other communities were mostly centered
around an Amazon tributary called the Arapiuns and we did a little jaunt onto
another large tributary called the Tapajós.
Vilas Amazonas had a very different feel, both because the vegetation
and soil color were different and because the houses and the layout of the
community were different.
In the other communities
where we have been we have seen the workings of the government, partly through
the provision of stable water supplies but also in the actual construction of
the houses there. The houses in Anã, for
example, were almost all of a plaster construction with metal windows and
doors. They are even stamped with some
federal bank logo to indicate their source.
In Vilas Amazonas,
though, the houses are less uniform.
Some are made of wooden planks, some of all thatch, some partially of
brick, etc., etc. The community has made
a conscious effort to plant and maintain fruit trees and hardwoods, so there
are about 15 or more kinds of fruits scattered on the ground throughout the
village at any give time. We tasted
mangoes straight from the tree along with cacao, the source of chocolate.
We visited one of the
houses and were offered avocado juice as a morning refreshment. Avocado juice is just smashed up avocadoes,
water and sugar. It is excellent. The avocado is universally treated as a fruit
here and used as a sugary dessert, drink or ice cream. No one would EVER salt an avocado and eat it
as part of a savory dish as far as we have seen.
The house with the
avocado juice also had two pet parrots that had just decided to live there,
coming in from the rain forest to domesticate themselves. They lived outside on the ledge of a shed and
happily walked onto our hands and shoulders, squawking (but not talking) all
the while.
The owner of the house
showed us his collection of indigenous artifacts, much like the ones that we
saw in the Santarém museum on our first day in town. Like the ones in the museum, these artifacts
are thousands of years old.
We went on into town
toward an indefinite location that only revealed itself when we reached it: the
tallest tree in the area. Our guide told
us that the tree had been there “since the beginning of time.” Whether or not he is accurate in his assessment,
we learned a lot about community
priorities by seeing how important this big old tree was to the people who live
there.
The community provided
lunch for us, including fish, chicken, salads, vegetables and juices and then
we headed back to our boat, about an hour’s walk away. We bathed in the river before we pulled up
the stakes that anchored the boat. Louro
made us pineapple juice with fresh mint and also popcorn. We got out our endless supply of peanut
butter and Ritz crackers to add to the feast and liberated our last big bag of
M&Ms from the “secret stash” bag that helps keep us supplied with treats
and a few necessities.
We took one last little
jaunt down one of “the narrows,” a small tributary lined with small ranches
that raise long-horned cattle. The cows
walk right down into the water, neck deep sometimes, to eat the rich vegetation
that is floating close by. We saw some
beautiful water birds, a few horses and a dolphin or two as we made our way
between the small thatched houses. It is
clear that this area gets flooded out regularly but it seems that everyone
involved is ready for all contingencies.
Once we left the narrows, we motored across the line where two rivers
run next to each other in different colors (the Amason in brown and the Tapajós
in blue) and back to the pier in Santarém from which we left.
We will return to our
original place of lodging tonight then do the last packing push to get
ourselves headed toward home. We
probably need to get ice cream in town before heading out to our camp and we
will also have to arrange for Louro to make us fried chicken at least once, if
not two more times, before we leave.
We feel some sadness
about the end of our boat trip and even more sadness about leaving Brazil. We are eager to see our people back at home,
though, and we are eager to remember what our clothes used to smell like when
we lived in California. We’ll try to
report in about our last day in Santarém, but we get on a plane tomorrow night
so we might have trouble finding the time.
Thanks again for keeping track of our travels!
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Here Comes the Rain!
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 18
Our piricaia was
excellent, with succulent roasted fish, beef and sausage, as well as tons of
vegetables, farofa (an offshoot of farinha) and the kind of flan that they
call pudim (pronounced pretty much
like “pudding”). We all ate more than
was reasonable and enjoyed the night sky around a big bonfire.
Our lovely evening, though, gave way to a
middle-of-the-night storm that had all of us jumping from our hammocks to
secure our things as the crew ran around the decks to drop the tarps to prevent
us from getting totally soaked. The
storm was mostly just rain, with some far-off lightning and thunder but without
enormous boat-rocking winds.
The rain continued through breakfast, causing a delay in our
entry to our next community: Urucureá.
While we waited for the rain to stop, we made the unusual decision to go
“signal fishing,” as we knew that our cellphones had caught a signal just outside
the cove where we spent the night. So,
we drove the boat out into a more open spot in the river and tried to make it
possible to at least send some texts out to friends and family at home. We got off a few texts by walking around the
boat with our phones in the air but then lost the signal entirely before too
much time had passed.
Still, our signal fishing excursion used up the last of the
rain so we could return to the community and walk up into it to meet the
greeting committee. In this community,
the greeters were all women who are artisans, mostly of the basket-weaving
variety. We heard a bit about their
community and then looked at their wares, acquiring quite a few more items as
souvenirs.
