4/20/08 7:00 PM

Our first full day in Santarem and we went to Alter do Chao, a small town on the water – North, South, East, or West of us, I dunno. I need to figure it out by map. Ronaldo has an apartment there on the third floor. It overlooks the water and the walk along it. It has a loft and an interior of beautiful wood. They got it because it has two bathrooms, not just one as their previous apartment did. It just happened to come with a great view. They used compact fluorescent bulbs there, too, with fluorescent lights seeming pretty prevalent in general. There were pictures of his kids that looked a little like HS graduation pictures. The boys looked dark and Brazilian. The daughter was lighter but could pass for a lot of nationalities. After hearing stories of “the golden steamroller,” as Ron described her, it was interesting to put a face to the name.

Garoldo showed up with his family, which is my opportunity to speak Portuguese, as Ronaldo speaks English – he’s an American who has been in Brazil for 31 years (a story worth telling). We told stories in the apartment as we waited for the rain to stop.

OK – brief intermission. At some point on a trip, you gotta make sure you have two clean jokes to tell. I have one standard and one that I haven’t used. The standard is this:

A boy is born to a really poor family. They are really poor, like splitting the beans at dinner time to make it look bigger. When the boy is born, he is born with just one eye. The doctor tells his parents that they can give him an artificial eye. The first one is really fancy. It moves like a real eye, has coloration like a real eye, and can almost hardly be noticed. But it is very expensive. So the boy’s parents ask about the next option. The next option is a glass eye. They can match the color and it can kinda move. But that, too, is more than they can afford. Finally, the doctor says that they can go with a wood eye, a round piece of wood with an eye painted on it. They can afford this and, well, it’s better than nothing. Growing up, the boy is terribly conscious of the eye, hanging his head, hiding his wood eye, staying out of social situations. In high school, he finally goes to a dance. He stands on the wall, hiding his head, looking around. In a corner, he sees a girl with a hook nose. She’s kinda cute, but has a hook nose and no one is asking her to dance. The boy slowly works up the courage, edging along the wall toward her, still hiding his wood eye by hanging his head. When he finally gets there, he kinda looks up and smiles just a little, “W-w-would you, uh, like to dance?” “Would I? Would I?” she says. “Hook nose! Hook nose!”

The other is one I got from my dad in around 2002:

The movie Gandhi portrayed the man well. He walked around in no shoes, ate little and became weak physically, but had spiritual visions to lead his country. Because he ate little, he rarely brushed or flossed, but still had a bit of bad breath. So one concept of a subtitle for the movie was, “Super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.”

Back in Alter do Chao, when the rain stopped, our walk began. Yes it is pretty hot here, consistently in the 80s, but both Santarem last night and Alter do Chao today had breezes that made it all feel great. The concrete and sand walk along the river is really small here, 100-150 m long, that’s all. There are riverside plastic tables from the restaurant across the street, tall mango trees hovering well above and providing shade. There were a few tens of people about – a happy number, not crowded and not dull. A few teenage kids were playing by the river. A couple boys climbed on the railings and jumped 10 ft down to the water. A couple girls walked gently down the stairs into the water. Now you need to know that the Tapajos River (a feeder into the Amazon that Santarem lies on) is about at its peak height. By November, the river will be another 5-10 m lower. Where the boys were landing in the water – they’d land on white sand 15 ft lower in 6 months. The stairs the girls were descending would go to a beautiful white beach, not the dark water of a river after only a few steps. And an island we saw out a couple hundred meters, it clearly was fundo aguas (underwater). You could see just thatched roofs sticking out of the water in places. Those would be shaded huts for merchants 6 months later. Life on a river with such dramatic shifts must be remarkable. Your brain and emotions probably shift with the rise and fall of the river, though in different ways for different people. Our trip is a tiny snapshot of a vibrant life.

But we do try to make our snapshots count. Victor a friend of Garoldo and Ron, probably about 29 years old, walked with us for a while telling stories – in English as he teaches it here. He wore braces on his teeth, turquoise-colored. Braces seem to be common and a fashion statement of youth here. Many women proudly wear theirs and seem to have no problem having men around. We went to a shop of girl clothes, little gifts, and big art. The art and the gifts seemed expensive. The clothes were better prices and might be good for Marcia – some good colors, but I do feel like I’m someone who can buy a sarape or something that can accent a woman’s outfit (like jewelry), but not an outfit itself. So I just looked at the hammocks – prices at $R 85. Not very colorful though, so I will keep looking.

