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| The beach in front of the Butlers' property |
My father has been in Brazil since February, tying up lose ends we have here and hanging out with two sets of family friends who my parents have known since they moved to Brazil in 1975. Unlike Judy and Roberto, who I have known since birth, David, Sueli, and David's Land Rover from the UK were mostly characters in my parents' stories to me. They moved back to Brazil a couple of years ago after living abroad, most recently for 12 years in Trinidad. They have a house on a small lot on the beach that includes a workshop where David and a few workers put together frames for high end bicycles for physically handicapped cyclists. These get shipped to his son, Graham (business owner), in California. My dad has been doing...well, I'm not sure what there. Perhaps having breakfast with a horse. My mother did inform me one day that he took one of the bikes out on the beach and found himself waist deep in a creek.
On my first full day in Ilheus, my parents picked me up to take me to David and Sueli's place. None of us could remember the last time I had met them, but they are lovely people. Vanessa, the youngest of their four kids, had just arrived from England. All three of them are warm and generous - the kind of people who take in strays of all shapes and sizes.
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| My father with a cocoa pod which I later devoured. |
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| Sueli with an encomenda of kibe, coxinha de galinha, pastel de carne and pastel de frango |
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| Chapati making operation: my mother on Step One |
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| David, Vanessa, and my father handling Step 2 (I was too busy taking care of Step 3 to photograph it) |
It was also really nice to be in a household that spoke English and Portuguese interchangeably. I tend to get lazy with language when I'm in Brasil and scramble my words, using those that seem most appropriate regardless of language. Rare are the times when I'm around people who do the same thing!
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