+Cut01.JPG)
Oi família e amigos!
The fifth tarântula I´ve come across on the island is in my bedroom, in that book filled locker a couple of metres behind me that happens to have a chair wedging it shut (there are too many textbooks in there so the door tries to stay open). I only just saw it 20 or so minutes ago when I came back from taking a cold shower over yonder in the factory changing rooms.
I was up on a chair trying and failing to twist at least one of the temperamental flourescent bulbs that hang above my hammock into life just after the generator had chugged back to life about 7:10pm, and used the torch in my mouth to check out the aranha macaco (monkey spider) I´d seen earlier in what seems to be a regular spot for it on the door of the locker. The door was cracked just enough for me to make out the (familiar by now) front legs of another tarântula. I climbed down and peered into the locker and there she was, about 110mm legspan, deep brown and beautiful. As I continued to rudely shine the torch at her she turned, in that graceful patented slomo tarântulas have and crept back into the dark at the back of the locker.
You did read that first line right, and the last one. I´m on the island in my quarters/the old school´s office tapping this out on the school computer (in the dark). I´m living here until the little casa over by the new school site is finished. It´s better than the shack I was expecting, still a jungle house but with brick walls and fewer gaps for bigger crawlers to find a way in than this old place. And it´ll have some power like this building whenever the right generator is running. And as for that “last one”, I do find tarântulas quite sexy in a kind of scary way.
I saw the first and biggest so far in my first day on the island. She was just sitting, happy as you please, on the side of the track that cuts 1.3km across the width of the island. They have these decent sized river islands in the Amazon, I think the two that sit very close to Ilha Murutucu are similar in size, about 3-3.5km long and 1-1.5km across.
(The track is pretty much a super long 1.2m wide deck raised two or three feet off the ground to be clear of floods and king tides [see ps1] and has extra 40 by 80 timber runners [see a man] on the top of either side to act as tracks for trolleys (like very small man-powered rail cars). The trolleys take trays of açaí berries from the river on either side of the island to the factory, and later transport the 44 gallon drums of product from the factory to the jetty outside Soldalici´s [see ps2] house where they´re craned onto a boat for Belém.)
Walking maybe 3m behind Ben Hur on my first patrol and orientation of the compound, about halfway down the track from the factory back to Soldalici´s, there she was (the tarântula, not Soldalici), sitting deep brownish grey, tarântula fat and pretty at the edge of the track. Ben Hur had just cruised [ps3] on by it without a glance (although his bad eye may be to blame for that) so I don´t even notice this beer-mug length spider til I´m about three feet away. It took me so much by surprise to see it there on a well used track in the middle of the day (even in the shade of the jungle) I´d gone by it before my brain registered that I´d seen an actual real live wild tarântula.
The second and smallest (also seen on my first day here) was high up under one of the soffits of the factory roof round the back. Probably only 60-65mm leg span but with a bright orange body, I was a fair way away from it, it being so high, but I just made sure I didn´t walk directly underneath it. I only saw it for that day before it must have decided it either liked a different position or was eaten by something bigger (like a female, or even a female tarantula).
There´s another tarântula about 12 paces from me but outside on the deck handrail, 40mm in body and 70 odd back feet to front feet and with orange hairs on the tips of its legs. It´s the same one I discovered yesterday about 2pm, when a heavy rain was pounding around us and I´d just returned to on the boat from shopping for a few supplies in the city. I was stoked to see her still around, the five different tarântulas I´ve seen so far have been quite beautiful and she´s the most striking of them because of the colours and shape of her legs, which aren´t super chunky but are still the typical thick tarântula leg.
Two nights before last, in between variously spewing and shitting my rings out, I met another, this time with legs a good 110-120mm but no extra marking, just a sexy deep brown and deep grey coat of spider fur. I hope she´s a she because she really turns me on, I´m not kidding.
She sat in the same place on the wall about 1.5mm up a wall 3m from the door of the factory bathroom as I went in and out, pacing back and forth in front of her, cursing my wuss guts for not handling the jungle bacteria. She´s been there every night since, it seems to be her favourite hunting ground. I know she´s the kind of girl who wouldn´t give me the time of day but I´m utterly enamoured of her.
On a couple of the balmy, lazy evenings, as I´ve sat at the teacher´s deck studying portuguese on the deck (aka classroom), futebol has broken out on the small irregular shaped field right next to the old school. The field is pretty well level, about 25 paces long and with small, not necessarily plumb, 1.2 by 0.9m goals at each end. There is no perimeter as such, but the river is close by on one side and one of the raised (about a foot and a half high) decking walkways on the other side. In between those natural outlines and the clearing of the field itself are a few palm trees and the stumps of former palm tree legends.