Lunch was feijoada at the hotel. We made fun of Steve for his hesitance to eat fish. Feijoada was very good for him.

After lunch, we walked to a tree where Garoldo used his key to cut into some of the bark. Slowly some white stuff started leaking out. He called it “latex” and I assume that meant rubber! It was a rubber tree! (“Oops there goes another rubber tree plant” always goes through my head when thinking of the trees.) We felt it and it felt and looked a lot like Elmer’s Glue. I just thought it was beleza (cool).

From that tree, we improvised a ride in a boat for all of us but Ronaldo. We walked through the water and climbed in, trees growing out of the water around us. The tour took us around the inlet. People lived in little houses, most of which floated on the rising or falling river. Some used large drums to float. One used huge nets full of plastic bottles – now that is Reusing! It was mainly birds that lived back in that area. They once saw a large jacare (alligator) but it was unusual. But then the boat went across a little more open water. I was looking around until I saw what we were headed for – the higher part of that submerged island with more thatched roofs, all operating and serving food and beer to people in bathing suits at plastic tables and chairs, some half in the water. We swam and sat and drank and talked and played dominoes. We learned words like vencedor (winner), roubando (cheating), and chato (annoying). What a life.

Back at the dorms now, I’m writing, others are resting, working on the internet, and we prepared food for traveling tomorrow at 7 AM. Before then, I need to do some work to figure out why the Nuggets lost. Maybe I can do something, maybe not. But I still gotta do some player eval.

4/20/08 10:10 AM in Santarem

My tank really hit zero last night. For the first time on the trip, I got tired – just 7 hours of sleep over two nights and a little break in our schedule did it. No meetings, meals, shows, tours, just an arrival in Santarem and chill time. We walked along the pier in Santarem where the breeze comes in and women in short skirts flirt with guys playing music – it was relaxing. And at 10 PM, I was out. I don’t celebrate sleep much, but that was a good one.

Other notes:

• Best meal so far, just beating out the first Rotary meeting or first dinner, was last night at Casa Nostra (I think, or maybe Nossa Casa), a fish restaurant. Marta is the owner. I had pirarucu that was outstanding. The catfish (suribim) was also beyond excellent. Bolinhas de aviao (sp?) were tremendous. Farofa de camarao. Best restaurant in town, they said. I believe it.

• Geroldo (sp?), his daughter Carol, wife Celia, and son Larry (sp?) joined us. Only Carol had sufficient English skills, so I got to speak a lot of Portuguese, which I liked.

• Ron Bertignoli and his wife Vera are our hosts here at Fundacao Esperanca. They have three kids, all living in the US. That’s tough, Ron said.

• We don’t look like good travelers because we brought so much luggage to accommodate Kicks for Kids, Mike’s personal charity to bring soccer balls to kids. In this case, the also brought roupa (clothes) and mosquito nets, so Mary brought extra suitcases and Mike had HUGE duffel bags. They barely fit into Ron’s truck that he picked us up with and he commented on it. The bags cost extra money because we were only allowed 25 kg TOTAL between all bags, plus another 5 kg in carry-on. That’s just Brazil now, but you gotta wonder about the future in the US.

• Our orientation here was useful. We got schedules in English and, more importantly for us all, those schedules had built-in rest time. Now I need to study it a little.

• There was a basketball court at the pier! And people were playing. Not very well, but these were older teenagers playing.

• Two guys were walking on the outside edge of the railing of the pier building different ends of a net. At the end, Garoldo asked to see the shrimp they were getting. These were 2 cm long transparent thin creatures with barely visible legs – aviao (sp?) that we ate for dinner.

• A lot of people came up to Ronaldo (I’ve taken to calling him by his Brazilian name and it confuses the team, which I’ll try to avoid doing) or Garoldo and greet them warmly.

4/19/08 1:15 PM Leaving Manaus

It is Saturday. I have to remind myself in English so that it kicks in that I’m here and it’s a weekend at home.

We just came from saying good-bye. I’ve done it a lot in my life and hardened a bit by the experiences. I know because I still feel it inside. I stayed with Mirza who apologized for anything that she did wrong while staying with her – it was her first time doing this. It was my first time doing this, too, so I should have apologized for all I did wrong. Unfortunately, it’s hard to have good timing in a language you don’t know well.

