Maladies and memories: Maceió, AL

I should apologize that I didn’t take any photos of Maceió. The sun was hot, and I was often sick during my visit. Below is a collection of my thoughts from the visit.

First, Alagoanos are extremely nice, warm, welcoming, and friendly. I enjoyed their company and their hospitality.

But there’s a contrast….
Maceió, the city, well, needs improvement. Friends who had visited rave about its beaches. And it’s true: the beaches of Ponta Verde, Jatiúca, and Pajuçara are nice. They’re palm-fronted, with acres of sand at low tide, a gentle curve not unlike Copacabana. The beaches to the north and south of the city are supposed to be even better.

So that part of the city is nice, and is appropriately full of new apartment buildings, tourist hotels, and tasty restaurants.

Then there’s the other part of Maceió. Two blocks from the beach in Pajuçara (the part where I stayed, most fashionable during the 1970s) are roads without signs for their names, full of dirt and often trash and low-slung houses crumbling under the sun.

I had almost all my interviews in downtown, or out in more distant neighborhoods. The center is terribly disorganized, with the same lack of street signs and no grid-like layout.

The city bus system is among the worst I’ve experienced. (I must admit that I only took two buses in Campo Grande, and one took too long and wandered so much that I finally jumped off to grab a taxi.) The buses run terribly infrequently, and one has to resort to asking every driver whether a given bus goes to a given destination.

Trash collection on our street happened once in the eleven days I was there. The rest of the time, I had to walk around torn-open garbage bags with remnants from the butcher on the other side of the street. There are open canals that run to the ocean that can be smelled from within the bus, even if the bus is a block away.

In pop sociology mode, I would think of Maceió as a microcosm of inequality, in Brazil and in general. The rich in Maceió all drive their own cars, and live in gated communities protected by private security and shards of glass in Ponta Verde and northward. They only escape their hygienic bubble for a bit, when necessary. The poor live in the rest of the city, and wait for infrequent buses in the hot sun. They walk around trash on the streets and open sewage drains. (This situation also describes Delhi and perhaps Los Angeles.)

But yes, Maceió does have astounding beaches.

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I did get the chance to escape the loneliness of individual travel and meet up with Daniel’s cousin and her future husband. We went to a cachaça bar Água Doce up in Ponta Verde, where the loveliest of Maceienses drink and chat. (And they were indeed all lovely.) I later had a chance to interview Bernardo’s uncle, and have perhaps the most interesting informal conversation of the trip thus far.

I was given directions to this last office as the following: near the rodoviária, on a viaduto that goes to the beach, there’s a tall tower that has a Banco do Brasil agency on the ground floor. The office is on the sixth floor. I was impressed that the taxi driver thought these directions no problem, and when I later read the address, I understood why. The address itself, given that the building is tucked back between a freeway and a Sam’s Club, is probably of no use.

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On my first Thursday there, I started to have shooting headaches on the left side of my head, and a swelling under my throat. I soldiered on, but spent more time in bed and more time taking naps. I drank more water, and finally gave in and bought ibuprofen and Claritin. The ibuprofen seemed to keep the sharpest pains at bay.

Thus I didn’t get out to see much. And this undoubtedly colored my impression of Maceió, probably not for the better.

Upon my return to Salvador, today, I was taken to see a doctor. The diagnosis from the blood tests: mononucleosis. We’ll see what happens next.