Accident Photos

This is a link that leads to photos related to the post below!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049699&l=0eea0&id=28201280

The Accident

“Hey Andy, remember that time we were hiking up a mountain in Brasil and you slipped and chipped your tooth on a giant rock?” Before proceeding I’ll add a little caveat that he is ok and there’s nothing to worry about. But now Andy and I have a good story that’ll go down in our history books, and should be a topic of conversation for quite some time. Honestly, we already have plenty of memories and good stories to tell, but this one is especially good.

The plan was to hike up Serra Verde and start taking down some solar panels. This is the community that already has normal energy. We packed our bags, caught a minibus, and arrived in Recreio around 11. Dona Rosa insisted that we stay for lunch (and who’s gonna say no to that?), we sat around for a couple hours conversing with the people at the bottom of the hill, waiting for Manoel to come down so we could hike back up with him. His plan was to come down to pick up his wife who is 8 ½ months pregnant and had just gotten back from a doctor appointment. Around 4 pm we all started up the hill. The perfect time to go up: the sun is going down, it’s usually done raining, and the cooling clouds start rolling off the hills. It sure beats walking up in the noon-day sun.

As we climbed Manoel and I discussed the ramifications of removing solar power. He has always had an excellent understanding that some day the panels would be removed in order to help another community that is in need of them. However, not everyone up tops shares his opinion. Despite countless meetings with John and Manoel, there are some people who will be difficult to convince that it’s finally time. They have their reasons. The normal energy often goes out while it’s raining or when there’s a storm, or sometimes for no reason at all. This effectively sends them back to the pre-energy days of candles and flashlights, not to mention a lack of power for the refrigerators and TVs. Their solar power can’t provide energy to run all those things, but an overhead light bulb sure makes it easier to cook supper over the fire. Not to mention the solar energy is free, as opposed to the metered normal energy.

As we talked it became clear that it would be better for everyone if we took the solar panels off the old school first. Explanation: the school up top has a huge crack running down the North wall. They’ve moved the kids from there to an empty house for their classes and are waiting for the mayor’s signature on a new school to be built up top over the next 9 months or so (that’s how long it’ll take all the construction supplies to reach the top on the shoulders of men and the backs of donkeys). So, the school is not being used, and the solar panels have to come down anyway. There are 16 panels up top, more than enough to power the sustainable house we’re trying to build at Banco de Mudas.

We decided that taking those panels down first would serve as a type of messenger boy, alerting everyone to prepare because the removal is a reality. I don’t mean to sound harsh. Everyone has known since the beginning that solar energy was just a patch fix until real energy arrived. I admit, I’m a little nervous being the designated “taker-downer” since it wasn’t my project to start with, but since John can’t be everywhere and do everything, we’re happy to help. And we get to learn a thing or two about solar energy, which is also very interesting.

However this trip, it just didn’t quite work out “Não deu certo” as we like to say. The hike up is a couple kilometers and then once you reach the top it’s about a kilometer of flat-ish hiking to get to the village. On the flat area the trail runs parallel to several huge mountain rocks that are almost flush with the incline of earth. It’s been raining a lot lately (Thank God! You should see how green it is now!), and so water runs down these rocks as a fine steady sheet. This creates a giant slippery slab of granite. The trail runs along the bottom of the rock, so theoretically no one should actually have to walk on it (though the little kids run, and in flip-flops! I have no idea how that works). They built the trail out of rocks and cement a couple years ago because when a woman goes into labor they carry her down the mountain in a hammock attached to a stick stretched between shoulders of 2 men. (Quick tangent: they can get women down the hill in 30 minutes. Even walking fast it takes us at least 45. They have 10 guys from the community help out. They work in pairs and when the first pair gets tired they switch to the second and so on. That would be amazing to see, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t keep up with their pace even if I wanted to).

We were so close to making it to the village. There are three sets of big rocks to get by, and we were walking across the last rock when Andy slipped.

It happened so fast nobody had time to react. Andy didn’t even have time to stick his hands out to catch his fall. He put one foot off the trail onto the rock in order to avoid a puddle on the trail and it just didn’t stick. He started to lean and his pack just took him all the way down. The pack was both a good thing and a bad thing. I think its weight ultimately made him fall instead of just slip, but it also hit the rock protecting his ribs and hips. We still haven’t figured out exactly how he hit, but as I hurried up to him he said “I broke a tooth!” (well, there were some other words too, but not quite fit for press :o)) I immediately imagined something from a movie where he would spit an entire tooth out into my hand, but it ended up just being a fragment, probably about 1/3 of his front left tooth. Only after that was thoroughly examined did we realize his chin was bleeding and that he has scraped up his knee too. Luckily I had a head cold so I had packed loads of Kleenex. We were able to press something relatively sterile onto his chin and before long the bleeding had slowed. A good sign. At the time we were stumped as to how he could only have those 3 points of impact. And why more teeth hadn’t broken. My theory now is that his chin hit the ground and made his bottom teeth collide with the top effectively breaking his tooth from the inside.