I said good-bye to the other host families as well, all of whom were around a lot. I wonder if I’ll see them again. Rotary provides good business and personal reasons to do so. I think it’s more likely. That would be good.

Yesterday was Friday, again forcing myself to say it to remind myself of the connotation. “Sexta-feira,” as Friday is called here, doesn’t hold the emotion of “Friday”, happy hours, getting away for the weekend, going out, seeing friends, just relaxing. Words do carry a lot of the connotation and I really try to understand that underlying meaning when I speak. It changes with context, tone of voice, and expression, but that’s what gives it all depth. Of course, precision of words is not vital. I have held meaningful conversations in Portuguese while probably sounding like a third grader with a deep voice.

One was last night on politics with a dark-skinned man named Nery. When he recognized me as American who spoke Portuguese, he came over and began his conversation with a serious look and the question, “My skin is dark. Do you think a dark-skinned President is possible?” The words were as harsh as his look. This was not a friendly start. It was accusatory. He called Americans racist, not in entirety but as a generality relative to Brazilians. I became a diplomat in a language I barely know in a way barely knew I could be. To detail how wouldn’t do justice to it because I don’t know exactly how. I general, I told the truth and I provided my opinion about the country and people I love and the administration I don’t respect for the job it has done, which I think was fair. By the end, Sergio was an ally, an honestly won-over person, someone who shared his opinions, respected mine, and very much interested in bringing me back.

The potentially difficult relationships – with Mirza who is very smart and independent, and with Nery – that have gone so well are tremendously rewarding to me. I search myself for reasons why, but I’m perhaps not the best at self-psychology. Probably just Hollywood – potential conflicts with happy endings. And, oh yeah, Mirza told blonde jokes – Vicitra probably would have loved them.

I talked to Nery at the tail end of a birthday party for Mike’s host mom – Ana Cristina. I have the benefit of living with a Brazilian wife, so I get Brazilian birthday parties all the time. They are a lot of fun, not different in huge ways from an American birthday party, but maybe more spirited. And the Happy Birthday song has a party where they say, “a biggie, a biggie,” that just makes me laugh every time, in the same way that watching the Three Stooges make a 6-year-old laugh.

Mike and Ana Cristina’s daughter, Sascha, who Mike has seriously flirted with since Day 1 (more later), prepared a fine buffet dinner, cake, and got drinks. For Mike, it was tough because, as he said, “this is such a girl’s apartment – it needs to be manned up.” Once he found the big beer cooler, he seemed to forget about that.

Mike opened the bar by creating a Molitoris Cocktail from rum, Sprite, and peach juice. It was called that because Mike and Steve (Molitoris) have been joking back and forth about being “fruity,” as in gay. They hug or put arms around each other and turn it into a joke. “You’re the fruta!” The Molitoris Cocktail was just raising the joke a little higher. If we could have found some 150 proof alcohol, it would have been a Flaming Molitoris Cocktail. I don’t know what is politically correct in this world anymore – especially having gay friends who make fun of themselves and of straight people – but it’s humanely correct to enjoy life like this.

At the start of the party, we chased down Francisco Barros, our “motorista” who drove us around on our excursions. I spent more time with him than I did with anyone else in Manaus. He spoke no English and never really before drove around non-english speakers. He said it was hard. It was good to hear that I helped. He taught me things – words, directions, the nature of his job (6-7 days per week), class differences, he showed some distaste for living so much lower. I learned a little about how to talk politics in talking to him, which came in handy in talking to Nery later. He had a good spirit, smiling often but not so often that you think he just smiles at anything. I gave him instructions to email me so I can send him pictures of the US – which he knows almost nothing about. He doesn’t have email, but I told him it was easy and gave him money explicitly to get on and give it a try. We all gave him big hugs after forcing him to stop. He’s got his kids and grandkids, but it’d be cool to hear from him.

Our day trip on sexta-feira was the Meeting of the Waters, “Encontro das Aguas.” Along with the opera house, this is what Manaus is known for. The Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes come together and don’t easily mix, one being colder, one being faster, one having more suspended sediment, one being denser. Their meeting is then a stark line of black and tan (yes, I did think of a Guinness). That line jags a bit back and forth and, when the boat goes over the line, it spawns pockets of floating tan in the black. And that was it.

