Plantation

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I woke up. My cell phone read 6:04. Twenty six minutes until my alarm would go off. I went back to sleep. Beep—buz—beep–. I got up took the sheets off my mat for the last time. I had dropped into these strangers house two months before. I had slept on this floor for the last month and a half. I rolled up my foam mat and put it in its corner.

 

            Claudia came down stairs and made her breakfast.

 

I sorted my things. I left in a drawer the pieces I wouldn’t need for the next three weeks. I left David Copperfield, Tom sawyer and a picture of me kissing Shoshi’s head all which I had finished reading.

 

I put six kilo’s of rice, 3 kilos of beans and 6.6 pounds of cassava flour in a bag. I drank my coffee. In the house, they make it in an Italian pot. The grounds are in the bottom in a small net. Below them you put the water. When the water boils it expands and is pushed up into the ground then through a pipe which spills into a chamber on top with sweet gurgling smells. It distances the coffee from the heat, keeping the coffee from being burnt.

I went up stairs to take a shower. I asked Marcia “you called a taxi for me?” She had a service. “Yes, for 8:00 o’clock,” she responded. “I have to be there at 8:00.” I said meekly. Once again language had kept me from getting my point across. She called. I quickly washed.

I took three chickens from the freezer and put them in a footlocker bag. Claudia said, “I’ll see you when you get back” and then quickly left to work. I don’t think I will see her again.

I put on tight green corduroys, a brown chemise, and leather Safari boots, made by Batta. Marcia call out,”David your taxi is here.” I pulled on my orange pack, lifted my Manhattan portage sack, kissed Marcia and Lese on their cheeks goodbye, and put the bags in the back of the taxi. I went back to get my chickens and dried goods. Living with strangers makes goodbyes easier. No real pain in leaving, just purpose.

The taxi pulled up to the agronomy building. A two-story jungle shack. Two pistoled guards lift the yellow and black striped security gates stopping cars. People walk through without harassment. I put my bags next to the building’s light green wall. I waited

It was a quarter past 8:15 and a cigarette was in my hand. Smoke left my ember.

            Professors Charles Clemens is from Oregon. He lives in Brazil and studies black soil generation. Black soil is biomass rich soil that is formed naturally over time as carbon is deposited in the soil through vegetation decay and forests cycle. Black soil land is highly valued in the Amazon for its crop yields. He walked up: “What’s that? The start of your first cancer?” he smiled and continued, “Congiki wont be going today, let me introduce you to the guy who will take you to the fruiticulture station.” I followed professor Clemins to meet the superviser. He was a Billoon of a s with a few teeth missing.. “ We Sai aloe tudo bein,” to eachother. He asked Professor Clemins if I spoke Portuguese. I said “pouco” He said in portugues, “You had beter because I speak very good Portuguese.”

I put my gear and food in the back of a covered bed-pickup truck with six, INPA weed-wackers and a pair of boots.

We got in the truck. I sat in the front with my laptop on it. Four men with missing teeth and deep sun lines sat in back. “You have a Hammock?” the supervisor who was driving asked as we pulled out of Agronomia’s parking lot. “No, a Hammock, No I don’t have one I don’t think,” I responded making sure I understood his Portuguese.

The road we pulled out onto, V8, was completely full. A volkswagon minibus let us out. The supervisor swung the truck into both lanes.

We drove out of Manaus to Agronomia’s experiemental fruit plantation. The Radio played a mix of Brazilian and American classic country, with a smattering of Gwen Stefani and Shania Twain.

On the way, the supervisor talked, a lot, of good Portuguese. The rest of us listened.

We pulled off the asphalt onto a red-dirt road. The truck hopped over the road’s ruts. We stopped in front of the station of the plantation I had visited two weeks before. I got out of the truck, put the chickens and plant parts directly in the Kitchen. I put my backs in he station, asked where my bed was, and was shown a bunk bed with the top bunk serving as a shelf. The foam mattress I was to sleep only a foot below the shelf. I hoped I didn’t have nightmares that made me bolt upright in the three weeks I was staying here.

I told a guard that I was going for a walk. “How do you say,” I said while miming waling. He sait, corre. I told him I was going for one of those.

I set off around the plantation to check on the four colonies of Leaf-Cutters I had found on my prior visit. It was now ten o’clock. The first two weren’t active yet. The plantation is a large rectangle. I had started on the North East side. I walked he perimeter. It skirted the forest edge. Thick underbrush blocked my view inside. Birds screetch and sang constantly. This side was taking the brunt of the sun. Particles of light slammed into the forest and sprayed back as greens and browns. I made my way past the north east corner.

I continued. At 11:00, I turned onto the south side of the parameter. It led along a small pond. On the ground I spotted an ant carrying a bright green leaf twice the size of its body. It didn’t notice the weight. I followed it to its colony, and then followed the trail back out to where it was harvesting. I realized that if this colony was active now, some of the others might be too.

I walked back up the eastern side the station where I had started. I met Patricia, and shared Ciggerettes, I asked how she was. She dismissively demanded the day was good and she was fine.

I took water and went to check the second colony again. I walked along the trail. I jumped over a tree that had fallen in the path and lept off it, bouncing over vines that hung from the felled trunk. I got to the second colony and saw some dead leaves being carried inside. I knelt down to watch.

By the door to the colony two ants wrestled. Their legs pushed against each other. Their mandibles reached for their opponent’s legs. The bigger one had six legs. The smaller one four. The smaller one shoved a foot into the larger’s face, stretching her thorax she locked-onto and lopped-off the larger’s left hind leg. A number of Leaf-Cutter ants walked past and examined the fight, but didn’t intervene. The larger one then pushed the smaller with her gastor. Repositioned, she scissored off the smaller’s front right leg.

A small black ant, a crematogastor, picked up the loose legs and carried them away for food.

The two combatants rolled down the bare ground of the Leaf-Cutter trail. Their mandibles seeking to de-leg each other. They took the legs with until the larger had only one, and the smaller none. Legless, the smaller seized her opponents last leg. Then the larger reach her pencers around the smallers kneck, and cut her head off. The head stayed attached to the leg, but without a body to bring leverage to bear, the headless Amazon warrior couldn’t take the last leg. Its hard to say if the body lost a head or the head a body, because both continued to wriggle after being parted, but the decapitated head simply clung to the victors last leg.

Another Leaf-Cutter approach the death match. This one stopped and engaged. She removed the victors last leg like a twig of a harvest plant. The victor stretched her body, towards the new fighter. She pulled herself around the legged foe.

Two crematogastor drug away the severed gastor, and thorax of the headless ants carcass.

The two new combatants intertangled their bodies and tumbled down the hill the trail was build on. Working her way around the new comers body she scissored off all the legs. The new comer tumbled off her besieged opponent. they accidently rolled away from each other, both ending up on their backs. Their leg stubs, only the joints where the legs meet the bod left, tried to get traction and flip the bodies. The earlier victor tried to use her mandibles to right herself: pushing one into the ground she turned her head to put herself back on her belly. The new combatant rolled herself over. Once righted, both used their mandibles to drag themselves back towards their foe. As the warriors approached each other anew, the fresh was grabbed by swarming crematogastor. She fought them off, slicing the air with her mandibles.

The old combatants recommenced combat. Their seized each other with their pincers. Both sought to scissor the other’s head. Then, staring each other down, eye to eye, they locked in a cross: they both placed one mandible under the others chin, and the other right between the eyes. Their jaws dug into each others’ faces. Intertwined in a cross, a large black ant, echtotomes, fought off the crematogastor, which were waiting for the bodies, and carried way the two moribund contestants. The evidence of the brawl cleared away even before the opponents die.

The three leaf-cutter ants were from the same colony. All of medium size. It wasn’t a raid. Most Leaf-Cutters that past the brawl didn’t stop, merely passed. But the three had dismembered each other with vigor. How could it be evolutionarily beneficial for ants from the same colony, 100% the same genes, to desiccate each other? If a whole colony acted this way, there would only be body parts. How could such a maladaptive behaviour evolve?

 

I stood up and walked back to the station for coffee, a cigarette and people.

 

 

New Photos

Slide Show

A Pause

I have to pause here, at the end of two months and see my life as it was then. Every night American television played on our screen. I watched two and a half men, and scenes from an HBO show about office life in the 1950s. I passed a night in the Manaus opera house, and had a Hamburgurer (hahm’boiger) and coke at the local eatry. My friends had hamburgurs and fruit shakes. Buses were crowded, shopping malls had thousands of people eye products they couldn’t afford. American movies played in the cinema’s I went to See Hellboy II, teenagers piled in to watch the lastest Steven king movie, The Mist (Neveiro). Dinner was different, language was different, people and places were different, different than i’m use to. However, that seems the case everywhere.

I get excited now when I think of going to Senegal. Its not that I have exhausted brazil, its the most colorful and multipart country I have ever been to. Ever region so different, everyone quite proud of where they came from, but no one quite sure “What Brazil is” I love it. No, I’m excited because I personally need to see new things. By staying put in One city for two months I have gone against what I am naturally happiest doing. I now know manaus, can get around. Can be bored, and not feel I am making a snap decision about a new place.

