On Eder's front varanda. L to R, Eder's dad Jose, his bro-in-law Nhaldo, Eder, some gringo.
I couldn't say goodbye to my mate Eder. I stood there in his stepfather Vito's canoe, floating at the end of his dock on my last morning in Brazil, and I shook my mate 's hand as his family watched from the house, but as much as I'm a big tough builder from South Auckland who loves to train in the thai boxing gym, watch rugby league and eat raw red meat, deep down I'm the big baby who cries during Mighty Ducks and Cool Runnings and Top Gun and I didn't have the guts to try and say a word of goodbye to Eder because I knew I would choke on the lump in my throat.
He's one of the best of the good bastards is Eder. I know a few there in that hot, wet, ramshackle, brawling, dancing, hollering, thieving, pumping, bloody, magical, writhing jungle of a river city called Belem, and I know a few more in the other quieter, greener kind of jungle that surrounds it. Many of them aren't any kind of angel, but not one of them will flinch when it comes to extending a disarming hospitality or offering a hand. But Eder has something else about him, a rock-solid decency and dignity that actually probably could qualify him as an angel. He was a labourer for Amazon Frut when I first started there, working mostly as a hand on the boats and the rail car trolleys, but as the concreting began for the school he spent more and more time helping us out there.
We were lucky to have him too, he's as strong as three oxes and he's happy to get stuck in. In the case of the concreting (for the 125 square metre slab for the school's floor) what that meant was days and weeks on end carrying sacks of sand, cement or stones from the boat to the mixing area, and then mixing the concrete by hand using hoes, and then carrying and pouring the concrete using 20L buckets. And when you do that kind of hard yakka type work together for days and weeks on end, sweating, bleeding, burning, drinking gallons of water and finishing the days aching, a bond forms from that toil, forms from the shared pain and fatigue and the humour you use to get through it.
You have each others' back, grit up and carry another sack of cement or sand or builders mix or another bucket of concrete on your shoulder or push and pull and push and pull the hoe through the mix for the three thousandth time that day because the other guy is doing it too. Part of it is an instinctive competitive thing, a pride thing, you want to show you have the same capacity as anyone else, or more. But a bigger part of it is that you have this shared mission, one that hurts physically, and that you know the end of that mission comes quicker if you guts it out together, for yourself and for each other.
I also got on real well with Eder because he's one of the more curious people I know about the world outside The Amazon. Everyone would ask a few things about NZ when you met them but, like Edimar and the boat pilot Paca, Eder would ask a lot more thoughtful and deeper questions and would ask about other countries and cultures too. We also talked a lot about music and he brought me my first cd of Brazilian music, a pirated copy of the legendary Reginaldo Rossi's greatest hits. He also introduced me to pagode, a musical style evolved from samba, that he loves and I that I now love too, and that we would jam on, me - without skill - on guitar, he - effortlessly - on a type of tambourine they call a pandeiro.
A photo from three months ago when Rii was with us, with Soldalici, Thais and Tainara.
Some of the things that happened during the time since my last letter were the birth, finally, of (Soldalici's nephew) Macaco and Patricia's baby boy Joao-Vito, a visit to our front yard/building site of a young green anaconda (ours was only a metre and a bit but this species of anaconda grow to be the largest snakes in the world, in excess of ten metres). We spent days at the popular beach/party islands of Cutijuba and Outeiro and another day saw the dramatic rescue from the river and resuscitation by Edimar of Cirilo (a local teenager) and nights watching the legendary Brazilian national football team struggle to find form in the World Cup qualifiers and a few friendly matches.
I also took a third trip to visit my friends Edilson and Naldo and the tribe in Sao Domingos Do Capim and with half the town packed into the gymnasium watched groups from local high schools dance one of the traditional colourful and lively June quadrilhas. Another change was the welcome addition of Valentim and Dona Lourdes' son Neco and their five year old granddaughter Enza Yasmin, the daughter of their heavily pregnant daughter Eliane, to our household. Neco is 25 and a mechanic who now works in the factory and on the boiler with his dad and little Enza is a hard case who, in spite of being away from her mother for a month or so while she finishes her pregnancy, is a happy, often dancing, little soul and another ray of sunshine around the place.
