Category: Images of São Luis and Maranhão

 

These are photos from our six-week research visit to São Luís (Maranhão), Brazil, in the summer of 2017.  It does not have a special theme,  except that we are happy to be able to continue our research here and are continually amazed by the diversity and riches of the place.

We were preparing to go on the road again to interior to photograph and film a variety of local ways that Festa do Divino is celebrated here.

The following photos are from our first getting grounded in the city and attending a few events before getting on a bumpy bus ride to the interior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first heard the phrase “Run what you brung” in southern auto and  motorcycle racing.  It usually signaled impatience when someone was complaining that the rights parts didn’t arrive, the carburetor is a bit off, the tires are too soft (or hard, or bald), or other of the endless reasons racers have for losing.  This was a reminder to stop complaining and get to work with what you have.

The photos here are beachfront and research photos taken during January – April, 2016 with a small-sensor camera that fits into a pocket.  It was already a couple of generations old when I used it, having been superceded by larger, and even “full-frame,” pocket cameras.  I found that it was a terrific carry-along (even in a pants pocket while bicycling at the beach),  and I gradually came to understand that there were images that were not only usable, but had certain special characteristics that were worth a bit of attention.  It is still not my camera of choice for something I go out with the intention to photograph, but it is very versatile and helpful when you are in a place Like São Luís where it’s always good to have a camera with you.

 

Beachfront and City images

 

 

The egret appeared in a January 2016 post on using a small camera (http://www.meredithwwatts.com/MWBrazilBlog/?m=201601 or scroll down to January).

This first post was shortly after losing most of our first-choice camera and video camera equipment, and we were adjusting to using our back-up equipment.

In these photographs the small camera was either the carry-along of choice because it slipped into my pants pocket, or it was all I had.  The little camera often made it possible to find images that would have escaped me if I had needed to have a larger camera with me.  Sometimes for reasons of convenience or security this is the kind of camera to have.  Since this model of camera was made, many more with larger sensors and better image quality are available, but few are more “pocketable.” And as the old photographers’ saying goes, “The best camera is the one you have with you.” (That is, “run what you brung…”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research on “cultura popular” Marenhense (popular culture in Maranhão)

Working with back-up equipment for photographing in our research project on popular culture, I often used the pocket camera.  This women directs a Bumba-meu-boi in one of Maranhão’s smaller cities.  This is in the workshop where costumes and equipment are prepared.  She is here reflected in a broken  mirror among the props.  She is a remarkably energetic performer and group leader, and helped he group, Bumba-meu-boi de Rama Santa be a very popular attraction in Sao Luis in the June festival.

 

 

 

 

This post describes two areas in the north of Maranhão — the first is the vast stretch of dunes of the Lençóis Ecological Park.  The Lençois Park encompasses just under 600 square miles.  The 2005 Brazilian film House of Sand was filmed in the park.

The second is the fishing village of Raposa, which is known for its access to wandering rivers, islands, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.  Raposa is also known for its local artisans who are specialized in making nets and in a specialized fabric form known as “renda de bilro.”  Renda is a form of of knitting or crocheting that is done with threads stretched over a large stuffed ball that is like a round pillow.  Each string is connected to a stick with a ball at the end that artisans cross over again and again to form lace and fabric. The design is formed around pins stuck into the ball that are guides for the yarn.

 

Lençois

The north coast of the Brazilian state of Maranhão has a huge expanse of dunes that reach along the Atlantic for miles.  During the rainy season (roughly December to May) fresh water fills small lakes and lagoons along the dunes.  The water gives the park its name of Lençois, which means “sheets,” since the lakes look like sheets spread out across the desert landscape.

The first photo set is of the Lençóis Ecological Park (also called Lençóis Maranhenses) is a protected national park that is reached from the small town of Barreirinhas.  The town itself lies on the Rio Preguiça the “lazy river.”

The river winds lazily through the north Maranhão landscape toward the Atlantic Ocean.  Along the way it forms the barrier (the root of the name Barreirinhas) which is a huge sand dune at the edge of town.  The river moves slowly toward the ocean, becoming more brackish along the way.  It is home to and vast stretches of mangrove trees that drop long air roots into the brackish water.   As the water become more salty near the ocean, the palm trees and mangroves disappear in favor of a forested area — which itself gives way to the dunes and the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Lençóis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raposa

The fishing village of Raposa has developed a route for visitors.  It includes little boats that take you among the wandering harbor and the mangroves to the fishing island of Curupuru.  There is a street of renda and net makers as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water and Brazil

This is a preliminary reflection on water in Brazil, a country that, in principle, has enough for its needs and then some.  The problem is in the distribution and management of water, and in the infrastructure that should carry it to the Brazilian population.  Later versions of this post will have more research and photos, but this preliminary reflection is a rough overview of Brazil’s water situation as we have seen it over the last few months. Some of these photos have appeared in earlier posts about life in the interior.

