{"id":273,"date":"2011-06-14T18:48:29","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T01:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2011-06-14T18:48:29","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T01:48:29","slug":"flashback-on-being-a-temporary-amazon-brazil-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: On Being A Temporary Amazon (Brazil, 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If there is one thing I can say about the Amazon rainforest, its’ that it’s hot. Hot and humid and sticky. When you see pictures of the amazon you don’t realize just how high the humidity factor is. We’ve had to turn off all our computers whenever we’re not using them because they overheat and blow up. My work station died so badly yesterday it took IT five hours to fix it!<\/p>\n

In all honesty it looks kind of like we’re sailing on mud…the river is SO silty it’s solid brown<\/p>\n

All in all, visiting the Amazon feels like stepping into a national geographic expose. As human beings, we remain constantly fascinated by the \u201cother\u201d, and I can\u2019t help but remind myself that it isn\u2019t too long ago that people who looked different than us were put on display as curios for all to see. Not that long ago that we didn\u2019t even think of them as people at all.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m ashamed to say I couldn\u2019t stay very long in the village. There were two reasons for this, one being the fact that the heat and humidity here is intense, far too intense for a pale-skinned little west coast fae such as I. As soon as I stepped out onto the tender, I was sweating, and without either a hat or an extra water bottle (stupid me, next time I\u2019ll bring one) \u2013 I found it difficult to concentrate. But mostly, it was because of the kids. The second you disembark the tender here the local children swamp you and grab your hands and won\u2019t let go. They\u2019re trying to be friendly, but I hate being followed and I hate being grabbed, I\u2019m so easily intimidated and they can\u2019t understand you when you say \u201cno thank you\u201d. So, unable to make it even past the disembark dock without getting mobbed, I turned around and left. They were still following me when I did so.<\/p>\n

It makes you think really. The line really does support this village, we bring the school supplies, water barrels, oil for the generators that run their single well, and \u2026our tourism brings them money. In short, we have trained them to be like this. Surely before we came along these kids would have viewed the sudden presence of a huge ship on the horizon as something to fear not something to approach without concern.<\/p>\n

Now they come right up to the ship-side tender docks in their canoes with their parrots and their crafts and show no sense of intimidation whatsoever. We mean support and privileged, we mean comfort. We mean survival.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s a fair trade, but I can\u2019t help but feel sick about it.<\/p>\n

We, truly, have not come so far from the days of cabinets of curiousity.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, I want to support them, I just wish supporting them didn\u2019t mean encouraging them to become \u2026become\u2026I dunno. They\u2019re people, just like us. No different whatsoever in fact. I just can\u2019t help but feel that in supporting them we are also encouraging them to extort themselves, encouraging them to put themselves on display for our money like some kind of \u2026<\/p>\n

This is the art history debate all over again, only with people involved this time instead of long-coveted trinkets.<\/p>\n

I think the long and the short of it is: I\u2019m not cut out to be an amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there is one thing I can say about the Amazon rainforest, its’ that it’s hot. Hot and humid and sticky. When you see pictures of the amazon you don’t realize just how high the humidity factor is. We’ve had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flash-backs","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-4p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}