DISHEARTENED

 “How are you?” asks my Danish friend, Tove, calling from Santiago, Chile, where she lives. We are speaking in Danish, and I pause a bit before I select a word to describe how I feel. “Modløs,” I finally say. (Discouraged, disheartened, dispirited are some translations, all of them applicable).  She counters with “vemodig” (sad, melancholic), and we both laugh at our plight. ‘Depressed’ is next, she adds, and we chuckle again, the way Danes often react to a shared bad situation. Like me she has been largely confined to her house for more than 13 months under the much stricter Chilean quarantine rules, and like me she has received her second shot of the Chinese CoronaVac (Sinovac) vaccine, which, we have just learnt, will not be authorized for inclusion in a European vaccination passport, and thus not grant us access to Denmark. Both of us are lucky to live in nice houses with a view and a garden, but the enforced confinement is getting to us and draining our usual energy. 

Tove finds peace and joie de vivre trekking in the mountains around Santiago, and I, in a smaller way, find my mood lifting on my weekly walks in the Botanical Garden. On my last visit I discovered a tree laden with ripening caquis (persimmons) – my favorite Brazilian fruit, and a charming green composition of a bunch of green bananas against a lime-green wall. 

 

My friend Ann and I walk in the early morning, when the garden is fresh and mostly empty of people. We listen to the toucans screaming in the tall trees, watch the nervous Jacupembas (Rusty-margined Guans) jog away from us,

WikiAves

and have long conversations, as we follow the route, which has become ours, and which leads us to a cute café on the other side of the garden. We order cappuccinos, whist rubbing alcohol gel on our hands, and then briefly remove our masks to savor the delicious brew. We check for the arrival of the pushy capuchin monkeys, who have become quite fearless in the long interval when the park was closed. We’ve had to move table when, one after the other, they would scale the wall and leap down onto the tables to steal packets of sugar. And we have watched them jump to the big garbage bins lined up against the wall, lift the lid, take a look inside, and then either dive in or go to the next one. Their intelligence is obvious and also unsettling because they don’t seem especially friendly. 

Nucleo de Conservação da Fauna do JBRJ

There may be change ahead. In another week Oswaldo and I will both have acquired the antibodies offered by our vaccines and should be able to move around more freely. Prosaically, first on the list are the many medical exams from our check-ups, delayed by the long period in isolation. Once they are done, and our health is cleared, well then, we’ll see what we can do. We may not be able to travel anytime soon, but new impressions and fresh inspiration would be very welcome.