Anyways, enough for the pause. I am leaving for a small Experimental agronomy field station on Monday North of Manaus, for three weeks and I don’t believe I will have internet, So, if your wondering where I went, I will speak again after the 14th of October. Keep well, call your friends,

Anthopper.smugmug.com, new photos put in the UFAM gallery.

Kit

6. Ducke Reserve

That night Olivia asked if I could take a picture of the cicada she works with in the morning. I agreed. In the morning I met Olivia in the student center of INPA. I then went to the INPA type species collection. Taxonomy describes the form of species, and by doing gives order to the endless variety of life. A type species is the specimen that was originally described in order to define a species. INPA has a large collection of type species in its entomology collection. This collection looks and smells like a bank vault full of drunks: many of the species are stored in alcohol, and as such the building reeks of it.

The building is directly across the quart yard from the entomology building where the student room is. When we arrived, Olivia told me, “wait here while I arrange the specimens.” I was left standing in a brown walled marble floored intersection with large dull gray shelves of drawers, I presume were full of dead insects.

I waited for a few minutes and then called Fabricio. I said “Alò this is Kit.” He replied, “what? what is this?” I corrected myself: “Hey, this is David.”

“Oh, hi David, we will go tomorrow morning. My girlfriend has a dance class in the morning and can’t take us then. We’ll go in the afternoon.”

“Do we need anything for the trip, How many meals will we eat?”

“So, we will only eat dinner tomorrow, and breakfast and lunch. We’ll come home tomorrow night.” He meant Sunday.

Insect sampling is closely monitored in Brazil. I went into the collection when Olivia came out. She asked me to sit in a chair and wait some more. She went back to the front office to get a piece of paper giving her permission to carry her collection of insects back to the south of Brail.

I got my camera out. The body is black. I unscrewed the protective cap on the sensor to put in my extension tubes. They are five inches long. Then I took of the cap at the end of the tubes. I mounted the sigma 105mm macro-focus lens into the tubes. I turned on the camera and took off the lens cap. The lens and tubes are a foot long. The entire apparatus weighed six pounds.

I mounted the camera on the guide rail. A guide rail is a mount that allows the camera to move laterally while attached to the tripod. This is essential in macro-photography, because the depth of focus is only a few milimetres. When the subject is only that big, delicately focusing means moving the plane of focus towards or away from the subject. While holding the camera, I could doven, but even the vibration of pressing the shutter button shakes the shot into complete obscurity. Therefore, without extremely steady hands, a tripod is necessary. Which makes lateral motion difficult. Consequently, I mount the camera on a guiding rail on a tripod.

I took a few practice shots to gauge the light. Inside the drunken vault, it was terrible: only fluorescents.

Olivia came back and apologized for keeping me waiting. We went inside the main collection and took some shots of her species. Because of the light, they all came out awful. As I was going with Febricio in the morning, I felt conscious about being responsible to take his field guide’s pictures—fast moving ants—and I couldn’t manage to capture a dead cicada in a box.

I went back to the casa, packed my backpack and played with Catherine, my camera.

The following day, I went to INPA.

Fabricio was late. We arranged to meet at 1:00, after his girl friend’s class. I arrived on time. I waited at the foot of a water tower in INPA. I sat on a metal lawn chair with the foam falling off. He showed up at half past, to sign a girl’s money request. Even on Saturday he had paper work. I put my orange pack in the back seat of the couple’s Fiat.

The three of us set off for Ducke Reserve. Duck is a 10 km by 10 km forest fragment on the edge of Manaus. It was set off half a century ago in the 1950s. INPA established Ducke as its first reserve. Consequently, the schools of researchers who have worked at INPA studied it extensively. It is one of the most studied squares of tropical rain forest in the world.

While we drove to Ducke, Fabricio commented on the state of Brazil. The road we’re on is the only way north of Manaus. All the pieces that don’t fit in Manaus are here. Look, its Manaus’ trash can.” Buzzards circled overhead. We passed a football field sized one hundred foot high pile of dirt with plastic protruding out from the sides. A smell of cooking broccoli ad foot slid into the car.

Then a few kilometres further, Fabricio said, ” Shh, coming up is something.” We waited in silence. Fabricio mumbled, “Now where is it? His girl friend said, “Where is what?” He insisted, “Wait, David needs to see this.” The Fiat pulled up a hill. Fabricio pointed to the left. “Look, there, its a Flevella. When I moved to Manaus, five years ago, that was all forest.”

Though a number of shops mostly blocked the view from the hillside, between the buildings I saw thousands of houses. Their red-clay roofs stretching off, Forest trees interspersed with white plaster walls.

“A flevale, they started in Rio, is an illegal settlement.” Fabricio explained. “People in Manaus clear forest, build a house, and then sell the land later for someone else to build a nicer house. “They don’t buy the forest?” I asked. “No, its completely illegal.” I proposed its better than the other options: “their all not having a house, or the government knocking them down if they tried to build one for health or other concerns…” He and his girl friend went incredulously silent.

We drove further out of Manaus. Trucks and buses roared towards us on the other side of the road and onward towards Manaus. We passed Texas Farm on our left, who knew Texas was brand name worthy. A few feet on, we stopped at the gates of Ducke Reserve on our right. They were simple metal gates, painted green, providing an opening in the barbed wired fence. Behind them, hundred foot high trees rooted in the soil. Their tendrils reaching down sucked life from the ground high into the sky.

“The station’s three kilometres inside. We have to climb this short hill, then the rest of the way is on a plateau, until we descend to the field station.” Fabricio explained.

We got out of the car, packs on, walked through the green gates, up the eroded dirt road and into the forest.

I said, “I expect a T-rex to bounce out any minute.” the trees along the road were woven together by vines which hung from bushes and shrubs. The growth created a venerable wall along the roadside. Only ants crossed. As they did, Fabricio talked about them.

Once we ascended the plateau, pools of water lived on the road. “The water table is high here. Above ground here with the amount of rain.” The puddles extended across the whole road, which had been cut into the forest floor through continued use. We had to slalom along to get around the agua.

We walked down a hill, and greeted the wardens of Ducke station. They asked for our papers, Fabricio handed them one.

The station was an L shape of buildings surrounding a central pitch. Though it had tufts of Grass, mostly the field was bare dirt. “We can put our bags here.” Fabricio directed. Inside the room hammocks hung from the wall and two mushy looking beds sat on the floor. We put our bags down.

“Ready to go?”

“Yah, I’ll just get the camera out.” I replied. I pulled the black case out of my orange pack, and slung it over my shoulder. Then I got out the tripod. I had affixed a piece of orange 300-test line to one of the tripod’s legs to serve as a strap. I slung the tripod as well. With my equipment over my shoulders, I walked into the forest to photograph ants.

We walked into the forest at the apex of the L of buildings, a path leading down a staircase descended towards a stream and up a hill into the trees. The steps were irregularly small. In order not to take three or four at a time, leading to a jolting controlled fall, the stairs required a loping stride.

Along the hundred metre long concrete step path a trail of atta, leaf-cutter, ants worked. Thousands of them carried leaves down the hill. In their trail other species of ants, spiders, and beetles walked as well.

At the bottom of the stairs, the human path crossed a decaying bridge with the boards falling threw, and nails sticking out. The atta trail followed beside and over the bridge. The ants had cleared all obstructions from their path, leaving only bear fluffy dust.

We crossed the bridge. On the other side we saw caches of leaves atta had left. To avoid workers walking all the way back to the colony, these caches of cut leaves piled to be taken back by bucket brigade.

At the edge of the forest proper we found the colony: a five-metre mound of dirt with several inch-wide doorways. Thousands of ants entered and left the two main tunnel entrances carrying their leafy loads to the fungus farms which lay within.

We left the colony and entered the forest. We found a Caponotus Rapax, with its red-orange gastor. It dashed. I assembled my camera and hung the stock upside down so that the camera hung between the legs. I lay flat on the ground and adjusted the focus. But the caponotus wouldn’t stay still. I darted the camera around to keep her in focus: picking up the tripod by two legs and bending over the ground hovering the camera over the ant. Fabricio said, “She likes salt, lets put down a bait.” He half chewed a nutri-grain bar and spit on the ground. That was the trick; she slid next to it and harvested his expectoration.

I dangled the two-foot tripod with the several pound camera over her. With the lens three inches from her, and me lying completely prone on the ground, I snapped the shutter closed.

Next up the trail I found another type of caponotus. It’s a docile, flat-headed creature. Fabricio picked it up and placed it in front of the camera. As if it would help, she played dead while I adjusted focus and took her. “She is used to the forest litre, where staying still is invisibility,” Fabricio explained. On the open trail, her trick made her easy prey for my slow adjusting lens.

Quite Luckily, we came across an Eciton, army ant, trail. Army ants are usually nocturnal. “Be careful, they bite,” cautioned Fabricio while I set my camera next to the bivouac. Eciton don’t build permanent nests from soil, instead they form a mound of bodies linked together under the litre of the forest floor. Inside, the larva, their producers and booty caches are protected, while the majority of the colony hunts for more prey.

