Anti-Dentite No More

Ava did end up visiting a dentist after some strange spots were discovered on her back teeth. Unlike the Brazilians, who still do not have a handle on preventive dentistry, we brought Ava to the dentist armed with her Usborne book "Going to the Dentist" that she recently received from family back home. Good timing. She also had both a mom and Grandma cheering her on. Such a contrast to locals who in all likelihood would not have even taken their child to the dentist until the tooth require pulling and they certainly would not prep their child by reading about dentists for two nights prior. I guess we still lacked a little teaching because when she climbed into the seat she laid on her belly, pointed her chin to the ceiling and opened her mouth expectantly to the dentist. She ended up needing two filling, she has my teeth, poor child. One was filled on this visit and we'll go back on Monday for the second filling. And I am sure we will be bringing her book again. ~Brin

So you think you know the Amazon...

We have been on a river trip with about 20 people for the last three days, participating in services in two river villages. Here’s a true-false test covering some of the things, in no particular order, that we’ve learned in the last few days.

1. The Amazon River has ten tributaries that are larger than the Mississippi.

2. You shouldn’t pee in the Amazon, because a microscopic organism that senses warmth will swim into your urinary tract, take up residence, and reproduce. It can only be a removed by surgery.

3. Bud and Suzanne have been struggling against ants in their kitchen for 12 years.

4. The Trans-Amazon highway is mostly gravel.

5. The Trans-Amazon highway is best in the areas where it is paved.

6. You should shuffle your feet when you’re walking through shallow water, because you might step on a sting ray. That’s the most common way people get stung.

7. Josh and Brin’s kids always wear seat belts and use children’s car seats, just like in the US.

8. Piranhas are the most dangerous predators in the Amazon River.

9. The Brazilian government has built schools in many river villages.

10. Cleide, the 14 year old girl who helps Brin with the kids, earns the equivalent of about a dollar an hour.

Answers:

1. True, according to Bud. It’s hard to fathom the size and scope of this river system and the logistics of living and moving from one place to another. I brought Josh a map of the entire Amazon River system, thinking it might be helpful. I might as well have brought him a map of the solar system. Bud has a large map on his wall of the state of Para, where he lives, just one of many Brazilian states and South American countries where the Amazon stretches. He drew a circle with his finger a couple inches around the town where they live, to indicate the most distant villages where they work. These villages, he says, are about a three day boat ride away on the Xingu River, one of the large tributaries, where they live. I doubt that Josh will need my map very often.

2. False. Bud laughs. That’s an urban legend, he says, even if the doctor on Oprah thinks he true. He has lived here for 12 years and has never heard of this malady. No-one—except maybe Connie and me, who are still not sure what to think about Bud—thinks twice about peeing in the river.

3. False. Josh and Brin are still fighting the battle mightily against all sorts of insects in their house, but with ants, at least, Bud and Suzanne have mostly given up. It’s probably the difference between being here seven months as opposed to being here 12 years.

4. False. Yes, I lied to you in an earlier update, before I had actually been on it. At least around Altamira, the Trans-Amazon highway is mostly red dirt, graded and packed. We have traveled an hour or two on the highway in each direction and saw very little gravel.

5. False. On one stretch near Altamira, the highway is paved. A large part of the paved area is so full of pot holes, however, that it is actually more treacherous than the packed dirt.

6. True, according the people here. We did not see any sting rays on our river trip, but apparently they are commonly seen in the shallow water in the evening, where they lie flat against the bottom and sometimes are partly covered by sand.

7. Not a chance. There is not a belt in sight in the Bandierante. Children’s car seats? Are you kidding? Another perspective is Xingu Mission’s vehicle, used most commonly for moving lots of people. It’s is a one-ton truck with sides, seats and a covering over the bed, capable of hauling an enormous number of passengers, depending on their ability to tolerate discomfort. But seat belts and child safety seats seem to be a long way off.

8. Trick question, but the best answer is false. How can you say a fish that is capable of ganging up with its friends and stripping the flesh off a cow in 90 seconds is not dangerous? But apparently they are not interested in humans as long as long as they have other options for food. They are more inclined to eat things that are smaller than themselves. But when the river begins to recede after the rainy season and leaves pools of water behind, they probably aren’t great places to go swimming. The anacondas and stingrays are much more feared by the locals.

9. True. We walked through such a school in one of the villages we visited on our river trip. The building was very basic, with three classrooms—pre to first, second to fourth, and fifth to eighth—desks in a circle around the wall, a teacher’s desk in a corner. Almost nothing on the walls, no shelves, no electricity, cement walls and floors. But the real problem is teachers, who are paid so little that many schools really do not function with any consistency or quality. Lots of kids do not go past fourth grade, others not past eighth grade. The best students have to move into Altamira and live with relatives in order to go to high school.

10. True. She just got a raise from about fifty cents an hour. This wage makes her by far one of the highwst paid 14 year olds in the city, placing her among a very small percentage of people of any age who actually has a regular job with a regular paycheck. She uses the money to help provide for her mother, who is partly disabled.

