Why the Amazon sucks

We landed the canoe on the far bank, and wandered through the village. Although there is electricity, the repaired generator hadn't been reinstalled, so it was impossible for me to tell the size, style, or quantity of buildings. We approached a round, raised structure, similar to the miloca but smaller, with a small generator powering a few bulbs and a stereo. The dancing was in full swing, and I was relieved that there was no reggaeton (I've had my fill of reggaeton for a while). I was immediately lead to the white, English-speaking group. I wouldn't go so far as to say my reception was cold, but it was apparent pretty quickly that the visiting girls saw me as an intrusion ("so, why are you here?" was my first greeting, from the perpetually sour-faced Jaimie), and the local boys saw me as a threat (they wouldn't talk to me at all - they were too busy fighting over who got the next dance with the exotic foreign girls).



Now will begin in earnest my bitching about how lame it is here (socially - next chapter, "why the Amazon rocks"):



There are five and a half people here that speak English. The half is an Italian girl, Eva, who has a basic vocabulary, but is hard to have actual conversations with (although she's nice enough). There are two girls from Vermont, Karissa and Jaimie, and then there are Chris's two daughters, Nicole and Katherine, who live in Italy in the winters with their mom, and in Brazil in the summers with their dad. The first two days I spent almost solely with the VT girls. They are both 18, cute, and really, really annoying. Jaimie is a perfect example of white-trash, ie she's stupid, crude, loud, and doesn't care in the least about it (and she didn't know Alaska was a state, which doesn't exactly score points with me). I used to think "hey, that's cool that people like Kid Rock revel in their white trash culture, everyone is different, who am I to judge?" but now I think that the idea of white trash really just epitomizes all the negative, and often correct, stereotypes about people from the United States. We revel in our ego, having to restrain ourselves is just Unamerican, and we love our country, even if that means not knowing about the places our military bombs or not learning the language of the places we visit (I have never heard either of the VT girls speak a word of Portuguese, and they've been here a month. Cardinal rule of travelling: the first thing you should do is learn to say "thank you"). Karissa is a lot smarter, but a lot meaner, too. Several times I've made idle comments in an attempt to engage in conversation (like "wow, it's really hot today. Or is this pretty normal?"), and she just responds with a curt little giggle and a short response, just to let me know how stupid I was for asking something. Or trying to talk at all.



Whenever the girls do anything, they don't invite me. They hardly speak to me at all, in fact. If I speak to them, their answers are short and noncommittal to conversation. Keep in mind that I am basically trapped at the miloca except for planned excursions, so I can't hang out with the villagers and think about how I can't speak Portuguese. Once Chris' daughters started coming over more, it just doubled the annoyingness: basically all those girls do is sit around and talk about boys, and talk shit on people - who's ugly, who's dumb, what the latest social scandal is (more or less who's cheating on who). It's not just aggravating because I have no decent company, but also - hey, I'M a boy! My third or fourth day here, Jaimie decided she didn't like the local boy she was hooking up with, but she was horny and wanted to get laid. "But who else is there?" she wondered. Nicole explained "It's hard, because it's a small community here. But maybe there's someone in the next village down river." This was basically in front of me, and is what I would consider another facet of white trash: complete lack of tact or discretion.



A couple days ago, a boat load of students from New York arrived here. There were about a dozen of them, and a couple teachers. They were, pasty, geeky-looking biology students, mostly 18-20, with those cheesy clothe floppy hats to keep the sun off and their pants tucked into their socks. And since the English-speaking world of the Xixuau is trapped in high school, the girls were not happy: "they're WEIRD. Did you see them? Are they going to eat with us? I don't want to eat with them. They'll eat all our food!" and on in that vein. Jesus fucking Christ, I ought to tip this canoe. I ended up getting drunk and playing cards with our guests on their boat.



And that's ANOTHER thing that is white trash, or maybe just American more generally: we have no idea how to host. Or how to be gracious at anything, really. Granted, hosting and greeting isn't done here nearly to the extent as it is in Chile, but still, you don't have to talk about how funny looking people are as you canoe past their boat.



So that's four of the five (and a half) English speakers here. Then there's Chris, the Scottish ex-pat who helped start the reserve. I'm not going to call Chris unlikable, but he definitely does nothing to make himself anything but. He has a kind of edge to him, a harshness that I think comes from something like a martyr complex since he left behind a life in the UK to Save the Amazon. Many times he has demonstrated that he thinks me incapable, lazy, or stupid. Like when we loaded from the large, public boat to the small speedboat on the way here, we were loading up all our stuff, and suddenly Chris said "are you getting off?" I just looked at him, confused - of course I'm getting off - and he added "do you want to load your stuff?" like he thought I expected him to do it for him. Today we were supposed to have an interview, but he also had to distribute monthly food rations to the families in the village. After lunch, he was loading up bags of food, and then he slipped away from the miloca without saying anything to me. I assumed he was busy, so sat around reading until about 3:30, when I was able to hitch a ride to the village. He was watching football, and said "what happened, I thought you were coming to my house after lunch for an interview." He wasn't angry, he just said it like I was stupid or incompetent. "Well you left without saying anything to me, and I thought you were busy over here." He just shrugged, looked away and replied "well, we'll have to do it tomorrow now." He is definitely a man that will not admit he was wrong; he also won't change his views in a conversation, because he's convinced of his ideas to a fault. A man who tells, doesn't ask. Maybe that helps him when he's trying to drum up donations for the Xuxuau in Europe? And it's not just me; one of the first things I learned from Chris was his contempt for Eva's attempt at trying to teach food education to the people here, he's constantly harassing the girls for sleeping in, and he doesn't hide his dislike for America and its people. Oh yeah, and he obviously doesn't give two craps about my project here: he never asks or talks to me about, even when I try and talk to him about it.



So anyways, that's the gamut of who I can talk to here. Like I said, I'm usually trapped on the miloca, reading. Which is why the Amazon sucks.