Gingerly, I knelt down next to the bivouac. Fabricio poked it with a stick to remove obstructing leaves. Kneeling between two harvesting trails, I put the lens as close as I dared.

Their reddish orange bodies teamed over each other. A major, with a large white head, and smiley-face eyes came out of the litre. I frantically snapped the shutter, trying to frame a shot in the two-inch rectangle-frame that captured the immensity of Millions of individuals who foraged hundreds of metres which contained untold numbers of species of plants and animals. The complete immensity of the system over-burdened the picture. With my super macro focus, each shot only caught the eye of a couple of ants. Part of the picture was always out of focus. I thought:

The force of Photography is that it keeps open to scrutiny instants which the normal flow of time immediately replaces. This freezing of time—instant, poignant stasis of each photograph—has produced new and more inclusive cannons of beauty. But the truths that can be rendered in a dissociated moment, however significant or decisive, have a very narrow relation to the needs of understanding. Contrary to the humanists’ claim of photography, the camera’s ability to transform reality into something beautiful derives from its relative weakness as a means to convey truth.
(Sontag, On Photography, 112)

“Quick, catch this,” Fabricio exclaimed from behind me. I turned and saw an inch long ant, Pachycondyla Comutata. It scurried across the ground, hiding its immense size underneath scattered leaves. I picked up the tripod and walked on my knees while looking through the viewfinder. I caught site of the out-of-focus black form and brought the camera down and snapped the shutter in batches of ten. As I chased her across the path, she kept escaping. She stopped under a leaf. Fabricio said, ” she moves quickly for her size,” then after a pause continued, “Get the camera ready. I will lift the leaf and you take her. ” I adjusted focus for where she would be underneath the leaf. He lifted. I caught her gastor and hind legs just as she concealed herself under a new obstruction. She got away into the forest without me ever catching her eye with my lens.

I turned my attention back to the Eciton. I said, “I need to take one alone.” Having given up on rendering the whole, I tried to isolate one individual. They moved too fast to be disassociated.

Without the image I wanted, I turned to a new subject. I carried the tripod and camera completely assembled. We walked up the path. An ant hopped across our way like a flea. Fabricio said, “Its Gigantiops Destructor, the only species to evolve jumping legs. It hunts other ants and has very large eyes.” I fell to the ground with my lens. She saw me and dashed. The chase was on. I crept up she ran away, I tried to out maneuver her she moved faster. Then her eyes filled my viewfinder, but her silky skin was tantalizingly out of focus.

I took off the extension tubes. Her specially evolved form became meaninglessly small.

She climbed onto my boot. Sitting on the ground, camera in hand, I shot her. Another Gigantiops Destructor approached. They communed while I took their picture. I wished I still had my extension tubes on to take the moment in macro-focus.

Just then Fabricio found crimatogastor under the bows of a nearby plant. I put back on the extension tubes to get the tiny bodies, and setup next to the small plant. With the foot long lens pointed at the arboreal colony, only inches from it, the camera tipped forward and felled the small plant and the tripod. While the camera smashed into the ground, it tore off the leaf the colony was built under.

“Foda!” I cried standing up. Fabricio picked up the Camera. I took it from him and looked down at the crimatogastor colony that lay on the ground.

I looked down at my shirt. It was dripping with sweat. Fabricio said, “Let me.” As he wasn’t nearly as wet, I assented. Fabricio wiped off the camera

I checked the camera. Nothing was broken.

Seeing the colony prone on the ground I took its picture. Finally, finding a subject that I could frame completely, I stood up to have a cigarette. Bits of tobacco drifted down as I pulled the pack out of my pocket. The past hour climbing on the ground had mangled it. I pulled a twisted cigarette out. I lit it. The smoke corkscrewed because of the twirled shape. Dripping sweat, I smoked it anyway.

I readjusted the tripod legs, the head, and the mounting plate to get the guiding rail straight again. Then, I bent down and snapped a trachyrmex.

We left the main trail onto a side trail. The main path had once been a road, but was put out of use for cars, and now the forest reclaims the edges.

On the side trail we found several species. We came across another crimatogastor. These, however, harvest nectar from cicadas: while the cicada ate from the plants oozing nectar, the ants stood patiently by to directly harvest from the sugar rich excrement of the cicada.

We looped back to the main trail and found Echtatomus on a branch. Its exoskeleton, annoyingly, reflected the flash without fail.

Fabricio and I walked back to the field station. I dismantled my camera there on a picnic bench. I put the parts back into the black bag.

We took showers.

The Amazon teems with life: to stop fungus growing inside my camera and all over my lens, I put my camera in an air-conditioned lab at the field station to dry it out. I opened up all the sections and left it on a workbench.

I pulled out another twirled cigarette. While I smoked, Fabricio talked about his life in New York City: “I went to learn English. It was a great city, My dad lives there. In the US. I worked at this Italian Resaurante. There was this one section at the bar where you could smoke. The waiters, they sat there, and got drunk. Hah, we would stumble over to tables for orders, smoke a cigarette and then place them. Drink all night.”

“I had a lot of girl friends there. They liked me because I wasn’t from there. I was Brazilian.”

“I went to my to my fathers house, he lives in Pennsylvania. His American Wife. His whole family, they were so friendly. They all wanted me to eat dinner with them. Every night I went to another house.” Throwing his head back and opening wide, he tossed an imaginary goblet down his throat. “I would drink Hah! The next day I would say I couldn’t get up. Jet lag,” he laughed. “Its only an hour difference I was hung every night.”

“So, the restaurant in New York went good for a while. One night they started to invite me to stay more. I was special. My grand father and father are Italian. They told all the Mexicans that worked in the kitchen to go home on some nights. They let me stay because I was Italian. These nights guys in suits came. We drank a lot, they talked: ‘Niger, chink’ and it was.” He makes a face.

“One of these nights I’m drunk. Too drunk to work. My boss tells me to leave. I’m on the street. I wake up and I’m in this bed. I ask where I am. A woman says, ‘found you on the street, told you you couldn’t sleep there. Its December,’ She says ‘you could freeze.’ She brought me home.”

“Later, when my job got real bad this lady found me another one. I made a lot of money. I spent it all. I would call Ticket Master. Say, whose playing. Buy ticket like that. I bought books. The Strand I love. I brought home seven boxes of books.”

I finished my cigarette. We went to bed talking about New York and ants.

7. Trail Formation

New ant pictures Anthopper.com

As the bus pulled down Highway 10-AM I left Manaus for Rio Preto Da Eva. Pillows of air billowed the bus’ curtains. My thoughts drifted on the air through the window. The morning I had spent finding the bus station the twenty beers I drank last yesturday, the jungle outside the window. Movies made the jungle mysterious, my view from a bus window made it the lining on a road.

I passed Ducke reserve where I had gone with Fabricioi. It marked the farthest point I had traveled. But in what direction? I arrived in Brazil by plane. I have no home, no origin. Marking points of distance seemed so natural, but made no sense without origin.

The couple in the seat in front of me made out. They touched an breathed. That gave their trip meaning. The girl got off the bus at a military post along the way, the guy left the bus a few miles further on.

An hour later, everyone stood up. I guessed we arrived. I didn’t know what Rio Preto looked like, but as the bus stopped I alighted.

A couple walked into the station as I left it. The man was wearing only a blue speedo and a pink intertube over his shoulder. I suppose he rode the bus that way.

It started to drizzle as I walked into town. Rio Preto da Eva is built on the course of the black river. The river is narrow but deep. Because the rain increased, I ducked into a bar by the river.

A long haired hipp drank fermented sugar cane, Cachaça, at the bar. A girl from next door stared at me. Unsure if she liked me or thought I disturbed the fung shwe, I looked around. A grill sat in front with two big fish on it. Several long tables for communal eating filled the room. I sat through the rain storm drinking beer. When it finished I bumbed a cigarrette from the hippy. He was from Rio De Janheiro. He said “my girl and baby are there.” he had hair to his butt, no chin, and a long beard thin beard. The Beard seemed to grow from his cheeks, fall over the lack of a chin and hang straight onto his kneck.

He said he was walking to Mexico. He asked, “Did I walk Manaus?” I said that would be long time. A two hour bus ride is a hell of a walk. He replied, “This government is shit man: they throw shit. The Amazon. Future? If you put. It goes. Vamos.” He kept speaking all in Portugues, I missed the rest.

Two others sat with us at the bar. They were drunk. One said, mostly with his hands, people here put into the ground and it comes. They put into their mouths. Then they put it into the ground’s mouth. The whole time, the other guy tried to get the hippy, who didn’t speak English either, to translate for him.

The Hippy kept saing “Its peace and love, man.” The drunkest man shook my hand and, after glaring at the one who gestured with his hands, said that he was drunk now and he was going to sleep. He left, walking up the road that ran through the center of town.

As we sat and smoked cars passed with huge sound systems. They blared campaign songs for local politicians. The cars themselves were covered in stickers and banners of men in suites, I presume the politicians. I didn’t see any people with sleeves on the street, let alone suites. I wondered what the politicians did locally.

The sound blared so loud it drowned everything. Because the cars are always repeating the songs and driving in circles around town the doppler effect is the only change in the song. I can’t imagine how monotonous it is to drive those thirty second campaign songs around.