Fortunately the tour company knows this and doesn’t spend too long just looking at this. Instead, they took us up the Igarape (stream) Janauarias. It is one of many little inlets that drain over the course of the dry season on the Amazon, of which we are supposedly entering. That dry season drops the water 15-40 ft, but sometimes the rainy season is really rainy and the dry season is really dry, so the river can drop 100 ft in rare years. (“In the dry season, it rains every day. In the wet season, it rains every hour,” said Mirza.) We arrive now at the end of the rainy season, the water being high. The boat could proceed quite a ways to a restaurant where we ate lunch, including suco de graviola, my favorite juice so far among acerola, cupuacu, and maracuja.

Before reboarding the boat, the passengers split into three different longboats with little outboard engines. We got our tour of a forest that is slowly draining. At points, it was only a couple feet deep, points where I thought that the airboats of the Everglades would be better. We saw few animals – birds mainly. There was, as the guide put it, a “trunkodile” – floating tree trunk that looked like a crocodile. Actually, there were many as it was easy to be deceived. Gators, snakes, piranha, and other less hazardous creatures abound in there, but we were well entertained by enormous trees, rushing water as it drained, twisting plants, the abrazo da morte, and just riding around in a boat through a forest. It felt a little like riding around through the Ewok Forest in Return of the Jedi.

We got our alligators after the boats stopped and we walked on elevated wood paths to the GIANT lily pads – as in 2 m across GIANT. The edges all curved up sharp, making them look like extra large crème brulee containers, which also mostly kept them dry on the inside (though they typically had holes). But on the outside of the pads were large spines to keep fish and turtles from having salad (though it doesn’t work against cows, which do live there, too). Alongside the lily pads was a jacare-tinga sunning himself.

On this trip as our chaperone was Teresa. Teresa is a retired grandmother, active in Rotary. She speaks almost no English. She is very quiet around us. She accompanied us to INPA on Tuesday and allowed the INPA guides to do most of the talking, though she knew a fair amount. But I talked to her a lot on this voyage about her family, my family, her travel experiences and mine. She is going to Los Angeles in June and on a European cruise in August. That’s a good life.

4/18/08 5:30 AM

Yesterday was a tough journey. I’m usually all about the journey, but yesterday, the destination was far better than the journey.

The destination was Novo Airao, a small town where Mirza used to live as a judge many years ago. What makes it so special is one thing. It’s not that it’s on a branch of the river. It’s not that her old spacious house had cupuacu trees all over the place. It’s not the small town friendly feel. It’s not that her old courthouse building overlooked all this. It’s that the dolphins hang out in one small area and you can swim with them (for just the price of getting there). And we swam with them for a good hour.

These are called botos here, maybe bottle-nosed dolphins in English, but how much does it matter? Their snouts were long and skinny and one of them had a twisted snout where the bottom and top were rotated to the side, as though it had been injured. These pinkish hued creatures felt softer than I expected, but otherwise like I’d felt at aquariums. They would sometimes feel you up by swimming underneath you and rubbing their snout on your leg. But mostly they wanted someone to give them fish.

This was a little like being in the Atlanta tornado, if you bear with me. I always was curious about having the experience, but figured it wouldn’t happen. When it did, it left me with impressions that will last because it was so surreal.

So that was the destination. The journey was very very long, beginning at 5 AM for me, 3:30 for others. A ferry ride and 3 hours in the car each way was a lot of sitting. Yes, we drove a desolate 2-lane road through rain forest and seeing hours of it wasn’t boring – we even hydroplaned several times through giant puddles to add excitement – but it was crowded in the car and, more importantly, I felt a bit sick on the return even before I tried to get some work done in the back of the car. The bathroom I had to use while awaiting the ferry was so bad that spelling out the details here will only make me sick again. Had I not gotten sick and had I not had to get playoff prep done, it still would have been a long tough drive. I’ve been spending 6 hrs a day in cars, so another day of 7 hours was hard…

And then I got home at 8 pm. I was ready to work and rest at home. But after 2 minutes of thinking that, I was told I had a Rotary meeting to go to. Quick shower and out the door for another hour and a half in the car to a restaurant and another hour back (less traffic), I thought. It turns out that we missed the meeting. So we actually got a chance to be un-chaperoned. So, like college kids finally away from their parents, we bought pizza and beer and took pictures of our informal Rotary meeting with Francisco as our special guest.

I slept from 11:45 until 4 am, did my work, and now am getting ready to go out again. We’re going to see the meeting of the waters – after a lot of driving.

