Digital Art - 10/22/14: "Lighthouse in the Lacy Clouds"

NF Photography alternates an Abstract Art prompt with a Digital Art prompt.
Click on the link in the line above to see others or post your own.

11/3/14 addendum:  I chose this image to link to Photo-Heart Connection, as my choice for the image that I worked on (or posted) during October that is closest to my heart.

I was in the Peace Corps in Brazil 1967-1969, but never had the chance to return until 2011. 

I come from stoic German stock ---I'm not demonstrative with emotions.  But somehow, the minute I stepped off the plane in Aracajú and was met by about 30 of my friends and former students, hugs and kisses were not only what I expected, but what I wanted.  Brazilians are so warm and welcoming, even to strangers, but in 2011, I was treated like a long-lost relative. 

It was great to see that nearly all of my former students who lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere and had few prospects for employment, worked hard to pay tuition and room/board to attend a colégio in another city and eventually most went on to university. They became lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, professors, meteorologists, ministers of agriculture, bankers, business owners, engineers, social workers, agronomists, and more.  I felt like a proud parent.

When I lived there without electricity, running water, or a sewage system, my neighbors helped me to adapt to the lack of conveniences and treated me like a daughter. Since then, anything Brazilian has always been close to my heart, especially Brazilians.

I started with a photo of a unique lighthouse in Aracajú in Brazil. There was not a cloud in the sky. However, for a photo of an object that is so tall and thin, a large blank sky isn't very interesting.  So I used some photos of sea gulls and lace to create this digital composition. I chose lace for the clouds because in the small town where I lived in Brazil, many older women sat in front of their homes tatting & gossiping.  I still have a few scraps of hand-made lace I purchased from them.

"Lighthouse in the Lacy Clouds"

Original photo,
Aracajú, Sergipe
Brazil
August 2011

Aracajú is one of Brazil's best-kept secrets. Its name was created from a combination of two words: Ara (a genus of macaws) and Cajú (the Portuguese word for the tree that bears cajú fruit and cashew nuts.) In its beautiful park near Atalaia Beach, the sides of benches are painted to resemble macaws, while trash cans are shaped like cajú fruit.

Aracajú is the capital of the small state of Sergipe. Sergipe's innovative health-care system became the blueprint for the national system which covers everyone, even tourists, in Brazil.

Situated on the Atlantic coast 10º south of the equator, Aracajú provides tourists with miles and miles of unspoiled beaches. It has the healthiest lifestyle of all major Brazilian cities and is also one of its safest and has a lower cost of living than other large cities in the country. It doesn't have the spectacular beauty of Rio de Janeiro or Iguaçu Falls, but for a relaxing beach vacation, it cannot be beat. The city has an oceanic aquarium, some interesting old government buildings with ornate architecture, and one can take side trips to several historic cities or to a gorgeous canyon along the São Francisco River.

Aracajú's temperatures hover around 82º (plus or minus a couple of degrees) during the day almost all year long, although it is slightly warmer in the summer months (Dec-Feb south of the equator) and cooler June-Aug. (However, occasionally, such as 2002, the cooler and hotter seasons reverse themselves because it is so close to the equator.) Mar-Aug are the rainiest months while Sept-Feb are drier.

Besides the area's other attributes, Sergipanos are some of the warmest, most-welcoming, helpful, and friendly people in the world. However, you won't find as many Brazilians speaking English at hotels or restaurants as you might find in larger cities, so it's best to take a phrase book with you and perhaps listen to a few Portuguese lessons from your local library so you can at least ask for directions, where to find a restroom, or request your bill at a restaurant.

I lived in a small town in Sergipe's interior during my Peace Corps Days (1967-1969) and visited Aracajú often. At that time it was a rather small city.  Now the metropolitan area has between 800,000 and 900,000 residents.  Because of it's relatively recent expansion, it has many new, modern buildings and conveniences. I spent a week there in 2011 and enjoyed every minute.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

See hundreds of my photos and artistic creations on my Flickr page. 