Their are several candidates. Some don’t have as much cash it seems, for there are also mo-ped mounted sound pushers. A sound system as large as the driver weighs down the back of the tiny motorcycle. The mo-ped drives slowly up and down hills. Up because the motor can’t pull anymore, down to avoid accelerating too fast.

I finished the hippy’s last cigarro, said tchau to the bar, and asked the hippy his name. He responded: “Jay, like the hemp.”

I explored the town, I was looking for agricultural land. After walking up the road to the edge of town, I lopped back through side streets. Motorcycles made up most of the traffic. The taxi’s were even motorcycles.

Rio Preto is a small town. Taverns and flip-flops take up most the the shop space, along with hand built plaster buildings and peeling pastel paint. Women hang out of first floor windows, people walk in the streets, and dogs sit in the shade speaking of the olden days.

The town is built on hills which slop to the river. On top of the the highest hill, which the federal government blasted a path for highway 10-am to pass through onward to Venezuala, a 50 foot statue of Jesus overlooks the town.

I wove among the streets of the Rio Preto. The people didn’t look at me, but I looked at them. I passed a footbal field. The boys were doing sprints. The girls sat outside the field’s fence talking on the curb. They all wore yellow political shirts, one waved a flag with a bearded man’s face on it. While I passed the girls, a man almost ran into me because he was staring at the girls so hard.

I walked into a gulch. The earth was red, blobby clay with ruts in it from the rain. I crossed the stream at the bottom. I passed a family, the mother in yellow, they didn’t look either.

As my road led out of town the asphalt covering changed to natural red clay. As The recent rain wetted it, it caked my flip-flops with a second sole made of clay.

The road passed a house and two hotels. The house doubled as a political headquarters. and sound truck was outside and a red political banner hung out front. The family ate lunch to the sweet sound of blaring campaign music. Further on, the two hotels had manicued lawns, brightly painted walls, and phone numbers brightly painted on them.

I walked over a hill and came to a river. At the river their was a empty resaurante. I went inside and asked, “Hello?” A man, two chickens and a dog greeted me. the dog ran at my ankles snarling. The man said “hey!” to the dog. I said “Calma, amigo,” then I asked to the man “Can I sit?” gesturing to the chairs.

I sat and ordered water. While the breeze aspired, the fish jumped from the stream, chickens chirped the water brgalled, and the rooster greeted the non-existant dawn “I said its not morning Frango…” The man laughed.

The Man sat at on the table next to me the whole time I drank my water. Afterwards, I walked back a long the wet red clay road to town.

I got a room for the night rested for two hours, until 8:00 PM. Then went out and got dinner alone. I had rice and beans and Frango and Manioc powder, cassava flour and a beer. After, I went to a bar alone: smoked, watched the street, talked with the owner in portuguese about the town and watched life on the street pass by. At night the fifty foot statue of Jesus is lit with purple flood lights.

I went to sleep in my room wondering where I was suppose to go.

In the morning, I walked out of town along 10-AM. The red clay walls where the government had blasted over shadowed my path out of town.

I took a logging trail into the forest. I came across a trail of Eciton, army ants, who were carrying a vanguished copinotus colony larava and all, back to their bivouac. I found them at 9:00 AM. I followed it into the forest 20 metres. 10 metres in there was a bridge made from Eciton bodies. When I broke it it reformed itself in 20 minutes. Even while the ants hadn’t joined others walked over, standing on the partially formed bridge reaching the other side. No majors took part in the bridge. Only the smallest Eciton. When I disrupted the trail on the litre I noticed caching of booty while the trail reformed itself. However, when I disrupted the trail in another place, no catching was observed.

Additionally, bridge building is used for efficiency in trail speed. When the the ants passed through an especially deep and narrow crack they formed a bridge half way down where the sides were no more than two ant widths apart.

After watching the ants, I walked back to town for lunch. I ate the same thing I had for dinner the previous night. I saw the hippy again. He said “Hey man” I waved, I didn’t have anything to say in Portuguese.

When i finished lunch, I walked back out of town the same way I had that morning. Jesus didn’t seem to notice. The air was cool: the clouds grew darker. I stopped at an unfinished bank building. There were people squatting in the ruins that had been left behind by receding capital.

After walking a mile, I turned left onto a new dirt road. It was lined on both sided with barbed wire fenced private particulars. They had small palms and big goats. Though the sound trucks didn’t come this far out of town, red and yellow posters hung on many fences. The clay stuck to my flops, turning them into plip-plops.

The sky cleared and the sun beamed. I walked down a hill in the oppressive heat. A creek lazed at the bottom. A bridged spanned the water, made of two thick rough boards. On the far bank, a sand beach slept. I walked to it and did too. Sitting on two planks of wood, I soothed my white skin in the shade of a tree.

I drew the creek in my sketch book. The lines were all tilted. I wanted my camera to prove how picturesque it was. I read the quote of Suntag in the front of my journal:

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past this is unreal, they also help people take possion of space in which they are insecure. Thus, photography develops in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern activities: tourism.

It seems positively unatural to travl for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photography will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had. Susan, On Phtogography, 9)

The lines tilted because my mind was not at rest. I connot make the pin be calm when who it expresses aches.

I ate cashew (Caju) nuts and a protein bar. It was made with organic natural banana, so tasted like the over ripe black part.

I gave cashews to the crimatogastor who were foraging around my feet. The nuts were a hundreds of times the size of the ants’ tiny legs. Pulling hundreds of penced mandibles, their legs lifted, pulled and pushed the nuts up the hill to their nest. Their bodies poking like light off a childs rendition of the sun. They took the nuts back home. They knew how to get home, it smelled right.

One nut got stuck in a concave patch of green. Two plants grew on both sides of a miniscule cliff. When the ants took the cashew into the the natural caldisack they couldn’t double back, they only knew the way home if they walked straight for it.

For more than half an hour they tried to hoist the caju up the cliff. More ants rallying to the taste. Though they pulled and pushed, they were standing on the leaves of two plants, every time, the immense weight of the cashew tipped the leaves, and the crimatogastors lost their footing. Finally, linking bodies they anchored over the leaves to the earth behind. By this time hundreds had rallied. The nut slid over the cliff. The ants neved doubled back. They technically couldn’t: their way of constructing world’s and order with pheromone trails wouldn’t allow it.

I stood up, brushed off the sand beach and kept walking along the path. The rain clouds had gathered again. The sky turned from blue to gray. The ants disappeared from the road. I turned into a small trail that led into the trees. Not knowing where it went I alternatively hoped trees would protect me from the rain, or that it would take me to someone’s house.

I passed under some forest trees and came out onto the cleared top of a hill. Charred stumps of forest canopy, cleared to cultivate the forest floor, made a panoramic view of five hills with a farming illage in the river valley bellow.

As the rain began to fall I breathed the clean air reviling in the the experience of hiking in Amazonian hills, the lighting and temultous clouds spelling ADVENTURE. As the rain began to fall harder, I realized I didn’t want to be that wet for the sake of adventure.

I took shelter with a pig. Running over the top of the hill I saw a small tin roof. I came to it and was greeted by a black and white pig. Behind a wood fence under a tin roof, he said : Grrrugf.” I had never met a pig this close before. I didn’t know how to respond. His noise wasn’t exactly friendly. Stuck in the rain by a seemingly inhospitable boar I waited.

I decided I would rather be mauled by a pig than get any wetter. I ducked under the eve’s of his cage outside his fence. He competed with the pouring rain to make more noise. I told him “Shh, amigo, calma, Legal?” He got the point and hoofed himself in relative silence. I guess he had flees.

The rain droppletted over the sides of the shack dribbling onto my face and splashing my toes with mud. To get a better smell, the pig hopped his two front feet with their four big pig toes onto the fence behind me.

I repeated “Calma, Amigo.” not actually preferring being mulled over by a pig.

The rain subsided. The charred hill top, cleared to grow pigs and palms, glimmered with granules of water.

I left the farm and went back to my clay road. Up the hill, the ants were the only thing on the road. After the down pour the clay stuck even thicker to my shoes. I clopped on. On one side of the road the forest grew thick. On the other their was illegal logging. The trees fetch as much as $600 a piece.

I came to a steep down slope. I slipped half way down it in my plops.

I met a man coming up the hill bearfoot. I realized how rediculous I was to still be wearing my shoes in clay this wet. I talked to the settlement at the bottom of the hill barefoot. The people looked at my feet like I was uncivilized. I just thought I was clever, reveling in the squishy between my toes.

I passed a church and a pinapple orchard and came to the end of the road. A young boy and a woman stradling up from the settlement I had just passed came toward me. Their was no more path to walk outward on, omly a number of houses. I pretended to examine some flowers – hoping either to see where they went so I could keep walking outward treking, or at the very least not to be seen walking around aimlessly.

After they passed I followed them for several feet. They went into a house. I realized I had no where further to go forward, and walked back the way I had come.

The Church had a man in nice leather shoes, sleek slacks, and a black tucked in chemise. He hammered something into the wall. Without my shoes on, I felt like a savage.