What I show here is what I have experienced and photographed in Brazil — mostly in the northeast state of Maranhão, which is among the poorest and least developed in Brazil.  My own subjective experience is augmented by reportage from São Paulo and Maranhão newspapers and weekly journals.

 

 

 

Some Larger Issues: Water in the Amazon and the Interior

The world is familiar with issues of conservation of the forests and aquifers in the Amazon region of Brazil.  The area is being deforested at an astonishing rate by miners, lumber companies, farming businesses, and others.  Farming of the lucrative cattle and grain products (e.g., soy beans) is creating more food and less water.

Directly or indirectly, forest and water in this region is especially threatened by the world’s demand for meat — either as cattle raised here or the grain used (and massively exported) to feed cattle elsewhere.  Some sources say that soy would be nine times more efficient as a source of protein if used directly, rather than being used as cattle feed to produce meat.  Much of the cattle ranching in Brazil is based on free range and thus needs space — this is perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil’s forests and water.

 

Water in São Paulo, and the Missing 20,000 Water Tanks

São Paulo’s reservoirs are threatened by a long, dry season.  Their replenishment is a matter of nature providing enough rain in the wet season.  But these problems are to some extent predictable and the infrastructure to manage a shortage has not yet been built.

Again, a major problem is in the distribution system.  In São Paulo there are eight major systems.  They are only partly connected and metro-wide “integration” of the water infrastructure is an engineer’s dream and a very problematic political task.

Brazil is currently plagued with a declining economy and is hobbled at the national level by corruption and feuding over ethics investigations, the jailing of leading political figures, and the possible impeachment of others.  In São Paulo the political situation is seems less contentious, but the water infrastructure demands a huge investment that is not readily accomplished in times of economic stress.

As an example, the northern zone of greater São Paulo is somewhat distant from the central commercial district and it houses a millions of people with modest incomes and standard of living.  This region is fed by the Cantareira water reserve, which has fallen to as low as 15% of capacity and has only recovered a few percent since the rains of the summer (i.e., the months that are winter in the Northern hemisphere).

Cantareira dropped to a “dead volume” — the level at which water does not freely flow out of the reservoir but must be pumped.  This depletes the volume further until, in theory, they reach the mud at the  bottom and the system fails entirely.  This has not been happened, but the measures to improve the situation have been difficult.

At full efficiency the Cantareira reservoir supplies 31 thousand liters of water a second to 9 million people.  By September  (24th) the newspaper Fohla de São Paulo reported that the system had fallen to about half that performance —  to 14 thousand liters/second and 9 million to 5 million people.  The slack in providing water to the northern region of the city has been taken up by shifting some load to other systems.

Load sharing is more effective if there is a metropolitan-wide system of integration, but that is not yet in place.

Another second tactic is rationing. This modifies the behavior of end-users by  simply shrinking the supply or, alternately, the hours of access. According to some newspaper accounts, certain areas of the affected zone are often without water for several days.  Sometimes the rationing is by time of day, reportedly as low in some places as 20 of 24 hours with dry faucets and toilets.  This is a working district so people may not be in their homes when there is water.  They need water tanks (caixas d’agua) that could be filled and would bridge the off-times of the municipal water.

The São Paulo mayor Geraldo Alckmin promised 20,000 new water tanks to be installed in troubled areas.  Thar was during an election campaign.  Only a fraction have been installed.  The city claims that they have not been able to deliver the tanks to many (or even most) households because nobody is home when the trucks come by (during the working hours of the city employees, of course).  This troubled half-solution is proceeding slowly, and only (it appears) under great pressure from the press.

Yet, the water tank is a basic feature of the Brazilian countryside and of most towns and cities in the interior.  Even in better-supplied areas, homes, businesses and factories use the tanks to stabilize their water supply.  This is true all over Brazil, in cities and in rural areas.

The problem, again, is one of distribution.  In this case it is the far-flung neighborhoods of São Paulo working people that are at the short end of the distribution chain.

But load sharing and infrastructure provide one approach to redistributing the water supply. Another is modifying consumer behavior.  For those that are more generously supplied there are a number of incentives to reduce consumption.  São Paulo initiated a system of fees (equivalent to fines) for usage above normal, and included a bonus for reductions in use.  Modifying consumer behavior in the better-supplied systems theoretically freed water to be distributed to the troubled districts such as those served by the Cantareira Reservoir.

By March, 2016 the São  Paulo situation had improved considerably due to heavy rains.  As a sign of improvement the system of fees and bonuses was scheduled to be suspended.

Recycling and Waste Management

There is an interconnected set of issues where water supply is limited and waste management is troubled.  In this small city of Mirinzal trash is routinely dumped (see large appliances  at photo right) and used tires are unceremoniously left about.  Both catch water during the wet season and become possible breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  In days of the Aedes Aegipti mosquito, such diseases as Zika, Chikunkunya and Dengue are major public issues (as is the spread of microencephalitis for which the mosquite may be a vector).

Managing water in the rainy season is important in its own way, as is distributing water in scarcity.  Trash and waste disposal are deeply interconnected with the water supply in both rural and urban areas.

