Confused in Carajas

Dear reader, a short note to inform you that I have updated the Google map of my journey with all the Brazil destinations now included. You can zoom into these by clicking the cake image to the right of this blog. And thanks for reading.

I’m unsettled, confused and rather overwhelmed.

At the tiny airport I passed a group of four indigenous people sitting on the steps with painted skins, traditional feathers and scant clothing, carrying small travel bags, I guess on their way to or from their Amazon homes. I was whisked several kilometres along a perfect road bordered by intimidating primary rainforest to be deposited at the best hotel in the roughish city of 200,000 people, which didn’t exist even 25 years ago. Sitting in the hotel foyer were two security guards armed with sub-machine guns. (I hope my room has a strong door lock.)

Now I’m down the road in a community of Stepford Wives/ Edward Scissorhands perfection; tightly clipped lawns, spotless, wide, empty streets, neat shops sporting Christmas trees, a life-size plastic Santa with his trousers heading south and 1970’s houses in a grid of repeating architecture dressed in a range of bright colours; regularly-spaced rows of vivid plastic recycling bins next to pink bus stops and a giant, plastic parrot doubling as a public telephone booth have all got me wondering where on Earth (or elsewhere) I have arrived. Surrounding the town is a high perimeter fence and guarded gate designed to keep out predatory jaguars, which works … sometimes! And the towering, dense Amazon rainforest is always the backdrop, pressing against the perimeter, ready to invade at the slightest opportunity.

My confusion is alleviated somewhat as I find a pharmacy amongst the perfection. I don’t speak Portuguese and the lad and lass behind the counter don’t speak any English, so I’m forced to resort to charades to describe the dietary problem for which I am seeking medicine, resulting in embarrassed hilarity at my predicament.

I have arrived in Carajas mining town, built in the 1970s, to house mine workers at the Carajas iron mine, run by Brazilian multinational mining company Vale, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Para state – one of the poorest in the nation. I am here with Alexandre, the man with responsibility for the environmental aspects of the mine and its challenging revegetation work. Alexandre earned his spurs with the renowned reforestation of the Trombetas aluminium mines in a different part of the Amazon (more of which in a later blog). Carajas mine is one of the largest mining ventures in the world and has transformed this region of the Amazon. The iron here is mine by removing and storing the soil and overburden (waste rock overlying the ore), and the iron ore is simply blasted, dug and hauled out of an ever-expanding pit, in fact three such pits make up this enormous mine.

One of Carajas mine's three pits

Carajas iron mine, courtesy of NASA (click on image to link to NASA info on this mine)

The plateau-topped hills are vegetated with extensive areas of a rather non-Amazon-like forest – in fact to call it a forest is rather a stretch. Alexandre explains that this type of dwarf forest/ sparse shrubbery/ bare ground is called ‘Kanga’, of which there are 12 different types covering 15,000 hectares, containing over 300 species and which is deciduous in the dry season. The soil on which it grows is not really soil at all, but baked as hard as concrete, red-brown and metallic – it rings like a bell if you hit it with a hammer! Yet, evolution has enabled plant life to colonise even this undesirable terrain. These are the areas that are being mined out.

Alexandre in the kanga

Old forest, new forest; Carajas mine nursery

Alexandre’s challenge is to restore these unique Amazonian habitats on artificial, sloping post-mining substrates. Installing the plants so that they survive is easy, but re-creating the self-sustaining Kanga habitat is currently vexing; the issue is getting the unique substrate conditions right on reclaimed mine workings. It’s a work in progress and there are various external research groups assisting. Also, dust control is a big problem at the mine, so revegetation of the new mine waste slopes and the sides of mine roads is a key issue. Undaunted, Alexandre and his intrepid team are establishing a new nursery to supply the required greenery employing 10 local people who are being trained into the positions.

I’ve seen many, many mines all over the world, usually with an environmental or community hat on. What always impress me are the dedication, generosity and goodwill of the people who work for the mines in these disciplines. Alexandre is no exception. I wish him and his team well, as I head off deeper into the Amazon.

It’s the evening and I’m sitting alone, again, in the voluminous expanse of the empty restaurant of this out-of-place hotel, trying to come to terms with what I have experienced in the past three days. I come to a decision: for the rest of this journey I will stop trying to understand and just absorb whatever comes my way and attempt to make sense of it all once I am back in Blighty. That's the theory anyway.

The next day I am waiting in the departure room of Carajas’ tiny airport. I’m thirsty and spot the drinking fountain in the corner. I lean over and place my mouth where I think the water should go; it erupts past my face in a glorious four-foot arc all over the picture window, dribbling down to form a large puddle on the floor. People are watching. I sit back down unsettled, confused and rather overwhelmed.