SMC Amazon 2009: Poverty and Promise in Northern Brazil

Public Presentations

2009-02-12T10:22:00.001-08:00

Please join us on Tuesday, February 17, at 7:30 in the Soda Center on the Saint Mary's College campus for the screening of selected multimedia projects from our Jan Term course. The event is free and open to the public.

For access to an expandable version of the slideshow posted below, please see:

http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/academics/undergraduate-requirements/january-term/class-websites/index.html

SMC Amazon 2009 Slide Show

2009-02-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

Erik Coloma combined some of our photos with excerpts from students' reflective journals.

Amazon 2009: Day Twenty-Two (Monday, January 26)

2009-01-29T07:10:00.000-08:00

An hour after leaving Santarém, we arrived in the Amazon capital of Manaus. Thus, at about 2:00 a.m. we were met by vans that took us to downtown Manaus to check in to hotel rooms that we would keep until we left about 20 hours later. We didn’t get to sleep until after 3:00 a.m., so we agreed to meet at noon in the lobby to chase down lunch nearby.

Our rooms in Manaus were pretty sparse, but they were fine for us to just sleep until mid-morning. We got lunch at a nearby self-service where everyone loads up on food and pays by the kilo for what they have selected. We got to enjoy fish and barbecued beef, among other things, but we already missed the cooking from back at our camp.

After lunch we went to visit the most famous site in town: the Teatro Amazonas, a beautiful opera house that was built at the height of the rubber boom. Though it is strangely (and exclusively) European and therefore a bit out of place where it is, the theater is striking, no matter how little interest one might have in architecture. The main auditorium is ringed with 5-person boxes and the overall décor is still stunning even after the passage of more than 100 years. The acoustics are great too, and the guide even let Shawny belt out a quick melody to give us a feel for the way sound carries in there. Though few of us would have predicted that we would be interested in a tour of an opera house, we had no regrets about going to this one today.

We did, however, have regrets about our next stop: a shopping center recommended by our hotel as a good place to buy clothes and souvenirs, as well as a source of good food and entertainment. After about an hour inside, we decided that we totally disagree with the hotel’s assessment. We got so bored so fast that we cut our plan short by one hour and headed back to the hotel. Maybe what we learned is that we just aren’t that interested in our lives as consumers anymore, as we were truly just plain bored in that mall.

Despite this shopping let down, we weren’t disappointed with our next move: dinner at a churrascaria. A churrascaria is kind of a Brazilian barbecue or steakhouse where waiters come around with huge pieces of meat on skewers and cut off big slabs for the diners at their request. Every part of a cow comes to the table at some point, along with various parts of chicken and even barbecued cheese. We took over a huge table in the center of the restaurant and just ate and ate to our hearts’ content.

We cleared out in time to beat a huge cloudburst that poured down on Manaus unexpectedly. We hurried to our hotel before we got drenched, then just stood and watched as massive amounts of rain fell. The end of the downpour pretty well matched the timing of our need to load out all of our gear and head to the airport.

Once on our plane, we were surprised to discover that we were joined by only about 5 other people in our flight to Atlanta. We therefore each got a row to ourselves, meaning that we all got pretty solid sleep on that 6+ hour flight. Our flight to San Francisco was equally painless (though not as spacious) and we arrived home before noon on Tuesday.

From here our job is to finish media projects in time to present one from each team at our big public speaking gig on Tuesday, February 17. We will camp out in the computer lab until we are done. Please join us on the 17th and see what we produce!

This is the famous Amazon Theater in Manaus.

These are the fabulous mirrors inside the ballroom in the Amazon Theater.

The inside of the opera theater.

A beautiful chapel in Manaus right by the hotel where we spent our last 25 hours in Brazil.

The ceiling of the actual opera room. The four different paintings represent tragedy, dance, music, and founding of the theatre.

Part of the ceiling inside of the Ball Room of the Amazonas Theatre.

This is the famous Amazon theater in Manaus.

This statue was erected for Brazil’s independence. All continents were represented except Australia and Antarctica.
We walked past this church on our way to the theater. Beautiful songs were being sung for mass.

These were the ceramic spittoons found in the theater.

The shopping center where we went to do the last of our consuming.

We ended the day by going to a fancy barbeque restaurant. Here, they were serving chicken hearts.

Amazon 2009: Day Twenty-One (Sunday, January 25)

2009-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

Shawny woke us up at 5:45 today so that we could finally make our way to mass at the beautiful church in the center of town. The last two Sundays, we missed mass, one because we (she) overslept and one because we had to help facilitate the television interviews that would highlight Jaime and Georgete’s program. On our last Sunday in town, then, we were determined to get ourselves to mass.

Brazil is more than 80% Catholic, so even for those of us who are not Catholics, attending mass is an important part of our cultural understanding of the place we have lived. Thus, some of us were eager to go so that we could get spiritual enrichment while others’ interests were more anthropological. In either case, we must report that – once again – we missed mass. For some reason, the regular 7:00 a.m. service did not occur at 7:00 a.m. today. In fact, some other church several blocks away got the 7:00 timeslot for today. We waited on the church steps until others came along and told us that today’s mass would be at a different time (though no one knew when that hour would be).

We weren’t terribly disturbed by this news, as the weather on this particular morning was perhaps the most beautiful temperature that we had experienced in our whole trip. There was a light river breeze blowing, the sun was shining (but not beating down on us), and the morning was clear and quiet.

At Cassidy’s suggestion, we decided to start our own service. We recognize that no matter what our religious affiliations might be, we feel blessed by our experiences here. We also feel thankful. Thus, we opened up a conversation about blessedness and thankfulness, in which different ones of us expressed our gratitude about our time in the Amazon, about each other, about the people we’ve met, and about the experiences that we’ve shared.

Just as we were reaching the end of our session, a woman appeared from around the corner wearing a big smile. She leaned down toward us from the top of the steps and started singing a lovely hymn that Jesse said predicted that we would all go to heaven. We recognized this woman from our first day in Santarém; that day, she also approached us out of nowhere and sang us a song about her love for Jesus and his blessings upon us. We hadn’t seen her again until this moment on the church steps, but it seemed like the perfect bookend to our trip.

Once she sang her first song, she began to speak in a voice that sounded sermonic and she delivered a message that Jesse flash-translated about hope and goodness in the world, overcoming sadness, and rising to new challenges. She sang another song. We clapped for her then Erik delivered a prayer for all of us. It was one of the most beautiful and moving “services” that any of us had ever attended.

We thus decided to head back toward home to eat breakfast and change clothes for our last morning of working with the kids. Before we were anywhere near the worksite, some of us already had tears in our eyes. We hadn’t even seen the kids yet today and we could tell that we were about to miss them desperately.
As we headed down into the beach area where we work and play with the kids, they started streaming out of every house and pathway to head down to meet us. They were hugging us and telling us they missed us because we had been gone for only four days. We started taking pictures of us with them, either individually or in small groups, and they quickly took over our cameras and showed us what to shoot.

We played lots of games, sat and painted, danced and sang. The capoeira group returned for a further demonstration and training session and a HUGE volleyball broke out on the beach. A different TV station showed up and followed us around to understand what had happened for us and for the kids in the last month.

As the end of the morning approached, we all gathered on the newly-roofed new deck on the boathouse for a big group picture. The kids all stood on the deck and we all stood below while Marcia and Shawny took pictures on about 20 different cameras. Then one of our favorites of all the kids, Luis Felipe, took over Marcia’s big camera and took the definitive final picture of all of us. (Luis Felipe, by the way, had a stunning day on the volleyball court today, where he managed a few saves that would have seemed impossible a couple of weeks ago. His euphoria over his achievements was contagious, so he was the hero of our day.)

As we walked away from the beach for the last time, the kids each took one of our bikes and pushed it up the hill for us. They followed us out to the main paved road where we ride and we told them that this was the place where they should probably turn back. They cried, we cried, everyone hugged and we parted ways waving back to each other until we were out of sight.

A few of our hosts joined us for lunch back at our camp. Jaime and Georgete were there with two visiting friends and Seu João came with his daughter, Josialda. We ate together, then Seu João delivered a tribute to us that brought us all to tears again. The women of our group presented a backpack full of clothes and other belongings to Josialda, who loved every item.

Once they all headed home, we kicked into full-fledged packing mode so that we could be ready to head for the airport tonight. Everyone got one more spin on the internet to let their people back home know when to expect them. We cleaned and cleared out the camp and then just gathered on the porch one last time to play cards, listen to music, and reflect on our lovely Amazon home.

Just before we left, Jaime returned one more time with a big box of mysterious goodies for us to take home and with another tribute to our group. In his tribute, Jaime named each one of us individually and reflected on the character traits that revealed themselves during the course of our stay. We were amazed by how well he knew us – each of us – and, of course, we were all brought to tears again.

We left the camp by saying goodbye to Zilly one by one. Our departure was a bit delayed leaving the Santarém airport, but none of us really minded. We may have left Santarém today, but we know that it will never, never leave us.
Special note:

We have some questions that have been posted by another set of elementary school students in Indiana, this time from third graders at Southwestern Elementary School (taught by Shawny’s other sister, Shelly). Here are their questions and some brief answers:

Dear Shawny and Class,

Mrs. Anderson Hamilton's third graders in Hanover, Indiana, have a few questions...

1. How did you keep the camera dry when it rained? Jade (cousin to Larry Bird)

--Jade, you are smart to think of this problem. You are right that we had to think about rain every day, even when it was not raining in the morning. Here in the rain forest, rain just comes and goes constantly, so it is a problem that we always have to think about. We have waterproof cases for all of our equipment, so we usually keep the cameras in those. When we need to carry it in a smaller form, we sometimes wrap the camera in a towel and put it inside a backpack or we even sometimes put them inside our shirts and rainjackets.

2. Why is there white paint around the trees? MiKaela

--We asked this question too, but we still aren’t sure about the answer. We think that the paint fights off some kind of fungus that would infect the trees if they weren’t painted.

3. Why were you painting the building blue? Jacob

--We painted the building the same colors that it had had been before: blue and white. Those are the colors that our hosts wanted.

4. How are the college students doing? Briann

--Everyone is okay. Almost every person got a little bit sick somewhere along the line, but when that happened, that person just sat out for half a day, slept, and then got better. We were lucky that no one got hurt or got really, really sick.

5. Which side of the river was salt water and which was fresh water? Nate

--Both sides of the river are fresh water. They stay separate because they move at different speeds and therefore they stir up different levels of silt and mud. The Amazon, the brown one, is the faster one, so it stirs up more stuff.

6. What kind of fish is the one in the market? It was giant! Triston

--The fish have really weird names (to us, anyway). The one you are thinking of us probably called tucunaré (too-coo-nah-RAY).

7. What's been your favorite activity so far? Katelin

--Each person would say something different. For most of us, though, it has been working with the kids because they are so warm and loving. We will miss them terribly.

FYI - We had a two hour delay today for weather, and probably won't be here tomorrow, so we spent some time watching your videos for each day. We will continue to check them for the rest of your trip. This is very strange for 8,9, and 10 year-olds to understand! Also, they'd like to know why some of the video sound is not as good - they couldn't hear everything that was being said!

--Sorry about our sound problems. Sometimes they are due to bad microphone placement, sometimes due to background noise, and sometimes because we forget to turn up the volume when editing.

We'll check back later!
Shelly and the class.

--Thanks for writing!

This was the beautiful inside of the church.

The children made these toys and Mercedes was eager to play along.

On our last day these boys wanted more pictures taken.

The children playing in the water.

It was very early when we arrived for morning mass.

This is a picture of the finished deck on the boat house.

Seu Joao at the worksite on the last day poses for the camera!

Jaime, Georgete, Seu Joao, the kids, SMC, and the Capoeira Crew get together for one final picture.

Shawny taking a brief time out from her hard work to learn a local dance.

Shanna giving a big smile as she says goodbye to the kids.

Jesse and Josy showing that goodbyes don’t always have to be sad.

Erik and Josy saying goodbye after an unforgettable trip.

A bittersweet end to an amazing trip.

Amazon 2009: Day Twenty (Saturday, January 24)

2009-01-28T18:14:00.001-08:00

We began our day on the banks of a community called Jamaraquá, one of the first communities that SMC travelers visited seven years ago in the College’s first Jan Term trip to the Amazon. In the center of the town is a house occupied by the leader of the community, Pedrinho, and his wife, Conceipcão. They and their children have helped to build this community over the last several years so that now it is probably the most developed one we have visited since we left Santarém.

When the SMC group visited in 2002, the community shared one communal pump and a series of dirt paths connected various houses to it. They had no electricity then, but now they have spent two months on and off “the grid” of public utilities. They actually have huge utility poles and cables strung alongside a large, graded, but still unpaved road that leads between Jamaraquá and its neighboring communities. When we arrived today and marveled over the presence of electricity, they told us that they were on their fourth day without power, as their new poles and cables work only sporadically.

They have also developed a plumbing system by which their well water is now pumped to individual houses within a certain ring from the center of the town. Additionally, we saw a few cars and trucks motor down the new roadway – a sight that would have seemed entirely alien to those of us who visited over the last several years. There was always an almost-daily bus to Santarém from the outskirts of town, but now vehicles were driving right into the center of the community. (Only three vehicles moved in the five or so hours we were there, but that still marks a significant change.)

The highlight of our visit to Jamaraquá was a hike into the primary rain forest. According to our guides, a fire 80 years ago stripped much of the old growth that should surround the community, so it takes about a two-hour hike to reach the actual “forest primeval” that still stands. When SMC students took this hike in years past, the trail was not yet cleared and our guides carried machetes to help us find our way. Now the path is so well-traveled (by tour groups nearly every day) that it is easy to follow (though strenuous).

