Analfabeto

Quite a wild goose chase type-of-day, largely because some partner organisations stop working around lunchtime on Fridays. One of my counterparts in the national protected areas administration is a trooper so I managed to track him down late afternoon for a very productive discussion. I clocked this poster whilst there, urging the country to stop caça furtiva (poaching; literally ‘furtive hunting’).

Analfabeto means illiterate and it’s my favourite word I learnt today. As usual some interesting topics were discussed in my lesson with Ilidio. As we’ve referred often to my singledom, he started hinting at single women in the shared working space who might be on the lookout to pescar (fish). Apparently it’s not easy to ‘entra na água e sair sem molhar’ (go into the water and not get wet). Right.

I relaxed more in the evening, during which times it’s easy to plunge into despair at the political disasters in the UK and USA. Then additional despair at the way the media functions. I saw the news item about Darcey Bussell quitting as a judge of Strictly Come Dancing. Her quote had to principally focus on defending any (non-existent) rifts between fellow judges rather than any positive messages about next steps or how the experience had enriched her. I found this sad, and a damning indictment of the media’s approach to covering events. I imagine it casts a negative stain on all of us, without us realising. If it’s because gossip and slurs sell media, let’s stop buying and clicking on titles that perpetuate this style.

A final depressing flourish to the evening was found in the next episode of Our Planet. The walruses ascending cliffs as the loss of ice has reduced the areas they can haul out. And then plunging to their deaths as they try and descend flabbily and weightily, being built entirely unsuitably for mountaineering. One of the many surprising and tragic results of climate change.