February 23, 2012

• A Week Off

  

  That is what Carnaval means to me: time off.

  

  I love the laid-backness of camp. of the beach. of Brazil. Someone is always walking around with a guitar, singing a song. I hear the drums. People everywhere and always a line for the bathroom. 80 people, two story house, three bathrooms, and no running water.

  

  Impromptu conversations. The one guy that speaks English seeks me out to practice. I’ve known him since middle school when he was my student. Now he is in college and speaks fluently. That is the nice thing about being in Brazil over 8 years now. You get to see things happen.

  He tells me how his family lived in a home for street kids. Now those kids are grown up, and one just visited them–a successful chef in Recife. Another just died–killed and cut up into pieces. He had been a druglord for five years. Not that it hurt him more to be chopped up after he was killed, but it just sounds so much more painful.

   

  One of the women is married to a hip-hop dancer. She tells me she is going to find me a negao. She is trying to teach us some moves. My hips don’t lie–they just don’t work properly. Anything that is cool, or any person she is talking to she calls “Sexy baby,” and it makes me giggle.

  

  I like watching people. I finished a 522 page book in two days. Aninha said I abandoned her for a book. It was true. I wander to the beach and Junior joins me. We sit and watch. He is a sit-and-watcher too. The kind that doesn’t have to talk. he is one of the older boys from Cajueiro Claro. He tells me about how he almost cried when someone paid his way to go to the beach camp. He told me about his crush.

  I jumped in the water, shrieking when I hit a patch of seaweed. Scandalous. I am fine as long as I don’t touch bottom. As long as I don’t imagine what is down there. But it feels like a bunch of bees just stung my food. I get out and see red spots and puffiness. Jellyfish, probably, they tell me. The stinging continues. Great.

  Not only did the shower stop working yesterday, but now the outside faucet is dry. There is a big tank of water, and the top of a coca-cola bottle. It is called banho de cuea: ladeling myself clean. I wash off the sand and stinging jellyfish and proudly announce to everyone that I had my first banho de cuea, and the applaud. The comment on it in the evening “News Report.”

  I watch girls straighten their hair and put on make up in a little mirror. Brazilian women are something else. They will go around wearing whatever until dinner time. Then it is Cinderella all over again. Camp is supposed to be a week of no watches, mirrors, internet, or make up. They didn’t get the memo. This is what camp and the beach do to my hair:

  

  I make fun of the cute guy, because he has shaved. Everywhere. Shaved chest and legs…good thing he is cute, because that is just weird. I watch the couples. So many different kinds. Two weeks ago Clara told me her boyfriend of 7 years cheated on her and broke up with her. But they are together at camp. I read somewhere that 33% of guys cheat. Are cheaters. And not to blame the other 66% of them for it. I don’t know where the other 1% went. Hiding, probably.

  He is sharing about children and entering the kingdom of heaven, but i am looking at the random light fixture that looks like Aladdin lamp. It needs to be dusted. One spoon in the whole kitchen. We get up to cook breakfast for 80 people with one spoon and one working oven burner. We manage. Because this is Brazil. And somehow, the things that need to get done get done. With just one spoon.

  I am getting the “camp-y” feeling. A soft heart that wants God like the first time I got excited about it and knew it was the only way for me. No, I hadn’t tried other religions, but I knew it, like you know you love him, even though there are so many guys you have never met.

  There is nothing better than a shower after swimming in the ocean all day. Washing off the salt and sand and dry feeling. There was less seaweed today, and I didn’t get bit by a jellyfish. I told the guys that the plan was for them to make a circle around me. That way, the jellyfish would get them, and be full before it came for me. This is my same plan for sharks and bears.

  I saw a jellyfish though. The little boys followed the fisherman around and brought back a dead squid and a live jellyfish in a plastic cup. The beach glistens in the early morning as Livia and I walk and walk. Livia has known me longer than most anyone in Brazil. We met and became pen pals after my first trip here in 1999. I still have some of her letters. She is now a dentist and working hard to pay off her master’s degree. She is an amazing person.

  

  In the evenings after devotions we have the “News report” of funny things that happened that day/ I am excited that my Portuguese is good enough to understand humor and inside jokes now. They read all the “love notes” people send each other. I write all of mine in English just to make the readers try to read them. Everyone thinks it is something terribly romantic. I let them think that.

  

  Only the stars shown while I built sand castles as we all sat in a circle on the beach, singing songs and sharing. Then I made a lizard and called him Fred. At the end we prayed, and I prayed loudly in English. It was exhilarating. The beach at night is delicious. But I couldn’t go the next night, because there was a bloco and a rave going on for Carnaval, and they took my beach to do it.

  

  Tapioca ice cream makes my tummy happy. Especially after eating cuzcuz and eggs for every meal since arriving (Except for lunch, which also had beans). Vegetarian camp food isn’t always the best. Dress up for dinner, they told me. I didn’t know it was optional; that is what you do at camp. But I put on freckles and pigtales and got third place.

  I opt to head home a day early, not feeling too well, and needing to do some business (the kind of business you flush) and wanting running water to do it. But it has been a wonderful time. With people like that, I would expect nothing less. All the grocery stores are closed except for the dinky one. I buy things for lasagna. How do you make lasagna? My lion must be painted; I’ve been saying I would–across that big blank wall. But all I have are finger paints. Fingerpainted Aslan it is.

  

  • 8:22 am
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