A
TRIP TO BRAZIL

 
Anna, Carlos, John, Larry, Oliver, Kathryn, Kevin

Six of us from Dallas had a marvelous trip -- leaving from Miami and returning there -- first to Rio de Janeiro for three days, then to Iguaçu Falls for two and a half days, then to Sao Paulo for a half day, then back to the US.

The overall journey was arranged by Carlos Nascimento, Hispanic pastor at our church, Spring Valley United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. TAM Airlines donated the airline tickets except Dallas to Miami and return. The hotel and food expenses were largely paid for by the Brazilian Department of Tourism. Carlos, who is Brazilian, has booked many choir tours to Brazil. The Brazilian Department of Tourism allowed him to invite some of his friends from other churches on a tour of Brazil, with the hope that they might wish to do choir tours at their churches.

I attach a photo of our group (see above). From left to right: the tour guide, Anna; Carlos; John Tatum, choir director at Hamilton Park Baptist Church; Larry George, senior pastor at Spring Valley United Methodist Church; myself; Kathryn Strempke, associate pastor at Custer Road United Methodist Church; and her husband Kevin, senior pastor at Sunnyvale United Methodist Church.

As you might guess from the makeup of the group, we attended two church services and a prayer meeting in Rio de Janeiro and an evening worship service in Foz de Iguaçu, which is the city by the falls. We made a group presentation at each assembly.

For instance, at the church services Sunday I brought greetings from North America in Spanish, Larry and Kevin presented inspirational messages in English, translated by Carlos; Kathryn sang (beautifully), accompanied by John on the keyboard; and Carlos would end with a homily in Portuguese. After the meeting, wherever we went, the children would gather ‘round while John played for them.

In Rio de Janeiro we looked out from the 21st floor of our hotel on Copacabana Beach.

(I brought my binoculars in the hope of getting a better look at the girls playing volleyball in string bikinis, but found to my disappointment that the guidebook had overstated the case.)

All along the beach, by the sidewalk, there are refreshment stands, and I attach photos, one by day showing the coconuts...

...and the other by night, showing the use of the coconuts.

We took the cog railroad to the top of Corcovado Mountain, there to look out on one of the world’s great vistas, the harbor and city of Rio de Janeiro.

But also we left the tourist beat to visit church services in Rio de Janeiro and also facilities for the poor that have been established over the last two decades by Isaias de Souza Maciel, who once was a neighbor of Carlos’s in Rio de Janeiro.

After his two sons were kidnapped and murdered years ago, Isaias decided to devote his life to humanitarian causes, in particular providing facilities to help the poor. We drove on Monday morning to one location where Isaias had built a church, an orphanage and an old folks’ home.

We arrived in our van that morning in the orphanage parking lot. We got out, and as we were looking around, a big black VW sedan roared up and screeched to a halt. The doors flew open and three men popped out, the driver and two young men in the back seat who turned out to be bodyguards. Then the main man, Isaias, stepped out, a smiling man of medium height, apparently in his 70s, with a bristling white mustache, dressed in a grey business suit. Parallel to the orphanage building is another long similar building where the old folks are housed. Carlos said many are retired ministers who have no pensions to live on.

After greetings all around, Isaias gave us a tour. The rooms were clean. In the kitchen they were preparing a beef and rice lunch. Outside, Isaias showed us the space where he hopes to build a basketball court.

The kids were appealing and friendly.

One, named Allison, proudly gave me the name of each tree on the grounds. He is the one between Larry and me in the photo. The lady in the picture is our tour guide, Kalley. The kids get a half day of school whenever there are a van and a driver available to take them.

We next walked to the pretty little church that Isaias had built nearby. Inside, beside the pulpit, Isaias held an impromptu prayer meeting for our group and himself. Then we got back in our vehicles and drove to a drug rehabilitation clinic that he had established. We met there the director of the clinic, who has a Ph.D. in psychology.

After a brief visit, Isaias again led us to the site of his medical clinics. The route meandered along streets that were not squeaky clean by any means, but neither were they overflowing with trash. Walkers were everywhere. There appeared to be a tiny refreshment stand on most of the corners of the blocks.

One clinic is totally free. Here both medical and dental services are available. Isaias said those needing help begin to line up at four in the morning. He showed us the radiology department, which consists of two pieces of equipment: an old, old X ray machine, and a CAT scan machine that belongs to a doctor who allows the clinic to use it at times.

At the other clinic, across the street, the flat charge for any service was 10 reales, which at the current rate of exchange was about $2.85. This clinic looked more professional than its sister on the other side of the street because there seemed to be more doctors, or orderlies, in white jackets moving about. Isaias told us that the two clinics serve 1500 persons every day.

This man, Isaias de Souza Maciel, is highly respected in the district of Rio de Janeiro where he operates. They call him “El Presidente.”  People come up to shake his hand wherever he goes. Considering the section of the city we were in, we were glad for the presence of his guards, who kept their eyes peeled at all times and were careful not to let us stray far from our group.

