Riding the bus

On Saturday October 29th, 2011 I made a trip through the city with Mellissa and Ny. We rode the bus from Paige's house and got lost on our way to Central Market, which took us three and a half hours to reach when it only should have taken us 30 minutes. On this trek we saw some interesting sites and people. The first interesting woman we saw was not a woman at all. She was a man with a tight, mid-drift revealing red shirt, and little cut-off jean shorts. It looked like a hairy, bearded, homeless man had tried to fit into Tommy Pickles' clothes. 

I also noticed, in passing, some young kids that were in front of traffic at a stop light dressed in circus clothes. One was on stilts and they were each juggling to perform for the waiting cars. They were not just there for entertainment, however, they were street performers trying to make some money for their, presumed, mother on the side of the road.

I also saw a little boy, probably about five years old, with his boy-part fully exposed as he openly peed while standing on the busy street curb as he faced traffic. Unfortunately, I have heard that grown men make a habit of this also. It is also very common that I see little girls walking around in their underwear on the streets of Fortaleza, no matter how busy the street is. 

I have seen many homeless people while in the city, and I have yet to even go into the favellas. I don't know if I will even get the opportunity to go because I have heard they are very dangerous and are home to a lot of sexual, gang, and drug activity. Anyway, the homeless people I did see were similar to the homeless that may be seen on the streets of Riverside, CA or LA. One man was tucked into his own tee-shirt, as if pulling as beevis and butthead disguise as he was curled up in the middle of the busy sidewalk of Beita Mar, a frequenced market place in the city.

On the bus there was also a one-legged man that was selling mentos. Apparently they eat Mentos and cough drops as candy here. However, I understand the Mentos equally candy. There are no sign of Skittles or Starburst, or pretty much any candy that we may find in a candy store in the states besides Mentos, Smarties, Lollipop, and maybe a few others.

Sometimes the busses get very crowded, and I mean, very crowded. One of those crowds that you hope the bus driver will make a fast turn or something so maybe some polluted, burnt-rubber air will pour in through the cracked windows on the bus. It surely beats the smell of a hot, humid space filled with people. When a seat does open up, it makes sense to take it, rather than to continue letting all the blood drain from your hands as you tightly clasp onto the pole above your head as to avoid falling over or letting your arm touch the sweaty person next to you.

At one point Mellissa was sitting in the aisle seat and the woman next to her was getting ready to get off at the next stop. When the woman struggled to get by in Mellissa's limited leg-space, she was quick to shout at Mellissa in a clearly dissatisfied voice about how rude Mellissa is as she smacked her in the chest, leaving scratches near Mellissa's clavicles. Mellissa said okay and let the lady leave. Apparently, the people around us were commenting how nice Mellissa was because that lady was a jerk. All of this was verbally communicated in Portuguese. I had watched the whole thing, and initially I had assumed the lady was saying sorry for stumbling over Mellissa and the hit to the chest was a result of her stumbles. I was wrong.

I have been learning a lot about communication while I have been here in Brazil. My nonverbal communication skills have been sharpened more than ever before, and it's amazing how much tone, body movements, pitch, up-talking, speed, and attitude truly communicate. The patience these girls at the Lar have with me is astounding. My first full day one of the girls even brought out her notebook and started teaching me Portuguese phrases and words. What neat kids!

Well the trip to Central Market didn't work out because they closed by the time we would have arrived after our extensive bus rides. So we went to Beita Mar, a market place on the shore of Fortaleza. It was really neat and I had only been there once before but only for about thirty minutes. I was able to get a Hammock chair my first time and a Hammock, along with some other souvenirs, this time. Money exchanging is truly a hassle here. I don't even really want to talk about it at this point. Anyway, at the market places here in Brazil bartering is expected, which is actually pretty fun once you get the hang of it. I love the fact that the initial price is simply the greatest amount I will have to pay, not necessarily the price I will take it home for. In the end, I managed to buy two sets of neat wooden crayons for the kids I love back home, a sweet hammock for Amanda (which I am totally tempted to keep for myself and buy her another), and some awesome man-bracelets for some guy-friends back home. I don't really want to spend much on myself here. I am actually pretty proud at the little amount i have even spent on food while being here, in most part due to the fact that I couldn't even exchange my money for the month of October and therefore didn't have the currency or transportation to buy anything from the store.

I can't wait to go to central market though. Looking at pictures online and hearing of this massive place makes me all the more anxious to explore.