-glogged by Tom

So, is this goodbye?

Sorry about the picture. I meant to take some pictures of my "End of the Semester" party but didn't remember until we were cleaning up. Monday was my last day of class teaching English. I am really quite sad about it and quite confused too. I just cannot decide if I should commit to teaching next fall. I really liked it. I made some new friends outside of church. My students were enthusiastic and apparently they did learn something since they all passed their final exam. However, two nights a week means that those are nights Josh has to stay home, and also it makes it harder to do river travel as frequently as we might wish to.

Josh and the rest of group left for river ministry. I stayed back to put on the party and I caught up to them in Souzel by speedboat. More details about that trip to come.

Our First Few Days

We’ve been in Brazil four full days now, and every day has been a smorgasbord of sights and sounds and new experiences. We did kick back the first day, hanging out with grandkids, going grocery shopping, getting settled into our quarters. The second day we worked at the “ranch,” making and pouring cement with about 15 young Brazilian men who are continuing to work on a training center for the mission here that has been in progress for about three years. Yesterday, we trekked with about 30 other people to a waterfall, two hours each way on the dusty Amazon highway, then back deep into the jungle until we had to hike the last half mile or so on foot. Today was a visit to the colorful Altamira street market, bartering for spices and vegetables and reddes (hammocks), which we will need on our river boat trip, and church in the evening.

Ro is doing great, having lots of fun with her nieces, and is always good for a few laughs. Those of you who collect Ronesha-isms, her ongoing list of mangled words, will appreciate learning that the national language in this country is porkucheese.

We are delighted and thankful to see how well Josh and Brin are adapting to their new home and ministry. They are tolerably conversational in the language, upbeat about the inconveniences of living in so remote a place, already finding ways to connect and minister to people in significant ways. They have customized their living quarters to fit their needs, built and bought functional furnishings, connected themselves to support people, and developed routines and structures for their girls. They seem to take the challenges in stride.

The Bandeirante, Josh’s 30-year-old safari wagon, which he introduced with pride a few months ago, is everything I could have imagined. I’m sure it’s reminiscent of the vehicle he drove back in the highlands of Papua New Guinea fifteen years ago. Distinguished primarily by the accessories that it does not have, it would be hard to imagine a more basic and uncomfortable but durable driving machine. Four hours through clouds of dust on the Amazon “highway” in this vehicle with five adults and three squirming children, windows down, was an experience we will not soon forget.

But perhaps my favorite moment of our time here so far was halfway to the waterfall when the clutch pedal assembly on the Bandeirante fell apart at Josh’s feet. We pulled off the road and Josh crawled under the dashboard, emerging a few moments later with a bent bolt about two inches long. The problem seemed to be how to get it to stay in place until he could get home and fix it right. On cue, Brin pulled a first aid kit from under her seat. How about a piece of medical tape? She asked. She opened a sterile package and offered him some kind of special bandage she had brought from her hospital back in Peoria. They would have charged you five bucks for this, she said.

Perfect, he said, and in a few minutes we were on our way again. There is a certain irony in fixing the Bandeirante with a piece of sterile medical tape, but it’s just what Josh and Brin do, and evidence, I think, that they are thriving.

-a glog (guest blog) by Tom Pflederer

Another Arrival

My parents (Tom and Connie) and Ronesha arrived on Wed. Emily, who was supposed to come with them, is still waiting on her passport. We're hoping she will be able to join us soon. The girls are thrilled to have another playmate in Ro, and have been eating up the attention from Grandma and Grandpa. Stay tuned for some guest blogging (glogging?) from Tom.

getting Rich quick

We've got visitors! Rich and Vicki Schurter arrived yesterday along with their friends from church, Tripp & Debbie Waldo and their children Rebecca, Lyndee and Corey. It is so fun to have guests I could just burst. The house will be even more full when Josh's parents arrive tomorrow. I am so excited to see them and anticipating a ton of laughs with Josh's sister Ronesha. Ronesha' nickname is Ro. To which Cleide found hilarious and will call her Rock n' Ro. You have to imagine her saying that with her Brazilian accent.

Rich & Vicki, along with Becca are only staying for a little over 2 weeks but Tom & Connie are staying for a month. We love sharing our world with visitors. Stay tuned for more adventures!

A Xingu Factory

We just had to go on another field trip, this one the pop factory. My student, Paulo, is the chemical engineer there and has wanted me to come so he could show off his talents. So I gathered up a posse of home school kids and off we went.

Paulo makes guarana, which is made from a small berry that has more caffeine than a coffee bean. Or so he says. I really like the stuff and it has been my Mountain Dew
replacement since arrival. The girls nodded appropriately and politely appeared as though they were interested in the boilers, mixers, assembly line, etc. But what they really were looking forward to was the cup of guarana they knew they were getting at the finish. It is pop after all, and they are kids.