They played three on three the first night, with a crappy, partly deflated football, nine of them in three teams swapping out the losing trio when goals were scored. I went across and leaned on the deck rail to watch, not wanting to be the bumbling ignorant foreigner inviting myself to play yet even though I´d met some of them already and they were cool.
The real reason I didn´t barrel on down though is that they´re ridiculously skillful, with absolute control of the ball and unless a slippery part of the pitch betrays them, unfailing balance. They´re mostly fit young guys but the older, paunchier cats are just the same, utterly sure of their feet/thighs/chest/head with the ball. The trees and stumps and outlines of the field continually threatened to upend them or thwart the intention of a pass but time and again they´d land the ball right dead exactly where they wanted it with their teammate.
And the thing is, the pass is where it´s at for these guys, one or two touches, it´s at their teammate. At times one will have a go at beating a man on his own, and when they do it´s badass to watch, but 95% of the time they look to pass and rarely shoot until they´re within pissing distance of the goal. They never look hurried but always do things too fast to second guess or let any doubt cloud things. They remind me of the way the P.I. boys play social touch, with a similar air of pure play and pure ability and a lot of joking around with each other.
My brazilian portuguese is slowly coming on, the language gradually revealing itself to my possum-in-the-headlights brain, like Manuela said it would. Two weeks she said. I´m a week in and can have a slow but decent conversation with someone who understands my handicap, and all the people on the island are sweet as about it. It´s more fits and starts than leaps and bounds but they compliment my proninciation quite often and my vocabulary has improved about 400% already, and I unlock more every day. And every day I say obrigado Deus para Manuela, a proffesora melhor no mundo.
It´s night outside now in the jungle, the almost daily thunderstorm (they´re superloud here) has passed by a couple of hours ago and a gentle rain fills in the noise between the grasshoppers, bats, little tree frogs, big jungle toads and something real loud and pissed-off sounding in one of the trees a hundred metres or so away across the creek that I hope is just a big weird rainforest bird. Also across that creek that cuts in from the river and runs past the old school one of the pet mongrel dogs of the island pipes up for 10 or 15 seconds before deciding its not worth his trouble.
Apart from a darkening of mood on guts-ache night/day and the continuing pain in the ass of jetlag I´ve loved every minute of this place so far, the island jungle and city one. I spent more than half of today in that wild, alive city with one of the teachers and a friend of hers trying to find more stuff from more shops but I´m knackered now and I´m going to have another crack at this sleeping in a hammock business. It´s not as cool as it sounds so far, and it´s not helping me kick the jetlag (and neither are the fucking mosquitoes).
Then again, as much as I´ve fallen a little bit for taratulas I´m not 100% relaxed to have one actually in the room with me while I sleep. Two aranha macacos up in the rafters last night was enough of an introduction to sleeping with big arachnids in one´s room, the thought of waking up with a tarantula next to or on me is a little too much, a little too soon. I mean, I´m a gentleman and we´re just getting to know each other. The one in the locker is about 110mm and a dark brown. Sleep may dance around the edge of my reach again, but I´m going after it anyway right now.
One more thing though. The people I´ve met on the island and through Amazon Fruits are friendly and open and during my first week here they´ve sometimes asked me if I´m doing okay being in this strange place far from home without any of my friends or family, and staying alone in the school. I´m sweet of course and I tell them that, tell them I´m stoked to be here finally after trying for so long to kick this project off and make it happen, and that I really dig the Amazon so far. And I´m never alone. During the day and evening people are always around to talk to and in the dark I have about a babillion animals of different walks and flights of life either rarking up the night or sitting very, very quietly in wait for food to drop by.
But there´s another reason I´m never alone; Oma is here. Everyone I love is never far from my thoughts but Oma is more than just in my thoughts. I feel her here more than I have at any time since she left for the next world. I can´t say I wouldn´t be in Brasil if it wasn´t for her, but would I be working for only food and lodging to build a school for kids who don´t have the same opportunities others do? Very likely not. The whole spark of the idea to make my time in Brasil this way ignited from Oma´s support of her 11 World Vision children, and from the way she loved and lived her life. The adventurousness of choosing to live in a country with a different culture and language must have been put into me from many people and influences, but any good I can do here is because of her.
