Of Ma Bell…

In a world of telephones, we often take for granted the ability to pick up a phone and get ahold of someone anytime and anywhere. 

In the Southern part of Brazil we were able to have a phone in our house, but after our move north, that was no longer an option.  Telephone wires, you see, did not generally run through the middle of the jungle.

We were able to drive into town to access the internet and communicate that way.  At one time we got a GlobalStar which was supposed to be able to use satellites and make it possible to call from anywhere in the world.  Except, apparently, the exact spot where we lived.  Add on the astronomical price per minute and it would be cheaper to send word via courier.

After a while with no phone at all, we got a regular cell phone and an antenna.  We put the antenna at the top of a pole on a hill near our house.  Making a phone call wasn’t to be taken lightly.

After hiking for five minutes or more, you reached the pole.  Since there were cows around and they thought the cable that ran down from the antenna was good for snacking, we had to hide the cable in a bag and hang it out of reach.  We had a stick at the bottom with a fork and would reach up with it to hook the bag and bring down the cable.

Even after the cable was hooked into the side of the phone, there was no guarantee that you would get a signal.  If you did, no matter what odd position your neck might be in, you didn’t move.  To move was to risk losing the signal and having the call fall.

There was no comfortable place to sit either.  My sister during conversations with her fiancé would perch on top of a fence pole.  Other times, we stood in the back of a pickup.  At all times there was the heat and the bugs to add some spice to an already interesting situation.

In the end, though, the ability to talk to loved ones made it more than worthwhile.

I remember jaca...

Of all the fruits I tried in Brazil, there is a special place reserved for jaca or jackfruit.  Covered with spikes, you dig your fingers into the skin to break it open, and reveal the slime covered seeds.  I wish I could say it was worth the effort, but, unfortunately, I cannot.

I like to describe jaca as rotten-banana-flavored-slime-covered-seeds.  If that makes you anxious to try the fruit, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

We had a deacon and a pastor come down to visit, and had been given a jaca as a gift.  We opened it up so our guests could try it.  The deacon was adventurous and tried a bite, although, admittedly, the sight of the fruit on the plate was almost enough to make him lose his courage.

The pastor refused to let the smallest particle cross his lips.

I had made a special chocolate cookie torte I reserved for special occasions, since it required hours of work.  It was then my sisters and I hit upon a fun idea.  Everyone else would be served chocolate cookie torte, but for the pastor we carefully arranged some rotten-banana-flavored-slime-covered-seeds on his plate.

I carried out the plates and set his before him.  After a promised bribe of torte if he managed to try some jaca, he did manage to force what could only be described as the essence of jaca past his lips, since I don’t believe there was any really substance to the “bite” he took.

In a book, it might be expected, he jumped to his feet an ardent convert to the love of jaca.  Real life wasn’t nearly so dramatic since he remained an ardent opponent of all things jaca.

Not, of course, that I blamed him. 

 The River near Our House

Of Laundry…

 It seems every year washing machines get bigger.  And fancier. 

Our Brazilian washing machine was small and white.  Our dryer was our patio where we would hang out our clothes to dry in the sun.  It worked well, except for the days when humidity was so thick even the clean clothes were sweating.

After moving to the northern part of Brazil, we were often faced with no electricity.  No power meant no washing machine, and wearing clothes more than once without washing, might just result in asphyxiation.

We were left to do it the old-fashioned way.

And I mean the very old-fashioned way, since when the power was out, we couldn’t afford to use water to wash laundry.

Instead, we headed for the river that ran about fifty yards from our house.

There were several things to keep in mind while washing in the river.  The piranhas and who knew what else lurking beneath the surface.  The strong current that threatened to carry your clothes away if you should lose your grip.  And then there were the pinkish-orange cast left on all the clothes from the mud in the river, and the funky smell that weaseled its way out of the scent of the laundry soap.

On the plus side, our clothes no longer reeked.  We had gotten a bit of a workout.  Cooled off.  Had a little fun.

And developed a deep and abiding appreciation for washing machines.

 

Over the speed bump, and down the pothole, on Brazilian roads we drive…

My dad likes to say that in America you know someone is drunk if they’re swerving all over the road.

In Brazil, you know they’re drunk if they’re NOT swerving all over the road.

This is due to the potholes (and by potholes I mean, canyons deep enough to swallow a semi and still have room for a car).   A quick flick of the wheel might allow you to avoid the pothole or send you into a deeper one in the opposite lane of the two-lane highway.

Driving at night is not for the faint of heart or really anyone who values their life or car.  Missionary friends were once driving at night when they hit a pothole-that-was-really-a-car-swallowing-monster.  The top of the car kept going, but the chassis had decided that the pothole was a nice place to stay.  No one was injured in the accident—except the bisected car that is.

To make up for the huge potholes, or perhaps to add more fun to the already obstacle-course-like roads, speed bumps also rose out of the ground—often unexpectedly— like veritable mountains.  And what they might lack in road building skills was more than made up for in their speed bump building skills. They bore little resemblance to the speed bumps that dot parking lots across America.  These things were the grandfathers of those picayune little bumps.  Or maybe even the great-great-grandfathers.

And then there were the trucks.  Big trucks loaded with goods that were also trying to avoid the potholes.  More often than not you shared a lane—going opposite directions.