I prowled all the way back the way I had come, daring anyone to question my shoes.

As I stepped onto the asphalt road once again the thick sole of clay on my bare foot fell away. I put back on my flip flops. A fat couple meandered by. The clouds turned from gray to black.

I pased a house where the fat couple sat. I looked in, they offered me shelter from the oncoming storm. Lightning cut the sky. Not wanting to not speak Portuguese, I said no thanks, and gestured as if to say these increasingly dark menacing clouds were no problem, lightning was my friend and continued down the asphalt back toward Rio Preto da Eva.

The rain started. I saw a gate to a ranch. It had a tile roof over it with one plaster wall between a pedestrian door and a vehicle gate.

I sat under the tile with with my back against the white plaster. The rain slashed out. I sat wet and tired watching cars go by. The plaster wall and the asphalt road had conducted heat from the sweltering sun between the storms. So while the sky was sombre and cold, the bulwarks of man kept me warm.

The clouds relieved of their burdens, I walked back to town. Intending to get up in a few hours for dinner, I went to bed at six.

I dreamt of Shoshi: walking around a spiral I couldn’t get out of I couldn’t reach her. I awoke forteen hours later and left Rio Perta

Banking

Check out my new pictures from Ducke reserve at www.Anthopper.smugmug.com

The weeks past. I got into a Rythem of reading in the morning, checking in on the progress of bureaucracy and the creation of my INPA I.D. at Midday, and working in the entymology lab at night. When I got back to Marcia’s house I came to count on the friendl hello’s. I grew increasingly more comfortable with Claudia, a French woman who is finishing a PHd in forest conservation and Julio, her Brazilian boyfriend that just finished his coursework for his Phd in meterology and now only has to write his thesis.

One Night, a Tuesday, Julio asked me how he can cash a check he got from the US. It was a checl from NYU for work he did while living in Virginia. As it was an American check, he had no way to deposit it. I said, “One thing we coud do is deposit it to my military bank and I could withdraw the money from the ATM.”

Impressed with the lack of riggamoral he said, “That sounds fine.”

During that same week, I was organizing with Fabricera to go to Ducke field station to shoot a number of ant genera to include in the ant field guid we had resolved to put together. The plan was to leave on Thursday and come back sunday night, but as Thursday came, we did not go.

Meanwhile, I kept forgetting to go to Julio’s office to deposit his check. Consequently, though we agree on Tuesday to deposit his check, it wasn’t until Thursday that I got to his office.

Arriving at eleven thirty, when I got to Julio’s office I was invited to lunch. “Hey’a, have you eatin’ yet?” He scrawled in the air while his relaxed frame turned away from his Bank of computers and towards the office door where I stood. “No,” I replied. “Okay well we’re goring now. We can work on the banking when we get back.”

We left for Restaurante INPA. INPA was established in the 1950s. It is a dedicated biological research institution. The campus is covered in jungle interspersed with low, air-conditioned buildings. They have tin eves  that hang three meters past the edge of the buildings’ walls. The large overhangs help keep researchers cool in the 90f heat by casting pools of shadow around each building.

When INPA was established Manaus was much smaller. At the turn of the century through the 1920s Manaus was boom town. As it was one of the world’s largest producers of Rubber it saw a florescence of culture. But, with the advent of synthetic rubber, the money left. In its wake was the magnificient Opera house in the center of town without anymore performers.

By the 1950s the population of Manaus had dwindled to a few hundred. As a result, INPA was built as a remote research site in the middle of the Amazon.

After Amazonia attained statehood and a tax free zone was constructed, Manaus swelled once again with the influx of manufacturing jobs. It now has more than 2 million people. The Once quiet research site now has choked thuroughfares on two sides, with an interstate bypass being erected on part of its land. As part of the deal that let the government build there, INPA demanded the trees be transplanted. So the hundred-meter-high rainforest was torn up by the roots and moved for the bypass.

While I walked to INPA’s Resaurante, I noted how out of place this jungle research station felt in the exhausting smog of Manaus.

Julio, his friend Zac and I ate at the Restarante. It was a buffet with salad, Manoc flour, Black beans, and sheep tibs. Amazonia lives on Manioc, otherwise known as Casava. Because it is rich in arsenic, its numbing qualities are best in Takaka, a soup made of Manioc leaves and shrimp. The broth is a dirty green. The arsenic in the leaves and broth deaden the tongue like a light shot of Novicane. Because the shrimp are jerked, the soup is very salty.

Over lunch, we talked about science. “I work with sampling,” Zac volunteered — his nervousness with English coming across loudly. “Yeah, he puts up towers keep measurement of turbulence, gathers data,” Julio clarified. “He’s finishing his masters.” He continued, “Some people sample, I mean smally,” he made a confused face, “the butterfly flaps and then turbulence knocks a leaf, and then you have a sample from a tiny branch of one tree.” 

He shrugged, “What does it do, you have to have aggregate data, people want answers to the big question. Some guys say the rainforest is a carbon producer.

“Who says that?,” I ask.

He retorts, “Americans. Some guys at Harvard.”

“What does your data suggest?” I ask.

“Our results are showing the Amazon is a carbon sink, that it pulls in more CO2 than it emits. At least it is neutral. Its not small sample though that answer big questions. In my Master’s I pulled samples from two sites using the same methodology and got completely differnt results. Some guys are looking at it at the ant scale. ‘What are the ants making in terms of carbon footprint,” he says with obvisous reference to my interests. “But, if you put that ant results with the butterfly what do they make together. If you see the collective impact, you see, togerther, you don’t need that small scale.”

It seems a lot of people are just geting a job with the small scale,” I remark.  ”Thats exactly it, they ask in ther Maser’s about something and it never gets put together. Life is a game, its easier if you live that way. The Question is, though — the one the politicians want to know, is the planet getting hotter. The results are so vague that’s why I use modelling, put it all together in one picture.

After we finished our meal we had a coffee the size of a thimble. Zac mentions he had been invited to a PHd program in the United States, in Georgia. He said, The fellowship is not so good, $1,000 a month. And my English is not so good. I, I can read and write it, but speaking,” he nervously went silent. I assured him that prices in the Southern US were cheaper: “an apartment is about five-hundred, if prices are like Tenessee where I’m from, and food is about the same. And in like six months, if you already read at a master’s degree level and have been publish in English you will pick up speaking. The speaking is always the last thing to come.

We went back to Julio’s office in LBA. When we walk in, Julio said, “yoou an check your E-mail, I have to go to the toilet.” I sent Shoshi a note mentioning that I was going to the field soon and I didn’t know when I would get to a computer. When he got back we scanned in his check and deposited it in my account.

I had to withdraw his money. Amazonia shopping contains the closest ATM. By chance, Claudia needed to buy a presnt for a departing friend, and so was already going. Julio phoned Claudia to arrange to meet her at the Casa de Marcia at 4:00. I had forty-five minutes to spend.

When I left Julio’s office I ran into Zac. He had just gotten off the phone. He said, “I’m going to the USA.” in the time sense I last saw him he decided to go.

In the forty five minutes, I went to check on my I.D.. I had given the forms to the printing office on Monday. The girl behind the counter smiled at me then and told me to come back in two days, “It will be done.” With the upmost trust in her word, I went back everyday to request my I.D.. Four days later — a full ten days since I originally filled the forms in Fabricia’s office I got my INPA identification card.

Feeling elated at my success, I walked to Marcia’s house beaming.

When I arrived at 4:01 no one was home. Alone, I jumped up and down under the security wire in front of the tall metal fence which protects Marcia’s house. I timidly banged on the door and called out: “Oi?” No answer. So, I sat on the curb to the right of the casa to perspire. I cleaned the Red Swiss army knife Shoshi had given me and waited.

Eh, a scruffy, skinny man road up on a bicycle. I heard him cooming from beind my back, because his tire made a ‘tinking.’ His shirt was soaked in sweat and his frame was thin and wiry. He said “Aloé.” I responded, “Ca Va,” as he looked very French. He replied “Vocé espere de temps aqui?” He said in Portuguese. “Je ne pass pas beacourt des temps ici,” I replied in an awful French accent. “Where are you from?” he asked in English. “Nevou York,” I replied in Portuguese. “OH so, you Speak English,” he concluded. “Yes,” I assured.

Thats when I met Marcus. He is a talkative man. I asked, “what branch of biology”; sense everyone I had met studied some sort of biology I felt it was a safe assumption. “I use to study forestry,” he replied with a frown. “I am a friend of Claudia, have you been waiting long?” He asked. “No, I just got here.” He continued, “How do you know them? I said, “I’m friends with Marcia. “Ah.” I asked, “where did you learn English? Your accent is good.”

With a wry smile he said, “magazines and books. My brother went to America and came back with a subscription to National Geographic. Its on TV, the music, the news, I don’t know how anyone can say, ‘I don’t know Engish.’ Its everywhere. I went to Germany too.”

“Oh, so you spoke English while you were there?”

“No, that thankfully was before I knew English. Otherwise, I would have never learned German.

“You know German?” I asked.

“No, that was ten years ago for six months,” he replied off-handedly.