Here, she´s in the forrest, in the laughter, in the heat, in the wildlife, in the stillness, in the wind, the lightning, the thunder and the rain. She´s with everyone who loves her anytime they want her to be. She´s with me always.
Peace, love and python skins,
Benjamin,
Escola Açaimu,
Ilha Murutucu,
Belém, Para
Brasil.
[ps1] Big rivers with enough water volume for the moon´s pull to act on them act like estuaries and have tides which oppose the flow, which makes absolute sense to me in physics terms but it´s still a weird thing to experience when you´re in a boat being pulled in the opposite direction to the flow of the day before.
[ps2] Soldalici´s house, Ben Hur says, is the most important house on the island. She´s the cook and the track runs past her casa - which is also a small brick-walled joint and is only 30 or so metres in from the river - on the way to the factory. She lives with her husband Ceara and two hard-case daughters, Thais (pron Ta-eez), 10, and Tainara, 8. I eat lunch and dinner there if I´m not in Belém and like them a lot.
[ps3] He´s 71 but he has a way of walking where it looks like he´s about to start dancing, a sort of brasileiro shoulder sway.
[ps4] Aranha macaco is pretty much like an avondale spider in size and appearance, a wolf spider type hairy sucker with 90-100mm of leg span but those legs are skinny rather than the more sexy volume tarântulas carry.
[ps5] I´ve had bats in my rom tôo, going nuts swooping and jetting through the rafters. They´re pretty tiny, only about the size of a Lynx bottle cap when they´re all folded up hanging out, maybe with a 120-150 mm wingspan (it´s hard to tell, they like to stay in the dark spaces and they move friggin quick).
[ps6] One of my most vivid memories from when I was a boy and we lived up at number 7 was being terrorised one night by one of those very small (8-10mm leg span?) jumping wolf spiders. It was the night before my birthday, probably 7 or 8 years old, and the little spider had just happened by my bedroom as it went about its spidering. I scooted for Mum and Dad but when we returned the little one was nowhere in sight and I couldn´t calm down until it was found and moved as far from my bedroom as possible, preferably to somewhere in Greece or México City.
Somehow that pussy kid has become a grown dude that actually revels in a proximity to very big spiders. What a world this can be.
The fifth tarântula I´ve come across on the island is in my bedroom, in that book filled locker a couple of metres behind me that happens to have a chair wedging it shut (there are too many textbooks in there so the door tries to stay open). I only just saw it 20 or so minutes ago when I came back from taking a cold shower over yonder in the factory changing rooms.
I was up on a chair trying and failing to twist at least one of the temperamental flourescent bulbs that hang above my hammock into life just after the generator had chugged back to life about 7:10pm, and used the torch in my mouth to check out the aranha macaco (monkey spider) I´d seen earlier in what seems to be a regular spot for it on the door of the locker. The door was cracked just enough for me to make out the (familiar by now) front legs of another tarântula. I climbed down and peered into the locker and there she was, about 110mm legspan, deep brown and beautiful. As I continued to rudely shine the torch at her she turned, in that graceful patented slomo tarântulas have and crept back into the dark at the back of the locker.
You did read that first line right, and the last one. I´m on the island in my quarters/the old school´s office tapping this out on the school computer (in the dark). I´m living here until the little casa over by the new school site is finished. It´s better than the shack I was expecting, still a jungle house but with brick walls and fewer gaps for bigger crawlers to find a way in than this old place. And it´ll have some power like this building whenever the right generator is running. And as for that “last one”, I do find tarântulas quite sexy in a kind of scary way.
I saw the first and biggest so far in my first day on the island. She was just sitting, happy as you please, on the side of the track that cuts 1.3km across the width of the island. They have these decent sized river islands in the Amazon, I think the two that sit very close to Ilha Murutucu are similar in size, about 3-3.5km long and 1-1.5km across.
(The track is pretty much a super long 1.2m wide deck raised two or three feet off the ground to be clear of floods and king tides [see ps1] and has extra 40 by 80 timber runners [see a man] on the top of either side to act as tracks for trolleys (like very small man-powered rail cars). The trolleys take trays of açaí berries from the river on either side of the island to the factory, and later transport the 44 gallon drums of product from the factory to the jetty outside Soldalici´s [see ps2] house where they´re craned onto a boat for Belém.)