A Mystery Solved

We’ve had a large bag of what we once thought was baking soda sitting on our shelf for about 4 months. The reason it was sitting on the shelf (and not being used) was because we weren’t sure what it was. That was until yesterday, when a chemical engineer was eating lunch at our house and Brin asked him his opinion. Now we know the truth…

It all started when I couldn’t get my pancakes to rise. I went on a quest for baking soda. After an internet search, I learned it is call bicarbonato here. It seemed all the grocery stores were out of bicarbonato. I went to a restaurant supply store (or at least that’s what I think it was) and was able to buy about 4 pounds of bicarbonato. I excitedly made pancakes the next day. As we were eating the pancakes there seemed to be a very strong chemical smell to them. My desire to eat pancakes overcame my aversion to the odor and even my concern that we were eating something that had a strong chemical smell.

That was the first and last time we cooked with my special bag of bicarbonato. Later, we were able to find bicarbonato at the grocery store and so the big bag was retired to the shelf, where it remained until yesterday. We were having lunch with one of Brin’s English students, who happens to be a chemical engineer at a local soft drink factory. If we got the translation right, what we thought was baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) was actually ammonium bicarbonate. Judging from the way he and his wife were laughing at us when we told them we ate the pancakes, I don’t think it is harmful. Now we’re thinking we will just use it in some science experiment, maybe a volcano or something. Stay tuned to hear about more adventures of the mysterious bag of bicarbonato!

Material World

I remember seeing a photography exhibit called “Material World” by Peter Menzel that showed families from several different countries with all of their possessions in their front yard. It was meant to be a snapshot of the different living standards throughout the world. The families were selected because they represented an average family from their nation. I remember being shocked by how in most of the pictures the families had so little belongings. I remember thinking “I wouldn’t want to volunteer for that, what a pain to take all your stuff and put it in your front yard!” Obviously, for most people, this was not the primary hurdle (imagine explaining to your neighbors what you were doing).
Here are a few of those pictures:

Mali------------------------Samoa

Thailand ---------------------------------- The U.S.

A few days ago Bud and I helped a Brazilian couple move. They were a young couple with one baby. The family is going to be our new neighbors and they go to our church, so naturally, they asked us to help them move. I was shocked by how little they had. Everything could have easily fit in a pickup truck bed. Everything! Furniture, appliances, beds, clothes.

Today, I overheard Ella explaining to Ava what it was to be poor. Naturally the conversation turned to what it means to be rich. Ava asked, “Are we rich, Dad?”. What a difficult question to answer. In the past year we have given up good incomes and a comfortable home. I have to admit, there are times when I feel poor, and that I have limited my options for the future. And yet I look around everyday and see people living with so much less. I’m still not sure how to answer Ava’s question, I guess for now I’ll just have to tell her “It doesn’t really matter”.

-JTP

Another Brazilian Birthday

On Thursday, Ella celebrated her 9th birthday, the last of our family to do so in Brazil. Ava must have picked up on this because this morning she asked how long until Christmas. Ella and Brin made a Hedge Hog Cake. Other than that, the planning was pretty minimal and it was nice to be able to relax and celebrate Ella's birth, rather than running around planning and supervising a party with 25 crazy 8 year olds (no offense to any crazy 8 year olds who may be reading this).

We went swimming as a family at our favorite spot, a 3 level pier that provides different swimming conditions depending on the level of the water.

For more birthday pictures click here.

Adaptation

We've learned a couple things about adapting to another culture. The first is, it takes time. You can't rush the process. There are no Cliff's Notes version of cultural learning. So it can be a discouraging proposition, especially to us task-oriented, results-expecting type of people.

But that leads me to the next thing we've learned about adapting to culture. It's a difficult thing to measure, so you don't always know how well you are blending (conversely, there always seems to be a very distinct awareness when you are sticking out like a sore thumb). From time to time, however, we catch glimpses of ourselves doing things very "Brazilian".

Where we are from, a bicycle is a very inefficient mode of transportation owing mainly to it's carrying capacity: 1 person + 1 water bottle. Here, the bicycle can carry entire families as well as many household items. Ella was excited the other day when she and Mia (it takes talent from both participants) had mastered the art of the "front bar position" (there are several other positions for carrying a passenger which we will not go into detail here).

Our new furniture is delivered by the local delivery man. I realize this is not much of an accomplishment by us, and probably the fact that we stopped and took a picture of the event disqualifies us for any blending that was taking place. but cut us a little slack.

-JTP

yuck

Ava thankfully appears to be infection free. Here is what her ear looked like on the boat trip. It started as a middle ear infection, which she has chronically, and then she also acquired swimmers ear along the way. This is the ear she has a tube in. Heather (a short-termer) told me one morning I needed to wash her hair because she was smelly. I had to point out that it wasn't her hair that smelled. We think she was growing psuedomonas in her ear, for those of you that know what that is, you know the lovely odor I am speaking of. Only those who really loved her snuggled her because between the smell and the puddle of pus she would deposit on your shoulder she was a hard kid to love on. We are thankful she is doing better and would appreciate prayer that she will outgrow her chronic ear problems.