 

Some Views from the Interior

Water tanks are ubiquitous in the smaller cities of Brazil.  The tanks are vital in the interior regions with no municipal water supply (photo above of ox cart, and the section below on caixas d’agua).  Settlements and towns in the country are often spread along rivers and water sources, but those sources are heavily used, vulnerable and the water often dries up or is unsafe.  The woman in the photo above is carrying household water from a common water source to her home.  This is not an unusual scene in povoadas. The most common source is be a well or a jointly-used water tank.  Rarely does a natural source meet local needs during the dry season.

Since much of our research is based in the provincial capital of São Luís and in the interior of the state of Maranhão, most of the photographs below are of that region.  Not shown are the indigenous regions of the interior where in September of 2015 there was a major water emergency, exacerbated by fires, in the forests of the interior.  Several cities declared water emergencies and much forested land was threatened.  There was insufficient water to fight a major fire.

These issues compound problems created by both nature by human and political behavior.

By comparison, São Paulo officials said that the water situation was only “really serious” when we begin to see trucks of water roaming the streets of the city.

In São Luís we see the water trucks almost daily.

Water in the federal state of Maranhão

Maranhão is a long way from the metropolitan centers of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.  Like those centers, it is on or near the Atlantic Ocean, but is dependent on its fresh water sources in the interior.  These systems are underdeveloped in general, and subject to shortages in dry seasons.

Readers of Brazilian popular fiction and many films are aware that the region of the sertão (often translated as “backlands”) has been depopulated for decades because of drought.

This region is has similarities to America’s “dust bowl” which emptied out much of the western region of the American Midwest during the dust storms of several decades ago.  In the United States this gave rise to a national rural recovery administration.  This period was memorialized in such books/films as John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and in the photography of Dorothea Lange and others working for the Farm Services Administration.

The sertao is Brazil’s rough analogue to the American dust bowl.  It is not geographically part of the federal state of Maranhão, but some of the dry-season problems of Maranhão are reminiscent of these famous dust bowl regions. The beautiful green of the countryside and its forests become dry and dusty waiting for the rains.  Even the palm trees and ground foliage get dusty. In many years the rains are not enough to replenish the water systems.  This threatens rice and cotton  crops, cattle production, and the lives of the inhabitants.

Like the dust bowl, the Northeast of Brazil, of which Maranhão is a part, is a major source of out-migration.  People in the interior migrate to Maranhão, and many others make the longer trip to major cities like São Paulo.

In São Paulo, however, they may live in a district like that served by Cantareira where water is in very short supply.  In some sense, moving the population contributes to moving the “water problem” from place to place in Brazil.

Even where there may be water, the distribution systems may be only rudimentary — for example, as in the village market described below.

The first photo from the interior is from the small city of Pindaré where the market is a major outlet for freshly-caught fish.  This is a major source of sustenance and economic life in the region.

The market in Pindaré has a common water source — the faucet below provides water for cleaning fish and other market needs.

 

 

In villages and povoadas in the interior, food preparation is a matter of careful planning and complicated hygiene.  The scene below brings back childhood memories of my grandparents’ farm where animals were butchered in the open and shared by many families.  There was little refrigeration and the best way to preserve meat was to keep it on the hoof.

In the scenes below animals come to the party alive and become dinner in the course of the celebration.  This is not “animal sacrifice” in the religious sense, but rather a practical way of feeding a large group.  The practice gains a spiritual/community sense in that there are often rituals or moments of praise for the gifts of food that they share.

Food Preparation

 

 

 

Some Household Systems

Grocery stores sell 6-liter bottles of household water.  These are helpful, but also enter the refuse stream of un-recycled plastic in the waste system.  More efficient are the delivery services that will bring you a 20-liter bottle within an hour or so if you live in a major service area.

A commonly-used word is “Diskagua,” which means you simply call and the water is delivered, usually by motorcycle (the disk portion of the word refers to the old-style telephones with a “disk” of numbers on a rotary dialer).

If you live in the interior away from an incorporated city or town, getting the bottles is much more difficult.  In some areas delivery is by truck, in others by motorcycle or by bicycle.

We have seen unlucky motorcycle diskagua drivers in heavy traffic with damaged and leaking 20-liter bottles lashed to the back.  In larger areas there are trucks carrying the bottles, but the “capillary” distribution to individual households is usually by small vehicle (or even by donkey cart in some places).

Apartments in the city of São Luís use this system since there is no potable water in the municipal pipes.  Many  have a boutique dispenser that also cools the water.

 

 

The older water system below is from the kitchen of a pousada, or bed-and-breakfast where we sometimes stay in Pindaré.  We don’t think of this as a 5-star experience, and on our last visit there was no water at all until sundown.

 

 

Plastic bottles are part of the solution, and part of the problem.

In the household systems above and below you can see that plastic bottles are an important part of the system.

