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.
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