Ny, also called Nyara, grew up in the Lar and is now in the half-way home at Mark and Paige's house in the city as she goes to nursing school. She is 21 years old and a wonderful friend. When she, Mellissa, and I went to Beita Mar she was really surprised that I had done all my shopping on my own. They were moving at a slower pace than I was and I went there to get gifts for my friends. They went primarily to enjoy time out and make it possible for me to go. So I was very independent the entire time, bartering with the little Portugues-Spanish mixture I know, and moving up and down the aisles on my own. She had told me as we were walking back to the bus stop to go home that even she wouldn't feel comfortable at the market alone and that I was very brave. The way she made it sound made me question if this presumed bravery was in fact naivity on my part. I thought about how my mom wouldn't be delighted to know that I went off on my own, but deep down I felt like I had a sense of my independence back that has been lacking since being withing the gates of the Lar with no car and no raise (Brazilian currency).

Note that the pictures in this blog were not taken by me, nor are they exact representations of this outing. They serve simply to convey the idea of what I experienced and saw.

Hands and Feet

October 19, 2011

Today was day two of going out with the medical teams and the day was quite eventful. You must excuse my choppy writing style for this entry, I made a lot of brief notes while I was administrating throughout the day and I am now re-typing what was written and my creativity is as belated as the night.

Apparently this location began as Indian grounds many years ago, and now is grounds for a local school in a impoverished farming community, dirt roads and all. the kids here love bubbles, insanely, like they've never seen the things before. Which wouldn't surprise me given that even their soap doesn't have suds.

The soccer ball the kids were kicking around in the approx. 40x20 foot cement yard between the classrooms was so worn down it was an oval shaped, gray stringed knot. The kids here only have school for four hours a day and most kids that are 14 or 15 are only in 4th or 5th grade.

It rained mist, not droplets.

To get straight into the interesting stuff, there were two boys here today that had a painful amount of fleas in their hands and feet. Truly, even one flea would be painful, as demonstrated by the young girl who screamed and cried as the doctors removed a single flea from the tip of her finger. But these boys had about forty in each foot, and probably twenty in each hand. 

The first boy was a tiny figure of a kid; very malnourished indeed. Skin and bones; skinny skin and thin-thin bones. He seemed to not even have enough energy to shake his head "no" when I went up to him as he sat his body hanging on the bench and post to ask if he'd like to see the doctors.

After being picked up and carried over by one of the women working for the health department, the boy was examined by the doctors and soon drew the attention of everyone in the self-set up clinic.

They ended up giving the 3 foot child some Valium to calm him down and hopefully quiet the screams that alarmed all the students within a 20 foot radius of the building. As he was screaming from the pain of the flea removal, I selfishly just didn't want him to look me in the eye; then the connection would be drawn and I would forever be seared into his memory tagged as one of the most painful days of his life.

It caught me as a surprise that the people we helped yesterday at a clinic a couple miles down the road acted as if was the absolute best day of their year. Free medical care and medication, whew, this was more exciting than the world cup for the lot of them! Well, maybe not the world cup.

The kids yesterday had been drawing pictures and giving them to the doctors, smiling and playing as the adults laughed and waiting hours upon hours for a few short minutes with the doctors. We served 119 that day, and today we would only serve 98 (hindsight). There were people being prayed over, one man prophesied over a doctor, and another woman gifted handmade place-mats to one of the eight doctors. Laughs, chit-chats, gifts and appreciation.

Today, screams and sobs of terror and pain.

Fortunately for the boy, "no" is the same in both English and Portuguese, unfortunately that exclamation was not enough to make the procedure slow down. Who knew such a big noise could come from such a small child for so long.

The second boy with an extreme case of flea infestation in his body was actually brother to the first. When he had gotten word out on the playground-area that his brother was the source of the screams and he was to examined next, he hid. That boy ran and hid swiftly, as I believe I would have done at his age. Some guy ended up finding him and bringing him in, face swollen with fear and tears welling up in anticipation as he drug his feet on his way into the back room.

That boy was weeping a song of painful fears as his foot was raised onto the lap of the doctor for examination.

The way the doctors have to remove the fleas is by using the scalpel to slice open the skin over the parasitic flea, pulling out the little beast and then digging out the egg sack that it laid and burrowed deeper into the foot or hand of these children--leaving a deep hole and blood flowing in its place.

The older brother, also very small for his age and clearly malnourished, was mumbling sobs, abs clinched. Moaning, weeping and sobbing, the boy held still for the completion of his first foot.

The doctors gave him some Valium, too, and let it take it's course as they took a quick lunch break. The boy sat there with his feet hanging in his chair, not long enough to touch the floor. One foot done and wrapped, the other resting before it's turn on the doctor's lap.

Note that our hands and feet, espcially the tips of our fingers and toes are some of the most sensitive parts of our entire bodies apart from our lips, which has the most nerve endings in our bodies.

Well, the valume must have worn off because the second boy is no longer weeping sobs of pain and fear, rather he is shouting sobs of anguish and remorse, integrating Portuguese phrases and exclamations.

