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