On the trail we learned about some of the medicinal uses for the plants that we were passing, as our guide still used a machete to remove chips of bark and let us smell the oils from the trees as he described their usage. Some were used in teas to fight off malaria, some were chewed or eaten to deal with stomach problems or overall aches and pains, and others were licked to ward off sore throats. Their smells were strong and medicinal and our guides convinced us that they were very effective remedies.

We also saw some awesome insects and spiders, including the stunning crab spider that is a big, hairy, brown thing as large as our biggest students’ hands. It is marked with dots and striping that look like eyes inside a hollowed out tree. Our guides knew just where to find the spiders, so they rousted one out for our different groups and laughed at us when we reacted like we were under direct attack from these apparently harmless beings.

They also showed us full trees made of the Brazilian hardwoods whose names we have seen in furniture stores or in flooring commercials. Some of the trees were as large as California old-growth redwoods and our guides used similar methods of describing their size to the “big trees” areas of California (“22 people can hold hands and barely surround this tree.”) They have stopped harvesting the oldest and largest trees, as they are catching on to the idea of conservation, recognizing that even apart from tourism, the old-growth forest is of great value in and of itself.

The guides took us to a grand vista point from which we could see the hills and valleys of the rain forest as it stretched along the Amazon basin. We were glad to see that there were swaths of forest that stretched for miles and miles, without the clear-cut sections that have become familiar in some regions along the Amazon and its tributaries.

Among the trees native to this region is the rubber tree; our guides demonstrated the primitive practice of extracting the latex from the tree by cutting a diagonal stripe into the bark and guiding the liquid latex that “bleeds” from the cut into a bowl. We later visited an outbuilding where they process and dye the latex to make products that they consider eco-friendly and sustainable, as it does not require the destruction of the trees to produce purses, bags, and notebook covers made of thick latex.

We also visited some artisans who make jewelry and other curios out of seeds, nuts, and plant matter. Most of us picked up souvenirs, some of which will no doubt end up with people who are reading these pages. We got necklaces, rings, earrings, notepads, and figurines. In fact, we are beginning to look like our own little tribe, as many of us have a whole series of bracelets that we have accumulated along the way and some of us have taken up wearing long feathers that seem popular among the women who live along the Amazon full-time.

As we finished our walks in and around Jamaraquá and its neighboring communities, we headed back to our boat to begin to motor downriver back to our Santarém home. We realized that we were about as hungry as we have ever been, so we were thrilled to learn that Louro had made our very favorite dish: fried chicken. Louro hopes to open a restaurant some day, and we think that if he served only his special-recipe fried chicken, he would make a fortune.

Because we were dirty, sweaty, and now covered with chicken grease, we looked forward to our next (and last) stop for an Amazon bath. We went near the beach that we visited during our first week, Alter do Chão, and found a strip that was largely unoccupied in which to swim and get clean. From there we headed back to start the long process of packing up to leave. That last leg of the boat ride brought a sense of quiet to most of us, as we began to feel pangs of sadness about the impending conclusion of our Amazon odyssey.

We decided to get up early on Sunday to go to mass, then work with the children one last time, then skip siestas to get ready to fly out after midnight on Sunday. We want to get the most out of the last day that we can . . .

Our guides showing us one of the trees that the people in the community get latex from to make crafts.

One of the groups on their way through the forest.

A fallen tree one of the groups had to go around on their hike.

One of the canoes we took on our hike to get from community to community.

The local bartender hard at work.

Our tour guides took us on a majestic canoe ride through the rain forest.

A plethora of lily pads engulfed the waterfront.

The local community members we visited make stunning handcrafted jewelry beads.

Shana’s bravery prevailed as she was able to hold the big red ant.

This is the view from the canoe ride after our hike through the rain forest.

The tarantula we saw along our hike.

The view of the entire Tapajos river from a view point during our hike.

Our trek through the rain forest.

Amazon 2009: Day Nineteen (Friday, January 23)

2009-01-28T16:48:00.001-08:00

The boat started moving this morning while we were all still asleep. Rionaldo had decided to stay at the ghost story beach but then move early to get to our next community. We all awoke at 4:00 when the motor started, but most of us managed to figure out what was going on, then go right back to sleep. We motored for about two hours to get to the village of São Miguel.

Before venturing into the community, we had breakfast on the boat. Along with our usual fruit, meat, cheese, and cake, we also added leftover fish from last night. Louro cooked up some eggs so that we could swirl the fish in for a very Amazonian breakfast. Of course, he had also prepared fresh juices for us, including graviola and acerola. We are in food heaven despite our otherwise pretty primitive mode of living.

São Miguel is a lovely community that operates almost entirely cooperatively. Their main sources of income seem to be crafts and the products of the manioc plant. Manioc is more than just a pantry staple here, as virtually every meal involves manioc in some form. The farofa that we sprinkle over most of our food comes from manioc, as does every form of tapioca that we eat. It is cooked into soups, including one of our favorites to say: tacacá. To visit the manioc-processing hut in São Miguel is like visiting a historic reenactment of a 19th century U.S. town. They hand-process the roots of the plant to grind it, cook it, dry it, and prepare it for consumption.

The town is made up of dirt roads and paths, with a few horses or other work animals (usually oxen) trundling along sometimes. Motorized vehicles are rarely visible, though we are told that buses run along the messy roads outside of the main cities to connect these various communities to the larger commercial site of Santarém.

There is a clinic in the town that looks pretty clean and efficient, even if small. There are satellite dishes to be seen, but they are all part of the telephone network and have little to do with other forms of electronic communications. Occasionally we see solar panels that power some portion of a community (usually the clinic, the post office, or the school), but this particular town did not have any.

What this community DID have that fascinated all of us was a family with a pet monkey. The monkey was like another child in the family, except that when we saw it, it was tied to a tree. Apparently it is not always on a leash, but when big groups like ours come through, the family is more careful. The matron of the family was quite proud of the monkey and told us that it was not only vaccinated, but also baptized. We each had a chance to hold the pet if we wanted and to snap a picture with it. Ana was, as usual, the favorite, as the monkey got very attached to her very quickly and was reluctant to let her leave.

We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the monkey and the rest of the community and headed off for another bath in the river. We actually carry our toiletries to the edge of the water, go in wearing swimsuits, float our shampoo beside us, and wash our hair, shave, and lather up to feel cleaner. Though we know that the water is polluted, it definitely makes us feel better. It is, admittedly, a bit odd to bathe all together like this, but no one seems too troubled by that issue.

At the end of the day we needed to cover quite a bit of territory to set ourselves up for tomorrow’s early morning hike through the rain forest. We thus spent several hours on the boat trying to make it to the village called Jamaraquá so that we could wake up and meet our guides by 7:00 a.m. We’ve gotten used to moving with the daylight now, so that hour won’t be terribly difficult to face.

And now for our final honored participant! Today’s Purple Biker will hereby be known as the Supreme Ruler of the Order of the Purple Bike. Though everyone on this trip has far exceeded expectations (even their own), no one can surpass today’s honoree: Ana Ahnen. As a native Brazilian, Ana has demonstrated an easy comfort in adapting to an entirely new environment (even for her, as the northern region of Brazil might as well be an entirely different country from her native region in the south). She has been our unofficial translator, backing up Jesse at all times and sometimes leading her own group when we need to divide up. She is beloved by the children we’ve been working with and she is also loved dearly by all of us. Thus, now and for all time, at least symbolically, Ana will ride the Purple Bike. Congratulations, Ana, and all of the members of the Order!

We spent the morning fishing for these piranhas, which we ate for dinner. Yummy!

Within a community we found a family who domesticated a monkey!

This community makes money by weaving reeds into bracelets from the rainforest; first they must cook them to get the desired light brown color.

The dominant religion in Brazil is Catholicism; a church like this one is found in most communities.

This giant dragonfly jumped on Erik before landing on Marcia’s sweatshirt.

A local from the community making a craft.
Kids from a local community on the banks of the Amazon river.

A contraption used to squeeze water out of the manioc root.

A pet monkey at a local community.

Our boat and home for 3 days.

A pet monkey that we all got to hold and take pictures of.

A local woman talking to us about her pet monkey.

Starting at a young age, the children prepare to fish using nets.

An example of homes built by the local community

Amazon 2009: Day Eighteen (Thursday, January 22)

2009-01-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Paz.

We awoke this morning on a riverfront beach outside the community of Urrucureá. Among other things, we immediately learned that we are quite a loud bunch of people. As it turns out, the entire community was quite aware that a boatload of U.S. Americans had arrived in the night. Our loud voices and laughter carried across the water and shattered the usual quiet that reigns supreme after dark in this area.

As we mentioned before, the communities out here have very little access to electricity. Most have a central generator that provides power for a maximum of two hours in a given day. Thus, when darkness falls, the day ends. When the sun rises, the day begins. This entire concept is pretty foreign to us as U.S. Americans based on the lives that we normally live.

No one was particularly perturbed by the fact that we made our presence known so obviously (except maybe some of us who were disturbed by the noise inside our own boat), but it was an important cultural lesson for us to notice that sound itself can be oppressive. In fact, we have only recently noticed that apart from the music and parties identified with Brazil, this culture is actually relatively quiet. We rarely hear someone call out across the room or the yard to get someone else’s attention. We almost never hear car horns honk. Even when we approach a friend’s house, the appropriate move is to clap our hands softly out front to get the occupants’ attention. Though SMC groups have been to Brazil several times before, no one ever made this important observation on any of those trips.

Before continuing on a description of our time in the community, our readers might be interested to hear about our sleep in the hammocks. Honestly, most of us struggled a bit, but everyone managed to sleep eventually. Alec, who is 6’6”, probably struggled more than anyone. The basic method that helps people actually sleep in a hammock is to position one’s body diagonally so that the body is essentially parallel to the ground and not in the “V” position usually identified with lounging in a hammock. If Alec achieved this position, though, he would take up much more than his share of the deck space. He decided right away to give up on the hammock entirely and put a cushion on the deck instead.

In Urrucureá we took a long walk through the rain forest to find our way to a huge river-fed lake called Lago Grande. The edge of the lake was a reed-filled marsh that also contained one of our new favorite things: Piranhas! We busted out the fishing poles again and baited them with red meat. Our guides taught us how to simulate a sense of distress at the top of the water then drop our bait into the middle of the ripples we created. By the end of the session, we had caught 10 piranhas! (We are not going to admit here how many of them were caught by our guides and how many were caught by us.) A few of them were small, so we only kept four. The small number didn’t disappoint us at all, as we were stoked to have caught any at all. (Marie and Joey might have been a little less enthused, as they got stuck babysitting the freshly-caught flesh-eaters inside their canoe. They survived the trauma.)
We walked back through the rain forest with our fish, stopping along the way to marvel at the huge plants (especially palms and ferns), the weird bugs, and the highlight of the hike for some of us: monkeys! A few of us heard something drop from a tree and stopped to look. We finally noticed a big monkey way up high and lured it closer to us with little noises that we might use to call a cat. Once we moved on from that monkey, another set of four started following us down the path at a safe distance so that we could see them and watch them, but they were never terribly close to us. We returned to the boat pretty hot and tired, so we decided to find a spot to swim and bathe in the river.

We took our fresh catch to a beautiful undeveloped beach and added in the two huge fish that we mentioned in our post about the food run before the boat trip. We went all along the shallows with our fishing nets, but didn’t catch any more to add to our feast. Our captain, Rionaldo, dug a pit in the sand and set up a beachfront barbecue with a bonfire on the side. He and our cook, Louro, tended to the fish for more than an hour to get it to a state of utter perfection. We ate until we were stuffed, then ate a little bit more. Some of us washed dishes and got settled into our hammocks while others sat around the bonfire telling ghost stories.

We just can’t believe how little we have around us and how happy it makes us feel to be here doing just this. Apparently, we are adjusting to the quiet that is around us. Some of us have even pulled the ever-present headphones out of our ears to embrace the quiet just a little bit more. A lot is happening for us: in our heads, our hearts, our spirits, our minds, our bodies, and even more. We look forward to finding out how much of this new perspective sticks when we return home.

Today’s newest member of the Order of the Purple Bike is Felicia Zhuang. Felicia was supposed to ride the bike a couple of days ago, but when Alec saved Shana from the dangerous hammock-flip, he took the honor. Felicia has been a trooper in Brazil in many important ways. For one, she braved some ladder work while we were painting that went on for hours and hours. Secondly, she overcame a legitimate case of arachnophobia (fear of spiders) by coming to Brazil at all. Finally, she was so excited about the whole hammock thing on the boat that it was a joy to behold. She was giddy about the hammocks, snapping pictures before everyone awoke just to capture the experience. Yay, Felicia!

After our unsuccessful piranha fishing, we feasted on the fish that our boat drivers caught.

This picture is a little deceiving because what you don’t know is that my camera is zoomed in completely. Our gator friend is actually a little baby.

Just for scale please notice that the fish are almost as large as the machete in the background.

We had a fish bbq on the beach.

Taking a bath in the river.

The fish we bought at the market was cooked on open fire for our luau-style dinner.

Just one example of the beautiful sunsets we got to see during our boat trip along the Tapajos River.

A picture of the beach we stopped at to have a luau-style dinner complete with bonfire and scary stories.

Evaldo, taking a quick break while spear diving for dinner.

A picture of our boat at one of the beaches that we stopped at along the river.

This is a view of the boat during sunset.

This is our barbeque pit where we cooked our delicious fish.

Katie collecting wood for our bonfire.

This is Evaldo, our first mate on the boat.

Amazon 2009: Day Seventeen (Wednesday, January 21)

2009-01-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

Today’s slideshow was produced by the team Dar Um Jeito.