This child has been here for hours, some of which had overlapped with his brothers procedure, and he ended up screaming his way through the exhaustion. All contemplation of weeping through the pain and "taking it like man" went out the window for this round.

The boy ended up throwing his head back over the lap of the woman who was holding him down from getting away or from kicking or hitting the doctors and his vision struck my eyes. That was it. His sight targeted me and I was made. With a clinched brow and a sorry excuse for sympathy smeared across my face, I repeated all I knew to tell him: "It's going to be okay." My mom had phrased such encouragement to me as a child through my worst moments, and I was hoping a cracked smile might do him some good.

Many of the issues treated over the three days we went out to provide medical care into the Brazilian community are easily preventable with education and good hygiene. These fleas, although common in this community showed neglect  and parental abuse from the home of these two boys.

Apparently the mom came to pick her kids up with the grandma, but once she got word that the doctors had treated her children for their bodily flea infestation, she was too embarrassed to claim her children. Once the grandmother came in to fetch her grandchildren she claimed that she would be taking care of the boys instead of their mother from now on.

We can only hope they receive better care, but we know that what was done for them today is for their best interest and greater good.

Brazil: Learning

I have been learning very much about myself, and pressing in to the God I know. He has revealed Himself as faithful as He has always been. I know many people believe that mission trips give way to a grand revelation of God, but I think the revelation would only be of the misconceptions or skewed perceptions we had of God or ourselves.

God is the same. The same as the old-testament God, the same as the new testament God, the same God of America and Brazil. I am not faithful. I change, break, mold, and hide.

Numbers Game

Stomach pains about every ten minutes.
About five new mosquito bites every day.
220 volts of electricity shocking me and leaving pinches, numbness, and sharp pains up my fingers and arms.
Two tree frogs in the bathroom every night.
Crackling rooster with no sense of dawn alarming me about every hour through the night.


28 kids screaming and chanting for joy after every game in Sunday School.
36 girls that want to spend unlimited time with me.
Two bars of internet in the corner of my living room--just enough to enjoy Facebook, FaceTime, Blogger, and Netflix.
14 kids--and counting--replicating different versions of  my tattoo on their arm.
66 kids I get to interview and spend time with.
Two girls I get to teach extensive English to and practice jewelry-making with.


One Davis-Lar Orphanage.
One Julia Jasmin Navarro.


One Big God.

Brazil: Walking with cows

The lives led here are so different than back home. On my first day (yesterday) I saw a donkey pulling a wagon with a big pig on the side of the road led by the owner. Everyone here either rides mopeds, motocross bikes, bicycles, or small cars. And it seems like a door lubricant salesman would have a lot of opportunity down here!

I'm learning Portuguese everyday and the girls are awesome! I will also be teaching a young girl English for about an hour everyday, investing in another girl through the art of jewelry-making, and creating flyers and updates on all the kids for the new child-sponsorship program.

The food takes some getting used to, the chicken definitely came straight from a real chicken.

The bread is fresh baked by the older boys, I haven't had any yet though because I wasn't hungry at breakfast--everyone here has bread and margarine with warm chocolate milk for breakfast.

We walked down to a farm-like area on the property and the girls picked raw sugar cane! It's very common to this area it seems! There was also a horse tied to a tree, two TINY kittens under a broken cement step, stalls of big pigs and batches of piglets, a few cows and a bull.

We went in a long walk through the town tonight, too, it was neat! My shoes were too small though and I ended up with a fatty blister on the bottom of my foot up by my toes, ouch.

The sunset was nice and I let the girls listen to my iPod on the walk :) I felt like I was gifting them with the joys of city and colour, the civil wars, and hillsong united :)

The dog we took with us on the walk almost got run over by motorized and regular bikes about three times. We also saw a baby snake earlier by the farm, dead, and the girls ahead of me on the walk saw a bigger one, alive.

Loose in the street were two huge cows, too. That was an interesting sight to approach on the street. I felt like I was in the Brazilian version of Spain, except instead of running with the bulls, we were walking with the cows.

I'm settling in a lot more and adjusting better than yesterday :) much better.

I noticed the change in me around lunch. I still wasn't hungry but I decided to eat just to be appropriate. After crying to the Lord in my room and cheering myself on to "pull it together" repeatedly, I ended up enjoying rice and chicken with some new friends. I felt much better after finding out that I get internet in the living room of the intern apartment, too :)In my sorrow the Lord revealed something to me in Scripture :) Psalm 119:169-176.

 May my cry come before you, LORD;
   give me understanding according to your word. 

 May my supplication come before you;
   deliver me according to your promise.
 May my lips overflow with praise,
   for you teach me your decrees.
 May my tongue sing of your word,
   for all your commands are righteous.
 May your hand be ready to help me,
   for I have chosen your precepts.
 I long for your salvation, LORD,
   and your law gives me delight.
 Let me live that I may praise you,
   and may your laws sustain me.
 I have strayed like a lost sheep.
   Seek your servant,
   for I have not forgotten your commands.

