A LITTLE "PEACE" OF BRAZIL

MEETING OF THE WATERS - Amazonas

2011-12-12T22:34:00.002-05:00

"Meeting of the Waters"
near Manaus, Brazil
08/21/11

With a population of approximately 1.8 million, Manaus is the capital of the state of Amazonas. There is an unusual natural phenomena that occurs when the dark, warm water of the Rio Negro, which comes from the northern jungle area, meets the light, cold water of the Rio Solimões from the Andes to the south. The difference in temperatures and current speeds causes the waters to remain separated for several miles until they eventually mix to form the Amazon River.

The Rio Negro, which is on the Manaus side of the parallel rivers, is also very acidic, and thus doesn't support mosquito life. Despite temperatures that reached 108 F (about 43 C) while I was there, I had no problem with them. Dehydration, yes. Mosquitos, no.

A popular tourist attraction is a 4-5 hour trip to see the "Meeting of the Waters" and travel through the rain forest.

A Walk in the Rain Forest
Before stopping for lunch at a floating restaurant, we
took a short walk through the jungle on this boardwalk.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

Carolina, Erika, and Brunie
After returning from our boat trip, Erika, the daughter of an
old friend (Nancides, now deceased) drove us to a lovely spot to
view the sun setting over the Rio Negro.
Then we had wonderful Brazilian ice cream that comes in
hundreds of exotic flavors: mango, tapioca, passion fruit, açaí,
coconut, coffee-chocolate-rum, pineapple. I wish I would
have had the time to sample them all.
(Photo: Erik Lifrak, used with permission.)

Sunset On the Rio Negro

Dia de Ação de Graças, 2011

2011-11-24T00:01:00.032-05:00

Hoje no E. U. A. nós celebramos o feriado de Ação de Graças. O feriado começou com primeiros colonizadores e indígena norte-americano indianos em América do Norte quando eles celebraram a colheita de outono juntos no décimo sétimo século. Em 1863 dia de Ação de Graças foi posto para a quarta quinta-feira em novembro.

Agora está um dia para todo o mundo de todas as religiões ou nenhuma religião estar agradecido. Tradicionalmente, as pessoas unem-se juntos para um jantar especial. Peru e torta de abóbora são comidas tradicionais na refeição.

Este ano estou pleno de agradece para duas coisas especiais.

Primeiro é as experiências maravilhosas que eu tive em Brasil como um Voluntário de Paz 1967-69. Era o tempo mais memorável de minha vida quando eu tive a oportunidade de viver em Brasil, apreciar a cultura brasileira, aprender a falar português, e, melhor de todos, tornar-se amigos com brasileiros maravilhosos.

Hoje também estou pleno de agradece para a oportunidade que tive que retornar a Brasil este ano encontrar meus amigos e estudantes anteriores no Sergipe outra vez e visitar lugares em Brasil sempre tinha querido ver ---Iguaçu e Amazonas.

Então, neste dia especial, quero agradecer meus amigos brasileiros outra vez para sua hospitalidade quente e amizade perdurável.

RETURN TO GLÓRIA

2011-11-04T01:44:00.011-04:00

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer was one of the defining experiences of my life. I spent 2 years in Brazil, living and working in Glória, a small town in the interior of the state of Sergipe, without benefit of full-time electricity, running water, a sewage system, TV, phone service, paved roads, hospital, nor university. There was no industry and only a few small businesses. I left Brazil and the Peace Corps after 2 years of service in July of 1969.

Over the intervening years, I had always wanted to return to Sergipe. Brunie (the other Volunteer who served in Glória) and I kept in touch and discussed traveling to Brazil often, but there was always some reason we couldn’t. Besides work, family, and money issues, we had lost touch with our Brazilian friends and former students.

Jorge Henrique (striped shirt) and his wife Veronica (top left photo between Brunie and me.)
Brunie's husband Eric is with Brunie and Jorge in the lower right.
(Photos: Jorge Henrique and Veronica, used with permission.)

I won’t go into the details (you can find them HERE) but finally in 2009, 40 years after leaving Brazil, I found the email address of one person in Glória. Even though Jorge Henrique, a poet and professor, hadn’t been born when I lived there, he helped me contact others and soon Brunie and I were invited to visit Sergipe. We were told all we needed to do was pay for airfare ---we would be provided with a place to stay.

How could we refuse?

It took nearly 2 years until we could both travel (Brunie from southern California, while I left from western Pennsylvania.)

On August 8th, 2011, she and I (and her husband Eric) met at the airport in Rio de Janeiro to catch a flight to Aracajú, the capital of Sergipe. We expected former students Idalécio and Célia and her sister Alcione to meet us. We were shocked to find more than 20 people at the airport, clapping, shouting, whistling ---and even a professional videographer to record our arrival.

Friends, colleagues and former students meet us at the airport in Aracajú.
Brunie is in black holding a sign. I am beside her in an aqua shirt.
Célia (front row left) and her family hosted us in Aracajú.
Teresa and José Augusto (back row behind Irene in the striped shirt) hosted us in Glória.
About five people who greeted us are missing from the photo.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

Aracajú is now immense. Because most of the city has been built in the last 40 years, it is relatively new and therefore clean and modern with lovely parks and beaches. It is one of the best-kept secrets in Brazil ---a beautiful unspoiled and safe resort city.

One evening, we were told we were meeting "a few people" for dinner. Another 20 or so showed up. We were honored with several speeches and one former student Gil, now a professional singer, sang for us.

Gil sings "Amigos Para Sempre" about everlasting friendship.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

At the dinner reception for us at a churrascaria (bar-b-que restaurant) in Aracajú.
Again, a few people are missing from the photo.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

In addition, many people stopped by Célia's beautiful home to visit us and others invited us to visit them. We also met others at the apartment of Idalécio and his wife.

In Brazil, one can never eat enough to please one’s hosts, so after eating wonderful meals at Célia’s home, we were offered more food everywhere we went. Sisters Neuzice and Euridice took us to the beach for fresh crabs, then wanted us to have another meal at their home. (Already full of delicious crabs, we politely declined.) Idalécio and his wife Graça took us to a great restaurant for feijoada, the Brazilian national dish. Irene and Dona Guiomar both had us to their apartments for scrumptious lunches.

One former student, Valmiro, now a doctor, invited us to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday and informed us that his first child was named Bruna Carolina in our honor.

Célia's brother Wilson who owns a fabulous studio, where he is a videographer creating commercials and promotional videos, had his driver take us to many places including his farm in the country.

On our fifth day in Sergipe, we moved from Aracajú to Glória to stay with Teresa and José Augusto (both former students) in their lovely home. Again, we were fed wonderful Brazilian foods and visited by many old friends.

On Saturday night, more than 50 people showed up for another dinner reception where the former school director of the ginásio where we taught, now in his eighties, made an eloquent speech about us. It was all a bit embarrassing while also extremely thrilling.

Dinner reception in Glória.

We received tons of gifts ---luckily I hadn’t filled my suitcases. One entire piece of my luggage was overstuffed with presents ---several CDs of Brazilian music, including one from Gil, a DVD of Idalécio’s singing group and DVDs about Sergipe, tote bags, key chains and other small souvenirs of the region, a hand-knit sweater, a blouse with hand-made lace, several linens embroidered by local crafts people, T-shirts, a hat, fancy soaps, cologne, hand-decorated dish and bath towels, a cute turtle paperweight, a beautiful book of photos of Sergipe, two books of Jorge Henrique's poems, a wood-cut print, sculptures created by local folk artists ---one made by Veio, who had been a pre-teen neighbor when we had lived there.

Gifts were totally unnecessary. My best gift was just being there and seeing everyone again.

Another photo from the reception in Glória.
Seu Manoel, the former school director in on the right.
Jorge Henrique and his wife Veronica are in the foreground.

Glória has progressed. All the things I stated above that didn’t exist when I lived there are there now. There is even a cell tower in the middle of the city. The town has many businesses and several industries. It always had a market on Saturdays, but now has a huge outdoor market from Friday through Saturday that attracts buyers from three states. Whereas few vehicles existed there in 1969, the place is teaming with cars, trucks, and zillions of motorcycles, fewer horses, mules, and donkeys, but none of the familiar ox carts that used to travel the streets and roads.

Many things came together in the late 1960s. I know I was part of it, but without all the other happenings, the town may not have progressed. The National Department of Works Against Droughts built a dam to hold enough water to last through rainless years in the sertão -a semi-arid region. A high school was established a few years before we arrived. A branch of the Bank of Brazil opened, providing loans for farmers and small businesses. A silo was built to store farmers’ crops so the market would not be glutted when they were harvested. An agricultural assistance agency provided an agronomist and a home economist (Irene and later Maria José.) A progressive woman, Dona Guiomar (Célia’s mother) became the elementary school director. The Brazilian Legion of Assistance started chicken cooperatives. A health center was opened and a doctor hired to visit one morning/week accompanied by Helen, a Peace Corps nurse. Nancides, an extremely intelligent, hard-working, eloquent, and humorous bank worker who also taught night classes at the high school, became the president of a Municipal Commission set up to make positive changes in the town. Brunie arrived in 1966 and started literacy classes. I arrived one year later and took over Brunie’s high school teaching duties so that she could concentrate on health and sanitation projects.

Best of all, despite there being no colégio nor universidade in the town, nearly all of our students managed to continue their educations. They are doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, agronomists, social workers, nurses, teachers. Some work for the state’s health service. One is a meteorologist. One became a minister of agriculture. One was the first woman to work for the Bank of Brazil in Sergipe and when she retired, became a lawyer.

If there was any doubt that we had made an impact, the doubts are gone.

Yet, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I gained so much more than I left in Glória. I have thought about Brazil and especially about Glória nearly every day since 1969. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to live and work there, to learn Portuguese, to know and appreciate the wonderful Brazilians and their culture, and also the opportunity to return 42 years later.

And while I was in Brazil in August, I decided I was going to do two things I had always regretted missing. First we visited the Amazon region. We were able to visit Nancides' daughter Erika in Manaus. Erika's father had died when she was only 11, so she was happy to meet us and hear stories about her father, even before her mother knew him. Then, while Brunie and Eric headed home, I went on to Iguaçu Falls.

And although, the rainforest and waterfalls are spectacular natural wonders, nothing compares to the reception we received from our friends and former students in Sergipe.

(I wish I could have mentioned everyone who we met or visited and every individual gift we received while in Sergipe, but I will be writing more and posting more photos about my trip in the coming days.)

Iguaçu/Iguazú Falls - Brazil/Argentina

2011-10-14T03:58:00.003-04:00

Iguaçu (Portuguese) or Iguazú (Spanish) Falls are on the border of Brazil and Argentina and close to Paraguay.

Below find two slide shows, one from the Brazilian side of the falls and another from Argentina.

The first presentation is longer, because I had more time to spend on the Brazilian side. I caught a bus across the street from my hotel, which took me to Brazil's lovely welcome center with colorful buses to take one to the actual falls. One descends and climbs lots of steps and takes wooden or metal walkways to see the falls. Afterwards, I walked across the road to the Bird Park where one can enter cages with exotic birds. (See the Bird Park slideshow HERE.)

The following day, I caught a bus from Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, went through customs at the border, exchanged dollars for pesos, took a bus to the city of Puerto Iguazú, then another to the falls. It was a rainy day, and not as nice for taking photos as it was the previous day.

By the way, even when it was not raining, the overspray from the falls, even when not close to them, is enough to get one quite wet. The first morning had been cool, so I threw a nylon parka into my knapsack, not even thinking I would need it to stay dry, but it came in handy, although plastic raincoats were on sale on both sides of the falls.

The Argentinean falls were fun because of the coati, an animal of the racoon family, which roamed everywhere. (I have seen videos of coati on the Brazilian side, too, but I didn't see any myself.) In Argentina, they wandered among the tourists and were quite tame. Despite many signs about not feeding the animals, I saw many tourists doing so.

Some of the Argentinean falls were wide and spectacular like the Brazilian ones, but some were narrow and surrounded by vegetation. I felt more as if I were in a rain forest than when viewing the Brazilian falls. But they were both spectacular to see. (Be sure to check out the very short video at the bottom of this post.)

These falls just go on and on. They were one of the highlights of my trip.

I had always regretted missing Iguaçu when I lived in Brazil 40+ years ago, so I knew I had to visit there on this trip ---my first time back since 1969.

Iguaçu Falls - Brazil Slideshow: Carol’s trip from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States to Foz do Iguaçu (near Foz de Iguacu), State of Parana, Brazil was created by TripAdvisor. See another Foz de Iguacu slideshow. Create your own stunning slideshow with our free photo slideshow maker.

Iguazu Falls - Argentina Slideshow: Carol’s trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States was created by TripAdvisor. See another Pittsburgh slideshow. Create a free slideshow with music from your travel photos.

The sound of the roaring water is almost deafening. I included a very short (27-second) You Tube video to demonstrate the sound and the enormous amount of water rushing over the falls. This is just one small section of the falls. Imagine this amount of water multiplied by perhaps 100 rushing over the falls.

Jardim Botânico - Rio de Janeiro

2011-10-09T07:31:00.001-04:00

One of the highlights of my trip to Brazil in August (2011) was the Jardim Botânico in Rio de Janeiro.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Jardim Botânico - Rio de Janeiro Slideshow: Carol’s trip from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States to Rio de Janeiro, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was created by TripAdvisor. See another Rio de Janeiro slideshow. Create a free slideshow with music from your travel photos.

Click on the full-screen icon for the best view.

Parque das Aves - Foz do Iguaçu

2011-10-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a great trip to Brazil (August 7-31, 2011.) One of the highlights of my trip was the Parque das Aves (Bird Park) which is just a few minutes walking distance from the entrance to the Iguaçu National Park where I had just viewed the magnificent Iguaçu Falls. I will be posting photos from my trip as time permits, so please come back to see photos from other locations in Brazil.

Click on the arrow below to view the slide show.

Bird Park, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil Slideshow: Carol’s trip from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States to Foz do Iguaçu (near Foz de Iguacu), State of Parana, Brazil was created by TripAdvisor. See another Foz de Iguacu slideshow. Create your own stunning slideshow with our free photo slideshow maker.

Click on the full-screen icon for the best view.

THE SIMPLE LIFE

2011-07-21T01:04:00.002-04:00

In response to the writing prompt, “The Simple Things” on Mama’s Losin it blog:

Glória, 1967 (top) and 1969 (bottom)

There are times when I would chuck most of what I own, burn down the house, and start over, because sometimes the simple things are the best.

*****************

In the late 1960’s I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Glória, a small town in the interior of Brazil. Brunie (another Volunteer) and I lived in a house that had 4 rooms: a sitting room, 2 bedrooms and a kitchen. We placed a table for eating in the wide hall that stretched from the front to the back of the house.

In the front room, we used our footlockers for seating. They rested on bricks (to keep them from touching the damp mud-brick floor.) We had a small table and chair there for a desk and used unfinished wooden chairs from our dining area when we needed more seating. We could hang a hammock diagonally from two adjacent walls for an overnight guest.

Each bedroom held a bed with a straw mattress and a mosquito net hanging from the lattice ceiling which supported our ceramic tile roof. We each had a small hand-made wardrobe and a tiny table next to each bed for a lamp.

The lamps were kerosene-powered. The town had electricity only four hours each evening, but our house, which we rented for a total of $5.00 ($2.50 each) per month, wasn’t wired for energia.

Once the town’s street lights were extinguished at 10:00 each night, one could see billions of stars in the southern-hemisphere skies.

The town had no sewage system, nor running water. Many larger homes held cisternas in back yards to catch and store rain water, but we needed to have water delivered to our home. A teenaged neighbor had a contraption for the back of his donkey which carried four large cans of water from the dam outside of town. Once he arrived at the house, we strained the water through a clean dishtowel into a waist-high ceramic jug to filter out leaves, small stones, and insects.

Water meant for cooking or drinking was boiled for 20 minutes, then put through a water filter. We boiled our water on a small stove with a propane tank attached to it. Most of our neighbors used wood-burning stoves.

We had a shower room, about 3-feet square, but we chose not to use it after my house-mate found a snake there one day. Instead, we heated water on our stove and poured it over our heads in the kitchen. The mud-brick floor slanted slightly toward the back entrance, so the water seeped under the door into our back yard, past the outhouse entrance and into the mato.

There were no telephones in town and no TVs. Many homes had refrigerators waiting for the full-time electricity that was scheduled to be powered up within a year. We had a temperamental kerosene-powered refrigerator.

We walked everywhere in town. If we needed to travel a short distance from town, we borrowed a horse or mule, unless we could catch a ride on one of the half-dozen cars in town. There was a bus three times a week into the capital city ---a drive which might have taken 90 minutes here, but on the dirt roads with frequent stops to pick up or dispatch passengers, stretched to four hours.

Yet, despite all of those “inconveniences” the town overcame its shortcomings with the warmth of its citizens. The Brazilians corrected our Portuguese, forgave our mistakes, shared their joys and sorrows, and treated us like daughters. I don't know that I have felt any more "at home" anyplace else.

I haven't been back to Glória since I left 4 decades ago. The town’s website shows a much larger city with a cell tower looming in the mato outside of town. The city's praças are filled with stunning tropical plants. Power lines are everywhere.

With TVs in most homes, probably fewer people spend evenings visiting with their neighbors. I’m sure the small circus that used to arrive annually, no longer visits. The nightly social event, gathering in the praça to watch the movemento, has doubtless disappeared.

Most likely street lights are left on all night. And with all that light, I am guessing one can no longer see the Southern Cross constellation quite as clearly in those big, beautiful, Brazilian skies.

There are times when I long for the simple life I lived in Glória. We had a roof over our heads, food to sustain us, boiled and filtered water, meaningful work, and friends. Really, what more do most of us need?

Despite the conveniences of modern technology, sometimes the simple things are still the best.

Glória, 2009
photo by Alcione (see her on the photo to the right)

-------

Alcione, c. 1967
youngest child of
Dona Guiomar,
(elementary-school
principal)
with brother & sisters

I will be visiting Glória in just a few weeks ---my first visit since I left in July of 1969. Check back for photos and new stories.

UPCOMING TRIP TO BRAZIL - AUGUST 2011

2011-07-01T03:28:00.003-04:00

   For anyone new to this blog, Brunie and I served in the Peace Corps together (Brunie 1966-68, me 1967-69). We worked in the same interior town in the state of Sergipe, Nossa Senhora da Glória ---everyone just calls it Glória. Luckily Brunie was there a full year before I arrived because her excellent Portuguese and outgoing personality allowed her to fit in extremely well. She was able to teach me everything I needed to know to get along, even the year I remained on my own after she returned home.
   For over 40 years, we have talked about returning to Brazil but we had lost track of our friends and former students. Read HERE how we were able to reconnect, which led to our upcoming trip.
   We planned to travel in 2010, but that trip had to be postponed because of Brunie's family issues. But, now our tickets have been purchased and we will be making the trip in a few weeks.
   Brunie and I have finally scheduled our trips to Brazil. Brunie and her husband are traveling from California, so their best travel deal was to fly to Manaus. From there they will make their way to Aracajú. They could choose from flights that had layovers in Brasilia, São Paulo or Rio. (They chose Rio.)
   From Pennsylvania, my best deal was to Rio. And it just so happens, that on Brunie's itinerary from Manaus that passes through Rio, she will transfer to the very flight I will take to Aracajú.
   Note: if we purchased flights from our homes directly to Aracajú and then back home, not allowing us to travel elsewhere. Each flight required 24- 30 hours each way, including numerous layovers and we would pay about the same as we are paying for Brunie's flight to Manaus or my flight to Rio, plus Brazilian airpasses which allow us up to 4 flights within Brazil. So the airpasses were the best way to go for us.
   We will arrive in Aracajú on a GOL flight at 2:25 pm on August 8th.
   We will stay for a few days in Aracajú (the captial of Sergipe) where many of our friends and former students live now. One family will host us there. The weekend of August 12, there is a big festa in Glória. We specifically planned our trip to be there for it, because many former residents of Glória return for the festa. Two of our former students, who married after we both left Brazil, will find places for us to stay there.