Our riverboat trip was slightly delayed, as last night’s rain never stopped. We got up at 5:45 anyway, ready to get on the boat no matter what. We packed our things, gathered them all for delivery to the boat, then learned that it was fruitless to leave so early when it was raining so hard. We all went back to bed. When we awoke again, our bags had been delivered to the boat for us and all we had to do was walk to the river and embark. A slight rain continued to fall, but we were undaunted.

We dropped the first stop from our trip, which was supposed to be a visit to a community east of Santarém on the Amazon. There would have been no good way to tour the area in the pouring rain, so we just skipped that step and headed west (upriver) instead. Before we had gotten anywhere, we were already exploding with excitement because the captain told us that we were about to go fishing . . . for PIRANHAS!

We headed to a small community called Santa Ana, where a long staircase led to a small town that was almost entirely dependent on the river for its survival. Groceries were being delivered by boat as we arrived, and we even docked next to the grocery boat and walked across it to get into the town. Young men were carrying huge loads up the long staircase, mostly supporting them with their heads. We were huffing and puffing just to walk up the staircase itself and we could scarcely imagine trying to conquer it with two cases of soft drinks or beer on our heads.

The community at the top of the stairs was simple and beautiful. The dirt roads were mostly used by people walking from place to place, though a few work animals also pulled wagons along them. A lovely church stood open in the center of it all, so we stepped inside to check it out. The people of the community were friendly and happy to see us and it took us a few minutes to realize that one reason they were so happy was that they, too, like so many other Brazilians we’ve met, are VERY excited about Barack Obama. Their town has a generator that produces electricity for only about an hour and a half a day. They used their hour and a half yesterday to watch our new President’s inauguration.

One man approached Marie and Shawny gushing and offering thanks, saying the word “Obama” every fifth word or so. All of us were stunned at the level of interest and enthusiasm that we encountered. We also, realized, though, that when we are out in the world, we are held accountable for the actions of our nation, no matter what our personal politics might be. None of us had really faced the relationship between our own lives and our country’s foreign policy quite so directly before. Fortunately, most people that we meet are giddy and hopeful about the U.S. at the moment, so those are the feelings that we got to bask in today.

Once we left Santa Ana, a very small number of us had our first confirmed sighting of a pink dolphin. It leapt up right in front of our boat, but only a few of us were out front when it happened. Those people screamed and called out for everyone else, but the dolphin didn’t surface again when we were looking. We’ve seen lots of other gray dolphins, but the pink ones are the ones we really want to get a glimpse of.

We also took turns going into the march in the dingy attached to our big boat so that we could scope out some ENORMOUS lily pads that are just called “The Big Leaves” here (but in Portuguese). The Big Leaves are endangered, so we counted ourselves as lucky that we got to canoe right next to them and check them out.

Pretty soon, we stopped to do our fishing for the day. We found a place that our captain knew would have piranhas and we baited our hooks with red meat and fished away. Unfortunately, we fished and fished and fished but didn’t catch ONE piranha today! Our captain said that they either bite or they don’t and that therefore patience would not pay off. We surrendered, but only for today.

We moved on to another river beach to park and sleep for the night. We stretched out our hammocks and lined up on both decks of the boat to learn whether hammocks are a viable place to sleep or not. The rain had come and gone all day, so we dropped the tarps on the boat to help us stay dry if it rained in the night. (It did.)

As mentioned already, our purple biker today was Joey Cacciatore.

First community we visited off the amazon river.

Family living on the edge of the amazon river.

River leading away from the main river to a small community off the river.

Kids shying away from us as we looked on the community.

Couple in the community who greeted us as we walked through the community.

The rainforest is home to numerous species of plants, most of which are new to us.

Instead of spending all day behind a desk, this fisherman spends his work days in the Amazon River.

Our boat has become home to many large creatures including this large grasshopper.

This small community off the Amazon River is home to less than 100 families.

Lotus flowers grow from the harshest of conditions, yet always rise to the surface.

None of us know what lay ahead of us, but if it looks like this we are happy to continue down the path to find out.

if these lily pads were not green they could easily be mistaken for bathtubs.

Franklin was seeing the white light as he came face to face with Margeaux.

Never have I ever seen a bird this blue.

Amazon 2009: Day Sixteen (Tuesday, January 20)

2009-01-24T18:51:00.000-08:00

Today’s slideshow was produced by the team Bota Fogo. (Still to come....)

We have returned from our boat trip and we are all intact! (Well, actually, we have lots of mosquito bites and lots of band-aids for a number of reasons, but we are NOT complaining). We’ll move backwards a bit to catch our readers up on all that has happened since we last wrote. By the way, because of our inability to charge our technology on the boat, we reduced our load by producing slideshows this week instead of videos. Today’s presentation by Bota Fogo preceded the boat trip, but they had to finish things later so we had them do a slide show too.

The group called Bota Fogo (named after a soccer team in Rio) got up very early this morning to join Jesse, our boat captain (Rionaldo), and our cook both on the boat and at camp (Louro) to purchase all of the food that we needed to move around out on the river for four days straight. Because we were to visit rather primitive communities, we knew that we could not acquire any extra goods along the way (there are no Safeways there), so we had to really be on top of things. The group went to a local market to buy fish and produce and then went to a large grocery store to get everything else. Among other fascinating purchases, they bought two fish that (combined) weighed 45 pounds.

Once they finished with the purchases of food for the boat, Bota Fogo and the team called As Onças both had some time to do some quick shopping, with their priority being the purchase of hammocks to use as beds on the boat. The riverfront is lined with boats that are strung with hammocks and such boats are the main mode of transportation between Santarém and other river towns. We were excited to join into this tradition and everyone got a big kick out of selecting his or her hammock and then bargaining over the price with the market vendors.

The other two teams, Dar Um Jeito and Paz, went straight to the worksite where they accomplished a huge amount of labor, far beyond what seemed possible for one morning. They hung the roof over the new deck, they installed a custom gate on the opening of the deck, and they finished painting everything on the deck and building. We thought there would be some finishwork to do after this morning’s shift, but these two strong teams (along with the hard work of the other two teams the evening before) guaranteed that there is no unfinished business on the job we set out to do.

In the afternoon, we followed up on an invitation from the local university to present some of our work to an audience there. Each team had selected photos and/or video to present and Jesse helped to translate things so that we could communicate with the sizable audience that showed up (maybe 50 people?). The audience was kind and attentive and their questions at the end indicated to us just how important U.S. foreign policy is to other parts of the world. We answered questions about the international interest in the Amazon, the state of the world under U.S. President George W. Bush, and the future prospects of the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, whose inauguration many of the audience members had just watched. (We, unfortunately, missed the inauguration because we couldn’t get access to a TV with the proper channel.)

After our speaking gig, we hit the basketball courts again and generated quite a bit of enthusiasm once more. A few people from the university even joined us down at the courts to see what was going on. We won a game and lost a game, again because of the refs’ tendency to call any physical contact a foul. Throughout the game, like most evenings here, there was lightning flashing in the sky out in the distance. This time, though, the clouds started looking a little more ominous close to us, so we all started gathering up our things and heading into cabs for rides home. The downpour that hit simultaneous to our departure was awesome. Never have we seen rain that was so . . . WET.

The streets started to flood and some cabs couldn’t make it down the lane where we stay. Some of us had to walk in through knee deep water, one of us lost a flip-flop forever (Shana), and all of us have a story of a tropical storm that we will never forget. Once we all got home we organized for our river trip, hoping that the weather would break soon.

As mentioned already, our purple biker today was Alec Tappin.

A Santarem license plate.

The poster put up advertising our presentation at the university.

Laundry drying in the side yard of a house.

A man selling fish on the street in Santarem.

Chickens that we saw on a porch on our walk through Santarem after our presentation at the university.

Sophie took a beautiful picture of the clouds, shortly before a monsoon-like storm.

Team Dar Um Jeito speaking to Santarem college students about their experiences thus far during the trip.

Joe helping Chris get the last pieces of wood on the veranda while the final touches are being applied.

Looking through the newly painted latis boards, we get a shot of the ladies finishing up the painting on the veranda.

Precious moments with the local children.

Nonverbal communication has become key for Lucas in communicating with us.

Walking through town.

The beautiful clouds of the storm that we later got stuck in. Looks can be deceiving. Later that evening, we were waste high in rain water, trying to get home.

We finally finished the construction on the boat house!

Out of the Office -- HA!

2009-01-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

When you read this we will be on a boat on the Amazon, first going downriver a bit to visit a community there, then up into the tributaries of the Tapajós River, where we will visit other developing communities and go on a hike in the rain forest. Our website will be updated (we hope) on Saturday, January 24. Sorry we didn't finish whole blogposts for today yet. We will post them on Saturday.

Huge day today, including finishing our work on the construction site, to everyone's amazement (including ours). Speaking gig at the local university, more basketball on the banks of the Amazon, a HUGE tropical storm that flooded the streets and our camp (everyone's okay), and packing for our river voyage. Please forgive us for being out of touch.

Today's purple biker was Alec Tappin, who saved Shana Dhillon from an almost-painful fall off of a hammock. (Can you imagine after all we've done in the past few weeks if our biggest injury was from a hammock accident?) Alec's cat-like reflexes (maybe he's been watching his own beloved cat, Puma) saved the day, as Shana tipped toward a full flip, but he caught her and righted her before most people even realized anything was happening. Alec is a treat to have around no matter what, as he is about a foot taller than most Brazilians. He is quite a spectacle (and very handy when we are trying to put up a new roof!) He's also just a wonderful, lovable person, so we are blessed to have him among us.

Tomorrow's Purple Biker: Joey Cacciatore. He was AMAZING on the basketball court tonight! Everywhere the opponents let the ball fly, Joey was there to snatch it away. His great athleticism tonight makes him worthy of the Purple Bike, along with his overall good humor and his easy comfort when working with the kids. Thanks, Joey!

Amazon 2009: Day Fifteen (Monday, January 19)

2009-01-19T17:52:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team As Onças.

Our morning began with a pouring rainstorm beating on our roofs even before we awoke. We called a thirty-minute delay and stayed in bed, then realized that the sky was clearing so it was time to get up to go to work. All of us went to the worksite this morning because we had construction work to finish and we had the kids to teach and entertain.

Our slightly late arrival meant that the kids were very antsy once we got there. They were so eager for us to appear that we could easily get them to gather around and repeat some lessons from other days, use our new “English phrases” flash cards, and then get them running around all over the sand without much persuasion.

At the same time, a smaller group of us separated off and helped our construction supervisor, Seu João, build a framework to drop roof tiling over the new deck. Once this new roof is installed, the kids will be able to gather outside but still out of the sun. Perfect!

The construction practices here have us all pretty stumped, as virtually every wood joint is accompanied by a hand-hewn notch. That is, every time two boards come together, they take this 19th-century-looking tool that is sort of a backwards-curved hatchet or something like that and they knock a divot out of it to make the two boards fit together like Lincoln Logs. Our new power saw doesn’t help all that much in this task, so we are all learning to use the strange new/old tool, along with chisels and hammers to make things go the way our hosts want them to go. Chris Verrips, our SMC-based construction expert, is pretty fascinated with it all. He’s taught João a thing or two, but he has learned much more than he has taught.

Along with today’s construction work, we needed to keep on painting to get this building looking as nice as it can before we leave. A small crew kept working its way around the building for the umpteenth time, as the paint really soaks into the wood and there is apparently no such thing as primer up here. The got a solid next coat all over the white part before we hurried off at lunch time to catch ourselves on Brazilian TV!

We hustled up to Georgete and Jaime’s house, where they had placed a TV in their entryway for us all to see. We all packed in there on the floor and eagerly awaited our big debut. When we first arrived, we were all sitting up and leaning forward, laughing and talking and trying to keep track of the news as it unfolded. As time went by, we began to lean back, then slump down, then lie down, then fall asleep as a full 56 minutes went by before our story hit. We all popped back to life and oohed and ahhed over the pictures they showed, but we really couldn’t tell what they were saying about us. By the time it ended about 4 minutes later, we were so tired and hungry that we just hurried back to camp to eat lunch (really great fried whole small fish) and we didn’t even talk about the TV program again. We still haven’t gotten the web address at which some of you might be able to watch it, but if we do, we will post it here.

After lunch most of us skipped siestas to get back to work. Two teams were sent into town to buy their hammocks for our upcoming boat trip and to do other shopping and errands that they need to do before we leave. The rest of us hit the worksite HARD and got more done in a four- (or so) hour period that we imagined possible. When we finally knocked off, it was almost dark and a rainstorm seemed to be bearing down on us (though it never caught us). Once we got back to camp, we realized that we had spent more energy than we actually possessed and that we were all REALLY tired, even though we were content with our accomplishments.

The work group came back and admired the new hammocks that the shoppers bought, along with some of the souvenirs and gifts that they had found. In the morning, the groups will trade places and today’s shoppers will work and the workers will shop. Even with these breaks, it seems likely that we will complete the parts of the job that we expected to finish before we leave on the boat.

We’ll tell more about our upcoming boat trip tomorrow, then we will “go dark” for a few days while we are incommunicado in the Amazon.

Our Purple Biker for today is: Marie Cacciatore! Based on how much she is doing for our group, we could easily have her ride the purple bike everyday. Marie is a fabulous contributor to everyone’s experience here. For today, though, it seemed clear that Marie is our most transformed group member of this trip. She has blossomed as our top visualist (not including Marcia) due to her excellent photography and her impressive art skills. She is also a great support person who is an informal therapist to many people along the way. Further, she has shown how gutsy she is on a number of occasions, most notably when she became our power saw expert a couple of days ago. We’ll all be interested to see if people back home notice a difference when she returns. For today, though, we’ll just let her enjoy the purple bike. Congratulations, Marie!

