Day Two: Another Day in the CIty

Another Day in the City

January 7, 2016

We started the day at Saúde e Alegria and were thrilled to see the person we know as the great visionary leader of Anã.  Dona Odila Godinho.  Dona Odila gathered the women of the community a few years ago and pointed out that they were the key to the future of Anã.  They formed an organization that is the hub of all community transformation.  Through their group, a fish farm was established that has significantly improved community health.  The women even learned to make their own fish food to reduce the costs of raising their own fish.  And they started writing grants related to community development, some of which funded the guest area where we will live for the next 16 days.  They started an ecotourism endeavor that brings some resources into the community (including us and our labor!).  For these and many other reasons, we have deep love and respect for Dona Odila, her female compatriots, the males who have now joined forces with them and the rest of this dynamic Amazon community. 

We discussed more plans for our visit (plans always subject to change!!!), including the possibility of building a large chicken coop for the benefit of the guesthouse and the surrounding area.  We LOVE this idea, as we are often hungry for eggs in the morning and we imagine that other visitors might feel the same way.  We don’t think that there is a way for us to benefit eggwise from the coop we build this trip, but we like the idea that other future visitors will get to enjoy the fruits of our labors. 

We also spent some time trying to produce creative solutions for needs in the community.  The recent lack of rain that we mentioned in yesterday’s post means that parts of the community garden are suffering.  They would like to use river water to support the garden but getting the water up the steep slopes to the community is a daunting task.  We brainstormed a number of ideas and decided to wait until we get there to formulate any plans.  There are a number of jobs to tackle already so this one might not get top priority, as surely the rains will come soon . . .

After our conversations with Odila, we ran downtown again to get some more things that we will need in the community.  More of us scored Havaianas in our size, which is always a thrill.  Havaianas are those little rubber flipflops that we have all seen everywhere but they are made in Brazil and here they have really cool colors and styles.  They are also much less expensive than they would be in the US.  And, EVERYone here has them.  So we want in on the action.  Almost everyone found what they sought today.

We had to trade in one hammock that unfortunately had a hole in it.  Daniel traded up to a nicer one and Cooper decided to get a new one even though he had brought one from home. 

We also scored some matching soccer shirts, which will be very important to our participation in the ongoing soccer challenge between our host community and us.  We play full men’s games and women’s games, where our main objective is to avoid total humiliation.  We have no illusions that we will win (though we have tied more than once in the past!).  But we know that the minute we arrive in Anã, the questions about scheduling the first soccer matches will begin.  This year we have the actual varsity goalkeeper for the SMC women’s team, as well as several club players who will definitely be able to hold their own against the strong Brazilian team. 

We made more runs to get chicken wire and other hardware related to the chicken coop project and then decided to head to a celebrated local spot to try natural açaí.  This regional fruit has become a curiosity in the US but it is usually in a much different form than the way Brazilians eat it.  Here they have bowls of smashed/pureed dark purple liquid to which consumers add sugar to their taste.  For most of us, our preferred ratio was about 50% açaí to 50% sugar.  For some, even that combo wasn’t sweet enough.  Some of us flipped to fruit push-up-like things in flavors like coconut, corn, and passion fruit.  They were great. 

After a long stay over our fruity treats, we headed home to get organized for our long boat trip tomorrow.  Friday is the day we head upriver to the forest preserve where Anã is located.  We will ride on the community boat, which goes back and forth on Fridays and Sundays.  Three Sundays from now, we will get back on the boat and face the fact that our trip is nearing its end. 

Because we are heading into an area with little electricity and no cellphone or internet connectivity, we are going to have to be creative about timing our blog posts.  Thus, it may be three days (or more) before you next hear from us.  We will keep preparing text, photos/captions and videos for every day and do everything in our power to get it all posted.  As this is the 7^th SMC trip to the Amazon, we can predict that problems will arise.  Please bear with us. 

Thanks for reading already.  Especially enjoy our pictures and video for today, as we can’t be sure when we will manage to post more . . . 

Abbey Road—Gaels in Brazil Style.

One of the many boats left beached due to drought conditions.

Steve found Shaq’s cleats at a shop in Santarém.

Cooper enjoying some açaí, but it’s not complete without a little sugar (or a lot… haha). Fun fact: Açaí means the “plant that bleeds” because when you cut open the trunk of the tree it looks as if it is bleeding.

Learning our plans while meeting Dona Odila, the phenomenal matriarch of Anã.

Dona Odila is enthusiastic to see Shawny for the first time in a year at Saúde e Alegria (“Health and Happiness”), a local non-profit in Santarém.

Buying jerseys so the DIRT team looks official when we play Team Ana.

The lovely Josy.

Exploring with Josy, a longtime friend of DIRTies! (She’s the third from the left).

Josy and Suze - Friends for life!

Spending the day in Santarém’s local markets searching for chicken wire to prepare for our projects in Anã.

Meet team Scattered Joy (Alegría Dispersa): Leah, Phil, Suze, Robert, and Annie.    

A woman in Santarém smiling with her eyes.

From holes in hammocks, to forgotten flip-flops, these streets became familiar in a short period of time. 

An end of the day sunset brings out the life in Santarém.