My itinerary:
Fly PA to Rio 8/7-8/8. Fly (red line) to Aracajú 8/8. By car (aqua line) to Glória and back 8/12-8/14. Bus (green line) to Salvador 8/15. Fly (blue line) to Manaus 8/19. Fly (orange line) to Foz de Iguaçu 8/23. Fly (pink line) to Rio 8/26 before heading back to PA 8/30-8/31. I just noticed that my basic flight patterns look like an upside-down and tilted outline of the stars that make up the southern cross.

   After returning to Aracajú, we will take a bus (3-4 hours) to my favorite Brazilian city, Salvador where we will stay at a modest hotel near Barra Beach ---a lovely spot. I will also visit Bob and his family. Bob was in my Peace Corps group, but has been living and working in Salvador during most of the past 40 years.
   After a few days there, we will fly from Salvador to the Amazon region. In Manaus, we are staying near the famed old opera house, built during the city's prosperous rubber-plantation days. Among other things we plan to take an afternoon trip on the River. Also we will visit with Erika, Nancides' daughter. Nancides was our friend in Glória. Sadly he died when his daughter was only 11. She is anxious to hear our stories about her father from even before her mother knew him.
   From Manaus, Brunie and Eric will fly home while I catch a flight to Foz de Iguaçu, where I will fill up my camera's memory cards, I'm sure. From Iguaçu, I will fly to Rio where I will stay for a few days with a friend, Ginger.
   Ginger lives in the mountains outside of Rio in the town of Novo Friburgo which was in the news in January 2011 because of terrible floods in the region. There were many deaths and the loss of roads, homes, and businesses. Ginger and her husband had no damage, but the woman who works for them lost everything and now has to live an hour's bus ride from her work. Because of odd government regulations, even though the woman and her family had lived there for decades, the property had never been registered, thus she cannot receive government assistance nor be able to rebuild there unless they pay what would be equivalent to several years' salary to register the property. Ginger and some of her friends have helped the woman's family survive during these rough times. I also sent Ginger some money for her and plan on contributing more in the future.
   Ginger has an apartment in Rio near Ipanema Beach, so I am staying with her there. I am interested in seeing the contemporary art museum designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (who designed most of Brasilia) in Niteroi, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. Ginger knows the city well so she has told me about great street markets and beautiful botanical gardens I won't want to miss.
   I always regretted not visiting the Amazon area or Iguaçu when I lived in Brazil, so I will be able to cross those 2 off my bucket list ---and one more: I plan to hang glide down to the beach in Rio. I figure if it took me 40+ years to return to Brazil, it's probably my last shot ---and even if I return, I'll never be in the physical shape I am now ----so I better do it while I can still get around without a walker. I also plan to do an obstacle course through a forested park in Rio, including a few zip lines. (I've been putting in extra hours on the elliptical and strength-training machines at the Y, so I won't seem like too much of a wimp.)
   I will, of course, post my photos here. I might be able to post some while I am still traveling, but more likely it will be September or maybe even October because I will be attending the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary events in Washington in late September where I will meet up with many of my fellow PC Volunteers with whom I trained.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

2011-03-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

I originally posted this in January of 2009, but I was editing it to publish elsewhere and thought I'd move it to the front of my blog for anyone who missed it the first time around.

   While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil in the late 1960’s, I used my month-long vacation time to travel by bus from the Northeast of Brazil through Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, then southward to Pôrto Alegre in Brazil’s southernmost state and onward to Montevideo, Uruguay. From there I took a bus to a hydrofoil that took me to Buenos Aires where a kind taxi driver deposited me at a small hotel owned by a Brazilian couple. I had learned Portuguese in order to survive in Brazil, but my Spanish was minimal.
   For vacation days, Peace Corps personnel in Brazil were each allotted $9 per day. Although I spent less than my per diem allowance some days, I made up for it by purchasing local crafts or clothing ---three cashmere sweaters in Buenos Aires ---on other days.
   To save money, I would catch a late bus, saving the cost of a hotel room by sleeping on the bus overnight when traveling between cities. I was in my early twenties and didn’t mind a noisy bus, even though I woke with swollen feet and a stiff neck on scheduled stops every two or three hours. I might mention that buses between major cities were modern, clean, and often more reliable than air travel in much of South America at that time.
   On my way back north, I returned to Montevideo. I arrived in the capital of Uruguay around 10 a.m. on a Saturday and planned to catch a bus twelve hours later. On my first stop there, I had seen most of the sites, so I spent the rainy afternoon in Montevideo dozing in a movie theater while a very bad Matt Helm movie repeated every two hours. It was still raining when I left the theater.

The northbound bus ride to Pôrto Alegre was supposed to last ten hours, arriving around 8 a.m. On the bus, a Brazilian boy in his late teens struck up a conversation. The boy was curious about the United States and eager to try out his English, but we spoke mostly in Portuguese throughout the long night. Because I would have to wait for about ten more hours in Pôrto Alegre to catch a bus to São Paulo, he urged me to go home with him to meet his family. I politely refused.

As the dawn broke the rain ended. It looked like it would be a beautiful day. At the bus station I said my good-byes, wondering what to do for ten hours on a Sunday when most of the city would be closed.
After retrieving my overstuffed luggage, I was confronted by a dozen Brazilians ---the boy’s parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents ---all insisting I visit their modest home for the day. After several polite refusals and their enthusiastic insistance, I agreed to spend the day with them. They fed me breakfast, took me on a driving tour of the sun-drenched city, gave me a huge lunch which is the major meal of the day in Brazil. The family was of Italian descent; the meal consisted of ravioli soup and pasta along with the traditional feijoada, the Brazilian national dish made with black beans and a variety of meats served over rice.

   Afterwards, the family insisted I take the customary siesta, which I needed after spending most of the night conversing in Portuguese with their son. An hour before I had to be at the bus station, they woke me, thrust a huge bag lunch on me, and drove me to the rodaviaria to catch my ônibus.
   Although I wrote to the entire family, thanking them for their hospitality, and later sent a few friendly letters to the boy, they never answered. In my experience, Brazilians weren’t zealous letter writers.
   From Pôrto Alegre, the bus took me north through the states of Santa Catarina and Paraná, back to São Paulo where I visited my friend Henry, a Peace Corps lawyer from New Jersey. He had befriended a Brazilian Jewish family at synagogue. Henry told me the family had virtually adopted him. They invited us for dinner and to view the Miss Universe contest on television. There was no television at my Peace Corps site and electricity only four hours each night, so this was a luxury for me. Miss Brazil and Miss Israel were among the favorites to win the contest so Henry and his Jewish friends were doubly passionate about the outcome. When Miss Brazil won the title, an unofficial national holiday resulted. The family members insisted that I stay with them for a few days, but I had to be on my way.
   Again, I passed through Rio de Janeiro on my way to Salvador where I planned to end my trip by attending a regional conference, bringing Peace Corps Volunteers together to share experiences, disappointments, successes, problems, and triumphs.
   I hadn’t seen most of the other Volunteers for a year, yet I was not surprised to hear how many of us had experienced similar acts of hospitality from relative strangers who were eager to know North Americans and show off their own country.
   Brazilian hospitality was a perfect example of how wonderful travel can be in foreign countries and what warm, friendly people one can meet. The most generous people were often those who had relatively little themselves. Such hospitable folks could rarely be encountered in a fancy tourist hotel or in the first-class section of an airplane. More likely they would be met in a local restaurant, on a bus, or in a inexpensive pensão.
   After leaving Brazil, I have never encountered any of the people who showed me such warmth, but every time I have had the chance to “pass it on” I have embraced the opportunity to do the same for foreigners in the United States, especially those who may have felt a bit lonely away from home and family.
   I only hope each person passed it on and the next person passed it on, so that eventually those folks in Brazil were rewarded with the type of kindness they had extended to me.

TRIP TO BRAZIL RESCHEDULED AGAIN

2011-01-17T08:29:00.003-05:00

It seems that my previous post hoping Brunie and I could travel in the Spring of 2011 (Fall south of the equator) must be revised again.

Brunie's family issues are not yet resolved, so we are hoping to travel this August (2011) to be in Glória for the festa in August, just as we had originally planned for last year.

I will post updates on the trip when I receive any new information.

Ainda tenho saudades.

Carolina

BRAZIL'S RISING STAR

2010-12-15T01:45:00.007-05:00

On 12/12/10, 60 Minutes aired a segment called "Brazil's Rising Star" which highlighted Brazil's growing economy and the many things that Brazil is doing right to become a future world leader, one that (unlike the United States) will be more interested in making love than making war.

How refreshing!

If you didn't see it when it first aired, click on a green link (above or below) to view the segment (which runs a little more than 13 minutes.)

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7143554n

TRIP TO BRAZIL - To Be Rescheduled

2010-05-29T02:01:00.002-04:00

It has been nearly 41 years since I was last in Brazil, when I served in the Peace Corps. The other former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in the same town as me (Brunie) and I were planning to travel to Brazil in August of this year.

But, now it looks like we have to postpone our trip ---at least for several months, perhaps longer. I spoke to Brunie last evening. Because of some family issues that will not be resolved by August, we cannot travel as we originally planned.

Even though it might not happen so soon, we are still excited about visiting some of our favorite places in Brazil's smallest state Sergipe, including the town where we lived, Nossa Senhora da Glória.

When I spoke to Brunie several weeks ago, we discussed meeting in Atlanta, then flying to Manaus in the Amazon region, then to Aracajú (the capital of Sergipe) where many of our friends and former students live. Aracajú is supposed to be one of the safest and least-spoiled coastal cities in Brazil now. Forty years ago, the beaches had just a few huts where one could purchase beer and boiled crabs which cost about ten cents (U.S.) for three. Apparently there are large hotels and resorts along the coast now.

We also hope to visit Salvador and Brunie wants to visit friends in Natal, so our itinerary is not set in stone. We will have to see what flights are available when we can actually make reservations.

Of course we want to see how the country has changed over the past 40 years, however, it is the people that we most want to visit. While we lived in Sergipe, the brasileiros were warm and welcoming. They helped us with every-day living. They corrected our Portuguese. They became our friends.

Alcione (the daughter of the elementary school director with whom we worked) has been my main contact and is coordinating our visit. I have also been in contact with several other of our neighbors and former students and we are thrilled that we will be able to see them again. But for now, we don't know when that will happen.

When I finally make it to Brazil, I will, of course, post lots of photos and tell about my travels on this blog.

MY SECRET FRIEND

2010-03-25T00:01:00.035-04:00

   I have written several posts about how difficult it was for me to learn Portuguese and some of the humorous mistakes Americans have made when trying to speak the language in Brazil.
   In Peace Corps Training, language learning was concentrated only on conversation. When we arrived in Brazil, we hadn't been taught to read or write the language. Although we were all college graduates, we were Portuguese illiterates.

   Despite my many Portuguese language mistakes, Brazilians sometimes make mistakes, too.

   One year before Christmas, the young adults who lived at the pensão plus a few others who were not from Glória, but who worked there, decided to add a little interest for the holiday by creating a Secret Friend activity. Each person pulled a name from a hat. We were supposed to write notes to our Secret Friend for about a week. Then before Christmas, we were to give a small gift and reveal our identities.
   There were lots of interesting people at the pensão, mostly government workers and bankers, and most of the young adults there were gregarious and full of fun. But I had picked the name of the only guy who was introverted and rarely said a word.
   What could I write to him? And, of course, even though my Portuguese was improving, if I wrote in my less-than perfect Portuguese, he would know immediately the notes were from me. So I asked my friend Nancides to help me write notes to my Secret Friend. In fact, I asked him to help me compose them and also to actually write them, because my American penmanship was so distinctive.
   I didn’t know at the time, but coincidentally, that guy chose my name, so we were writing notes to each other.
   The idea was to write something short, funny, and clever. However, my Secret Friend was writing pages and pages of flowery prose, praising my beauty, my charming accent, my fair complexion, my long legs, my light hair. I had no idea who was sending me these letters, but it seemed the guy had a crush on me and was sending me inappropriately passionate messages, as if this game gave him permission to woo me.
   At lunch time, everyone would bring their notes to lunch to read out loud and every one would speculate on who had written them. I didn’t want to read the letter I had received ---it was embarassing. But I asked Nancides to read a small portion, claiming it would take too much time to read it all. At random, he chose a paragraph. Suddenly everyone was laughing. I didn’t understand why, but then Nancides explained.
   I can’t remember the exact mistake in Portuguese, but the writer had done the equivalent of leaving out an important comma, which made a sentence that was obviously meant to say, “I dream of you, Virgin....” In other words, he meant to call me Virgin, as someone might refer to a person as Honey, or Sweetheart. But by leaving the comma out before the word Virgin, he actually had written, “I dream of you as a virgin...” In other words, I was obviously not a virgin, but he dreamed of me as if I were.
   Of course, this had completely gone over my head. But when it was explained, I ---not normally one to be embarassed ---blushed. And the guy who wrote it, although we hadn’t known who my Secret Friend was, turned bright red, too. Thus he had inadvertently revealed his identity.
   Poor guy. He probably never dared write a passionate love note to anyone ever again.

MISUNDERSTANDING PORTUGUESE #2

2010-03-21T00:01:00.002-04:00

SOME HUMOROUS MISTAKES MADE IN PORTUGUESE

   Everyone makes mistakes with a foreign language, and of course, I was no different.
   The first morning I was in Rio, I requested two fried uvas (grapes) instead of ovos (eggs) for breakfast. The waiter heard the ‘uvas’ but politely said, “Two fried eggs for the senhorita.” He’d probably heard it before.

   In training, we had been told of the Brazilian soft drink Guarana. The flavor of Guarana might be described as a cross between ginger ale and apple juice. It is supposed to be a high-energy drink, which probably means it is loaded with sugar. When we stopped at a restaurant for a snack on one of our first days in the country, one of the other trainees ordered a Guanabara, which is the state in which Rio is located. That would be like visiting Denver and ordering a Colorado instead of a Coca Cola.

   When I was in Brazil, the three favorite flavors of ice cream in the area where I lived were avocado, prune, and coconut. The first two didn’t sound all that tasty to me, so I always chose coconut ice cream. The problem is that the Portuguese word for coconut is ‘coco’ which is quite similar to another Portuguese word which resulted in many a foreigner ordering shit ice cream.

   Americans have the habit of, when not understanding someone, saying “Huh?” In Brazil, an R at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an H and an Ã is pronounced sort of like a nasal ‘uh.’ Thus, when an American says “Huh?” in Brazil, it sounds like the Portuguese word ‘rã’ ---and the Brazilians wonder why americanos go around saying ‘frog?’ all the time.

   One Volunteer decribed an embarrassing language faux pax on the Peace Corps Brazil website. After a full dinner with a Brazilian family, the male volunteer exclaimed, “Estou cheio.” Literally that means “I am full” but in reality the phrase is commonly used to say, “I am pregnant."
   The Brazilian hostess explained that it is more correct to say, "Estou satisfeito" or “I am satisfied.”
   The next evening after arriving home late the volunteer explained, "O omnibus estava satisfeito." (The bus was satisfied.)

My fellow PC Volunteer Gary, who served in Espirito Santo, sent me this story:

“During my first three months in PC in Brazil, I was invited to dinner at a home of a large Brazilian family on the street where I lived. There were mom/dad, grandparents, seven children, aunts and uncles, etc. all at the house. My Portuguese was halting at best, but I wanted to be socialable and try to blend in to this lively family gathering. After finishing dinner and before leaving the table, I thanked my hosts and ---trying out a new Portuguese slang I had learned that week ---attempted to say that I would always look forward to 'shooting the breeze' with them (bater o papo) but instead I said "bater o papa". I could not understand the shocked stares and open mouths of the group after I had proudly tried my Portuguese-best. It was later explained to me that I had not said 'shoot the breeze/bate o papo' [literally ‘beat the talk’] but had actually told everyone how enjoyable it would be to 'bate o Papa'....or "beat the Pope" with them.”

Que vergonha, nao e!!!

Gary also tells stories of learning Portuguese during Peace Corps Training. Unless you know both Portuguese and English, you might not understand these.

One of the Brazilian language teachers told my PCV group that we could order orange juice anywhere in Brazil by just quickly saying "Lone Ranger...Lone Ranger....Lone Ranger!"

Likewise, we were told that a toasted cheese sandwich was just minutes away after requesting a "Miss You Ken Gee!"

This same instructor from Rio Grande do Sul convinced us that getting an apple would be no problem if we said "My son" with a US southern accent.

Those mischevious Brazilian language instructors are probably still laughing at the crazy and naive norteamericanos. Pois e gente!

MY MOTHER 3/18/1909 - 11/25/2009

2009-12-09T02:39:00.004-05:00

My 95 year old mother had been on a waiting list for an assisted living facility for over 14 months. Meanwhile she had in-home help when I couldn't be there.

Her health and dementia had slowly worsened over the past five years, but she seemed to go down hill very swiftly in the last three months. Still, she could dress and feed herself. She took her medications, but someone had to put out the correct pills each day so she wouldn't take the wrong ones. Physically, she was frail, but had very little wrong with her.

Recently, she fell in her home between her daytime and night-time help. We thought she had a stroke because she was not walking and had no recollection of her fall. We took her to the emergency room where it was determined that she did not have a stroke. Although she had only minor physical injuries, they decided to keep her for observation. She was disorientated and very listless, and somewhat dehydrated. She knew she was in the hospital, but did not understand why.

Several days later, she seemed to be doing fairly well ---she was walking short distances with help, feeding herself and alert, although somewhat disoriented. However, her doctor recommended we place her in a nursing home for a month or so after leaving the hospital and we were looking into that possibility.

However, during the early hours of November 25th, the day before Thanksgiving, she died peacefully in her sleep.

My Aunt Jeanne, my mother's youngest sister, died the day before Thanksgiving in 2006. Their grandfather died the day before Thanksgiving in 1946. If I were a superstitious person, I might worry every time that holiday rolled around.

I've been out of touch because my mother seemed to be deteriorating so quickly. Then I was visiting the hospital and taking care of her home. Since her death I have been contacting everyone, arranging a memorial service, taking care of matters (bills, insurance, the will, etc.) helping my niece move into my mother's home, disposing of my mothers' belongings, and dealing with lawyers and probate.

My mother left written instructions that she wanted to be cremated with no viewing, which suited me fine. I have never liked funeral homes and avoid them whenever possible. She requested only a memorial service. Since there was to be no viewing, there was no rush for the service. I didn't want to do it over Thanksgiving weekend. The next week, the church was busy with a large meeting and several weddings. Also a good friend of my mother's was having a 100th birthday party that week and I didn't want to put a damper on that, so we scheduled the service for two weeks after her death.

My mother was not well-educated, but she was very smart and well-read. She had many talents. She was a caring person who was involved in a lot of volunteer work. Yet, she was not perfect and also had a dark side that many people never saw.

Probably, I will not be blogging until at least January. When I return, I will write about my mother's life on my other blog, Pro Artz.

PEACE CORPS 50th ANNIVERSARY REUNION

2009-09-28T07:16:00.004-04:00

In 1961, John F. Kennedy believed so strongly in the idea of the Peace Corps that he used his discretionary funds to fund it instead of waiting for approval from Congress.

In 2011, the Peace Corps will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

If you served in the Peace Corps anywhere in the world during the past 50 years, record these dates and plan to attend the conference to be held in Washington DC to celebrate that milestone.

September 22-25, 2011

OPHIDIOPHOBIA - fear of snakes

2009-09-10T04:08:00.009-04:00

This post is in response to a writing prompt at

MAMA'S LOSIN' IT

Writing prompt: "Scaredy Cat!!!"

OPHIDIOPHOBIA (according to Wikipedia) refers to the fear of snakes. It is one of the most common zoophobias (animal phobias). A typical ophidiophobic would not only fear them when in live contact but also dreads to think about them or even see them on TV or in pictures. Ophidiophobia is a characteristic of fictional adventurer Indiana Jones (and with good reason, I might add.)

