I woke up at 7:00 on a beautiful Saturday morning. Everyone was still sleeping. I quietly put on my swim trunks and headed outside. The only door that I could open was the one leading from the kitchen to to the outside yard. I made my way to the pool where I discovered a man who was cleaning the pool quietly and who then moved on to rake the whole huge yard. He spoke no English and all I could do was greet him. He probably realized from my accent that I was a non-Portuguese speaker and so he attempted no conversation with me. After my dip in the pool, I sat at one of the tables near the pool and admired the lush growth surrounding the country home and I listened to and watched all the new-to-me birds that were flying around and hopping on the lawn which looked like it was Bermuda grass.
At 7:30 or so, Polido slid open the patio doors on the bottom level of the house and came out and joined me. We sat there for about 2 hours just talking...politics, religion, humanities, the meaning of life...deep stuff! I think he was trying to assess what kind of person he had entrusted Fabiana to when she had been in Winnipeg at KEC. I enjoyed our conversation immensely. Polido is a good man!
At about 10:00 a.m., another brother, Leo, and his five year old son, Pedro, arrived. Breakfast was an informal affair prepared by Polido's house-helpers, Fatima and Welkeria. We had fresh baked bread, cheeses, fruit, juice, and coffee served with hot milk. Harley(Zhee?) was very fluent in English while Zheena was quite fluent. Leo could speak and understand a lot of English so that conversation around the breakfast table was mostly in English except for a few Portuguese asides after which some more food would magically appear and be offered to me.
I discovered in what kind of upper echelon of Brazilian management Polido, Zhee, Leo, and Tarcisio were. Zhhe was a managing director for Vale, a world wide mining consortium. They recently acquired 2 of Canada's largest nickel mines in Sudbury and Thompson. Zhee has been to Winnipeg to check on the Thompson operation. I suspect we will meet again in the near future when he returns on company business. Polido and Tarcisio, if I understood correctly, are engineers in a construction company that is involved in projects all over the world. Tarcisio is a comptroller overseeing the financial aspects of the projects while Polido is a problem solver on these projects. They all work 12+ hour-days during the week and are under a lot of pressure and stress. When it's time to relax, they do so wholeheartedly!
Carnival week in Brazil involves a week of no working, lots of visiting with a lot of eating, dancing, music, and drinking. There was to be a gathering at Polido's and Rosangela's place to celebrate carnival and to allow us to meet and mingle with their families and friends. Guests and family members started arriving around 11:00 a.m. Fabiana and Gustavo's friends, numbering 14 or so, arrived en masse with Fabiana.
While they were getting settled, Polido, Rosangela, Zheena, Patti, and I embarked on a 6 kilometre walk around the lake on paths that were mostly under a canopy of trees and flowery growths with openings to view the lake on one side and open to see the beautiful homes and yards bordering the lake. We saw beautiful flowers, lush vegetation, fantasically colored butterflies,birds, and insects. There were a few preponas, which are butterfies that are strong fliers in tropical forests where they feed on fermenting fruits and animal dung(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepona). The underside of the wings is pale greyish or brownish, while the upperside is dark with distinct iridescent blue markings. Our friends referred to them as vanessas! We were even fortunate to see a monkey that Rosangela and Zheena spotted with their sharp eyes. It looked like a black-tufted marmoset. It was elusively shy and hid in the dense foliage.
There were 2 beautiful waterfalls along the path we took. Near the end of the walk we came to a club with little restaurants, a canopied dance area, swimming area, boat rentals, and small vendors. From here we descended down into a small canyon where there was a most magnificent waterfall that I have a photo of in my Belo Horizonte album on my home page in FaceBook. It was almost 30 metres high and cascaded into a pool where you could swim. There was a slippery path leading to a pool directly under the falling water.
The young people had driven to the falls to meet us and to swim and then to drive us back to the party which was heating up back at Polido and Rosangela's place. I joined Fabiana and Fernanda and their friends under the waterfall. It was very refreshing but I realized that I couldn't take the force of the water falling on me for too long.
Tarcisio had also arrived and he took Patti and me and Fernanda and Rodrigo back to the party where we were introduced to all the family and friends who had arrived while we were on our walk. Then it was a full afternoon into the evening of swimming, and singing, and visiting,and eating, and drinking. A chef prepared canapes, while Polido's househelpers, Fatima and Welkeria, kept people supplied with caipirinhas. As well, there was a tap attached to a keg from which one could draw a cold mug of Brazilian beer.
Late in the afternoon, a "lunch" was served. This was their main meal and consisted of the most delicious foods, rice and delicacies prepared by the chef. After the meal, the guests slowly started to disperse. By 9:00 p.m., only those of us who were spending the night there remained.
There was another meal at 10:00 p.m. - Brazilian "perogies" stuffed with chicken in a most excellent cream sauce, along with sweets and cake for dessert with wine, soda pop, and juices. At 11:00 we took our leave and retired for the night. Others stayed up to visit. It was good for them to be able to talk in their native language and not have to worry about leaving us out or translating for us!
No comments:
Post a Comment