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Making friends aboard the Navio Santarem. The boy in the back is named Fernando. We loved him -- he was very intelligent and respectful.
Amanda Howard with a young boy named Gabriel. By the end of the trip, Gabriel had really grown to love Amanda. He did not give me details, but told me that he was traveling with his dad, and that he had no mother.
Along the river, especially early on, indians and other jungle residents would row out in their wooden canoes to beg. One of two things would happen. First, some on the boat (keep in mind that everyone on the boat had enough money to travel), would throw their garbage at the people. Others though, wrapped clothes, food or other items in plastic bags and threw the packages to the beggars. I talked to my students about both acts on the part of the people on our boat. Ultimately, we decided that although it contributed to a culture of dependence, we wanted to share, so we prepared several small packages and threw them to people along the river. I left a WVU t-shirt for one of the groups.
A few of our students with a couple of Italians (Gregory is the guy with the beard), and a couple of Brazilians traveling on the boat with us. The guy in yellow is named Wellington, a really nice guy who spent a lot of time with us, talking about culture, language, and life in the Amazon.
Several of our students made friends with the younger girls traveling on the boat.
Matt Houy and Nick Uram, two of the male students on the trip. They helped to keep the mood light on the boat.
This is Dr. Mark Swift, the other professor who went on the trip with me, and Mike Adams, another of the students who made sure we kept an eye on the lighter side of life.
This is Paulo, and his little brother Renato. They were the musicians, and kept us entertained.
The Brazilians on the boat were completely fascinated by us. They loved spending time with us, and asking us everything they could think of about life in the U.S.
Sunset on the Amazon River.
What happened this week...?
The boat up the Amazon was supposed to be an exciting and informative time for our group. Unfortunately, the conditions on the boat were very difficult. Before we even boarded the boat, I had several problems at the bank in Belem, which ended with us leaving town without paying our hotel bill or even the full amount for the boat passage. I was able to get the money problems sorted out before we left Brazil, but it caused me a good amount of stress throughout the trip. Please, if you never do me another favor in your entire life, never, never do business with HSBC bank. You'll save yourself tremendous headaches if you forever steer clear of the most incompetent, incoherent bank I've ever had the displeasure of working with.
The boat trip itself was also difficult. I had been promised a reserved area for our group on the air conditioned deck. We had planned to sleep in hammocks. We did sleep in hammocks, but it was with more than 100 other passengers crammed in side by side (there was a total of about 300 people on the boat on two decks). Our group was mostly able to stay together, but we were put near the bathrooms, and up against a wall that separated the sleeping area from the dining room oven. The air conditioning did little to overcome the heat, and the bathrooms smelled and blocked light that came through the windows along the other parts of the deck. So it was fair to describe our living quarters on the boat as dark, hot and smelly. Fortunately, the weather was unseasonably cool, and when we reached our half-way point at Santarem, we were able to move our hammocks to more comfortable locations as some of our co-travellers got off the boat to stay in Santarem. We stopped at numerous villages and towns along the way -- Breves, Prainha, Obidos, Monte Alegre, Altamira, Itacoitiara -- many places I'd never been to during my mission. That part was really cool. The other cool part was getting to know the people on the boat. It was a hard, but very valuable experience. We were all relieved when we finally arrived in Manaus, late in the evening of Sunday, January 20th.
Best wishes to all,
Matt, Joanne, Jessica, Emily & Madeline