Aracaju Weeks 1 and 2: Welcome back to Civilisation

After my absurdly long bus journey out of Campo Formoso, I arrived in Aracaju, set my ants up in their new laboratory, and headed to the house where I would be staying for the next 4 weeks, with a lady called Nice. As soon as the usual formalities were over; "this is where the bathroom is" ... "this is the kitchen"... etc, I collapsed on the bed and slept for a few hours. When I awoke that evening I felt considerably more human. The evening meal proved to be only slightly traumatic, with the usual level of communication issues and no more than the expected level of showing off the exciting gringa, who had just arrived, to friends and family. Still feeling tired from my bus ordeal the night before, I escaped from the living room as early as possible and went to bed.

The following day I headed into university early, discovering just exactly how long my daily commute would be - about an hour on crowded, hot, bumpy Brazilian buses which appear to be driven by poorly trained monkeys (their only training being to aim for the pot holes and speed up for speed bumps). On top of this the scale of my work load for the coming weeks began to become apparent. I was about to try and fit 3 months worth of field work plans into 3 and a half weeks.... Nevertheless, it was nice to be back in the city, with most of the normal amenities that entails, along with people to socialise with.

Campo Formoso Weeks Four and Five: When the rains came

The weekend after my post ordeal I had planned to spend a little time relaxing, and the rest of the time preparing my equipment to being work when my student, Natalia, returned on Monday. However, the rain that began on Friday continued all weekend, which confined me to the house almost entirely, and I started to discover a rather worrying number of places where the roof leaked. On top of this, when I finally got around to doing some work and trying to assemble all my equipment which had finally arrived, I realised that one vital piece was missing - my supervisor had accidentally forgotten to include the power cable for the laptop, which would be necessary to download my data. The laptop is so old that it won't even turn on without the power cable. This discovery pushed me to a point of total disbelief. How can so many things go wrong in such short succession? I quickly began devising a new work plan, knowing it would be at least a week, probably two, before the cable could be posted here - assuming it ever arrived!

Natalia arrived that Monday and it carried on raining continuously for another 4 days. Sometimes it got a little lighter, or even stopped for a minute or two, and I started to feel optimistic that maybe it would stop for a while, but then it came back, harder than ever. The rains began to cause real problems. Although it made digging colonies slightly easier because the soil was softer, it removed all internet access for me because my laptop would get wet, and it turned the roads near the farm into a mud bath. Natalia and I were quickly running out of food, a situation exacerbated by the temporary loss of electricity for 24 hours, during which the fridge had no power. But with 30 minutes of treacherous dirt roads between us and the nearest shops, we started to worry. There are two 'taxis' a day which run from the farm into the town of Campo Formoso, one at 6am and one returning at about midday, acting almost like a bus, collecting many people along the way. However, we weren't sure if the taxi would be able pass along the muddy dirt roads, and if we made it into town successfully, there was a good possibility we would be stranded if the midday taxi couldn't get back. We decided to postpone until the following day.