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Photo: Loading açai barrels onto the boat for Belém (L to R, Rosa, Preto, Eder, Cutia).
Tuesday Jan 22
I take the boat piloted by a young guy called Paca across to Belém at about 7:30am, headed for another rendezvous with tall, loud, fearless Jorgeane (she would probably have made one formidable ass-kicking Amazon (not that the legendary female Amazon warriors actually came from the Amazon of South America but that´s way beside the point)), one of the teachers from Escola Açaimu who has been helping me out with buying stuff in the city.
She´s the sort of woman who´ll be standing in line with you at a store kind of like Stationery Warehouse but less organized, and when she sees one of those little airhorns on a shelf by the counter she picks it up, mulls it over for about a second, then pushes the button to send a blast out through the packed shop, then give a little grin that has not even the pretence of oops or guilt but still acknowledges what she´s done isn´t what most people do.
Or she´ll have a running conversation over the course of four different traffic light stops with some people in another tinted-windowed car that appears, with its massive roof-mounted speakers and stickers all over it, to be a radio station promo vehicle. She just leans across and calls back and forth and cracks up whenever the radio car is alongside,
And she hás the voice that sounds like it´s ready to leave her at any time, like she talks it to within an inch of its life. It´s not the gravely smokers voice, it´s the voice of someone who gets full mileage out of their vocal chords. And, like everyone around here, she drives like Evel Kneivel´s neice (or nephew or uncle etc). I guess she might be the kind of woman who´d intimidate or overpower some people, brassy to the nth degree, but I like her a lot, just to sit back and enjoy the show, and we have a few laughs. She´s big fun.
The day before, we´d spent the good part of three hours driving, looking for shops or shopping in them and late last week we and a friend of hers called Diany spent six hours mostly driving, sometimes shopping all over the place. I was pretty keen to get my stuff sorted and get back to the island to set myself up better with things like a mosquito net, some singlets (it´s pretty warm here in Para, I haven´t worn my awesome Southside hoodie or any other longsleeve thing since I got out of the airport), some washing line and some more tools.
I don´t know whether Diany actually needed to buy anything, was along for the ride to check out the new gringo in town, or was there as a safety outlet because Jorgeane loves to talk, and loves to talk faster than a hail of speeding bullets, and the kiwi guy is just not going to cut it yet at that pace. Diany did end up separating from us at times and doing her own thing so I guess the last thing wasn´t it, but boy howdy can these brasilieras talk.
I pick out a word or phrase here and there but mostly it´s flying over my head like tracer fire and most of the time I figuratively keep my head down and do a lot of reading street signs, shop names, billboards, anything with printed letters that´s out my passenger window. I read portuguese pretty decently, much better than I hear it of course, so in that situation it´s more my pace. And it´s not that the girls are unfriendly in the slightest, Diany especially is super-friendly (no not like that, I made it clear up front to everyone here I´m spoken for) it´s just that they´re girls, and girls love to yak it up right? Right girls?
And brazilian portuguese just sounds so frikken cool anyway, even when you can´t follow 95% of it, and the city is so damn cool to drive around that through the frustration of not getting stuff done I was just too stoked the whole time to worry about it. Jon let me know well in advance that there´s not much time spent worrying about time over here and while I´m here, I´ll drink to that, yes sir.
So before too long (Para time) there the two of us are, about 9 in the morning, back cruising the crazy, random, colourful potholed streets of Belém, teeming with humanity. First through the older, rundown but more lively suburbs of Guamá, with its stalls, caged houses, millions of little unique shops, churches, mini-futebol stadiums and God knows what else. Then into the still uber-lively central city, or Comercial district. Where among the smaller shops, stalls etc, you´ll find department stores, bigger banks, more cops, airconditioning and a generally more modern vibe.
We fail to find a Fuji brand câmera-USB cable even in Belem´s electronic superstore, but I score, finally, a mosquito net in one of the thousands of little side shops. I have the repellant and the spray but there´s no peice-of-mind like a half millimetre thick aerated physical barrier between a man and the tiny biting, high-pitched whining part of the jungle. Now I´ll no longer have to pull the sheets over, something that makes plenty of difference to a South Auckland boy in the equatorial night.