Pregnant Patricia, Black Singletted Benjamin and Mad Soon-To-Be-Dad Macaco.
One of the most amazing things that took place in the last few weeks was the evening that a big storm hit the region. Afternoon thunderstorms are more than common in tropical climes and The Amazon has more than its fair share (apparently Brazil experiences more lightning strikes per square kilometre than any other country). On the day the big one hit we'd been playing football on the school floor, the only non-mudbath playing surface on the island that day, and the rain had been falling steadily for about ten minutes.
When the wind came up leaves and small twigs had started to float down onto the pitch and puddles formed that would put the brakes on a ball played through them. We played on though, the obstacles becoming part of the game. After a short time, with the force of the wind growing, I was startled by a cracking noise above the sound of the battering rain from nearby, high in the trees just inland from our house, and I swung my head expecting to see a branch fall. But none did, they all just kept swaying in an increasingly wild four story high dance.
I turn to look at Eliel, the closest player, and see him turn his head back from where the noise had come from to the game in front of him, thinking to myself that if the locals are happy to stay out in this craziness then I am too. By now our concrete pitch is almost as green as Old Trafford or The Maracana, covered in foliage torn and thrown from the trees to windward of us, carpeting the playing surface and occasionally puncturing a foot.
Lightning and thunder are playing their own epic game above us, adding a rumbling booming baritone and a snakestrike light show to the rushing symphony of the gale. The stories and video of footballers being struck by lightning play in the back of my mind and sometimes I flinch as the bolts flash like God's camera around us, but I rationalise my desire to keep playing by telling myself that there are many very tall trees around us that would be struck before us wee soaked humans.
When I hear the cracking again from near our house I'm not on the pitch, I'm on the ground at the opposite end of the school retrieving an unsuccessful shot at goal. My head is down as I'm picking up the ball but my neck snaps up instantly towards the noise. And the noise doesn't stop, the cracking continues above the growing maelstrom of the wind and rain and thunder and I see branches, these big solid chunks of tree, crashing to the ground at the other end of the school, around our house. I bolt for the floor, jumping up and taking shelter by one of the tall strong piles like the other guys have done.
I see the first of the acai palms fall and proper elemental fear takes a seat in my consciousness as my mind races. The piles are strong enough to withstand a falling tree or branch but surely are potential targets for lightning strikes. If I can make it to the house I'm safe from lightning but a tree would demolish most of our roof like it was made from toothpicks. But Valentim, Dona Lourdes and little Enza are in the house and I have to know they're ok, and that decides for me that the best thing is to make a break for the house. I'll check on them and take up a position inside close to a wall under the roof's strong central ridge beam, probably near or under the table, then I'll be out of the road of the lightning and still have some protection from anything falling from above too.
I scoot from one pile to the next like I'm dodging enemy fire (but without the forward rolls) passing the other lads and making my way to the other end of the floor, towards the house. When I reach the last pile I look around again, seeing carnage and destruction, the broken jungle lying in a disarray of warning around the house, but the house itself seems to be in one piece. Also encouragingly the force of the wind is already dropping, still howling menacingly but without the terrifying accompaniment of the cracking limbs and thudding crash of the falling acai palms.
I leave the cover of the pile and begin the short (about 20m) dash for the house but no sooner have I reached the bottom of the ramp and started my way towards rounding the giant Pareca tree than something crashes to the ground directly in front of me, missing sconing me by only a single metre, one stride of my powerful manly legs. I pull up with a jolt, reeling on my heels for half a second as my good fortune sinks in, then my survival instinct cracks the whip again and I'm flying towards the house.
When I get to the top of the steps I break my run to a purposeful stride, making my way along our deck towards and then through the front door, dread steeling me for what I might find inside. But, thank God, my housemates and the house itself are so far unscathed. Enza huddles by Dona Lourdes who shoots me a nervous smile as she huddles beside Valentim who huddles by a central wall of the house eating a plate of leftovers from lunch completely nonchalantly as if he doesn't have a concern in the world. The wind subsides to almost nothing within a couple of minutes leaving only vertical rain pattering and thunder that grows fainter with every strike.
