This was a relatively calm week, except for the fact that four of my six volunteers were ill. As soon as I got to my first town, they were all coming at me with their stomachaches and their colds and their flus and their cactus wounds from all sides. Good grief. It made for more interesting home remedies. (Nothing will ever top the breast milk but I was amused nonetheless). My only guy volunteer lives on the top of this mini cliff where electricity and running water don’t exist. While lacking the basic comforts that most of us take for granted, it’s kind of exhilarating doing your business at the top of the world where you get to bask in the glorious views of mountain tops and surrounding valleys. Of course, this loses its charm when it’s 3 in the morning, your insides are churning in ways you didn’t think possible, and you have a minefield of cacti to run through until you get to your haven. My vol learned this the hard way when one of these sneaky low-lying cacti attacked him as he sought salvation. However, who cares when you have a caring host mother waiting back at home ready to douse your foot with gasoline? Yes, gasoline. My vol was terrified because it came from the lantern they use for light. My vol assumed she was preparing to light his foot on fire. I think that even if his Portuguese had been better, it would have been insufficient in explaining the benefits of gasoline on cactus punctures. When I stayed with them this week, I suggested in the most culturally sensitive way possible that I would prefer that she doesn’t use gasoline on open wounds.

So by the time I got to the community 3 days later, his foot had swollen to the size of a meatloaf and he was hobbling every which way. Subsequent uses of sewing needles failed to extract all the spines still stuck in his foot. While everyone in town assured me they would eventually fall out, that these were somehow the good spines as opposed to the bad spines that hurt something awful (I don’t know how you can tell the difference—a spine covered foot is a spine covered foot), I was prepared to take my poor vol to the hospital. Of course this requires a grand production. Since there is no regular transportation in and out of the town (I rely on the president of the labor union to take me to the land before time), we would’ve had to hike the 2 hours to the nearest hospital, as cactus punctures did not warrant pulling out the emergency transportation. In fact, the town was just laughing at him for complaining so much. Apparently, this is a common occurrence: cactus attacks. So after much debate, we decided to wrap his foot in aloe vera and let nature take its course. I’ll find out Thursday whether he still has a foot.

Staff house, where I come on weekends to decompress, is filled with books. Each supervisor brought at least 5 books and we pass them around. It’s fun living with a bunch of nerds, I finally feel like an intellectual (since when I’m working on my PhD, I spend most of my time proving that I’m not one.) It’s sort of a makeshift Oprah’s book club, because we discuss all the books we read. The next one on my list is Fernando Henrique Cardozo’s The Accidental President of Brazil, a memoir by the president that preceded Lula. Besides helping me to understand what is going on politically and historically in this country, it’s full of amusing quotes, many of them referring to Bushisms. My favorite was when Cardozo was explaining the country’s diversity to Bush during a presidential trip to Brazil. It is hands down the world’s biggest melting pot, even if the US tries to take that distinction, because in Brazil people actually meld and melt into each other. You never know what a person is, and it doesn’t matter. Of course it has many of the same problems as the U.S. in race relations, but their isn’t as stark of divide between different races because most people are of mixed origin. Of course, our great president Bush was unaware of this as he was quoted as responding to Cardozo with “You have black people in Brazil?” Followed by Condie saying, “Of course they do, Mr. President, now about this weather…” I guess the largest black population in the world outside of Nigeria doesn’t count. However, I have promised not to use this forum to blast Bush. That would be tooooo easy. I relate this quote to bring up another interesting story of the week…

What would my email be without a transportation story? (You are probably wondering what kind of segue is this, but I do have a point). While I had been told numerous times that the “Toyotas” can hold up to 30 people (by my calculations, I only see 15 passengers being possible, and that’s with people sitting on top of each other), I hadn’t seen it done until this week. We managed to get 5 people in the front seat. This is particularly difficult when you have a giant gearshift that makes it difficult for even 3 people to sit there. Oh, and the small child…make that 6 people. So the child’s mother put the girl, perhaps about 5 yrs old, on my lap since her lap was covered with groceries. I’m sitting there with this blond haired, blue-eyed girl on top of me while the roof of the Toyota has about 10 people, some bags of rice, and a couple chickens. About 3 people were also hanging from the back of the Toyota. Luckily, they know I’m from out of town and never make me hang from the back or cling to the roof. Anyway, I’m sitting there and the lady to my other side asks, “How many do you have?” How many what? Chickens? She looks at the child and repeats, “How many do you have?” I look at the girl, then her, and laughed, “Oh, no, this isn’t my child. It’s the lady’s right next to me.” Then I looked at the girl again and asked myself how on earth is someone going to confuse this child of the corn with my daughter? But then I take a look around and notice that no one’s child looks like it can actually belong to a specific person. The country has melted to the point that genetics seems to have no place. Light parents with dark kids, dark parents with light kids. Someone asked my co-supervisor who’s Chinese if she was the daughter of this person in the community that would be labeled black by U.S. standards. Race is not decisive. You never know what’s going to pop out in the delivery room. Geneticists say that the more diverse the gene pool, the healthier it is. By that logic, Brazil must then be the healthiest country in the world. More power to them.

Anyway, I’m waiting for the World Cup final to start. I’m still on the fence, but will probably go for France, just because I’ve lived there twice. No offense to my Italian friends, I’ve got nothing but love for you. In the meantime, I’ve been watching the soccer highlights of the last month and wishing that they would play the Wimbledon final. I’m tired of getting all my scores online.

Until next week!

Maya