Back on the island for lunch I eat til I can barely move then go over to the new school site to take pictures using Ben Hur´s câmera. I end up going for overkill by choosing 10 different spots in the surrounding área where trees don´t block tôo much of the view and I can get the entire structure in frame. The plan is to take shots from the same positions regularly as the building comes together to track the progress. There´ll be a website set up to show prospective donors the project and the visual side of it should be a big help in letting them understand where their hard-earned dinheiro would be going.
For now, in 2D, it´s hard to see the wood (piles) for the trees, but once it starts flling in it´ll be great. As I tramp through the underbrush I keep having to brush off big biting ants and a few mozzies but no snakes or jaguars so I mark it up as a success.
That night, after a big beautiful meal of rice, chicken and beef at Soldalici´s table, I get to chow down on some banana fritters Donna Leah´s made with some bananas I brought back from the city. Life is real, real good when a man hás a plate full of banana fritters rolled in sugar and cinnamon in front of him and a jungle full of awesomeness outside.
I take the boat piloted by a young guy called Paca across to Belém at about 7:30am, headed for another rendezvous with tall, loud, fearless Jorgeane (she would probably have made one formidable ass-kicking Amazon (not that the legendary female Amazon warriors actually came from the Amazon of South America but that´s way beside the point)), one of the teachers from Escola Açaimu who has been helping me out with buying stuff in the city.
She´s the sort of woman who´ll be standing in line with you at a store kind of like Stationery Warehouse but less organized, and when she sees one of those little airhorns on a shelf by the counter she picks it up, mulls it over for about a second, then pushes the button to send a blast out through the packed shop, then give a little grin that has not even the pretence of oops or guilt but still acknowledges what she´s done isn´t what most people do.
Or she´ll have a running conversation over the course of four different traffic light stops with some people in another tinted-windowed car that appears, with its massive roof-mounted speakers and stickers all over it, to be a radio station promo vehicle. She just leans across and calls back and forth and cracks up whenever the radio car is alongside,
And she hás the voice that sounds like it´s ready to leave her at any time, like she talks it to within an inch of its life. It´s not the gravely smokers voice, it´s the voice of someone who gets full mileage out of their vocal chords. And, like everyone around here, she drives like Evel Kneivel´s neice (or nephew or uncle etc). I guess she might be the kind of woman who´d intimidate or overpower some people, brassy to the nth degree, but I like her a lot, just to sit back and enjoy the show, and we have a few laughs. She´s big fun.
The day before, we´d spent the good part of three hours driving, looking for shops or shopping in them and late last week we and a friend of hers called Diany spent six hours mostly driving, sometimes shopping all over the place. I was pretty keen to get my stuff sorted and get back to the island to set myself up better with things like a mosquito net, some singlets (it´s pretty warm here in Para, I haven´t worn my awesome Southside hoodie or any other longsleeve thing since I got out of the airport), some washing line and some more tools.
I don´t know whether Diany actually needed to buy anything, was along for the ride to check out the new gringo in town, or was there as a safety outlet because Jorgeane loves to talk, and loves to talk faster than a hail of speeding bullets, and the kiwi guy is just not going to cut it yet at that pace. Diany did end up separating from us at times and doing her own thing so I guess the last thing wasn´t it, but boy howdy can these brasilieras talk.
I pick out a word or phrase here and there but mostly it´s flying over my head like tracer fire and most of the time I figuratively keep my head down and do a lot of reading street signs, shop names, billboards, anything with printed letters that´s out my passenger window. I read portuguese pretty decently, much better than I hear it of course, so in that situation it´s more my pace. And it´s not that the girls are unfriendly in the slightest, Diany especially is super-friendly (no not like that, I made it clear up front to everyone here I´m spoken for) it´s just that they´re girls, and girls love to yak it up right? Right girls?
And brazilian portuguese just sounds so frikken cool anyway, even when you can´t follow 95% of it, and the city is so damn cool to drive around that through the frustration of not getting stuff done I was just too stoked the whole time to worry about it. Jon let me know well in advance that there´s not much time spent worrying about time over here and while I´m here, I´ll drink to that, yes sir.
So before too long (Para time) there the two of us are, about 9 in the morning, back cruising the crazy, random, colourful potholed streets of Belém, teeming with humanity. First through the older, rundown but more lively suburbs of Guamá, with its stalls, caged houses, millions of little unique shops, churches, mini-futebol stadiums and God knows what else. Then into the still uber-lively central city, or Comercial district. Where among the smaller shops, stalls etc, you´ll find department stores, bigger banks, more cops, airconditioning and a generally more modern vibe.
