Mariri is very, very mato. Mato is Portuguese for “in the middle of absolutely nowhere.” Our
town lies 10 miles off the main road, and is isolated due to its lack of a
market, electricity, or running water. Seriously, no one comes to Mariri.
I think that maybe two people in our town own private cars, and there is one chapa
(public bus) that goes to the city once every day, but everyone else rides
bicycles or motorbikes. Needless to say,
we don’t get out much! Fortunately, our house is less than a five minute walk
from the school, so the transportation nightmare doesn't haunt us on a daily basis. However, we don’t
have access to groceries or supplies without going into the next town, so we’ve
been eating a lot of stuff like rice and canned fish, rice and onions, rice and
potatoes, rice and water, etc…
Mariri is, however, beautiful! I feel like I
live in a park. The school grounds were part of a mission and seminary before
the war, so there are many mature mango and papaya trees, as well as palm
trees, banana plants, and gorgeous Portuguese trees. The ground is very sandy,
and right now the entire area is very lush and green; we have three lakes (full
of catfish) and a beautiful green mountain.
The town consists of three
neighborhoods, one of which is at the top of the mountain. We climbed it last
week to attend the church (yup, I climb a mountain to go to church!), which was
an experience in and of itself. For many of the kids in the very isolated
neighborhood, Jamie and I were probably the first foreigners they had ever
seen, and they all repeatedly called us “white people” in the local language.
The church experience was interesting, too: communion was distributed out of a
Tupperware, I’m pretty sure the presider wasn’t actually a priest, and the
altar boy asked me to marry him.
It was a cool cultural experience,
though, and Jamie and I are planning to go back in order to better integrate in
the community. And that mountaintop view isn’t too bad.