We went up a long rain forest trail to learn more about
their community, including how they had established their water system through
the help of Saude e Alegría (it
provides water for almost every house in the community for less than the
equivalent of $5 US per month) and how they got their small computer lab (also
from S&A, with four laptops and a wireless hub). We toured the school and the church, then
thanked our guides and said our farewells.
We learned about the next projects that they would like to pursue so we
might need to remember them as we plan next January . . .
We decided to nap on the boat for a bit because most of us
had very interrupted sleep last night, mostly due to the storm. We slept hard for an hour or so, then decided
to do some more signal fishing before our next excursion this afternoon: more
fishing, this time for the elusive piranha!
We have a local piranha-fishing expert who has had good luck
catching the fish near dusk in a cove not too far from the community. His other amazing skill is his ability to
play pitch perfect tunes on a leaf, including the complicated (and long!)
Brazilian national anthem. We are on the
boat right now trying to send more texts and we are looking forward to our
fishing expedition in an hour or so.
We will tell you more about our fishing expedition as soon
as we can and, of course, we will send pictures of our catch whenever we can
send data again. Tonight will be our
last night on the boat and then we return to Santarém to revisit our original
Brazilian home and hit the town there one more time. We expect to buy out most of the city’s
supply of Brazilian-made Havaianas (flip flop sandals), as we have learned how
priceless they are when one is living in the Amazon.
We will try to fit in another excursion or two as we return
to the city so we will write those up too.
Otherwise, we will hit the ground back in the U.S. on Tuesday, after a
long night of traveling that starts late Monday night. Please remember to save the date for our
final presentations on Wednesday, February 12, at 7:00 p.m. in Galileo 201 on
the Saint Mary’s College campus.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Special Note: Join Us!
Special Note: Please join us at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 12,
in Galileo 201 on the Saint Mary's College campus for a screening of
some of our final multimedia presentations from SMC Amazon 2014. Bring
your friends, relatives and neighbors! Bring strangers if you want!
Baskets and Dolphins
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 17
We awoke to a beautiful morning after a rather breezy night. The sun hit the beach and changed the color of the sand from the night before and the clouds, the water, and all of the vegetation around us all went into high contrast mode. We decided to try to get a group picture to meet a Jan Term program request, but we couldn’t get the light to quite work out the way we wanted.
We motored around the
point and headed into a cove of trees that were out in the water, indicating
that the river is higher than it sometimes is.
We stopped the big boat outside the cove and used our little motorboat
to shuttle groups of six in through the trees to get to the community of
Arimum. We were met by a man in a yellow
shirt, who walked us to a group of other people in yellow shirts, all of whom
were part of the “tourism committee” for their community. They were in a thatched shelter by a swimming
hole where children were jumping from trees into the water and squealing with
delight.
Once we had all been
shuttled over, we got a demonstration of how the locals collect a slightly
different version of palhas than the
ones we opened in Anã and dry them properly for use in baskets and other
handicrafts. They showed us how to dye
them using natural leaves, plants and roots and then they let us pick our own
colors and try to weave a little coaster for ourselves.
“Try” is the operative
word here, as many of us did not succeed in our goal of finishing a legitimate
project. Some of us did a pretty good
job, while others successfully conned one of the people in the yellow shirts to
do the project that we set out to do, while still others gave up entirely and
did something else. We learned a lot
about the concepts of “teaching” and “learning” in this process. Let’s leave it at that.
We got a chance to see
some of the community’s real handiwork at the end of the demonstration and
several of us invested in quite a few pieces (maybe as gifts for some of YOU!).
We swam a bit with the kids in the swimming hole and then we got out our
markers and paper and drew with the kids who felt like drawing. It turned out that a lot of them wanted to
draw so we stayed pretty busy.
We started to shuttle
back to the big boat and then set off for our next destination: the middle of
the river. Our captain knew a great
place to anchor the boat where the water would be very deep but the current
would be very mild. A place like that is
an excellent place to jump off of our boat and into the river, with lots of
spotters waiting below with life jackets and other flotation devices, just in
case.
All of you old DIRT fans
know that this moment can be a momentous one.
Without belaboring the point, we will let you know that there was a BIG
safety talk that preceded anyone jumping off the boat and that Shawny took her
usual role of being the first one to jump.
Everyone went off feet first, knees bent. We had a fun frolic in the water and then
decided that we were ready to move on.
Then Dennis noticed the
dolphins. CLOSE to us. So we asked the captain about them and he
said that if we swam some more, they would come even closer. So four people offered to go back in the
water and the dolphins did, indeed, come really close. Not close enough to touch, but close enough
to hear them really well and see them really well. The captain pointed out that they were black
dolphins (not regular grey or Amazon pink ones) and that they aren’t terribly
friendly. So, we got back out of the
water and watched them go along their merry way.