“You said you studied forestry, not anymore?”

“No, it didn’t go so well.” We waited in silence for a minute.

“What do you do now?” I asked.

“I bake bread,” he said with a poets’ smile.

“Do you mean that metaphorically, or really?” I incredulously asked.

“Really. I like it.”

I put my pocket knife away: having removed all the pieces of lent that collect in its finely machine-metalic-sheaned crevices, I felt it was more itself.

Claudia arrived with ume Amigo. She put her key in the lock and the metal gate swung open. Control of security devices, is where the home is.

We met inside and she called Julio to see if he was coming. “He stilled has work,” she informed us. Marcus put his bike inside the gate and we left to Amazonia’s Shopping. It is a large mall filled with shoes and shirts.

On our way to the bus stop, we crossed Bolle de Colorado. Its circular traffic gagging on its elegant round-about. We ran across the street where motor-bicycles weave among the traffic, like beetles in a leaf-cutter ant tail — namely, they co-habitate with the cars, but move at a completely different rate.

It was 4:30 and so Everyone moved. Filled with people, the bus we had boarded tossed bodies side to side as it sailed down the road. Its progress hindered by every start and stop of congestion.

Ten minutes before the bus arrived at The Mall, we started pushing our way towards the front of the bus to get off. The bus is only wide enough for a person and a half to stand in the aile. Everyone rides while standing in the aile.  Claudia said, as I was the closest one to the front of the Bus, ” David, we have to get off.” Towering above most people on the bus, I pushed my body through the crowd. I slipped against one girls ass and then some man has his hand on my shoulder. My elbow knocks the Top of a boy’s head. My body doesn’t fit between the bond of one couple to eachother, I push through anyway I can.

As we pull up to Amazonia’s shopping I’m at the front of the bus. “They like being very close,” Claudia remarks. She goes on, “They like their buses,” as if riding the bus was a sexual perverstion.

I ask,” while we’re here can you help me buy credits for my cell phone.” She nods yes.

In the Mall we shopped for a present, ate Icecream, and stood on line at the Bank.

Claudia said, “You come with me to get a presnt, and then we will go to your, “she waved her hand. “I want to buy a pillow. My friend is leaving. She has a little girl of two. I want to buy her a peelow for the trip. She is moving to Sáo Paulo for a new job, you know.”

“They have a machine that cane…” she moves her hand up and down. “It can put pictures… How do you say.

” The machine can embroider,” I insert.

“Yes. I want to put a Peroke and a Mio…” I don’t know know the name in Englishh. “I say, “Perokeet is a kind of Bird.” She goes on, “yes, well to put one of each of those on the Péellow,” Her emphasis clearly not of any one language.

We shopped for a Pillow. Marcus helpfully fetched options, Claudia picked between them. The first store didn’t have the one she wanted. We went to another store and bought a cheap pillow.

After that, we arranged the embroidery at the machine shop. Exactly what element went where became a group effort we all contributed to.

We went to find a bank. The first ATM we found has a massive line. We looked for another. On our way we stopped for Icecream. “David, do you want one. Its good bececuase they dip the icecream into the choclate. “No, thanks,”I say.

Marcus inserted, “This is the food of your homeland.” I noted then that were at a McDonald’s Icrecream stand. “What is it, you have no money?” Claudia chided. “no I have money,” I retarted. I bought a lardy soft serve cone because of patriotism and image.

The second ATM also had a long line. I waited anyway. I had to get Julio his money. I figured if I did him this favor I could buy another week crashing in his house.

Marcus waited with me. Claudia and her friend went to another bank where she had an account. 

I asked Marcus how the US was seen in Brazil. He vaguely described a lack of effinity, and that Brazilians blame America for all problems, Even their own problems. He went on “There was an American staying here. He was Jewsish; your not Jewish also are you?” I said I wasn’t. “He got with this girl while he was here. I don’t think he knew. She was a big anti-semite,” He said with a big smile.

There were a lot of Nazi’s here in Brazil, yes,” I interposed. “Well, yes. In fact Joseph Mangala lived here in Manaus for a long time. “Maybe I can meet his children…”I said.

Just then a man standing behind us in line laughed as he looked at us, he was clearly listening in. “No one thought he could live so long in Manaus,” Marcus went on. “But, a Brazilian University showed it by his teeth, it was really him.

He asked where I was from, as I had a British accent.” I replied “I was born in Tennessee, grew up Kenya and Sudan in East Africa, and went to school in New York. The man behind us then interrupted to clarify what we had been saying. aparently he had lived  in New Jersey for a number of Years. He corroborated the Mangela tail. Then asked, ” Hod do you like the Brazilian women, better than the Irish?”

Clearly everyone is confused at what I am. Thats good me too.

I got to the front of the line withdrew Julio’s money along with money for my trip to Ducke field station. Then went an bought credits for my cell phone so it would work.

 

Check out my new pictures from Ducke reserve at www.Anthopper.smugmug.com

5. Starting Work

After printing out a picture, and arranging my papers I went back to Fabrizio’s office. We worked through some papers. He realized the wrong file was sent by a women in the other office, who was responsible for arranging the forms. Febrizio reordered the forms for a non-bussiness visa. With the pass I would have access to go on all INPA field trips. We worked to fill the form. They waned my fathers name, my mothers name, address of home institution, address in Brazil, my full name and the title of my project. The information was necessary in order to be quietly stuffed in a drawer and never seen again.

Though most of the information was merely pedantic, the name of my project was a problem. As my Watson is called Miniscule Wonders, it doesn’t pass mustard on a bureaucratic form. So we tried some alternatives, first we wrote, “ A Watson Fellowship: a study of four ant species and agricultural production.” This was nice, but Febrizio felt it didn’t capture the most important aspect of the project. He suggested we change it to “A study of Leaf Cutter Ants: a Watson Fellowship.” As has been apparent in all my work with the foundation so far, the Watson name means nothing, and is consequently put last and forgotten.

When the forms were in shape, we walked to LBA to get an official signature. LBA is the organization center of INPA, and as such, the head manager, Munzi, has his office there. As we stratled over, a women stopped and tried to grease the wheels of Fabrizio. As he was the manager of all field sites he controlled money. She wanted to get money for her project… He seemed use to it.

He told me the laws in Brazil make bureaucracy  both necessary, and impossible. There are always more papers and offices. As an example, he offered the three hundred pages 1988 constitution

We didn’t get the signature at LBA. As we walked into the building the cool dry feeling of airconditioned air poured over us. We ran into a man in the hall. He followed us to Munzi’s office. The Boss happened to be Marcia’s boss. In the office the four of them, Marcia, Fabrizio, the strange man from the hall and boss Munzi discussed the form’s fate. I watched. Munzi wanted an entymologist’s signature, Febrizio and Marcia insured him it didn’t matter. The unknown man who had followed us tipped the scale; he insisted an entymologists signature would be best. So, we went to the entymology organizer’s office.

Beatrix wasn’t in her office. We met Olivia in the hall, I waved. She came over to help. Because she was in the building, Febrizio thought she would know where to find Beatrix. She figured that sense he was guiding me around, he would know how to get a signature.

All to say, I didn’t get my I.D. that day. Over the coming week, fighting through the red tape was a daily task I could count on to always be there to provide me with something to do. I guess thats why bureaucracy is so hard, if it wasn’t all these clerks would be out of a job. Nonethless, the following day, I started working in the INPA entymology lab, even though I didn’t have a I.D.

Floating particles wiggle infront of my magnified eyes. My giant tongs push leaves aside searching for a sprawled leg or a compound eye. Bobbing in the sugarcane  based alcohol, a litter sample rests under my microscope.

The Sugar cane smells sweet. Like rum, of course, bith with a tinge of orange. “They add a chemical to give anyone who drinks it a massive headach,” Febrizio explains. “Some guys just drink it straight,” he says with a  shrug.

Leaves bounce in in the water. I find a lot of Acura, a tick like bugs with no head, but not ants.  In the microscope a leaf as thick as my cuticle fills both my eyes; when I flip it with my forceps, I only feel the faintest crunch in my fingers. This almost unperseptable  touch is the only way to feel this tiny world.

After searching my petri dish for thirty minutes, under a twig I find my first ant. Its body is translucent gold. Its the size of a letter on the back of the “água crim” bottle next to me. “It is a Stremugynes.” Fabrizio explains: “it has dentials like a hand at the end of the madibles.”

We stop looking for anything but ants. “The girls can clean the samples, we will only need ants” He notes with his massive smile.

I spend the next hour finishing searching the sample. The grit and grime of winkler 01, from BR319 yield no more ants. BR319 is a road that the Brazilian President, Lulo da Silva, promised to build in order to connect the north and south. Unfortunately, “It cuts a, what is the word,” Febrizio explains while violently jutting his hand from his heart into the air in front of him. ” A gash,” I volunteer. “Yes, it cuts a gash straight through the Amazon. This is a fragile forest. And people move north as the highway is bult. I mean the road is already built but it is… “Dirt,” I preposed. “Yes, and now they are laying down, how do you say,” his hand going back an forth in a flattening motion. ” Laying down asphalt,” I conclude.” “Yeah. I don’t  agree with this road, but I am doing the best I can.”

