This is my first post and my first entry in a short series paying homage to early May 2009, our opening week in Brazil.  After the series I’ll leap to the present, but I want to initiate the blog with recent history and excerpts from my journal to shed a soft light on our transition to Brazil.  The opportunity to come here evolved faithfully since the closing months of 2008.   To make sense of the blog, I invite the reader to peak at the About Us tab at the top of the site.   In summary, I am here with Vus and we moved in May to liaise between a service-learning organization in Pittsburgh and a clinic in Santarém, Brazil. There are several flight paths into the Amazon. From eastern Pennsylvania we chose the cheapest route: Philadelpha-Atlanta-Manaus. Before leaving, we didn’t book the final passage from Manaus to Santarém. TAM airlines repeatedly listed fares from for the 2 hour flight in excess of $300. Our contacts in Manaus told us that the chartered riverboats were substantially cheaper. So we took them on their word and flew to Manaus. I wrote the following on the day we arrived:

“I… cannot easily summarize our itinerary or expectations for brazil.   Even my singular goal is incoherent: to be devoted and calm, risky and patient, open and shrewd.”

“At 11:30pm we arrived at the Eduardo Gomes International Airport in Manaus.  Earlier, during our layover in Atlanta, I talked to Regiane Deane and confirmed our pickup.  Regiane lives in Texas with her husband Elio who she met in Utah.  Before she met him she met me in Santarém in 2002… she insisted that Val and I stay with her family for a few days in Manaus.  Regiane’s mother and two sisters moved from  Santarém to Manaus last years for better job opportunities.  Maybe it was a good move, the youngest sister, Rosane, scored a job with TAM (a Brazilian airline).”

“I look hideous in my passport – disheveled and mischievous – and I worried over the past few months that a skeptical customs agent would refuse my entry.   Then suddenly I earned an ally in the customs line when a Delta airline employee, Rosane’s boyfriend, came to chitchat with us while we waited.  Rosane and her mother were ready for us.  Six years ago they didn’t have a car.  Now they have a Ford Focus.  They gave us a bedroom with a bed and a mosquito net, and we fell asleep at half past 12.”