I know others are afraid of other creepy-crawlies, but my only phobia is snakes. I acquired the fear from my grandmother who often told a story about a neighbor boy who threw a large black snake across the road at her when she was a young girl. The force of the throw made it wrap it self around her body, before falling to the ground. It was dead, but she didn’t know that when it was flying toward her.
I worked at a camp one summer in an area where there were timber rattlers. Counselors often walked from the main camp to our campsites at night. I was assured rattlers were not nocturnal so I wasn't worried. I usually had a flashlight with me, but occasionally walked without one if the moon were bright. After returning home from the camp at the end of the summer, I read an article about common myths ---and sure enough the myth that timber rattlers are not nocturnal is false. Even though it was months later, I almost fainted.
Once my first husband & I stopped to eat our lunch at a highway rest stop. On the way to a picnic table, I tramped on a snake and it curled over my almost-bare, sandaled foot. I screamed. It was harmless, but it still freaked me out. I went camping with friends, and on a hike, I went off the path to pee ---and there was a snake. It seemed that if there were a snake anywhere nearby, I was the one to run into it.

During my Peace Corp stint in Brazil, our house in Glória was at the edge of a town surrounded by hinterland. There was a pond nearby, so it attracted all kinds of animals, including reptiles. Several times a snake crawled into our house in the space (about an inch) under the door.
Brunie (my fellow volunteer) and I each had a footlocker which we shipped from home with clothing and other essentials. To prevent mildew, we placed each of them on four bricks (underneath the corners) to keep them from touching the mud-brick floor which was sometimes damp. The footlockers served as extra seating.

José Francisco (see photos of him and me, scroll down a little to find us both dressed in red, HERE) a man who worked for the Brazilian Legion of Assistance, was sitting on one of the footlockers when a snake slithered from underneath it, right between his feet. José Francisco ran from the room. I jumped onto a chair. Brunie and I screamed for our next-door neighbor and landlord. He came in and killed the snake and then pointed out its fangs and told us it was a poisonous variety.

In Peace Corps training, we were told that all poisonous snakes in Brazil were deadly. And the fact that the snake was nearly the exact color as our mud-brick floor scared me even more, because in other circumstances, one of us might have walked right up to it, or even stepped on it, without even noticing it was there.
I started to pack to go home, but then someone reminded me there wasn't a bus out of town for five days ---which gave me time to calm down ---sort of.

That was the first time we saw a snake in the house, but it was not the last. It got to the point that I would jump if I saw a thread on the floor. I had a bathrobe that had a tie at the waist which was sewn on across the back, but if not tied, the ends hung down at the side. Those ties would brush my leg and I would gasp in panic. One day, I just cut those suckers off so I wouldn’t be jumping every two minutes when I wore it around the house.

We had lots of other creepy things in our house in Brazil --toads, mice, roaches, tarantulas, bats, scorpions ---but nothing bothered me except the snakes.

What didn’t help was the word for snake in Portuguese is “cobra” and even though there were no King Cobras around, there were several varieties of highly poisonous snakes. In Peace Corps training, a fellow volunteer asked the question, “If a ______ snake bit you and you could instantly amputate your leg, would you die anyway?” The answer was “Yes.” I can’t remember, now, the variety he mentioned, but perhaps it was a bushmaster.

I once saw a dead coral snake on the street in Glória. We were assured that the coral snake wasn’t much of a threat because its jaw span was so small that it would almost have to gnaw at a little finger or toe to inject its venom. We were told they live in banana trees and not to stick our hands into one. So there was no way I was ever going to pluck a banana right from a tree. I always bought them from vendors at the weekly market. I am guessing the dead coral snake I saw was from a cart full of bananas, and that the snake had been crushed by a horse, cart, truck, or automobile.

My husband thinks I am ridiculously silly ---I can't look at a snake on TV, not even a drawing of one.

I had a very difficult time writing this ---even writing the word sn___ makes me crazy. And I couldn't look at photos of them for an illustration, so I did the best I could without actually drawing a sn___ !

Luckily, in my everyday life, I rarely see one, but my husband found a very small harmless one in our basement about a year ago. I wish he hadn't told me.

* * * * *

(Recent studies have theorised that humans may have an innate reaction to snakes, which was vital for the survival of humankind as it allowed such dangerous threats to be identified immediately.)

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

2009-07-20T05:52:00.005-04:00

Today I am thinking of forty years ago when the men landed on the moon.

I had been discharged from the Peace Corps about 10-14 days earlier. I flew with several friends from Rio to Lima where we spent a few days, then flew on to Cusco for another few days. We took a train to Machu Picchu. After returning to Lima, my friends went on to other places, while I flew to Mexico City for several days. Then I took a flight to Houston to visit a high school friend.

Connie had recently married. In her wedding photos were Neil Armstrong and some of the other astronauts, for Connie's father-in-law worked for NASA.

At her parents' home that night, everyone was excited about the moon landing. The day I arrived back in the U.S., July 20th, 1969, in Houston everyone was glued to their TV's watching the grainy black and white pictures of the astronauts. I was there, too, but after several weeks of travel, I could not keep my eyes open. I kept dozing off, then waking and trying to watch, only to drift off again within seconds. Eventually, sitting on a comfortable couch, I allowed my exhaustion to overtake me and slept through the broadcast.

Thus, I missed one of the big historical events of my lifetime. Those astronauts might as well have been walking on the dark side of the moon where no one could see them, for I saw almost nothing of the actual event and remember it only from news videos seen later.

But, then, I had just lived through what would prove to be my own most memorable experience, serving for two years in the U.S. Peace Corps in Brazil.

St. John's Day- June 24th - Festa de São João

2009-06-22T00:01:00.008-04:00

In Glória on June 24th, we celebrated the Festa de São João, St. John's Day, celebrating John the Baptist. Like many religious holidays, the celebration had little to do with religion. This festival has been celebrated in Portugal for more than 600 years. It has sacred roots but is also mixed with pagan traditions. In Glória, I thought it was sort of a cross between Sadie Hawkins Day and Trick or Treating.

The ginásio where I taught sponsored a quadrilha, which was similar to square dancing or line dancing. Participants practiced for weeks so we could put on a performance. It was customary for females to ask males to be their partners and everyone dressed up like the Brazilian version of hillbillies, thus the similarity to Sadie Hawkins Day.

The first June I was there (1968) I asked Zé Francisco (who worked at the Brazilian Legion of Assistance to create chicken cooperatives) to be my partner. I wore a red print dress someone had loaned to me.

The next year (1969) I asked my student José Augusto to be my partner. He was a very nice and hard-working man who worked as a tailor to support himself and his mother. Since there had been no high school in the town for most of his life, when the ginásio was founded, he went back to school in his mid-twenties, so he was a few years older than I was. That year, I had a green & pink print dress made for myself by a local seamstress. I still have it in a closet in my attic, although I will never fit into it ever again.

We danced to music on a recording by Luis Gonzaga, featuring lots of accordian music. Before I left Brazil, I copied the dance instructions in both English and Portuguese and took a Luis Gonzaga record home with me. On several occasions when I taught in public schools in the U.S., I taught a shortened version of the quadrilha to students for International Week performances.

In Glória, Judite (the girl on the right of the quadrilha photos in a blue dress) was the "caller" who would call out the moves we made.

The quadrilha was a lot of fun ---and some of the moves were humorous. For example, she would call out "Here comes the rain," and we would hold our hands over our heads. Then she would call, "Watch out for the mud," and we would pretend we were wading through deep mud, picking up our feet in an exaggerated way.

Most of the participants were students, but other young people in the town participated, including Brunie and me.

Several other traditions of São João were that people built bonfires in front of their homes and roasted cobs of corn on the coals. Pamonha, a sweet corn pudding, was also popular. The purposes of the festival were to celebrate rural life and to thank the saints for the rain which comes in the late fall, winter, and early spring months (May through September south of the equator.) The June solstice marks the beginning of winter in Brazil.

Young men would wear a half of a coconut shell on a string around their necks and go door to door asking for genipap (not sure if I spelled that correctly) ----a sweet liquor which they drank from the shells.

Forty years ago, São João's Day was mostly celebrated in rural areas of the northeast (like Glória) for a day or two, but now it seems that June is a full month of festas to honor several saints. Throughout Brazil, June is filled with singing, dancing, food, concerts fireworks, and costumes.

Poet Jorge Henrique of Glória posted photos of recent São João celebrations HERE. (Once you arrive at that page, click on "VEJA AS FOTOS!" for a slide show.)

ALEGRIA! ALEGRIA! (Happiness! Happiness!) Part 1

2009-05-26T03:38:00.021-04:00

Alegria! Alegria!

Losing contact:

   When I left Brazil in 1969, I wrote to people there for a while, but (at least at that time) Brazilians weren’t great letter writers and many people took months to respond or didn’t respond at all. Or, perhaps our letters were lost in the mail. Eventually my teaching job, graduate school, art work, volunteer work, a new love who turned into my first husband, and my hectic lifestyle all took over and I lost touch completely with the wonderful people I had worked with in Glória.
   After I had internet service at home, 15 years ago or so, I occasionally searched for the town of Glória, with no luck. I knew it might take a while for information technology to catch up in the sertão.
   About 5 years ago, I finally found a web site called Sou de Glória (I’m from Glória). There were many virtual postcards on the site, including one showing the cell tower that served the town. I knew then, that Glória was no longer the underdeveloped town in the middle of the hinterland. Other photos showed a town so much larger than it was in 1969. The only thing I recognized was the church. I posted a notice on that web site stating that I would like to contact old friends from Glória, but all I received were spam messages from Brazilian businesses.
   In late 2008, I found a notice about a poet and professor from Glória, Jorge Henrique, who was going to present his epic poem on the anniversary of the founding of Glória. It included an email address. I sent him a message asking if he knew some of the people I wished to contact, and if so, requested he give them my email address.
   Although I heard back from him and saw that he was following my blog, I didn’t hear from anyone else.

Last week, everything changed:
On May 17th, Jorge Henrique ----obrigada, obrigada (thank you, thank you) ---wrote a short article about my blog and posted it on the official web site of N.S. da Glória and also on the web site of the colégio there.

)

Dona Guiomar and her family.

I heard from Celia, top left and

Alcione, in front. (See disclaimer

at bottom about poor photo quality.)

Within a few days, I heard from Alcione the youngest daughter of Dona Guiomar ---a great and progressive woman who was the elementary school director when I left Glória in 1969. Alcione, was six when I left Brazil. She sent me news of her mother, older sisters and brother. Also Alcione planned to be in Glória on the weekend of May 22nd and intended to see who she could find that I knew back when. A few days later I heard from her eldest sister Celia who was about 13 when I left Brazil. She told me her father had died c. 1974. Her mother is now 81 and is doing well.

Idalécinho (middle) at about age 16

with his parents, sisters, brothers,

and cat.

Also, I received an email from Idalécio, who I knew as Idalécinho, one of my former students. After I replied to him, he kindly wrote back with more news of residents of Glória.

I actually cried reading his email. First, sadly, some of the people I knew had died, including his parents, a friend who had worked at the bank and taught at the ginásio, and Dona Nininha who had treated Brunie and me like daughters. A few days later, I heard from Nadja, one of Dona Nininha's daughters.

I also cried from joy to hear wonderful news of my former students.

Read the rest of this story in

Alegria! Alegria! Part 2

Please excuse my very bad photography.

The photo of Dona Guiomar and Idalecinho

and their families are so bad that I was almost

embarrassed to show them. Below you can see the

photos as I scanned them from 40-year-old slides.

In comparison, the ones I enhanced above aren't so awful.

(Original slides.

Left Dona Guiomar & family.

Right: Idalecinho and family.)

ALEGRIA! ALEGRIA! Part 2

2009-05-26T03:00:00.010-04:00

Overland, a former student,

is now a meteorologist in Sergipe.

Alegria! Alegria!

continued

Making contact:

In my post Alegria! Alegria! Part 1, I explained that I had been trying to contact my former students from my work as a teacher in the Peace Corp in Brazil. After many years of trying, I finally was contacted by several people I knew when I lived there.

Sadly I learned a few people had died.

But I was so thrilled to learn of the lives of my former students that I actually cried with joy when I read about their successes.

   When I left Glória, 40 years ago, I was proud to be a part of the first ginásio  (high school) in the town. It had been established only a few years earlier. When I arrived, no one had graduated yet, but would soon. As proud as I was to be teaching these wonderful students ---I am a firm believer that education can open doors for everyone ---I admit I worried that there would be no opportunities for high school graduates in Glória.
   The town had no industry. Except for local farms and small businesses that served the town (bars, bakeries, a fabric shop, cabinet makers, etc.) there were several government agencies. DNOCS was a federal agency fighting droughts. ANCARSE provided a home economist and an agronomist to help farmers and homemakers and to teach students practical skills at one-room schools in the interior. Also there was a Brazilian Legion of Assistance that was in Glória to create chicken cooperatives. Most of the people working in these agencies were not from Glória. They had come from the capital city Aracajú and most would move back there or to another larger city if the opportunity arose.
   There was also a branch of the Bank of Brazil which had an all-male work force. Most of the bankers were also from other cities, with only two local employees with low-level jobs. And most of the men had submitted requests to move to larger cities when there were openings for them.
   Opportunities for women were almost non-existant, except for teaching. But there wasn’t a need for more than a few teachers, and most teaching jobs were part-time.
   Those who wanted to continue their educations would have to live in Aracajú or another larger city to attend a colégio, which was somewhat like the last two years of high school in the U.S. That meant staying with relatives or paying room and board in addition to tuition. Some students’ families already struggled to pay for tuition, uniforms, books and other supplies for the ginásio. The good thing was that if students completed courses at a colégio, university tuition would be free.
   I feared it would take decades for any progress in the town to permit the graduates to branch into new fields or to build better lives for themselves, their families, and their community.

   I am so happy that I was wrong.

Overjoyed:
My former student Idalécio told me he is a chemical engineer and a professor. Other former students are a meteorologist, a bank manager, a federal police officer, a lawyer, a doctor, a secretary of agriculture, and a social worker. Several are teachers.

Idalécio at about age 16 in a detail of a larger photo (see below ) is now an chemical engineer and a professor.

   Wow! I feel like a proud parent who wants to brag about her children. But, of course, 40 years have passed and none of my former students are children. In fact, some are older than I am. I had just turned 22 when I arrived and not quite 24 when I left Glória. Some adults who had never before had the opportunity to attend high school, were my students. The oldest was 44. The youngest was 12 and would be 52 now.
   I am so proud that I played even the tiniest part in their educations. Apparently, at least for some, the doors of opportunity were opened. I’m sure it took much hard work and sacrifice for many of them to continue learning and to achieve success in their chosen fields, but they did.
   Knowing this, is the best gift I have received in many years.

Que ALEGRIA!

(What HAPPINESS!)

When I wanted to take a final photo of Glória

before leaving in 1969, Idalecinho posed on a

bench in the praça in front of the church.

GLÓRIA IN BLACK AND WHITE

2009-05-17T05:59:00.017-04:00

Click on any photo for a larger image.

When I arrived in Glória, Brunie had already been a PC Volunteer there for about a year. She welcomed me into her home which we shared until she left.

Brunie has been reading my blog. A few days ago, I received these photos from her in the mail.

If I remember correctly, Brunie had a camera that took only black and white photos. There was a young man in town who was a photographer who took and developed his own photos. He was a student at the ginásio and also worked at the Post Office or the bank. I think his name was Ronaldo, but I'm not sure. (The memory has quite gone after 40 years.) And although I have no memory of these photos being taken, I think it was Ronaldo(?) who took the last one in this blog because I have a few that I know he took and the format is similar.

Some of these photos are not very clear. They were very small, quite dark, or too light and had some flaws, mostly due to age. I scanned them and retouched them, but they are still not in perfect condition, but they brought back great memories, even though I cannot remember everyone's name.

The photo above and a detail of it below shows Me (left) and Brunie (right) with Irene who was a home economist who worked at the agricultural extension agency in Glória, and Brunie's best friend. When Irene moved to the capital city, she was replaced by Maria José.

I think this was taken soon after my arrival, probably in August or September of 1967. By the shadows on the ground, it appears to be high noon. This may have been taken near the town square in front of the ANCARSE office where Irene worked.

Below is a photo taken in front of the house Brunie and I shared. Our house is the last one at the end of a row of houses. Our landlord, his wife, and baby lived in the house to the left of ours (out of the picture.) In the background, is his shed that he used for his work as a carpenter.

On the right is the road into town from the east. When we went to the capital city, the bus would return on this dirt road and drop us right in front of our home. Although most streets in town were paved with cobblestones, we were on the outskirts of the small city, so our road was not paved. By the way, one of my favorite Portuguese words is the word for cobblestone: paralelapípedo. (I may have spelled that incorrectly. I can't find it in an online Portuguese dictionary.)

   Pictured are (left to right): unknown, our landlord José(?), me (at rear), the landlord's wife Lourdes(?), Dona Guiomar who later became the elementary school director, Brunie, unknown.

   Below is another photo taken in front of our house. I am leaning against the utility pole with letters just delivered by the postman. A group of neighbors seemed to have gathered to see what was going on. I think the boy in the hat was our landlord's younger brother and the landlord's wife is leaning against the door frame just left of the utility pole. Between the postman and me is Nadja, a neighbor girl and student at the ginásio.

   And finally, there I am on the back of a donkey. My riding a donkey is about as ridiculous as Michael Dukakis riding a tank, but I don't think I actually rode it, I just posed with it.

Occasionally Brunie and I did ride horses or mules. A large family from the interior would invite us to lunch (the large meal of the day) on a Sunday. They sent two of their smaller boys on two horses or mules & we would ride back with them sitting behind us.

I think this was taken outside of town at the dam which had been built by DNOCS, the National Department of Works Against Droughts.

In this photo, Linda, a Volunteer from Brunie's group is on the left. She lived in another town in Sergipe (Propría, I think) and was visiting us for a few days. (Linda is featured in a previous post.)

Gugu, the boy who delivered water to our house is to Linda's right. An unknown person is hidden behind me. In the water is Overland, one of my students.

Overland (pronounced Oh-ver-láwn-dee) was named for a truck his father saw in an American movie. He was the oldest child. The next child was a girl, so they named her Maryland and then didn't have a name ending in "land" for the next child, so called him Joséland. Their father was known as Zé de Shell (Zé is short for José) because he had, at one time, worked for Shell Oil. He ran the town's generator which gave the town electricity from 6-10 pm before full-time electricity came to Glória.

On at least one occasion, Overland loaned me his horse.

In the morning, Overland often rode the horse to his family's farm several miles outside of town to get milk. He would stop at our house for Brunie to make hot chocolate to share with him.

THANKS, BRUNIE

for the photos and the memories

TETHER THE SUN - a trip to Machu Picchu

2009-05-08T12:05:00.003-04:00

Although this isn't strictly a story about my Peace Corps experiences, it belongs on this blog because I traveled to Peru on my way home from Brazil along with Don and Sharyn, Volunteers from my Peace Corps training group. At the Lima airport, waiting for our plane to Cuzco, we ran into friends of Don's from college who were serving in the Peace Corps in Colombia. In Pisac, we also encountered Van, another Volunteer from our own group, along with his cousin who had flown to South America to travel with him. During much of our trip, Peace Corps was definitely on our minds as we had just completed two years in Brazil.

* * * * *

Sharyn trying a flute at the market in Pisac.

If I had to recommend one place to visit in South America, it would be Machu Picchu in Peru.

In July 1969, after exploring the museums in Lima, Don, Sharyn, and I took the one-hour flight to Cuzco (also spelled Cusco) where we spent several days acclimating ourselves to altitudes exceeding two miles. We hired a guide with an automobile to take us to spectacular Inca sights near Cuzco and spent one day shopping in nearby Pisac before moving on to the acclaimed ruins at Machu Picchu.

Experts have never determined exactly when Machu Picchu was built or why it had been abandoned or why the city was founded in such an inaccessible location with little arable land.
There are no paved access roads to Machu Picchu and the river at the base of the mountain is too shallow for navigation. Experienced backpackers may chose strenuous hikes along ancient Inca footpaths, but most tourists opt for traveling by train. Trips of three to four hours leave daily from Cuzco. Local trains are reportedly dangerous for foreigners who may be robbed. Yet tourist trains deprive one of experiencing the local culture. Don, Sharyn, and I took the tourist train because we were unaware of the other.