They are sampling along BR319 in order to be able to show the effect building the road had on the ecosystems along the route. They have over a hundred litter samples, small clear plastic jars with sealed red plastic tops. Each one has to be examined for what genera are inside. Once bugs are found they are passed onto researchers in those spieces to determine their taxonomy more specifically. With the results of sampling they can state what was along the road’s path before it was built. They don’t want the road, but at the moment there is no Amazonian data that shows that building a road will negatively effect the surrounding area.

T

Stolen Wallet

When a man thinks on anything whatsoever His next thought after, is not altogether so casuall as it seems to be. Not every Thought to every Thought succeeds indifferently. But as wee have no imagination where of we have not formerly had sense, in whole or in parts, so we have not Transition from one Imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our sense. All fancies are motions within us, reliques of those made in the sense; Hobbes’ Leviathan, Chapter III page 9. On the Consequence of Train of Imagination As all of this sense pours over me, getting in the very pits of my skin, Hobbes inspires me to continue the deluged. When Marcia finishes work, Marcia, David and I walk home. I offer to teach an English class. They laugh. The street is still growded. The house is onely a block away.

When we arrive at the house two of Marica’s housemates walk up behind us and meet us at the gate. It will be a good night. Será uma boa noite.

Eu / sou/ estou pronounced like stow

Tu/ és/ Estás

Ele, ela / é/ Está

Nós/ somos/ estamos

Vós/ sois/ estais pronounced like steiss

Eles/ são/ estão

We go into her house. She takes me upstairs and shows me a bed on her floor. She tells me I will be staying on her floor. I move my bags up from the kitchen to her fairly small room.

The two roommates are Elisa, and OIlvia. It turns out they both are etymologists. Olivia studies a type of cicada. Elisa had studies house flies, but needed a change, now she has moved on to the “moe interesante subject des fruit flees.” Olivia has bouncing brown eyes and a ready made square smile. She punctuates her words with turns of her body, and most helpfully she speaks excellent English.

Elisa is a shy girl, from de sud de Braziliero. As such, she is more European looking. I still haven’t said more than hello with her. After a shower and a change of clothes, I came out of the Bathroom and talked with the three roommates. Standing awkwardly in Olivia and Elisa’s doorway I smiled and laughed at the least consequential of remarks in an attempt to gain acceptants. All of the sleeping rooms are upstairs. I hesitated to speak, fearful of flubbing with the only engaging English speaker I had met. But it was such a relief when I opened my mouth and could speak as I wished that I really couldn’t contain myself. In the course of twenty mintoes had told of my large family and East Africa where I grew up. I told her I had seven brothers and sisters three of one and four of the other, also I mentioned that my parents put back together languages that earlier missionaries had fucked up. In the course of the English speaking we all decided to go out to a Pizzaria. A very local treat. There we decided that, if I liked, I should come to the field with her and her colleagues to hunt for ants why she did for cicadas. She mentioned a trip next week with her colleagues, and the fact she had been to a very good sight for her, that she would like to go back to, but hadn’t her colleagues did not find the site so good. I agreed going to the field would be a good idea. Marcia and her also discusses my situation in Portuguese and assessed how easy it would be for me to use INPA, the massive Environmental Research station that they, and it seemed everyone in Manaus, worked for. They insisted that, as I had a Tourist visa I could not collect. Further, they decided my first step would be to get an INPA I.D card so I could participate in all trips to the field. I agreed in English once they translated this deliberation.

The Pizza came in rounds, and it was all you can eat. The waiter would bring a tray with different types. You could say Pour favor, or Náo Obrigado. The pizzas were topped with Fish, locally caught in the Negro River–which surrounds Manaus–, Stroganoff, Banna, Chocolate, Ala Cart, Pepperoni, an orange gourd with a bitter taste a bit like papaya and pineapple with ham and cinnamon that tasted like apple pie.

The following four days were the weekend. Weeekends here don’t have time. The house’s jobs stopped. The internet went black. As only at offices does information flow. We went to a bar. I drank Cervantes, and Skol–local beers, and vodka and lime. I spoke to two of Marcia’s friends both who didn’t speak English. The woman insistted she didn’t speak English and stopped me when she didn’t understand. We spoke of our likes for different musics. Our understanding of different foods, and whether dance was something enjoyable or not. She didn’t like “Fumes, ooh, des cigerretes… Marlboros.” The man pretended to speak English perfectly, I spoke about how good Portuguese sounds. He spoke of how good Brazilian women look. Then we discussed The meaning of the word defenestrate. “Huhuha, to put out of a window, why, WHY would you need that word? I’m glad its uselessness is as obvious in any language.

The following day we swam, and ate and sat. Marcia went to work, but I believe it was to use her E-mail, as that’s when I used mine. Plus work is air-conditioned.

This morning. Monday morning, the fourth day I am here, I didn’t want to get up. I had told Marcia to wake me before she left, as she had asked me how to say last night, “at ten before eight, and nothing more complicated.” I woke up when she stood up peeking at her with eye’s half shut. I was undecided if I wanted to make my consciousness known. She left the room with al her things and shut the door. Then I just lay there. Thoughts mingled with an indelible inability to do more than turn to my side and tuck a pillow under my head. On my left side I lay. I eventually rose, realizing that the interview I had asked Marica to wake me for was in less than an hour.

I stole the bathroom from one of the house members. The light was on when I went in, but I figured someone had forgotten. While I shat, a swear in Portuguese highlighted my crime. I had stepped on another person’s toe. Living in a room with a stranger, in a house of strangers, in a country of strangers, makes social foibles unavoidable. And though I know I make them, I don’t know what they are. Further, no one can tell me because I don’t know the language. Though I guessed I had stolen the bathroom, I took a shower. It was guilty, moist and hot. My Tension evaporated under steam.

When I got dressed, I couldn’t find my wallet. It was not where I had left it. M backpack is a Labyrinth of pockets. I couldn’t find it and it hadn’t left a trail of coins, or breadcrumbs, or anything else to follow.

I started to worry. Yesterday I had been very open with David and Marcia about how much money I had. I had told them cause my MasterCard wasn’t working at the Bank. I couldn’t withdraw money. They had looked at me as if I had no money. Without notes I felt less of a man. When David bought me coffee, I was defeated. I was broke, without an ATM to withdraw at; in this state I bragged and assured them that I was financially soluble with good credit. They could lend me pocket money with ease. After an hour, we found an ATM I could withdraw at. When I got my money I danced. In the aircontioned narthex of the fourth bank we tried, I stuck my car into the machine, slipped it out, selected English for its sense of home and withdrew $R100. At an exchange rate of $41.4 to $1.00, the machine dispensed a hundred Brazilian Riles with a clicking purrrr.

I took my money and danced in the barren white bank, vestibule. I Waved the money around like a fool. Marcia said, “lets wait here a while,” as she pointed to the air-conditioner. It was 35c outside. David said, “ We could go buy lunch with your new well,” pointing to my fist of bills, “and bring it back here to enjoy.” After a minute, I put the money away and we left the building. As such, sitting there this morning, when I couldn’t find my wallet, worried I had made the money too obvious.

David is an itinerant traveler. He has spent the pas lifetime traveling and seeing. He has tattoos from all over the world and he did not say good night to me last night. As I searched for my wallet, I freaked out. It has all my credit cards. All my Cash, besides a few American dollars, without it, I would have no way o call my bank and cancel my cards. I imagined how clever David was, to have taken my only means of paying my way. I saw every moment that I had mentioned money, and I vetted they added up to his judgment that I was weak, that he could take advantage of me. I realized, I had no one to go to. If he had taken my wallet, it was while he was alone in my room with Marcia. They had been making him a facebook account. For some reason their internet worked that night, not mine. As such, if he had taken it, my thoughts raged, it was with her permission, She is my hostess here and my only place to stay. I searched my bags, but realized I had to get to the interview.

Marcia had set up this interview through her boss. I was to meet Febrizio, a Myrmecologist at Nine. I had no more time and the wallet still was gone. Without a centos to my name, I went to meet Fabrizio. I had to meet Marcia in her office for her secretary to call his secretary to arrange when to meet. The two women decided that it would happen that day. Though as they did not set a time on the phone, when Marcia’s secretary hung up, she was immediately told to call back and set a time. Thus, it was arranged that I would walk over with Marcia immediately to meet Fabrizio. At his doro standing in the way, was a middle-aged man with E.O. Wilson’s Naturalista tucked under his arm. E.O. Wilson is the guru of modern Myrmecology. As such, I knew I was in the right place.

I met Fabrizio. He was wearing a band t-shirt and Hawaiian print knee length shorts. He had a scruffy go-tee and long surfer hair. Still nervous at being robbed that morning, I told him about my project. Thankfully he had lived in Manhattan for a year, and spoke English. He offered me to sit down. As we spoke it became clear he needed someone to photograph most of the images for a new catalogue of Amazonian Formicidae, ants. He showed me a gorgeous glossy book done for frogs, and his pinned ant collection. Their tiny carcasses, each with minutely inscribed taxonomic tags, floated above the Styrofoam. The ants were gorgeous. After descending to collaborate on an ant guide, we went to the etymology lab where I met his main assistant, gorge.