Manoel and Aparaceida (his wife) were a lot of help. We sat on the rock for a while, and to make the moment even more perfect it started raining lightly. Andy said he hadn’t hit his head, but I still watched for signs of a concussion or shock…which may have been a little bit of overkill, but in situations like these I’d much rather be safe than sorry.

We had a decision to make and it was getting dark. Either we could continue a couple hundred meters to the village, spend the night there and hike down early the next morning, or we could hike down at that moment and try to find some way to get back to Sobral. Transportation had already stopped to and from but we were certain that if we paid someone with a car enough money they would take us. Andy and I discussed the options and decided it would be better to get back to Sobral as soon as possible just in case he needed stitches and to try and see a dentist about how bad off his tooth was. Manoel used up almost all his cell phone credits (that’s a discussion for another blog, but the short of it is that the cost of cell phone calls here is ridiculous, at least $1R per call) trying to get a hold of someone. After a couple minutes Jocelito called us back, a little worried. The message Manoel left was pretty much “Hey, this is Manoel from Serra Verde. There’s been a little accident up here with the Americans. Everyone’s fine, but we’re hiking back down now. Give me a call back.” Manoel explained the situation better once he called back, and Joe pretty much said, “Ok, get them down the mountain and find any way you can to get them back to Sobral. Call me if you can’t find anyone to drive.”

This is just to give you an example of what amazing friends we’ve made here. Joe must have called John because John immediately called Manoel. He was super worried, so we did our best to tell him that Andy was ok, we were walking back down the hill (yes in the dark, yes in the rain), but we would find some way to get back to Sobral. John called everybody. Everyone short of the national guard, just in case we needed to be evacuated off the hill. He knows almost all the doctors in Sobral because he teaches them English classes. So, we were set to see someone at the hospital before we even got down the mountain.

As we hiked down Manoel and I tried to make light of the situation. Andy just focused on not slipping again. We left his pack at the top. One of the little guys carried it to the village to store for us until we came back up again. That made his hike a little easier. We all pretty much decided that it could have been A LOT worse, and that eventually it would make a good story.

At the bottom of the hill Dona Rosa was at the house worried sick about us. She had called her daughter at the top to see if we arrived, only to be told there was an accident and we were coming back down. She sat us down and made us coffee and food (neither of which Andy could eat at the time), and hung up a hammock just in case Andy wanted to lie down.

Just as we thought, there wasn’t anymore transportation out of Recreio for the night, and as we were discussing this Joe called back to find out what was going on. Without a second’s hesitation he decided to drive out and get us. Recreio is probably a 30 or 40 min drive from Sobral. So we waited and talked to people. As news spread through Recreio more and more people stopped by the house to see the poor American guy who has slipped and hurt himself out of a mix of worry and curiosity. We already get a lot of weird looks walking through the town with our hiking packs, thank goodness is was night when we were walking back, ragged and bloody!

Within an hour Joe was there to pick us up and take us straight to the hospital. He was relieved to see that the damage wasn’t as bad as he thought. Manoel waited with us. He went back up the hill shortly after we left, meaning that he hiked the mountain twice…I was hurting after walking up and down only once in one day. He’s a really great guy. I know I keep saying this, but we have really great friends here. And it’s not like we’ve known these people for years, we’re talking 2 months!

We pulled right up to Santa Casa (hospital) and John had a dentist waiting for us. He took a look at Andy’s tooth, tapped on in a couple times, and decided that it was mostly superficial damage. It didn’t kill the tooth and there wasn’t any root exposure. There weren’t any fractures that he could see. And it’s definitely reparable. He took a look at Andy’s chin and lead us to his ER doctor friend. That doctor took a look and decided there wasn’t a need for stitches and just cleaned him up a little bit. Honestly, that water-washed rock was probably one of the most sterile places in Brasil he could have cut himself open on.

The dentist waited to make sure we were taken care of, that we didn’t have any more questions and then left. Public healthcare is free in Brasil, so the visit didn’t cost us a penny. When we get his tooth fixed, which we’ll probably do here, that will cost because it’ll have to be done at a private practice, but thank God for travel insurance!! They should pay us back. His knee and chin have healed nicely, and his tooth is only sensitive with hot and cold foods. No pain all the time, which means we should be able to get it fixed soon.

We’ve already been back up to Serra Verde one time this past week, and it didn’t work to take down the solar panels that time either, but that’s a different blog post. It was still a wonderful couple of days up there with the families. I think it all turned out pretty ok. Apart from Andy’s new goofy smile, everything’s already back to normal.

(Pictures to follow with a better internet connection :o))

A Date

So, for those of you who have been following our ongoing drama about extending our visas and changing our plane tickets, we have good news:
After 2 trips to Fortaleza, totalling 12 hrs on buses and more money than I like to mention, we're finally all changed for the end of May instead of the end of April. We have an additional 60 days on our visa, and a plane ticket out of Brasil on May 27th. That's coming up faster than I can imagine...
Plans from here on out, we're visiting my host family in Maceió at the end of April, and Belo Horizonte right before we leave. We're still working on the digester, and just praying we get something done before we leave!
More to follow, of course, there's always more stories to tell.
Beijos