Work hard and play hard!

Making progress on the porch.

Margeaux teaches one of the children English.

Domiciano and Cassidy take a fall after spinning around in circles.

The kids are always enthusiastic to help with the painting whenever they can.

Diana found a grasshopper!

Shana uses the homemade flashcards to teach one of our youngest students English.

Seu Joao, perched atop the latticework, preparing the posts for the roof.

Finishing touches on the house.

Seu Joao measuring out the next balance beam for the roof extension.

kids enjoying a cooling snack during a hot day.

Josialda taught us some of her karate skills.

Enjoying downtime in between games and construction.

Dar Um Jeito relaxes in our newly purchased hammocks that we will use on the boat trip.

Amazon 2009: Day Fourteen (Sunday, January 18)

2009-01-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Paz.

What a day! What a day! What a day! We experienced so many totally unique facets of Brazilian culture today that we can barely express what all happened. We started our day at the worksite, with a couple of us finishing the facing on the deck and most of us working with the kids out on the beach. The TV station came as planned and their presence made the kids pretty excited (us too!).

The television folks interviewed Jesse in Portuguese to get the whole lowdown on who we are and what we are doing. Then they talked to Ana and found out about our work with the kids and the agency. Then they talked to Shawny about why we would do a course like this one (even asking the loaded question: “Isn’t it the government’s job to help poor kids?”). All of our interviewees just gushed about how lucky we are to be here and what a privilege it is to work with these kids in this neighborhood. They took lots of footage of us doing our thing, so it will be interesting to find out what shows up on TV tomorrow at lunchtime.

After the TV crew left, a small group showed up to demonstrate the art of Capoeira ( a Brazilian martial art/dance with music and singing) for the kids and for us. We got to hear them play the berimbau (a one-stringed instrument that is hit with a small stone in different places to change the tone) and we got to see some of their moves. A few of us got to give it a try. All of us look forward to next Sunday, when an even bigger group will return.

Georgete let us know that she didn’t want to return to the worksite in the afternoon and that neither should we. We thought we might go into town and do some wandering and shopping, but we soon learned that few shops would be open and we wouldn’t be able to accomplish much. We had team meetings instead and did a bit of video shooting at our camp.

Then we went into town in the early evening to watch a karate demonstration by our teenage friend Josialda and the other students from her karate class. We waited on the steps overlooking the rivers for the event to begin and we all felt really happy that we had connected with someone in such a way that we were the guests she invited to see her show off her skills. We were like proud parents or older siblings in the audience, going particularly nuts whenever she was showing off her moves and whispering to each other that she was clearly the best of them all. She was giddy (and nervous) because we were there and we were thrilled to be a part of it.

We got an additional thrill when we realized we had a chance to hit up the highly competitive pickup basketball games that occur on a riverside court near where Josialda’s class performed. Five of our guys (Alec, Erik, Joe, Joey, and Rob) took on a very tough team of Brazilian players and lost the first game (they play short intervals until the first team scores 11 points, then they switch players) exclusively on foul shots. It turns out that they call almost any physical contact a foul (falta) and free throws are handed out rather liberally.

In the second game, though, our strong team caught on to the fact that they were spending all of their time trying to draw fouls from us. Once we had them figured out, we had them beat. We calmly avoided any reactions, we kept our distance, and we scored and scored. Joe was draining threes, Rob and Joey were hustling on defense, Alec was dominating in assists, and Erik scored the winning basket. The rest of us were hanging over the low fence surrounding the court screaming, cheering, and offering advice to our players.

We didn’t even notice at first that a pretty big crowd had gathered (compared to the numbers of people who are usually watching that court). We also didn’t notice how many people were taking pictures of us both on and off the court. Once we noticed all of these things, the whole game only got even more fun. We hooted and hollered, their fans hooted and hollered, and our players just kept smiling and avoiding fouls. It was a blast. And somehow, we succeeded in resisting any urge to start chanting “USA! USA! USA!”

As we cleared the court after a third game (a somewhat disappointing loss that seemed to be due to bad officiating, but, hey, we lost, so of course we’re going to say that) kids and others were coming up to shake our players’ hands and take their pictures. One guy took a whole series of pictures to post on his blog. For whatever reason, the chance to play a strong U.S. American team was a real thrill, even if people were only watching. We learned that those guys play each other every single day, so we’re not surprised now about how happy they were to see some new and interesting opponents.

While we were still thoroughly jazzed about the whole basketball experience, we decided to find a local samba school that we heard would be practicing for Carnaval. Though this Mardi Gras-like festival is identified with Rio de Janeiro, it happens all over the country, including here. Different groups of musicians practice for months in advance to lead parades through the city. We went looking for one of those groups and found them just as they were leaving their indoor practice area literally to take their show on the road. We met a big truck with a big amplifier on the street, being ridden by samba singers and musicians and followed by lots of dancers. No on was decked out in feathers or anything, they were just rocking out.

We followed the group for a couple of blocks, danced with them in the street where they stopped, then went on our merry way. Over and over we said: “Now THIS is Brazil!” What a day! What a day! What a day!

And before we sign off, we should let our readers know that the newest member of the Order of the Purple Bike is: Sophie Damerel! A few days ago, Sophie’s team was granted an afternoon off to run errands, rest, or do some shopping. Sophie (and Mercedes, whose group also had a break) decided to go to the worksite anyway. Not only did she work through a possible break, but also she stayed until the very last shift of that segment, helping to clean paintbrushes and put away materials. This set of actions is actually typical of Sophie, so it’s a bit weird to give her an award for doing what she does all the time anyway. Still, we are very lucky (and happy) to have her in our group and today we acknowledged how fortunate we are by asking her to ride the purple bike. Congratulations, Sophie!

This is one of the homemade kites that the children make themselves.

This was a demonstration for the group of a Brazilian traditional art.

Cassidy learning the basic moves of Capoiera.

Georete explaining the technique of using color sand to make art.
Ana being interviewed for the local tv station about our work here in Santarem.

Josialda, one of our students, warms up for her karate demonstration.

Volleyball is a favorite activity between lessons on the beach.

Sophie and Katie tried avocado ice cream popsicles for the first time. Though they sound strange, they are pretty much amazing.

Today, we used sand in our art with the kids.

even though words might fail us the fist pound is always a good way to make friends.

They might not know much English but Josialda knows how to let us know what she is feeling.

one of the capoiera performers in mid move… impressive.

one of the boys from our work site surveying the area from his lookout post.

the boys challenged some Brazilians to a game of B ball and were victorious.

Amazon 2009: Day Thirteen (Saturday, January 17)

2009-01-17T19:17:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Dar Um Jeito.

Today was our last big push at the worksite before our big TV appearance tomorrow. (Actually, we are supposed to appear on TV on Monday, but the filming will happen on Sunday.) We wanted the paint job on our building to be as far along as possible and we wanted to make the greatest possible progress on the covering for the deck. We succeeded on both fronts.

We split the group into two today, taking two teams to the worksite in the morning and leaving two teams at camp. The teams at camp had important work to do: prep some stills and video clips for a dvd that we will give to the TV station to use as they prepare their story about us and the organization with which we are affiliated. They want to incorporate some of our own impressions into the story that they prepare.

Those clips might also come in handy when we visit the main campus of the university who is providing our housing here in Santarém. We are speaking there on Tuesday in front of a mixed group of students, many of whom are specializing in education theory.

The groups that went to the worksite kicked things into high gear as they worked to finish the deck front and the paint job. The deck work is really frustrating, as the nails we use are a bit weak and the wood is really, really hard. Thus, it sometimes takes us ten or more nails to drive one all the way in. We are also having some serious logic problems on cutting the diagonal pieces that make the shape of the deck. Somehow, though, we overcame all of these obstacles and really made things change.

The paint crew overcame a pretty serious obstacle as well: rain. They started painting and it started raining. They toughed it out and kept painting, but the rain got tougher too. When they finally ran for cover, it seemed that painting might be off the agenda for the day. But just a few minutes later, the clouds parted, the hot Amazon sun broke through, and painting continued as planned.

Though we had gone to the site just to do construction work, our presence there meant that a whole lot of kids showed up wanting to play or learn. We offered both options. Marie headed up a crew that made some sweet little flashcards to help the kids learn conversations. They had notes about weather, emotions, food, etc. Pairs of us worked with three or four of them and they got really good at remembering and using their new English words.

Some of the rest of us decided to get in on their 2-liter cricket game, though none of us actually knew how to play. The language barrier did not prevent us from learning, though, and they were thrilled to yell and scream for us and at us to train us into following the rules. We went home late and exhausted but we were pleased with how much we had accomplished in one morning. We were also surprised to learn from the camp staff that another TV station had come by looking for us. We might have another day in front of the camera before we leave.

In the afternoon, the teams switched places and things continued. The afternoon construction and painting crews really got into a groove and took those jobs almost to completion. The paint crew had the heart-breaking experience of watching some of their fresh new paint peel when the tape was pulled, but some touchups tomorrow should solve that problem easily. The deck crew also found some new brain synapses and somehow overcame the difficulties that have stymied the crews before them. They almost finished that job too.

One difference in the afternoon crews’ experience was that the team called Dar Um Jeito (To Make a Way) did a follow up interview with the museum director that we met on Monday, Lourimar Leal. That team has decided to do one of its multimedia projects about Lourimar. (Special Note: one multimedia project per team will premier at our special presentation night on the SMC campus once we return. The date of that event is Tuesday, February 17. The event will be held in the Soda Center on the Saint Mary’s College campus at 7:00 in the evening. The event is free and open to the public.) Lourimar talked about his ancestors’ experiences with slavery, his own attempts to express his sense of liberation, and his dreams for Santarém’s future. He also offered the great favor of singing some of the songs that had been passed down through his family for generations. For those that were there it really seemed like the past itself was singing to us right in the courtyard of the museum.

We ended the night with another special treat: Brazilian ice cream. We picked only the funkiest flavors, like cupuaçú, açaí, coconut, tapioca, maracujá, graviola, and castanha. We won’t try to describe each one, but we will offer our hope that each of you gets to taste something nearly as good as that ice cream during your travels this week.

And today’s Purple Biker is: Rob Silva! As we noted a few days ago, Rob is a profuse projectile sweater and that distinction alone could have earned him purple bike status. Despite all of his perspiration, Rob still got a heat rash in the last few days and rather than opting out of work, he instead braved the hot Amazon days in long-sleeved shirts to protect himself. That, too, might have earned him the PB. As it turns out, though, he is also our bravest new speaker of Portuguese. He boldly carries on conversations that most of us wouldn’t attempt. Even though he doesn’t always have things quite right, our hosts and we appreciate his impressive efforts. Congratulations, Rob!

Working hard.

Someone gave Joe a baby.

Joe tearin it up.

Cassidy and Erik playing some sort of game that involved 2 bottles, 2 sticks and a ball.

Cassidy with all of her new friends.

The thinking spot on our porch. One of the best places to reflect on the day's happenings.
The fence near our worksite where some kids stand and observe us from afar.

Sleepy Zilly keeping the hammock warm for the next person.

Dona Maria sweeping the walkway in the afternoon sun.

This chair has become the chair where one waits to pounce on the hammock as soon as it is free.

Amazon 2009: Day Twelve (Friday, January 16)

2009-01-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Bota Fogo.

Note: Our internet connection has been so slow for the last two days that we got timed out every time we attempted to post pics, videos, and blog entries. Thanks for your patience. Thus, we are a bit behind as we post these on Saturday night in Brazil. (By the way, the name of the country in which we are working is actually spelled with an “s”: Brasil. Don’t be surprised if we get so used to seeing that “s” instead of a “z” that we seem to be misspelling it here or elsewhere once we return.) Anyway, back to the blog:

Today is Cassidy’s birthday! Even though we had a night away from camp playing pool yesterday, we still looked forward to having a nice dinner out tonight to celebrate that Cassidy has turned 22. Happy birthday, Cass!

In general, we eat in camp for just about every meal. (One exception was the recent lunch on the beach that included the fish with the big teeth. And for those of you who wrote in about our “joke,” those teeth were the REAL teeth of the fish itself. That picture was NOT a prank!) We are all very happy with our food here. We have fresh-squeezed juice from exotic fruits every morning, noon, and night, and nothing that we eat is processed (except for the Coca-Cola that a few people are sneaking in every once in awhile). Our cooks, Dona Maria and Louro, really have managed to tap all of our taste buds pretty well. We’re so happy with our food that we have asked Louro to accompany us on our boat trip so that we don’t have to be away from his cooking.

Our breakfasts usually consist of sliced meats and cheese, bread, juice, and some kind of homemade cake or donut. Sometimes we have eggs. We always have lots of fruit, including watermelon and papaya every day and then other things when they are available at the local market. One of our favorites is called “cupuaçú” (pronounced “coop-oo-wah-SOO”). It and manioc seem to be cooked into something at virtually every meal.

For the big meal of the day, lunch, we have fried chicken or fresh fish, along with beans and rice every day. We have beets or broccoli or squash almost every day. We also have dessert every lunch, whether it is cake, flan, or pudding made from cupuaçú. We also sprinkle everything with this crunchy yellow stuff called “farofa.” It is made from manioc flour and it adds a nice flavor and texture to everything we eat.

