Note: I returned Nov. 7 from nearly two weeks on a medical missions boat in Brazil with the Central Brazil Mission. Before departing, I prayed that I’d have the time, energy, and opportunity to write about the trip—and then I was invited to be the diarist for the journey. Because I had no Internet access, I’ll post the entries here, one per day. They’re unedited, just as they appeared when I finished them each evening.
Thurs. Oct. 30
Routine has set in, such that I wasn’t sure what day it was until I opened up the journal document here and saw yesterday’s date. I had an inkling, as the wife and kids were planning to carve pumpkins after dinner this evening.
Which brings to mind a particular blessing: the ability to make phone calls for free over the boat’s wi-fi network. I traveled here fully expecting that I could be incommunicado for two full weeks—and while the wi-fi’s functionality is spotty, and the modem seems to have a radius of perhaps 15 feet, tying you and your phone to the kitchen’s epicenter of reception, I’m pleased as punch to be able to call my wife and kids and talk for 15 minutes, as I did this afternoon, with crystal-clear reception. I called my parents, too, and caught them on my mom’s cell phone right before their evening routine of swimming at the nearby campus gym.
Other creature comforts: bodyweight exercises on the top deck as the sun set with Brian, the other exercise junkie on the boat. Confinement on a boat makes the fitness addict look for makeshift pull-up bars, parallel bars for dips (“baja,” in Portugese, I think), sit-ups, and more. (In general, being divorced from routine makes me long for a return to it—such as healthy eating with less meat and rigorous exercise.) Brian brought a jump rope. For pull-ups, I employed the fin-like whatchamacallit (mast?), the 12- or 14-foot tall tower on the top deck that holds the Brazilian flag, communications gear, and the powerful horn that beckons our patients from their homes. We attempted some handstands, bracing our feet against the tower’s ladder and then bracing them not at all. Brian, a retired physical education teacher, showed me what he called a Marine Corps push-up. Similar to a plank, you lie face down with your arms stretched out at full length above your head. Pressing your hands and toes into the ground, and tightening your core, you’re supposed to rise up off the ground. Brian could… and I could not. This I will have to remedy. While teaching, Brian would tell his students he’d give them an A if they could do three things: the Marines’ push-up, a 360-degree spin in the air, and a one-legged jump through the loop made when one hand holds your airborne foot.
Above left: Brian, at the door, would welcome patients onto the boat. Above right: I helped to weigh and measure patients, recording the data on their medical forms.
***
Today’s medical visits were at a more relaxed pace… at least for us. The dentist was three or four patients deep all day. For us, we stopped late morning and took a stroll into the community, the mid-90-degree sunshine bearing down bright and oppressive. We waved at residents on their porches, high-fived schoolchildren (uniformed, in what looked like, to me, soccer jerseys) rushing away for lunch, and stood atop a bridge that looked rather rickety even when an ancient dump truck rumbled across its span.
As the patients rolled in, Eduardo, resident of Goiania and husband of the dentist, continued our routine of communicating, slowly but surely, and translating words one by one. Whenever Earl could spare five seconds, I learned more, translating into Portugese those common verbs I know in Spanish that will cover many needs: “I need,” “I want,” “I like,” etc. I can’t yet conjugate the verbs, of course, to say “You need,” and so forth, not knowing whether the article appears in front or is absorbed in the word itself. Other phrases I can deduce by looking at our phrase sheet, with about 25 phrases already translated for our linguistic edification. Each day, I pick up a few more words (see the image below), and relish the idea of being in a foreign country—here, elsewhere, wherever—long enough, in an immersive setting with daily instruction, to begin speaking the language competently. I’d like to think that I could have functional knowledge of a language in six months—especially one like Portugese, given my prior foundation of some Spanish study in junior high and high school.
Above: The mission provided us with a Portugese phrase sheet, which I quickly started embellishing.
***
This evening, as we exercised on the top deck, the sun sank, casting in streaks across the sky those oranges and yellows and reds that warm our hearts. The beams of light reflected on the water’s shimmering calm as the wind ushered in cooler air. River dolphins—which, incidentally, will stop surfacing and/or jumping as soon as you pull out your phone—frolicked closer to the boat than they did yesterday. Smoke from a wood fire and a baby’s wails drifted toward us from the village as we awaited our dinner.
upwardfit 