 I had been thirsting for Scripture all day; which came as a change since I have neglected reading the Word for over a week now. 

God is faithful though I am not. 

I opened my Bible and let Him lead me; it was only a matter of seconds after opening my Bible and flipping back and forth until I knew this was for me to listen to. It reminded me of why I am here, who my God is, and what I long for. 

The closing to this passage also came as a wake-up call because I recently got the phrase "The Lord is my Shepherd" tattooed on my arm. Yet here I was, straying from his truth like a lost sheep.

Oh my God is good, He is my portion forever.

Brazil: Waiting

Hi everyone!


Well I made it safely to the Sao Palo airport. It is currently hour 28 of traveling and I still have 11.5 hours until I land in Fortaleza.


I have been sitting/sleeping/walking in the Sao Palo airport for six hours and still have a little over four hours until departure. I cannot tell you how much simple math I have been calculating approximately every seven minutes since waking up in the airplane headed for Sao Palo about three hours before landing. It was quite a disappointment. I had fallen asleep on the plane while watching Hangover 2 and thought I had slept for hours. It turns out that the Portegese speaking pilot was not advising us to prepare for landing, but to prepare for turbulence. I can't tell you how long it took for me to figure out we weren't landing anytime soon, nor can I tell you how often I anxiously stared at the little light picture of a seatbelt above our heads with anticipation.


My mom and I were discussing the wonders of walking on the drive to LAX. We talked about how walking can prevent Alzheimer's and maintain healthy circulation, and how having the ability to walk is another way God orchastrated us  to function in health. I thought of this conversation as I pushed my well-stacked luggage cart back and forth, two and frow, and every circle-which-way I could trek through the Sao Palo airport during this ten hour layover. I avoided telling my mom that I would have to spend the night in a South American airport on the way to Fortaleza. And I suppose now would also be the time to disclose that I'll be spending the night in Rio on my way back to the states in December. I suppose I witheld this information because I didn't want my mom to worry, but now I realize that it may have just been because I didn't want to hear her worry while I was on the verge of being overwhelmed with everything else I was dealing with, sorry mom.


Another thing she may not like is the fact that I spent a bit of time in the Sao Palo airport bathrooms--no, not to use the toilet facilities, but to rest my eyes. I don't feel comfotable leaving my baggage unattended, and given that I am traveling alone, if I were to sleep my luggage would therefore be unattended. So, in seeking rest, I went into the single unit--clean--handicapped bathroom for women with all my lugagge, cleared the cart of all except the "Big Kona" (that's what I call the giant Hawaiian styled suitcase I have with me), and I curled up on top. It wasn't perfect, but it served me well. I was able to rest my eyes in peace for about thirty minutes without touching the floor or worrying about my belongings.


My first choice would haved been the kids restroom area. They had a separtate room with a large granite countertop that looked great to cuddle up on with my travel pillow and blanket. The cleaning lady had stopped me before I could go in though, motioning that the room I wanted to enter was for either kids or midgets below the height of her waiving arm. Nonetheless, I ended up finding a separate kids restroom after getting a weird look from the cleaning lady after my thirty minute use of the handicapped restroom and then later taking a stroll once more through the airport. This time I felt like Will Smith and his son in the movie Persuit of Happyness when they spent the night in a subway station restroom. Although I felt like it would have been appropriate to imagine a world of dinosaurs filling my presence, as in the film, I layed there on that clean hard granite with my tiny black pilllow and "borrowed" Delta Airlines blanket in peace as I listened to Carla Bruni--note that the restroom was much cleaner and friendly than that of Will Smith and his son; where they had graffiti and slanderous language, I had tiled flowers and a very short mirror.


As of now it is almost three in the morning where I am, however, whoever reads this may notice the delay in time it will take me to post/e-mail this. This is because there is no free wifi at this airport as there is in US airports. I have to sit here, virtually alone. I cannot even e-mail my mama to tell her that I'm safe, but nonetheless, I will push onward. Whether it be in the form of physically pushing my luggage cart onward, or figuratively pushing myself further in self-motivation and entertainment.


It is 2:42 AM in the Sao Palo Airport.
It is 10:42 PM in my La Quinta, CA home.
1 hour and 18 minutes until I check in for my flight.
2 hour and 52 minutes until my flight boards.
3 hours and 23 minutes until departure.


P.S. When the plane landed in Sao Palo they wheeled a staircase up to the plane and we exited on the runway road area. In my head as I reached the top of the staircase I threw my hands out shook my hair and shouted "Hello, Sao Palo!"