He is a tall man, with flobby curls, and a passion for ants. He has boxes of them on his lab’s wall, each one describing a small piece of his heart. After talking with him for forty-five minutes, I left to arrange my papers for the necessary forms, and to print and I.D. image. When I got back to Marcia’s Casa, the man of the house, a large guy who never wears a shirt and his doing his PH.D one climatology, told me, “David come quick.” I went through the kitchen where I came in, into the dining room ad out the back door, which leaves the house through the living room. “A large animal just jumped out of that tree,” he said walking down the back steps towards the pool. He went down the ramp and around the pool house corner. “Then it went around this corner to the left and WOOOSh, into the pool,” and “Look there it is.” I looked into the blue chlorinated water, and at the bottom on the far side was a foot and a half long Lizard. It lay at the bottom not moving. Its skin a tropical green. “We call it Iguana” he said, “Yeah us the same,” I reply “do you think it will be okay with the chlorine? “I don’t know” he shrugged. “Do we have a stick to poke it,” I wondered. I walked over to grab the pool cleaning stick. I poked it with the un-netted end. The iguana gracefully swam three feet. Its form perfectly made to glide through the water with rhythmic back and forth motions of its entire body. “Its alive. Do you think it can get out? I asked, “Yeah probably, wanna get it out?” he inquired. I passed him the pool cleaner as he was standing closer to it. He put the netted side under the lizard, tried twice to scoop it out, the Iguana didn’t cooperate. The third time, the Iguana understood what was happening and seemed to climb unto the netted end. His reptilian limbs and tail flapping, he flew out of the water into the air, and unto the hard concrete of the pool edge with a fwap.

I said, “See you later”, still terrified I didn’t have my wallet, I went upstairs dogged through my backpack. I found my wallet at the bottom of my bag. David was not a thief.

Arival

At four in the morning with tears in my eyes I kissed Shoshi once more. Said, ´I love you´. Then, waved back and forth through the security line. The line was built for fifty or more, but before the sun was up, JFK´s sound system, which constantly blares inconsequential announcements wasn´t awake either.

 

At the end of the line, I went through security. I took off my shoes, pulled out my bomb like laptop and walked through the magnetic eyes of the law. As I turned around on leaving security I gave Shoshi a wave. Being separated by fifty feet I had no gesture for my love of ht last three years but a meek wave followed by a cute blown kiss. Love really is changed by distance.

 

I fed my laptop while I was waiting to board my flight to panama city. I pluged in my macbook, and an Ecudarian man across from me asked `whats its capacity?´ I told him it was 2.2 Ghz. ´He said he loved music and was ddict to it on computers. Apparently,he really was in love with computers, (he bought four laptops to take home, for ´computers are much more expensive´.  He said he was buying his son a special laptop. It had a beautifuyl tag art caseing of shiny bage and cubes and rectangles. it was gorgeous.

 

The Ecudarian man then said he was in love with Apple computers. I said I had been since the year I was born, as me and them came out the same year. We boarded the plane then and he said, áh you have to stop feeding your beast, with his level of consumption, he was clearly aware of electronics veracious appetite.

 

Planes have no time. We boarded at 6:30. In an uncomfortable coach class seat I sat and slept. I had half a cheese blintz and a coka-light. Then, flaps emerged our plane plumeted to earth, kissed the ground, didn´t pull away and rolled to safety. The audience, by which i mean the passengers, who hadn´t shared a word the whole flight, burst forth in a round of applause, all equally elated to avoid a gruesome shared death.

 

Panama cityhas free wi-fi. With it I told my fellowship that IU was leaving for Brazil, and told Hanah about the thousands of dolphins I saw out the window while I was landing over the Gulf of Mexico. From 4,000 feet, their bodies, white like marble, looked like self-propelled skipping stones.

 

I left Panama two hours later. After disembarking in BrazilI emigrated, found my burnished orange hiking backpack and met Marica, my only contact in Brazil

 

Marcia is a small, beautiful women with a quick smile and calculating movements. She is a financial accountant.I hugged her with one arm when I met her and she asked about the flight and apologized for her English ´which´she demanded ´was terrible´I couldn´t tell.

 

We left the airport. I climbed into a large strange man´s pick up truck with my fifty pounds of gear. He was a friend of Marcia, who owned the car. He didn´t speak any English, that is the norm now though.

 

The side of the truck said LBA, a large research program Hoj-pojed together from smaller projects. They research climate chnage through passive anbd active monitoring of the rain forest.

 

The streets of Manausare dusty with the red river-bed clay. rom the back seat of the truck I saw high walled buildings, many with electric fences There are a lot of cars. The roads choked on cars. The buildings are concrete and the vegitation is green and lively, palms are common.

 

As I rode in the car my aniexty rose. Marcia was my only contact in Brazil, and our conversation moved ahead in starts and stops at best. She told me the bed she might have had been taken

 

Regardless, we arrive at her house. She says ìf you want, you can put your bags inside´The layers of trust are already building. She unlocks the gate on her six foot tall concrete wall, with Electical fencing on top, and lets me into her home. Inside we meet some of her roomates and see the house. They filter all of the their water, and have a swimming pool in thge back yard.

 

I put my backpack against the wall, along with my computer bag, then she says ´I have to go back to work and meet one of my other guests, you can come ´she again apologizes for her English. I take my three thousand dollar camera with me. Its not that I don´t trust her. Its that I don´t know who I am ion this trip if I don´t have the camera to prove that I am doing something. I want to pull it out and show these peoplke who I am and what I am capable of.

 

We walk to LBA. It airconditioned. On the way we meet a French girl I say ´Bonjour,´She responds and then I stumbled over `Ca va?`she speaks Portuguese with Marcia, and donnates me a smile.

 

We cross a sufficating traffic artary and Arrive at LBA. Marcia says, ´the city is a beautiful MODERN city, but the traffic is terrible. I wonder what a modern city is to her, but don´t have the words to ask. LBA is a large compiund Ít looks like a resort´I observe, ´you know, look at the umbrellas, just like on vacation,´ She looks up and points to the sky ´its for the sun. I go silent realizing I somehow just said her place of work is a vactation, which it cetainly feel s like to me. I don´t know she understood the insult, but my guilt for thinking of someone elses´lifge as a breka shamed me into silence.

 

She pointed out the entomologist´s building and we went to her office. The doors were made of glass and the floor of marble. On the walls were sienctific briefings, just like my friends did for their senior project in science at Bard College. Her was was chilled. Inside, I met David, from France. I he was balding with thick five o´clock shadow and wore a T-shirt and shorts. His legs were hairy, like they had grown to the length of his travel. He wore sandals. That afternoon he had gottern back froim a trip to an observation tower LBA maintains for measuring the forest. He explained  it sticks up high above the sixty meter forest canopy.

 

Marcia said she had to go back to work for thirty minotáos. So, we went into the hall and met two other of her colleagues. Marica introduced us, they quickly embarced, after saying a lack of words, they couldn´t speak english, I apologized for my lack of Portugu8ese. They bath spoke to David. He smiled at them, said few words.

 

MArcia spoke to me and David in Engliush the other two fell silent.

 

Marcia said she had to go back to work,m as she had fifteen minutes left. I wint with David and one of the other two girls. She was wearing a yellow shirth that was the color of Brazil, she had awide happy face with beautiful hair and eyes the color of the stripes of of her flag. She was studying for her Mastadoes ´de que?´I asked, ´de scientifico?´she replied. Having exhausted my Portugues, David and Her went back to speaking.

The Begining

As this ant points her left feeler over the hole, the right one still securely touching the ground, her nature tells her to keep moving it down. Only once her feeler strikes solid ground will she know what exactly is ahead, and how exactly deep that hole thing is. The bottom of this abyss isn’t exactly just when she feels the tunnel floor. That chasm in the earth leads to the hive, and for me thats even less known than every next step for the unintelligent biomachine (this little ant). As I stand at the edge, reaching out to feel my first step into a world of ants I’m feeling rather scared. I just do not know when my feet are going to take me to the bottom of the colony, and when this little ant hole is going to end.

On the practical side, I have my tickets for Brazil, it turns out Copa air panama’s regional air provider has great deals from JFK to Manaus, only just over a $1,000. I now have a contact in biology, though he is a mammalogist, in Brazil. I will beleaving NYC on the 17th of July. While talking about flights I have decided the best way to get my Brazilan visa is at the consulate in the Big Apple. As an amusing aside, On the consular’s site for Brazil it says “there will be a $130 charge for a US Citizen to get a visa to Brazil, the exact same price the US has been charging Brazilian citizens for years.” This is a kind of ‘fuck you’ to the US, and I like it. Additionally, I have finally found the last component to my macro photo kit the B150 B macro guiding rail, which essentially allows me to slide my camera backwards and forwards thereby making up for the fact that macro photography has an incredibly narrow depth of field (i.e. the camera only focuses at a very specific depth).

Furthermore, if you like the picture above you can see my first roll (at much higher resolution) at Anthopper.smugmug.com