Dependence on water, and dependence on plastic, go together in Brazil, creating a huge problem of recycling and plastic waste.  Plastic waste adds to other waste/rubbish removal problems to create standing water where mosquitoes breed in season.  This chain of interconnected water-refuse-public health issues begins with problematic hygiene in sewage and water systems, water shortages, generation of plastic alternatives for water, and the absence of recycling in many areas.

Solving any of these problems is like doing paper work with the Brazilian bureaucracy (where “Catch 22” is a basic situation) — you often can’t do just one thing at one office, you need to solve several other problems at different offices (which may be closed or across town).  The public health analogue is in the interconnectedness of water, sewage, waste removal, and recycling (all of which are, in turn, related in some way to other infrastructure issues in roads and the underlying water/sewer systems).

It is difficult to encourage recycling of plastic or reduce people’s dependence on plastic when getting water is so critical.  You might ask whether Brazilian could not simply get a reusable water bottle (like campers use). Many recycling-conscious people in other countries use camping bottles and refil them from a water tap.  This works where the municipal water supply is safe.  Many people do indeed reuse plastic water water bottles to reduce cost and waste.  When we are traveling in the interior we try to reuse commercial plastic bottles filled from our 20-liter tank at home — that is how we learned that they are thin and fragile, often cracking and losing the water (in your luggage or camera bag).

 

 

The home below is a modest one, but has the rare good fortune to have its own well water.  There is otherwise no municipal system of water or sanitation in this neighborhood in the interior of Maranhão (near the city of Rosário).

 

 

 

 

In several of these photos (including the one below) you can see that individual households do try to recycle plastic bottles to cut cost and waste.  The bottle are not made to last, however.

Americans will be familiar with similar situations in the United States.  Residents in Flint Michigan suffered a serious pollution of their water, apparently due to decisions made at the state level.  As their water became unpotable, they were forced to buy bottled water (in plastic bottles, usually).  The irony is compounded by the fact that some of the bottled water supply was originally from the Great Lakes — rebottled and sold to them commercially.

 

 

 

 

Calhau Beach Restaurants, São Luís

The beaches in São Luís are lined with restaurant and bars.  They vary in quality and hygiene, but some are quite popular regardless of what lies behind.  On the beach side of these businesses you can see the motley infrastructure that supports the kitchen and bathrooms.  It is hard to tell how much the bathrooms and kitchens are supported by city water or sewer system.  On rainy days effluent from the city purges into the bay.

The restaurant may be doing alright, but the runoff is part of the pollution in the the San Marcos Bay.

 

 

 

The Ubiquitous Water Tank (caixa da agua)

The various household and commercial systems are often depending on water tanks for stabilizing the water supply.  They show up in the photos above.  Below are more such systems showing how common and essential they are outside areas of reliable municipal systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sanitation

 

 

 

 

 

The beauty of this place, such as the sunset on the Bay of San Marcos above, clashes with ecological compromises and infrastructure problems that are a constant source of ambivalence for us as we visit the beach nearly everyday.

The above photo and the black and white photos below are all shot with a small camera that became more important after the theft of some of our main equipment.  (More on that in an earlier post.)

Because of the equipment losses, I have been experimenting with a small Canon that was formerly just my walk-around camera. It fits in my pocket when on the beach and is a good companion when I am in town and don’t want to carry heavier equipment.

These photographs are all from the beach in Sáo Luís and in one of the central city’s shopping streets.  It was once an elegant area but has been abandoned by the middle class which has moved to the outer rings of the city.

 

 

I have been working without my basic camera for a while and have used this little Canon S-100 in situations that I might have reserved for a larger-format camera. Its small sensor has about 18 MP squeezed into a body the size of most point-and-shoot cameras. It has adjustments for aperture and shutter speed, and zooms from 24mm to 120 mm.  It shoots in RAW format which gives a lot of latitude for subsequent computer processing.

There are newer small cameras with larger sensors, but this in the one in my pocket most of the time.

 

 

This small camera is handy if you don’t need large format prints or are photographing simple compositions.  Because it is easy and inconspicuous to carry in a pocket, it fits the old rule that “the best camera is the one you have with you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I see this place I think of Rick’s Place in Casablanca — “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she has to walk into mine” — but Kallamazoo?  Most beachfront places have names like Rising Sun, or Ocean Bar, or Adventurer, but some have named like this and “Mallibu,” invariably spelled with Brazilian indifference.  I have not stopped to ask if they specialize in central Michigan cuisine, hesitating  to visit in case they have burgers and the University of Michigan football game on television.  A better guess is that they have the same fried fish and french-fried manioc strips (macaxeira) that everyone else does.

American romantics should be warned that no place on the beach plays bossa nova, jazz or anything remotely like classical (not even Astor Piazzola or Brazilian classical guitar).  It is Brazilian pop and dance music, leavened from time to time with an folk singer crooning “Sweet Caroline” or “Eleanor Rigby.”  One night we had Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” — an old favorite in Brazil, translated into Portuguese.  Beach music is made for drinking, not subtlety.

