Portugal Part IV - The Day Off

When Frances first mentioned there was a day off worked into the project itinerary, I thought it was bizarre. We were only here for a week, why on earth would we take an entire day out of such a short stay to be tourists? By the time our day off arrived I had changed my mind; my right arm positively ached with the stress of willing cement onto walls all day long, I was popping ibuprofen like they were mints, and I was dog tired.

We slept in that morning, and the eight of us and Irène from the Habitat Portugal office piled onto a tour bus, and headed for a town called Barcelos, where we strolled through a market that sold everything from live chickens to second hand clothing. On one end of the market vendors sold olives that were stacked impossibly high, crates of dried fish, and cheese. In other corners were housewares, clothing, furniture and CDs. In one spot a woman holding a microphone seemed to be conducting a live auction for used clothing, and in another was a stall that sold handmade folkloric clothing in children's sizes. I bought several miniature hand-painted roosters (the national symbol of Portugal), that had the word "Portugal" painted in script on the base of each one. I told the aging vendor how many I wanted to buy, in broken Spanish, and he lined them up in front of me for inspection before wrapping each one individually in tissue paper. Then he typed what I owed him into a hand calculator. I bought four tablecloths printed with the rooster motif from a vendor who spoke French, and a top that looked a lot like a dreidel from a man selling handmade wooden items. He painstakingly explained what the letter on each side of the top was, and I repeated after him. Then he tried to explain what the object was, or perhaps how it was used. I nodded and smiled, but I could see in his eyes that he knew I didn't understand a thing he'd said to me. Finally I bought a second hand soccer jersey with Christiano Ronaldo's name and number on it for my brother in law. I'd started a precedent a few years ago when I bought him a soccer jersey in Marrakesh; virtually every time he wears it in Boston someone yells "Aaaaaaay Morocco!" to him. He's the kind of man who looks like he could be from one of a hundred countries, and I was sure he'd get a similar reaction wearing Ronaldo's number.

The day had started out rainy, but by noon the sun broke through the clouds and I was squinting. We ate lunch at a restaurant in Barcelos where I ordered a dish that included dried cod. My friend Muggy, who lives on Cape Cod, had recently given me a book titled Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, which contains detailed descriptions of the cod trading route, ancient recipes for dried salted cod, and descriptions of Cape Cod that made me wish I could travel back in time. Among the many facts I learned reading that book is that Portugal and Spain are the largest consumers of dried cod in the world. I'd tried making an old cod recipe from the book at home, with limited success, and was determined to try it while I was in Portugal. As with all the seafood I'd eaten on this trip, it was better than anything I could get back home.

After lunch we piled back onto the bus and drove to a small beach town called Ofir, where I rolled up my pant legs and strolled along the oceanfront with Frances. We were drawn to the perfectly round, smooth stones on the shoreline. I picked one out of the sand, rinsed it in the wake of a broken wave, and dropped it in my pocket. As the tide receded with each wave, more perfectly round stones emerged, cold, wet and gleaming in the sun. I picked up one after another, soon my pockets grew heavy from their weight, and my jeans sagged. Frances was just as into it as I was, "oooh, look at this one," she said, showing me a translucent white stone sitting in the center of her open palm. We were the only ones on the beach, and I felt like a kid walking in the wind with my jeans rolled up to my knees, the pressure of my body weight causing the sand beneath me to pucker against the sides of my feet when I plunked one down, and pool with water when I lifted it up again. Time stretched, it seemed we spent an entire summer picking up stones and looking out onto the ocean. I imagined what I'd be looking at if I could see around the earth's curvature, and all the way across the ocean. What American city was I lined up with at this moment? Baltimore? We walked back to the boardwalk where the others were lounging, and boarded the bus - shoes in one hand and pebbles in the other.

From there we returned to Braga and drove to a hilltop to see a church whose name was Bom Jesus, and was pronounced Bom Shush in Portuguese. From the top of the hill we could see the city, and Irène pointed out where we were in relation to the hotel and the job site. I walked through the church quietly, a service was in progress, and hovered silently by the vestry, where a heavy wooden door opened onto a scene of a priest sitting at a desk, lost in an oversized book. It looked like a paper advent calendar window.

Below the church was a series of stairs with seven landings running down the length of the hilltop, a fountain at each one. The fountains on the second through sixth landings were dedicated to the senses; the fountain dedicated to sight had a sculpture of a woman with water flowing through her eyes, the one dedicated to hearing had a sculpture of a figure with water flowing through its ears. There was something delectable about seeing something that I knew absolutely nothing about, in preparing for this trip I hadn't read anything touristy because I didn't think I'd be doing much touring, so I was seeing everything for the very first time - unfiltered by guide books or must-see lists. So often by the time I see a monument in person I've seen it a thousand times already in pictures and in movies, or had the experience described to me by someone who's been there. Everything Irène showed us on our day off was brand new to me, I had no preconceptions of what it would be like, or how I would feel when I got there. It was liberating.

