Years of Poems and Spirits

Nice day today. We came to Brazil at the beginning of the rainy season. It is not the best time to see anything: flowers would be better in spring and animals in fall.

There are four visitors beside us in the lodge. Two Chinese guys from America (like us), Li and Aiwan. Li is a Brazil-phile, if there is such a thing: he’s been here four times now. He travels the same way he speaks, very deliberately—like spending a month just in one place. He learned about Brazil from a college roommate and fell in love with the country ever since. Li learned to speak Portuguese in college and our guide said he was pretty good. For Aiwan, this is his first trip aboard outside of the U.S. and China. He is kind of like us (our second trip aboard anyway, not counting Canada): a bit more curious and a bit more critical.

The other couple is from the U.S. too and is even more interesting. The lady, “Jane”, is married and teaches in a community college in Orange County. The guy, “John”, works as a consultant for a federal agency in D.C. area. Before we had a chance to talk to them, Aiwan told us about their companionship status so we came somewhat prepared the next day.

Apparently their MBA (married but available) status offended Aiwan’s sensibility. Even that Song and I have learned not to judge others, conversing with them does stretch our imagination a little. Jane is not shy about her married status and talks about her husband and their married life freely. John, on the other hand, is very withdrawn. He talks very little and never comment on anything Jane said about her life and theirs.

Jane fits the stereotype OC housewife perfectly: a blue-eyed blonde with an attractive body and is properly “manicured” all the time. Although at times I found her repugnantly pretentious, I have to say she appears genuinely happy with John.

If anything, encounters along this trip substantiate what I thought about the concept of “family” for a while, that it is as much a social control unit as a union of love. Brought up in China, I was fed with the idea of the sacredness of family because the existence of the nation-state depends so much on the integrity of family, for tightly-knit families would cut the administrative targets down to a fraction for a ruler.

In China, the culture and the tradition made people more than willing to comply. In other words, Chinese are more likely to go through the matrimony and to form a family. In Brazil, however, this is not the case. People stay together at will. According to the owner of the lodge, federal and local governments recognize this reality when they dish out entitlement. When Jane asked “what is the divorce rate here?” I was rather amused—of course the divorce rate is lower in America if everyone does what she does.

Brazilians are aware their life style differences. Our guide in Iquacu, Valdir said it matter-of-factly. Another guide in Manaus, Milton, put it more philosophically. He said marriage has little to do with a couple’s mutual commitment toward each other, rather it is a ceremony to show your commitment to the society. This functionalistic feature of marriage is more detectable in Brazil because the gap between its normative function, championed by non other than the Church which is a foreign import itself, and the prevalent practice of unmarried civil union. For example, Milton told us that there are services in Brazil where selected men and women are trained to be proper companions and the services will rent them out for formal functions. They have to follow the latest news, the stock market and so on so they can behave as if they are the spouses of their clients.

It makes so much sense, had this type of service does not exist yet and the law of supply-demand still works, it almost has to be invented.

We also went hiking in the “jungle” for the day. It wasn’t really a jungle for we could see the sky most of the time. The foliage is dense enough that we did not see any animal. It was a hot and humid day, I sweat through my backpack.

We encountered the “telephone” tree, the bread tree, the quinine tree and some other trees. Our guide, Joseph, is a short native guy. He speaks good English, is very knowledgeable about the jungle but constantly updates us about money and lodge politics: how poor his family is, how Lee and Aiwan argued about their tips before him (“you thought they were good friends”)—we found the story least believable, how jealous the bartender could be and why the chef did not get along with anyone. He did his job really well but I didn’t care for him as a person.

Late in the night, we celebrated Christmas with the owner’s family (husband is a Dutch and the wife is of Italian-Indian heritage. They speak English in the family with their daughters who would go to Orlando in a month) and all the staff in the lodge. With Jane in the loop, the conversation did not go very far. We retired early since we have to tour another city and fly to Rio the next morning.

The plane ride was not very comfortable and I didn’t sleep at all. When we arrived in Manaus, there was no driver to pick us up. It was 5am. Someone was kind enough to help us to reach the owner of our lodge. When we finally got to the lodge it was 7am. I felt like a walking dead (行尸走肉).

Two hours later, we were on a boat tour of the Amazon river. It was a hot humid day. I sweat like constantly being in a shower. But there were only a few mosquitoes along the river, I was pretty surprised.

The river was wide. It holds so much water that it has tides. We are only in the middle section of the river but felt like touring the big lakes in the U.S. We saw fresh water dolphins, some gray, some pink. They are all blind because the river is always brownish and muddy. We went to another piranha finishing. But Amazon piranhas are much smarter than Pantanal ones: we end up fed more fishes than caught them.

There was a rain storm between touring and fishing. I’ve heard stories of how hard it could rain here: sometimes there was so much water pouring down at the same time, one could feel short of breath. Today, however, it was not to be. Nevertheless, we took shelter in a boat house and drunk the so-called Coca-Cola of Brazil, Guarana.

After the rain storm, the sunset was spectacular. We were on a quiet lake off the river. The water was calm and expansive, and setting sun gave it a creamy texture. When our boat cut through, the wake was not bubblery at all. It was like there was a little creature running under a piece of satin. It was one of the most memorable moments of the trip.

Later on, our guide showed us how to use spotlight to find animals at night. Animals’ pupils reflect lights like glistering purple diamond in the darkness. It was particularly fun to spot caimans hiding among water lilies. Our guide caught couple of them and had us held the smaller one for fun. Maybe it was the end of a long, long day, I was not as amused seeing the animals struggling to get free.

It was close to 9pm when we got back to our lodge. The lodge was deep in the jungle but there was plenty of development and clearing along the road to the lodge. The tour book said given the current clearing speed, 90% of the Amazon jungle will be cleared by 2020. It is a little hard for me to believe this number given the vastness of the forest. However, claims like these do make me more aware of the wastefulness of human activities. On our way to the river tour, tracks of land were cleared for pineapple plantation or cattle grazing. Some of them were still burning. Given the rich grass land Brazil has in the north, the abundance of tropic fruits produced elsewhere, and the uniqueness of the Amazon forest, it is a shame to see the land being used as such.

Our lodge is built on the edge of the forest. It was made up of a doze or so two-unit bungalows, each minimally furnished: a couple of beds with only cloth sheets to cover ourselves because even with large screen doors and windows the room was like a sauna in the night. The water is drinkable and taste really sweet. The shower has no hot water but it is fine once you get used to it. For the first time in my life, I slept in a hammock through the night. It was super comfy.

I am writing this blog on an airplane. I thought we had the longest day yesterday in Iguacu and how wrong was I! After the dinner and show, we didn’t go to sleep until midnight. Five hours later, we had to get up and dash to the airport. On the way, Valdir told us the bad news: more delays and this time it is really serious. At the airport, we were told our 6:40am flight wouldn’t leave until 1pm at the earliest. We were sent back to a hotel, slept a few hours and had lunch.

Several false starts later—which kept us up for the entire afternoon—we finally boarded the plane to Manaus through Brazilia. We met the German family yet again. Their flight was delayed and somehow they were put on the same plane as ours. We met another couple from Houston. It looks like we are making friends mainly through delayed flights.

I was exhausted in Brazilia. The terminal for other next flight looks like a refuge camp—even worse, much worse, than the scene in Sao Paolo. It was terrible.