4/16/08 10:50 pm

My wife called as I wrote before and, seemingly, the phone knew how much time I had, disconnecting a couple minutes before my ride came to take me to the Hotel Tropical for drinks. It was good to talk to Marcia almost exclusively in Portuguese. It wasn’t good that the phone shut me down before I got to say “I love you,” or “Um beijo, tchau!”

So back to the opera house. After sliding around on the floor, we learned that the Rubber Barons were a lot like those occasional college kids you hear about who can’t do laundry. They didn’t like doing it, especially in or with the acidic water of the Amazon. So some of them would send it back to Europe to get it done – getting it back 6 months later. And their opera seats stunk, too.

The second level box suites at the opera were what I think of for prime seats. I can see opera glasses, bad costumes, and someone sneaking in to stab you in the back. It was beautiful, exotic, elegant, dramatic, and enough beyond the stereotype to take it seriously.

We then were led outside to the deck surrounding the second floor. The view now is of somewhat decrepit towers of offices and apartments. But the Amazon Jungle and Rio Negro are still visible to remind you of the wild that contains the growth of the city.

The city’s growth was much contained in the 20s when rubber tree seeds were stolen and taken to Malaysia. They planted them there as farmers plant seeds for harvest, not the haphazard plan that Mother Nature had for Rubber Barons of Manaus. That, some access issues, and the arrogance of the Barons to think that rubber trees would only grow in Brazil’s climate doomed their business to the invariant pressure of competition.

And, with that came the end of opera for 70 years. After 1925, no opera was performed in Teatro Amazonas until 1996. It was used for occasional shows and for tourism. They even upgraded the facilities in 1974, but there would be no opera until most people didn’t know that rubber came from trees.

Those early Brazilians were smart with their rubber, mixing it with concrete to make a durable road that also limited the noise of horses. I think that principle lives today with mixing of tires in asphalt.

Our day proceeded with a Rotary lunch meeting with another group of friendly people. Though we haven’t mastered Portuguese, we were told twice afterward how happy they were that we made significant effort to use the language. And I will say that all are making good progress.

We finally swapped some dollars for reais, tried to find sunglasses, visited quickly the Olympic Village – where no Olympians train, but many kids get good practice with good facilities – and then rested. Or I wrote the previous entry.

After an hour, we went out again for drinks with many people from today’s meeting and a group of Rotarians on exchange from Belgium. Caiprinhas, Caipiroscas, “rum” (pronounced “hoom” to Steve’s dismay) and cokes, beer, and many less toxic drinks abounded. Bad accents and multiple languages (French, Spanish, German, English, Portuguese) were spoken. Esperanto was spoken about – the first time I’d heard anything of that in a very long time. Many danced to American songs. And even the fear of getting up at 4am on Thursday wasn’t enough to keep us from staying until nearly 10 pm.

It’s now 11:20. Maybe I should sleep.

4/16/08 4:30 pm

Pictures will tell a good tale of today. Mike took some good ones as we were driven home. They show the urban area and atmosphere we live in, the people, the life. If he strings a few picture together, it may even show the bumps in the road.

Today we went to the famous opera house of Manaus. When I first heard of Manaus in 1998 or so, it was because of the Opera House, Teatro Amazonas. Such a paradox to have an elegant opera house in the middle of the most wild jungle on earth. And now I’ve seen it. The pictures tell a fair amount of the story. I’ll try to tell the rest.

Our guide was Benedict. I think he joked that it was a “pompous” name, but maybe he said a “papa’s” name, since papa is the Portuguese word for Pope. Either way, people laughed. Benedict spoke of the stones for the structure all being imported from Europe, as there are no stones in the Amazon. Why they didn’t get it from other parts of Brazil, I didn’t think to ask. The money to build the opera house came from the “Rubber Barons.” As America had Robber Barons, Brazil had men (mostly Germans) who made a fortune on rubber and were hence called the Rubber Barons. After 15 years of construction, their opera house was done in 1891. They would have it for 35 years or so until Malaysia successfully stole the rubber tree seeds and the rubber market. In Brazil, rubber would, uh, never bounce back.

During those heydays, the Rubber Barons enjoyed seats at nearly stage left and stage right. Benedict made fun of the Barons often and, in this case, he pointed out that these seats are now the cheapest in the house, the acoustics being worst so close. The VIP section is now in the second level center, exactly where you’d probably pick.

