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.