Left: This train carries locals along the Urubamba River valley (not the tourist train.)

Right: Don (left) and Sharyn (middle) and I traveled together in Peru after completing our two-years as Peace Corps Volunteers in Brazil. At the market in Pisac, we ran into Van (middle back) who was also in our Peace Corps group, along with his cousin (right) who joined him to travel through South America.

A few miles from Cuzco found us on zigzagging tracks designed to navigate steep hillsides. We traveled on one grade forward, then moved backward up the next, traversing five switchbacks out of the Cuzco Valley before descending toward Machu Picchu, lower in elevation than Cuzco by 3,000 feet. We were soon traveling beside the sacred Urubamba River in awe of the steep slopes on both sides which had been cultivated on stepped terraces built hundreds of years ago.

   Machu Picchu is referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas.” Arriving at the foot of the mountain we understood why it had long eluded explorers. Two thousand feet above us, the ruins were invisible. When Hiram Bingham of Yale University discovered them in 1911, the magnitude of his find escaped him at first. The ruins nestled on a saddle between Machu Picchu (Quechua for “old peak”) and the higher Huayna Picchu (“young peak”), had been so overgrown with jungle vegetation, that even from the summit only a few huts were visible. The following year Bingham returned. Without a road, workers transporting provisions found access to the site nearly impossible. (FYI: Indiana Jones was loosely based on Hiram Bingham. Find more info HERE.)
   Although tourists used to be carried up the mountainside on mules, we boarded vans to make the steep ascent. Our driver whipped around hairpin curves making each forbidding turn a frightening memory until we encountered the Turista Hotel below the ancient ruins. The cool ancient air from the summit was so clear we could see far-distant, well-defined Andean peaks. The July day (winter south of the equator) was sunny, but crisp. I wore a turtle-neck under a sweater, feeling chilled in the shade and slightly too warm in the sun.
   We passed up an opportunity to join an expedition set to hike extremely steep steps to the Huayna peak. The climb takes about an hour and is supposed to provide a spectacular view.
   We ventured into the archaic ruins. The stone structures were generally intact much as they had been hundreds of years ago, except for their straw roofs which had rotted with time.

   For hours, we wandered among the ruins, in and out of huts and between them on narrow paths, up and down hundreds of stone stairways. We examined what Bingham had called “the most beautiful wall in America” in the Temple of the Sun. We were astounded by aqueducts carved into the rocks which created a crude form of plumbing as well as an irrigation system.

   Everywhere we found perfect photo opportunities. A trapezoidal opening framed a mountain crest in the distance. A cylindrical observatory was silhouetted against the cerulean-blue sky. A llama posed proudly in the brilliant sun. Precise gray stonework contrasted with the acid-green grass between huts. A Peruvian child in a scarlet cap peaked through a trapezoid-shaped hole. Lush blue-green foliage on nearby mountains created a perfect backdrop. My snapshots of the ruins are some of the best photographs I have ever taken.
   There were more than one hundred tourists roaming in and out of the roofless stone temples and shrines, across plazas and open courtyards, climbing terraces, admiring steps carved into the natural rocks. Yet a silence prevailed, with visitors talking in hushed tones, or not speaking at all, as if in a cathedral. The effect was breathtaking, peaceful, arcane ---almost magical.
   Most visitors returned to Cuzco the same day, but we decided to spend the night. Before sunset, we climbed vertical steps to examine Inti Huantana, a carved stone standing sentinel on a high altar-like plateau, resembling a sundial casting a long, abstract shadow on the late afternoon. Scholars believe it was used by Inca priests as a mystical hitching post to tether the sun. An old man in traditional garb played his handmade flute below us. With those eerie tones as a backdrop, I could almost imagine a priest, arms raised upward, chanting an Inca invocation.
   Before retiring to our rooms at the Turista Hotel, we requested a predawn wake-up call so that we could experience the sun rising over the Andes Mountains.
   The morning air was cold and tentative, with clouds hovering in the early stillness. After climbing the trail behind the hotel, we sat on the summit to obtain a bird’s-eye-view of the ruins. The sun inched its way over the tops of distant peaks, slowly turning the stony grayness to yellow-gold while dissolving the mist. Watching the morning awake, I sat transfixed, gradually warmed by the sun, sensing a peaceful connection with the ancient past and engraving the haunting images of Machu Picchu on my mind.

Machu Picchu at dawn.

After additional explorations of two square miles of ruins, we braved the hairpin curves downward. Despite our reckless driver, we arrived safely at the train for our return trip to Cuzco.

Perhaps the Inca gods were with us.

MISUNDERSTANDING PORTUGUESE #1

2009-04-25T02:30:00.004-04:00

In a previous post about Peace Corps Training, I explained how difficult it was for me to learn Portuguese. I had no confidence in my ability to learn the language. I was in the lowest level of language class all through training. I had convinced myself I might never learn to speak Brazilian Portuguese.

* * * * *

LANGUAGE DEFICIT DISORDER

I arrived at my PC site, Glória, barely able to speak Portuguese and not understanding more than a few words. Brunie, the Volunteer who had requested a teacher for her site, was from a Latino-American family. She spoke Spanish and English at home. She had studied Portuguese in college. Portuguese and Spanish are not the same, but there are many similarities, so Brunie spoke Portuguese extremely well when she arrived in Glória and made a concerted effort to improve her language skills. At first, she kept a notebook with new words and made arrangements to sit in on Portuguese language arts classes at the ginásio. She loved learning the local slang. Brunie was determined to earn a 5 on the foreign service language evaluation required at the end of service. A 5 would mean she spoke like a native.
I, on the other hand, earned B’s and C’s in my Latin and French classes in high school and college. I could barely pronounce the foreign words and certainly understood none when spoken, but I could read and translate enough to pass my courses.

BRUNIE’S RULES
   I moved into Brunie’s house with her. Immediately she set some rules.
   Rule #1: Speak English only if we were alone. If anyone was within earshot, we used nicknames for people. The wall of our house was also the wall of our neighbor. If we had said, in English, “Dona Maria and her husband are marvelous people.” The neighbor might hear Dona Maria and marvelous, but marvelous sounds just tiny bit like malévoios, which means malevolent. Then the neighbor might start the rumor that we said nasty things about Dona Maria, or simply that we were discussing her in our house. So, in the house, we referred to people as the postmistress, the bank manager, the school director, the priest, the seamstress, the bar owner.
   Rule #2: Always speak Portuguese when with Brazilians. If I didn’t know how to say something, I could ask Brunie, in Portuguese, “How do you say...?” inserting one English word. But if I spoke in English, Brunie would not acknowledge that I had even spoken. She thought it was rude to speak English around the Brazilians (and she was right about that.) And also things we said in English might be misinterpreted as in Rule #1.
   Rule #3: Don’t say you understand when you don’t. Brazilians often asked, “Do you understand?” We are all programmed to prevent others from thinking we are stupid, so we often say yes, when we don’t understand at all.
   Rule #4: Continue to learn. Keep a notebook with new words and attend Portuguese classes at the high school. Ask how to say something. Ask someone to explain what a Portuguese word means using different words. Request that people speak more slowly (one of the first phrases I mastered immediately in Portuguese.)
   Rule #5: Get to work. The first night I was in Glória, Brunie took me to the literacy class she taught at night in the elementary school building. She assigned me to delightful cousins Maria and Maria, both around 15 or 16. One Maria was quiet and shy; the other was talkative and laughed a lot. On my first night, we practiced writing their names, writing letters of the alphabet and learning three-letter words. I’m sure they had about as hard a time understanding me as I did them. But I added a few words to my vocabulary, because each word in the literacy text book was accompanied by an illustration. Beside the word ave was a sketch of a bird.

Shy Maria is on the far left. Outgoing Maria is in the red dress in both photos.

The smaller children are the younger children of the family.

On the left outgoing Maria is stirring a pot of feijão, black beans.

On the right you can see, hanging behind her, carne do sol, salted sun-dried meat. This was a way of preserving meat without refrigeration.

LEARN BY TEACHING
   That first night at the literacy class, I learned something valuable I had never understood before: a good way to learn is to teach. And by teaching, I continued to learn.
   Within a few days, I was teaching English at the ginásio. The high school had been in existence only 3 years, so there were students who were just out of elementary school and there were adults who had never before had the opportunity to attend high school. My oldest student was 44. One of the students I admired was José Augusto. He was a 26-year-old tailor who supported himself and his mother. We often saw him at night through his window at his sewing machine (powered by foot pedal) with a book propped in front of him, sewing and studying by a kerosene lantern.
   My students were not afraid to tell me when I made mistakes in Portuguese. And when I taught them English vocabulary, the Portuguese meaning was right there on the page, so I was learning Portuguese as I taught the students English. The text books were obviously British because the English words for truck and bus were lorry and omnibus.
   By teaching English as a foreign language, I learned some things about English, that perhaps I knew, but didn’t understand. For example, when I taught the word ‘many’ from the text book, I also told my students they could also use the work ‘much’. When a student asked how to know which word to use, I couldn’t explain it. Obviously, I knew which word to use, but I didn’t consciously know why. I went home that evening and made a list of words with which I would use each ---and then it hit me, ‘many’ is plural while ‘much’ is singular. I would say ‘many cows’ but ‘much milk.”
   After a few weeks, I was learning Portuguese by teaching and having to use the language. But I still struggled.

GAINING CONFIDENCE
   About two months after my arrival, Brunie received a letter from a judge’s family in Aracajú inviting us to spend the weekend with them. Besides the luxury of being able to take a civilized shower and sleep on a real mattress, one thing happened that weekend that was a turning point in my understanding of Portuguese. The girls of the family, who spent time with us that weekend, told me I spoke Portuguese very well for only having been in Brazil for a few months. I was shocked. Me? Speaking bem português?
   At first I didn’t understand why they thought I spoke well when many people in Glória couldn’t understand most of what I said. I think one of the reasons was that these girls were well-educated. Living in the capital city, they probably had more experience with foreigners than the people of Glória. So if I used the wrong tense of a verb or mispronounced a word, they were able to make the connection between what I actually said and what I was trying to say.
   Somehow, the vote of confidence from those girls made me think, for the first time, that I might just be able to learn Portuguese ---and from then on it became easier and easier.
   Soon I noticed the people in Glória were having an easier time understanding me, too.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION
   A few other things made the language easier. Most of the everyday words in Portuguese were much different than English words: chair = cadeira, beer = cerveja, to eat = comer. But once I got beyond those words, many words were similar to English. Sometimes I had to adjust the pronunciation, or add a different ending, but even when I didn’t know a word existed in Portuguese, I often created a word from an English word and was rewarded with total understanding of what I had said. Sometimes, of course, I was understood, but also corrected, because I hadn’t gotten it quite right. At least I was communicating.
   Other words reminded me of English words of similar meaning: green = verde (as in verdant), red = vermelho (as in vermillion), traveler = viajante (as in voyager), alone = sô (as in solo)
   And even though I knew only a few Spanish words (mostly from western movies) some Portuguese words were the same or similar: house = casa, gentleman = cavalheiro (caballero in Spanish).

CONJUGATING VERBS
   For me, the worst thing to learn in Portuguese were verbs. There are three different verb endings and each is conjugated differently. And then, like in English, there are a zillion irregular verbs. I decided I couldn’t get fancy with all the different conjugated endings, so I learned the present tense (I eat or I am eating) and the past tense (I ate). Instead of learning the future tense (I will eat), I learned to say the present tense of go (I am going) and added the gerund (to eat) after it (I am going to eat.)
   I didn’t even attempt to learn imperative, past perfect, and all those other annoying tenses that roll off my tongue so naturally in English.

THINKING IN PORTUGUESE
   Finally, after eight months or so, one day I realized I was no longer translating everything between Portuguese and English. I was thinking in Portuguese. It had come about gradually, and finally sneaked up on me so slowly, that I didn’t realize it was happening. When I began to think in Portuguese, I knew I had crossed a big hurdle. There was only one more to jump.
   Soon after, I began to dream in Portuguese. Then I knew I was totally absorbed in the language.

PASSING THE TEST
   Before leaving Brazil, each PC Volunteer had to take a foreign service language evaluation. The scores ranged from 0 to 5, zero being not able to speak the language at all. A score of 5 was reserved for someone who spoke like an educated native. Miracle of miracles, I earned a 3+. That meant I could speak Portuguese well enough to get along by myself in all normal situations and that I knew some vocabulary in a specialized field.

DREAM WORLD - 40 YEARS LATER
   In a few months (July 2009) it will be 40 years since I returned from Brazil. I have had the opportunity to use Portuguese occasionally, but I have forgotten a lot. Now, I can understand more than I can speak. Maybe I cannot recall the word for onion, but if someone says ‘cebola’ I remember what it means. But there are words I have completely forgotten. I have forgotten how to use some tenses of some verbs. And, I have to again ask people to speak slowly. I resort to hand gestures and describing something if I can’t remember the exact word. And I’m sure my pronunciation has suffered.
   All the Portuguese I once knew is still in my subconscious mind somewhere. How do I know? Because, occasionally, I still dream in Portuguese. In my dreams, I understand absolutely everything a Brazilian says to me and I speak the language fluently.

THANKS, BRUNIE
For someone who barely made it out of Peace Corps Training because of my poor language skills, I am still proud that I was eventually able to overcome my language difficulties. I owe most of that to Brunie. She was a hard taskmaster, but that is exactly what I needed.

So, a big thank you to Brunie ---and a big abraço from me, too.

TOAD SOUP

2009-04-20T00:08:00.005-04:00

   When I arrived in Glória, my Peace Corps site, Brunie had already been there a year. Kindly, she let me share her small house with her. At first the plan was that I would stay until I got settled in the town, then move to my own house, but I ended up staying with her until she left the following year. We soon got into a routine of shopping at the weekly market and performing other household chores. I hated to clean and Brunie was bored with cooking, so Brunie did most of the cleaning while I usually prepared meals, although Brunie cooked occasionally. There were some things I liked that Brunie didn’t like, so I would cook them when she was in the capital city, or she would cook something she liked (a sheep’s head) that I wouldn’t touch when I prepared fish or liver.
   When she first told me she was going to make ox tail soup, I was doubtful that I would like it, but it was delicious. She cooked the ox tail until it was tender, then added whatever vegetables were readily available at Glória’s market: onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage. We could also add rice or break dried spaghetti into short pieces. It was easy to make and we could let it simmer on the stove while we worked through the afternoon. Since ox tail soup was Brunie’s specialty and she was very proud of her soup, she would buy an ox tail or two at the local market on Saturday if we were expecting company the next week. We served her soup with small loaves of fresh pão (each about the size of a sausage bun,) manteiga (butter), and fresh fruit for dessert.
   We didn’t receive many visitors, but occasionally the Peace Corps director would visit from the capital city. The Peace Corps doctor visited from Salvador when we were due for our routine booster vaccine to prevent hepatitis, about every six months. Somehow it seemed slightly obscene for him to ask us to pull down our drawers in our own home, rather than a doctor’s office.
   The doctor had grown up in Africa. I think his parents were working with a medical relief agency there. When he joined the Peace Corps, he noted on his application that he spoke Swahili, thinking the PC would surely send him back to Africa. However, he had been sent to Brazil. He remarked that he could now speak two of the most useless languages on earth. Of course, there were millions of Portuguese speakers around the world, but Portuguese was the official language of only a few countries.
   My friend Barney, a Volunteer from my training group, visited once. Brunie’s friends from her group, Linda and Henry, had visited her. A nurse from Brunie’s group, Helen, stopped in for lunch every Tuesday when she assisted the doctor from her PC site when he saw patients at the medical center in Glória. But that was about it for visitors.

   Brunie’s two-year commitment in the Peace Crops was up about the time I was celebrating the end of my first year there. I never met anyone who loved the Peace Corps and Brazil as much as Brunie, but after two years, she was looking forward to going home to her close-knit family. However, a new group of trainees was arriving in Aracajú, so the director asked Brunie if she would stay to help with the training. She left most of her belongings in Glória and would visit occasionally through the 12-weeks of training. Twice, trainees were sent to spend a few days with us, so they could see what it was like in the field.
   A young married couple, Carroll and Cary visited Glória. They were both very tall and very blond, a curiosity to the locals. The Brazilians thought it was funny that his first name was the same as mine, although spelled differently. Carroll especially liked Glória because, even though the city sat 10 degrees south of the equator, it was on a plateau in the path of cooling breezes most of the time. In the dry summer months, the area was desert-like, hot and dry during the day, but cool at night. I don’t remember ever sleeping without at least a light blanket. Cary told me Carroll often went outdoors in shirt sleeves in the middle of winter at home in New England, so the tropical climate in the capital was uncomfortable to him.
   For another few days, another trainee joined us in Glória. I don’t remember her name, so I will call her Becky. She, like us, was in her early twenties.

   (In a a previous post about PEACE CORPS TRAINING, I mentioned that it sometimes seemed that trainers would intentionally throw an unusual situation at a trainee, just to see how s/he would react.)

   Brunie made ox tail soup for dinner the first night Becky stayed with us. We were conversing over our bowls of soup. Brunie was explaining how politics worked in small towns. Becky had stopped eating. She held her spoon in front of her, politely waiting for Brunie to end her rather lengthy explanation. Then Becky asked very calmly, “Do I have to eat the frog?”
   Brunie & I looked at her and asked, “Frog?”
   “The frog in my soup,” Becky added, holding her spoon out for us to see.
   “That’s not a frog, that’s a piece of cabbage,” Brunie said.
   “But it IS a frog,” Becky said.
   Brunie took the spoon from our guest’s hand and lifted the green “cabbage” with her fingers. Then, she suddenly threw it on the floor, and shrieked, “It IS a frog.”

   We surmised that one of the tiny frogs that hopped around everywhere, including our kitchen, must have committed unintentional suicide by hopping into the pot of soup as it simmered on the stove. To no one’s surprise, Becky thought we had planted it there under the direction of the PC psychologist to see how she would react. We assured her we were not a party to such a prank, but if we had been, Becky had stayed calm and cool so she would have passed the psych test with flying colors ---or maybe with flying frogs.
   After removing the frog, which had been well-cooked, we all continued to eat our soup. However, the next day, no one seemed keen on having the leftovers, so we ordered a roasted chicken from a local bar and went there for dinner.

When we told the story about the soup to a neighbor, the tale was quickly passed from neighbor to neighbor. Within hours, everyone in town knew about the crazy Americans who cooked frogs in their soup. It so happens that the Portuguese word for soup is sopa and the word for toad is sapo, so the Brazilians were soon talking about the new American delicacy called soup of toad ---SOPA DE SAPO in Portuguese. Yum.

PEACE CORPS TRAINING - not for the faint of heart

2009-04-17T02:27:00.017-04:00

Click on map for larger image.

Peace Crops training is different for every country and every group. Here you will find the saga of my training to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil.

BEFORE TRAINING
After filling out a lengthy application during a Peace Corps recruitment event at my college and before I was accepted for training, a background check had been completed. Several of my professors told me they had been visited by FBI agents, asking questions about me.

I received word, several months later, that I had been accepted for a PC “advanced training program” for Chile. I had studied Latin and French in high school and college, but couldn’t speak a word of Spanish. To get a head start, I arranged to meet a Spanish major over coffee once a week for tutoring.
The “advanced training program” meant that we would train for about 10 weeks during the summer between our Junior and Senior years of college, receive language tapes throughout our senior year, then train several more weeks after graduation and eventually become Peace Corps Volunteers.
Soon I received a letter saying I would be in a Brazilian program instead of serving in Chile, so I dropped the Spanish tutoring. In June 1966, I flew to California and checked in at Sacramento State College, a wonderful location for our training.

SACRAMENTO STATE COLLEGE
Training was difficult, very difficult.