Some of my photos are straight-forward photos. Some have been manipulated into something else. Some are digital creations, which were rendered entirely with Photoshop or other enhancement software. And some are scans of hand-made works of art. A few are a combination of two or more of those.

 If you are interested in a particular type of image or subject matter (such as "art from my photos" or "abstract impressions" or "Brazil") click on "Albums" to the right of my profile image. Then choose the album you want to see.

Otherwise, you will be on my photostream and be able to see everything I've posted, with the most recent first.

Click on any image for a larger view. Below each image is more info about it.  Then click on the arrows to the left & right of a photo to go forward or backward.

My photostream is very eclectic. I love all kinds of art and I like "playing with possibilities" so I am constantly trying something new. I might make 2 or 3 images using a particular technique or style, then move on to something else. Or I might create dozens in a similar style and keep going back to it.

I add photos nearly every day.

Good Fences - 8/21/14: "GuGú's Truck"

GuGú in front of our house with his weekly
water delivery.
(photo by Brunie Chavez, used with permission.)

Scroll to bottom of page to view my photo for Good Fences Thursday but you might want to read on to understand why I took the photo.

Click on any image for larger views (albeit without captions.) 

When I lived in Brazil as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1967-1969) no one had running water in their homes in the small interior town where I lived.  Some residents of Glória had cisternas in their back yards to collect rain water from their roofs, but most had to haul water themselves or hire someone to carry it from ponds within the city or from a dam which was some distance from the town.  The dam was cleaner, so the other Volunteer and I hired a neighbor to bring us water from the dam which he carried to our house in four large cans on the back of his donkey.

GuGú across from our house with some typical
homes in the background.

GuGú was a handsome boy of about 14. His sister Teresa was one of my high school students, but GuGú was not interested in school. (In Brazil 4 years of elementary school were required at that time, but some children never attended. I'm not sure how many years of school GuGú completed, but it was no more than four.)

Because he spent his teen years hauling water, it's not surprising that GuGú ended up hauling all his life. As an adult he had his own truck to haul large loads between cities.

His sister Teresa completed high school and went on to become a teacher and had two sons after marrying another of my high school students José Augusto, a minister of agriculture.

At Teresa and José Augusto's home, 2011
 L to R: José Augusto, Teresa, Adebaldo and his wife
Maria Adgenil, Brunie, Nadja, me, Brunie's husband Eric.
(José Augusto, Teresa, Adebaldo, and  Nadja were my
students when I taught English as a foreign language
at the high school, more than 40 years earlier. Most
were in their teens, but José Augusto was in his 20s ---the
school had opened only a few years earlier and it was his
first opportunity to attend high school.)

GuGú in front of our house as a truck leaves town
carrying shoppers and vendors from the weekly
market back to their homes in the countryside. The
passengers sit on top of bags of black beans, rice, and
other purchases from the market.

GuGú is on the far right with his wife Damiela and 
daughter Leninha. At the back is his sister Lucinha, Brunie
(the other Volunteer who served with me) and
her husband Eric in 2011 at the home of Teresa &
José Augusto who hosted us for several days in Glória.
(Note the natural red hair on Leninha ---very rare in Brazil.)

GuGú ended up marrying several times, having a load of children, lots of child-support payments, and in poor health with heart disease and diabetes.

GuGú's truck behind a fence in front of his home in the small town of Glória,
in the interior of Brazil's northeast, 2011.

Good Fences - 7/31/14 "Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil"

Good Fences Thursday challenges us to post an image of a fence or gate each week.

 
Today we're heading to Brazil.  (Click on any photo for larger views.)

One can catch a municipal bus in the town of Foz do Iguaçu to take you to the entrance to the National Park to see Iguaçu Falls. There, you catch colorful buses that feature stylized jaquars, alligators and toucans. (There may be other animals, but I saw three buses with those animals on the sides.) However, except for birds, I didn't see any animals, let alone exotic ones ---I'm sure the tourists scare them away.

