Flood, part II

Running across a highway in pouring rain to wait for our bus under a tree...laughing as I run into another umbrella-blinded, utterly soaked commuter at the bus station...a surreal half hour at a bar, watching the sky turn pink with lightning and the soccer fields become lakes, declining offers of beer and marijuana from the friendly punks also taking shelter there...walking in water up to my knees and rising...putting televisions and mattresses up high and watching helplessly as water rushes in under the doorframes of my friends' homes...taking showers and eating dinner at a complete stranger's house, simply because she's a neighbor of a friend and she lives on the second floor...getting home at almost midnight, trying to convince your friend that yes, midnight is an acceptable time to sleep, not just 4 am...all in half a day's work.

huh.

it's been a week of rain for us, which has been nice at least to break the (supposedly) record temps we'd had earlier. i actually had to put a towel in my window tonight because the wind was blowing the rain in through the windowframe. it was a fantastic storm with none of the nasty side effects: no serious flooding, no power outages, no phone outages.

tomorrow my bed and my new table and chairs and bookcase thing arrive! i tore out the front room today and rearranged everything in preparation. i am so ready to start decorating this place the way i've been dreaming about since peru!!! anyone have any ideas on how to turn a roll of cork into a bulletin board? can i just nail it into the wall, or should i put grommets or something in? buying it as a roll was so much cheaper and easier to transport on the bus, but now i'm at a loss as to what to do with it!

oh, and i'm also going to check out a post-grad course tomorrow at a university near my home, in the hopes it will land me a student visa...any prayers are appreciated!

I snagged these photos from www.oglobo.com.br, the big Brazilian newspaper...those of you that read Portuguese are more than welcome to check it out! None are from our area of town...the entire city was flooded!

Flood

Now that the phone lines are back up, at least on this side of Manguinhos, I can use the internet...I'm searching for some photos to give you an idea of the amount of water that ran through my community last night. They're saying this was the worst flood since 1989...I was on my way home from our trip to Majé when the skies opened and I was unwilling to risk my life trying to get home. There was water as deep as 1.5 meters or more in some places, and knee to mid-thigh almost everywhere else. I spent a good portion of the evening in calf-deep water in my friend Erica's home, helping her salvage the electronics and mattresses in her home. Everything else was destroyed, except, thank the Lord!, her freezer and refrigerator. Our streets are full of mud, roaches, dead rats, filth...and the smell of bleach, lugged around in empty 2 liters, tinted brilliant rainbow colors so no one will mistake it for water.

Anyhow, I'm going to take a nap, rest a bit, and then post up a full report. It's been a long 24 hours...

What you do when the thermometer breaks...

Stand on the porch and dump buckets over your head...and your girlfriend's head...and threaten passerby...because it's 40, 41, 42 degrees C...

Twins

My sister made it here safe and sound and we're having fun exploring all the different sides of Rio...going to the beach (almost the first time in a year for me!), playing cards under the stars, stares, and far-away gunfire of the favela, trying sugarcane juice and fried pastels as a late breakfast, hanging at Praça XV with street kids, and much more...Walking down the street today after church we ran into Elias, who takes off his glasses and looks at us with the most confused expression: am I seeing double??? Two foreign women? Everyone thinks we're twins, which is immensly humorous, considering the four year difference in our ages. But it's fun to turn heads...

Anna's also playing spy for the family and Junior and his family are earning some serious points with her...I think! We spent three, four? hours playing cards last night and during a course of that famous lying-through-your-teeth game, "Bull%*$&*," she managed to learn to count from one to ten in Portuguese!!! We're both a little fried from our time at the beach the other day, which isn't surprising because the thermometer measured 102 degrees yesterday. Summer's here!

Correction

I’m still trying to get a picture, but I saw the billboard again. It’s better than I remembered: “Policia Militar: Trabalhando com amor, que todas as dias do seu ano sejam com paz?”

The Military Police: Working with love so that all the days of your year may be peaceful. Huh. I seem to remember Christmas not being so peaceful...

Not every day...or night

I’m sitting in the bathroom because the machine gun fire outside scares me. I've been hearing isolated shots all night, like someone was doing target practice at 15 minute intervals. But then about two minutes ago, it started for real. From the echo, at least one of the shooters is close. And I just saw what I’m pretty sure was a tank, turn around on the next street over. A regular truck or car could have made that turn, but not something with a poor turning radius. Nope. There’s quite a bit of gunfire going on outside, but it’s moving away from my house. At least the noise has made the cats in heat stop their infernal bleating. I can’t block cat screams with my earplugs, but they do a good job with sharp pops.

Is this what living is a war zone is like? The people of Baghdad, Jerusalem and the West Bank, Kabul...do they just get used to running to safe rooms, to dropping to the floor at a moment’s notice, a startling noise? Do they grab their computer and cell phone as they run, so they have the ability to write what's going on and make emergency calls if necessary? Do they stay up late and forget to pray for the innocents, caught up in the Hollywood special effects? I think I’m a voyeur. It's kind of fun being able to tell people at home, “Yeah, there was a tank shooting around on my street last night.” I hear it again, I think it’s going back...surely no one else is planning on driving down these streets tonight. Who else would be out driving? The police use tanks in residential areas. Do we really think they know who they’re looking for, that if they meet a car on the road, they’ll wave politely and go their separate ways? These are powerdrunk triggerhappy psychomaniacs who are armed for full-on warfare. You'd have to be a maniac to leave the favela right now unless you were on foot...

Connie, don't copy this for my grandparents, okay?!

It's hard not to hate the police. I saw a billboard yesterday, in warm pastels with leaves all around the edges that said something like: "Military Police: Protecting You and Working for Peace." Something so ludicrous that I laughed out loud and missed writing it down. I'll keep my eyes out the next time I go down that road. I want a picture of it. Oh, the irony. You'd almost think it was a sarcastic joke...