The elegance of the place is exquisite in velvet covered dark wood chairs, large white pillars (hollow), elaborate artwork all around and on the ceiling, and wood floors mixed of dark mahogany and a lighter yellow wood, signifying the meeting of the waters that occurs off the port in Manaus (that we’ve yet to see). The stage is now moveable up and down 2 m and was currently down as they prepared it for a new opera tonight after Roger Waters’ opera last night.

Upstairs was an entire ballroom for music and dancing. We entered only after putting on large slippers that covered our shoes. In the most irreverent way – which is seemingly how to best enjoy Rubber Baron culture – we slid around the floor like children in those slippers. They moved across the beautiful wood floor almost like dull ice skates. Where Rubber Barons waltzed, Mike moon-walked.

4/15/08 6:30 PM

I’ve been home 30 minutes. 10 minutes ago, I was told it was time to go again. Fortunately, it was a false alarm.

You see, I live on the edge of town. A bus comes and picks the Rotarians up and drops us off at our predetermined destination. I am the last one off and the first one on. I get the least time at home, probably 2 hours less than Steve who is the first dropped off and the last picked up – a good hour each way different than I. In distance, we’re not too far, but traffic, narrow streets, pedestrians, and a non-linear route from him to me causes an hour to lapse with me on the onibus. This morning, we got lost on our way to Steve’s in Alto de Flores, so it was an hour and a half. I’m working on something to maybe pass the time. But usually I just like looking around and talking to Francisco, the motorista who must also be sick of the driving.

He was driving today when we went to INPA, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Amazonas. It was a big botanical garden. We got dropped off then got ourselves a guide named Diego. He didn’t speak English, so I was translator again. I’m getting a better hang of it, but some scientific terms were well outside my vocabulary. Peixe-boi is a manatee – how would I know that? Well, now I do. Sapo is a frog – we saw the smallest one I’ve ever seen today, smaller than your pinky’s fingernail. How could a polly wog become such a small frog? After I asked that, I realized that it could be a very different frog – like a poison dart frog. This was after it lost itself in some rocks, so I couldn’t check it out and I didn’t mention it to the others. Jacare is an alligator. Jacare-acu is a big one – six meters. Jacare-tinga is a white one, a bit smaller. Macaco is a monkey. We saw a spider monkey, called that for its articulated legs. When it walks, it walks a little like a spider. Um peixe electrica is an eel that puts out 500 volts when big fish worth eating get nearby. It paralyzes them and the eel eats. I didn’t ask what happens to the small ones that aren’t threatened by the eel. O Abrazo da Morte is the hug of death, a label given to the action of a vine, called apui, that wraps itself around its neighbor tree and robs it of its nutrients. Raiz means root. Caule is the trunk. Arara is a type of parrot, the ones we saw being bright red.

With all this education, we were already late when we went to go find Francisco and the bus. We arrived at the entrance and no one was there. Teresa called her companheiros in Rotary and tried to figure out what was happening.

All of a sudden, the rain crashed upon us. We heard and felt it before really seeing it. It was a deluge. The street filled with little rivers of water, some carrying floating boxes. The wind blew hard, causing a metal sign hanging above us to flap back and forth, eventually falling to the ground not even one second after we had been standing underneath. I imagined the potential involuntary visit to the hospital, then blocked it out.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Teresa decided to just eat at the restaurant of the park. We borrowed an umbrella and Steve, Mary, and I walked first, but the umbrella wasn’t big enough. I decided to get wet and ran to a shelter. In the process of getting to the restaurant, Mary and Mike were left by a shelter, Steve, Teresa, and I found the restaurant, and Francisco appeared, having been at another exit for 2 hours. As I went back with Francisco to find Mary and Mike, a power transformer blew up, sparks flying, the sound as loud as thunder hitting 100 m away. When we returned to the restaurant, the power was out. We ate anyway, not seeing what we were getting.

We had 2 short stops next, one at UFAM, where Kathya runs a program of physical fitness for the disabled. It’s not meant to train them as athletes, nor just to be recreation. I think we’d call it a wellness program in the States.

The next was at a hospital, seeing tomography, MRI equipment, and nuclear medicine. This was a public hospital and Mirza told me that they were good for some of these specialties. Trying to translate here was HARD. Steve did better because he knows medical terms and I run from medical stuff even in English. It was cool to see him so excited and able to interpret everything.

Oh yeah, I learned that beleza and show di bola also mean “cool.” And we taught Luciana, the second guide at INPA to say “wicked cool” in English. Useful stuff.

