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.