Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Arraial d'Ajuda, Brazil

Type-A in the Tropics

Thoughts on shirking work in favor of beach time

Amen and hallelujah, we’re back on the beach! We’ve been in our new home in Arraial for two weeks now and are once again getting used to the laid-back pace of life on the Brazilian coast. Despite my type-A personality, which back home generally has me running from project to project like a decapitated chicken, it’s pretty easy to mono-task around here. The heat makes you want to do nothing but sit on the beach. And the beach makes you want to do nothing but drink cachaça. Cachaça is the Brazilian version of rum of which we have grown fond as of late. Though, I think it should be placed in its very own category since it has a more scrumptious flavor than any rum I’ve ever tasted. Cachaça is also known as aguardente, which literally translates as burning water. That’s pretty close to the truth. Brazilians have created what is undoubtedly the best cocktail I have ever tasted—the caipirinha—by mixing copious amounts of cachaça with fresh lime, sugar, and ice. Oh dear me, it is delicious. And damn strong. We learned the hard way that you should only try to tackle one (or maybe two) caipirinhas in a day, if you want to be able to ride your bike home from the beach at sunset.

I don’t know how anyone in Brazil manages to work at all. With stunning turquoise waters lapping at the beach, which stretches from the end of town to beyond the horizon, what on earth would possess a person to sit at a desk for hours on end pushing buttons? Such behavior might seem appropriate in less favorable climates where holing up indoors strikes folks as a sensible idea, but that doesn’t fly here. Brazilians seem to understand a fundamental truth that those of us from cooler climates have somehow failed to grasp. The verity that I’ve often heard Pa recite over the years: “work is the crabgrass in the lawn of life.” Though there is more sand than grass here in Arraial, the town still embraces this truth. The entire town closes shop around noon only to reopen at sunset since everyone in their right mind is on the beach. Only when the sun dips low, and sandy beach-goers begin to trudge back up the hill into town, do shops and restaurants open their doors.

As luck would have it, January is always a slow month in the translation business. It’s the time of year when I would normally be catching up on accounting, marketing, updating the company web site, or any number of other seemingly critical endeavors. I said normally. And in a less favorable climate. This year, I seem to be having no problem shirking work in favor of beach time. This is a tad uncharacteristic for me, and though I am just a Humanities major, it makes me wax scientific: can Type-A personalities even survive in the tropics? Maybe they can survive, but they are drastically mutated into some other unrecognizable type when exposed to extreme heat? No, come to think of it, I did meet a couple of fully-functioning Type-As here the other day when I visited the home-office of a husband and wife translation team. Since I am still attempting to do some recruiting (and since their office happened to be on the way to the beach), we agreed to meet. I dismounted my bike and concealed my swimming suit tightly under the solitary blouse I had packed for such business occasions (which was now drenched with sweat), before stepping into their tidy, air-conditioned office. The two busy-bees were feverishly pushing buttons and consulting dictionaries, trying to appear as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, and seemingly oblivious to the pristine stretch of beach just two blocks away. I had a hard time focusing during our brief conversation, but I do remember them mentioning at one point, when they caught me looking wistfully out the window, how difficult it is to find good help in these parts. “They get their first paycheck and they’re off to the beach, never to be heard from again.” Hmm. Hard to imagine.

We’re renting a simple open-air cinderblock home with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a little kitchen, and no glass (or screens) over the windows, of course. The structure itself is nothing fancy, but it’s surrounded by a beautiful tropical garden, which is the pride and joy of our cantankerous young Italian landlord named Marco who lives in an adjacent house on the property. When he’s not busy berating his pregnant wife, Marco’s greatest joy is to follow little Cruz around the garden and report back to us each time he steps on a plant or damages a leaf. We still don’t speak Portuguese very well since I have not yet found a language teacher here in Arraial, and Marco doesn’t speak English or Spanish, so he generally chastises us in Italian. We attempt to defend ourselves in uncertain Italuguesticulation (Italian + Portuguese + gesticulation) and as a result, he has had the upper hand in all interactions thus far. I don’t know, maybe I’m just sore because he won’t let me start a compost pile. Cruz and I did, however, secretly plant a few lettuce seeds in a corner of the garden the other day, just in case they might have enough time to grow while we’re here.

I’m sitting in the hammock on our front porch right now, under Marco’s banana trees. Everyone else is in bed. The sound of pounding drums is drifting up from the beach, which has been a nightly occurrence. Arraial is about half way between Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, and it’s a bit of a bohemian town, so we generally feel right at home—kind of like being at a Phish show. Except for there’s a beach. And everyone is speaking Portuguese.