Tonight we are having a piricaia on another lovely river
beach. This means we will dig a pit,
start a fire, build a grid over it and then roast fish. We’ll do some potatoes and other things at
the same time and have a blast. The sky
has more clouds this evening but there doesn’t seem to be an immediate threat
of rain. We’ll let you know about our
evening when we write tomorrow . . .
The Rain Forest
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 16
It’s Jesse’s
birthday!!! More on this later in the
entry . . .
We had mixed results
sleeping on the boat, but no matter how much anyone slept, we all awoke
abruptly at 5:00 when the boat engine turned on to get things rolling for the
morning. We stayed in our hammocks until
about 6:00, had breakfast and then went into the community of Atodí just after
7:00. There, we broke into two groups,
each of which had a local guide, and started a four and a half hour hike
through the rain forest.
Our guides can move
through the forest very quickly and with great ease, so we did our best to keep
up. We started out on a trail that is a
central path between various communities and their source of farinha (the manioc flour that is at the
base of most of what we eat here). The
places where farinha is made started
uphill from the river, near a freshwater source called an igarapé. Even though the
(small) population is now more concentrated near the river, the food production
still remains in its traditional location, meaning that the path that leads to
the manioc huts is pretty well worn.
We were on that path for
about thirty minutes, then diverted out into the forest. In certain places, we were in old growth
areas with absolutely awesome trees and other forms of vegetation unlike
anything many of us had ever seen. There
were enormous palms whose fronds were actually truly 30 or 40 feet long just
standing right off the forest floor.
There were castanha (Brazil
nut) trees, many of which will be raised in the tree nursery we built in Anã,
that seemed like they might have been 100 feet tall. (We aren’t sure if that number is an
exaggeration or not.) The way they
looked from below against all of the other enormous plants and trees around
them and against the beautiful Amazon sky is almost impossible to describe in
words (or pictures). Some of the trees
were so enormous that we couldn’t get any perspective on them with our cameras
to even indicate their size.
We tasted Brazil nuts
fresh from the tree, star fruit, guava, a tree milk that is used to cure colds
and sore throats, and some other fruits and berries selected by our local
guides. We watched monkeys high up in a
tree tasting fruits as well and we noticed when we caught their attention as we
found them staring at us full of curiosity.
Our guides knew about our
work in the other community and they kept pointing out trees that our nursery
would help to propagate. They talked
about fires that had eliminated groves of native trees and about general
deforestation, mostly from outside entities profiting from the sale of the hardwoods
that were harvested without clear planning.
They gushed about how important it is to restore these species to the
rain forest and they assured us that our nursery would play an important part
in this process. We were thrilled.
We swam a bit in the
small fresh stream that we crossed and used the muds along its walls as a
refreshing exfoliating treatment for our skin.
We learned that the mud is used
by organic products companies for just that purpose.
We had lunch in a pousada much like the place where we
stayed in Anã and then went to one of the farinha
huts to take in the various parts of the process involved in making use of the
manioc plant.
Once we said our
farewells in the community, we drove the boat to a long, low sandbar way out in
the river called Ponte Grande (POHN-chee GRUN-jee). All of the SMC Amazon vets will remember this
stretch of sand and beach. We bathed in
the river wearing our swimsuits and then we all walked out to the farthest
point we could reach on foot out on the point of the sandbar. We watched the sunset then came back to the
boat to set up a beach dinner for Jesse’s birthday.
We stayed in awe of the
cloudless Amazon sky (though it’s incredible when big fluffy clouds are
everywhere too) and all of the colors that emerged as the sun dropped below the
horizon. We kept snapping pictures,
knowing they were all inadequate but wishing that somehow we could store and
share the beauty that we are experiencing here.
We sang happy birthday to
Jesse and gave him a feathered headdress much like the one we gave Ali
yesterday. We had a big fish dinner on
the beach and stared at the millions of stars that are visible when there are
no artificial lights anywhere for hundreds of miles. Louro made a very special birthday cake with
chocolate and maybe some pudding and some crunchy cereal stuff on top. It was excellent.
Some people stayed out on
the sand while others headed into the boat to stretch out their hammocks or to
work on videos. Tomorrow we head to
another community, this one with an emphasis on craftwork as its main economic
engine. More on this subject as soon as
we have learned more about it . . .
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Farewell to our Future Forest
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 15
It’s Ali’s birthday!!!
More on this later in the entry . . .
Today was our last day to wake up in our fabulous hammock
hut and bounce off each other to get out of bed. We got a bit of a late start to work, mainly
because the kitchen staff had been among the last to quit the cultural night
last night, keeping the music going long after most of us had hit our
pillows.
Our job was to bring the nursery as close to completion as
we possibly could. That meant finishing
the standing planter boxes and creating some new ground boxes to fill the space
under the shade cloth. We got it
done.