Oi!

 

 

 

 

 

Sao Luis has three markets that are favorite places to photograph– the Mercado Municipal (city market) city’s historic center, the Mercado Central (central market) just above the city center and what wold have been the city center in the late 19th century, and the central produce market (CEAS-MA) a bit more removed from the old center but placed at a busy intersection for easy access for trucks and cars.  There is also a Mercado de Peixe (fish market) near the Praia Grande at the water’s edge below the historic center, but I haven’t figured out how to get there early enough to photograph.

The Mercado Municipal and the Mercado Central are wonderfully tacky and unsuited for actual food consumption — a photographer’s dream, in other words.  The CEAS – Maranhao is a working produce market that supplies the region with fruits and vegetables.  There is some animal protein as well (fresh chicken, crabs, shrimp), but this place is above all a bustling produce center.

CEAS seems to be the place where groceries and restaurants buy their fresh produce.  It is huge, though not compared to New York or Sao Paulo, and it has a constant stream of vehicles coming in and out in the early morning.

This is the place to buy fresh produce.  There are also specialized vendors for prepared food, spices, and other items that are hard to find in neighborhood markets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you were planning to give up drinking, this is a good time.  The purple bottle to the left is taquira, a strong liquor made from manioc or cassava.  Known locally as mandioca, manioc is a staple food of he interior and with indigenous people.  In town it can become macaxeira which is fried like french fries, or it can be ground into farofa, a dense flour that is spread on food.  The one on the right says something about butter, but I’m not drinking that one either.

The nutritional benefits of the purple liquor are unproven, and generally not to be recommended.  On the other hand, manioc itself is a regular feature of the Brazilian diet, and in the interior it is a basic food item (like potatoes and grain at the same time.

 

Another thing not to drink.  It is popular to place fruits and sea creatures in bottles of alcohol.  They seem to be made by cutting the bottle and resealing it with a woven cover over the cut.  Perhaps, though,  this is just my pragmatic notion.  The crabs may have gotten into the bottle of booze some other clever way.

 

 

 

In an earlier post I described a visit to the artisan mask-maker Abel Texeira, A mask (here known as a careta) takes thousands of beads, sequins, tiny glass tubes and other decorations.  Here is one of the shops where most of the supplies are sold.

There are higher quality decorative materials available in Sao Paulo, and at least one embroider (see post on Dona Tania Soares) gets materials there whenever possible.  They are said to be expensive Japanese embroidery decoration, not found in Sao Luis.

The historic center has a thriving market for tourist trinkets and craft work.  Some seem to have a “traditional” or even esoteric origin (Afro-Brazilian or indigenous spiritual entities), but many have a kitschy tourist quality full of with stereotypes of women and rural Brazilians.

 

 

This is another side of the tiny reggae plaza, with the slogan “Arroz, feijao, and ganja.”

This translates to the basic Maranhao reggae diet of “Rice, beans, and ganja (marijuana, maconha).”

Most nights there is an intense atmosphere of loud music and various herbal fragrances.  The hotel where we normally stayed is nearby, so we could enjoy the reggae until 2:00 or 3:00 am.

 

 

 

Joelma travels to indigenous territories in Maranhao to bring back artisanal work to sell in this shop in the historic center.  She is a constant source of information about the status of indigenous people in the interior, who are threatened by hunters, miners, the lumber industry, road construction, and land conflicts of all sorts. In the complex racial and ethnic culture of Maranhao, the indigenous peoples are both protected and threatened.  Many live on what are referred to as the “remnants” or remains of quilombos.  For centuries freed and escaped slaves escaped to remote regions, often in the deep forests, to communities whose remoteness gave them some protection the plantation owners and slavers.  Many intermarried with the indigenous peoples who often supported and protected them.  Today the quilombos and other small settlements often show this centuries-old ethnic mixture.

Unlike the United States where there were limited wild spaces for slaves to escape, the first Brazilian quilombos were often deep in the interior where the white authority could not easily reach them.  Many were founded by escapees and free blacks at least as early as the 17th century.  The largest of them, Palmares (in the current state of Alagoas) was said to have had a population of some 20,000.   It lasted from 1605 until 1694 when, after several unsuccessful expeditions against them,  they were wiped out by an army of mercenaries.

 

Some of the basket work from the indigenous settlements that Joelma represents.  They are all woven from different varieties of palm, whose endless variety here provides natural materials that fill a myriad of uses for construction and practical items like baskets.

In late October we moved to another temporary apartment a bit further from the beach and more to the west along its trajectory.  We still visit it once or twice a day, but new location changes the view a bit.  In an earlier post I described the physical sensations of living at the equator and talked about the beach.  Since then we have moved westward along the beach and experience it a bit differently.  We are further from the slightly rough-cut apartment along the beach avenue and closer to the middle-class high rises you can see in photos below.

