Toucan vs. Crow

---

Perhaps I shouldn´t be writing on a travel blog website, as I haven´t been doing a whole lot of traveling.

I´ve spent the past week in Belo, either staying with a friend or visiting some of the projects. In due course the Portuguese is improving, as well as the ability to navigate the city via public transportation (which could prove less challenging were it not for the density of unruly drivers making making every street crossing a brush with death). In the next week I´ll begin assisting another volunteer in teaching english. Neither of us have taught before, but the children (and the older staff themselves) are very eager to learn - even after I mistakenly explained our plans to teach them as "Next week we will set fire." Most of the middle class in Brazil has taken some English classes, but the poorer majority don´t have access to this. As to the criticism in regards to economic success being directly tied to global imperialism and cultural subversion, I´m open to any thoughts. So far my English skills have only been used to translate Jennifer Lopez and Lil´Jon lyrics (which is far more difficult then it seems).

Last night I had the opportunity to visit the house of one of the staff. The solution to poverty (i.e. household salary of R$1000 or $500 a month, two earners of above minimum wage salary) is often found in combining resources. For example, his house is about 600 sq. ft. - a kitchen, bathroom, living room, 3 bedrooms - and there are 8 people living there. His family only accounts for five or six people - the other children were taken in when their parents died. The houses in the area were built for a project through Habitat for Humanity, but all the physical labor was done by the people who live in the houses (when the 200 families built the 200 houses, they didn´t know until afterwards which house would belong to them - they chose the house keys at random after they were all complete).

In the next weeks I´ll be staying in both this and another neighborhood. Last night, however, we stayed outside of the city at a farmhouse belonging to a friend. I decided to take a quick jaunt around the property with binoculars in tow. Outside on the porch was a wooden hanging sculpture of a toucan, and I passed by thinking to myself "Wow, I wonder if they have toucans around here." Not five seconds passed before one flew right over my head. In time I saw not only another toucan, but an egret and some wee little monkeys (as well as a ton of other birds - unfortunately I´ve yet to find a Brazilian bird book and have to resort to calling them "green bird" and "yellow bird with stripes"). Other items of interest in no particular order: Agave the size of a car. Bamboo, 60 ft tall and as thick as my arm (which is pretty thick). Spiders as big as a baseball. Butterflies the size of BIRDS! Everything in Brazil is big and would totally dominate animals and plants in the Northwest (you know, like if they had a war - squirrel vs. squirrel monkey).

On the other hand, that´s why there was never a Brazilian John Muir - he caught yellow fever and was eating by a jaguar.

---

Comments

[edgar]

was lol while reading this
I hope you haven't been gettin these ideas from watching cockfights on the side ...