I head out with Neco, winding our way across the debris strewn island to check on the neighbours. Outside our place on three sides of the house we see half a dozen acai palms laying over on the ground, their fifteen metre long trunks ending in roots ripped from the earth. The only side without fallen trees is the windward side of our house, and so, with a stroke of golden good luck, we've escaped the tempest unscathed. We soon find the same good fortune has kept Soldalici and Ceara's house safe from harm, and shortly after we see the same has happened at the old school buildings and Bare's place nearby, branches and palm trees laying all around but not a single hit on the houses.
After the smoke had cleared about a dozen or so acai palms had fallen and many more heavy branches but the only building to suffer damage was Berruga's house across the creek from the school where several sheets of iron had been ripped off and not a single person was hurt. According to Ceara in his twelve years living on the island they'd never a storm of such ferocity.
Dona Lourdes propels Enza on her polystyrene boat out front of our house during a very high tide. Soldalici is in the blue, Enza's mum Eliane on the step and Valentim on the varanda.
On my last Sunday there on the island, a perfect Amazon summers day without rain, we had my farewell party at our house and on the new school floor we'd busted our guts to make. Starting around ten in the morning we passed the day eating through the mountains of bbq beef and chicken, the beans, rice, farinha and chilled acai on the side, we drank and yakked and grooved to Cutia's sound system and kicked a ball or two around.
Edimar had arrived without the company of a lady because he'd had arguments with all three of his girlfriends in the week prior. Dioza had arrived with her former tugboat pilot husband and daughter and a present for me of a carved necklass. Valentim's sister Teresinha had arrived with four of her lovely neighbours I'd previously never met. Eleziu had arrived with his glowingly very pregnant lady. All in all more than sixty people arrived but still at the end of the day, after the new school floor had become a dance floor and everyone had boogied and swung and slowdanced and samba-ed to Cutia's big soundsystem until the sun went down and it was time for the boats to leave, there was food left over. I love it when there's food left over.
There was also the packing up and the leaving. So many so longs, so many poignant moments. But there was one important moment missed. Edimar, along with Soldalici my first friend in Brazil and an invaluable teacher of the language and the culture as well as the source of so many moments of clowning, energy and hi-jinks, would say three or four times a day in those last three or four weeks that he would “feel the absence of his friend Benjamin Da Nova Zelandia”. I've known plenty of cats with the gift of the gab and who are often the life of a party but never met anyone with more charisma or force of character than my mate Edimar. But because of a three hour boat delay I missed my chance to meet up with him and say what I needed to say to him on my last night there before heading for the airport and it hurts still.
Thankfully I did get to say goodbye properly to Soldalici and her family, eating my last dinner there at her table, the table I'd eaten at and talked at and laughed at and wondered at so many times in the last six months. Crazy Macaco and sweet Patricia, the new parents, the gorgeous girls Thais and Tainara who'd helped me so much with my Portuguese in my first weeks and entertained me so often hilariously. And the patriarch Ceara with his lopsided grin and yukking laugh, a battler and good bugger. At times they're a rough and ready bunch, those who live on the river, but when it comes to hospitality they're second to none and I always felt completely at home in Ceara and Soldalici's house.
They're all hard cases and all brilliant fun and I absolutely need to go back one day and see them again, and to eat again at Soldalici's table, I hope sooner rather than later. Valentim and Lourdes and Neco and Enza too, who I shared the house with for those last four months, so important to my everyday life there and such good fun. There are so many others too, so many people I'd passed so much time coming to know and to like and respect. So many other reasons to return there, to Brazil, to Para, to Murutucu.
Eder's family. L to R, daughter Stephany, neice Moneque, son Alden, daugher Jenifer and wife Lea.
A while ago, in another letter, I said that we were lucky to be in an area of The Amazon almost entirely free of the serious mosquito born diseases, but that became much less true in the last two months. Dengue broke out in Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo and also in Belem. Two months ago Eder stopped coming to work because he had become sick with a fever and two of his three kids were struck with similar illnesses. A week passed and the two sick kids improved but Eder stayed down and his other daughter and wife Leia became ill. Eder also developed a bad chest infection and went into the hospital for tests (the family could only afford one of them to get a consultation) but luckily his daughter and Leia had improved by the time he got the results back three days later.
Eder though, had stayed sick and off work and it turned out he had not just Dengue but pneumonia. He'd had to borrow money to get the consultations, tests and medicine but they worked and he bounced back, at first only as strong as one and a half oxes but eventually back to his three ox best.
