A typical day for me at Instituto Bíblico do Alto Rio Negro

5:00am Wake-up bell
5:45am Early Morning Service
7:00am Breakfast – crackers, coffee, gross porridge and/or watery oatmeal
12:00pm Lunch – combination of beans, rice, noodles & some kind of meat
3:00-5:00pm Teach Music Class
6:00pm Dinner - combination of beans, rice, noodles & some kind of meat

In between the scheduled times:
Wait for next meal - next event - next day, wait until I’ve digested food & malaria pill so that I can lie down again, wait for flight out to Manaus – to Sao Paulo – back home!, try to quiet constantly racing mind in an effort to better appreciate life in the rainforest, wonder why God loves me so much, swing on hammock & talk to Sharon, nap until I can nap no more, think about what I’ll write on blog, read bible & journal, go on laptop & listen to music, walk around seminary & look at sky, increase tolerance for bugs, etc.

gems scattered abundantly across absolute blackness
outshone only by the occasional flash of lightning
that retreats back into night, before I can capture the sight
and leaves me alone with unbearable beauty
only good to wish on, for neon stars of the city

9.7.2009 quinta

Favorite Scent: Insect Repellent
Favorite Food: Pineapple
Least Favorite Food: Monkey Brain
Hobbies: Scratching my bug bites, scratching my bug bites, napping in my hammock, applying anti-itch spray, and scratching my bug bites
Things I won’t miss from the villages: Piumes (blood suckers that look like fruit flies) and a pervading stench
First thing I’ll do when I’m out: Drink and wash up in clean water, instead of the brown river water.

8.7.2009 quarta

In EBF (Vacation Bible School), we ran out of crackers for the kids. Running out of crackers, that’s a novel concept… I don’t know that I felt sad but I certainly felt something. I come from cracker-land, land of plenty. Here, round tummies protrude from their little bodies of malnutrition. We eat buckets of chicken. We supersize. We throw away leftovers. We have gallons of ice cream!

I don’t think I could ever eat an entire package of crackers in one sitting anymore. The true test will come when I’m home with a box of Wheat Thins, a year or two from now.

People are funny – I am funny. The first night in this village, Castelo Branco, I felt horrible that we were eating a second “real” dinner, after I saw one of the villagers watching us, as he picked up something from the boat. The second day, I gladly ate it. The third day, I expected it. The last day, I didn’t think anything of it.

The food in the villages is limited but they saved up for this bi-annual conference and gave us the best of everything (except for the third and last village, Nazaré do Cubate, who didn’t treat us as well). Breakfast consists of a combination of coffee, a hot chocolate or kool-aid sort of drink, some tapioca, crackers, really hard bread and/or popcorn. Breakfast was my favorite meal of the three because I could just eat some popcorn. For lunch and dinner, every village had fish and sometimes had alligator, monkey, chicken, some kind of rainforest pig, and something like a large rodent, called paca. I tasted everything at least once. Alligator was pretty good. Monkey tasted like dirt in meat form. They also have farinha and bejú, hard flat bread made out of the farinha, at every meal, which is alright. And they often have some combination of rice, beans and noodles.

I stopped getting a cup, because then they would give me their drinks. I tried one of their various types of mingau (porridge) and thought I would throw up. But most others drank the mingau okay. I realized how precious drinking water is. Since we would get sick if we drank the river water, we drank boiled water from a stream, lime juice or coconut water most of the time. Sometimes some of the seminary student sisters made things like avocado shake, which is delicious.

Some people handled the food really well – 목사님 (aka Pastor Kim) of course since he’s eaten this food for nearly 2 decades – as well as others. 10 year-old Daniel ate a whole monkey head by himself, except for the brain, which he shared. Fish was fine but after a few days, I didn’t even want to eat that because I was sick of the smell.

They don’t really have any vegetables here but do have fruits. Their banana is sweeter and smaller than what I usually have in the States and pineapple is great, as it is anywhere. The seminary students regularly cut up sugar cane and coconut for all of us and that’s fun to eat. Other than that, I tried some other Amazonian fruits, which are so-so, and some, extremely sour.

I also tried one very crunchy ant, which is bigger than the ants you usually see. It didn’t really taste like anything and felt sort of like I was eating barley. We watched a video of Sam eating a gigantic live ant at a village from a previous trip – they tear off the head before they eat it. It really was humongous for an ant. I don’t know if I would have the guts to eat a live ant that’s about the size of those giant cockroaches.

Meal times seem to be a communal event, where everyone gathers in one place, with their own cups and buckets. Servers come around and pour a bit of the food in each person’s bowl, which they put on the ground, by their feet. I wish I could have eaten the food more heartily but I kept thinking about how unsanitary the food must be, even if it tasted okay. But I am really thankful that the villagers prepared their best for us – too bad I couldn’t show it in the way I ate.

We were not allowed to leave any food because that would be extremely offensive, in a place where food is so precious.

I would post some pictures but the internet here is extremely slow so I can’t. Later, when I’m in Sao Paulo, I’ll put up photos.

Poems from the boat

사모님 (aka Dona Rute) kept saying she wonders how a daughter like me came from my 얌전한, 평범한 and seemingly average parents. I wrote a poem called “1+1=Me” in response. I miss my parents and Jelly, back in LA. I am realizing more and more what fantastic parents I have. Here’s the poem below.

His nose
Her hair
His peculiarities
Her mentalities
Engrained deeply
In my DNA
Like a stain
That won’t go away
So though you think
That they’re MIA
I am certain they’re in me.
Because of them,
I’m here today.


Then I wrote some more because Nelson wanted to know how to write poems and though I don’t really know either, we had a little writing session. I also wrote 2 songs in Portuguese about the Rio Negro and pineapple, with Nelson’s help – maybe you’ll hear them someday.

I liked to eat chicken taquito
Until I stopped being poquito
Now I’m delicious to mosquito

If I were a carioca,
I’d eat tapioca,
And maybe go louca.


And then I wrote one for each one of my 4 buddies on the boat. Nelson just graduated from high school and came from São Paulo with his mom, 양 집사님. Sam is about the same age and came from New Jersey. Melanie just graduated from college and is from the same church as Sam. And you already know Sharon. I’m so happy that we got to be friends on this boat trip and though we only spent a total of 18 days together, I feel like I’ve known them for years. We made a great team. I fall in love too easily.

Nelson-
Thinking he cannot write,
he dims his own light.
Like the little engine
who said he can,
if only he would understand.
Poetry at its core,
are just thoughts
that won’t leave you,
like pesky moths.

My ham of a friend Sam
has recently gotten a tan
and would like to be a man
and go home when he can

Meh-lah-nie
Needs to be a mommy
So she can make salami
And sing about Bonnie

Not wanting to be barren
She wants to find another missionário
And fly like a heron
To populate the Amazon
Sharon