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The Brazilian Amazon
April, 2008
After lunch we had some time to kill before afternoon clinic so I wandered the small village. The water totally surrounded the little "island" and it was impossible to explore far in any direction. Very quickly a few organisms were turned up. Ameiva ameiva Unfortunately this was the best picture I could get of these large and quick lizards.
A neat dragonfly
I have no idea what these small frogs are - Leptodactylus sp?
I also spotted a skink, Mabuya nigropunctata but was unable to secure it for pictures. I tried playing tag with some kids but they were feeling bashful.
With afternoon clinic over we boated to a secluded part of the lake and tied off for a swim. We all swam until dusk.
The next day we went to the town of Mato Grosso. This town had a great looking paved road that seemed to just lead off into the jungle... I wish I had a set of wheels for nighttime! Our clinic was set up in Athletic Club and it had some pretty good airflow through it making for a decent day. My job today was to check blood pressures. We each had a job to do everyday, no matter how big or small and for the most part we all happily completed our tasks. We saw 77 people this morning. Mai surveys the village before hopping off the boat in the morning.
Photo Mai Vu
Our clinic site for the day.
Allegra was hard at work today.
I took a few moments to photograph the villages black vultures before we departed for lunch.
One of the people of the village, the resident shaman, gave us some cure-all right before we left. Supposably, this will cure any ailment.
That afternoon we visited the town of Novo Brasil and we saw 50 more people. Soon after being there a women walked in with a disfigured hand and arm. Upon further questioning, she claimed to have been bitten by a surucucu, or the legendary bushmaster, 15 years ago. I talked to her for a few moments and she was nice enough to allow me to take a picture of her hand. Whether or not the bite was actually from a bushmaster or a jararaca (Bothrops atrox) I will never be sure. It was a pretty gruesome injury though and one that has had drastic effects on the way she lives her life 15 years later.
Clinic was a great time as always though and I had a great time taking blood pressures and interacting with everyone who walked through the door.
Kelly was a senior in high school who has an interest in medicine who had visited Brazil previously for some volunteer work and heard about the project. She joined us for the trip and it was great to have her along. We often had to tell her to put on "earmuffs" but she really got along well with the rest of the group from the start. We had taught her how to take blood pressures earlier in the day so we started to let her practice the skill a bit.
Clinic finished up a little earlier than normal, so I took some moments to explore a little bit again. Here was the town bar, equipped with a pool table. The table was tiny though and the pockets were not forgiving at all.
One of the goals of the project was to conduct general interviews of different individuals throughout the village to try and assess needs of the community, sanitation and general lifestyle. Many people still obtain all of the drinking water directly from the river and parasitic infections were a major problem throughout the trip. Almost every family complained of worms and we worked hard to try and educate them. This is a tough battle though. Some foreign groups will come in and install large, complicated and expensive wells. These wells inevitably break and then no one knows how to fix them. As each well fails, the people just go back to drinking out of the river as they have done for generations. There needs to be a better solution for clean drinking water. I guess there are wonderful filter straws that are being used in Africa, and I know Brazil actually already has a project in place that distributes simple filtration systems for villages. The people dump their water into a large concrete container that holds a bunch of different substrates of different sizes. As the water filters down the different components clean out the impurities and leave clean, filtered water. These units are very cheap to produce, easy to use and easy to maintain. They supposedly have been a great success in other parts of the country but we did not see any on our trip. This village had recently had a new schoolhouse constructed and with the school house came a nice new well.
It had a pretty old school looking switch.
Nearby the school house, there was a fallen tree at the edge of the water. I noticed a large lizard swimming 10-15 feet of the bank. It happened to be a Crocadile Tegu, Crocodilurus amazonicus
I explored some trails nearby and found a group of young boys to go on a hunt for "cobras". I laughed and they typically made fun of me for about an hour as we tried to communicate with my terrible portuguese. I was able to ask "Do you see ____" and then "Where?" but could not understand their answers. We looked for the animals I could communicate, "cobras", "cobra corals", "jararaca", "surucucu" and "lagartos" or "callangos". These are snakes, coral snakes, fer-de-lance, bushmaster and two words for lizard respectively. I guess this area used a different term for lizard than the common lagarto. When I asked they immediately took me to some caterpillars. Figuring out the different term of the area took some work... Anyway, we had an awesome time on our snake hunt, and they enjoyed showing me butterflies, flowers, pigs and a place where a jararaca had been killed. Nothing else was found though.
My crew of herpers - don't judge, it was hot.
As with most villages, this one also had a futbol field. Max and I explored a trail behind it that went through some crop fields while the group started a pickup game. we joined in a few minutes later and everyone had a great time.
A nearby home had a small capuchin monkey as a pet. My herper friends also told me that the house had "cobras" and the young girl came outside with these.
It was a bit stormy that night but the sky lit up with some nice reds and oranges.
The next day was to be our recreation day. Our interpreters had a few activities throughout the day that included a jungle hike, piranha fishing, a boat tour of the igapo (flooded forest, technically varezea because of our location on a white river) and caimen hunting at night. I was pretty darn excited... Before we went to bed, we shared some songs with each other. They sang us some traditional brazilian tunes and Tah sang some Johnny Cash.
Photo Mai Vu
I had the best luck with the wildlife and was always chasing something. Unfortunately, I lost a couple very small Leptodactylus species, a Hyla granosa and a poison dart frog. I had a decent look at the dart frog before it dissapeared in a root system and I think it was Epipidobates .... I did manage to catch a small leptodactylid and another member of the group caught a Bufo while I was getting angry about the loss of the dart frog.
Adonomera sp.
Bufo proboscideus?
We also found a few interesting insects.
I was told this is a Goliath Bird Eating Spider - is it? or just a tarantula?
I was pretty dissapointed when the hike only lasted about 1 hour... I could have stayed out there for days. By the time we got back to the boat, it had cleared up a little bit. I photographed some nearby birds and a dragonfly while waiting for lunch. Mangrove Swallow?
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© 2006 Last Updated: 2/11/07