We fail to find a Fuji brand câmera-USB cable even in Belem´s electronic superstore, but I score, finally, a mosquito net in one of the thousands of little side shops. I have the repellant and the spray but there´s no peice-of-mind like a half millimetre thick aerated physical barrier between a man and the tiny biting, high-pitched whining part of the jungle. Now I´ll no longer have to pull the sheets over, something that makes plenty of difference to a South Auckland boy in the equatorial night.
Back on the island for lunch I eat til I can barely move then go over to the new school site to take pictures using Ben Hur´s câmera. I end up going for overkill by choosing 10 different spots in the surrounding área where trees don´t block tôo much of the view and I can get the entire structure in frame. The plan is to take shots from the same positions regularly as the building comes together to track the progress. There´ll be a website set up to show prospective donors the project and the visual side of it should be a big help in letting them understand where their hard-earned dinheiro would be going.
For now, in 2D, it´s hard to see the wood (piles) for the trees, but once it starts flling in it´ll be great. As I tramp through the underbrush I keep having to brush off big biting ants and a few mozzies but no snakes or jaguars so I mark it up as a success.
That night, after a big beautiful meal of rice, chicken and beef at Soldalici´s table, I get to chow down on some banana fritters Donna Leah´s made with some bananas I brought back from the city. Life is real, real good when a man hás a plate full of banana fritters rolled in sugar and cinnamon in front of him and a jungle full of awesomeness outside.
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Friday 25 Jan
If you walk through the jungle at night here the main sensation is sound. A few of the birds seem to do a late shift so there´s a little of their action but for the most part when the generator shuts down for the night it´s crickets and frogs. The tree frogs have a high rythmic chirp and the big toads an uber-loud seemingly random roar/croak that blasts across the island like a foghorn. (It´s possible they´re even louder than Jorgeane but I haven´t run anything scientific on the data yet, and you may call me animalist but there´s little chance the toads would be as much fun to drive with.)
The coolest visual trick the jungle hás shown me so far are the fireflies. I first saw them the night I had my puke/crap-athon, leaning on the deck handrail at the old school for some air before the party in my guts really started. The first flash I thought was a trick my sleep-deprived/bacterially-influenced mind was playing, like seeing stars when you aren´t getting enough oxygen. But I wasn´t having any trouble breathing, there´s plenty of oxygen in a jungle, and about three seconds later I saw another flash a few feet away.
It was about 15 to 18 feet from me out towards the river, and whatever the thing was it was airborne but seemed to have a weird trajectory because the flash isn´t so much of a flash as a short rolling strobe (about a second long). The thing is, light starts near the front of the bug and moves to the rear, but it does so at a greater speed than the forward motion of the bug as it flies. The effect is that you see the strobe move in one direction but next pick up the bug´s location in the opposite direction.
That night I saw more floating amongst the trees as I tramped to and from the factory bathrooms in the dark, purposely keeping my torch off to let my night vision crank up. They´re spookily cool and add even more of the magical element to the place. I´m no historificatician on myth and stuff but I wouldn´t be surprised if they were the original source of fairies because that´s what it feels like to have them around.
On a small downer note, I think I found Dino, my favourite tarântula, dead on the deck this morning. I say I think because I couldn´t bring myself to try to stir him just in case it confrimed the awful truth, that he hadn´t gone out in the time honoured spider-male tradition of being devoured post-coitus by his woman, but had simply starved or reached old age.
Coming out of the room onto the deck to have some breakfast that morning I´d seen him there, front and centre and exposed, and thought I´d just caught him out having a roam, like I had the first time I came across him a couple of weeks ago. That time, still not used to the idea of having the big spiders so close to where I´m shacking up, I´d shoed him slowly off the deck, but I´d been pleased to see him again the next day on the handrail by the indoor classroom.
This morning though, I noticed the orange tip of one of his legs missing, and the leg up in the air slightly instead of resting on the deck. Then I realised he was directly below the roof tile he´d been hanging out on (the roof tiles work in pairs, one over one under, like interlinked u and n) for the past two days, hanging a couple of legs over and curiously not changing position.