We also had some time to reflect on issues that are related
to a question we got from the Happy Hollow sixth graders: “How does cutting
down trees help the forest?” We spent a
lot of our time clearing spaces for future plantings, all in the name of
reforestation. What we learned during
this clearing process was that many of the trees that are left are not
hardwoods, as those have already been harvested, and few of them are fruit or
nut trees. Those kinds of trees belong
in this area but the spaces they should occupy have been taken up by other
trees and plants. The work that we are
doing will help to reverse this process.
When the community finishes the workspace (for which we prepared
the roof thatch), the nursery will be a place to nurture the new growth of
desired trees and a distribution site for the community to start reviving the
native trees that are currently in short supply. It should be obvious to all readers that this
project is not an “instant gratification” one, as it is more about the very,
very, very long view of what the future will be.
We left a beautiful little tree nursery behind when we
trudged home to pack up our voluminous baggage once again. We gathered all of our power tools, our first
aid, our technology, our group shared items (including all of the items needed
for our water supply) and – most daunting of all – our LAUNDRY, which was still
hanging everywhere it could possibly be, including on clothes lines, bushes,
ladders and trees. It was still just a
little damp (as usual) but we packed it up anyway.
We made quick work of the packing job and got the hammock
hut and bathrooms pretty clean pretty fast as well. Shawny and Jesse hired some motorcycles to
take them out to a remote part of the area where, strangely, there is cell
phone reception and the prospect of posting blog parts. They didn’t have much luck posting anything
but they dumped some more items on DIRT veteran Bryan Navarro, our “man on the
ground” in California. Hopefully those
items have been posted by now.
When we got on the big boat again (after a nightmare loading
process that included some impressive bucket brigades of luggage), we
celebrated Ali’s birthday. Louro had
made a dairy-free cake for Ali and we all presented her with a big feathered
head dress that we had gotten in Santarém before we left there.
We got to reconnect with Jaclyn, Ana, our friend Josy (and,
of course, Louro) once we were all on the boat.
Jaclyn, by the way, has clear x-rays and a good MRI, so she is in a
Velcro brace and is using crutches. She
doesn’t move around a lot on the boat (where she sleeps on an air mattress
rather than a hammock) so things are working out just fine. She still has some pain and swelling but the
situation seems as good as it can be at this point. We are glad to have her back.
We have two floors of sleeping space for hammocks here, so
we all established our spaces and tried to get the bags tucked away as well as
we could so that they are not in the way when we are trying to move around on
the boat. The personal bags are crammed
too tightly together to really be convenient, but we are all realizing that
convenience isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
We look forward to the next few days on the boat and hope
that we manage to report in from out on the water. One thing is for sure: we are really, really,
really in the Amazon . . .
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
"Get that chicken off the field!"
SMC Amazon 2014 Day 14
We got a “late” start to our day again, with a 7:00 a.m. breakfast rather than a 6:30 one. We all struggled hard to get our heads out of our hammocks today, but we finally got things going and sent one group out to the rocky coast where we collect stones for our projects. The rest of us went up to the work site and started building planter boxes and sewing the shade roof over the nursery area. Things are starting to shape up in such a way that you can really tell what is going on here and what is supposed to happen in the long run. The place is littered with drying palhas, But everyone here knows what that mess is about so we aren’t worried that things look too disorganized.
We had lunch and then a very short sesta, as we had to squeeze in a couple more hours of work before
prepping for the soccer rematch that is the talk of the town. Our afternoon work was a bit draining but we
knocked off an hour before match time to get ourselves ready for a respectable
game. We busted out some hidden Gatorade
powder for our athletes and showed up to the field to find no one there.
Our arrival, though, changed everything. People started streaming over and our local
friend Marcia even showed up with enough soccer jerseys for all of us to look
like a real team. Marcia agreed to play
for us this time and another of our Brazilian friends agreed to be our
sub.
We started with Megan V. as goalkeeper and she made some
heroic saves to keep the game scoreless for quite awhile. The Brazilians eventually snuck one by her
though, so Marcia took up goalkeeping.
Our team was hustling madly but not getting scoring opportunities. We reorganized a bit during halftime and came
out ready to score. And we did.
There was a mad scramble in the center of the field and lots
of us got a foot on the ball but Ali was the one who finally drove it
home. We went nuts. Actually, so did the locals. Jesse turned into a frantic rodeo clown
running all over the sideline (and sometimes the field) going crazy, chasing
dogs and chickens off the field (to little effect).
Our goal gave us confidence so we started get much closer
and getting some more excellent shots on goal (that didn’t go in). The Brazilians had scored again so we were
eager to tie the game. We got down to
the last two minutes and Jesse encouraged our new goalkeeper, Benjamin, to
leave the goal and play offense. This
move did not work out in our favor.
The Brazilians scored not one, but two more goals in the
last 1:30 or so, with us not even trying to cover the goal. Oops.
