| Week 5 | |
|
Things have kind of settled into routine around here. My classes with both the kids and the fishing guides are going well. I have also started classes with about 15 other people who have direct contact with the guests. There are five security guards (story about them later), three waiters, three other kitchen workers, the lady who cleans cabins, and a few maintenance guys. They just got started and are still a bit shy. Since I have a bit of experience with teaching the guides, things are going more smoothly with this group.
I prefer teaching the adults. The kids (there are 7 now) wear me out! With the adults between my Portuguese and their limited English we can usually phrase and rephrase our thoughts until someone understands. The kids don't have the vocabulary in either language to alter their original thought. The adults also understand when I conjugate a verb incorrectly…the kids don't have room for any imperfection in my speech or accent. They also get frustrated and antsy because four hours of a language they don't understand is too much for eight and nine year olds! We have altered the school day and the kids are now going to school from 8-3 Monday- Friday. That works out much better for everyone. I have spent half the day working with them in English and they have spent the other half of the day working with the Brazilian teacher. I have been trying to teach Philip and another little boy in the first grade their lessons in Portuguese because the other teacher cannot handle 3 different lessons at once. I'm sure it's an amusing site. Beginning Monday, I will work with only Philip and the other little boy from 8-12, while the other kids get instruction in Portuguese. Then I work with the other kids from 1:30-3:00 in English. I do no have the materials to effectively teach all seven kids all subjects. Paper is like white gold, we don't have a copy machine, and everything else is extremely limited. Plus it is hard to give Philip the best of what he needs with six other antsy kids around. They all do very well for about 2 hours. So I think the new arrangement should work well for all involved. Now, the story about the security guys… Like I said, there are five security guys in my second English class. On a normal day, crime is not an issue. But during the "off-season" when Phil and Ruth were in the US people robbed this place blind! All sorts of medications were stolen from the clinic. Phil and Ruth are missing things from their cabin, a dozen or more digital cameras can't be found, and the copy machine that once was, is no more. Dr. Gibson and Anne had boxed and taped all of their stuff up, put it in the center of the room and covered it with a tarp. When we arrived, the room had been set up so that people could sit on the sofas and watch TV; the boxes had been opened and raided. And best of all, their bed was missing…GONE! I have a few concerns about the effectiveness of the local security force. There is a red macaw here that is a mean little cuss. He has a thing for attacking women. He usually swoops down and lands in their hair or runs around nipping at their ankles. Well yesterday he attacked one of my seven-year-old little girls as she was walking home after school. He swooped down, landed in her hair, and she panicked. She started screaming and flailing, and he started attacking. He scratched her up pretty good, scared her half to death, and took a chunk out of her finger that went all the way to the bone. All of the kids saw it happen, and about 6 men went to get the bird off of her. The bird must have enjoyed the excitement because he has been extremely aggressive since then. The security guys have had to earn their keep by shooing the birds away from the ladies with brooms. None of the men or boys has had problems with the bird. There has been a lot of talk about how the bird can distinguish between males and females from the top of a tree fifty feet away. (If you would like to take a few minutes and look that up for me it would be great!) My first few weeks here were plagued with insect bites. Little black devil bugs ate me alive on the waterfall expedition, and 4 weeks later they are still haunting me! I had something feast on my arms and neck in my sleep here at the lodge, and I've had a few strange and mysterious bites appear. I now have a mosquito net over the bed, and Phil bought me some OFF! in Manaus. I think that most of the bites that I have been scratching at are old bites from the first week at the waterfall. But, for the past 4 days I have worn pants during the day, and while I sleep. It has dramatically cut down on the amount I can scratch, and my legs are finally healing. Hopefully as the rainy season ends, and the puddles around the area begin to subside, I will be free to walk barelegged once again. My scratching has been the source of much amusement. I think I ought to photograph and catalog my different bites, and begin a doctoral thesis on the healing times of Amazonian bug bites. I am still enjoying myself here, despite the scratching. We have made friends with some very nice people, and the climate and surroundings are beautiful. The food is fresh and good, and the laundry and maid service is fabulous. My commute to work usually only takes me 45 seconds to a minute, and all of the passing pedestrians greet me with a pleasant, "bom dia" or "good morning." Scott and I have both had some pretty intense conversations with people who speak no English. It is a fun mixture of charades with a bilingual dictionary filling in the gaps on both sides. Everyone has a story about why they are here and who they have waiting for them at home. There is an interesting group of people with whom we enjoy spending time. It's funny because sometimes you