Dinner is usually a little lighter, sometimes including leftovers from lunch, sometimes incorporating some new facet like a special new bread or soup. Tonight, however, we went to dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in town in honor of Cassidy’s birthday. We tasted really interesting appetizers made of shrimp and fish, then had entrees that included slow-cooked beef, fish, chicken, or shrimp. We shipped in a chocolate birthday cake for Cass and the restaurant came up with trick candles (two “2s”) that wouldn’t stay blown out no matter how hard she tried. The restaurant owner was really happy to have us and even took our picture to post somewhere to show what a great place his restaurant is.

In general, the place counted as pretty posh compared to everything else we’ve seen in Santarém. We keep exclaiming over the fact that we see almost no one wearing business attire or seeming to worry about perfect hairstyles. There are no luxury cars to speak of and we even learned today that less that 10% of the population owns a car or motorcycle. The people who cook for us (Dona Maria, Louro, and another woman named Leinda) all come to work on the same motorcycle, owned by Louro. He brings Dona Maria to work then goes back to get Leinda.

There is no fancy part of town, according to a cab driver who drove us today. He says that most parts of Santarém are pretty much like the places we’ve already been, but that there is a section that will jump up quickly if the city becomes the capital of the state, as planned.

The section of the city where we work, Liberdade (lee-bair-DODGE-ee), is more rundown than most parts. Few people have telephones, most of them walk wherever they go, and the children with whom we work play games using found objects (like two-liter bottles and sticks for cricket) rather than any store-bought items. When one team handed out stickers to the kids the other day, they went crazy, sticking them all over their clothes and faces and saving some to take home to their siblings or parents.

We’re starting to think that we’d like to stay in touch with the kids after we leave. A few people are thinking of starting up a clothing drive to send some new things their way. We’d also like to get some pictures printed so they can have copies of some of the shots we’ve taken of them and us together. We know that those pictures will be precious to us so we think that they might appreciate them too. We’re not quite ready to think about leaving yet, though, so we’ll put off all of these plans until later.

On to purple bike news: today’s rider of the bicicleta roxa is Katie Leonard! Katie is our unofficial nurse (she’s a nursing student) and she has been very careful about making our first aid kit get to where it belongs every day. When she sat out a stint on the worksite the other day because she was a bit under the weather (she’s fine now), a couple of the rest of us found out what a pain it is to ride a bike with that big fat purple duffle bag on the back. She’s also a great team member all the way around, so we are happy to award her a ride in the purple seat. Congratulations, Katie!

Our pet cat taking a nap.

Alyssandra was excited to help with the work, and Tara was fine with that.

They were fascinated with the technology.

Celebrating Cassidy’s 22nd birthday.

The kids were eager to help us paint the boathouse.

Robert does laundry??? This is questionable.

Boy flying kite at the worksite.

Horses on the side of the road walking outside our camp roaming freely and eating grass.

Birthday Girl, Cassidy blows out her candles…at least tries to because little did she know, Jesse bought trick candles!

The gals with the birthday hats on posing for a picture.

Sophie trying to perfect her hammering.

Marie protecting her face from the harmful paint fumes. Safety first!

Joe and Joey practicing their hammering. They made up a game of who could hit the nail in quicker.
Jaime with the kids fresh out of the Tapajos River.

Day two of painting the boathouse. Cassidy, Sophie, and Shana are doing a great job with the messy blue.

Amazon 2009: Day Eleven (Thursday, January 15)

2009-01-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team As Onças.

Let’s start by talking weather and bugs. Those two areas seem to be the ones generating the most questions in our emails, so let’s see how to address them to help our readers understand. The first issue, weather, seems to center around the question of how hot it really is. As it turns out, the answer in “degrees Fahrenheit” is “not THAT hot.” We never really check the temperature during the day, but it probably never tops over 100 degrees, staying closer to 90 or so on most days. That’s hot, but in the U.S., that temperature is rarely an excruciating experience. At night, the temperature is usually about 80 or so degrees.

Apparently, though, that old phrase “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” really proves itself true in the Amazon. The air here is so thick and dense that sometimes it seems hard to use it to breathe. Once we’ve showered, we step back out onto our porch (where we REALLY live here) and we are immediately covered with a layer of heat and sweat and oiliness. Then we layer on insect repellant and sunscreen and the scumminess just increases. There is almost never a full five-minute period where our skin is just dry and feeling normal. Strangely, that basic greasy state of being IS now normal for us and we really don’t even complain about it anymore.

Today, though, we had a still, hot morning that broke into a siesta-time rain shower. After that, during our afternoon work time, the heat seemed more unbearable than ever. Our teammate Rob was actually, literally projectile sweating. He would bend over to measure a piece of lumber and his whole hatband would run like a waterfall. He says that he is “a sweater,” but this was crazy. We would work for ten minutes or so, head into the shade and guzzle water, then Rob would shoot it out of his pores and continue to work.

As for bugs, we are not nearly as grossed out as we expected to be by the somewhat enormous spiders, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes that we are encountering. We still gasp and run more than is reasonable when a big fat spider appears out from under a board or through a window. Our Brazilian hosts, though, are totally unperturbed and they just reach for the spiders and throw them out of the way. The mosquitoes, too, are not as intimidating as we thought they would be. They are sure everywhere, but we are so slathered with repellant that we don’t really have all that many bites considering how many of us there are and how long we’ve been here.

Anyway, our morning job today was split into two parts: working with the kids on English and recreation and working on the new deck of the building we’ve been working on. As for the kids, they got a huge kick out of doing the “Hokey Pokey,” and they didn’t even notice that we were substituting the English words that they had learned in “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” for the regular words of the song. We also did a few English lessons, including fruits and animals. They are still loving the idea of learning English, though they have really only mastered “Hello,” and “How are you?”

We, of course, want to help them learn English (as they have requested) because we want to help them learn and grow, but we also have particular interest in their progress because on Sunday we are all going to be on Brazilian TV. The local station has heard about us and about the program that Georgete runs, so they are spending the day with us on Sunday for a story that will run on Monday. We’re excited, especially because we think that the kids will love the idea of being on TV. We understand that the story will be posted online, so we will forward the link when we know it. Please be aware that if you click on it you will find it only in Portuguese.

The group that wasn’t playing with the kids worked on the deck of the building all day or else repainted the building. Georgete decided she wanted to put a lattice-type facing on the rail, maybe for safety reasons, maybe to discourage people from hanging out and sitting on the deck. The comedy of errors that came from mixing English and metric measuring systems with 45 degree angles was quite entertaining.

Beyond this comedic part of the construction, our awe for Jaime’s skills grew even more. We all struggled to make the small nails go through the hard wood as we hoped they would, but Jaime seemed like a zen master as he seemed to use the force of his will to make the nails obey him. More often than not, they did. As if we weren’t already impressed enough with Jaime’s greatness, we got another dose of it when, at the end of the day, he literally took the shirt off his back and tore it into rags for us to use to clean the messy paint off of ourselves with turpentine.

In the evening we decided to eat early and head down the street to play pool at a place that has been recommended by several of our local acquaintances. When we arrived just after 8:00 p.m., the place was pretty quiet, but it turned into a pretty happy, hopping spot not long after. We played pool with each other then took friendly challenges from the locals. It was all very calm and low-key, but really fun. We even learned that Marie and Joey are MAJOR pool sharks, as they spent a good deal of their youths perfecting their games. Most of us stayed up until just after midnight, so Shawny and Jesse worked it out for us to go to work a little later than usual on Friday, this time arriving at 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:00.

And as for the purple bike, the newest inductee into the “Ordem da Bicicleta Roxa” is Mercedes Matthews! She wins a day on the purple bike partially because she got locked in the bathroom of the boat on Tuesday, but more because she is always watching out for what work needs to be done (and, of course, she does it). One of our mottos is “Every job is everybody’s job,” and Mercedes exemplifies that spirit well. Congratulations, Mercedes!

Red light green light was one of the games we taught the kids.

An example of the giant bugs we live with here in Brazil.

Jaime teaches the older kids at the camp how to kayak.

Hokey Pokey was one of the other games we played with the kids.

The kids loves teaching us different Brazilian clapping games.

Shana learning quickly how to saw.

Our team, minus Katie, beginning the first half of the white paint on the new and improved boathouse.

The biggest spider we’ve ever seen. It was significantly bigger than a tube of chapstick.

Alesandra, one of our students, took our camera and capture this shot of the Tapajos River.

The kids are getting ready for their daily lessons. Today, we started with the Hokey Pokey.

The kids happily wait for our lesson to start.

Ana uses this downtime to hang out and relax on the hammock.

The girls smile for a picture during our night out taking a break after a hard day’s work.

The kids are so excited and full of energy that they tackle Erik full force.

Happy Birthday Cassidy! Zilly gives Cassidy a birthday kiss!

Amazon 2009: Day Ten (Wednesday, January 14)

2009-01-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Paz.

We quickly got back into the swing of things by getting to work on time this morning (we decided to get up 15 minutes earlier to help make this happen). Though our hosts weren’t quite ready to begin when we arrived, we were. We started going around to different kids and checking out their recollection of the English we had taught them. We mostly focused on greetings and the question: “How are you?” Little clumps of them picked it up quickly while others needed phonetics lessons on the words “thank you.”

When Georgete was ready to get started, we separated into two groups. Most of us went out onto the beach to build the tents and get ready to deliver our lesson plans. Today we planned to do two songs (The Counting Song and The Hokey Pokey) and two lessons in English (colors and clothing). Partway through The Counting Song, we could already tell that our students were pretty hyped up. Then we moved into our English lessons instead of going on to our next song. We managed to keep them together and focused on our lessons, but it was clear that they wanted to RUN!

So, Team Paz came to the rescue by setting up its calisthenics obstacle course. The kids had to run in pairs (representing the two teams into which we had divided them) and stop at different stations to do pushups and jumping jacks, among other things. Perhaps more than any other lesson we’ve done, this one was PERFECT for its moment. The kids were patient and courteous, they were really excited about the game, they ran really hard from station to station, and they cheered madly as each person returned to home base. We all cheered almost as hard.

We played Duck, Duck, Goose, and a game called Cat and Mouse. They taught us Portuguese words for all of the English in the game but we still had them play the games in English. (Of course, this decision meant that as we rode off for lunch, we heard calls of “Duck! Duck! Goose!” from the kids lining the dirt road.) We have all gotten a kick out of spending some of our college lives playing children’s games again.

Another group of the older kids separated off with Georgete to plant açai trees around the storage building. Açai is the fruit that is the basis of some new diet fads in the U.S., but here it is just a common fruit that people eat often. The main way to eat it is to smash it up into a substance somewhat like melting ice cream, sweeten it, then eat it a bowlful of it from a spoon. It is a great source of iron and other nutrients, so it will be nice for the kids and the program to have access to a steady supply of açai once the seedlings mature. We didn’t find out today how long it will take for the plants to bear fruit.

The rest of our group got busy with the building itself, demolishing the back wall in short order (carefully, though, so we could salvage as much wood as possible) and then rebuilding it. A few of the students who were on the construction job had never knocked a wall out of a building before (no matter how sturdy), so doing it for the first time was quite a rush.

Equally fun was rebuilding the wall using hand tools almost exclusively. The one exception was the small power saw that we bought to help cut the wood. It is of a familiar brand name, Makita, but it is so small that it looks like a toy. It saves us lots of work, though, so we don’t mind. Chris trained a couple of people on how to use the saw and they became a virtual lumber mill. We had two different sizes of boards that all had to be cut at 45 degree angles, so we would measure and yell out “Fat 310” and the crew would know just what to do. By the end of the day, the wall we knocked out was rebuilt much better than before.

As for that “310” up there, it is a metric measurement, which has been a constant source of confusion for us. We keep saying the number on the tape, then asking, “is that centimeters or millimeters or what?” Of course our Brazilian hosts always use the metric system, but few of us have ever gotten the hang of it. We keep switching back and forth: “Bring me an 8 inch board cut to 291 centimeters.” Maybe by February we will catch on.

Speaking of the metric system, we are guessing that a certain subset of our readership out there might be better versed in the metric system than we are. More specifically, we could probably use some of Miss Anderson’s (Shawny’s sister’s) sixth graders from Happy Hollow Elementary School in West Lafayette, Indiana, on our measuring team. They probably know their way around the metric system better than we do. Each of the Happy Hollow students wrote letters to each of our students before the trip began. We just got our letters when we were out on the boat yesterday.

The Happy Hollow students have some questions for us, so we will answer them here:

Q: How big was the anaconda?
A: Happily, we didn’t see an anaconda. We hear that they can be 18 feet long.

Q: Please introduce yourselves in each video so we can get to know you.
A: It takes a long time to put together our short videos. We probably won’t remember to do this. Sorry.

Q: How does it feel to be compared to Barack Obama??
A: Joe is not in the room right now, so we can’t answer. Maybe he will say it in tomorrow’s video.

Q: More Zilly! What kind of cat is she? What will happen to her when you leave?
A: What kind of cat is Zilly? A SKINNY cat! Did you see her bones? She seems much fatter already since we’ve been here. Another guy here seems to like her too, so hopefully he will give her attention when we go back to the U.S. Several of us have contemplated smuggling her back with us, but we think we will leave her to hunt bugs in the bushes around our camp.

Q: We love the "Order of the Purple Bike!"
A: We love it too! All day every day people praise each other’s work by saying, “That might be worth a ride on the purple bike!”

And speaking of the purple bike, the newest inductee into the “Ordem da Bicicleta Roxa” is Shana Dhillon! Shana jumped up and ran around collecting laundry off the line when the rain started a couple of days ago, and we had such a back-up of worthy recipients that we are only getting around to recognizing Shana now. She is always a person who is trying to see what others need. She offers to get first aid items when someone is tending to a blister or sunburn and she does more than her share of work on-site. The Purple Bike belonged to her today! Congratulations, Shana!

