Snippets

The Copacabana Palace has a job in which the employee’s sole purpose is to scare away the pigeons. He’s an “espantador de pombas.” Imagine. A couple of guys in nice hotel suits, who walk around the grounds all day and spook the pigeons. Priceless.
***
The other job I love? Professionais de abastecimento. Professional fuelers. They pump your gas. And they take training seriously…there's actually PROGRAMS and STATIONS that specialize in training people to pump gas. Ah...Brazil!
***
Ben told a story this week about the kids at the after-school program playing tag. Dengue tag. They'd gotten a mosquito mask from the public health workers, a black thing with a pointy snout that was striped black and white. And the other kids would try not to get poked. When they were bitten by the Dengue IT, everyone else turned on the poor mosquito and chased him with brooms and swatters!
***
Also courtesy of Ben, the dengue-proof suit: a hat with attached mosquito net that falls to the ground like a South American burqua. I wonder if it works going up stairs...
***
Last week on the streets, the Servant Team girls brought finger paints. For the most part, the finger paints went on finger and papers. But there was one kid who wanted to graffiti the white walls of the Lapa arches. My original argument wasn't convincing him, so I told him that the paint was wrong and wouldn't dry right. So if he painted on the walls, and someone leaned up against it, he'd be responsible for ruining their clothes. Street kids are pretty picky about their shirts...and he backed away from the wall and didn't try it the rest of the night! A little lie...but then, it IS possible that the paint was washable, in which case it might come off on clothes...There was also a kid throwing stones, a small fight involving a crazy old man and bananas, and a knife. But no one was hurt. Just a normal night in Lapa.