But we didn’t care. The
celebration was a blast, the radio announcers were going nuts and the community
offered us a night of cultural performances as a nod to our good
sportsmanship.
We went home and cleaned up and found our dining hall
getting converted to a concert/performance venue. A big amplifier, several microphones, an
electronic keyboard and lots of other instruments and other performance
materials showed up. Musicians were
sound-checking and dancers were rehearsing.
When things got started, Jesse shared emcee duties with our
friend Silvanei of Saude e Alegría. They had Dona Odila tell the legend of the
founding of Anã and they had a local music group sing some songs about the
community. They had us a sing a song,
which, under pressure, Shawny, Kaylia and Samira agreed to do. They then taught us to dance carimbó, which is a dance that involves
stepping back and forth with your right foot over and over and over and over
again until you can barely stand up anymore on your left foot.
They sang some more songs, had us dance a bit (including
dancing with the little kids in attendance) and then they busted out a surprise
for us – they had voted on awards for our students! Each award recipient won a local handicraft
as a prize. Our winners were: The
American Ox Award – Dennis; Best Soccer Player – Ali; Best Dishwasher – Hoi;
Most Beautiful – Kristina; and Happiest: Samira. Each winner had to dance carimbó with a local
as part of the award process. It was
hilarious.
After all of the formal thank yous and goodbyes had gone by,
they just cranked up the sound system and we all danced. We got spun in all directions by the locals
and the little kids got a kick out of dancing and laughing with us too.
Tomorrow will be our last day here in this community and we
are realizing that we have really settled in and will now miss our hammocks,
our hammock hut, our friends here and even the work we’ve been doing. We will NOT miss the spiders. Or the gnats.
We get back on our boat tomorrow and will head out to some
other Amazon communities in the small tributaries off of the main rivers that
converge here. We will still be in
hammocks on the boat, but we will be spread across two deck. Our friends Louro and Josy will join us and
Jaclyn, too, will be back with us for the boat trip. We think we can post from “out there”
somewhere, so keep watching this space . . .
"Landscaping the Rainforest"
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 13
Well, all of our good luck and pivoting came to a crashing
halt today, as Jaclyn woke up having heard a huge pop in her knee (twice) that
rendered her largely immobile. She
started as goalkeeper in our World Cup preview game but stepped out after going
down for a save. She rallied and walked
home feeling fine, but sometime between that initial twist and this morning,
things deteriorated.
We got the local medic on the scene and he was pretty
convinced that nothing was out of place or broken. He tested her in a few ways and got even more
hopeful. Still, she was experiencing
pain so we all decided it was best to call the ambulance boat and send her into
Santarém to have a hospital check things out.
Jesse and Jenny T. went with her for translation help and moral
support. As the evening begins to fall,
we still have no information about how things have progressed.
We hope to have her back among us tonight or maybe tomorrow,
though we will cope with the situation somehow if she decides that going home is
the best move for her. Jaclyn is a very
sunny person with a twinkle in her eye, a huge smile always shining and a low
song humming all around her no matter where she is or what she is doing. Thus, she is a very important part of our
group and we will all be diminished until we know that she is well.
We woke up to pouring rain this morning, making the whole
day somewhat more complex than it otherwise would have been. It continued to rain through breakfast but
stopped pretty soon after we finished eating.
Dona Odila has wanted some landscaping done here so we decided to work
on that job for her while we waited for the palhas
to dry out a bit on our usual worksite.
The hammock hut where we live had some trees and bushes
around it that were not conducive to excellent shade or privacy so she wanted
to replace them with others that will do a better job on both of those
fronts. So, we dug things up, saving as
many good plants as we could, and then amended the soil to make it even better
for the new plantings that will likely go in tomorrow. It took most of the morning to complete this
job, which we took to be perfect because we were expecting a wood delivery for
the nursery project today.
After lunch and our sesta,
we headed to the nursery site and discovered that the wood had not yet
arrived. We decided to open palhas for as long as we could, which
turned out to be as long as it took to get them all done. We played music and talked and laughed as we
practiced our now acceptable skills with the palm fronds.
We learned that the boat with our wood on it had turned back
and would not be coming today but we did not learn why. Maybe tonight or tomorrow more news will come.
We worked hard and kept our spirits up today, but having one
of our team members in limbo was definitely a blow to all of us. We decided to break out a secret weapon to
help ourselves cope: more inspiring letters from the sixth graders at Happy Hollow
Elementary in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Those letters really made a HUGE difference for us! Almost all of them contained jokes to help us
take our minds off our troubles and we were hooting and hollering and sharing
our jokes with each other as soon as we got a chance to read them.
Thanks again to those students, the third graders at
Southwestern Elementary, and the fourth graders in Pittsburg, California. We are very grateful that you are interested
in our work and that you are supporting us from afar. Watch for shoutouts once we manage to post
our videos!
