Heathrow to Camp Shalom

The guy beside me on the flight was a doctor from Bristol who was married to a Brazilian lady. He introduced me to Guarana, a fizzy drink made from berries of the Amazon and which is probably as popular as, if not more popular than, Coca Cola. I had gotten some sleep during the night, but my blanket had gone AWOL at some stage causing it to be a bit chilly.

We arrived in Sao Paulo about an hour late, which was a slight problem as the transfer time to our connecting flight had already been quite tight. We got through immigration without too much bother but then came a bit unstuck at baggage collection. Our bags weren’t forthcoming. After a long wait, we eventually managed to collect our bags and then had to start queuing for customs. Once through that, it was a quick dash through the airport (including getting everything and everyone from ground floor to the first floor) to the domestic check-in desks. Here, confusion reigned supreme. Those in the chariots (wheelchairs) got taken through a different route, but had left their luggage behind. We therefore had quite a few more bags than we had passengers, but somehow we got everything through. We were just completing checking in at 9am and had 10 minutes to get to the gate before our flight was due to depart. We got through security with minimum fuss and raced along to our departure gate. We got there at about the time that the flight was supposed to leave but then realised that we needed to take a bus to the actual plane itself! We were bundled into a minibus and raced across the airport to the plane that was to take us to Londrina.

The flight to Londrina was quite full, but I got a window seat beside the emergency exit and was happy with this. It was the first flight I had been on were there was a stop en route. In fact, after checking the atlas on my return, I have since figured out that Curitiba wasn’t really en route at all but was something of a roundabout way of getting to Londrina. This aside, the plane emptied at Curitiba (seemingly after the cabin crew had played some form of seat lucky dip in which passengers won prizes) and I moved up closer to the group and got a bigger window in the process.

We arrived in Londrina on time and after getting our baggage, headed out into the terminal where we were met by Tommy and Margaret. We dumped a load of the luggage into Tommy’s truck and we travelled in luxury on a bus that they had hired. We stopped for a brief photo opportunity at the airport but I was weary and it was hot and so I decided that I would give it a miss this time.

It took about half an hour to get out to camp and, once we had unloaded the luggage and taken it to our rooms, we assembled at the Scott’s house and had lunch. There was a largish group of young Brazilians at the camp that weekend and someone arranged a game of football (I never did trace the culprit for that ‘good’ idea). During the afternoon we had a tour of the camp and were left to unpack. Before dinner, we had a game of football. It is impressive that despite the fact we had just travelled over 6000 miles, hadn’t had much sleep, and weren’t used to the temperatures in the high 20’s that we were enjoying, that we actually won, but I would have to add that this probably had a lot to do with the fact that we signed Carlos and a few of his Brazilian friends onto our team and that they turned out to be very good at football.

We joined with the Brazilian group in the dining hall for dinner that evening, which was an experience. There were about a dozen individual tables in the hall, of which we occupied two. The Brazilians had a practical joke whereby a table would count quietly to 3 and then bang the table and shout ‘Oi’ or something to that effect, causing everyone else in the hall to give a jump. This became standard practice throughout the following fortnight, although admittedly the first Strean led attempt resulted in Jack McCracken wearing his drink.

After dinner, we held the first of our devotional times. We had a time of worship, Sylv spoke and then we had a time of prayer. During this, the noise of the Brazilians having a praise party in the chapel (which must have been about 50 metres away but which sounded as though it was in the room next door) was clearly audible. I was interested to note that some of the tunes which the band were playing I knew as modern choruses from church back in England. After our devotional time, I headed across to see what they were doing.

There is no such thing as a spectator in a Brazilian praise party! I spent a couple of minutes standing at the door watching the goings on before I was dragged in to take part. People were dancing, there was happiness in the singing and the noise of the voices was second only in strength to the noise that was blasting from the various amplifiers that the musicians were using (which I think were all set to volume setting 11!). Later in the evening, Hilda, Maureen and Mary joined us and at one stage the Brazilians even had them dancing along. I was able to chat in English with 2 or 3 of the guys who were there which was cool. I headed back to my room shortly after 11pm although the sound of music was still echoing around the site from various rooms.

Stephen Boyle snores.