Pastoral Do Menor

Pastoral Do Menor is the last school type program we attended yesterday. The two men in the photo, Father Ron and Father Leneord have been in Brasil for 40 plus years. This is an after school program that offers all types of activities from sewing, silk screening, volleyball, soccer, painting. The children also get a meal at the end of the day. The Dance program put on a dance recital for us that was absolutely wonderful! What a great day. Three different schools that have specific needs in the community and Rotary plays a part in each one.

SEARA

SEARA is a program for children 1 - 4 years old who are in desparate need of nutrition. Most of the teachers are their moms and both mother and child receives education on health, nutrition, cleanliness and many other subjects. The children are fed 4 times a day. Bathed 2 times a day. Many of them have to walk 1 hour to get to the school, so their clothes are washed and dried while they attend school. While there, they are placed in donated clothing. We arrived at the last meal of the day and the children ate everything, including the marrow in bones.

Rotary School

The Rotary School was mentioned on my first blog posting. This is our first day here (yesterday). We went back today to play soccer with the children. This is a school where Rotary plays a very active role both in donations and man power. There are three Rotary Clubs in Santarem and they are all involved. The biggest thing this school needs is space. There is little room for play. But we did a great job today wearing each other out.

Back in Santarem

My bedroom in Fundacao Esperanca in Santarem. FE is a medical and dental center for the poorer people of Santarem. Most of the doctors and dentists come from the US and stay in these rooms. We have toured the facilities and most of the funding comes from Rotary International.

Sunset on the Amazon

Obidos is on the right. We are leaving the port to head back to Santarem. It has been a long 21 hour wait. But we all kept our cool and handled the situation very well. We even laughed a lot. What a view!

Dean, Steve,Paulo and Mike

Leaving Obidos The Final Chapter

Monday April 28, 2008

Trying to Leave Obidos The Final Chapter

5:30 PM

We left on the Cezar Brelaz about 15 minutes ago.

After a nap from 1 - 3 PM, Paulo took Dean and I to a Museum that had a display on the early history of Obidos. There is a Native American tribe and the early settlers came here in 1697 when the military set up a fort to protect the interests of the Portuguese Government. (Brasil was a colony of Portugal since 1530).

6:07 PM

Filled with a coca cola, bacon flavored cheese puffs, 1/2 package of cookies, I am content.

Sitting on the top deck of the Cezar, listening to a concert on TV (very loud) and watching a lightening storm in the distance, chugging on a boat up the Amazon, this is the life. It is approximately 5 hours to Santarem. Hopefully tonight we won't break down. We should be in Santarem by 11, if I didn't just jinx us.

The breeze feels so great. I just may stay up here all night as long as the rain holds off. We haven't had rain since early this morning. We are in the Rain Forest during rainy season. It is always raining.

12 hours ago I never thought we would be at this point; returning by boat to Santarem. 24 hours ago I had no clue what the evening had in store for us. We were giving out clothes and soccer balls to children in the poorest barrio in Obidos. It was such a powerful experience. I was filming and children were literally coming from every direction. How they knew what we were doing was staggering. I want to do so many things here and every where we go, people let us know of the ways we Americans can help. The Rotarians here are like the gods to these people.

Paulo is awesome. He is living Rotary's motto every day of his life: Service above Self. He is it! We keep calling him the mayor, because everywhere we go he knows somebody.

Hopefully my work is not done here in Obidos and Santarem. I still have so many questions. I will need to continue my Portuguese lessons when I return to the states.

Last night while sitting in the boat terminal with a ton of other people who were waiting for a different boat, every time a ship came into port, I sooo wanted to see the word "Cezar" on the prow. When I finally saw it tonight I was ecstatic. I really can't believe we are heading back to Santarem. Heading back to warm showers, real coffee, clean clothes, a bed with a pillow.

12:35 AM

We got back to FE about 30 - 40 minutes ago. I unpacked my dirty stinking clothes so they can be laundered tomorrow. Yucko. They were my pillow for the past two nights. I got a shower, scrubbed my face, shaved my legs, got in clean pajamas, put some baby powder on my body, turned on the ceiling fan. AHHH civilization. Did I say a few days ago in an email that Santarem was a third world country? Nah…it is all relative.

What a great adventure the past few days have been. Obidos was wonderful. Even through all of the hassles of the past 24 hours, I would do it again in a heart beat. God Bless and Good Night.

7:00 AM

At first I couldn't figure out where I was. Then I head Ron's voice, which is very distinctive and I knew I was back in Santarem.