Walking maybe 3m behind Ben Hur on my first patrol and orientation of the compound, about halfway down the track from the factory back to Soldalici´s, there she was (the tarântula, not Soldalici), sitting deep brownish grey, tarântula fat and pretty at the edge of the track. Ben Hur had just cruised [ps3] on by it without a glance (although his bad eye may be to blame for that) so I don´t even notice this beer-mug length spider til I´m about three feet away. It took me so much by surprise to see it there on a well used track in the middle of the day (even in the shade of the jungle) I´d gone by it before my brain registered that I´d seen an actual real live wild tarântula.
The second and smallest (also seen on my first day here) was high up under one of the soffits of the factory roof round the back. Probably only 60-65mm leg span but with a bright orange body, I was a fair way away from it, it being so high, but I just made sure I didn´t walk directly underneath it. I only saw it for that day before it must have decided it either liked a different position or was eaten by something bigger (like a female, or even a female tarantula).
There´s another tarântula about 12 paces from me but outside on the deck handrail, 40mm in body and 70 odd back feet to front feet and with orange hairs on the tips of its legs. It´s the same one I discovered yesterday about 2pm, when a heavy rain was pounding around us and I´d just returned to on the boat from shopping for a few supplies in the city. I was stoked to see her still around, the five different tarântulas I´ve seen so far have been quite beautiful and she´s the most striking of them because of the colours and shape of her legs, which aren´t super chunky but are still the typical thick tarântula leg.
Two nights before last, in between variously spewing and shitting my rings out, I met another, this time with legs a good 110-120mm but no extra marking, just a sexy deep brown and deep grey coat of spider fur. I hope she´s a she because she really turns me on, I´m not kidding.
She sat in the same place on the wall about 1.5mm up a wall 3m from the door of the factory bathroom as I went in and out, pacing back and forth in front of her, cursing my wuss guts for not handling the jungle bacteria. She´s been there every night since, it seems to be her favourite hunting ground. I know she´s the kind of girl who wouldn´t give me the time of day but I´m utterly enamoured of her.
On a couple of the balmy, lazy evenings, as I´ve sat at the teacher´s deck studying portuguese on the deck (aka classroom), futebol has broken out on the small irregular shaped field right next to the old school. The field is pretty well level, about 25 paces long and with small, not necessarily plumb, 1.2 by 0.9m goals at each end. There is no perimeter as such, but the river is close by on one side and one of the raised (about a foot and a half high) decking walkways on the other side. In between those natural outlines and the clearing of the field itself are a few palm trees and the stumps of former palm tree legends.
They played three on three the first night, with a crappy, partly deflated football, nine of them in three teams swapping out the losing trio when goals were scored. I went across and leaned on the deck rail to watch, not wanting to be the bumbling ignorant foreigner inviting myself to play yet even though I´d met some of them already and they were cool.
The real reason I didn´t barrel on down though is that they´re ridiculously skillful, with absolute control of the ball and unless a slippery part of the pitch betrays them, unfailing balance. They´re mostly fit young guys but the older, paunchier cats are just the same, utterly sure of their feet/thighs/chest/head with the ball. The trees and stumps and outlines of the field continually threatened to upend them or thwart the intention of a pass but time and again they´d land the ball right dead exactly where they wanted it with their teammate.
And the thing is, the pass is where it´s at for these guys, one or two touches, it´s at their teammate. At times one will have a go at beating a man on his own, and when they do it´s badass to watch, but 95% of the time they look to pass and rarely shoot until they´re within pissing distance of the goal. They never look hurried but always do things too fast to second guess or let any doubt cloud things. They remind me of the way the P.I. boys play social touch, with a similar air of pure play and pure ability and a lot of joking around with each other.
My brazilian portuguese is slowly coming on, the language gradually revealing itself to my possum-in-the-headlights brain, like Manuela said it would. Two weeks she said. I´m a week in and can have a slow but decent conversation with someone who understands my handicap, and all the people on the island are sweet as about it. It´s more fits and starts than leaps and bounds but they compliment my proninciation quite often and my vocabulary has improved about 400% already, and I unlock more every day. And every day I say obrigado Deus para Manuela, a proffesora melhor no mundo.
It´s night outside now in the jungle, the almost daily thunderstorm (they´re superloud here) has passed by a couple of hours ago and a gentle rain fills in the noise between the grasshoppers, bats, little tree frogs, big jungle toads and something real loud and pissed-off sounding in one of the trees a hundred metres or so away across the creek that I hope is just a big weird rainforest bird. Also across that creek that cuts in from the river and runs past the old school one of the pet mongrel dogs of the island pipes up for 10 or 15 seconds before deciding its not worth his trouble.