We’ll keep you posted on Jaclyn’s progress and we’ll tell
you more about our upcoming plans. We
hope you are as interested and invigorated by hearing about our experiences as
we are in having them!
Monday, January 20, 2014
Fish, Bees, Turtles and the World Cup Preview
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 12
Sundays in the Amazon
usually involve lower amounts of manual labor and this one was no
exception. We heard that church was at
8:00pm so we spent the morning touring some of the other projects going on in
this community. One is a fish farm out
in a lake on the river that consists of cages on stilts that hold between 600
and 1000 fish. There are ten or so of
these cages in the lake and we went along with our awesome primary host, Dona
Odila (pronounced “oh-ZHEE-luh) to feed the fish in the cages.
Not only does Dona Odila
stock and feed the fish with a collective of other local women but also she
makes the fish food herself. The food
looks kind of like dog food pellets and we have no idea how she makes it. We do know, however, that she aspires to
start a fish food manufacturing plant of some sort here and that she hopes to
produce the food she is currently producing on a larger scale.
In any case, we took Dona
Odila’s homemade fish food out on boats and paddled to the cages, opened up the
tops, and watched the fish go crazy to eat the stuff as soon as it hit the
water. Dona Odila told us that this
whole project is the result of the determination of a subset of very strong and
determined women, all of whom persevered way beyond the rest of the community
to be sure that this important food supply would be stabilized. The need for the fish farm is a result of the
rather acidic water in this particular tributary of the Amazon; Dona Odila’s
fish food makes it possible for fish to live there even if they couldn’t find a
natural food source in this water.
After the fish farm we
went to get a look at another local enterprise: beekeeping. One of the community members who has worked
with us since our arrival here, Alvaier, has taken up his father’s dream of
keeping bees in the community. He has
dozens and dozens of unusual structures that hold different colonies and their
corresponding queens. The bees
themselves do not have stingers, so this particular form of beekeeping does not
involve crazy suits and headgear and smokers, etc., etc., etc. The honey that the bees create is very thin
and runny and tastes slightly sour to some of our palates. We are investigating whether it is possible
for us to bring any of it home for some of you to taste, as we think it is one
of the things that customs forms list as forbidden to import . . .
The other fascinating
thing at the same house as the bees was a set of pet turtles that the family
has collected out of the forest. We
watched the turtles and fed them and heard the family talk about their
affection for them. It was a lovely
distraction from our usual manual labor.
We went home for lunch
and sesta and then rallied for the
biggest challenge of the day: the U.S. v. Brazil women’s soccer match. The locals had invited us to play soccer on
Sunday several days ago and we took it as a casual invitation like the one we
got on our first day here to play soccer on the beach. Over the course of the week, though, we
learned that this was no casual issue. People
that we newly met would mention their excitement about the upcoming match and
some of the women who work here at our camp would make little comments (talking
smack?) about seeing us on Sunday.
When we headed out at the
appointed time, we noticed many more people on the paths than usual and we saw
quite a few of them all the way down at the end of the community near the
soccer field. When we arrived on the
field, the other team was nowhere in sight, but there were still lots of people
clearly waiting for something to happen.
Our women got organized
and started warming up and psyching themselves up for the match. A little observation tower at the field
suddenly became the focal point of everything when we learned that a radio
announcer was setting up to broadcast.
The radio guy was also the public address guy so suddenly things really
cranked up with some serious volume and that unmistakable sports announcer
cadence, even when the language is unfamiliar.
Finally, the other team
arrived. They had matching shirts! Like real soccer jerseys! The goalkeeper had cleats but most of the
rest of the women played barefoot. We
already knew we were way out of our league just because we were playing soccer
against Brazilians, but we got even more convinced of it when we learned that
this is an actual team and not just a random group like ours.
The announcer introduced
each player by name and the match began.
We knew we had a ringer in Ali, who played college soccer before she
transferred to Saint Mary’s. We also
knew we had a couple of other pretty serious athletes in Kaylia (captain of
club volleyball at SMC) and Jenny T. We
also had some seriously game folks in Kristina and Megan V., who are willing to
try anything, and then we had some reluctant participants who knew we had to
step up and meet this challenge: Samira, Victoria, Lupe, Marisol, Jenny L., and
Jaclyn.
When the game got
started, though, all of these categories fell away and we all looked like we
pretty much knew what we were doing.
Victoria in particular came out of nowhere and turned out to be a fierce
competitor and a pretty adept soccer player, having only done so before at ages
5-6. Samira brought her poise and grace
to the field and did some footwork that she didn’t even know she could do. Jaclyn made three excellent saves at goal
before switching out with substitute Ana.
Megan made an excellent armpit play that was a stunner to everyone
(including her). Once Ana got sick of
the ants in the goalkeeper’s box, Benjamin jumped in and made four or more
saves of his own. And our obvious stars
proved to be just as fabulous as we expected.