Portugal, Part I

My roommate's alarm went off at 7. She hit the snooze, then got up when it sounded a second time. "Hi J," she said.
"Hi," I said from underneath my bedsheets, "you must be Frances, it's nice to meet you." Frances was the team leader from Habitat, I'd sent her a photo and bio of myself so she could compile it into a document along with the rest of the team's information and email it to us before the trip. I wrote about myself using the third person, and felt like a tool when I saw that everyone else had written about themselves using the first. Secretly I was hoping that I would be paired up with Frances as a roommate, I'd considered a few different Habitat trips before committing to this one, and her easy going manner and Midwestern hominess had sold me. She's originally from Michigan, and I have a soft spot for America's high-five. Some of the best people I've ever met are from Michigan, and every summer M and I spend time at my in-laws' summer cottage in a town called Dowagiac; maybe choosing a trip based on the regional familiarity of the team leader isn't the best way to make a decision, but its not the worst either.

Frances hadn't heard me enter the room the night before, so I explained my unintended late-night check-in, and told her I'd be joining the group later with another team member who hadn't yet arrived. After Frances left the room I could hear the other team members gathering in the hallway, snippets of conversation as they made their way out of their rooms and down the stairs, and wondered which bios matched the voices I was hearing. At 8a.m. church bells rang out, first from one church, then another and another. I lost track of how many, and wondered if this would be an hourly occurrence. Just when I thought I'd never get back to sleep I drifted off.

I woke at 10, ravenous. I descended a flight of stairs to the breakfast room, where evidence that other guests had recently dined surrounded me; empty coffee cups and crumb-filled dishes populated the tabletops in pairs. I approached the buffet table and picked up what I thought was a coffee mug and realized was a cereal bowl only after I'd poured instant coffee into it. The food selection was spare: cereal in plastic dispensers; a few lonely yogurts in a bowl of melted ice; bread rolls; and a couple slices of ham and cheese. I ate a roll with butter and jam, and two pieces of something that looked like zwieback crackers. Then I went back to my room and, Portuguese glossary in hand, walked out of the hotel onto the cobblestone street.

It was raining a little, not enough to really be called rain. Misty drops of condensation landed on my face and darkened the cobblestones, creating a high-contrast tone reminiscent of an old black and white photo. A hundred feet to my left was a cathedral, twenty feet to my right was something that looked like a diner called Refrigerador da Sé . I walked to the cathedral in time to see a group of Asian tourists approach the edifice in silent observation, guidebooks in their hands and cameras around their necks. I followed them into the cathedral and looked inside, then walked back up the street past my hotel, and crossed the street into new territory. I walked past a school where the voices of young students singing in unison could be heard, and further along the narrow street the proprietor of a bar stood outside his establishment and silently watched me walk past him until I rounded the corner to a wide avenue that led to residential buildings and a dead end. I was hungry; I retraced my steps to Refrigerador da Sé, and opened my glossary to the food page.

"Sandsh?" I asked the young, dark-haired woman behind the counter while pointing to the word sandes, which according to my glossary meant sandwich. She called over an older woman, who pointed to all the words in my glossary that were available at the Refrigerador, and said them out loud to me. Then she opened a menu and pointed to the various items available; when her finger hovered over the word omelete, I made a happy sound and nodded my head. "Café?" I asked, the woman nodded and said: "sim" (sounds like si). "Can I sit here?" I asked, pointing to a small round table by the window. She held her hand out towards the table, indicating that the table was available. A few minutes later a delectably strong cappuccino and a ham and cheese omelet served with rice and fries was delivered to me. It was a small victory, but I was extraordinarily pleased with myself. I ate everything on my plate. "Obrigado," I said to the woman as I left, "Obrigado, bom dia," she replied.

Later I was driven to the job site by Irène, a Habitat Portugal staffer, along with the team member whose flight had landed earlier that day. We drove through the town and up into green hills, and parked near the small building we'd be working in for the next week. I walked in and immediately saw Frances.
"There's J!" She said. I was directed to the basement where I put on the construction gloves M had insisted on buying me at Menards, picked out a hard hat, and was assigned to a room in the back of the building to apply cement to the walls. The foreman demonstrated, slopping a pile of cement from a bucket using a trowel, and heaping it onto a flat rectangular plate with a handle on the underside. With the plate in his left hand, he scooped up several ounces of cement onto the back of the trowel with his right, and spread it onto the wall as easily as if he were icing a cake. It was much harder and went much slower when I did it. When the foreman stopped by my station to see how I was doing, he held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and said "Mais." It sounded like maish, and I knew from context that he was telling me to apply more cement.

By the time we called it a day and walked to the bus stop a few blocks from the job site my wrist was sore from the repeated motion and effort of spreading cement. I had finally met my fellow team members, and if I were to cast celebrities in the movie version of this trip it would break down like this: there was a mother of two from Minneapolis who could be portrayed by Bebe Neuwirth; a woman from California who worked in the film industry who might be played by Lili Taylor; a young ad exec from New York City who could possibly be portrayed by Cher circa 1968; a viola player from New Jersey with a resemblance to Shirley MacLaine; an outdoors-man from Vermont who had a passing resemblance to John Malkovich; an attorney from Utah who could easily be played by Catherine O'Hara; the Habitat team leader, who reminded me of Frances McDormand circa Fargo; and a young man who lived with his parents in southern France, who could be played variously by Nicholas Cage circa Valley Girl or Leaving Las Vegas, depending on the situation. Over the next week or so I would come to know these people, but for now all I knew of them was what I'd read in their bios, and the few hours we'd spent working together.