4/14/08 11 pm

I realized in Mexico 9 years ago that being in a country where you have to speak another language is one of the most intense experiences. There and here in Brazil, my language skills are those of an 8 year old (or younger). What happens at the same time you speak and listen with the skills of an 8 year old is that you – or at least I – acquire the emotions of an 8 year old. The insecurities are more profound. The happiness is more elated. As my childhood was very happy, so is this time, my third or fourth experience living as a child, speaking poorly, living to trust adults with more knowledge than I. It’s just Day 1.

So tonight, I tried to discuss the philosophy of law, especially “cause,” with my host “Mirza,” whose name I do finally know for sure. She is, you see, a judge and she should be interested and informative. I happened to bring a book on Social Philosophy, to understand better what is “fair.” Fairness is an important concept in Rotary – one of the parts of the Four Way Test (Prova Quadrupla) is “Is it fair to all parties?” It is also important in my work – how do we split the credit for the success of a basketball team between the players? I philosophized in my book, Basketball on Paper, that it should be based on the difficulty of each person’s contribution, with “difficulty” becoming then the concept of investigation. In this book I brought, the perspective is legal and economic. And it has many examples. I attempted to tell Mirza this one:

There are 3 people. Both A and B want to kill C. C is out in the desert with a big supply of water in a tank. Person A goes out to kill C by adding salt to the water in enough quantity to killl. Before C can drink the water, B steals the whole supply and C then dies of dehydration. Who is to blame?

If I explained things right, Mirza said B because of the law here. Hell, if I explained things wrong in my fractured portuguese, she still said B. The book takes the easy way and says “it depends.” And I say both equally. Regardless, Mirza explained herself better than I can relay here. She is quite intelligent and, right now, the most difficult person for me to understand because I think she really uses more complex or at least more advanced terms. I kinda understood, but I’m not sure. I love the challenge and it is important. It’s a concept that is deep, one that is interesting to me, and I really want to be able to discuss this in more than english. I will get there.

We discussed that while waiting for our ride to dinner from the secretary of the local club, whose name is something like Sergio’s, but it’s not (late note: it’s Selso). I will learn it, but he’s Sergio for this account. We went to pick up Mike, got lost, then found him, then stopped to let him run back to get his camera. At this point, Sergio said that Manaus has 8 women for each 1 man. I really didn’t believe it, but still mentioned Caltech, where the ratio was 7 men to 1 woman in my freshman class. When we got to the restaurant – an open air, well lit, fish joint that was awesome (called Bon Gosto) – I told Sergio that I didn’t believe him (even in the face of 2 nearby tables having only women). So he said to ask Kathya. And Kathya said it was 20 women per 1 man. And she added the kicker – if you ask a man, he’ll say that some man has 40 women!

And so we laughed. I laughed a lot at dinner, eating a soup with fish, shrimp, rice, and some goopy yellow stuff, and what looked like uncooked cous-cous. That was 2 soups today – the first one a prianha soup (yes, that piranha) – that were outstanding. And, oh yeah, we drank beer. I never felt it, I don’t think. But I think I continued to speak pretty good portuguese. We really don’t know what or when we’re doing on this trip. I thought we were in Manaus until Monday, then I read something about Saturday, then dinner and beer happened and now it’s Idunnowhen and I think we’re going to a town called Obidos, maybe by boat, maybe by plane and boat.
I do hope we have our luggage whenever Idunnowhen is. This t-shirt is getting nasty.

4/14/08 4:45 pm

I am returning now to the house. It’s hot. I won’t turn on the air conditioner just to try to deal with the heat. I think, though, that Mirza is doing best by running around with her daughter, Stela, and the dog, Nana… So I went and joined them. I ate acerola off her tree and another fruit – a small not very sweet type of orange, unwashed with dangerous water.

I then met Adriano, Mirza’s son. He speaks english, but fitfully, probably better than I speak portuguese, though maybe not as I seen willing to try a lot of words on this trip.

I definitely was most able to communicate at the Rotary lunch meeting. Mary’s prepared portuguese speech sits in her lost luggage, so she had to speak in english with translation. She was understanding far better by later in the afternoon, so I’m sure she’ll get that portuguese down with or without the prepared version.

She, Steve, Mike and I got more of that understanding after the meeting with a trip to the Unimed Hospital, a private hospital with a specialty in pediatrics. For Steve, who works with health care financing, this was good as he could ask questions related to the size, capacity, financing, and equipment – things he knows. For me, who struggles to be around people in pain – I feel pain or sick just thinking about what they’re going through – I had to divert my mind to the construction techniques used and to the water recycling tank in the middle of the building.