Most of us had to learn a language we had never studied. We went through a short battery of tests to determine our ability to learn a language and were grouped with others of similar skill levels. Each week, based on our individual progress, we might stay in our current language group or move to a higher or lower group. I stayed in the lowest group throughout training.

The trainers let us off the hook at breakfast, but we were expected to speak Portuguese at lunch and dinner. Despite being somewhat of a motor mouth in English, I listened but barely spoke a word.
I didn’t seemed to have the skill for learning a language. I had been a mediocre Latin and French student. As a child I had frequent and severe ear aches. Although I could hear even very soft speech, I had a hard time distinguishing sounds. One day, a trainer tried over and over to get me to say ‘prazer’ while I kept hearing ‘plazer.’ My biggest problem was that I had no confidence. I thought I would never learn another language ---eventually I found out I was wrong about that ---but in training, I was sure I was hopeless.
For the most part our language trainers were Brazilian university students studying in the U.S. Most were from Rio, São Paulo, or other large modern cities, and most were from the upper crust of Brazilian society. Only later did we realize this was a disadvantage because we were likely to be working, at least part of the time, with poor, uneducated people, who had lost many of their teeth ---rendering them difficult to understand ---and who spoke Portuguese much like someone in Appalachia might speak English, with unusual accents and lots of colloquialisms and regional slang.
We were expected to learn and understand local customs and as much about the history geography, popular culture, religion, social norms, food, and customs of Brazil as could be crammed into our heads. We took a course in group dynamics and another in community organization. We needed a lot of information on health concerns in the areas we would serve, including first aid skills.

In PE classes, we were taught the basics of soccer (long before almost anyone played it in the U.S.) and had to pass a swimming and “drown-proofing” test.

We were supplied with long lists of recommended items or those we needed to take to Brazil, including a two-year supply of tampons since they were unavailable there. We were also told the texture of the toilet paper in Brazil was reminiscent of crepe paper, but that filling our footlockers with toilet paper would be a waste of space.

We spent part of each evening in the college language lab and had a class in which we simply practiced Portuguese sounds. Occasionally we watched a Brazilian movie or learned song lyrics in Portuguese.

Except for mealtimes, we were in classes from early morning until ten o’clock at night. Then, many of us walked to a Shakey’s Pizza parlor to drink beer and let loose after each grueling day. But even there, we played a children's game, singing a Portuguese song called Escravos de Jó, passing beer mugs around the table instead of the traditional match boxes.

Classes continued on Saturday mornings, but we had the rest of the weekend off. We often went into town by bus to catch a movie. One weekend someone organized a trip to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite.

Here I am at Yosemite (age 20).

I think that is my friend Roy (another trainee) driving

the car, but the photo is so dark it is difficult to tell.

We had to learn a lot of DON’Ts. Don’t make the customary OK sign, because, in Brazil, it means the same thing as an extended middle finger does in the U.S. Unmarried women should not be alone with men. Slacks were okay in big cities, resorts, and beaches, but not in small towns. (This changed over the two years I was in Brazil.) Don’t drink water unless it has been boiled twenty minutes, then filtered, yet don’t be rude by refusing coffee one knows hasn’t boiled the required twenty minutes. Don’t flaunt your money or expensive cameras. It was recommended that we not become involved romantically with Brazilians. That was a useless “don’t” ---most of us were single, 22 to 25, and we were likely going to be involved romantically with either another volunteer or a Brazilian.
Training included a battery of psychological tests, lots of interviews with the administrators, trainers, and psychologists, along with frequent evaluations.

Trainees were in jeopardy of being deselected at any time, for any reason. Two guys were let go midway through our summer of training because of racist attitudes that were unacceptable to the PC and would have been problematic in a country as racially diverse as Brazil. At the end of the summer, one guy was let go because it was suspected he was gay. One of my best pals, a wonderfully funny man, was deselected because he made a joke out of nearly everything. He would answer questions on the psychological tests that required one to fill in bubbles and “make no other marks on the answer sheet,” by responding to a question like “Do you always follow directions?” by writing the word ‘YES’ on the paper. He should have known that kind of behavior would not be appreciated.
I’m not sure what all the criteria were for “passing” training, but it often appeared as if the trainers would put banana peels in our paths just to see if we would slip. It seemed rather juvenile to me, but that appeared to be the modus operandi for PC training at that time. The most feared man on the staff was the PC psychologist. I guess it might all have been part of a plan to toughen us up or to see how we would react to stress or the unexpected. A Portuguese word that was bantered about a lot was "flexibilidade" ---flexibility, something we would need a lot of in Brazil.

Some of my Sacramento training is a blur to me now. I'm sure I was sleep deprived. We often went to bed after walking back from Shakey's after 1:00 a.m. and had to be up early for 7:00 a.m. breakfast and our first classes at 8:00. We were in classes or physical activity about twelve hours a day, and even when not in class, we were trying to speak Portuguese or conversing with trainers about Peace Corps and Brazil.

It was probably the most intense and grueling educational experience I ever had.

FIELD TRAINING
As part of our training, we each spent three weeks working with a social agency. I worked in Tracy, CA with a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) worker. My humorous pal worked nearby with a migrant minister.
Our trainers decided that everyone located near Stockton should work on a migrant farm for a day, just to see what migrant workers experienced. We dragged ourselves from bed before dawn and went to the vacant lot in Stockton where trucks or buses arrived to carry workers to the fields. Men would shout out, “Thirty-two cents a crate for tomatoes. Thirty workers needed.” Some of the members of our group picked cucumbers. I was with a small group picking apricots.
We were totally unprepared. We took no water or food with us, wrongly assuming it would be provided. The temperature was close to 100 degrees. The guys picking cucumbers had a rough time. They had to bend over all day in the scorching sun.

Ours was a hot, nasty job, but at least we were in the shade. However, the trees were planted close together so the branches from each tree touched the next tree, holding in the oppressive heat. We could pick apricots from the lower branches of the small trees without much effort. Ladders were available for higher branches. Some of the migrant workers could fill two crates in the time six of us filled one.

Because we had no food or water, we ate apricots ---lots of apricots ---mostly for the moisture. I was very fond of apricots, but after eating a crate of them that day, I could not look at an apricot for many years to come.

TRAGIC EVENT
Meanwhile, a tragedy happened with another group of trainees working in a different area. They were helping at a summer day camp for impoverished children. One day the scheduled activity was a field trip to a local swimming hole. Sadly, one of the children drowned.
One of my worst fears is that I might be involved in an incident that hurt or killed someone. Even if it were an accident and no fault of my own, I can’t imagine how I would live with that. I empathized with the trainees involved.

We were never informed of the details ---and those involved were instructed not to discuss it ---so I don’t know if someone was negligent or if it were an unavoidable accident. There were rumors of a law suit.
The Peace Corps decided to deselect all the trainees who were present when the drowning incident took place.

It was a sad event, especially for the family of the victim. But is was also sad for the Peace Corps and for those trainees who would not be joining the rest of us in Brazil.

MY SENIOR YEAR
I made it through the summer and returned home full of excitement about the coming year. During my last year of college when I would complete my B.S. degree in Art Education, I was supposed to listen to Portuguese tapes and it was suggested that we become involved in some kind of volunteer work. I had good intentions, but my senior year was hectic. I was taking more than the recommended number of courses during the fall semester. During the spring semester I student taught while taking two required education classes. So I didn’t do volunteer work and only half-heartenedly listened to my language tapes.
My training group met over Christmas break in Chicago, but I had an emergency appendectomy, so I didn’t make it.
In the spring, I started to get my required inoculations. I believe the total was about 18 shots for everything from tetanus to cholera.

IN-COUNTRY TRAINING
After graduation, we met in Philadelphia for a few days near the beginning of July 1967. From there, we flew to Miami where we had a long wait because of a mechanical problem on the plane. Finally we left for a very long and uncomfortable flight. We stopped briefly at the airport in Caracas, then flew on to Rio.
After a few days of orientation and sight seeing in Rio, we were invited to a reception at the American ambassador’s home where we were officially sworn in.
We were divided into three groups for six more weeks of training. One flew to the state of Goiás, another to Espírito Santo, and my group to Bahia. (See map at the top of this post.)

After a few days in Salvador (which became my favorite Brazilian city) the Bahia group was sent to Dias d’Avila, a small town outside of Salvador, where we lived with locals. I stayed with a family consisting of an older couple, their granddaughter, her husband and their small boy Paulo. After about three weeks, I was moved to a pensão because the elderly gentleman was admitted to the hospital and a house guest was too much work when the family would be with him most of the time.
My Portuguese skills didn’t seem to improve with training. The trainers informed me that I would be deselected if I didn't make progress soon.
The trainers still seemed to be trying to trip us up and would question us about the oddest things. I was called to an interview one day because someone (?) said they had seen me flirting with a Brazilian stranger on the Lacerda Elevador (a large public elevator that carries commuters between the upper and lower sections of Salvador.) I had no idea what the psychologist was talking about. Someone may have asked me if I were an American ---a frequent occurrence ---and to be polite, I may have responded. In Salvador, I was always with another trainee ---mainly because I needed someone who could speak Portuguese better than I did ----so I referred him to the people I had spent time with in the city. It was not brought up again.
We made lots of fun of the PC psychologists (when they weren’t around, of course) because they seemed like such small, petty men ---and yes, they were all men ---who had an unnatural interest in everyone’s love life and seemed to get some perverse pleasure from watching us squirm.

Advanced training sounded like a great idea, but there were problems with the program so ours was the last such training group. We started out with about 106 trainees the previous summer. By the time we were ready to go to our PC sites in Brazil, only about 56 remained. During our senior year, some had decided PC was not for them. Some had received job offers or graduate assistantships or fellowships they felt they couldn’t pass up. A few had become romantically involved and didn’t want to leave their new loves. Others were let go by the Peace Corps for a number of reasons. Several dropped out during our in-country training. After flying us to California, putting us up at a college, paying the numerous staff and teachers, flying everyone to Chicago for the Chistmas holiday event, too many people dropped out to continue that type of program.

The Peace Corps has always run on a budget, less than what is allocated for the Army band, so unsuccessful programs had to be trashed for ones that were more cost effective.

Despite my terrible Portuguese language skills, Ralph, the state director for Bahia, fought for me to stay in Brazil. In his experience, anyone who had been trained as a teacher turned out to be an excellent Volunteer. Brunie, who had been in Brazil for about a year, was requesting a teacher ---primarily to teach English as a foreign language ---to be assigned to her town in the state of Sergipe, just north of Bahia along the Atlantic coast.

I suspect that Ralph knew that Brunie, who spoke Portuguese beautifully, would be a good teacher and a hard taskmaster, which was exactly what I needed.

So, sometime in August of 1967, just a few days after turning 22, I arrived in Nossa Senhora da Glória, my Peace Corps site, anxious to begin my two-year commitment, but barely able to speak the language ---and the rest of this story can be found on other posts on this blog.

Click HERE for a post about how I went from a Portuguese illiterate to earning a 3+ (able to get along in all normal situations with some advanced vocabulary in a specialized field) on my final foreign service Portuguese language evaluation in July 1969. (Scores ranged from 0 to 5.)

"THE DOORS OF RIO" - Ruby Tuesday #2

2009-04-14T00:13:00.008-04:00

This image is in response to

RUBY TUESDAY

Click on the link to post your own photo

or see what others have posted.

   Several years ago, there was a popular series of posters titled "The Doors of Ireland," "The Doors of London" etc. At the time, I had been taking photos of doors and windows for years. To me, doors represent an opening, a portal, a gate to something new. Of course a door may be closed, but one can open a door to a house, a car, an idea, a perception, an opportunity, an experience, or to the outdoors. One can lock or unlock a door, turn a door knob, win a door prize. ring a doorbell, use a door knocker, wipe one's feet on a door mat, be stuck in a doorjamb. The possibilities are endless.
   I wanted to create my own "The Doors of..." poster, but I didn't want it to be mere photographs of doors like the ones I had seen, so instead I used photos of two doors in Rio de Janeiro, turned them sideways, repeated the images, and created a semi-abstract design from them. I wanted the doors to be recognizable, but not obvious at first glance.
   So here is my entry to this week's Ruby Tuesday photo prompt. Enjoy.

"AS PORTAS DO RIO"

A poster featuring this image can be found HERE.

I post on two different blogs.
See last week's entry (#1) "Classic Caddy" on

my other blog, Pro Artz.

HAND WASHING - Photo Hunt #1

2009-03-28T00:36:00.003-04:00

This image is in response to

Photo Hunt

Click on the link and post your own photo

or see what others have posted.

This week's assignment is to post a photo with the topic: HANDS.

The photograph above is a detail of a larger image of the

woman who washed my clothes by hand every week in Brazil.

Find the entire photograph and an accompanying story

on an earlier post HERE.

"Busy hands will not find trouble." (Proverb)

"A man is not paid for having a head and hands,

but for using them." (Elbert Hubbard)

"Put your future in good hands - your own."

(Author Unknown)

"Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands."

(Francis Bacon)

"Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find

one at the end of your arm. . . . As you grow older you

will discover that you have two hands. One for helping

yourself, the other for helping others." (Audrey Hepburn)

THE ROAD TO HEAVEN - Sky Watch Friday #2

2009-03-27T04:07:00.006-04:00

THE ROAD TO HEAVEN

This image is in response to

Sky Watch Friday

Click on the link and post your own photo

or see what others have posted.

In Brazil, I was stationed in Glória, "heaven" in Portuguese. The scene above was my very first view of the small city in the distance on the horizon, when the Peace Corps director for the state of Sergipe delivered me, my suitcase, and my footlocker to the town in the Peace Corps jeep.

The countryside was a lush green indicating recent rain. On the dirt road to Glória, we had negotiated many large puddles that hadn't dried yet from the hot tropical sun ten degrees south of the equator. It was near the end of August 1967 and there would still be days of rain ahead, but the rainy season (six months of almost daily rain) was winding down. Once it stopped, we might not have clouds or rain again for six months and there had been years of drought when it hadn't rained at all.

When I traveled to the capital city, I was always glad when, on the return trip, the bus rounded this curve in the road, and I saw Glória ahead.

See SEDONA, AZ - Sky Watch Friday #1 on my other blog: PRO ARTZ

WAGING PEACE

2009-03-13T00:13:00.009-04:00

In my previous post, I published my thoughts

on the Peace Corps after attending the 25th Peace Corps

Anniversary Conference in Washington DC in 1986.

The following is an update I wrote three years after

attending the Peace Corps conference held in June 2002.

[In 2005, I wrote:]
In 2002, I attended the 40th Anniversary Peace Corps Conference. It had been scheduled for September of 2001. After the 9/11 tragedy, the organizers decided to go ahead as planned, because they felt we needed the PEACE, as exemplified by the Peace Corps, more than ever. But when Reagan Airport was shut down, the conference had to be postponed until June of 2002.

   Like the 1986 conference I wrote about previously, it was a happy, joyous, nostalgic, emotionally-draining weekend.

   I briefly met Jason Carter, Jimmy Carter's grandson, who had recently returned from service in Africa, following in his great-grandmother's footsteps. (The president's mother, Miss Lillian, had served in India when she was 68-70 years old.)
   Sargent Shriver, already suffering from alzheimers, spoke briefly. Bill Moyers, who had been in on the planning of the Peace Corps, was in attendance.

   Alejandro Toledo of Peru was supposed to attend, but he conferenced in by phone due to a national emergency. In 1963, Toledo, then an adolescent shoe shine boy in a family of 16 children, developed a friendship with Peace Corps Volunteers Joel Meister and Nancy Deeds.

   After Toledo graduated from high school, Meister and Deeds helped him gain admission to San Francisco City College and later San Francisco State University, where Toledo earned a degree in economics by obtaining a partial soccer scholarship and working at a gas station. Subsequently, he earned a scholarship for graduate studies at Stanford University where he earned advanced degrees in economics and education. He became a professor of economics at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru and a guest professor in Japan. He also worked as a consultant for various international organizations including the United Nations.
   In 2001, Alejandro Toledo was elected to the Peruvian presidency. [During Toledo's presidency, the economy grew steadily and Peru showed one of the world's lowest inflation rates. He served until 2006. He has denied rumors that he may run again in 2011.]

   At the 2002 conference, I enjoyed being with others who had served in Brazil, including two other Returned PC Volunteers from my own Peace Corps group. Gary had been working for the Christian Children's Fund and returned to Brazil often. Vivian remained in Brazil for 20 years where she met her Chilean husband. They had recently moved to the Washington area and kindly allowed me to stay in their spare room. Brunie, the woman who overlapped me for one year at my Brazilian PC site, attended the conference with her husband, adopted son, her niece and grand niece. Several evenings, a small group of former volunteers who had served in Brazil met at several Brazilian restaurants to enjoy feijoada and other Brazilian dishes.

One elderly woman, 86 at the time of the conference, had served in Brazil for 15 years teaching goat husbandry. Most Volunteeers serve two years, but may extend service to four, especially if time is needed to complete a project. Apparently, the Peace Corps had to travel to her site to physically remove her because she didn't want to leave. I don't remember what years she served, but since the PC stopped serving Brazil in 1980, that may have been her 15th year.

Since 1961, more than 165,000 [now 195,000] volunteers have served in the Peace Corps, working in such diverse fields as agriculture, small business and community development, education, environmental conservation, healthcare and information technology. Peace Corps volunteers must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. The oldest volunteer was 84. Most programs require a college degree and all majors are welcome. Non-degreed applicants must have three to five years of experience in business, farming, ranching or a skilled trade. Peace Corps service is a two-year commitment. Its benefits include language and cultural training, medical and dental coverage, housing, travel to and from the country of service, as well as a monthly stipend and 24 vacation days a year. Volunteers may defer repayment of various student loans while serving.

With the Iraqi War costing this country billions of dollars and thousands of lives, I often wonder how much less it would have cost in both lives and money for us to send teachers, nurses, doctors, farmers and business professionals to Iraq and other mideastern countries to wage peace.

THE TOUGHEST JOB YOU'LL EVER LOVE

2009-03-11T17:34:00.011-04:00

Originally, this was written in October of 1986,

thus many references are to that time.

Much of this is still relevant today.

[In October 1986, I wrote:]
   Nineteen years ago, on an August evening in 1967 when I was 22 years old and fresh out of college, full of hopes and ideals and ready to save the world, I arrived in the tiny town of Nossa Senhora da Glória where I spent the next two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching English and working on community development projects in Brazil's underdeveloped Northeast.
   I didn't save the world, of course. Although some of my optimistic hopes and ideals were soon dashed, many were also fulfilled. After almost twenty years, I look upon that time as one of the best times of my life and one of the experiences of which I am most proud.
   In those two short years, I probably learned more than ever before or since in a 24 month period. I learned about the customs and habits of another culture. I learned to communicate in the Portuguese language. I learned to live reasonably well without running water, electricity, and other conveniences. But what I really learned is a little less tangible.

   I learned I could do many things I thought I would never be able to do ---like learn another language well enough to get along in most situations. I learned to live without things I thought I couldn't live without, such as TV and telephones. This gave a boost to my self-confidence.
   I learned to look at the United States from a global point of view during the Vietnam years. I didn't like the warmonger, imperialistic image I saw. I thought it was a shame that, as a nation, we were not respected nearly as much as we were feared.
   I learned that we are truly one world, and that we are going to have to start thinking and acting as if we believed it. One of the Peace Corps' mottos is to "bring the world back home." One contribution Returned PC Volunteers have made to our society is to return with a wealth of experience and knowledge of another culture to share with family, friends, students, and coworkers.
   Most of all, I learned how lucky I am to be an American. I am not complacent. There are many things that need to be improved here, but living in a town of 2000 where perhaps 20% of the people were functionally literate, where the infant mortality rate was about 30%, made me appreciate, more than ever, the wonderful opportunities I have as an American, at the same time celebrating the similarities and differences of other cultures.