Sunday morning  — after a long walk you can get fresh green coconuts.  They cut open the top and place a straw for drinking the coconut water inside.  If you wish, they can crack the coconut open later so you can eat the soft flesh.  These “green” coconuts are much different from the mature brown coconuts known outside the country.  They are still filled with fluid that is reputed to be full of electrolytes and is restorative on a hot day.

Living near the beach in Sao Luis, Maranhao means beginning and ending each day with a walk on the sand.  Here we look to the north and west where freighters wait in anchor further out in the bay.  One by one they will circle to the north and then west to pick up their load of iron ore from the Itaqui that services the Vale mining enterprise.

 

 

We see the early life of the beach, including these men who work each day to put the beach “back where it belongs.”  Each tide brings in more sand, and the prevailing strong winds from the east move the dry sand toward the dunes to the south — where the restaurants are.  To keep the tables from disappearing requires constant shovel and wheelbarrow work.

 

The bombeiros are a rescue and life-saving squad.  They are often garrisoned in a military-style facility.  At the Calhau beach in Sao Luis they have a headquarters where they train.

This is a late afternoon soccer game with spectators.  By 6:00 pm the sun has dropped below the horizon.  Being on the equator means roughly 12 hours of sun a day throughout the year.  When the sun is up, it is fierce.

Morning and evening walks are the most comfortable when the sun is low and there is a bit of an overcast.

Evenings are when the egrets (called garcas in Portuguese) visit the shallow tide ponds.

 

 

 

 

 

The dunes shield the beach from the south side (where the road and pedestrian walks and restaurants are).

With a little careful framing of the photo the beach looks a bit more deserted that it really is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some days the tides are high.  This day was one of heavy overcast and the night before one of a full moon.

 

On days like this we walk on a running-bicycling sidewalk above the beach.  This takes us past the bars and restaurants.  In early morning some of the kite surfers are getting ready, and the boot camp has moved to the high ground.   As the photo below shows, the supports are exposed during low tide and much of the day.

 

 

 

The bars all have similar engineering.  Here, early in the morning, the heroes of the beach (in orange) clean things up for another day of humans.  They wear full orange suits with hats and neck covers, looking a bit like a disposal crew for hazardous waste (which is not entirely untrue).  Each morning they take a break in shade of one of the bars on stilts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beach

 

Tonight the conditions were just right for the terns, the egrets and the kite surfers.   There is a prevailing wind of about 25 miles per hour from the east, sweeping the beach along its length, which runs nearly a perfect east-west trajectory.  Tonight the wind was a bit higher and seemed to have shifted a bit to the north, blowing large waves across the bay.  The tide came higher than usual, shrinking the beach to a fraction of its normal width and creating a huge expanse of damp, slightly packed sand.  Each long rolling wave brought new little creatures to the shore, attracting terns and egrets.  There were the occasional clusters of young “boot camp” athletes running around orange cones they laid out in a beach course, thrashing along to a techno beat from a portable music system.  They didn’t discourage the birds or anyone else because the offshore wind blew the sound away from the water.  Even the egrets don’t seem to care because the peck about in the shallow tide pools without much concern for human.  Also, there were always a dozen or more kite surfers in sight.  A 25-30mpg wind gives a wild ride.  The strongest of them could heel hard into the wind, gathering their strength to leap some ten feet into and over the waves.  The stronger ones could reverse field and sail back into the wind to prepare for the next downwind run.  It is the beginning of a long weekend, and the beach is as clean and wild as it will be for days.

 

What is the physical experience of living near the beach? (Not quite what you would think if you have been looking at travel posters from Rio de Janeiro)

There is a new world of physical experiences for those who have spent most of their mortal existence not far from the 42nd parallel in the northern hemisphere.  In the so-called temperate zones of the northern hemisphere the southern and northern weather systems compete and shift the weather from cold to warm and even hot, for a short time.  The winter days are short and the summer days long.  Temperatures may range over the year from 95degrees for a few days in the summer to long stretches below zero in the winter.

 

Not so here on the equator.

Actually we are a degree or two above or below the equator but the difference is too small to notice.  By the way, that is the – 0th  parallel, 42 degrees away from home.  Instead of large shifts in the temperature and number of hours of daylight, there about 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness each day, every day of the year.  Some sensitive souls seem to find a few minutes difference from one solstice to another, but 12 hours of sun is pretty much guaranteed — and what a sun it is!  Dawn is about 5:30 to 6:00 am and comes rapidly.  By 7:00 there is a strong sun, by 8:00 it is bright and by 9:00 the sun drops on your head like a hammer.  The heat is mitigated by the prevailing winds at the beach, but deeper in the city you are on your own with the noonday sun.  When it is at a peak, you may remember the old British song about “Mad dogs and Englishmen,” who are the only ones odd enough to go about in midday.

Here it is the laborers and people in service positions who have to keep moving about in the sun.  The middle class is air-conditioned and indoors, but the young man delivering 50-liter water bottle or tank of propane gas on a bicycle is on the street.