Once you arrive at the falls, there is a lot of walking on stairs and across wooden or metal walkways to get the best views of the falls. Every place, there are fences or railings to keep tourists safe. The falls seem to go on forever on the Brazilian side of the border.

I have to say the only spectacular thing about these fences is the view from behind them.

Next week, I will post photos from the Argentinean side, where the Spanish spelling of Iguazú is different than the Portuguese Iguaçu.  (I've also seen Iguassu ---which is probably  the English version.)

If you want to see more of my photos of both the Brazilian and Argentinean sides of the falls and view a very short video (less than 30 seconds) that will give you a taste of the enormous roar of the falls from the place where my final photo was taken, you will find those by clicking HERE.

Colorful double-decker buses take tourists from the park entrance
to the actual falls. This one just happened to have a red and
yellow fence (railing?) in front of it. 

Most people get their first view of the falls
from here.  Fences keep tourists from
falling down step hillsides and cliffs into the
rapidly-flowing river below.

A rain poncho was essential to keep from
being soaked by overspray. (Cheap plastic
ones were available.)  It was a cool morning,
so I had thrown a nylon parka into my bag,
without thinking I would need it to stay dry.

There were "bridges" out over the falls
with heavy fences (railings) to keep
us safe.

Closeup of the above bridge.
There are falls behind the bridge, to the right,
and immediately under the bridge, and
plenty more downstream.

This is a still shot from a video I took
on the bridge. The long-haired guy on
the right was a young Japanese
student.  I took pictures of him with
his camera and he did the same for
me.  (He took the photo of me, above,
with my camera.)

There are two levels here to view the falls. This is the upper one,
which is drier than the one below.  Occasionally, on the lower level,
those closest to the railing are suddenly hit with what seems
like 50 tons of water.  (If you click on the link above my photos
you will find a YouTube video of the roaring falls from this location.
It's less than 30 seconds long.)   

RAIN DANCE - Short Fiction

This week's writing prompt from Write on Edge is: a 400-word fiction or creative non-fiction piece influenced by the idea of RAIN.

When Richard woke, it was still dark. After untangling himself from his mosquito net, he threw on his robe and slid into loafers. Grabbing a flashlight, he rushed through the rain to the outhouse. His hopes for a modern bathroom at the pensão had been dashed the previous night when the other volunteer had delivered him to the boarding house at his Peace Corps site. The side-by-side stalls in the privy were crawling with roaches.

Holding his cramped stomach, he returned to his room, glad that his vomiting had finally stopped. Despite being only ten degrees from the equator, he donned socks and pulled a sweatshirt over his cotton pajamas. Wriggling into bed, he wondered why he had expected a real mattress. What he got was a huge cotton sack stuffed with straw. Eventually, he fell asleep again.

When he woke, he heard splashing raindrops. He shoved the mosquito net aside to discover water dripping from the red-tiled roof into his right loafer and dancing onto the mud-brick floor. 

Outside his door a female voice said, “Seu Ricardo?”

“Sim?”

“May I come in?”

“Sim.”

A dark, homely teenager dressed in a faded green shift tiptoed into the room. With her eyes lowered to the foot of Richard’s bed, she asked, “Seu Ricardo, my mother wants to know if you want breakfast?” 

“Não, I do not have hunger.”

“Will you have lunch here?” the girl asked, pulling at her kinky hair, never meeting his eyes.

Not sure if he would ever want to eat again, he said, “I want sleep.”

The girl shuffled toward the door in her plastic sandals.

“Wait,” Richard said. He couldn’t remember the Portuguese word for rain. “The, uh, water comes from the, ah....” He pointed to the tiled roof, then to his overflowing shoe. The girl’s broad face looked like a blank brown canvas. Again he pointed to the roof and the shoe. 