Tchau

Leaving Obidos

April 28, 2008

Trying to leave Obidos

3:50 AM

I have to write this now while the thoughts are going through my head. We`ve been at the boat terminal since 7 pm last night. We were supposed to be on the boat taking us back to Santarem at 8 pm. We sat outside the terminal at the “beer park” till midnight.

Our host for the weekend in Obidos is Paulo. He is a school teacher at both the high school and the elementary school. He teaches English and Sociology. Paulo and his family have been wonderful hosts for the past three days, but they both have to work at 7 am, so we forced them to leave us at the boat terminal in a foreign country. They were very reluctant. But we were more persistent. We even got out of the car and walked to the boat yard entrance. Bags in hand.

Communication and technology that we have in the US is something I never had to think about before. You want to see when your plane is coming – check the board. Ditto for the train. You want a taxi – you hold up your arm and you have a taxi. Here in this region of Brasil, the rivers are the roads. Boats are your only form of transportation.

The rain is nonstop and has been since 1 AM. I am soooooo thankful that I bought an LLBean rain jacket for this trip and I am even more thankful that I brought it for this weekend trip to Obidos. It has been my salvation.

I just went to the bathroom. I had to use journal paper as toilet paper. The guys on the team have it so easy with regards to bathrooms. They can use the Amazon River, just like all of the other men in this area. As soon as I brush my teeth I will be good to go another few hours. Some day, sometime I will sleep.

5:35 AM

A boat heading to Santarem arrived at the port at 5. We were on it for about 5 minutes. There were no rooms, they wouldn’t take our tickets, we had no hammocks – so we would have been standing for 8 – 10 hours. Plus no one in the world knew we were on that boat. It was a scary decision to make on only 1 hour of sleep.

So now Steve and I are sitting with the bags back in the terminal while Dean and Mike are looking for Paulo’s house. It has to be somewhere near the docks. We had stayed at his parent’s house and that is only two blocks away. Worst comes to worst…we hop the security gate at his dad’s house, we use the key hidden in a planter on the porch wall, we shower, we sleep, we tell someone in Santarem what is going on, we get another boat trip home, we refill our water bottles, we eat. A lot of wishes in that last sentence. All with the hope that Mike and Dean can find his car and that leads them to his house.


The boat that showed up here at 5 was due in last night at 6. 11 hours late.

What surprises me is the lack of technological infrastructure. No ship to shore communication at all.

I slept from 4 – 5 AM with tons of bats swooping overhead, 2 inch long cockroaches crawling on the floor and walls, rats walking within 10 feet of me. I slept great. After I brushed my teeth for five minutes, using the Amazon River at my sink; I just couldn’t stomach going back into the public bathroom at the terminal. The only bathroom and all public bathrooms here smell like old fashion outhouses (not portopotties – they are cleaned out regularly). I will never ever complain about gas station restrooms again.

11:45 AM

We arrived here at Paulo’s dad’s house at 6:30 AM. We will leave for lunch at noon.

Dean and Mike found Paulo’s car but not his house. When they came back, I wrote up a note for the car. Mike and I went to the car to put the note on the wind shield. We weren’t satisfied that he would find it…he could walk to work. So we walked back to the terminal and wrote up two more letters. One for each of this language centers that he and his wife own. We walked to the buildings and put the notes on the doors. The notes were basic English: “6:00 AM Paulo – we are still at the terminal. We need sleep, water and food. Please come get us.”

It worked. He found the one on the windshield. He was very upset for us. He found out our boat the Cezar Brelaz, broke down 3 hours away from Obidos. So who knows if it will show up. Tonight there is a boat leaving for Santarem at 8 AM.

Once we got to Paulo's dad's house, I was too tired to shower. Even though I was so smelly, I couldn’t get out of the hammock.

April 29, 2008 Tuesday

Even though I have been in Brasil for more than two weeks, I am going to start my blog today and as time goes on, if I get more computer time, I can add some of our past experiences.

We are now in Santarem, Para. The home of the District Governor Vera. We have been guests at her home since we arrived last week. Vera and her husband Ron are directors of a medical center and a university. We are staying in the guest dorms that visiting doctors, nurses and dentists use. I will upload some photos of our facility.

The district conference is this week Thursday - Sunday so the dorms are filling up. It is going to be a fiesta until we leave here on Monday.

This afternoon we visited three different schools. The first is a Rotary School. It has 500 students and not many classes. So children attend school in shifts. Younger students go from 8 - 11:30. 1:30 - 5 is for middle school students and at 7 another group comes in. They have one computer lab.