Mike got himself an interview on malaria in his quest to be a journalist. The doctor, Jucilena Viana (I think), told us how it is many contracted at the river or forest between 4 and 6 in the afternoon. In the cities, we should be ok. But our (semi) scheduled trip to the river was cancelled as we saw that it was 3:30.

So we got our rides home. I called my wife and hopefully didn’t break the bank with a 5 minute cell phone call. It was good to hear her voice. I hear her words frequently down here, including “vai tomar banho” and “escovao dentes,” but her voice is special. I talk to her via the cheaper home phone soon.

4/14/08 10:30 am

A few notes:

• · I need to remember the name of the woman I’m staying with. It’s unusual, something like “Mihisa”, maybe it’s “Marisa” and the “r” as an “h” sound throws me off. (late note: it is “Mirza”).

• · The time zone here is the same as EDT right now. So we arrived at around 1 am. Our luggage never arrived. They had advance warning at the airport, already prepared to file a report on our luggage. It took a long time, but the people were friendly. When we finally left customs, it was 2 am. Our host families were waiting for us. There were almost no other people there, just one driver with a sign desperately looking for his designated passenger. It seemed that all were tired – there would be no party. But all were happy. All the rock stars wanted to get sleep. We need to warm up to this role.

• · I slept fitfully. I had a hard time sleeping, but it was all excitement, just as when I went to Rio with Marcia, Argentina with Dave and John, Europe and Australia on my own. My mind races with all I’ve seen on the trip, probably just to be able to write this. I awoke early – around 6 – and barely slept until getting up at 8:30, my brain awash in words and visions and people. They say dreams are your brain replaying experiences of the day before. If so, my dreams blend strongly with consciousness.

• · Our landing last night was dark. The plane lights lit up the jet engine out my window and the horizon was dark until only minutes before landing. I finally saw a patch of light way off on the horizon. And two minutes before landing, I saw the lights of Manaus with the abrupt edge indicating the river. As we landed, it looked a lot like any other small city, but something was different. Maybe it was less light or fewer big prominent roads. When we got low enough, I saw the small rolling hills of the town as silhouettes of trees rose and disappeared with our elevation.

• · My temporary house, my host family’s house is “simple” but nice. Tile floors, tall ceilings, “hard” but welcoming. My room has a TV and Mirza found a channel with financial news as I went to bed. It was in English. I switched to Animal Planet in Portuguese. Then I just tried to sleep.

• · At breakfast, I spoke Portuguese a lot. It is always hard for me. I explained that I tend to be shy because I don’t know how to say that I tend to prefer listening. Knowing that I want to speak better, I force myself to do so.

4/13/08, 8:40 pm

The four of us – Mary, Mike, Steve, and I – sit on Air Tran #8077 33,000 ft above sea level. The pilot announced it two minutes ago in English and about four minutes ago in Portuguese. It’s dark outside and I have no altimeter, so I’ll take his word for it.

The flight was a little delayed – about 30 minutes – something the pilot didn’t mention. Knowing the Brazilian time concept, he probably didn’t notice. We will land at close to 1 am Manaus time, which is about midnight in the time zone we came from (late note: actually Manaus and EDT are the same right now). Having all gotten up early to be at the airport at 8:30, we will be tired upon arrival. But I noted to the group that it is possible – given our lack of detailed itinerary and the reputation of our hosts – that sleep will be hours away when we arrive. We could be up late drinking and partying, honoring our role as rock stars.

Not knowing any rock stars, I realize that at least the analogy of being rock stars is useful for this trip. We will be partying with people we don’t know, traveling around on a schedule we don’t know and probably will only partially meet, and performing in front of adoring fans even as our voices struggle to spit out “Bom dia.”

None of us right now is actively preparing to be a rock star. No one is practicing Portuguese, reviewing our presentation, or even working on flirting, though Mike and I did seem to get approached by an older woman who needed instructions plugging in her computer. Once we showed her this remarkable task, she talked us up for a while.

That excitement aside, I write now to document the other excitement of facing our unknown. We are all at least explorers, willing to accept no itinerary, food with names we don’t recognize, malaria meds that mess with the brain, and, most of all, that slight discomfort that comes with being in someone else’s area. We may be rock stars, but we will also be guests, learning what we need to be good guests, educators, and ambassadors.