Bending at the waist, the girl pulled a chamber pot from under the extra bed, removed the lid, and placed the enameled pot under the leak. She emptied his shoe into it, then quietly moved to the hall, closing the door behind her.

At first Richard thought the girl had believed him to be an idiot because he couldn’t remember the words for rain or ceiling. Then he decided she thought he had foolishly placed the shoe there to catch the water. 

He curled up in a ball, wondering what in the hell he had gotten himself into.

--------

This story is a slightly-revised excerpt from CJ's in-progress novel: A Little Slice of Heaven. The story takes place in a fictional, Portuguese-speaking country, in a small town much like the one where CJ spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Richard, at first, decides he will stay for a few days, then find an appropriate opportunity to resign and head home. Eventually, he is drawn in by the culture, and especially the warm, outgoing citizens, but there are still a multitude of obstacles to overcome in this foreign land.

Read the author's non-fiction stories about her experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil on her other blog: A Little "Peace" of Brazil

FLAMED

This post was inspired by Mama Kat's writing prompt: Tell a story (based on truth or fiction) where someone is playing with fire--literally or metaphorically--and probably shouldn't be. Below is my true story.

        When I arrived at my Peace Corps site in a small town in northeastern Brazil in August of 1967 and discovered I would be living without electricity or running water, it seemed like my life there would be much like a two-year-long camping trip. I had been a Girl Scout. I thought I was prepared for anything.
        It was fun for a while, using my scouting and camping skills and learning new ones to survive the harsh conditions there, but after a while, I missed many of the conveniences of home.
        On one occasion, forgetting that things didn’t work in Glória the way they did at home, could have turned into a disaster.

        In order to furnish her extra bedroom, Brunie (another Volunteer who had already been in Glória for a year) helped me purchase a hand-made wooden bed at a carpenter's shop, along with an extra chair, a wardrobe and a mattress which was a large cotton sack filled with straw. The mattress was comfortable enough, although I needed to add more straw from time to time since the original straw eventually broke into small pieces and settled on the bottom side of the sack.

        I always slept under a mosquito net, as protection from mosquitos, scorpions and beetles that carried Chagas disease.
        While one side of the house faced an open area, the opposite side was the wall shared with our landlord’s home. The opposite wall of his house was shared with another neighbor and so on down the street. There was a space between the horizontal top of each wall and the pointed roof, leaving a large triangular opening between homes. This made it easy to converse with the neighbors next door, but it also meant one could hear everything going on in the landlord's home. He and his wife were newlyweds, so you might imagine what "everything" means.

        Our front door left an inch or two of open space between the bottom of it and the floor. This, plus the open area between houses, meant that unwanted varmints could enter the house, either from outside or from neighbors' homes. We had toads, mice, bats, roaches, tarantulas, and an occasional snake in the house. 

        I hadn’t taken much jewelry with me, only a few pair of earrings, several inexpensive rings and a watch which I kept in a box on the wicker table I used as a night stand. One morning, while making the bed, I knocked the box to the floor, scattering everything under the bed.
        Because of the vermin that could be there, I was not about to reach into the shadows below the mattress without seeing what was lurking there. So, I did what I would do at home. I grabbed a lamp, and placed it under the bed. I started to pick up my jewelry before I realized that a kerosene lantern with an open flame under a mattress filled with straw was not the brightest idea I ever had.

        I yelled for Brunie who was, luckily, in the kitchen, to bring a pot of water from the huge ceramic storage container there. Meanwhile I beat the flames with a towel. 

        Within a few minutes, the fire was out. The sheets were burned in one large area as was part of my mattress. Considering it was filled with dry straw, I was surprised it wasn't engulfed in flames within seconds. The wooden frame of the bed was blackened on a small area on one side, more scorched than burned. 

