Manaus Memories

Manaus Memories

I first went to Amazonas with a fellow Franciscan friar of the Third Order Regular in 1977. We went to spend three months and see if the missionary life was for us. After our three months upriver in the interior in the town of Nova Aripuana, he opted to stay in the States. Shortly after my ordination I arrived in Manaus in 1980 to begin my missionary career in Amazonas.

Twenty-eight years ago Manaus was growing, as it has continued to do. People abandoned the interior in hopes of better employment and a better life. Therefore expansion and construction is an everyday way of life in Manaus.

I experienced Manaus by going on shopping expeditions to the center of the city. At that time the Order had friars in three towns on the Rio Madeira. Nova Olinda do Norte, Borba and Nova Aripuana were the three major cities in the Prelacy of Borba.

Although small planes had begun flying to Borba, all other traffic was by river boat. Generally boats came in from the interior on Sunday or Monday and went up river on Wednesday or Thursday.

Each of the friaries had a locked blue bag they would send down river with their mail, along with their food and necessity orders. A friar in Manaus was responsible for retrieving the bags and then doing the necessary shopping.

Until I went to language school in Brazilia, I was the assistant on this job for four months.

Driving in Manaus is always an adventure. Back then the most common vehicle was the Volkswagen Bug. It was small, got a lot of miles to gallon and was easy to repair. Second was the Volkswagen Combi or minibus. (Now little Fiats dominate the roads.)

First we would go to three different supermarkets, depending on what items were needed. Then we would go to the Central Market, even larger now than it was back then, and finish up the orders.

We would return to the monastery and put what we could in the locked bags and then place everything else in boxes we taped shut.

Boats generally left at dusk, between 5PM and 6PM. We would get to the harbor around four. Generally you parked anywhere from a quarter to a mile away, depending on the day and how many boats were pulling out. If we had a lot of items we would pay a stevedore (carrigadore) to carry the items to the boat.

We used a different boat for each town, because very few boats went to all three. The captains and crews knew the friars, as we knew them, and they always made certain that everything was delivered safely.

The port/harbor was always exciting, as you wove your way through trucks loaded with merchandise to be loaded on boats to head into the interior, stevedores carrying the merchandise from truck to boat, passengers either going to the boats or leaving the boats and then the folks like us with small loads we need to entrust to a captain's care.

Now a days the port is better organized with more controls, not as wild as in the old days.

Even now though it is exciting to watch the boats load as they prepare to make their way up a variety of rivers and streams to take the necessities that keep the jungle state of Amazonas running.

More in the next edition.