Apart from a darkening of mood on guts-ache night/day and the continuing pain in the ass of jetlag I´ve loved every minute of this place so far, the island jungle and city one. I spent more than half of today in that wild, alive city with one of the teachers and a friend of hers trying to find more stuff from more shops but I´m knackered now and I´m going to have another crack at this sleeping in a hammock business. It´s not as cool as it sounds so far, and it´s not helping me kick the jetlag (and neither are the fucking mosquitoes).
Then again, as much as I´ve fallen a little bit for taratulas I´m not 100% relaxed to have one actually in the room with me while I sleep. Two aranha macacos up in the rafters last night was enough of an introduction to sleeping with big arachnids in one´s room, the thought of waking up with a tarantula next to or on me is a little too much, a little too soon. I mean, I´m a gentleman and we´re just getting to know each other. The one in the locker is about 110mm and a dark brown. Sleep may dance around the edge of my reach again, but I´m going after it anyway right now.
One more thing though. The people I´ve met on the island and through Amazon Fruits are friendly and open and during my first week here they´ve sometimes asked me if I´m doing okay being in this strange place far from home without any of my friends or family, and staying alone in the school. I´m sweet of course and I tell them that, tell them I´m stoked to be here finally after trying for so long to kick this project off and make it happen, and that I really dig the Amazon so far. And I´m never alone. During the day and evening people are always around to talk to and in the dark I have about a babillion animals of different walks and flights of life either rarking up the night or sitting very, very quietly in wait for food to drop by.
But there´s another reason I´m never alone; Oma is here. Everyone I love is never far from my thoughts but Oma is more than just in my thoughts. I feel her here more than I have at any time since she left for the next world. I can´t say I wouldn´t be in Brasil if it wasn´t for her, but would I be working for only food and lodging to build a school for kids who don´t have the same opportunities others do? Very likely not. The whole spark of the idea to make my time in Brasil this way ignited from Oma´s support of her 11 World Vision children, and from the way she loved and lived her life. The adventurousness of choosing to live in a country with a different culture and language must have been put into me from many people and influences, but any good I can do here is because of her.
Here, she´s in the forrest, in the laughter, in the heat, in the wildlife, in the stillness, in the wind, the lightning, the thunder and the rain. She´s with everyone who loves her anytime they want her to be. She´s with me always.
Peace, love and python skins,
Benjamin,
Escola Açaimu,
Ilha Murutucu,
Belém, Para
Brasil.
[ps1] Big rivers with enough water volume for the moon´s pull to act on them act like estuaries and have tides which oppose the flow, which makes absolute sense to me in physics terms but it´s still a weird thing to experience when you´re in a boat being pulled in the opposite direction to the flow of the day before.
[ps2] Soldalici´s house, Ben Hur says, is the most important house on the island. She´s the cook and the track runs past her casa - which is also a small brick-walled joint and is only 30 or so metres in from the river - on the way to the factory. She lives with her husband Ceara and two hard-case daughters, Thais (pron Ta-eez), 10, and Tainara, 8. I eat lunch and dinner there if I´m not in Belém and like them a lot.
[ps3] He´s 71 but he has a way of walking where it looks like he´s about to start dancing, a sort of brasileiro shoulder sway.
[ps4] Aranha macaco is pretty much like an avondale spider in size and appearance, a wolf spider type hairy sucker with 90-100mm of leg span but those legs are skinny rather than the more sexy volume tarântulas carry.
[ps5] I´ve had bats in my rom tôo, going nuts swooping and jetting through the rafters. They´re pretty tiny, only about the size of a Lynx bottle cap when they´re all folded up hanging out, maybe with a 120-150 mm wingspan (it´s hard to tell, they like to stay in the dark spaces and they move friggin quick).
[ps6] One of my most vivid memories from when I was a boy and we lived up at number 7 was being terrorised one night by one of those very small (8-10mm leg span?) jumping wolf spiders. It was the night before my birthday, probably 7 or 8 years old, and the little spider had just happened by my bedroom as it went about its spidering. I scooted for Mum and Dad but when we returned the little one was nowhere in sight and I couldn´t calm down until it was found and moved as far from my bedroom as possible, preferably to somewhere in Greece or México City.
Somehow that pussy kid has become a grown dude that actually revels in a proximity to very big spiders. What a world this can be.