        Fortunately the mosquito net had been flung aside before I started to make the bed. If it had caught fire, the flames might have leaped to the ceiling where the net was attached to a lattice of wood that supported the ceramic tile roof. Since the homes were attached, the fire might have spread from lattice to lattice, resulting in the collapse of every roof on that side of the street. 

        Glória had no fire department. Because there was no running water, residents would not have been able to use hoses to spray water on their ceilings. Any attempt to throw water that high from buckets would have been futile. 

        I am so glad I hadn't caused neighbors to lose their homes or belongings. Worse yet would have been if I had caused someone a serious injury.

        I could imagine the headline: PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER'S STUPIDITY LEAVES DOZENS OF BRAZILIANS HOMELESS.  But luckily that didn't happen.


       After cleaning the charred, wet mess in my room, I carried my mattress to the carpenter's store to buy new sheets and have the mattress cover re-stuffed and patched. It retained a burnt odor for months.

        Then I headed to a different shop to make another prudent purchase ---a flashlight.

MEETING OF THE WATERS -odd shot

"Meeting of the Waters"
near Manaus, Brazil
08/21/11

This image is in response to

ODD SHOTS

Click on the link to post your own image

or see what others have posted.

With a population of approximately 1.8 million, Manaus is the capital of the state of Amazonas. There is an unusual natural phenomena that occurs when the dark, warm water of the Rio Negro, which comes from the northern jungle area, meets the light, cold water of the Rio Solimões from the Andes to the south. The difference in temperatures and current speeds causes the waters to remain separated for several miles until they eventually mix to form the Amazon River.

The Rio Negro, which is on the Manaus side of the parallel rivers, is also very acidic, and thus doesn't support mosquito life.  Despite temperatures that reached 108 degrees while I was there, I had no problem with them. Dehydration, yes.  Mosquitos, no.


A popular tourist attraction is a 4-5 hour trip to see the "Meeting of the Waters" and travel through the rain forest. 

A Walk in the Rain Forest
Before stopping for lunch at a floating restaurant, we
took a short walk through the jungle on this boardwalk.
That's me, walking away from the camera.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

Me, Erika, and Brunie
(Brunie and I worked together in Brazil over 40 years ago.)
After returning from our boat trip, Erika, the daughter of an
old friend (Nancides, now deceased) drove us to a lovely spot to
view the sun setting over the river.
Then we had wonderful Brazilian ice cream that comes in 
hundreds of exotic flavors: mango, tapioca, passion fruit, açaí,
coconut, coffee-chocolate-rum, pineapple. I wish I would
have had the time to sample them all.
(Photo by Brunie's husband Erik Lifrak, used with permission.)

Sunset On the Rio Negro

SHADY GARDEN

Jardim Botânico (Botanical Garden)
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
August 30, 2011

This image is in response to

SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY

Click on the link to post your own image

or see what others have posted.

        I haven't contributed to Shadow Shot Sunday for a while.  I've been busy with other projects and some travel.  I had worked in Brazil 1967-69 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and finally had the opportunity to return this past August.  I got some great shadow shots, especially in the Botanical Garden in Rio.

        You can read about my return to my old Peace Corps site in Brazil this past August in RETURN TO GLÓRIA on my other blog.

RETURN TO GLÓRIA

In response to the writing prompt: "Did you create a list of 22 things you’ve done in your life last week? This week, choose one item from your list and elaborate!" on Mama’s Losin it blog.

Well, my bad! I didn’t create the list of 22 things last week, but I that list will be in my next post, but I’ll elaborate on one thing I did in August, because it is something that would have made my list.

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer was one of the defining experiences of my life. I spent 2 years in Brazil, living and working in Glória, a small town in the interior of the state of Sergipe, without benefit of full-time electricity, running water, a sewage system, TV, phone service, paved roads, hospital, nor university. There was no industry and only a few small businesses. I left Brazil and the Peace Corps after 2 years of service in July of 1969.