Ana helps us get the kids ready to start the day.

The building across from our work site shows the general condition of the riverfront in the neighborhood where we work.

The children taught us how to play “Cat and Mouse.”

Marcia chases Joe around the circle in the game of “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Even with a camera around her neck, she can still catch him.

Alec takes a break from the hand-saw to help one of the kids practice his English.

After playing around in the hot sun, the kids needed some water to refresh their body and mind.

Shana and Margeaux repaint the side wall of the new and improved boathouse.

Chris trained Marie on how to use the power-saw and she became a real expert today.

The two boys relaxing in the shade from the hot sun.

The two boys again, smiling (we think), for the camera. They came to watch and observe the hard work everyone had put in on the building.

Mercedes, Shawny and Alec working together to put up the boards on the building.

Here's a picture of the wall replacement job mid-morning.

A fantastic group puts on the finishing touches of the wall. It was ripped down and built up ten times better in one day.

Jaime standing tall on the reinforced building, proud of all the work that has been done.

Amazon 2009: Day Nine (Tuesday, January 13)

2009-01-13T17:51:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Dar Um Jeito.

Today was technically a day off, but we still bounced out early to get started on our day of exploration on our way to a local beach called Alter do Chão. We walked out of our gate at 7:40 just as we planned and arrived at the docks of the Port of Santarém exactly as the clock struck 8. It might be the first time we’ve managed to make it to an appointment as scheduled in this whole trip. Maybe we can make a habit of it.

As it turned out, the place that we arrived was not where our captain was, but we managed to call him and have him bring the boat to us rather than us hiking over to where he was. Our captain, Rionaldo, owns a triple decker boat similar to the ones that SMC groups have chartered on previous trips upriver. This boat, the Marco André, has a nice kitchen area and a spacious split level deck that left plenty of room for people to be in the sun or the shade, whichever they preferred.

Some people napped and some people talked, but all of us were awed by the magnificence of the entire river basin. We were mostly on the Tapajós River today, which splits from the Amazon right by Santarém. The size and scale of the river cannot be described. We said over and over again that this thing around us just could NOT be a river, as it is too vast. All along the shore were lovely villages and small beaches, along with long stretches of undeveloped land.

We stopped at one abandoned beach that had apparently been a gathering place some years gone by. Now it has a few standing refreshment huts, but with no refreshments or customers inside. Its sand is soft and white, and it would feel great on your feet if it didn’t get so hot that it almost burns. Thus, we ran from shady spot to shady spot to cross a low hill and get to a lagoon on the other side.
We all hopped right into the water to cool off, then walked down the shore to a long sandbar that arcs far out into the shallows of the river. The tranquility of the moment ended only because we decided to move on up the river to the beach where we really meant to spend our time today.

Our chosen beach for the day was the well-known (but not crowded) Alter do Chão. It is a wonderful river beach with a cute little town nearby. There are food huts and cabana boys and umbrellas to be rented, but it is not posh in any way. In fact, we ordered our lunch of fish and chicken and waited over two hours before it arrived. Once we had eaten it, though, we had no complaints, because it was fabulous. We tasted other beach snacks, including pachoca, which consists of ground/powderized roasted peanuts and a little bit of sugar. It looks like a bag of sand on the tray but it tastes fabulous.

After lunch, a few of us went into town to walk around, while others rested on the beach. One other group took advantage of the totally-out-of-regional-character “banana boat” ride. It is really designed for children and is pulled behind a speedboat until it dumps off its 6-8 occupants. Our group took several spins on the thing and decided it was pretty fun even if it wasn’t very Amazonian.

We gathered back at the boat at 4:00 so that we could make it back to Santarém by sunset. We wanted to spend sunset at the “meeting of the waters,” where the Amazon and Tapajós run side by side in different colors. We were interested to see that phenomenon, but even more we were hoping to see some of the most unusual occupants of that particular part of the river basin: the pink dolphins.

As we understand, river dolphins sometimes turn pink depending on their diets and other factors. There are quite a few pink dolphins that are seen regularly in the area, so we will continue to seek them every time we enter the water. Unfortunately, we missed the sunset and therefore the dolphins. We still stopped at the meeting of the waters and jumped into two rivers simultaneously. Wouldn’t you?

______

Today’s Rider of the Purple Bike was Cassidy Gunter, in honor of her “why not?” attitude, especially when we are working with the kids. She demonstrated this spirit in a very clear way when she agreed to be buried in the sand a couple of days ago. Though others joined her eventually, she was the first to volunteer. As usual, she was the trendsetter. Today’s Purpleness was largely symbolic, as we didn’t ride our bikes today at all. She still feels honored, we hope.

This is where the Amazon River and the Tapajos River meet, but their waters do not mix. We jumped off our boat in the exact spot where we were in both rivers at the same time!

This is the food that we had for lunch at the beach! It was delicious!

: This is the Brazilian flag waving on the back of the boat!

The scenery on the boat was truly breath taking as you can see.

At the beach we decided to try this banana boat ride. It was SOooo fun!

The welcome home view of the city from our boat.

Our very own Tara was the star sailing beauty of the day.

Marcia took a moment to sit in the water and contemplate her surroundings, or maybe she was just using the facilities.

Our lunch had obviously been visiting the dentist frequently.

Dentist or not, the fish’s teeth were no match for us.

Tara taught some of the girls yoga on the back deck.

The first beach we visited. (Siblings Joey and Marie having alone time.)

We spent the day on the boat "Marco Andre".

Since the boat ride was a few hours long, we played games to pass the time.

At the end of the day we jumped off the boat into the Amazon river.

Amazon 2009: Day Eight (Monday, January 12)

2009-01-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Bota Fogo.

Again, we are catching up on blogposts, so please look back at the last couple of days to see newly-posted videos. Today we had a surprise day off, so we slept in a bit. Still, we are used to being productive, so we took the time to clean our camp. The staff gave us all of their cleaning supplies and taught us their methods; we went to town on the floors, walls, our own stuff, everything. It really felt much better to see the place straightened up.

One group of four opted to go to work with Georgete this morning to help her package some goods that she had made. We are very impressed with her resourcefulness in everything that she does. She is constantly producing art and other goods from recycled materials and she apparently sells enough of her work to help support her family and the program in which we are participating. Our group had a great time working with her until we realized that one of the bikes that we had used to get to her house was no longer outside. That is, we had parked our bikes inside a wall around her house, but someone ventured in and stole one.

We were bummed to lose a bike, but Georgete was downright horrified that this unfortunate event had happened. She launched a full investigation among her neighborhood group, which might well lead to the return of the bike. We’ll see.

Even without all of our bikes, we decided to use this afternoon to learn a bit more about Santarém. We chose the João Fona Cultural Center as a starting point. It is a museum of natural and cultural history that focuses on Santarém and the surrounding Amazon region. We learned a range of different things there, but most of us were probably most fascinated by Lourimar Leal, the director of the museum, who was just inside the front door. The last SMC group had met him four years ago, so our leaders were able to catch up and see what has transpired in Santarém since then.

Lourimar is a descendant of Brazilian slaves, so he has spent part of his life trying to understand the practices of slavery and the premises under which the system persisted. Among other things, he has collected some items that were used to punish slaves, including a huge iron shoe and an actual stockade that were used to keep slaves in line. These items are on display in one room of the museum and -- unlike U.S. museums – the items are not covered by plexiglass or protective coverings so we could actually touch some of them.

Lourimar’s perspective on the entire subject of the Brazilian slave trade is unique, especially because he is one of few living Brazilians who learned the songs that were passed around in slave communities. He sang a couple of them for us and we were surprised to learn that they are not recorded anywhere, whether sung by him or someone else. We, then, are going back to see him soon and we will be the crew that documents this important piece of Brazilian history for the first time (as far as we know). Both Lourimar and we are thrilled.

The sad news from Lourimar is that since the last SMC visit (in 2005), he has lost his sight due to glaucoma. This news is particularly sad because Lourimar is also a respected painter in the region, who has served as Secretary of Culture under several different administrations. Lourimar, however, seems to take his relatively new blindness in stride and now hopes to do more singing (perhaps starting to sing about what he might have painted). We look forward to our next visit with him, which might actually be at his artifact-filled home.

Our Rider of the Purple Bike today was Tara Larson. Yesterday, she got herself up for church and sat out on the porch waiting for almost an hour. When Shawny finally got up, it was too late to make it to mass, but she stayed up anyway. Tara is a fabulous group member no matter what is happening, but she proved herself to be extra special on Sunday and therefore wins a seat on the Purple Bike.

The view out into the courtyard of the museum.

Felicia, Rob, Erik, and Katie sitting on the steps of the Santarem Museum.

Georgete in the process of packaging the products she makes before sending them out to the stores.

A doorway out into the courtyard of the Santarem Museum.

Ana talking to Lourimar Leal, a historian at the Santarem Museum.

As we stare outside the window, you are able to see the meeting of the Tapajos river and the Amazon.

Lourimar Leal is not only the director of the Cultural Center of Santarem, he is also a well renowned artist.

This is Joe and Joey enjoying each other's company in Brazil.

This is Georgete using her day off from working with the kids to make fruit flavored liqueur and jelly. This is how she makes her livelihood in Brazil.

Erik contemplated about life looking at the pure beauty of Brazil.

A whale skeleton of the animal that mysteriously floated throughout the Tapajos River, only unfortunately die in a boat accident.

Artifacts in the museum. Some of the earliest ceramic art was found in Santarem.

The beautiful Mercedes is documenting the beginning of our tour of the Santarem Museum.

Who needs a car when you can carry your family on your bike?

Katie enjoying the scenery and relaxing in the hammock, while diligently writing in her daily journal.

Amazon 2009: Day Seven (Sunday, January 11)

2009-01-12T17:52:00.001-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team As Onças.

We got behind on blog entries for a day or so there, so go back to Day 6 to see a newly-posted video for that day. We are having a few problems with our late-night internet connection here on the university campus so we haven’t quite gotten everything done that we are trying to do. We have also had an awful time working out a cell phone situation here. In prior trips the groups managed to outfit a U.S. phone with a Brazilian chip and stay in contact in that way. This time that option seems impossible. International phone cards on pay phones have turned out to be our best way to talk to people back at home.

Anyway, on with our Sunday. We intended to go to mass today, even though we knew it started at 7:00 a.m. That meant we needed to get up at 6:00 and start walking into the city by 6:30. We were all game to do it, as the last group who visited got a very different view of the town on Sunday (not to mention a trip to the church’s bell tower, which comes with a 360 degree view of the river and the city). Unfortunately, our alarm clock (Shawny) set her alarm clock but forgot to turn it on. Maybe we were meant to get a little extra sleep today.

Instead, then, we headed on over to our worksite to connect with the kids, Georgete and Jaime again. Today we started out inside the building on-site teaching lessons in English. We decided to start with songs today, so we used “Happy Birthday” as our opening, followed by “Old McDonald.” The kids thought that the word “oink” was one of the funniest they had ever heard. They were laughing and clapping and very much NOT self-conscious; suddenly we noticed that all of those things were true about us too.

Georgete then took the students outside and they began to run around madly. A new volleyball net caught their attention, along with some of ours. Some of the students took interest in the kayaks and new paddles, lining up to wait their turn for lessons from Jaime, an expert kayaker. Some of the students teamed up with one or more of us to practice speaking English.

Everyone was pretty well occupied, when suddenly we heard a noise like a train in the far off distance. We looked that direction and saw a wall of rain heading our way like an invading army. Though we didn’t really fear getting wet, the sense that it was chasing us convinced us all to run madly for cover, screaming and laughing along with the kids. We huddled under the tents and for the first time since we landed and got the slightest recollection of what it feels like to be chilly. The kids thought it was “freezing,” but to us it was a pleasant reminder that there are times when one’s body does not perspire.

The sun broke through pretty quickly and we all resumed our activities. Some of us even took spins in the kayaks. We knocked off just after noon and helped clean up the area. As we left the worksite by walking our bikes up the rutted dirt road that leads away from the river, we were surrounded by kids screaming, cheering, and yelling: “How are you?,” “Fine, thank you,” “And you?,” and “Oink!”
We headed home for lunch and siesta, then biked right back to the worksite, but not for work this time. Instead, some of our hosts took us in boats across the delta to a beautiful river beach called Maracaná. We actually picked a shady spot on the beach and just relaxed for the first time since we arrived. (By the way, our 50 spf sunscreen is still doing an amazing job of keeping us from getting burned! Though we should easily expect to have a couple of bad burns among us by now, we have not experienced any such pain. AND our insect repellants seem to be working too. Our only problem is heat rash, which comes and goes on most of us.) We could only stay on the beach for about two hours, as we had to catch the last boats back at 6:00.

We were so happy and relaxed that we decided to go into town to hear some live music at night at what used to be Santarém’s prime ice cream spot. As it turned out, they didn’t have live music or a proper selection of ice cream, but they DID have pizza (including a sardine one, which we ordered!) and burgers. Though we love the food at our camp and our cook, Dona Maria, we liked cheating just a little bit for some familiar comfort foods.

Georgete let us know that she is not working with the kids on Monday or Tuesday, so we are planning other adventures for those two days.

By the way, our Rider of the Purple Bike today was Erik Coloma. Yesterday, when the chain broke on Marcia's bike and Chris offered to walk the broken bike home, Erik towed Chris and the broken bike up the longest hill we have to ride. For that, and his great co-operative and collaborative attitude, he deserves the special honor today.

While we were playing beach Volleyball, a wall of rain came at us and we all ran for cover.

Team Paz teaches the kids how to sing happy birthday.

Selini is one of our youngest students. We all love her curly hair.

While we're making friends with the kids, it looks like they were making friends with each other too.