Day One: Our Long Journey

Our Long Journey

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

We’re writing on a Thursday morning to cover our long but happy trip that started on Monday in Moraga.  We gathered in the evening and rushed to pack our last few items before boarding shuttles to the airport.  As we noted in our last brief post, we were shocked to learn that our flight had been rescheduled to leave two hours earlier than we expected, which means that as soon as we arrived, we were too late.  It was a temporary setback, though, as we overheard the people next to us speaking in Portuguese about going to Miami.  When we asked if there would be a way to join that flight, the agent noticed that there were, in fact, twenty seats available on that flight.  So, in true DIRT form, we pivoted.  This one wasn’t a typical problem-solving pivot, as it was a very easy move to hop onto a direct flight that got us there faster than our original flight with one fewer transfer.  We still had a long layover in Miami so all was well. 

While in Miami, we frantically charged all of our electronics for the last time, as we know that our power supplies in Brazil will be unreliable for the rest of the month. We also ate food that we expect to miss and stocked up on bottled water for our time in Manaus.  Though we have had lots of “downtime” during the journey so far, we aren’t bored or bothered by it because we generally like being together.  Our ability to get along and entertain ourselves even when nothing seems to be happening will pay off for us quite a bit when we are living in our Amazon community. 

We settled into our hostel in our stopover in Santarém, but not all the way, as we are leaving Friday morning on a boat to head upriver to our home in the community of Anã on the Arapiuns tributary of the Amazon.  We left the hostel to visit our partners from Anã, some of whom are in the city now getting materials together for our visit.  We met them at our main partner agency, Saúde e Alegria (Health and Happiness).  We were droopy and sleep-deprived, but excited to see our local friends and hear their plans for our time together. 

We are learning that the rains have not yet come this year, so there is a bit of a fruit shortage and prices are higher than they might usually be.  The upside of this state of being is that there are fewer mosquitoes than usual.  Due to a recent outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus (which would have little effect on us but is particularly problematic for pregnant women), we are not the only ones who welcome a smaller population of mosquitoes. 

We wandered the city today doing mundane errands like getting bleach (to sterilize our dishes), laundry soap (for our individual hand-washing needs) and some thin rope (to figure out a way to rig our mosquito nets over our hammocks).  But our most important quest of the day was to find our hammocks themselves.  The search for hammocks is a blast even if we are all too tired to deal with the task. There is a large open air market on the banks of the river with hundreds and hundreds of different hammock options available.  Some of us could see a pattern from a distance and know that it was the hammock for us.  Others needed several passes through the entire market to get a sense of what they wanted to buy.  In the end, we each got a beautiful hammock and in some way we all learned a bit about each other as we saw what choices each person made. Additionally, we brushed up on our Portuguese, including developing some negotiating skills.  A few people decided to splurge on fancier hammocks, contributing their own money to bolster the allotted budget amount for each student.  Jesse bought Shawny the fanciest hammock of all, after watching her stare at it and walk away over and over again.  We are all very happy with our new purchases.  We better be, as we will sleep in our hammocks every night that we are in Brazil from this point forward. 

Before heading home, we stopped at a celebrated local ice cream place and tried flavors named after fruits we haven’t yet seen, as well as Brazil nut, corn, and tapioca.  Quite irrationally, we followed our ice cream with dinner prepared by our beloved friends (and great cooks) Louro and Dona Maria.  They had already made our favorite Brazilian dish, fried chicken, for lunch. 

We messed with pictures, made a daily video (hopefully posted here soon) and got to bed early for some much-needed rest.  We all developed pretty good hammock-sleeping techniques and slept like rocks for almost nine hours.  We are up and ready to hit the town again today, with lumber, a marine battery, some flipflops and other atypical items on our shopping list. 

Please be patient as we try to organize as many posts as we can as quickly as we can.  We look forward to telling you more!

Annie, Suze, Matt, and Cam in Santarém

Bank of the Tapajós outside of Santarém

Carlos, Annie and Steve walking through a fish market

Jules at Saúde e Alegria

Skyline of Manaus

The Tapajós has receded due to the lack of rain, forcing boats to dock farther out. 

Everyone spent the day searching for the perfect hammock at the local market.

Enjoying summer six months earlier than usual. 

Shopping for hammocks in the local market of Santarém.

Matt constantly making us all laugh.

Our first exposure to the Tapajós River

Salgadinhos? – “Hors d’oeuvres?”

Getting a first hand experience of the market

A local English teacher meets SMC DIRT

Five hours later and we have our hammocks

Exploring the Santarém market where it is obvious that futebol is one of the main sports.

Attempting to bargain for hammocks (rede [hedgee]), which we will sleep in for the remainder of our trip.

Matt looking to the sky for inspiration for how to get the water pump to work.

From left to right: Jenny, Ari, and Annie with all smiles after fun day exploring the markets of Santarém.

Annie the turtle riding her spirit animal (the turtle) next to the river in Santarém.

On our way!

We're sitting in the Miami airport waiting for our flight to Manaus.  We had quite a shock at SFO, where we learned that our flight had been rescheduled to leave two hours earlier than we expected.  No one had ever notified us of this change.  Miraculously, though, there was a delayed direct flight to Miami that had twenty available seats!  We hopped over to that flight (no extra charges) and avoided a short hop through Charlotte that was in our original itinerary.  So far so weird but so far so good!

We won't be able to post daily from Brazil due to internet issues.  We will work to make it happen every three days if possible.  We look forward to our trip and to telling you all about it!  Please tune in to our blog posts, pictures and videos and leave comments for us if you can.  Huge thanks to Bryan Navarro, our California connection who will help us convert our files onto our web page.  Without him, we would likely struggle to post at all.