Over the intervening years, I had always wanted to return to Sergipe. Brunie (the other Volunteer who served in Glória) and I kept in touch and discussed traveling to Brazil often, but there was always some reason we couldn’t. Besides work, family, and money issues, we had lost touch with our Brazilian friends and former students.

Jorge Henrique (striped shirt) and his wife Veronica (top left photo between Brunie and me.)
Brunie's husband Eric is with Brunie and Jorge in the lower right.
(Photos: Jorge Henrique and Veronica, used with permission.)

I won’t go into the details (you can find them HERE) but finally in 2009, 40 years after leaving Brazil, I found the email address of one person in Glória. Even though Jorge Henrique, a poet and professor, hadn’t been born when I lived there, he helped me contact others and soon Brunie and I were invited to visit Sergipe. We were told all we needed to do was pay for airfare ---we would be provided with a place to stay.

How could we refuse?

It took nearly 2 years until we could both travel (Brunie from southern CA, while I left from PA.)

On August 8th, 2011, she and I (and her husband Eric) met at the airport in Rio de Janeiro to catch a flight to Aracajú, the capital of Sergipe. We expected former students Idalécio and Célia and her sister Alcione to meet us. We were shocked to find more than 20 people at the airport, clapping, shouting, whistling ---and even a professional videographer to record our arrival.

Friends, colleagues and former students meet us at the airport in Aracajú.
Brunie is in the front row in black holding a sign and
I am beside her in the aqua shirt.
Celia, front row left, and her family hosted us in Aracajú.
Teresa and José Augusto (back row behind Irene in the striped shirt) hosted us in Glória.
About five people who greeted us are missing from the photo.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

Aracajú is now immense. Because most of the city has been built in the last 40 years, it is relatively new and therefore clean and modern with lovely parks and beaches. It is one of the best-kept secrets in Brazil ---a beautiful unspoiled and safe resort city.

One evening, we were told we were meeting "a few people" for dinner. Another 20 or so showed up. We were honored with several speeches and one former student Gil, now a professional singer, sang for us.

Gil sings about everlasting friendship.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

At the dinner reception for us at a churrascaria (bar-b-que restaurant) in Aracajú.
I am sitting (in green) at the front.   Neuzice and Idalécio (in front of and behind Brunie) made speeches.
Again, a few people are missing from the photo.
(Photo: Eric Lifrak, used with permission)

In addition, many people stopped by Célia's beautiful home to visit us and others invited us to visit them. We also met others at the apartment of Idalécio and his wife.

In Brazil, one can never eat enough to please one’s hosts, so after eating wonderful meals at Célia’s home, we were offered more food everywhere we went. Sisters Neuzice and Euridice took us to the beach for fresh crabs, then wanted us to have another meal at their home. (Already full of delicious crabs, we politely declined.) Idalécio and his wife Graça took us to a great restaurant for feijoada, the Brazilian national dish. Irene and Dona Guiomar both had us to their apartments for scrumptious lunches.

One former student, Valmiro, now a doctor, invited us to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday and informed us that his first child was named Bruna Carolina in our honor.

Célia's brother Wilson who owns a fabulous studio, where he is a videographer creating commercials and promotional videos, had his driver take us to many places including his farm in the country.

On our fifth day in Sergipe, we moved from Aracajú to Glória to stay with Teresa and José Augusto (both former students) in their lovely home. Again, we were fed wonderful Brazilian foods and visited by many old friends.

On Saturday night, more than 50 people showed up for another dinner reception where the former school director of the ginásio where we taught, now in his eighties, made an eloquent speech about us. It was all quite embarrassing and yet a bit thrilling.

Dinner reception in Glória.

We received tons of gifts ---luckily I hadn’t filled my suitcases. One entire piece of my luggage was overstuffed with presents ---several CDs of Brazilian music, including one from Gil, a DVD of Idalécio’s singing group and DVDs about Sergipe, tote bags, key chains and other small souvenirs of the region, a hand-knit sweater, a blouse with hand-made lace, several linens embroidered by local crafts people, T-shirts, a hat, fancy soaps, cologne, hand-decorated dish and bath towels, several books including a beautiful book of photos of Sergipe and two books of Jorge Henrique's poems, a wood-cut print, sculptures created by local folk artists ---one made by Veio, who had been a pre-teen neighbor when we had lived there.