After an exhausting morning working with the kids, we took a break on Maracana beach.

A moth the size of the palm of a hand.

On a sunday afternoon the beach was hoppin'.

People of all ages enjoy kayaing on the Tapajos River.

The fab 4 (Dar Um Jeito) having a great day at the beach.
Cops patrol the beaches of the Tapajos River.

This is Botafogo teaching the kids "Old Macdonald had a farm".

Some of the kids thought it would be fun to bury some of us.

Some of the youngest kids of the group.

In the afternoon we took 3 canoes to a beach across from our worksite.

A picture of the beach at which we spent part of the afternoon.

Amazon 2009: Day Six (Saturday, January 10)

2009-01-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Paz.

Wow. A day that we may remember for the rest of our lives. We worked today with the kids from the neighborhood around our construction worksite. About thirty (maybe 40?) of them showed up for art and recreation activities, along with some English lessons from us. There was a bit of hesitation when we first got started, but once things clicked in, they clicked in fully.

We got to the beach with the supplies that we bought during the week and started setting up. Georgete was interested in teaching painting today, but the wind was a bit daunting. We set up a big tarp for her anyway, along with a couple of canopies under which the kids (and we) could find some shade. We weren’t quite sure how things would unfold, and we especially weren’t sure what the specific agenda was. None of that mattered, though.

When the last of us walked onto the beach, the kids swarmed around us like we were celebrities. They showed us a “low-five, then fist-bump” handshake that they said they use with their friends. We asked if that meant we all are friends now and they said that it did. They were right.

We played games. We taught them some English (“Hello. How are you? I am fine.” “I like ice cream.” “Head, shoulders, knees and toes . . .”). They taught us some Portuguese. They kicked our butts in soccer (fútbol). We took their pictures. They took pictures of themselves with us (on our cameras). They dragged us in the water and splashed us. They held our hands and hugged us. A few of them asked for kisses (but didn’t get them).

Throughout the day we became more and more aware of the language barriers between the kids and us, but our awareness of those barriers only helped us to find ways around them. We’ve gotten very good at charades here, and we have all taken up a much more physical way of talking through the use of exaggerated gestures and overly performative facial expressions. (We think that we are really going to annoy people at home with these new practices, especially the dramatic overuse of the double “thumbs up.”) The incredible warmth and openness of the kids, though, helped us to overcome all barriers and to find a way into their world.

Their world might look pretty bleak from the outside, but even in this single day we got a real sense of the joy that their lives embody. We ran through examples of young kids we know in the U.S. whose lives revolve around video games and other forms of technological interaction. For these kids, though, their lives are about their friendships, kite-flying, soccer, the river, and the possibility that they might make new friends who have come from far away. It was a pleasure and a privilege for us to be the newest friends in their lives today.

When we left at lunchtime, a few of us stayed behind to complete the deck we started yesterday. We installed a railing and fixed some of the places where the whole thing just wasn’t square. It took a while, but we got it done. For the rest of us, we found out that a morning in the sun doesn’t prove how exhausting it is until after lunch. During siesta time, we crashed. We needed to crash. When we awoke, we learned that our otherwise very effective SPF 50 sunscreen had let a little bit of pinkness through on some of us. We also realized that we were sore and tired, but there was no doubt whatsoever that it was worth it.

A bunch of us went into town in the afternoon to get beach towels, as tomorrow afternoon we are going to visit a river beach after another morning with the kids. Tonight we are going to bed early so that we can get up and attend an early morning mass at the church in the center of the city.

The one downside to today was that our Rider of the Purple Bike, Margeaux, needed to sleep in all day because of a minor illness. She is better tonight, but she missed her day of purpleness. We’ll find a way to make it up to her.

Soccer game organized by the kids themselves.

We all worked together to set up tents for kids to do their artwork.

A little boy was eager to learn how to use a camera....

...and this was the successful picture (of the entire group) he took.

The kids thought it'd be funny to drag their new American friends into the water to play.

The girls who came to the camp taking some pictures all together.

Everyone joining in on the circle game and having a great time.

Ana making a sand castle with two very cute little girls.

Felicia and Mercedes posing with all the girls after having some fun in Lake Papaco.

Joey and Joe giving a local boy the time of his life in the water.

Shawny and Mercedes learning Brazilian hand games. These are the last contenders in the game that began with over 40.

The kids learned to kayak today. These girls were a little nervous.

Two iguanas walked across the sidewalk outside our living quarters. They are both larger and quicker than we expected.

Tara and our jungle cat Zily taking a siesta.

Georgete taught art lessons on the beach today. They use recycled objects as brushes and natural products as stencils.

Amazon 2009: Day Five (Friday, January 9)

2009-01-09T17:24:00.001-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team Dar um Jeito.

Today we made an important realization: we are thrilled and blessed that Ana Ahnen is one of our group members. Ana was born in Brazil but now lives in the U.S.; her connections to Brazil remain strong, though, as do her language skills. Ana has been very gracious at every turn with all of us and even more so with our hosts and our new Brazilian friends. Thanks, Ana! And thanks to her family for letting us have her in our midst for this experience!

Though we love and adore Ana, she is NOT the rider of the purple bike today. Instead, we gave it to yesterday’s star, Joe Arnold, who entertained the kids on the beach so thoroughly and who just had a fabulous glow of happiness about him all day long. Congratulations, Joe!

Most importantly, though, we FINALLY got to do some actual work (and not just prep work) on the project for Georgete and Jaime. As we mentioned a couple of days ago, they are trying to improve the small building in which they store their equipment, so we turned Chris Verrips loose with a bunch of Portuguese-speaking carpenters and a non-Portuguese-speaking set of students (they’re not fluent, anyway) to start doing construction on the new deck/veranda outside their space. They had a very frustrating beginning, but things soon started clicking into place and we made a lot of progress today.

We learned quite a bit today about the relationship between manual labor and the Amazon climate. Mostly we learned that it is too hot to sustain the levels of work that we might reach back home. We would saw a piece of wood then walk around to the shady side of the building to rest. Or hammer six nails and feel like we had just done something pretty strenuous. Our Brazilian co-workers, mostly João and his son Jadson, were unaffected by the heat and, in fact, seemed superhuman to us all day. Even more than their levels of endurance, we were floored by their skills with handtools. They could maneuver handsaws, chisels, and hammers in ways that few of us had ever seen.

Also, we learned that we need LOTS of water to keep things feeling right. Fortunately we brought lots along and even managed to get some 5-gallon jugs delivered right to the site. No matter how much we drank, though, we never quite felt hydrated, as that constant trickle of perspiration that we mentioned before turned into something more like projectile sweating. No one really overdid things, though, and by the time we broke for lunch/siesta, it looked probable that we would actually finish the small deck in one day.

Speaking of siesta, that’s another huge realization for us: naps in the afternoon are essential to most people’s existence here, including ours. A few of us resist the urge to actually fall asleep during siesta, but most of us crash HARD, eventually waking up totally confused about where we are and what day it is. We recover quickly, though, and start anew with a fresh level of energy.

Not all of us were at the construction site today, as some stayed at camp in the morning to get our lesson plans together. Because we have now seen some of the kids from the program, we are more excited than ever about planning activities that will be really fun and helpful for them. As it turns out, some of them know a few words in English (including “dollar,” “good bye,” and “Barack Obama”), but they all really want to learn more English right away. When we told them we would help them learn it for the next two weeks, they squealed with delight.

Thus, all of the teams have really produced high quality visual aids for their lessons and have practiced and practiced how to do the parts that must be spoken in Portuguese. We have tested out our lessons on each other and everyone has been pretty agreeable to every silly request (like singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” on the video yesterday). Some of us ran into town today to get more goodies to help bolster our lessons, including soft bouncy balls and newspapers. On Saturday we get a chance to put our plans into action with the kids in the program.

After siesta, we switched roles and the lesson planners became construction workers and vice versa. The construction workers had to face even more brutal afternoon heat than the morning crew had survived, but no one seemed terribly unhappy about it. We drank lots of water, pounded lots of nails, and actually got the small deck within one plank of completion. We, of course, wanted to install that last board, but João had been up since 5 a.m. and it was his wife’s birthday. So, we agreed to stop just after 6:00 p.m. and head back to camp. The kids followed us up the red dirt road like we were celebrities and screamed that they would see us tomorrow. We can hardly wait.

Speaking of tomorrow, we already know who will ride the purple bike. But we’ll wait until tomorrow to write it here . . .

Working hard on the job site using a chisel on the wood.

A very beautiful Brazilian girl who enjoyed coming to the work site and watching the work.

An iguana we spotted at camp this afternoon.

Georgete’s dogs that we saw when we visited her home up the street from the job site.

The last picture of our work site before its transformation.

A road that is on the way to work.

While Erik attempts to fix the broken posthole digger; Shana continues to dig a hole for posts of the deck.

Joe and Cassidy using the posthole digger to make holes for posts that will support the deck.

Our future students that we will meet tomorrow.

As we work, children watch attentively to us from a distance.

Sisters playing with a kite in front of their home.

The beautiful and calm road to work.

Working hard but still maintaining a smile.

Working with other local men in the shade.

Jadson taking a break in the shade.

Here's a long view of the almost finished deck.

Amazon 2009: Day Four (Thursday, January 8)

2009-01-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team called Bota Fogo, which consists of Marie Cacciatore, Mercedes Matthews, Ana Ahnen, and Alec Tappin.

By today we have all completely lost track of time, including what day it is. Nearly every hour someone makes a comment about something that has happened, and we say, “Was that today or yesterday?” or “How long have we been here?” Each day is so packed with unique experiences that it feels like we are living three or four days in the space of each 24-hour period. Happily, we spend most of our time being amazed, so it’s no problem for us to do that a lot.

This morning brought the completion of some tasks that began yesterday, as teams went forth again to search for the goods we need to perform our major service project for the Associão Amazonica. Yesterday, the group that went lumber and hardware shopping faced major frustration as they clearly seem to have faced a situation of overt discrimination against them. Today, though, that entire experience was reversed; our community partner Jaime found another source for the wood we need and not only was the entire staff of the store completely warm and friendly, but also the price of the goods at the new store was less than half of the price that the group was quoted yesterday. Although buying 2x4s is rarely regarded as a triumphant move, in this case it definitely counted as a major victory.

Another set of folks continued the search for art and recreation supplies and they, too, experienced major success with few obstacles. At the same time, two bike technicians came to our camp and performed all of the final maintenance on our great new bikes. Thus, though at times yesterday it seemed like we might never get to ride the bikes, suddenly, they were ready to go. It seems that things flow this way in this region all the time: things move slowly, obstacles emerge, logistics get complicated, and then the path just clears and the job gets done.

A couple of the groups that didn’t go on materials runs stayed back at camp to work up the lesson plans that they will use to engage the children that are part of the day camp we will assist in the coming weeks. Each group is working out plans for a song, a game, an English lesson, a health and nutrition lesson and a lesson of their choice. Two of the groups, then, worked most of the morning to develop their ideas, which meant that we all heard several rounds of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “The Hokey-Pokey.” By lunchtime another hard rain had started to fall so we all took naps knowing that our prep work was done and we could take a break before beginning the next phase of our work.

Before leaving, though, we had to divide up the bikes, knowing that none of them was perfectly selected to fit anyone’s individual body size. We tried to put bigger bikes with bigger people and smaller bikes with smaller people, but things didn’t always work out just right. Still, everyone was happy with having any bike at all.

One person who should be especially happy with her bike today is Sam. She was awarded the special privilege of riding the only one-of-a-kind bike in our whole set: the purple one. Yesterday, while all of the teams were out running frustrating and tedious errands, we discovered in the middle of the day that Sam was actually just a little bit under the weather. She hadn’t made a peep about it, though, and she just kept trooping away. Once we realized she needed rest, we offered her the afternoon off. She didn’t take it. She got enough rest in the night to turn the corner on whatever was ailing her. Though we don’t want to imply that anyone should hide an illness that needs to be addressed, it seemed that Sam showed exceptional toughness on this particular day. For that, she was rewarded with the purple bike. Because there is only one such bike, it will change hands daily as different students are inducted into our entirely imaginary “Order of the Purple Bike.”

The next phase of our day included hopping on our bikes and riding to the worksite where we will help with construction and where we will work with the kids in Georgete’s program. We expected the lumber to arrive at about the same time that we did, so we hoped we could plan out the building project and take some of the first steps. Like so many other things this week, the delivery did not work out as planned. Again, like so many other times this week, we capitalized on the available time in a great way. In this case, one of our hosts, a carpenter named João, offered us a chance to explore the marshy deltas of the Tapajós River. He and his son Jadson took us into one of the most stunningly beautiful experiences we have had so far. From the fronts of two rowboats, the father and son piloted two separate groups of us through reeds, grasses, and highly unusual lily pads to a lake in the delta that stands at the edge of a dense nature preserve. It will take pictures and video to make any attempt to convey the beauty and wonder of what we saw.

While two boatloads of people were out in the marsh, the remaining members of our group waited on a river beach full of fishing boats and their occupants. At the edge of the water was a group of happy and rambunctious boys who played in the water, ran up onto the beach to play soccer, flew kites, and swam some more. We eventually connected with the boys and threw the ball to them in the water as they screamed and fought madly to retrieve it. One of our group, Joe, turned out to be the ultimate expert at placing the ball just where it would produce the greatest mania in the boys. Using bits of Portuguese, he would ask if they wanted the ball to be thrown high or low, near or far. They would scream an answer and he would meet their request, whatever it was. They eventually offered their evaluation of him by giving him the most laudatory nickname they could think of for a U.S. American: “Barack Obama.”

