I wake up for the first time in Brazil from a shallow sleep with a limpid awareness of exhaustion that keeps me motionless in the comfortable hotel bed and gradually honing in to the slight sounds of surroundings. There's construction across the street, the patter of rain on the window sill. I fill coffee in the lobby, more like espresso, and recognize a company driver on a couch with a newspaper. With a friendly greeting, he hands me a clear plastic cup with a red screw-top and tells me through gestures I should fill the cup with urine before we go to the clinic, the day's first errand related to my work visa. He says we'll leave at 9 o'clock. He's a moment too late of course for an immediate deposit, so I pocket the cup and find breakfast in the rear of the establishment, passing through a gym and into a courtyard with a narrow-lane pool, winsome droplets atop the surface, the placid blessing of rain on water. Breakfast is a beautiful spread of sub-tropical fruits and local unknowns, at least to me.
Its after 9:30 when we leave, and I'm encouraged by the delay, the prospect that operations will be less-rigid than back home; that in Brazil, events will proceed on "local time", such as it was running boats in Mexico and Central America. But then we're swerving and weaving our way about town again, and there's nothing relaxed about it. Most drivers collapse their side-view mirrors in order to brush by vehicles and pedestrians and obstructions; they're imagining, I suppose, that they're Emerson Fittipaldi, the Brazilian icon and two-time winner of the Indy 500. We're back in the industrial complex when I see the sign for the "clínica médico", where I'm dropped off again without a clear understanding of impending proceedings.
I enter a waiting room crowded, obviously, with prospective employees of the surrounding companies. Mostly men, a couple of women, each holding a clear plastic cup with a red lid, inside which sloshes an insipid liquid, the former contents of their bladders, presumably, or from someone else's for that matter. It seems an improper way to conduct drug screening, but certainly more convenient for the applicant. Obviously dehydrated from the previous day, I've currently no hope to perform when sampling time arrives. I sign in at the desk, produce my passport and visa and the name of my company, and a rather pretty woman in a white lab coat hands me a slip of paper. I retreat to the waiting area to down water.
There's a small TV mounted on the wall and I try to follow news. I recognize President Dilma Vana Rousseff, who at the beginning of the year became the first woman (and first economist) to assume Brazil's highest office. As Minister of Energy under former President Lula, she must have played a role in Brazil's rise to the stature of energy superpower. She also has an interesting story. As a socialist during her youth, she joined a Marxist urban guerilla group that fought against the military government after a 1964 coup. Rousseff could apparently handle a weapon and incite impassioned resistance, and she was eventually jailed in the early 70's and reportedly tortured. It was near that point, almost 40 years ago, when Brazil first began production of ethanol, surely a development far from the forefront of Rousseff's concerns at the time.
I hear my name and head for a tiny exam room where a technician draws blood, a huge tray of coagulating vials on the counter-top. Never fond of needles, its a lovely way to start the process. I produce my slip of paper and receive a check. I'm drinking more water, thinking I've had a couple of liters since breakfast, when I hear my name from behind. There's a radiation placard on the door, behind which I'm guided through a chest x-ray and receive another check. By this time I'm examining my slip of paper, which has quite a few unchecked columns, one of which reads "ECG". I can almost feel my blood pressure rising, and I'm sure that will be taken as well. I'm just hoping there's no stool sample involved--I had to do that once to get a green card in Taiwan, where interestingly, another formerly-imprisoned women had also risen to power (as vice president), Annette Lu, who also did time for participation in an opposition political party.
Water finally working its way through my system, I find the head and fill the cup, tighten the lid, and in moments I'm asked for my deposit, shuffled to a scale, an eye chart, and then to a dentist on the second floor, where I'm forced to apologize for coffee breath. "I didn't know this was coming," I try to explain. After seclusion in a padded hearing booth, I lay shirtless on an examination table, where a technician brushes gel onto my chest and connects sensors. While I'm exposed to a graphic representation of my nervous heart beat, I try to think about other things, like politics, and the potentially tough road ahead for President Rousseff in replacing Lula, who became known as "the world's most popular politician" and was referred to as such by the current US president.
Finally someone reads my blood pressure, surprisingly normal, and my slip of paper is fully checked. Afterwards, I'm treated to an awesome lunch by the water, a buffet spread that's surprisingly expensive at 36 reals--close to 25 bucks US--for lunch. In the afternoon, I'm taken to a photo lab and then to the federal police for finger printing, to register as a foreigner with a work-visa. I wind up back at headquarters where I finally meet an American in the company and receive a brief orientation on aspects of the "safety management system". I'm told I'll be headed to one of the older boats in the fleet, a fast supply vessel that hot-shots equipment to offshore installations. A Brazilian guy speaks up, says the boat runs non-stop on a very demanding contract, that there's a mountain of additional paperwork required on the job, that they're having a lot of technical and mechanical issues on board, trouble with the engines, the steering pump. At least he's not sugar-coating. "So what's the down-side?" I ask, and at least they get my joke. Finally, I'm taken back to the hotel and told to be ready in the morning, wondering not for the first time or last, what the hell I've gotten myself into.
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