Gifts were totally unnecessary. My best gift was just being there and seeing everyone again.

Another photo from the reception in Glória.
Seu Manoel, the former school director is on the right.
Jorge Henrique and his wife Veronica are in the foreground.

Glória has progressed. All the things I stated above that didn’t exist when I lived there are there now. There is even a cell tower in the middle of the city. The town has many businesses and several industries. It always had a market on Saturdays, but now has a huge outdoor market from Friday through Saturday that attracts buyers from three states. Whereas few vehicles existed there in 1969, the place is teaming with cars, trucks, and zillions of motorcycles, fewer horses, mules, and donkeys, but none of the familiar ox carts that used to travel the streets and roads.

Many things came together in the late 1960s. I know I was part of it, but without all the other happenings, the town may not have progressed. The National Department of Works Against Droughts built a dam to hold enough water to last through rainless years. A high school was established a few years before we arrived. A branch of the Bank of Brazil opened, providing loans for farmers and small businesses. A silo was built to store farmers’ crops so the market would not be glutted when they were harvested. An agricultural assistance agency provided an agronomist and a home economist (Irene and later Maria José.) A progressive woman, Dona Guiomar (Célia’s mother) became the elementary school director. The Brazilian Legion of Assistance started chicken cooperatives. A health center was opened and a doctor hired to visit one morning/week accompanied by Helen, a Peace Corps nurse. Nancides, an extremely intelligent, hard-working, eloquent, and humorous bank worker who also taught night classes at the high school, became the president of a Municipal Commission set up to make positive changes in the town. Brunie arrived in 1966 and started literacy classes. I arrived one year later and took over Brunie’s high school teaching duties so that she could concentrate on health and sanitation projects.

Best of all, despite there being no colégio nor universidade in the town, nearly all of our students managed to continue their educations. They are doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, agronomists, social workers, nurses, teachers. Some work for the state’s health service. One is a meteorologist. One became a minister of agriculture. One was the first woman to work for the Bank of Brazil in Sergipe and when she retired, became a lawyer.

If there was any doubt that we had made an impact, the doubts are gone.

Yet, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I gained so much more than I left in Glória. I have thought about Brazil and especially about Glória nearly every day since 1969. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to live and work there, to learn Portuguese, to know and appreciate the wonderful Brazilians and their culture, and also the opportunity to return 42 years later.

============================

And while I was in Brazil in August, I decided I was going to do two things I had always regretted missing. First we visited the Amazon region. We were able to visit Nancides' daughter Erika in Manaus. Erika's father had died when she was only 11, so she was happy to meet us and hear stories about her father, even before her mother knew him. Then, while Brunie and Eric headed home, I went on to Iguaçu Falls.

And although, the rainforest and waterfalls are spectacular natural wonders, nothing compares to the reception we received from our friends and former students in Sergipe.

If you are interested, you can read many stories about my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer on my other blog: A Little “Peace” of Brazil

Bird Park - Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

I just returned from a great trip to Brazil (August 7-31, 2011.) One of the highlights of my trip was the Parque das Aves (Bird Park) which is just a few minutes walking distance from the entrance to the Iguaçu National Park where I had just viewed the magnificent Iguaçu Falls. I will be posting photos from my trip as time permits, so please come back to see photos from other locations in Brazil.

Click on the arrow below to view the slide show.

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THE SIMPLE THINGS

In response to the writing prompt, “The Simple Things” on Mama’s Losin it blog:

Glória, 1967 (top) and 1969 (bottom)

There are times when I would chuck most of what I own, burn down the house, and start over, because sometimes the simple things are the best.