can tell someone has put quite a lot of effort into preparing a sentence or two in broken English to tell us as soon as they see us. They rush to tell us so that they don't forget. It's kind of like when your mom tells you to pick up 5 things at the store and you repeat the list all the way to the store so you don't forget anything. You can see their lips moving and their faces are plastered in concentration until they can spout off the two phrases that they have wanted for two days to communicate! I guess I'm the same way! I had a good chortle the other day during one of my fishing guide classes. We had been working on telling time, days of the week, months and so forth, when one of the guys asked me what "Estamos perdido" meant. Well, "estamos" means "we are" but I didn't know what perdido meant. So I pulled out my handy yellow dictionary and looked up perdido and it was defined as "period, cycle". I tried to explain a period of time or a cycle like a month, or the lunar cycle…nothing. So then I explained that usually the word period was used to explain the dot at the end of a sentence or a woman's menstrual cycle. Then I laughed and said in Portuguese "Do you want to know if we are menstruating?" The whole group of guys roared, and the fellow with the question was absolutely horrified. Apparently it is somewhat taboo to discuss menstruation in mixed company. So of course we all attacked Phil after class to find out the actual meaning. "Estamos perdido" means "We are lost." I hope I haven't embarrassed the guy to the point that he won't ask any more questions. 09/22/01 Today is Saturday and exactly one week before the first group of fishermen arrives at the Lodge. There is still a lot of work to be done around here. They are rebuilding a huge aquarium in the main lodge, building a barbeque area adjacent to the Lodge, laying rock in some of the sidewalks, landscaping and working on a hundred other projects behind the scenes. The cabins have been cleaned…but still need some detail work (corners, floorboard, etc…). They are in the process of washing all of the sheets and comforters that have been stored all winter and re-hanging curtains. Phil and Ruth have both gone to Manaus for a couple of days, and it is apparent why this place goes to hell during the 4 months they are gone. The whole world changes around here when Phil and Ruth are gone. It's like a bunch kids running around when Mommy and Daddy aren't home. No wild parties or anything like that, it's just that everything becomes extremely relaxed, informal, slow. Only the minimum amount of work occurs each day. A four-year-old little boy named Marcos lives here. He is beautiful, smart, and BAD. The staff calls him Demon (in Portuguese). He has no discipline and regularly yells at and hits his mother. Since Phil and Ruth have been gone, he has been tearing around the Lodge like a wild animal. Last night he ate chocolate cake for dinner because that is what he wanted and his mother gave it to him. There were six or seven other people at the table who were shocked that his mother actually gave him cake for dinner. (He and his sister are tear-assing around the table as I type!) We decided after they left last night that Marcos needed three spankings a day. "One for yes, one for no and one for suspicion" as one guy put it. I think his parents could use a whooping every now and then too for allowing him to be such a devil at four. He is the same little boy that drew all over the freshly painted wall outside of the school last week. Demon. I write about the monkeys often…here's another story: The male monkey that lives in the cage here named Xico is not known for his pleasant demeanor. Chica, his mate is a real sweetheart though. I have spent quite a bit of time at the monkey cages and have made friends with all of the monkeys. I always approach Xico slowly, and with quite a bit of caution, and he will now allow me to pet him. I also only approach him while he is in his cage. Every other day or so the caretaker takes the monkeys and puts them on leashes and tether them to a tree at the front of the lodge. This morning Andrew went straight up to Xico (thinking it was Chica) and started petting him. Well, Xico doesn't know Andrew and did not take too kindly to him. Xico took a pretty good bite out of his arm and his ankle. Those monkeys aren't very big but they are extremely strong. Gotta be careful! I have cut down on my visits to the monkey cage. Not that I've tired of playing with the monkeys or I'm afraid to get bitten, but because there are a lot of little black devil bugs by the monkey cages. I have to dress from head to toe in long clothes and bathe in OFF! before I go over there, and I still manage to get a few insect bites. So I've had to choose between spending time with the monkeys or getting eaten alive by devil bugs. The devil bugs are an effective deterrent. They are conserving fuel here and are only running the generator sporadically. You never know when it will be on or off! Now is one of the times that it is off. It's best when they turn it off from about 4:00 in the morning until about 11:00 or noon. That's when the day is at its coolest and it is not really so noticeable. Because the workers only work until 11:00 on Saturdays they turned the generator on from 7-11 so that they could use power tools. So today we will have no electricity until probably 4 or 5 o'clock. It is a pretty warm day today so it is getting warm inside pretty quickly. I'm think that I'll go for a swim here in a few minutes. The red bird is on the attack again out front. There is a lady running and a man chasing the bird with a broom. There are two dogs also in the mix enjoying the excitement. I'm all about putting that mean bird into a cage! |