   In September 1986, I attended the Peace Corps 25th Anniversary Conference in Washington, DC. I learned a sobering fact there. The Peace Corps has less funding per year than our military bands. The Peace Corps has always had to beg for its meager funds.
   In 1961, Kennedy had so much faith in the idea for a Peace Corps, that he used his discretionary funds to train and place Volunteers in 8 countries before Congress approved PC funding. For months it operated from a hotel room, with mostly volunteer workers, people who hunted down the office and dropped in to give time to the project.
   At the conference, I learned that everything and anything could bring me to tears.
   I cried when Cory Aquino [the new president of The Philippines] received a standing ovation upon her entrance. I cried when Bob Shriver told us how proud his father [Sargent Shriver, first PC director] was that his younger son had joined the Peace Corps, the first Shriver to do so.

When the first PC Volunteer told how he received a letter saying he had been accepted to serve in "China or some other African country," I cried with laughter. He was assigned to Korea.

Awards were given to Volunteers who had returned home only to do amazing things, like start a program to prevent blindness in a Caribbean nation. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to the award winners' stories.

   I was thrilled at the sight of 7000 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers marching from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery, each group carrying the colorful flag of the country served. We passed JFK's gravesite on the way.
   I cried at Bill Moyers' speech at the memorial service held in Arlington's amphitheater, honoring Volunteers who had died during service and when Sargent Shriver and Loret Miller Ruppe [the PC director in 1986] handed yellow roses to family members of the deceased. [Fewer PC Volunteers died during service than those in the same demographic group at home. Most were victims of accidents.]
   Although not many from my own PC group attended, many others who had served in Brazil were there. Brunie, the girl with whom I shared my PC site [our service times overlapped for a year] flew from California, along with her fiancé and adopted daughter. It was wonderful to see her and to catch up with an old friend.
   It was a happy, joyous, nostalgic, emotionally-draining weekend. I didn't want it to end.

   In many countries of the world today, people acquire their impressions of America and Americans from TV or movies. It's frightening to think that Rambo movies and Dallas or Dukes of Hazard reruns form opinions of us. [Remember, it was 1986 when I first wrote this.]
   In many remote villages, the only real American anyone ever meets or has been close to or worked with, has been a PC Volunteer, someone who looks strange to the locals, who may dress differently, may not speak the language particularly well, but someone who cares about them and their lives, someone who will work hard and love it ---as they say, it's "the toughest job you'll ever love."
   PC Volunteers live in remote regions of the world, not needing protection. Few have had to be recalled because of internal problems in host nations. Local people love the Volunteers for what they do. When I left Peace Corps service in 1969, a few Brazilians, frank to a fault, told me they still disliked the United States, but they loved me. This was progress ---some had told me two years earlier that they despised America.

   It wasn't easy. There were times I would have gone home in a snap, like the time we found a poisonous snake in the house --- but there wasn't a bus passing through Glória for four days, so I stayed.
   We had to cook everything from scratch (that meant starting with a live chicken), boil and filter water, sleep on a straw mattress under a leaky roof, teach with fewer materials for an entire class than a single American student would have. At times, I suffered depression, culture shock, alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation. I lost nearly 30 pounds and suffered with intestinal worms that required a handful of horse-sized pills to cure.
   Yet there were wonderful moments. I taught English as a foreign language and helped with community-development projects. I made visual aids for the elementary school and for the doctor who showed up once a week, because sometimes he had only one text book for an entire class at his medical school. I was able to travel throughout Brazil and visit other South American countries. There were lazy days at the beach, exuberant Carnaval celebrations, soothing rhythms of samba and bossa nova, and wonderful new Brazilian friends. There were also many humorous moments, such as on my first day in Rio when I ordered two fried grapes for breakfast.
   I loved Brazilians and Brazil. It was truly a land of contrasts. At times, I found Brazil backward, yet rapidly progressing, sexist yet wonderfully romantic, fascinatingly exciting while amazingly slow paced. Each day was full of joy, humor, and tragedy. The land surrounding the town where I lived was drab and colorless. The cities, the language, the music, and the people were vibrantly colorful, sometimes exotic.

   In its heyday, the Peace Corps had more than 15,000 Volunteers serving around the world. Today [1986] only about 5500 are in the field. In the 1980's, with an ever-increasing military budget, star wars, and terrorism, we need a Peace Corps more than ever.
   Current Volunteers and Returned PC Volunteers have become citizens, not only of the United States, but also of the world.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY - Cowboys in Glória

2009-03-05T00:01:00.007-05:00

This post is in response to A Thousand Word Thursday

at Cheaper Than Therapy blog

Cowboys:

Every Friday, late in the afternoon, local cowboys sauntered into town on their horses, driving a small herd of cattle in front of them. The photo above was taken from the front door of the house Brunie and I shared. In Brazil, the cowboys were vaqueiros, but in Glória, they were usually called gauchos.

The gauchos wore leather chaps and leather jackets. They often had holsters with guns strapped to their thighs and dangerous-looking knifes in leather sheaths on their belts. Their leather gaucho hats had brims that were turned up at the front and back rather than at the sides. Many also wore small decorated leather purses at their waists.

They were rough men hardened by harsh conditions.

The herd of cattle passing our house would be kept in a small corral outside of town, then slaughtered in the wee hours of the morning and be sold at the market on Saturday morning.

Gunslingers:

   A family from the neighboring state of Alagoas moved to a farm outside of town. There were a father and either four or five sons and one daughter. I never saw the mother so I'm not sure if she had died, left, or if she stayed on the farm when other family members came into town.
   On the outskirts of Glória, someone would see the men heading toward town on their horses. Dressed in usual gaucho garb, they were dirty, unshaven (would have been designer stubble today) and, of course, were missing a few teeth much like many of the local cowboys. Their faces and arms had been roasted to a leather color to match their chaps. Someone would yell that the Alagoanos were coming. Mothers ran outside to grab their children from the streets, dragged them inside, and quickly closed and locked their doors and shutters. It was like a scene in a Western movie when gunslingers showed up in town.
   As far as I know the Alagoanos never caused any trouble. They never hurt or threatened anyone, nor stole anything, but they were feared. Perhaps it was just the fear of the unknown.

Shootings:

Once when we were in the market square, we heard a gunshot. The wife of a local man had been aiming for her husband's mistress. The wife was normally left outside of town to live on the farm while her husband had a mistress in town. Luckily no one was hurt. After the gun was wrestled from the shooter's hand, she was reprimanded by the mayor and handed over to her husband who promised to keep her out of town.

Cowboys. Cattle drives. Horses. Gunslingers. Shootouts. No wonder there were times when I felt like an extra in a Western movie. I didn't play a big part in the plot, but there I was in the background, watching all of the dusty action.

WATERING HOLES

2009-02-26T06:14:00.009-05:00

This post is in response to A Thousand Word Thursday

at Cheaper Than Therapy blog

"Wash Day"

"Water Gatherers"

When I served in the Peace Corps in Brazil, I had no running water. We had to pay a neighbor boy to carry water from a dam outside of town. He strapped four large cans (each held about five gallons) to the sides of his donkey to carry water to us about once a week.

There were water sources closer to town, but since those small ponds were used by many for washing clothes and watering animals, we paid him extra to bring us the cleaner water from the dam.

We also paid a woman to hand wash our clothes. (There was electricity only four hours each night ---and no one in town had a washing machine.) We insisted she take our clothes to the dam outside of town, too. And we requested that EVERYTHING, including underwear, be ironed, mostly to kill germs. Irons for pressing clothes were really made from iron. They were heavy and held hot coals.

In our kitchen, we had a large, four-foot high crock to store our water. First we put a clean dish towel over the hole in the top while our water boy poured the water in. That was to filter out insects, stones, weeds, frogs, or other small animals or debris.

Water used for cooking or drinking had to be boiled for at least twenty minutes, then we put it into the top portion of a terra cotta water filter to drip slowly into the bottom section. A spout allowed us to draw a glass of water when we needed it. The terra cotta also kept the water cool.

In restaurants, anywhere in Brazil, we always ordered bottled water. Even the large cities didn't have clean drinking water when I was there (40 years ago.)

In a previous post, one can see an example of a water filter and read about how we bathed in our kitchen.

About six months before I left Brazil, I rented a different house. Brunie (the other Volunteer) had returned home after her two years of service ended.* None of the houses in town had running water, but my new house had a system to collect rain water and a cisterna to store it. I'm not sure how much water it could hold, but I will guess about 1000 gallons. Even in good years, ten degrees south of the Equator, anyone with a family was unlikely to collect enough water during six rainy months to last through six dry months. The region was notorious for droughts which often meant there was no rain for a year or more at a time. Luckily, the two years I spent there, we had plenty of rain during the winter months, but almost none during the dry summers.

My new house had a fairly sophisticated shower room. All I had to do during the rainy season was move one of the ceramic tiles on the roof so that rain water would fall into a metal container under the ceiling of the shower room. I heated a pot of water on my stove (fueled by a propane gas tank) stood on a chair and poured the hot water into the tank to heat up the cool water already gathered there. I turned a small knob on the bottom of the water tank so water would fall from a spout onto my head. A drain in the floor took the waste water outside to a gutter cut into the concrete which directed the water to the end of the back yard.

I asked my laundress to come to my yard to use the clean rain water from my cisterna. The photo at the top of this post shows her and her daughter washing my clothes. The break in the concrete at the bottom left of the photo shows where the water drained to the yard.

By the time I moved into my new home, the town had full-time electricity. My previous home was not wired, but my new one was. However, since I had a gas stove, a kerosene refrigerator and lamps, I didn't have much need for it, but it was nice to have electric lights ---one bare bulb hanging from a wire from the ceiling in each room. I still used a kerosene lantern for reading.

A Volunteer who had to leave early because of a family emergency loaned me his radio so I could listen to Voice of America. (He lived less than 100 miles from me at home, so I was able to easily return the radio later.) And finally, I could use the travel iron I had brought from home, but my laundress preferred her old iron which weighed about ten pounds.

I do not take water for granted. After living for two years where it was a lot of work to get a little water, I appreciate clean running water.

*Things could have been worse. Two years after returning home from Brazil, Brunie rejoined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso. During her service there was a widespread drought. Brunie was allotted a gallon of water a week for cooking, drinking and bathing.

MARKET DAY - Part 1 Dawn

2009-02-22T04:10:00.006-05:00

This is Part 1 of a 4-part series describing

a typical Saturday ---Market Day ---in Glória.

Note: Some of the names in this story have

been changed because I can’t remember the

real names of all of the people in the town.

Dawn:

   Saturday was the best day of the week in Glória.
If I hadn’t been awakened by crowing roosters or braying donkeys, I would have been aroused by horses and mules clomping along the dirt road in front of the four-room house we rented. Brunie, the other Peace Corps Volunteer with whom I shared a house, woke before I did. She often sang as she did morning chores, which was a more pleasant way to wake than a braying donkey.
   With shiny black hair, dark eyes, and nearly perfect Portuguese, Brunie fit completely into the Brazilian landscape. Only her five-foot-ten inch height gave her way as an American. I was about five foot eight, with light hair and green eyes and imperfect Portuguese. No one ever mistook me for a native. Brunie had spent a little over a year in Brazil’s northeast before I arrived in Glória. I’m not sure if I would have survived without her guidance.
   Overloaded trucks roared past the house, sending billows of dust through the shutters that covered our glassless windows. Each truck was loaded with goods to be sold at the weekly market and with passengers, either those arriving to sell their wares or to buy goods for that week. Ox carts with large noisy wooden wheels, also moved through town to transport goods.
   I slipped into a robe and rubber thongs. After a trip to the outhouse, I dressed in a cotton shift, glided into leather sandals, and ran a comb through my sun-bleached hair.
   When I emerged from my room, Brunie stood inside the front door with Seu Vicente, an elderly man who stopped at our house every Saturday before heading to the market.
“Bom dia, Seu Vicente. And how are you this morning?” I said. Seu Vicente’s chocolate-colored face broke into a toothless smile. His cheeks looked like the cracked earth of a deeply-eroded field.
   “I am well, and you?” he responded, lifting his leather gaucho hat. “I have again asked Dona Brunie if she will marry me, but she always says ‘No’. Maybe next week she will accept my proposal.”
   “Next week we won’t be here. I’ll pay you now if you will remember to leave my eggs with Dona Nininha,” Brunie said.
   The old man’s eggs rested in a large reed basket, each egg wrapped in a leaf for protection. He counted a dozen into the bowl Brunie held and accepted several crumbled bills, stuffing them into the small leather pouch he wore at the waist of his unbleached muslin trousers. Seu Vicente then shuffled toward the center of town.
   Brunie and I grabbed canvas totes, plastic bags, rope sacks, baskets and small cooking pails ---everything we had that could hold our purchases. Most of the items we could buy at the market were not available in local stores, so we needed to purchase enough to last the entire week. Since we would be in the capital city the following weekend, we needed to buy a little extra, but we could shop in Aracajú before returning to Glória the following Monday. In the capital, market day was every day except Sunday. Or we could ask a neighbor to purchase items that would be difficult to transport on the bus.
   Before seven a.m. the tropical sun was already blazing. The temperature in the shade would probably hit over one-hundred degrees that day. Glória was only ten degrees south of the Equator. Back in Pennsylvania everyone was probably complaining about winter weather.
   We headed for the Banco do Brasil. Fifteen or twenty horses or mules were tied to posts in front of the modern building. The bank collaborated with the owner of a huge storage silo on the edge of town to provide farmers with storage space for beans and other crops. When beans were plentiful they would bring only pennies per kilo. Depending on a farmer’s harvest, the bank would loan him enough money to store his beans and live for several months. When the price of beans went up, the farmer could remove some from storage, sell them at a higher price and gradually pay off the loan.
   After waiting in line behind a gaucho who emitted a leathery scent, we reached our friend Carlinhos at the teller’s window. We withdrew enough money from our accounts to pay for expected purchases.
   As Peace Corps Volunteers, we each earned about sixty dollars per month, plenty to purchase food and survive in Brazil’s interior. Our rent was five dollars, split between us. We paid a woman to wash and iron our clothes and a neighbor boy everyone called Gugú to carry water from a damn a few miles outside of town. He had four huge cans strapped on the sides of his donkey.

We splurged on a monthly trip to Aracajú to collect our living-allowance checks, stay in a pensão, luxuriate in a civilized hot shower, take in a movie, and relax at the beach.
We left the bank walking on cobblestoned streets to the praça near the center of town where the mercado was held each Saturday.

See other posts in this series:
Market Day - Part 1 Dawn (this one)
Market Day - Part 2 Shopping
Market Day - Part 3 Morning & Afternoon
Market Day - Part 4 Saturday Night

Find another great story about shopping on

market day in northeastern Brazil HERE.

It, too, was written by a former PC Volunteer.

MARKET DAY - Part 2 Shopping

2009-02-22T04:05:00.006-05:00

Brunie (blue blouse) and I (straw hat)

choose fruit from the weekly market.

This is Part 2 of a 4-part series describing

a typical Saturday ---Market Day ---in Glória.

Note: Some of the names in this story have

been changed because I can’t remember the

real names of all of the people in the town.

Shopping:

   The town square where the market was laid out was bare except for an old bandstand in the middle. There were no trees nor grass, as they would have been trampled by vendors and townspeople.
   Dona Maria had covered her designated area with four-foot high ceramic jugs ----the kind used to store water in nearly every home in town that didn’t have a cisterna in the back yard to collect rain water. A man from a neighboring village had spread his aluminum cooking vessels and enameled chamber pots on squares of burlap. Venders opened sacks of dried black beans, rice, or flour. Others had set up shabby wooden booths with canvas canopies to shelter themselves and their wares from sun or rain. We passed a dark man selling large ropes of tobacco and an ancient woman with her display of sandals and headed toward the vegetable vendors.

   With Seu João’s help, we chose the best of his onions, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and yams. Seu João weighed them on his balance scale using brass weights and placed our purchases in my basket. We headed to Seu Paulo’s booth to select from a dozen varieties of bananas. We collected a dozen green oranges from another vendor. The oranges weren’t green as in “unripe” they had green skins, not orange.

   We quickly passed a display of jaca, jackfruit. The watermelon-sized greenish-yellow fruit emanated a distasteful sweetish odor. We threaded our way between brooms, fabric, baskets, and straw hats, greeting our neighbors along the way. We chose rice and black beans ---staples of the Brazilian diet ---scooping them into aluminum pots. We purchased a plump live chicken from Dona Maria Fatima. Brunie carried it up-side-down by its feet.

   Next we headed through a narrow cobblestoned street to the meat market in the next block. We visited Zé Pedro’s booth to purchase two kilos of beef which Brunie placed in her metal pail. Seu Agnaldo placed a kilo (2.2 lbs.) of pork on top of the beef.
   Next we crossed the town’s second plaza, this one filled with trees and plants and benches emblazoned with “From the Benevolence of Mayor....” followed by his name. I often wondered if the next mayor would tear out those benches to install new ones with his own name on them.

   In the post office, I pulled letters from my pocket and paid for postage to the United States. Dona Alícia used syrupy glue to affix eight stamps to each letter. Then she hand stamped them with purple ink to cancel them. Dona Alícia placed our mail that had arrived on the bus the night before ---six letters ---on the counter. Brunie and I received more mail than anyone in town, with the exception of the Banco do Brasil.
   The telegraph operator, emerged from the back room. “Dona Brunie. Dona Carolina. I am so pleased to see you,” he said with a voice as syrupy as the glue. I hope I will see you at the movie tonight. He was a married man who like to flirt. We said hello, then ignored him.
   We grabbed our mail and headed for the bakery. The proprietress, carrying a mug of steaming coffee, greeted us with, “Bom dia, meninas. Tudo bem?”

   “Yes, Dona Anna. All is well with us,” answered Brunie. “And how are you?”
   After greetings and inquiries about the woman’s family were completed, Brunie asked for pão. The woman wrapped six tiny loaves of bread --- about the size of sausage buns ---in white paper. When I asked for mantega, Dona Anna stepped aside so that Brunie could take butter from her refrigerator. Brazilians had numerous superstitions, one of which was an irrational fear of mixing anything hot with anything cold. After Dona Anna had sipped her hot coffee, she would not open her kerosene-powered refrigerator for several hours. Brunie lifted a large crock of butter from the shelf and scooped a large blob of it onto a piece of waxed paper with a flat wooden spatula. She weighed it, wrapped it in butcher paper, and placed it on top of the meat in her pail.
   Finally, our shopping done, we headed home.

See other posts in this series:

Market Day - Part 1 Dawn
Market Day - Part 2 Shopping (this one)
Market Day - Part 3 Morning & Afternoon
Market Day - Part 4 Saturday Night

MARKET DAY - Part 3 Morning & Afternoon

2009-02-22T04:02:00.005-05:00

This is Part 3 of a 4-part series describing

a typical Saturday ---Market Day --- in Glória.

Note: Some of the names in this story have

been changed because I can’t remember the

real names of all of the people in the town.

Morning & Afternoon:

After shopping at the weekly market, we carried our heavy purchases to our small house. Brunie placed a bit of dried corn and a bowl of water on the floor, then untied the chicken’s legs and let her strut around the kitchen. Neither of us had the heart to kill a chicken, so when we decided to cook chicken for dinner, we would take her to a neighbor to trade for a chicken the neighbor had killed.
Brunie had opted to purchase a small stove powered by a propane tank, thus we used our built-in wood-burning stove as counter space. We soaked vegetables in iodine water and placed them in our kerosene refrigerator. We cut gristle and fat from the meat, throwing it out the back door where large vultures with blue-black opalescent heads swooped down to gather the scraps. We placed fruit in large gourds that had been cut in half to make bowls. Beans, rice, and other dry goods went in airtight containers, more to protect them from mice than to keep them fresh.

Ceramic drip water filter similar

to one we used in Glória.

   I used a handful of sugar as an abrasive cleaner for the filter in our drinking-water crock and set a huge pot of water to boil for the required twenty minutes before adding it to the terra cotta water filter.
   By eight-thirty or nine, we had completed our chores and were ready to prepare breakfast. Brunie flipped through our James Beard paperback cookbook ---conveniently issued by the Peace Corps ---to find a pancake recipe. She mixed flour, eggs, baking powder, sugar, powdered milk, water, and vanilla. I cut up a banana and sectioned an orange.
   Someone had told Brunie that there was no maple syrup in Brazil, so she had packed two bottles of concentrated maple flavoring in her foot locker. We mixed it with corn syrup to approximate the maple syrup we enjoyed at home.
   After breakfast, I spent the morning working on lessons for my English classes. The ginásio was staffed with some bankers and elementary school teachers who worked during the day, so high school classes were held evenings and on Saturdays as well as weekday afternoons. I, too, was a professora at the ginásio.