Our day ended with the arrival of the lumber, which we decided to leave at João’s nearby house. Tomorrow morning we will move it to the program site and begin the improvements that we have planned. Stayed tuned to learn who will be riding the purple bike!

Bike Wranglers (Teams Dar Um Jeito and Jungle Cats) work on our lesson plan after the previous day’s success of obtaining 20 matching red bicycles.
A Bug’s Life: a group of crickets hanging out near our rooms.
Margeaux took this morning’s rain as a chance to test out her new poncho.

Today was the day we got to ride off on all of our brand new bikes.

Our shiny, matching, attention grabbing, bright red bicycles.

On the canoe ride on the Tapajos River.

Catch of the day.

Big Air.

The river had so many plants hiding the nest of the Anaconda.

Team Paz sending messages of peace to the Anaconda.

The edge of the water near where we work is populated mostly by fishermen. Many of them stay in their boats all day even when they are not fishing.

Near the site of our work project, these kids swam and laughed and played all day long.

The beach we sat on, the kids we played with, and the river we boated through.

Our work site: before shot. We will be building a deck (veranda) around it as well as replacing the back wall and adding a door.

This is not the first, and we’re sure it won’t be the last, gorgeous sunset we see in the amazon.

Amazon 2009: Day Three (Wednesday, January 7)

2009-01-07T20:26:00.000-08:00

Today’s video was produced by the team called “As Onças” (pronounced “oz OHNzuhs,” and meaning something like the Jungle Cats). They include: Margeaux Pelusi, Samantha Yeates, Rob Silva, and Felicia Zhuang.

The morning started early for a few of us who went to check out our jobsite this morning. Like yesterday, today involved a lot of walking in the hot Amazon climate. We’re definitely figuring out how to cope with the heat, though. Now, if only we can learn how to overcome all of the logistical difficulties we face whenever we try to accomplish even the simplest tasks . . .

Georgete (pronounced “zhor-ZHE-chee”) and Jaime (“ZHY-mee”) took us to their program site on the banks of the Tapajós River, where we learned that they have a small storage building that needs some repairs. Because the ultimate veteran of the SMC New Orleans hurricane relief trips, Chris Verrips, is with us as a consultant, we are actually capable of completing the repairs they need. Along with these repairs, they also hope to attach a small deck on one side of the building so that they can be outside the building but still in the shade of its extended roof.

In just a few days (on Saturday), the children will return to the program, so we need to get as much work done on the building as we can before we start dividing our time between working with the kids and doing construction work. Thus, we spent the morning hustling around in different parts of town chasing down three important sets of supplies: lumber and tools, art and recreation supplies, and – most fun for us – BIKES for us to use as our primary mode of transport.

One group went with Jaime to chase down construction materials. That group includes Ana, our Brazilian group member whose fluent Portuguese is a godsend to all of us. She helped Chris translate construction needs, which means they spent the day playing a crazy version of talking charades where they speak of the function of the item and act out its use to try to learn the word for the tool they are seeking. Turns out that they – and the Brazilian hardware store workers – are pretty good at the game, as they succeeded in finding everything that they need except for one important item: lumber.

The problem was not that they couldn’t find the lumber, it was that there was a bit of an intercultural conflict at the lumber store. That is, Jaime had gone to the store ahead of time and priced out the items. He had the same list when he returned with our group members, but it turns out that the presence of our group immediately raised the price by a significant margin. Jaime was incensed and decided never to return to that store again.

For us, the experience was humbling, as we realized that as U.S. Americans (it seems weird to call ourselves “Americans” here, as everyone around us is also an “American”), we are automatically seen as rich and privileged. And, in comparison to every single person we’ve encountered since we arrived, we are rich and privileged. For example, today we purchased a power saw to help us deal with the lumber we’ll need to replace floorboards, frame out a new doorway, and build the deck/walkway outside the building at the program site. The customers in the store around us were in awe, saying that such a saw was so completely out of reach for them that they had never even considered buying one. For us, saving ourselves some grueling manual labor in the Amazon sun was worth the price of a power saw; for them, grueling manual labor in the Amazon sun is the only way to get anything done.

Another group joined Georgete in pursing art and recreation materials for the program. That group was also humbled, but not by the recognition of their own relative wealth. Instead, that group was awed by Georgete’s incredible resourcefulness and creativity. She showed us all some of her art made from discarded goods, including used coffee filters. Some of her coffee filter work looked like it was made from some exotic stone, when, in fact, it was made from “garbage.” In her program, she teaches local children to create similar art from discarded objects, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of sustainability to the future of the Amazon region. We look forward to joining into her classes so that maybe some of her talent will also rub off on us!

The final group got the job that was supposed to be the most fun: ten people at a bike store riding off on ten bikes, then returning to ride off on ten more. So far we have used three modes of transportation (not counting the planes on which we arrived): a hired bus, city buses, and walking. The first one was a great way to get home from the airport but it is too expensive to be feasible on a daily basis. The second is a great cultural experience, but it is confusing and daunting due to our language barrier. The third is great for exercise and sightseeing, but it is grueling in this climate. Thus we opted for a fourth alternative: bikes. Because this is not a tourist area, there is no shop or agency that rents bikes. Thus, our only option was to buy bikes. They will improve our lives drastically in three ways: they will save our swollen and aching feet (our hands are swollen too, apparently as a side effect of humidity), they will allow us to get more sleep (as we can leave for the worksite later and return for siesta faster than we can on foot), and they will improve our spirits (already pretty high) by reducing the frustrating tedium of repetitive sweat-soaked walks.

Things didn’t go quite as planned due to a series of complex but uninteresting financial technology glitches. (Now why would a credit card company be suspicious about a California resident suddenly buying twenty bikes in one day in the Amazon?) Five different modes of payment failed, including a very surprising one: travelers checks. As turns out, it is almost impossible to exchange travelers checks for cash, no matter how much cash they represent. Finally, though, after a series of runs to different banks, currency exchange spots, money-wiring depots, etc., we managed to purchase the bikes. Strangely, though, we did not manage to ride away on them. The bikes we bought, as it turns out, needed to be assembled at the store’s warehouse, so they offered to deliver all twenty of them to us this afternoon. We took them up on their offer and found our way home for a very late lunch.

We lunched, told each other our stories of retail adventure then settled down for our naps. When we awoke we saw thick black clouds that would eventually deliver a pounding rain forest rain. We also saw the truck pull up to deliver our beautiful bikes. Once we got the bikes under cover, the clouds burst. We gathered on the porch to watch the water fall (“Is rain wetter in the Amazon?”), then succumbed to our inner impulses and went out and frolicked in it.

We had hoped to start our construction work at the program site today, but things just didn’t unfold that way. It seems that lots of days work this way in the Amazon. We’ll have to get used to this.

Amazon 2009: Day Two (Tuesday, January 6)

2009-01-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

Today’s video post was prepared by Team Paz (peace in Portuguese), which consists of Erik Coloma, Joe Arnold, Cassidy Gunter, and Shana Dhillon.

After our thrilling (and THRILLED) arrival in Santarém, we got the added boost of moving into our new January home. We are staying at Campus II of the local university, UFPA (which, translated, stands for Federal University of Pará). SMC groups have stayed here twice before, and Shawny, Jesse, and Marcia, were all very surprised about how much the area has grown since their last visit in 2005. Still, the beautiful coziness of the UFPA cabins and bunks remained.

We were greeted by the person that we now all appreciate the most: Dona Maria, our cook and housemother. She was happy to see us return, and when we told her how happy we were to be here, she explained that the camp was almost destroyed a couple of years ago. Strangely, she said that our group’s multiple trips to the region helped to save the camp, as they used us as an example of the great global outreach that the camp provides. We were pleased to hear that we had helped them, but we were even more pleased to settle in and make the camp start to feel like home.

We loaded gear and sorted first aid equipment. We staked claims on our favorite bunks and hoisted mosquito nets above them. And we made friends with our first visitor, a skinny-bone-jones cat that we have named Zilly (a shortened form of Brazil). We also looked for the monkeys that hang out in the trees outside our cabin, but we haven’t seen them yet.

Some of us took our weekly dose of malaria medicine, while others took their daily doses. We aren’t really in an area with a high risk of malaria, but we’d rather be safe than sorry. We also had several immunizations before we came, including Yellow Fever, Hepatitis, and Typhoid. Despite our knowledge of all of these (very low) threats around us, the whole world around us seemed too beautiful to be anything but benign. We’ll continue to enjoy the beauty, but we’ll also take every available precaution.

We took a siesta in the afternoon, but Shawny didn’t let it go on nearly as long as it would have if we had been left to our own devices. She knew that if we slept too long in the afternoon, we would have trouble sleeping at night and our body clocks would not adjust properly to our new time zone. When we reluctantly awoke, we took a walk into the town. We doused ourselves with sunscreen (50 spf) and mosquito repellant (with DEET) and ventured out into the stifling heat.
The heat here is difficult to describe, as it is so thick and heavy that it seems possible to measure its mass and density. It is often only about 90 degrees, but the humidity weighs down on us in a way that is really oppressive. Also, a constant trickle of sweat is running somewhere down each of our bodies at all times. Because we are surrounded by spiders, mosquitoes, gnats, ants, and other crawling things, it is not hard to imagine that the trickle of sweat might actually be some living creature. We are adjusting quickly, though, and soon we can stop flinching over every drop.

Our walk into town was actually quite taxing due to the heat, but our excitement at everything that we were seeing definitely overrode our discomfort. We walked along the banks of the conjoined Amazon and Tapajós Rivers, following the “orla” (kind of like an embarcadero?) along the edge of the town.
People who noticed us were incredibly friendly, meaning that we learned a whole new range of Portuguese greetings that had not been included in our recorded language lessons. We caught on quickly to the greetings, but we are not necessarily catching on quite as quickly to longer phrases and sentences that are coming our way. Jesse is helping us to develop our understanding quickly and we are all pretty equally committed to really improving our language skills.
At night we had a visit from our work partners from the Associão Amazónica, Georgete and Jaime. Their organization serves local children by teaching them about sustainability through art, recreation, and education. They run a day-camp-like program on the banks of the Tapajós not too far from our UFPA home. They invited a few of us to visit their site tomorrow morning to get a better feel for what our service work will be.

Before we sign off, we want to announce that we are eating wonderful, fabulous food for every meal. Everything is home-cooked and the exotic and interesting juices that we are tasting for the first time are all freshly-squeezed. Even familiar items like chicken (called “frango” here) seem especially tasty. Some of us even managed to find fresh coconuts in town so that we could drink the “coconut water” right from the coconut itself. There are still lots of things that we need to try, though, so we are eager to keep discovering new dining delights.
Along with our great food, we are seeing some fascinating images. Marcia is particularly talented at capturing them and she is posting some of her photos at this site: Marciainbrasil.blogspot.com. Visit there too, if you’d like to see some beautiful work.

Amazon 2009: Day One (Monday, January 5)

2009-01-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

The team named “Dar um Jeito” (pronounced something like DAR oong ZHAYtoo and meaning “to make a way”) made our video blog for today. Click the link above to view the work of Katie Leonard, Sophie Damerel, Joey Cacciatore, and Tara Larson.

Our adventure to the Amazon began at 4:15 a.m. on the Saint Mary’s College campus in Moraga. Our friend and SMC staff member Michael Viola agreed to meet us at that terrible hour and he somehow managed to be incredibly warm and cheerful anyway. Huge thanks to Michael!
We struggled to contain our enormous amounts of luggage in our state of desperate – but planned – exhaustion. We were tired because most of us got no sleep in the last frantic hours of getting ready to leave. We had planned it, though, because we knew it was important to sleep as much as we could on the planes.

Seventeen of us left from campus and met our videographer Marcia Ong at the San Francisco airport. We flew to Atlanta where we met our other professor, Jesse Wheeler, an ethnomusicologist and Portuguese instructor currently living in Chicago. He and Marcia have been on two trips with SMC Jan Term students before (2002 and 2005). Jesse serves as our indispensible translator, guide, and language instructor. We picked up our final team member , student Ana Ahnen, in Manaus in the middle of the night.

Our trip lasted 17.5 hours, only 12 of which were spent actually flying. We left at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and arrived in Santarém at 6:00 a.m. in whatever their time zone is called on Tuesday. Though we had planned to sleep a healthy number of hours on the planes, no one really succeeded.
Still, we all experienced a huge collective second wind as soon as we hit the tarmac in Santarém. Santarém is a river town at a very famous spot where two rivers, the Amazon and the Tapajós (pronounced tap-uh-ZHOESS), run side by side in different colors (Amazon = Brown, Tapajós = blue). It is about equidistant from two other well-known Amazon cities, Manaus and Belém, each about 400 miles away.

The thrill of a different climate, a different language, a different landscape, and a different perspective served as a caffeine-like jolt for all of us. We sprung to life immediately, and so did all of our cameras, our conversations, and our imaginations about all that is to come.

Poverty and Promise in Northeastern Brazil

2008-12-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Though Northeastern Brazil is one of the most beautiful regions in the Americas, it is also among the poorest. In the areas along the Amazon River and its tributaries, residents live in dirt-floored huts with only one central pump to serve as a source of clean water for an entire community. Our group will study the socioeconomics of the region during a series of required overnight retreats in the fall semester (October 10-11, November 14-15, and December 4-5).

While in Brazil, we will work almost every day on community development projects, probably including ecological work, participation in programs for youth, and building and construction.

The course itself will involve production of multimedia presentations about the people we encounter. We will present these to the campus and surrounding community in the spring semester (2/11)

Shawny Anderson, Jesse Wheeler

Travel Dates: January 5-26
Dates on Campus: January 27-30