The beach is about ½ mile downhill from here. We’ve rented bikes and ride to the beach each afternoon as soon as work and homeschool are done. Last weekend we actually rented a car for a day trip to a more distant beach and we realized that it was the first time we’d been behind the wheel in almost four months. We drove north up the shore and passed through indigenous villages known for their wooden handicrafts. We stopped at one family’s stand and Jason and I bought a few wooden bowls and spoons while the kids snuggled with the family’s pet monkey and sloth. We continued on as far as Praia do Spelho (Mirror Beach) and spent the day snorkeling in the clear blue water along the coral reefs. The beach was lined with soaring red and white sand cliffs and was deserted, save for the five of us. We decided that it was about as close to paradise as you can get. If the cabanas on the beach had been equipped with internet access (and if we hadn’t been so eager to get back to Arraial to torment Marco), we may have stayed forever.

The big news of the week is that we were robbed—virtually. We’ve had a few little robberies along the way—pickpockets here and there who never got away with much. (One unlucky thief on a crowded bus in Lima did get a face-full of screaming gringa, though. He didn’t make off with anything, but I figured he still deserved a good bit of public humiliation, so I let into him a bit.) This time some unseen, tech-savvy crooks got us pretty good. We didn’t even realize we’d been robbed until receiving a call yesterday from our bank back in the US to notify us that the grand total of our savings and checking accounts was now down to $6.88. Apparently, the thieves were somehow able to get the password for our ATM card, which is still in our possession, and have for the past two weeks been on a shopping spree throughout northern Brazil at our expense. They drained our checking account and then started dipping into the savings account that we had linked for overdraft protection. With any luck, the story will have a happy ending since the bank has already agreed to credit back to our accounts the amount that was stolen. Whew! But the bastards still piss me off.

Ever since we left our idyllic little neighborhood in the Chapada Diamantina, Cyrus has sunk back into his funk of homesickness, and now he’s actually physically ill. He has been in bed for two days with a fever and can hardly move. We’re not sure what to do for him. It’s hard to tell whether he has a serious illness or maybe just the flu made worse by his general unhappiness.

This journey is certainly allowing us boat-loads of family together time. That’s supposed to be good, right? Finding apart time, we’re learning, is a bit more challenging. I don’t know how other homeschooling families do it. We are all together all the time. I hadn’t foreseen how difficult this aspect of the trip would be—for the next two years (or however long this harebrained adventure lasts), we will be not only the kids’ parents, but also their teachers, their companions, their playmates, and their travel partners. No daily break from each other when they go off to school or have a play date. No poker nights for Jason; no girls’ night out for me. Whenever a Skype call comes in, we each immediately drop whatever we happen to be doing and run to the computer to see who it is. I don’t remember that happening with the phone back home. These days we don’t even mind spending an hour or two on the line with the ever so polite and English speaking representatives from Bank of America. When we actually get a real friend from home on the horn, we all crowd around vying for a spot in front of the screen and talk the poor sucker’s ear off. Argh. This adventure has only just began, and we’re already starting to get sick of each other.

And just then, from stage left in the well-timed comedy that has become our life, at the instant right before the five actors begin to wring each other’s necks, enter The Grandparents! Praise be to Yahweh, Jason’s parents, Grandma Norma and Grandpa Jim, flew in from California yesterday to save us from each other, at least for the next three weeks. The house is abuzz. We’re all beside ourselves waiting our turn to exhaust them with conversation. Fortunately, Grandma is a retired family therapist and does not easily tire of listening. Maybe she will even help us iron out some of the relationship kinks that are surfacing from the overdose of family bonding.

Damn! Our pregnant landlady just interrupted my hammock time to notify me that our beloved proprietor, Marco, was diagnosed today with dengue fever. Apparently it’s transmitted by mosquitoes and the main symptoms are exhaustion, severe joint and muscle pain, and fever. Fever! Crud. What if that’s what Cyrus has? Oh that’s just swell. Dengue is probably the only disease we didn't get a vaccination for before we set out. Argh. I hate slathering DEET on the kids’ skin, so I’ve been going easy on the repellant. And of course, since there are no screens on the windows anywhere, mosquitoes are all over the place. Drat! Pa’s words of wisdom are suddenly ringing in my ears; why is he always so on the mark? “The worst thing about mosquitoes is that they’re too small to punch them in the face.” Argh. I must be off, to look up some dengue terminology in Portuguese.