From Rio de Janeiro we flew to Sao Paulo airport, changed planes, and then flew to Foz de Iguaçu, where Raul our tour guide met us. They took us to the Panorama Hotel, near the Falls. We were in the country, which is tropical, with lush foliage and palm trees.

Iguaçu Falls is really a collection of many falls. They stretch out for over a mile. Niagara is more spectacular, I think, because the water falls all in one spot, but Iguaçu is beautiful.

We roared upriver in a plastic boat holding about 40 persons, driven by an outboard motor; the boat struggled up through the rapids to like a salmon wiggling up a ladder. The driver halted at a pool at the foot of the falls so we could take pictures. After everyone had replaced his camera in a plastic bag, the driver put on a poncho and circled the boat over and over through one of the small waterfalls, whereupon we passengers got soaked, but the day was sunny and warm, and all survived in good humor.

About twenty kilometers downstream of the Falls, the Iguaçu River joins the Parana River. This confluence is remarkable because three countries border one another there: Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, as shown in the following diagram.

That afternoon we took a boat trip. It began at a point on the Brazilian side of the Iguaçu River, just downstream of the label “Iguaçu River” on the drawing. At the Parana River we turned left and proceeded along the river until the captain put the boat ashore at a little beach and everyone disembarked. The guide immediately led us up a jungle trail. He told us before we began that it would be only a mile long, but he didn’t stress the fact that it would be chiefly uphill, with few resting spots, and that the “steps” along the trail would be chiefly tree roots. But we all made it, although not all at the same time. I believe that John, who weighs more than 300 pounds, was the last to stagger into the clearing at the top of the hill. There stands the house of a Paraguayan naturalist named Moises Bertoni. The building is devoid of furniture, but his library and scientific apparatus are preserved as a testimony to his many contributions to the field of natural medicines.

Behind the house is a hill, and squatting on the side of the hill were Indian women, totally silent, surrounded by their little children. Displayed on blankets on the ground in front of them were the things they’d made: necklaces strung from native seeds, miniature bows and arrows, miniature blowpipes, complete with feathered darts in little quivers; and wooden jaguars with wood burned spots.

They didn’t know what to make of John Tatum, probably not having seen a creature quite like John before, but after he made overtures of friendship they lost their fear and allowed him to sit among them.

Going down was not as bad as climbing up.

When we reached the beach, the captain of the boat showed us a fish he had caught while we were away. It was a fat one, at least 18 inches long. He said he’d seen five or six others that big swimming around the boat...

...And I believed every word of it, because the next day, when we had lunch at a restaurant on the Parana River, the manager proudly brought in a day’s catch, suspended from the upper bar on a kind of cart with clothes racks like bellboys use for bags at a hotel. (I thought a Parana monster, if there is one, could give the Loch Ness monster, if there is one, a run for his money.)

Upstream of the confluence of the Iguaçu and Parana rivers, between Brazil and Paraguay, is the world’s largest hydroelectric plant. Perhaps nothing evokes the scale of this massive undertaking better than the size of the intake pipes to the water turbines.

Rather than bicker or feud or go to war with one another, Brazil and Paraguay together build a facility that benefits all concerned. And they accommodated one another. Brazil uses alternating current at 60 cycles per second; Paraguay uses alternating current at 50 cycles per second. The engineers solved this problem by installing one set of generators for Brazil and another for Paraguay.

To celebrate this marvelous expression of good will, Larry and Carlos clasped hands across one of the border lines.

Between the Falls and our hotel was Bird Park, which we visited. Raul was our guide on this excursion. He told us how many species of parrots, toucans and macaws there are Brazil. Maybe we didn’t see all of them in the Bird Park, but we must have seen darn near all of them.

The birds outside the cages have no fear. One toucan sat on a bridge rail, oblivious to our presence. The guide joked that he was made of plastic.

The national animal of Brazil is the coati, which everyone told us was an anteater.  He looks like a cross between a raccoon, an opossum, and an ice cream cone.

We also saw a placid iguana hugging a branch.

On the return trip, we flew from Foz de Iguaçu to Sao Paulo, spent an afternoon in a vast shopping mall, and then caught the night plane to Miami. Supper was at 9:30, breakfast at 3:30. Everyone eats well on TAM Airlines!

music:  Na Boquinha da Garrafa Companhia do Pagode (trad. Brazilian samba)

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Brasília

Brazil's flag is a deep green banner with a yellow diamond enclosing a night-blue, star-studded Southern Hemisphere sky. The sky depicts 27 white, five-pointed stars (one for each state and the Federal District); the stars are arranged in the pattern of the night sky over Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889 (this is the date when the last Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, was deposed, and the republic was proclaimed). The stars in view include the constellations Southern Cross (also called Crux), Scorpio, Canis Major and others. A banner across the sky reads, "ORDEM E PROGRESSO," which means "order and progress" in Portuguese.

This flag was adopted on May 11, 1992 - it was an adaptation of an earlier Brazilian flag from November 15, 1889.