Kerry Grant
banana-boat-boy.com
The cone of light originating from my cell phone is failing miserably in its attempts at lighting the track ahead of me. I make the mistake of turning it upside down to check if it has been partly covered by dirt and pay the ultimate penalty for looking directly into a light source in darkness – losing my night vision. My progress subsequently becomes slower and my companions disappear into the night ahead of me – leaving me to face the consequences alone.
Though I desperately call out for them to wait and come back – my almost screams (which I hope do not sound as on the edge as they sound to me) are ignored. I can’t help but blame them though – after having tolerated this gringo’s attempts at communication in the stress of a work environment for close to 15 hours.
My phone light continues to barely illuminate the steps descending into the Amazon jungle in front of me even though my night vision has now returned. I sink deeper into the jungle’s interior, stumbling over stones, tree roots and branches erratically placed in the more challenging parts to navigate upon the steeply declining terrain.
I have to admit that this is the most frightened I have been in my time in Brazil with the potential threat of being leapt upon by a Cougar or dragged away by a Boa a very present danger (no more so than in my current heightened state of anxiety and overactive imagination accompanying it). Fortunately, the journey’s objective is the river at the bottom of this lush bush-covered valley where we will be cleaning our grit covered bodies….and underwear – need I say more!
I had tried to circumvent this trip by telling myself that I did not need to be bathed but a form of sense had convinced me of the need if I was ever to succeed in the pursuit of sleep.
A barrage of sound accosts my ears from the forest on each side of me. I can only guess at the types of creatures they are emanating from. One has a deep, resonating, booming rasp which repeats itself over and over like some form of demented fog horn. I imagine a pack of baboons ready to pounce, until a form of rationality returns to my thinking and I remember that this is Brazil and not Africa.
Maybe they are a form of Gibbon or monkey with equally as sharp rabies laced teeth. I do not find out till much later in my time in Brazil that it is a type of bloody Parrot that has me hoping that the river’s current will be swift enough to quickly and discretely carry off any contents that may float out of my garments as I am about to bath.
I think I have managed to keep it all together but can’t be certain and not unlike the American Presidential election it has been a close-run thing. During the few moments I get cell coverage up here I am bombarded with a barrage of messages from family and friends. They are all concerned for my safety — fueled not from my current excursion but from the media reports abounding in New Zealand that the whole of the Amazon is covered in wildfires or is in ashes. This definitely comes as news to me as I have not seen one out of control domestic fire let alone bushfire in my time up here and even the smoke from them which is supposed to be blanketing half of the planet has mysteriously been absent. Yet at the time I can remember thinking — well the media can’t be getting it that wrong and maybe that spectacular sunset last night was caused by smoke that I couldn’t smell or see with the naked eye.
Well, that was over one year ago and I find myself back in Brazil and hearing but not seeing any evidence other than over-dramatised global media reports. Yes, the Amazon’s so-called dwindling rainforests are on the woke menu again but this time partnered with Brazil’s despairing and appropriately criminalised under-reaction to the Covid Panic…or so they would have the rest of the world believe.
Then I see the misrepresentations and ignorance of facts in the reporting on the aforementioned election and cannot help but see a globally motivated media agenda being played out the world over and it scares me far more than that moment in the dark Amazon forest. There appears to be a media instigated bias that only reports the so-called facts according to their agendas or desired outcomes — where anyone who goes against the stipulated and dictated script is very emotively criminalised and ostracised — though their facts are far more collaborative and convincing than the required status quo.
Of course, much of this is in countries and places that I am far removed from and I should be taking my cues from the locals, which as in my experiences of Brazil in most cases, contradicts the written script.
There is a cheap and really good sushi restaurant up the road (all of the food here is cheap when you convert the price to NZ dollars). If the globalists get their media propagandised this way, I do not expect this to last for much longer — especially in the South American nations. We may all be marching to a very different beat in the not too distant future but like all conspiracists, I am no doubt delusional and with a little more public ridicule and a landslide of fact-checkers’ debunking I will be proven wrong like the millions of American voters who voted for Trump but whose legal right for a recount is being unquestionably criminalised and vilified by all mainstream media.
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