Since we had eaten breakfast later than usual, we skipped lunch. While most Glorianos took their after-lunch siestas, I headed to the school's office in the priests' home next to the church. Using Padre Henrique’s typewriter and the school’s hand-cranked mimeograph machine I made copies of a worksheet for my two o’clock class of beginning English students.

Students show off their

new school uniforms.

Only fifteen of the twenty-one students showed up, not bad for Saturday. Even fewer arrived for my three and four-o’clock classes, but a few students lingered after class, trying out the American slang I had taught them.

   “Do you think I’m cute?” asked Fernando.
   Veralucia laughed and said, “No, Fernando. You are not cute. But you are cool.” The boys snickered because the word ‘cool’ sounded like a naughty Portuguese word. The students laughed and teased each other, butchering English about as much as I normally butchered their language.
   Veralucia asked, “Will you go to the movie tonight, Dona Carolina?”
   “No. I already saw tonight’s film,” I lied.
   “I can never understand the English on American films. Why is that?”
   Of course she couldn’t. The sound system on the projector was so bad that even I couldn’t understand the garbled English. I had attended one film, the first weekend I spent in Glória. I vowed it would be my last. The theater had hard wooden seats with almost no leg room. There was no ventilation in the theater. After twenty minutes it felt and smelled like a steamy locker room.
   To help promote the Brazilian film industry, a law prevented foreign films from being dubbed into Portuguese. Therefore every American film had Portuguese subtitles. The owner paid a few high school students to sit at strategic places so they could be ‘readers’. They read the subtitles out loud so any illiterate citizens could enjoy the movie.
   Brunie had spent the afternoon at the office of an agronomist and home economist commissioned by the state government to impliment agricultural and nutrition improvements in the small town. Many farmers requested hybrid corn or other seeds from Luís Carlos. Brunie and Irene talked to women about boiling and filtering water and adding more vegetables to their diets.

Trucks carried vendors and shoppers to and from the

weekly market. Our neighbor Gugú, who carried

water to our house, sits on his donkey to the right.

Trucks, horses, donkeys, and mules with the last of the market-day vendors and shoppers passed me as I walked home from the school. Many vendors would travel to markets in other towns Monday through Friday the next week and return to Glória on Saturday.
When I arrived home, I decided to take a shower and wash my hair. First I heated water in a huge cooking pot, then mixed enough cold water with it to make it luke warm. In the kitchen, with a slightly slanted mud-brick floor and no windows, I undressed and scooped water into a smaller pot and poured it over my head, allowing it to run under the door to the outside.

   The house was equipped with a small shower stall, but one had to carry pails of water and go outside to enter it, so it was more convenient to shower inside the house. Besides, soon after she arrived in Glória, Brunie had found a snake in the shower room, so we used it only for storing brooms and other tools. We brushed our teeth standing just inside the back door, spitting into the yard.
   Since we had been to the market that morning, we had a variety of fresh foods for dinner. We could make beef stew with potatoes, onions and carrots. We could use our hand-cranked meat grinder to make hamburgers or meat sauce for pasta. But, since it was Saturday and Brunie wanted to go to the movie that night, we opted for something less time-consuming. We fried fresh pork and heated leftover beans and rice from our kerosene refrigerator. There was always fruit for dessert. We often ended our meal with maté tea. Brunie didn’t like coffee, and frankly the coffee in Glória wasn’t very good. Someone explained that all the good coffee was exported.
   After cleaning the dishes and storing leftovers, we left for Saturday night on the town. The second town square was not used for the market. It had been planted with grass, trees, and other tropical plants. And there were benches scattered around the perimeter. That is were everyone gathered to watch the movemento.

The praça where everyone

strolled on Saturday night,

to see and be seen.

See other posts in this series:

Market Day - Part 1 Dawn

Market Day - Part 2 Shopping

Market Day - Part 3 Morning and Afternoon (this one)

Market Day - Part 4 Saturday Night

MARKET DAY - Part 4 Saturday Night

2009-02-22T03:59:00.001-05:00

This is Part 4 of a 4-part series describing

a typical Saturday ---Market Day ---in Glória.

Note: Some of the names in this story have

been changed because I can’t remember the

real names of all of the people in the town.

Saturday Night - "Hole" Numbers:

After dinner, Brunie and I strolled around the praça near the church and the post office. This was the time and place to watch the movemento and to be seen watching the movemento.

When we tired of strolling, we chose a bench emblazened with script telling us that the bench had been provided by the benevolence of our esteemed mayor. Sometimes we would be surrounded by inquisitive students and neighbors who loved to hear about the United States.

The Ciné Glória presented a film each Friday and Saturday night. Typically it was an American film with Portuguese subtitles. The projector's sound was so bad we couldn't understand the English. The theatre had hard wooden seats that had not been built for long-legged Americans. It was hot and stuffy inside. If possible, I usually begged off by saying I had seen the film previously ---which was likely because the theater showed mostly old black and white films that had been shown on American TV hundreds of times. Brunie often went to the theater and returned to the praça around 8:30 or 9:00.

While I waited for her, I purchased popcorn from the children who sold it outside of the theater. I continued socializing with my students and neighbors, or I might stop into a nearby home to visit.
Then we headed toward the A.A.B.B. ---Associação Atlética Banco do Brasil. Most of the bankers, young and without seniority, were exiled to small towns in the interior. Those who honed their skills, learned English, and stayed with the bank long enough, could receive promotions to better positions and in larger, more-desirable cities. Meanwhile, they set up a club to entertain themselves. Although they had occasional parties, most nights they played buraco, a card game similar to Canasta, and ran up bar bills that rivaled the Brazilian national debt.

Brunie and I sat with Cardoso and Carlinhos and several other young men and a few female friends. The young men and women from the town were home with family, but those who worked in Glória, but were not from there, joined us at the A.A.B.B.

We could purchase Cokes or beer or other liquor, but generally the guys insisted on paying for our drinks. Brunie loved Coca Cola. I preferred Brahma Choppe.

Carlinhos, a handsome bank teller, was dating one of my students. She was at home. Cardoso, considered one of the most eligible bachelors in town, delivered loan money and collected payments from farmers who lived so far into the interior that they rarely made it to town. Where there was a definite language barrier, what I liked about him was that he had a sense of humor that I understood.
When the next hand was dealt, I entered a game. I had played buraco so much, I could have played in my sleep. In fact, I spent many nights dreaming about the game. Besides the giant box of paperback books provided by the U.S. government, it was my only entertainment.

Buraco means "hole." I guess it was so named because it was possible to lose so many points that one ended up 'in the hole.' The object of the game was to earn as many points as possible ---or at least stay out of the hole. The men kept meticulous records of ongoing scores in notebooks filled with numbers.

   At nine forty-five, the electric lights flicked off for a few seconds. That was the signal that the town’s electric generator would go off in fifteen minutes, time enough to head home while the street lights were still on.
   For me, living without electricity was one of the most difficult aspects of life in Glória. But I had been told that it could be worse. The mayor’s friend, Zé, ran the electrical generator. When the opposition political party had been elected before the present administration had regained political power, Zé refused to run the machine.
   When I arrived in Glória, we had electricity for four hours each night. But that was going to change within a year. Energipe, the electrical company for the state of Sergipe, would be installing full-time electrical power.

(L to R) Bankers Cardoso & Carlinhos, Agronomist Etivaldo (?)

   Carlinhos and Cardoso carried kerosene lanterns from the back room for each table. Brunie and a few other women left at midnight so they could rise for early mass the next day. I, on the other hand, preferred to spend my Sunday mornings on my straw-filled mattress. The rest of us continued playing cards until 2:00 in the morning.
   Cardoso drove me home in his new VW Beatle. Then he and Carlinhos headed to the pensão where they boarded. Outside my door, I looked up. Without electric lights competing with the sky, the heavens seemed to hold more stars than I ever remembered seeing at home. The Southern Cross, in the shape a a huge kite, dominated the sky over Glôria.
   Inside the door I used matches to light a small lantern. With lantern in hand, I crept past Brunie's door to my room. After crawling under my misquito net, I read by kerosene light until my eyelids became heavy. After reaching under the netting to extinguish the flame, I fell asleep, satisfied to have survived another busy week in Glória.

See other posts in this series:
Market Day - Part 1 Dawn
Market Day - Part 2 Shopping
Market Day - Part 3 Morning & Afternoon

Market Day - Part 4 Saturday Night (this one)

See my story "CARD TRICK" about my best

practical joke ever ---on my other blog

PRO ARTZ.

LOSING IT IN BRAZIL

2009-02-15T06:55:00.012-05:00

   When I was in Brazil, there was a joke among Peace Corps Volunteers: Why did male volunteers lose weight? Because they cooked for themselves. Why did female Volunteers gain weight? Because they cooked for themselves.

   But, against odds, I lost approximately 30 pounds over the two years I lived in Brazil. I have several explanations for this.

   1. First, I walked everywhere. I had no car or bike in Glória. In larger cities, I caught a bus only when I had to travel more than a few miles.

   2. Everything had to be cooked from scratch. We didn’t have packaged foods. Chicken didn’t come in nice shrink-wrapped refrigerated packages. We had to buy a live chicken. When we purchased a chicken at the market, we carried it home, up-side-down, holding it by its feet. We put a bowl of water and some dried corn on the floor in the kitchen and the chicken was our house guest for a few days.
   I couldn’t kill a chicken. And after living with ours for several days, I didn’t want to eat it, either. So we took it to a neighbor and had her kill one of her chickens, then we gave her our live one. She wasn’t stupid. The chicken we got from her was never as plump as the one we had purchased at the weekly market.
   When it took so long to prepare food, we made less and ate less.

   3. Another reason for my weight loss, was the lack of variety in food. It just wasn’t that much fun to eat. We could buy chicken, pork or beef. There was also fish, but Brunie disliked fish so we never cooked it. There were many tropical fruits, oranges, bananas, guava, and pineapple in season. The choice of vegetables was limited to potatoes, yams, tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage. Occasionally we found green beans or broccoli in the capital city but never in Glória.
   The Brazilians ate almost the same thing every day. For breakfast they would have fruit, bread and coffee. For lunch (the largest meal of the day) they ate some kind of meat or fish with back beans and rice. Dinner would be soup, bread, and fruit.

   4. There were no places to grab a quick meal or snack in Glória. No McDonald’s. No pizza parlors. Until a few months before I left, no one had a freezer, so there was no ice cream either.

   5. Probably the biggest reason I lost weight is that there were no nicely-packaged snack foods. At a bar, one could buy hard-cooked eggs or a whole roasted chicken. At parties, hosts often served peanuts which had been boiled, in their shells, in salty water. They weren’t crunchy and roasted. I could eat them, but I didn’t like them much.
   One could buy popcorn sold by children in front of the movie theater on Friday and Saturday nights. At home, Brazilians placed cobs of corn on the hot coals in their wood-burning ovens until the kernels popped while still on the cob. But there was nothing like pretzels or potato chips. So, we had to figure out how to make our own.
   We tried to make taco dough, without a recipe, by hand grinding corn into meal, then cutting and frying it into corn chips. Our experiments were unsuccessful.
   Next we attempted to make potato chips. The problem, of course, was slicing the potatoes thin enough. Luckily Brunie had been told before going to Brazil to pack a few potato peelers because they were unavailable in Brazil. So we peeled potatoes, then laboriously sliced them with the potato peelers into paper-thin slices, deep fried them to a golden yellow, and sprinkled them with salt as they drained on paper towels.
   Everyone liked the potato chips and often asked us to make them for parties. It would take several days to make enough for even a small gathering. Not knowing what to call the new delicacy, the Brazilians just called them batatas fritas ---fried potatoes.
   Now that I know more about entrepreneurship, if this had happened to me recently, I would have seen a golden opportunity to open a potato chip factory in the sertão. I might have been soley responsible for increasing cholesterol in Brazil. But at the time, it never crossed my mind.

   6. And finally, one last reason I lost weight. At our final meeting in Rio before heading home, we had to have extensive medical tests. The doctor found I had roundworms. Symptoms include loss of appetite and weight loss. I hadn't had them for long because they weren't present in my previous medical tests. Roundworms are prevalent in tropical climates and can be passed from soil, from people, insects and other animals.
   I had to take three horse-sized anti-parasitic pills each night for several nights before they were eliminated from my intestines. Actually I felt quite lucky. There were some volunteers who suffered from more severe medical problems, such as amoebic dysentery, that had nasty symptoms and were more difficult to cure.

   Brazilians are often quite frank; they say exactly what they are thinking. Several of them told me that when I arrived in Glória, I was pretty and forte ---strong. Before I left I was magra ---thin ---and presumably less attractive. In that area of Brazil's northeast, where many didn’t have enough to eat, forte was better than magra.

   Forty years later, Brazil is the plastic surgery capital of the world.

FLAMED

2009-02-07T06:27:00.017-05:00

   When I arrived at my Peace Corps site and discovered I would be living without electricity or running water, it seemed like my life there would be much like a two-year-long camping trip. I had been a Girl Scout. I was prepared ---or so I thought.
   I admit that it was fun for a while, using my Girl Scout skills and learning new ones to get along in the harsh environment, but after a while, I missed many of the conveniences of home.
   On one occasion, forgetting that things didn’t work in Glória the way they worked at home, could have turned into a disaster.

When I arrived, Brunie (who had already been in Glória for a year) took me to a carpentry shop to buy a hand-made wooden bed, an extra chair, and a wardrobe. We went to another shop for a mattress, which was a large cotton sack filled with straw. It was comfortable enough, although I needed to add more straw from time to time since the original straw would break into small pieces and settle after a while.

When we changed sheets, we sprinkled a powder on the mattress covers to kill bed bugs which were a common problem in that area. We always slept under mosquito nets to protect us, not only from mosquitos, but also from scorpions and the beetles that carried Chagas disease.
While one side wall of the house faced an open area, the other side wall was also the wall of our landlord’s home next door. And the opposite wall of his house was shared with another neighbor and so on down the street. There was a space between the horizontal top of each wall and the pointed roof, leaving a large triangular open area between homes. This made it easy to converse with the neighbors next door, but it also meant one could hear everything going on at the landlord's home. He and his wife were newlyweds, so you might imagine what I mean by "everything."

Our front door left an inch or two of open space between the bottom of it and the floor. This, plus the open area between houses, meant that unwanted varmints could enter the house, either from outside or from the neighbor’s homes. We had toads, mice, bats, roaches, tarantulas, and an occasional snake in the house.

I hadn’t taken much jewelry with me, but I had a dozen pair of earrings and several inexpensive rings and a watch which I kept in a box on the table I used as a night stand. One day, while making the bed, I knocked the box onto the floor. The various pieces scattered under the bed.
Because of the assorted vermin that could be lurking there, in no way was I was going to reach into the shadows below the mattress without seeing what was there first. So, I did what I would do at home. I grabbed a lamp, and put it under the bed. I started to pick up my jewelry before I realized that a kerosene lantern with an open flame under a mattress filled with straw was not the brightest idea I ever had.

Luckily Brunie was in the kitchen. I yelled for her to bring a pot of water from the huge ceramic storage container there. Meanwhile I started to beat the flames with a towel.

Within a few minutes, the fire was out. The sheets were burned in one large spot as was part of my mattress. Considering it was filled with dry straw, I was surprised it wasn't engulfed in flames within seconds. The wooden frame of the bed was blackened on a small area of the side, but more scorched than burned.

Fortunately the mosquito net had been flung aside before I started to make the bed. If It had caught fire, the flames would probably have leaped to the ceiling where the net was attached to a lattice of wood that held up the ceramic tile roof. Since the homes were attached, the fire might have spread from lattice to lattice, resulting in the roofs of all the houses on that side of the street caving in.

Glória had no fire department. And since there was no running water, residents would not even be able to hook up a hose to spray water on their ceilings. Any attempt to throw water as high as that from buckets would have been futile.

I am so glad I hadn't caused neighbors to lose their homes or belongings. Worse yet would have been if I had caused someone a serious injury.

I could imagine the headline: PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER'S STUPIDITY LEAVES DOZENS OF BRAZILIANS HOMELESS. But luckily that didn't happen.

After cleaning up the charred mess and water in my bedroom, I had to buy new sheets and take my mattress to the shop to have the cover patched and re-stuffed with new straw. It retained a burnt odor for months.

I also bought a flashlight to keep beside my bed ---a prudent purchase.

SAUDADE DO FUTURO - film review

2009-01-31T02:45:00.020-05:00

"Saudade" is a Brazilian Portuguese word difficult to translate into English. It is a longing, missing or nostalgia, often bittersweet. "Saudade do Futuro" roughly means "Longing for the Future."

This 2000 documentary film centers on the lives of nordestinos (people from the northeast of Brazil) who have migrated to São Paulo, a city of 16 million, looking for a better future. Most nordestinos are thought of as unwelcome hillbillies who ought to stay in the Northeast growing potatoes in the drought-prone sertão (hinterland). Some are successful in São Paulo, including Dona Erundina who became mayor (1989-1992) and Emanoel Araujo, an internationally-known sculptor who is a respected member of São Paulo's art scene. Many end up as street vendors, laborers, or the musicians who are the heart and soul of this film.

Clearly related to rap, the musical style called "repente" that evolved from African rhythms, is featured in this film.

Repentistas tap out music on tambourines, guitars, flutes, or drums while improvising verses, often saudades for the simpler life in the Northeast, the hardships of the big city, or humorous (& often sexually suggestive) insults hurled at each other or audience members who gather to listen and donate money. One family group, Banda da Pifanos, started in 1924. The oldest members of the multigenerational ensemble recall being forced to play for Lampião, a notorious bandit who roamed the Northeast with 50 to 100 followers in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Interspersed between the music are everyday nordestinos who work long hours at mundane jobs for little pay in São Paulo. Their lives are enriched by their social events, dancing, and the repente music which is both humorous and a celebration of their lives.

I lived in the Northeast of Brazil in the late 60's. I saw, in the varied nordestinos of this film, the faces I had lived with every day during my time there. The faces are filled with the combination of despair, optimism, and humor that creates the wonderful improvised music that infests the film with rhythmic beats that are uniquely Brazilian. There is no narration. The characters tell their own stories through words or verses. The stunning photography of bustling São Paulo makes New York traffic look like a rural joy ride. The film may not be for everyone, but for those who would enjoy seeing a unique slice of Brazilian life, it is “maravilhoso!”

-------------
Portuguese with English subtitles.

Sample verses:

   São Paulo may thrill you
   but its sadness can kill you
   some have a tear in their eyes
   others stifle their cries
   some live in fine villas
   other suffer in favelas

   the mason from the Nordeste
   slaves away with no rest
   builds pools and mansions
   embellished like gardens
   but he and his own
   have no roof to call home

   to this city we come
   and end up in a slum
   we build lovely villas
   with door and windows
   but once we've painted the place
   they slam the door in our face

Update 2/04/09: This post was chosen as the Featured Post of the Week at WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS. Thanks, Contest Chris. Click on the link to join his Worth a Thousand Words Contest.