Not changing position isn´t unusual for these guys, Beleza, the female that stakes out her ground by the changing rooms at the factory, returns to that same square metre of brick wall every night. But the odds were stacking up now as I thought about it, that my little buddy was actually playing a harp 8-legged style somewhere else and what I was seeing was the hairy body he wasn’t using anymore.
I´d headed off to work deciding to leave him there, thinking one of two things would happen. Either I´d return that night and he´d still be there, in which case he was certainly gone (they don´t hang out exposed so far from cover during the day and he was way out in no-spider´s-land) and I´d give him a proper send-off, or I´d return and he´d have moved or have been moved by someone or something else.
When I got back to the school that night he was gone. I hope he found some nice pink-toe girl tarântula to shag and then be eaten by. What a way to go.
Benjamin,
Escola Açaimu,
Ilha Murutucu,
Rio Guamá,
Para, Brasil.
If you walk through the jungle at night here the main sensation is sound. A few of the birds seem to do a late shift so there´s a little of their action but for the most part when the generator shuts down for the night it´s crickets and frogs. The tree frogs have a high rythmic chirp and the big toads an uber-loud seemingly random roar/croak that blasts across the island like a foghorn. (It´s possible they´re even louder than Jorgeane but I haven´t run anything scientific on the data yet, and you may call me animalist but there´s little chance the toads would be as much fun to drive with.)
The coolest visual trick the jungle hás shown me so far are the fireflies. I first saw them the night I had my puke/crap-athon, leaning on the deck handrail at the old school for some air before the party in my guts really started. The first flash I thought was a trick my sleep-deprived/bacterially-influenced mind was playing, like seeing stars when you aren´t getting enough oxygen. But I wasn´t having any trouble breathing, there´s plenty of oxygen in a jungle, and about three seconds later I saw another flash a few feet away.
It was about 15 to 18 feet from me out towards the river, and whatever the thing was it was airborne but seemed to have a weird trajectory because the flash isn´t so much of a flash as a short rolling strobe (about a second long). The thing is, light starts near the front of the bug and moves to the rear, but it does so at a greater speed than the forward motion of the bug as it flies. The effect is that you see the strobe move in one direction but next pick up the bug´s location in the opposite direction.
That night I saw more floating amongst the trees as I tramped to and from the factory bathrooms in the dark, purposely keeping my torch off to let my night vision crank up. They´re spookily cool and add even more of the magical element to the place. I´m no historificatician on myth and stuff but I wouldn´t be surprised if they were the original source of fairies because that´s what it feels like to have them around.
On a small downer note, I think I found Dino, my favourite tarântula, dead on the deck this morning. I say I think because I couldn´t bring myself to try to stir him just in case it confrimed the awful truth, that he hadn´t gone out in the time honoured spider-male tradition of being devoured post-coitus by his woman, but had simply starved or reached old age.
Coming out of the room onto the deck to have some breakfast that morning I´d seen him there, front and centre and exposed, and thought I´d just caught him out having a roam, like I had the first time I came across him a couple of weeks ago. That time, still not used to the idea of having the big spiders so close to where I´m shacking up, I´d shoed him slowly off the deck, but I´d been pleased to see him again the next day on the handrail by the indoor classroom.
This morning though, I noticed the orange tip of one of his legs missing, and the leg up in the air slightly instead of resting on the deck. Then I realised he was directly below the roof tile he´d been hanging out on (the roof tiles work in pairs, one over one under, like interlinked u and n) for the past two days, hanging a couple of legs over and curiously not changing position.
Not changing position isn´t unusual for these guys, Beleza, the female that stakes out her ground by the changing rooms at the factory, returns to that same square metre of brick wall every night. But the odds were stacking up now as I thought about it, that my little buddy was actually playing a harp 8-legged style somewhere else and what I was seeing was the hairy body he wasn’t using anymore.
I´d headed off to work deciding to leave him there, thinking one of two things would happen. Either I´d return that night and he´d still be there, in which case he was certainly gone (they don´t hang out exposed so far from cover during the day and he was way out in no-spider´s-land) and I´d give him a proper send-off, or I´d return and he´d have moved or have been moved by someone or something else.
When I got back to the school that night he was gone. I hope he found some nice pink-toe girl tarântula to shag and then be eaten by. What a way to go.
Benjamin,
Escola Açaimu,
Ilha Murutucu,
Rio Guamá,
Para, Brasil.