Every year of the last twelve, since he was fourteen, Eder has worked for Amazon Frut during the first half of the year, during the acai off-season. Even though he only works as a labourer, and is utterly humble, he carries himself always with a rare unshakable and effortless dignity. When the acai is in season he works on Murutucu's neighbouring island Cumbu, not far from where he also lives with his young family, climbing the tall acai palms and collecting the fruit. His father Jose also lives with him, Eder says because when his father lives alone he drinks too much. Living at Eder's house though, his father lives with the same quiet dignity, making baskets and jokes.
During the last month Eder had been back in business collecting acai so we didn't seem him anymore working around Amazon Frut but he would still ask me round his place for a bbq and a jam or to go with him and his family to see his girls perform in a traditional festival at their school. It was thus that I slept my last night in Brazil at their place and yakked long into the night with him about all manner of subjects, from the usual music, wildlife and family to physics, dinosaurs and aliens.
And it was thus that I swung out of my hammock on my last morning in Brazil and ate hot bread, cheese, leftover birthday cake and hot chocolate with my mate Eder. And it was thus that shortly after breakfast, with the sun rising into an almost cloudless sky above the jungle canopy out to the east, I walked down the neighbouring dock of Vito's house and stood in Vito's canoe shaking my mate's hand as his mother, wife, kids, a sister-in-law and a couple of nieces, his father and stepfather looked on. I just had to hope that he got it, that I appreciated from the bottom of my heart all the help he'd given me, all the time we'd sweated, strained, sung and played and laughed together and that I would miss hanging out with him from where I was headed far away, those little green islands on the other side of the world. And I hoped that he knew that I think a lot of my mate Eder, that I admire and respect the simple dignity and the great strength and good humour he lives his life with.
As Vito's paddle pushed us away, up the glassy creek into the waking morning I waved goodbye to Eder's family who had waited up by the house, and they waved back to me. Eder didn't wave though, when he got to the house he kept walking inside without turning around. As I carried on waving back to Lea and the kids I could see him come out of his Mum's house at the back and turn away down the walkway to his own house. Earlier before breakfast I'd said maybe there'd be a chance for one last jam if I got all my stuff sorted in time before the last boat from the island to the city, and if he happened to be in the area. Eder had grinned and said that he didn't think he would be in the area, and at that his wife Lea had said to me, only half joking it seemed, that it was because he didn't want to watch me leave. So he didn't.
When I did finally fly out of Belem at 2am the next morning, after Polaco and Cutia had seen me off at the airport, it was with my eyes on the horizon, on the future. I've never been one to look back too much on good old days, even very recent ones, because there can always be better ones to come. But naturally, with all the emotional and sensory upheaval that comes with changing so much of your environment so suddenly, I couldn't help glancing back in my mind to that little jungle island in that huge brown river by that hot crazy city and to the faces and the voices and the laughter of the people there. The incorrigible ladies-men Edimar and Cutia, my guardian angel Soldalici and her hard case man Ceara, my stupendous housemates Valentim and Lourdes and Neco and Enza, the boat pilots Chapolim and Paca, and smiling Eleziu and Bare and Dudu and Yurandir and Meloso and Thais and Tainara and Dona Lea and Nelinho and Augustinho, my brazilian cuz.
And I saw the acai palms reaching into the sky where the urubu fly and I heard the sound of diesel engines chugging by and of giant cicadas and toads and the waves of the river washing against the bank. And I saw my mate Eder and his family too, making their life there in their little two roomed wooden house by the river. And in my bag was my mate's pandeiro, and there in his house, by the river, in the jungle, is my guitar.
A view from Eder's dock up the creek that separates Murutucu on the right from Cumbu on the left. In the foreground the dock of his mother's and Vito's house, in the background that magical, steaming, writhing jungle of a city called Belem
Notes:
Eder is pronounced more like Eh-deh, with emphasis on the first syllable.
Urubu are the black vultures that soar majestically over the skies of the Amazon. Close up they're as ugly as any other vulture but up there patrolling on the air currents they're beautiful.
I don't really cry during Top Gun anymore. Mighty Ducks, I probably would.
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