A friend once took a video while driving with my dad who was swerving in and out of the opposite lane with a truck coming towards the car.  Absolutely horrified by the danger he’d been in, he insisted on showing it to the rest of my family.  We shrugged our shoulders wondering what they big deal was.

After all, you’re only really in danger if you drive straight.   

 

 

Of Juice…

Juice is a wonderful beverage that you can justify to yourself far more easily than other sweet beverages like, say, soda pop, which apparently rots out your teeth, dissolves pennies, and make you fat.

In Brazil, there are myriad of juices from which to choose.  Many of them unfamiliar to the American palate.

One popular juice is sugar cane juice.  It is primarily sold on street corners.  The sugar cane stands have juicers with gears and gizmos that press the juice out of the sugar cane while you wait.  The juice is a mildly sweet, grass-flavored beverage.

Another is Coconut water, although this is making the journey north as a health food beverage as has Açaí berries.  On a side note, açaí berries also make beautiful jewelry. 

However, a vast majority of Brazilian fruits have about the same make up.  Slime-covered seeds.  To make the juice, the idea was to remove the slime from the seeds and make it drinkable.

                                                                               Passionfruit

 

My personal favorite was maracuja or passionfruit.  It takes some effort to make, but the results are worthwhile.  Passionfruit is generally a smooth, shiny orb which when cut open reveals yellow-slime-covered black seeds.  After being ground in a blender, strained and having water and sugar added, the juice is well worth the effort it takes to make.

One of my not so favorites is cupuaçu.  The shell is hard to crack and not worth the effort.  I would describe the taste as sour dirty laundry.  My mother tried to make it palatable by turning it into ice cream.  Although, I have a hard time turning down ice cream, I had no trouble sticking to my diet with that bowl in front of me.

I much preferred to watch it melt while sipping a tall, cold glass of maracuja juice.

Of Plaid Sofas...

Brazil is known for soccer, Carnaval, and uncomfortable sofas.

Okay, so maybe the whole implied worldwide knowledge of the discomfort of Brazilian sofas is a bit of an exaggeration. 

Unknown or not, the sad fact is that Brazilian sofas offer very little in the way of comfort, at least at our price point.  During our time in Brazil, we had three sets.

Our first set we bought shortly after moving into our house.  It was black and white plaid with touches of green and red.  I imagine the story of the creation of said sofa went something like this.

“Let’s make a sofa,” says first sofa maker.

“But, senhor, we only have enough foam to add a quarter of an inch over the wooden underpinnings.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Make it anyway.”

Thus came into being the sofas that inhabited our living room for a year and a half.  Lest you doubt my story, I can show you the myriad of chiropractor bills that can be traced directly back to that sofa.  Okay, I admit, that too may be a slight exaggeration.

Our second set of sofas we bought after moving to northern Brazil.  It too lacked in comfort but made up for it in quality.  We hadn’t had the sofa long before the material began to wear out eventually sprouting holes.  The foam smashed down even quicker and the wooden frame stuck out of its upholstered cover like bony ribs through a shirt four sizes too small.

Shortly before my sister’s wedding we decided to splurge and buy new sofas.   They were brown and almost—gasp—comfortable. 

We were delighted.  The wedding guests arrived and we had one very tall guest with a proportioned weight.  He decided to sit on the arm of our brand new sofa. 

The poor sofa was angry at being so used and decided to break its arm.

So, although, the eyes of the world are upon Brazil with the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, I don’t think much broadcast time will be spent belittling the country’s sofa making abilities.

But then, those reporters probably won’t be delivering their stories from the all-too-uncomfortable embrace of a Brazilian sofa.

Convenience food barely exists in Brasil.  If it does it cost an arm and a leg to buy, so it’s just all around easier to make your own food since you at least have all your limbs to do so.

One of my family’s favorite foods is Mexican.  Although one might expect that Mexican food would be very similar to Brasil, it is not even remotely similar.  In fact, you can’t find most of the things we use to make Mexican food, including tortillas.

To make a Mexican meal required a lot of work. 

First you needed to sort the beans.  They came dry and often contained other additives like rocks, stones or if you were really lucky occasionally an egg sack or weevil.  Once sorted the beans had to be washed, brought to a boil, and then allowed to soak for an hour or so.  Then they were pressure cooked.  Pressure cookers are a necessity of life in Brasil.

Once your beans were cooking you started on the tortillas.  First the dough was made and then allowed to rest before rolling each piece into a circle.  Humidity made the kitchen moist and hot and the dough was as likely to melt into the counter as to roll into a nice circle.  If you did succeed in completing a haphazardly-shaped, semi-thin, tortilla-like-ish creation you then got the pleasure of frying it over a hot stove.

Once the beans and tortillas were complete—and providing you had not passed out from exhaustion and the blistering temperatures in the kitchen, made worse by all the tortilla frying— you then needed to shred the cheese.  It sometimes turned out to be rancid or festooned with mold.  After whacking away with a knife you were able to shred it.

If you were feeling particularly adventurous you might then make salsa, but in a pinch ketchup mixed with hot sauce provided a decent sauce.

As long as it wasn’t wine ketchup, my family’s name for the off brand ketchups that were a bizarre purple color and did indeed taste like wine mixed with ketchup.  Only a blistering amount of picante sauce would make it semi-palatable.

Once the beans were mashed and flavored and we added some fresh avocado, our meal was complete and delicious enough to make us forget the hours in the sweltering kitchen.

At least until the next time we had a hankering for some Mexican food.