Everyone showed a ton of spirit, heart and drive. Our team did our country and our school
proud.
We lost, of course. We didn’t even score. (Though Kaylia had three heartbreaking shots
on goal that should have gone in. All
went over the top.). The final score was
a contested 3-0, as the second goal involved and off sides situation and the
third goal was scored when a Brazilian had temporarily taken over as our
goalkeeper. We think that one shouldn’t
count.
At the end of the game,
the announcer interviewed Ali and she spoke eloquently about connecting through
sports even through language barriers.
The Brazilian captain spoke graciously about her team’s familiarity with
the field and the advantage that they had because of it. A rematch had already been set for Tuesday
and she predicted that our knowledge of the field would give us the victory
next time.
Throughout the match, the
announcer used the presence of the crowd to help promote the community projects
that we are doing and to invite more community members out to join us. We learned lots of new names, got lots of
very sincere hugs and high fives, and really feel like the situation – that
could have been a totally humiliating waste of time – invigorated all of us and
the community too. Nice.
We came home and
scrambled to get ready for church, only to find that they had decided not to
hold a service tonight and that they held it this morning instead. In lieu of church, then, we sat together in a
circle and talked about the blessings that we have felt on this trip. We spoke of the people that we’ve met, the
warm welcomes we have felt everywhere we’ve gone, the insights we have gained
about our own lives and the lives of our Brazilian friends, the things we’ve
always taken for granted in our lives in the U.S. (like constantly flowing safe
clean water), and how lucky we all are to be here in this incredible place
together.
We feel truly blessed,
even though we miss all of you out there reading these words and we are
surprised to be as disconnected from all of you (technologically) as we have
turned out to be. We hope you can
forgive our jumpy correspondence and we assure you that we have many more
things to tell you than you will ever have time (or interest) to hear . . .
Jorlando, one of our community hosts, was swimming with the fish that are farmed in a lake from a community project that started by some of the women of Ana.
This picture shows the crafts that are hand made by some of the community members of Ana. The project is used to support the families that are involved financially.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Hunting Thatch
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 11
Continuing in “pivot”
mode, we took up a job today that community members were going to do, mostly
because they thought that we would be either unable or unwilling to help. The job was to go deep into the rain forest
and find just the perfect plant at just the perfect stage of development to
serve as the future thatched roof of the tree nursery’s workspace. We learned partway through the day that the
missing materials are going to arrive earlier than we had heard, so we will
continue to shift and change our plans accordingly.
Anyway, we all decided to
spend the morning chasing thatch. The
Portuguese word is actually “palha”
or something like that, but the basic premise is that we needed to find the
just-sprouted centers of palm plants before they open up. Because we are unskilled at navigating the
forest floor, each of us joined a small group led by a local who blazed the
trail with a machete and spotted the perfect plants from a distance. They would go in and whack the center of the
plant and throw it back toward us like a spear.
Then we would pass it through the forest to walk it back out to the
trail.
As it turns out, the
beautiful just-past-full moon that we have been admiring the last few nights
was thwarting our ability to find exactly what we wanted, as the moonlight
inspires the plants to open up. Still,
there were plenty out there; it just took lots of bushwhacking to get to them. We ran into one small boa constrictor and one
tarantula out there but otherwise we just made our way through as unobtrusively
as possible to get to the palhas and
then get them back out. (The boa and the
spider, by the way, wanted to get away from us just as badly as we wanted to
get away from them.) The forest was so
thick that if you got about five or ten feet from the person in front of you,
sometimes it took a quick game of “Marco Polo” to find each other again. It worked.
We worked until lunchtime
and then loaded our newly counted bundles of 30 palhas onto what should have been an oxcart, except that we didn’t
have an ox. But we had Dennis, which is
at least as good. He ran that cart back
with some assistance from some of the rest of us and we found that we had
retrieved 24 bundles out of the 60 that we will eventually need. Not bad for a bunch of rookies.
After lunch we took a
quick sesta and then went back to the
site that we prepped on the first day to start working the thatch. Each frond needs to be shaken madly to loosen
its leaves and then each individual leaf needs to be twisted in a very particular
way to make them all align just right to make a proper roof. We had a very long and slow learning curve
but after not too much time, we all became pretty adept at this local skill. Despite our improvements, we were getting
schooled by young girls, old ladies, and every guy that we have met here so
far, as they can crank those palhas
in their sleep.
The effort that we have
put into this nonexistent roof already is making us truly appreciate the roof
over our heads in our hammock room and in our lovely dining area here in
camp. The number of people and hours
represented by just these two spaces really makes us take note of what cushy
lives we usually live.
We caught a glimpse of a thunderstorm on the other side of the river while we were out
swimming on the beach of Ana.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Of buckets, sand and rocks
SMC Amazon 2014: Day 10
We got the unfortunate
(but not shocking) news today that the materials we need for the next phases of
the nursery have not arrived (sound familiar, DIRT people?). We had a few minutes of deflated “now what do
we do?” conversations and then we did what DIRT people do best: we pivoted.
