The Men in Our Lives

There are a lot of people here whose names we've never known, but for these 2 years they've had names within our four walls whenever we see them.

Horse-Cart Man: This guy drives all around town with his frighteningly skinny old mare and a 2 wheeled cart behind.  Usually he is collecting cardboard out of people's garbage, but sometimes it's empty 2 liter bottles. (Every day is garbage day here.)  The cardboard he takes to the favelas (or shanty towns) to be used as walls or roofs for extremely less fortunate persons in our area.  We've seen a lot of uses for the pop bottles, including a green house made entirely of cut off bottoms of 2 liter bottles, Christmas decorations, and so on.  More than likely he is turning them in for a tiny profit for plastic recycling.

Gremio Man: This guy delivers pizza from our favorite place, D'Forno.  He drives a motorcycle and always wants to practice his 3 or 4 English phrases with us.  From the beginning we have loved him for trying to speak English to us when we felt our Portuguese vocabulary was only about 3 or 4 phrases as well!  Often he tells us our amount due for the pizza in English.  He always chit chats a moment and when we happen to be dining in the restaurant, our kids run to hug him and say hello between his deliveries.  We call him Gremio Man beacsue he is a big fan of the soccer team Gremio, and almost always wears a team jersey.

The Juice Man: This is another one of those guys who immediately won a place in our hearts.  He started visiting us within our first few weeks selling produce and fresh made juice out of the back of his car.  It was like one of those things that the books and CDC travel advice tell you to avoid....but for some reason, new to the country, the whole experience, it just felt right to embrace it.  And we are so glad we did.  The juice is supreme and the fruit almost always amazing.  He also is the supplier of fresh juice to a number of restaurants in town.  He's made a lot of changes since we arrived here. Back then he was delivering juice bottled in washed out old 2 liter pop bottles.  Now he has a truck with a logo, he packages his juice in new bottles with sealed caps and labels with his logo.  He also doesn't come by as often as he used to.  I guess his corporate customers are growing.  But once he invited us (very impromptu) out to his house to see how he makes the juice.  He showed us around his home/garage business, the 13 deep freezers he stores juice in for the off months, the crates upon crates of oranges he bought or brought from his orchard in the country.  He squeezed us fresh juice in his machine and filled us each a glass and sent us home with bags of fruit.  He's a kind man.  We're glad he's part of our Brazil experience.

Motorcycle Man: This is a guy I could live without.  He drives all around town with a large speaker strapped to the back of his motorcycle blasting advertisements from all sorts of local vendors... appliance stores, grocery markets, restaurants or simply advertising special events.  He has this knack of driving by just as the little ones are about to drift off to nap, or right in the middle when they are going through that light sleep stage.  We've had more than one crabby over tired afternoon thanks to motorcycle man.