Caros Amigos / Greetings friends,
Hello all from my new parish, thank God I am finished travelling and so I am no longer a person with N.F.A. {No Fixed Abode}. It has been a long journey from Gorey in September 2005 to now. With transitory addresses such as Navan, Carnew, São Paulo, Brasilia, São Paulo a second time, Juruena, and São Paulo a third time. Now it is Castanheira; a permanent address I hope.
Padre Denis Browne
I set out on a long drive from São Paulo {for the third time} on Sunday 22nd of October for “Castanheira”, and the fact it was “World Wide Mission Sunday” was not lost on me. Six days later and over 200 litres of Alcohol [Fuel] {for the car not me} I arrived in Castanheira.
My first port of call was “Campo Grande” the capital of the state of “Mato Grosso do Sul”. Here I stayed with Fr. Thomas Naidu Joekeen. Thomas is from India and was trained in Kenya by Fr. Tommy Curran, SMA, and a native of Gorey.
At 33 years of age Thomas Naidu has just been made Vicar General [second in command] of his order. And his “orders” are to buy land in Campo Grande, build a house and find the money and then start a community to receive newly ordained Indian priests. His Order was founded to work in Brazil. The church is indeed a world wide phenomenon!
The State of São Paulo has private motorways as good as you would see anywhere in the world, including high tolls. I didn’t mind the tolls as I had over a 1000km to do that day so a good road helped.
The Paraná River in the centre of South America
not on the coast! 7th Largest in The world.
The 13km bridge over the Paraná River
Once I crossed into “Mato Grosso do Sul” everything went down hill. No motorways just a single road with hundreds, maybe thousands of trucks which bucketed my little Uno all over the place. Also with the heat and the weight of the trucks, the road had ruts or hollows in it, the middle of which were too high for the sump of my car, so for the next 150km or so I had to drive with the wheels up on rims of the ruts. To add to all that there wasn’t one sign to give me directions, thank God for maps and it was also a good test of my new language skills.
I made contact with Thomas after 16½ hours of travelling. I was not fit for much more so I rested up for two days in Campo Grande sampling all different kinds of Indian food and the hospitality Thomas and friends had to offer.
The next leg of the journey was from Campo Grande to “Cuiabá”, the capital of “Mato Grosso” state {north}. This was about 750km but it was by far the worst day. Trucks again, this time thousands and I don’t feel I am exaggerating and single lane traffic. Brazil moves a vast majority of its freight by truck and road. There is little or no railway to speak of here and it is such a vast country. The heat of that day did not help. With no air conditioning in the car I brought eight bottles of water kept cold in an ice box and I finished them all.
A Sugar Cane Lorry on the flat lands of Mato Grosso
The journey up was interesting all the same, as I was passing through the famous “Pantanal” wet lands, where a huge diversity of Brazilian wild life can be found. I saw Anteaters, Emus, a small Jakara / Alligator, and a few other small animals that I did not recognise and a few snakes. Sadly all but the emus were road kills.
I was stopped on the border of the two states by the Policia Militar. My car was full to the brim with luggage and things for the new parish and other parishes. They wanted to see receipts for everything. Bolivia and Paraguay are not far away from here and smuggling is very common. I nearly got arrested when the found a couple of bottles of “Duty Free” Jameson’s Whiskey. Imagine if I was arrested for smuggling drink and I a non drinker. The shame of it! Anyway, I put on my best Irish accent and I didn’t understand Portuguese. When they found out I was a priest they gave a kind of an understanding nod and sent me on my way.
I arrived in Cuiabá at night time, eleven hours later, and I had a lot of difficulty in the finding the local seminary. But once I did, I stayed the night there and I had a chance to meet with some of the students from our diocese of “Juina”.
A storm is brewing
The next day, was the best days driving. I was now off the beaten track with little traffic and travelling on brand new country roads. I took it easy and stopped many times to admire the views. Most of the journey was through flat lands full of sugar cane and little else. I travelled just over 600km that day through small towns and villages. The only glitch was rain that stopped traffic for a while. I arrived before dark in the Parish of “Brasnorte”, the first of the parishes in our diocese. Here I stayed with Padre Eurico, a Brazilian Sacred Heart Father, and if I am not mistaken, founders of this new diocese.
A quiet and unending country road
On a side note: the diocese of “Juina” is only eight years old and has only three or four of its own priests and the rest are missionaries or volunteers like myself. It is about the size of Ireland, that’s if you measure distances in time. One of our priests and a few nuns working in parishes up north take about 12 hours of travelling, to come to Clergy-Religious meetings in Juina, whereas we are only an hour away.