We knew that there was a
need for concrete at the new nursery and its surrounding components, especially
the covered workspace that we expected to be our primary achievement here. We carried up several 110-pound bags of
cement on our first day here (ouch!) so we asked where the necessary sand and
stone would come from to make it into concrete.
As it turns out, both would be “harvested” locally. In other words, tons (literally) of sand
needed to be carried up from the beach and approximately equal amounts of stone
needed to be collected from a nearby uninhabited island, delivered by boat to
our beach and then carried up the hill.
We took on those jobs.
All of the old DIRT vets
know that Shawny had an ecstatic day because it was a day full of bucket
lines. We distributed ourselves along the
space from the starting pile of sand and rocks to the worksite. At the piles, someone loads the buckets and
then each person just touches each bucket once to get the entire pile to the
top. Of course, it takes the same amount
of effort to do it this way as it does to just carry buckets (or push
wheelbarrows) one by one. Still, the
fact that no one faced that daunting hill with a bucket of rocks or a bucket of
sand all alone somehow makes it seem much, much easier.
It’s a great learning
experience in two ways. First, it
teaches us all that our Brazilian hosts had to go through to construct the
lovely buildings in which we are living here, along with all of the other homes
and buildings in this community. Second,
it teaches us about our role in the group.
That is, when the bucket lines first start, every person thinks that he
or she has the worst job of all and that everyone else’s role is easier. Then we do some shifting, changing and
negotiating and everyone starts realizing that the entire line is pretty much
equally difficult. But also, we each
start realizing that it’s all much better when we are together. And suddenly, a huge pile of rocks that used
to be far away down a bumpy hill is up where it needs to be for the project
that the community is doing. Nice.
A couple of our group
members also got approached with a distress call of sorts from a neighbor with
a broken chainsaw. Having seen that we
all seemed to know about power tools, he approached us to see if we could help. As it turns out, both Hoi and Lupe have Army
training that helped them take on the job.
They got the chainsaw apart and saw what was stopping it from working
but it might be difficult to fix it without any available parts. Even so, we were happy to be able to offer our
services to people other than our direct community partners.
Our day today was all
rocks, buckets and sand so we can tell you a little more about our lives here
in Brazil. We awaken at 5:50 if we are
the breakfast crew so that we can back up the cooks here at the camp. The rest of the group gets up at 6:10 for a
6:30 breakfast. Breakfast is usually a
sponge-y cake-y thing of one sort or another, mostly made from a root that in
English would be called manioc. They
make lots of stuff out of what they call “mandioca,”
including starchy little crepes that they call tapioca, donuts, a crumbly
topping called farofa, and lots of
other options. We have eaten some
version of it for almost every meal here.
In fact, mandioca is one of the reasons that we
could not continue on the tree nursery today, along with the absence of the
materials. The other really evident
issue in the community today was that everyone was gone. We didn’t notice at first and then we
recognized how abandoned things seemed.
As it turns out, today was the perfect day to plant mandioca, due to rainfall and climate and a host of other
issues. Everyone made a run for the
fields today and by the time we got up, we were just living in a ghost
community, moving sand and rocks.
We all start our days
with healthy doses of sunscreen, insect repellent (Avon Skin-So-Soft has been
working wonders for us here this trip) and malaria medicines. Lots of us are also taking allergy meds, as
we are pretty sneezy here. A few people
have needed Immodium but we haven’t had any serious scares just yet.
One team joins the
breakfast crew, as we already mentioned.
That teams backs up all of the meals.
Another starts filtering water, using our solar-powered water
purification system. Though the water
here is already filtered, we re-filter it with ours anyway. The water team takes care of all camp needs,
including charging batteries for tools and reorganizing the first aid
bags. Another team has to take up the
dishes after each meal and the last team is in charge of video.
We get to work at 7:00
a.m., mostly because it gets so hot so fast that we want as much work as
possible to be done before the heat gets too oppressive. We work until at least 11:30 (more like noon
or later) and then walk home by way of the beach and jump in the river if we
feel like it. We eat lunch, take a sesta
or swim, then go back to work pretty late in the afternoon (3:00 or 4:00). We swim again on the way home, then shower
off the river water before dinner. There
is always someone doing laundry at night, as we are completely dependent on
hand washing. We’re finally developing
some skills at wringing things out.
We aren’t having big
problems with mosquitoes, but we have a few bites. No one has gotten terribly sick but we feel
like we are due. No big injuries either,
so we hope we can keep up that streak.
We would love to take
questions from the 3rd, 4th and 6th graders
that are following us but we know that our technological issues will make it
hard for us to be very responsive. We’ll
just keep showing pictures of big bugs and hope that those are what they want
to see . . .
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