Campo Grande: mayor, Padre Pedro, senhora Magdalena, piaba’s
28-10-2005 Padre Pedros church
I forgot to mention that by this time our team is composed by Wanessa, Elinez and Rosemberg. We are staying at Campo Grande: a nice little county side town. When we arrived and asked around for a pousada (a small hotel) everybody mentioned a senhora Magdalena. Her pousada does not have a sign revealing that it actually is a pousada and when we finally found it she did not look very keen of having us there at all. First she wanted to talk with us. Happily we passed this selection interview and we were allowed to stay. The pousada is very clean and we have a great breakfast (very important as well :-) )
A senhora Magdalena and some other people I talked to in the village (such as: the owner of the small grocery shop where we do our shopping, the military police where I park the car at night and the mayor who I met when the neighbor of the military police insisted of taking me to his house…) all told me that I should go and meet ‘Padre Pedro’. He is a Dutch catholic priest who has been living in Campo Grande for decades already.
The second night in town I went there and… ofcourse he already knew that a Dutch person was in town. News travels fast around here! By now I feel that I know half the village and when I walk back from our ‘parking lot’ at the police station to the pousada I have 100% change that some of my new acquaintances stop me to have a talk. Anyway, I had a very nice talk with Padre Pedro about the catholic church, the fast growing protestant churches in Brazil, Brazilian politics (he had a picture of him and Lula hanging on the wall), poverty and water. My audience was quickly over because he was having a meeting with single mothers how were going to construct houses for themselves but I found it very interesting to have methim.
After this short break in my daily routine it was back to usual again. The next morning we got our fish nets out of the Acude O Recreio with 8300 piaba’s stuck in them. About one third of the fish dropped out by simply shaking the net, which means that (quickly calculated) we still had to fiddle over two thousand and fivehunderd (!!!) fish out of the net. A nice team building activity I can assure you :- )The temperature by now was 40+ and we were working below a tree. Every half an hour we moved a little bit with the sun to stay in the shade; we made a completed a semi-circle before we were finished.
Gige Sarian Wanessa Rosemberg Ilinez and Eduarda.
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