WORLD CLASS TRAVELERS

2009-01-25T06:53:00.006-05:00

   After college, I spent two years in the Peace Corps in northeastern Brazil. During my second year, I used my vacation time to travel through Brazil by bus. Although it was winter in South America, it was warm enough to swim in Rio de Janeiro, but was pleasantly cool in southern Brazil. From there, I ventured to Buenos Aires.
   I learned enough Spanish to say, “I don’t speak Spanish. I speak Portuguese. Speak slowly and I will understand you.” In Buenos Aires, I somehow managed to communicate to my taxi driver that I wanted a clean but economical hotel. I don’t know if the driver knew that the small hotel was owned by a Brazilian couple, but it was a stroke of luck, making communication possible for me.
   I had been traveling for several weeks and needed clean underwear. The landlady directed me to a wash tub in a dark hallway where I met an American woman laundering by hand. She wore slacks and a turtleneck which matched her dark eyes and hair, which was sprinkled with silver strands. She said, “You’re washing more underwear than my husband and I own.” Soon she and I were chatting like old friends.
   Her husband had broad shoulders and was a little taller than his wife, his mustache and receding hair streaked with more gray than hers. During that week, over breakfast and for an additional hour or two each day, I listened in awe to their spellbinding travel tales. In the intervening years, I may have forgotten some of the details, but the essence of what they told me follows. I can’t remember their names, so I will call them George and Helen.

   Helen and her husband had yearned to travel around the world. She was a secretary and George an auto mechanic. They didn’t have high-paying jobs that would permit them to travel in luxury. When their sons were grown, the couple sold their house and furniture, depositing the proceeds into savings. They applied for passports, arranged for immunizations, quit their jobs, and withdrew a few thousand dollars.
   When their travel funds were nearly depleted, they returned to their hometown, rented a furnished apartment, found jobs, and foregoing all luxuries, worked until they were able to save several thousand dollars again. Television, library books, and travel brochures were their only entertainment. They never saw a movie while in the U.S. because the same film would be playing in foreign countries at a much lower price while they traveled. They purchased only the essentials and were soon on the road again. They went through the routine several more times and with each trip learned to make their resources stretch farther.
   When we met, Helen and George were on their fifth trip. They intended to continue this pattern until their money or their health ran out.
   They couldn’t describe lush accommodations or exclusive resorts, but they recounted exciting travel anecdotes that could never be found in a travel brochure. They spoke of stopping in Abu Dhabi or Shanghai the way I might mention a trip to the local mall. They almost always stayed at clean but humble hostels or hotels, but recalled a time when they had arrived at a bus station late at night in a small town in the Middle East and couldn’t find a hotel. In desperation, they arrived at the police station where they were offered an empty cell. They told me of one other night that they had to sleep in a stair well, but that was their only night of real discomfort in many years of unconventional travel. Even the jail cell had been warm, clean, and safe.
   They each carried only two changes of shirts and slacks, with one set left in the hotel room to dry after washing it. The recent introduction of drip-dry fabric made laundering easy. With the addition of a plain black dress for her and a sports coat and tie for him, they could get by at all but the most elegant of events. With three sets of underwear, one good pair of walking shoes, a pair of dressier shoes, and a light water-repellant jacket and sweater, they followed the seasons, so that heavy clothing was unnecessary. Besides toiletries, the other things in their suitcases were an immersion heater coil with foreign adapters, two mugs, spoons, tea bags, instant coffee, and packages of dried soup.
   Most foreign hotels included a breakfast of bread, fruit, and coffee. The couple sought out good food with generous portions at a reasonable price for lunch. For dinner, they purchased fruit, bottled water and bread, carrying them to the hotel room to consume with soup and coffee or tea.
   They knew every interesting place, event, fair or festival in Buenos Aires that they could attend for free or at a very low cost and happily shared that information with me. Mornings and afternoons were spent sightseeing, attending museums, zoos, historical sights, or strolling through picturesque streets, parks, or botanical gardens. They spent most evenings writing letters to their sons, visiting new acquaintances, reading, or attending musical performances or movies.
   George and Helen usually celebrated with a “night on the town” on their last evening in any large city. I doubt that they bought souvenirs of their trips. or even had a camera. Film and developing may have been too prohibitive for their frugal ways, or the bother of carrying a camera might have restrained such an unencumbered couple.
   When I met them, they were waiting in Buenos Aires for a cargo steamer to dock. It would eventually transport them to Genoa. They planned to buy a used motorcycle to bike themselves to Germany where one son was stationed in the military. After staying with their son and his young family for a few weeks, George and Helen planned to roam throughout Europe or perhaps Russia, then sell the motorcycle and move on.

   I think of George and Helen often, wishing I had the courage to follow in the footsteps of such an inspiring couple. If I had the courage to travel as they did, I’m sure it would be a wonderful escapade. But maybe I’d have to forego an extra set of clothes and carry my laptop and a camera so that I could record the intriguing details of my exotic adventures.
   If they are still living, George and Helen would be in their nineties by now. I’d like to think they are still satisfying their insatiable wanderlust. If not, I hope they have settled down with the satisfaction that they did what they wanted to do and did it well. So I salute all the Georges and Helens of the world and all others who have had the heart, the courage, and the determination to achieve in their senior years the dream of a lifetime, to accomplish things that most of us would love to do but probably will never even attempt.

PRESIDENT OBAMA

2009-01-20T23:30:00.001-05:00

I thought some of our new president's comments would be of interest to former Peace Corps Volunteers and those interested in the Peace Corps.

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

"And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it...

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

"This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, 1/20/09

ON THE SKIDS

2009-01-16T03:31:00.008-05:00

In previous posts, I have written about my experiences in the Peace Corps serving in a small town called Glória. I served along with Brunie who had been there a year before I arrived. She spoke Portuguese beautifully and fit in into the culture as I never could.

After writing my previous post, I thought of the many bus rides I took in Brazil and decided to tell another tale of a short, by equally memorable, adventure involving a bus.

   On a Monday afternoon after Brunie and I had spent a weekend in the capital city, we caught a 2:00 pm bus back to Glória, a trip of 126 kilometers, close to 80 miles. At home, that might have been a 90 minute trip, but not in Brazil’s interior. There were frequent stops on the unpaved road, so it usually took about four hours to traverse that distance.
   We knew that many people from the interior seldom traveled in any kind of motorized transportation. As a result, they often suffered from motion sickness. We always chose aisle seats across from each other, if available, glad not to be between a sick passenger and a window.
   Three employees worked on each vehicle. One was the driver, of course. Another took care of the luggage compartment under the bus and was also the mechanic. If the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere, we hoped he could repair it. The third man collected fares. He had to keep track of where each person got on and off so he knew how much to charge. Many people couldn’t count, so they just handed the man some bills. Sometimes he didn’t give them the right change. It could be because he himself couldn’t count well, but he might have been pocketing the extra money. If I were close to the front of the bus, I watched him closely.
   Rain swept across the countryside in sheets. The windows were closed. We could hardly breathe. The dense atmosphere was humid enough to keep our clothes clinging to our damp bodies.
   The bus stopped at each small town, but it didn't seem to have any other regular stops. People stood up and went to the front of the bus and asked the driver to stop anywhere along the road. Other passengers stood at the side of the road, ready to flag down the bus. Most wore a hat or a sheet of plastic to protect them from the rain. Each time the vehicle stopped, the mechanic, in a plastic raincoat, emerged to open the luggage compartment for new passengers or departing ones.
   Many Brazilians carried their packages with them, especially if their possessions were alive. That day I counted three piglets and five chickens. One passenger had an unidentified creature moving inside a cloth sack.

   In the back of the bus sat the man everyone called O Crente. ‘Crente’ literally meant ‘believer,’ but was used to refer to Protestants, mostly conservative evangelicals, as opposed to members of the majority religion, Roman Catholicism.
   O Crente, The Believer, caught the bus in his own town every night at about 2:30 in the morning and returned home the same day on the 2:00 pm bus from the capital. Each time we traveled to the capital city, he was already on the bus when we boarded at 3:00 am. He read the Bible out loud to his captive audience, both coming and going. He didn't read it in a normal speaking voice. He read it dramatically, shouting the passages with passion, like the most extreme of fire and brimstone preachers. Most Brazilians thought he was crazy. I found him so annoying that I chose to sit as far from him as possible. Because he lived in the town beyond Glória, I knew he would be with us for the entire trip. That day there had been no empty seats near the front. With the rain and O Crente, it was going to be a long four-hour ride.
   I wasn’t sure what O Crente did in the capital from 7:00 am until he caught the afternoon bus. Maybe he had relatives there. Most likely, he read the Bible in public places. I also wasn’t sure how he was able to afford bus fare 6 days a week without a job. He solicited donations from passengers, but never gathered more than a few centavos. I donated nothing ---I wasn’t about to to encourage him ---but I often wondered how much of a donation he would accept in exchange for a few minutes of silence.

   I tried to read, but couldn't concentrate on my book with O Crente yakking behind us. One couldn't carry on a conversation with that man screaming the scriptures. I couldn’t even watch the scenery in the passing hinterland. The side of the road could barely be seen through the pelting rain and steamed windows. Several times, the wheels spun on the mud while the bus tried to climb a small grade. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes, allowed my paperback book to drop to my lap, tuned out O Crente, and started to doze in the stuffy bus.
   Suddenly, the back of the bus lurched sideways. At once, I recognized a skid. I grabbed the back of the seat in front of me. In a second, the bus was in a deep ditch on the right side of the road, leaning on its side, its left wheels off the ground. I had been hurled off my seat partially by the movement of the bus and partially by the force of the female passenger to my left. I still held onto the seat, but I had twisted my wrist. I had to untangle my legs from Brunie and an elderly woman who had been sitting to her right.
   People yelled in frantic Portuguese. Children cried. Chickens squawked and piglets squealed their disapproval. The driver yelled orders to the passengers.

   “Quick, get out of the bus," someone screamed in a high-pitched voice. "The driver is saying that everyone should get off."

   I pulled myself to my feet. I held my hand out to the woman who had been to my left. Her face had lost its color and her hand trembled as I helped her scramble into the tilted aisle. We helped the old woman who sat beside Brunie to her feet. Once she headed toward the rear emergency exit, we scurried to the front door.
   Outside my sandals sank into the mire beside the road.
   "You okay?" Brunie asked.
   "I think so. I feel like I'll have a few bruises," I answered, rubbing my wrist. “How about you?”
   Brunie had hurt her elbow, but otherwise was okay.
   "I was dozing,” I said. “I never expected anything like this." Up to that point I had been calm, but suddenly felt like my blood sugar had dropped to zero. I leaned on Brunie for a few minutes until my dizziness passed.

   I noticed that the luggage compartment had been thrown open by the force of the skid. I recognized my own suitcase and Brunie's covered with mud in the ditch. Several people were grabbing at their own cloth sacks, probably filled with flour, rice, or cornmeal. To protect them from the rain, they carried them into the sloping bus. Several wooden liquor crates were broken ---some of the bottles smashed.
   We waited until most of the Brazilians had picked up their own possessions, before venturing near the vehicle. Just as I leaned over to grab my suitcase, O Crente grabbed one of the liquor bottles which hadn't broken. Smashing the bottle against the side of the bus, he yelled, "Diabo! Demonio!" Glass fragments and whiskey splattered onto my legs. Reaching for another bottle, the man yelled again. Brunie and I backed away.
   "What in the hell is going on?" I asked. O Crente was yelling and speaking so fast, I couldn’t understand his Portuguese.
   Another man grabbed a bottle by its neck, pushing the broken end toward O Crente who was reaching into the crate.
   Brunie answered me, "The Crente is blaming the desastre of the bus on the liquor. He says it's the devil's work ---he's trying to break the rest of the bottles. The man in white owns a bar in the next town. It's his whiskey."
   I found it quaint that the Brazilians referred to even the most minor of accidents as a ‘disaster.’ Luckily, no one had been seriously hurt in this one.
   The bus driver, the mechanic, the fare taker, and several passengers pulled the men apart. O Crente continued to make aggressive gestures toward the tavern owner waving his Bible in the air. Eventually several men wrestled him to the ground ending the ruckus.
   By the time everyone was calm, O Crente and several other men were covered with mud. O Crente wrapped a handkerchief around his bloody hand ---he seemed to have the only injury. Several men placed themselves strategically between the combatants. The men covered in mud stood with their heads tilted toward the pelting rain, trying to wash brown slime from their faces.

   The bus employees and several of the male passengers spoke for several minutes, with broad hand gestures, some arguing, and finally hand shakes. The driver crawled through the back door and moved unsteadily to the front of the slanting bus. He started the engine. Several men picked through the mud to find pieces of broken glass and move them out of the way. The mechanic explained that everyone was needed on the right side of the bus to push it back onto the road.
   To me it looked hopeless. I was sure no amount of mere human effort would upright the huge vehicle. And if the bus tilted more, passengers could be crushed. I might have refused to help but I didn't want to admit I was afraid. I placed myself near the back end, thinking I could scramble out of the way, if the bus toppled over. Feet slipped from under the passengers as we tried to push. Several landed on their knees in the mud.
   When that didn't work, the bus employees asked the women to get in the bus and stand or sit as close to the left side as possible while the men pushed on the right side. But that strategy didn't work either. The mechanic took some pieces of thick jute rope from his large metal tool chest. He tied them around the posts between windows on the left of the bus. The men pulled on the ropes while the women stayed inside on the left. Then everyone tried pulling on the ropes. Nothing worked.
   An hour passed. The rain subsided to a gentle drizzle. Most of the men gathered in small groups, smoking. A few people crawled back onto the bus to escape the rain, although everyone was thoroughly soaked by then. A few old women, a middle-aged couple, Brunie, and I sat on our luggage a few meters from the bus, under a lone tree. The main topic of conversation was how to get the bus back on the road and how long we would wait for help.
   O Crente sat apart from the others on a stump, reading loudly from his muddy Bible. I wondered if he were reading the story of Noah. Besides the mud that covered him, he wore a look that told the world that no one understood his wisdom, that everyone else was a sinner who needed salvation while he had discovered the one true path to paradise.
   Another hour went by before the first vehicle approached. The bus driver flagged down the jeep. Everyone watched as the two drivers spoke. The jeep’s owner shook his head saying he couldn't help; his jeep was too small. He said to wait. Soon, his friend would be coming in his truck; they had both been to the market in one of the interior towns.


   In another thirty minutes, a truck filled with goods and passengers, turned the bend, followed by a second truck from the market. The bus passengers buzzed with expectant excitement. The mechanic tied ropes to the jeep and both trucks. The fare taker organized the passengers from both the bus and the trucks to push on the right side of the bus while the jeep and the trucks strained to pull the bus from the ditch. It seemed like even that wouldn't work. Then, suddenly, the bus bounced onto all its wheels, the tires grabbed, and the driver was able to steer it onto the muddy road.
   Many handshakes and "obrigados" followed. The luggage compartment was refilled. Passengers reentered the bus. Packages were redeposited on the overhead racks and under the seats. The bar owner and O Crente were kept at a safe distance from each other, the latter loudly proclaiming that his prayers had resulted in a miracle that saved us from the satanic whiskey.

   Settling into my seat, soaked through to the skin, I looked at Brunie. Laughing, I said, "We must look like a couple of drowned rats."
   Brunie laughed. "I probably don't look that good."
   I ran my fingers through my wet hair. "How often does this happen?"
   She wiped her face with paper from the roll of toilet tissue she always carried in her purse. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Of course, when we tell everyone in Glória, we'll hear all kinds of stories about desastres."
   "We were supposed to be back by six. It'll be after nine 'til we get home. Our literacy students will be waiting for us."

Brunie assured me that by now everyone in Glória knew the bus was late and everyone in town knew exactly which residents of Glória were expected on the bus. The literacy students would not even show up. She fumbled in her mesh bag. Handing me an orange, she said, "It will be good to be home, won’t it?"
I nodded. I was finally feeling as if Glória really was my home, at least for the next few years.

POWERLESS

2009-01-07T18:57:00.004-05:00

“Technology gives us power,

but it doesn't make us happy.”

(one of my husband’s insightful observations)

   When I lived in the small interior town of Glória during my Peace Corps service, a generator, known simply as “a máquina” provided electricity in my section of the sertão (the Brazilian hinterland.)
   Zé (short for José) ran the máquina. He was of the same political party as the mayor, perhaps a relative. I understand that for several years before I arrived, while the opposition political party was in power, Zé refused to run the generator. Once his candidate was reelected, the town had electricity again.
   Well, we had electricity from 6:00 -10:00 pm.

   At 9:45, the lights flicked off for a few seconds as a warning, allowing citizens to head home while the street lights were still on. For special occasions, holiday parties, or Carnaval, the máquina ran until midnight.
   Once the lights went off each night, and there were only dim kerosene lanterns to compete with the heavens, one could see millions of stars in the southern-hemisphere sky.

   In anticipation of the coming of full-time electricity, many households had a brand new refrigerator in which people stored items they wanted to keep away from mice or roaches, until the appliances could be used for their intended purposes.
   Some had purchased several refrigerators. They knew that depositing money in the bank was useless, as the interest rate was much lower than the inflation rate. After sitting for a year or so, a never-used appliance could be sold for two or three times the purchase price, less than someone would pay for a new refrigerator at inflated prices, but much more than the owner had originally paid. Thus a refrigerator was an investment, better than a savings account.
   A movie theater showed old American films on a 16 mm projector on Friday and Saturday nights. A student who spoke English well, told me he couldn't understand anything in those American films. The sound on the projector was so garbled, even I couldn't understand one word. Most Glorianos couldn't read the subtitles, so the owner of the cinema allowed a few ginásio students in free so they could read them out loud for the rest of the crowd.
   The theater was hot, stuffy, & uncomfortable. The hard seats were not made for long-legged Americans. At first, I couldn't read the subtitles fast enough nor understand the students who were scattered throughout the theater yelling out the dialogue. Thus, I made excuses not to attend the films. I admit I was not disappointed when the cinema had to be closed after the balcony caved in one night ---luckily, after everyone had left. I thought, perhaps, along with the renovations, the owner might purchase a new projector, but he did not.
   There were no electric meters in the homes. No one had electrical outlets until the full-time electricity arrived. One light bulb hung from the ceiling in each room and residents were charged by the number of light bulbs in their homes.

   Everyone made do without full-time electricity ---or none at all if their homes weren’t wired. Almost every household listened to a radio attached to a car battery. Sewing machines had large flat pedals, pumped with the feet. We cooked on wood burning stoves or small gas appliances fueled by propane tanks. We used kerosene lanterns and kerosene refrigerators. I will never understand how a flame could keep things cold, but it did.
   I lived with Brunie, another Peace Corps Volunteer, in a house without electricity. In 1968, about a year after my arrival, full-time electricity arrived, although our landlord did not install it in our home. Brunie soon ended her two years of service and returned to California, only to rejoin the Peace Corps two years later to serve in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso.)
   About 6 months before I headed home, I moved into a different house. Besides a cisterna to gather rain water, I had one light bulb hanging from the ceiling in each room. With a few outlets scattered throughout the house, I could use the travel iron I had kept in my footlocker for the previous 18 months. In addition, a Volunteer who had returned to the U.S. and lived within a 100 miles of me at home, had loaned me his radio to listen to Voice of America.
   I kept my temperamental kerosene-powered refrigerator for convenience, but the owner of the pensão allowed me the use of her freezer compartment ---unaccustomed to frozen foods, the Brazilians left most freezers empty. I purchased fresh green beans, broccoli, and other vegetables in the capital city ---vegetables no one ever saw in Glória at that time ---blanched them and stored them in plastic bags or foil in the freezer. On my way home from teaching English at the ginásio, I retrieved vegetables, meat, and the ice cubes I had made from boiled/filtered water.
   Within weeks of the arrival of full-time power, two televisions arrived in Glória ---at a bar and at the bank manager's home. Even with poor reception, the bar became the most popular place in town.
   The bank manager and his wife were quiet, private people, so I don't think they appreciated the attention, but they were kind and allowed neighbors to view the television from outside their open shutters.

   I haven't been back to Glória since I left there in July of 1969. The city’s web site shows a much larger city with a cell tower looming in the mato outside of town. The town praças are filled with stunning tropical plants. Power lines are everywhere.
   With TVs in most homes, probably fewer people gather at the Ciné Glória on weekends. I’m sure the small circus that used to arrive annually, no longer visits Glória. Just as in the film “Bye, Bye, Brazil” traveling shows can’t compete with TV.
   The nightly social event, gathering in the praça to watch the movemento, has doubtless disappeared. Street lights are probably left on all night.

   Most likely, one can no longer see the Southern Cross quite as clearly in those big, beautiful, Brazilian skies.