Being near the beach is wonderful for an early riser.  I can stretch and practice yoga on the (small) balcony from 6:00 to about 7:30 when it becomes a bit too sunny in the reflected heat of the ceramic balcony tiles to be pleasant.  Then a walk on the beach – so far, to the east into the rising sun in the morning and to the west, into the setting sun.  The ocean air (maresia) coats your glasses and your lips with a thin film of salt.  The firm sand surface is soft enough to walk on barefoot but it doesn’t hold you down like the light, fluffy sand in the travel posters.  Walking is easy and comfortable.  Jogging, bicycle riding, dog walking and various physical disciplines (including soccer) are native to this beach.

But on the beach you walk leaning into the wind, which is relentless at 25 or so miles an hour.  The sun drops suddenly at about 6:00 pm as if someone had flipped a light switch.  By then you have had your 12 hours of sun, most of it between 80 and 90 degrees.  With the darkness, the temperature may drop to about 70-85 degrees… or it may not.

Physically, you are almost always comfortable in shorts and your wardrobe is,well, basic .. unless you have to go to town, or appear on the evening news where an uncomfortable black suit seems to be the style for local announcers (90 degrees and all).  However, most of all, it is the suddenness and intensity of the sun and the constancy of the temperature that creates the world of physical sensations that are so different from the “temperate” climates.  It is not that all this is exotic or so much more appealing, but that the body and the spirit react differently.  The noonday sun drives you inside just as the northern winter does.

 

The sunrises and sunsets are lustrous if you catch them at about 6:00am and 5:30pm.

 

What is Sao Luis like?

 

This may sound more exotic than it is, even though I’m writing from the balcony of a small apartment near the beach in Sao Luis (Maranhao).

Like much of Sao Luis, an underserved and infrastructure-poor state capital in the far northeast of Brasil, the beach area is a bit rough-cut.  This particular apartment is not quite ready for guests (unless they are really good friends), but it has the charm of my graduate school days and my first years of travel in Europe.  It is refreshing to do your laundry in the shower and perform the agitate/rinse cycle by stomping on the freshly soaped clothes.

Old fashioned home laundry is generally not a problem because things dry in a hurry (some are on a drying rack next to me on the balcony), and because your normal wardrobe is a pair of shorts and sandals.  Sandals can come in rubber flip-flops or leather, and you can wear a shirt if you insist, but the wardrobe is pretty basic.

Besides, we are moving later this month to an apartment with a washing machine.

When we go to the most interesting part of the city – the old historic city center — to meet with culture officials bureaucrats or for the festivals I wear long pants ….. reluctantly… and only then because (1) the city/state offices won’t let you in if you are in shorts, or (2) within the physical culture of Brazil it is appreciated if older guys with long white legs bow to public aesthetics and cover up a bit.

 

More at the beach

The beach at peak times is nice enough, but this is not place for soft bossa nova music lilting The Girl from Ipanema in your ear.  That is Rio, and only in the travel advertisements.  What the ads don’t show is that people on the beach in Rio carry only what they can carry (to avoid theft), avoid the nighttime, and have bodies pretty much like you and me.  The breathtaking bodies of popular image are there in a dizzying way, but we see them mostly because the camera are not pointed at the middle-aged couple with stomachs and tiny bathing suits just next to you.

 

Here, in Sao Luis, the bathing suits are bigger than the Rio “dental floss” (fia dental) suits, and the diversity of bodies is pretty much representative of the human race in general.

 

Though this not Rio or any other travel poster beach, the early morning and evening here are remarkable in their own way.

 

This is not because the beach is idyllic and romantic, but because this is a public beach with all the life and diversity you expect in a busy place.  There are walkers/runners/joggers from some of the more elegant apartments nearby, and there are the morning maintenance crews, fishermen, yogis, dog walkers and early morning vendors.

Like the rest of Sao Luis, it is a bit ragged.

 

 

In the morning you may see:

 

A dozen or more large ships waiting offshore for a berthing place at the city dock

Guys with shovels trying to move the beach back to the water to uncover the restaurant tables that are gradually sinking into the sand

A horseman exercising this mount along the beach, or perhaps he is just commuting.

A few children already in the water

Eco-friendly walkers picking up the trash washed on the beach (we are averaging about three bags a day). Others notice this peculiarity and once someone brought us her some trash our bag.  She handed the plastic bottle to us and remarked that “when people hurt the environment like this, they hurt themselves.”

Philosophers and artists and poets are at home in Sao Luis, and sometimes they are out in the morning … and sometimes picking up plastic bottles.

On the other hand, a more practical philosopher stopped by to point out that “You ought to wear gloves.”

A local cultural note:  the most common beach trash (except from endless coconuts left by the consumers of “coconut water”), are the plastic bags that vendors use to sel shrimp and nuts, little plastic cups, water bottles, and little bottle of bleach.  The last takes a bit of explanation:  my fashion advisor explains that Brazilian women use the bleach to lighten the hair on their bodies and legs.  You do it at the beach, of course, so you can wash it off in the surf.  You wear little rubber gloves while you are bleaching and soaping, and these sometimes join the beach detritus.

