By now I’m familiar with what happens to my brain pre-Brazil.
I’m nearing my fourth trip into the Amazon River basin, to serve on a medical missions boat.
In my day job, my pace and activity pick up speed as I try to set things in motion before I leave.
In my thoughts, the Portuguese begins to take over. I spend more and more time trying to think in Portuguese, to translate my activities into Portuguese.
And in my daily Bible-reading, I begin to weigh the words of scripture through the lens of the upcoming trip.
This morning, Psalm 65:8-9 jumped off the page: “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it.”
To rest on the deck of the boat while it moves across the water is a spiritual experience. I can put myself there in my mind fairly quickly – and to know I’ll be there again soon brings forth a song of joy.
“It” was fluency in Portuguese. This was in September 2018, on a medical missions boat in the Amazon River basin.
Earl had moved to Brazil with his wife, Ruth Anne, 50 years prior, and they had spent a full year in immersive language-learning before beginning their missions work.
On the boat, Earl heard my progress, and likely saw my eagerness to learn the language. When he gave me the 10-year timeframe, my first thought was this: “I can do it faster than that.”
Returning home in early October 2018, I buckled down. From 2018 to my next trip to Brazil in May 2022, I spent 5-10 minutes per day learning Portuguese on Duolingo. In 3.5 years, I missed less than 10 days; at one point, my streak was above 500 days.
Every morning – after reading the Bible and before exercise and learning – I put in the time. And the practice extends throughout the day as I try to think in Portuguese, narrating simple activities or taking notes. Disney+, too, is great, because it offers audio and subtitles in Portuguese.
Now, I’ve always loved the structure of words and language. And a few years of Spanish, from 7th to 10th grade, gave me a head start, because there are a number of similarities in the Latin roots. For example, “I have” is “Eu tenho” in Portuguese and “Yo tengo” in Spanish. And “yellow” is “amarela” in Portuguese and “amarilla” in Spanish.
During my first 10-day trip to Brazil in late 2014, I was hooked. As a volunteer on the boat – essentially a floating doctor’s office and dentist office – I was able to learn words and phrases and see, right away, whether they were working or not.
By the time I returned in May 2022, I had nearly completed the Portuguese course on Duolingo. (I’ve since finished it.) And I was really excited to see how far I had come.
The findings were both encouraging and sobering. I went in knowing that my ability was like that of a 3-year-old. (“Por favor, fala comigo devagar, como estou uma crianca,” or “Please speak to me slowly, like I’m a child.”)
On my résumé, I could probably say my skills are “basic” or approaching “conversational.” If given enough time, I can explain most things, substituting words I know for words I don’t know. And in Brazil, it really helped if a Brazilian knew a bit of English, so that we could find meaning together.
But the findings were also sobering, as I realized how far away I was from fluency. More often than not, a native speaker would rattle off a sentence and stare at me, waiting for my face to show that I understood… and, well, eu não entendi.
And every day, I’d reach a point where it was mentally exhausting, and my ears would literally stop trying to listening and decipher. I’d tune it out. To reengage, I’d have to flip the switch back on.
Even so, I’m still hooked. I’m still on Duolingo every day, working through each unit to earn the “legendary” trophies, and contemplating how to build into my daily schedule a 10-minute conversation with any willing Brazilian friend so that I can make faster progress.
Earl said 10 years, and for fluency, he’s probably right. But I still think I can do it a little faster!
Learning language on the Amazon: (clockwise from top left) 1. Pastor Agostinho and I spent hours trying to converse, with the help of the English he knew and Google Translate on my phone. 2. Daniela helped Pastor Bob with a few words, and helped me a great deal. She had met my daughter on our trip in 2018, and I was able to explain how my daughter’s boyfriend was nervous around me, which for a protective father was a positive thing. LOL. 3. When you go down the rabbit hole of learning a language, every situation is an opportunity to translate. On the river one evening, I was looking up how to say that the river had smooth circles on its surface. 4. Cristiano, at left, found it hilarious when I told him I remembered the sauce – made of lemon juice, hot sauce, salt, and sugar – from my first trip in 2014.
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.
Sun. Nov. 2
“Keep your eye on that young man,” Beaver said.
The sights and sounds of travel are enough to spur the packing of a suitcase, but it’s the people who stick in your mind the most. At the village this afternoon, a young Brazilian approached by himself in a boat. Wearing a pink polo shirt, white khaki shorts, and headphones around his neck, Sostenes walked up to me with an air of confidence and asked, with impeccable manners and impressive English, to see the doctor. Handsome with a dark complexion, clean haircut, and big smile, he had learned English from reading books at home and watching movies in Portugese and English while studying the subtitles… although he said, without too much of an accent, that he “still had a little bit to learn, somewhat.” His conversational skills in English were, by far, the best we’ve come across. When we tried to explain that his blood pressure was too high and we’d have to take it again, he explained that it was because he had “just walked up the… I’m not sure how to say [the bank]… and then walked back down to the boat. As it turns out, he’s studying for some sort of medical school entrance examination; he not only understood what we were trying to tell him about the pressure, but he understood the likely cause of its elevated state. I tried telling him in Portugese that we would take his blood pressure again, and my message wasn’t sticking—until he realized that he was listening for English while I was trying to practice my Portugese single-word requests and explanations. Later, in the service at the Assembly of God church up the hill, where he told us he was a musician, he was the only man wearing a tie (and this at, what, 17 years old? 19?), and while the pastor read a passage from Psalms, Sostenes recited it from memory.
“Keep an eye on that young man,” indeed. He’s going places.
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.
Sat. Nov. 1
We saw more patients this morning in Sao Francisco, giving us 122 instead of 99, thus upping our total to, I think, 322 for the trip. Many more came through today.
We continued what I’ll now call the sumo diet: carbs, sleep; carbs, sleep; carbs, sleep. Rice, pasta, meat, fruit, dessert, cookies, cake, etc., with a nap every afternoon after lunch. Same thing at dinner, and because the sun goes down at 6:00 and by 7:30 you’re showered and growing tired, you struggle to occupy yourself until 9:00 or so before falling asleep.
This evening, we strolled up on the bank, coming across two boys, maybe 9 and 11, fighting and laughing. Elbows, knees, spinning back kicks, takedowns, choke-holds. The little guy wasn’t laughing toward the end, having to deal with a weight disadvantage, but he wasn’t giving up. The first time we watched, one chased the other toward the stairs leading to the river, tripping the boy in front, who tumbled head over heels down the dirt-and-log stairs and grabbed a railing to stop his fall. The boy in the back slid, too, coming to a stop several stairs down. Then they ran down to the river and jumped in for a quick wash, as they were both covered head to toe in dirt. Up top, the second time, as we videotaped the bout, an older sister and younger brother also fought and kicked. As their mother called them in, I believe the girl told us to come back tomorrow—“aranha aqui.”
My Portugese is improving, one word at a time (uma palabra de uma vez). Day by day, Eduardo and I are able to converse with each other a little more. I’d like to think I’ll continue learning at home, but I know myself better. I need an immersive environment—and an experience like this refreshes my desire for this sort of work on a longer basis.
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 