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In the late 1960’s I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Glória, a small town in the interior of Brazil.  Brunie (another Volunteer) and I lived in a house that had 4 rooms: a sitting room, 2 bedrooms and a kitchen.  We placed a table for eating in the wide hall that stretched from the front to the back of the house.

In the front room, we used our footlockers for seating. They rested on bricks (to keep them from touching the damp mud-brick floor.) We had a small table and chair there for a desk and used unfinished wooden chairs from our dining area when we needed more seating.  We could hang a hammock diagonally from two adjacent walls for an overnight guest.

Each bedroom held a bed with a straw mattress and a mosquito net hanging from the lattice ceiling which supported our ceramic tile roof.  We each had a small hand-made wardrobe and a tiny table next to each bed for a lamp.

The lamps were kerosene-powered.  The town had electricity only four hours each evening, but our house, which we rented for a total of $5.00 ($2.50 each) per month, wasn’t wired for energia.

Once the town’s street lights were extinguished  at 10:00 each night, one could see billions of stars in the southern-hemisphere skies.

The town had no sewage system, nor running water.  Many larger homes held cisternas in back yards to catch and store rain water, but we needed to have water delivered to our home. A teenaged neighbor had a contraption for the back of his donkey which carried four large cans of water from the dam outside of town.  Once he arrived at the house, we strained the water through a clean dishtowel  into a waist-high ceramic jug to filter out leaves, small stones, and insects.  

Water meant for cooking or drinking was boiled for 20 minutes, then put through a water filter.  We boiled our water on a small stove with a propane tank attached to it.  Most of our neighbors used wood-burning stoves.

We had a shower room, about 3-feet square, but we chose not to use it after my house-mate found a snake there one day.  Instead, we heated water on our stove and poured it over our heads in the kitchen.  The mud-brick floor slanted slightly toward the back entrance, so the water seeped under the door into our back yard, past the outhouse entrance and into the mato.

There were no telephones in town and no TVs. Many homes had refrigerators waiting for the full-time electricity that was scheduled to be powered up within a year. We had a temperamental kerosene-powered refrigerator. 

We walked everywhere in town.  If we needed to travel a short distance from town, we borrowed a horse or mule, unless we could catch a ride on one of the half-dozen cars in town. There was a bus three times a week into the capital city ---a drive which might have taken 90 minutes here, but on the dirt roads with frequent stops to pick up or dispatch passengers, stretched to four hours.  

Yet, despite all of those “inconveniences” the town overcame its shortcomings with the warmth of its citizens.  The Brazilians corrected our Portuguese, forgave our mistakes, shared their joys and sorrows, and treated us like daughters.  I don't know that I have felt any more  "at home" anyplace else.

I haven't been back to Glória since I left 4 decades ago. The town’s website shows a much larger city with a cell tower looming in the mato outside of town. The city's praças are filled with stunning tropical plants. Power lines are everywhere.

With TVs in most homes, probably fewer people spend evenings visiting with their neighbors. I’m sure the small circus that used to arrive annually, no longer visits. The nightly social event, gathering in the praça to watch the movemento, has doubtless disappeared. 

Most likely street lights are left on all night. And with all that light, I am guessing one can no longer see the Southern Cross constellation quite as clearly in those big, beautiful, Brazilian skies.   


There are times when I long for the simple life I lived in Glória.  We had a roof over our heads, food to sustain us, boiled and filtered water, meaningful work, and friends.  Really, what more do most of us need?


Despite the conveniences of modern technology, sometimes the simple things are still the best.

Glória, 2009
photo by Alcione (see her on the photo to the right)

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Alcione, c. 1967
youngest child of
Dona Guiomar, 
(elementary-school
principal)
with brother & sisters

I will be visiting Glória in just a few weeks ---my first visit since I left in July of 1969.   Check back for photos and new stories.

Read about my return trip to Glória on my other blog HERE.