Hermes has had quite a time in the Pantanal and I almost think he doesn’t want to leave. Here is a chronicle of a typical day for my favorite lil hippo. 

Like any intelligent Pantaneiro, Hermes likes to get his work done early before the heat of the day. He will spend 4-5 hours scrubbing the bathrooms, sweeping the courtyard, and pretending to drive the tractor.

Pretending to drive the tractor is one of Hermes’ favorite jobs. He’s an expert. It also takes up the majority of his time. After that he normally has a Portuguese lesson in the school house (sometimes he has lessons with Tootsie! After initial feelings of jealousy and mistrust the two are becoming fast friends)

Yes this is the same school room that our NYU friend Misha was featured in earlier in the blog. Needless to say it’s come a long way. We even have blackboards!

After school it’s time for lunch and a midafternoon nap in the wheelbarrow.

After his nap it’s all play for this gregarious little fiend. He usually likes to hang with his favorite bro-man Matt, unsuccessfully play hide and seek (we haven’t told him he doesn’t blend in with the cement chunks yet), or chill with Pascoal the Pedrero’s laundry.

Sometimes he’ll go out with his Brazilian girlfriend Maria Antonia, but that’s only every once in awhile They’re taking it slow.

She’s a sassy one, amirite?

The people who work in the Pantanal are a special breed of people. They are a breed of people who are okay with camping out and having absolutely no life outside of work and the 3-5 people with whom they work. So when it comes to maid service, they get some pretty interesting characters. 

Enter the witch. I’m still unclear what her actual name is as the pedreros only called her “bruixa” (witch). What I do know is she is a 4’7” rotund 27-year old with dyed blond hair and an alcohol problem. I also know that she fell madly and hopelessly in love with Adrienne. One night, when all the other Brazilians were busy working at the eco-lodge (or possibly hiding from the witch) across the way she decided it would be prudent to down a handle of cheap cachaca and profess her love to a group of Americans who had NO idea what she was saying. I was across the way washing dishes and scavenging food for Tootsie and I, because we had both become sick with rice and beans, when Tootsie came bounding up with a look in his eye. I took one look and knew there was trouble. It was Toostie’s “Jimmy fell down the well” look. I immediately raced back to our homestead and found the witch manhandling Matt and yelling in broken and slurred Portuguese at Adrienne and Cassie who vacillated between laughing hysterically and looking extremely concerned for the woman’s health. We decided it was time for bed and as a group retreated into our living quarters. From here we tied a rope through our door making a crude lock to keep our inebriated housemate at bay.  This woman would not be deterred. This little orc, began PUSHING on our door. Pushing and knocking and pushing and knocking and then looking through the holes in the door trying to see us. Normally this would be a very frightening situation, but Adrienne and Matt both play ultimate frisbee, Cassie’s good with blunt objects, and I have a 170 lb feline as a pet. We were unconcerned.  After 30 minutes trying to break down our door, playing a chintzy brazilian love ballad on her phone outside our window, AND shining a flashlight through the holes in the door after we turned off the light, She finally busied herself eating our leftover past sauce, writing “I love you” on the wall in sharpie, and promptly throwing up and passing out on the floor in her underwear. 

The next morning the witch was shipped back to Pocone. Why was she fired? Because it was the cook’s cachaca. And in the Pantanal they DO NOT tolerate stealing.

(Adrienne with the scrawled “I love you”)

Well I have now! We are all in a buzz beautifying our school for the arrival of the Secretary of Ed who has the power to make or break our project. I’m on team “Make this House  a Home” and am bustling about doing superfluous beautifying tasks. Such as making our trash pit into a fire pit lined in stones and surrounded by a gravel path. Unnecessary? Maybe. Beautiful? Absolutely. It’s amazing what a couple arranged stones can do for a formerly weed covered back yard. Tootsie has finally mastered getting his tongue and lips around his massive teeth and eeked out a few Portuguese words, so I’ve set about teaching him the Secretary of Ed’s name: Luciane.  This way he will able to properly greet her when she arrives. I mean if the jaguars in the Pantanal can be taught, the children should be a piece of cake! Right? On her visit, she will not only examine the school and all these fine people’s handi-work, but also go to the river, meet the children, and see what kind of boat we will need to transport the kids to school. Yeah, that puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? These kids are taking a school BOAT every morning. I have a feeling their attendance rate will be exemplary. 

And I must say I’ve gotten quite attached. For those of you who haven’t found this blog as informative as it could have been: I am staying in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, Brasil which is THE SPOT in South America to see wildlife. It’s like the Amazon without the possible death, really awful mosquitoes, and density of flora that makes it difficult to actually see things. This is what I’m told anyways. The crew previously featured is working to build a school in the Pantanal that will serve the 12-14 families that live along the river. The idea is that if there is some education offered here, it will stop the hemorrhaging of families in this area who are moving to more populous areas to educate their children. Also the economic landscape here is changing from a cattle culture to an eco-tourism culture, which requires greater language skills and literacy on the part of the denizens of the Pantanal in order to continue to live and survive here. Was that a run on sentence? No. Yes? No. Luckily the brunt of the teaching does not fall on me. Though I have taken to teaching the locals catch phrases from Mariokart. I think it’s the most accurate representation of the American language. IMMA GONNA WIN!