And, of course, there are various creatures that wash up on the beach and try to find their way back.

Mid-day and peak times are a little less appealing (see “Dia dos Criancas” photo above).  There are crowds and usual beach behavior, of course.  And not all of us love the beach life.  Three hours at the beach is a long day, or two days, it seems.  The reason it seems so long is that you cannot read or converse or sleep.  There is a constant trail of vendors selling sunglasses, nuts, roasted cheese, beach towels, shrimp, huge bags of crabs, and curiosities of all sorts (not to mention the caricaturists and artists with jewelry and paintings).

So much for reading and dozing in the sun.

This complex social and economic system is compounded by the fact the beach is lined with restaurants.  Each has tables and umbrellas where you can sit and graze your way through greater and lesser meals, the water from green coconuts (or a whole coconut, for that matter), drinks of all sorts, and even gargantuan plates of fish.

 

The beaches are democratic and open to everyone, but an umbrella comes at the price of incessant commercial attention.  Seasoned Brazilian beach-goers seem to welcome this as part of the buffet of being on the sand – conversations must be limited to the time between vendors and waiters, so it is best if you have an attention deficit disorder.

The mornings and evening are non-commercial and these are the times when the older beach people and joggers are out.  One morning we even saw and heard a large cohort of coast guard or firefighters running in cadence and shouting.

For someone who did not grow up near the sea, the moods of the beach are a revelation.  There are high tides in the morning and evening.  The beach is long and flat so the water comes up high on shore.  This creates an interesting beach.  It is generally moist and washing by the surf all day — except for the dunes along the roadside where the restaurants are. This means that the sand is somewhat more packed and solid so you can comfortably ride bicycles, vendors can push carts, you can exercise your all-terrain-vehicle … or your horse.  Walkers and joggers have a forgiving surface without sinking into sand.  For extra resistance they walk in the water and do a sort of water-aerobic walking/jogging.

 

 

It has moods by time of day as well.  In the morning the local walkers and joggers are out in large numbers.  Families start to appear by early mid-morning, and the beach cleaners are usually finished by then.  The most energetic of them have wheelbarrows and shovels and try to take the loose sand from the restaurants (where some of the tables are gradually submerging) and move part of the dunes back to the beach.  This goes on every morning.  When the winds are high some of the tables are unusable because the sand is too deep for a chair.  It has a slightly “Planet of the Apes” feel where nature takes over from the annoying and invasive human species.

The one thing nature cannot do is easily dispose of the plastic waste that people leave on the beach – the hired beachcombers do that in front of each restaurant, and there is a crew that cleans the rest of the beach periodically.

 

Recently there have been other moods.  When there is a firm beach and a section of dry sand, the fine sand drifts over the packed surface in waves and streams, skimming along the beach.

Even more beautiful are the small pools that gather during the higher tide washes but stay as little ponds.  They are adored by children who use them as little play pools.  They are adored by photographers by early morning and late afternoon light because they catch the light and create the effect of acres of small lakes reflecting the colors of sunrise and sunset.

This creation of shallow tide pools echoes in miniature the immense dunes of Lencois to the north where hundreds acres of dune landscape are preserved in a series of parks.  In Lencois, rainwater fills hundreds of small lakes that can be used for swimming.  The dunes are ideal for diving, rolling down the incline into the water (sliding with your body), or using to “write” with your feet a philosophical or trivia message (“UWM,” has appeared, but then so has “I am confused.”  These messages were done, I think, by different groups).

 

 

The notion of “popular” beach is important in Brazil.  It means both “public” and “for the people.”  The wealthier have their own properties and zones of less accessible beaches, but the popular beaches are democratic and diverse.  In Sao Luis they don’t seem as risky as those in Rio often are, with petty criminals and young people coming to the beach to snatch up whatever is left loose.  People in Sao Luis do not carry much to the beach either, but during the daylight hours the beach is active, democratic, and safe.  The elite are not here, for the most part.  But the restaurants are moderate to a bit more expensive, several have live music, and a few are famous for the musical talent they have on weekends.  Further down the beach, they say, is Sao Luis’ most famous “roots reggae” bar, which they say is for a “vibrant young crowd.”  We haven’t been there yet, and may wait until we have some “vibrant young” guests visiting us.

 

By the way, a last comment on the bossa nova mystique of the Brazilian beach.  In nearly three weeks I have not heard the One Note Samba or Girl from Ipanema once – not once.  I have heard a Pink Floyd cover band with a dismal version of “Another Brick in the Wall,” Abba and the BG’s, popular songs that all sound pretty much alike, and occasional rock/folk groups.  There have been nights of major talent, but that is at the end of the beach where there is a small amphitheater and stage.

 

When  you visit here, bring your own sound track. And while you are at it, bring plenty of sunscreen, a silly beach hat (the safari-type with a neck cover is ideal for northern skin), and perhaps your surf board or kite-surfing rig (see below).