Flores Part 3:
The Florentinos

"We’re going to kill the pig tomorrow, please come and have lunch with us."

Telma and her husband Fernando da Silva invite me to at their house a few days after my arrival. Telma is a nurse’s aide, council member of her village of Fazenda, and first cousin of the Footpaths to Creativity founder/director Maria Murray. Maria was born in Flores but her family left for America when Maria was seven years old. She started her non-profit foundation "Footpaths to Creativity" artist residence program in 2005 so artists and writers could create their art in Flores.

I arrived early to see and photograph the preparations: all the women of the family were in the kitchen preparing various dishes: the pig’s liver and sweetmeats stewed in a savory sauce, large white sweet potatoes called nhames, and of course, a feiojada, the traditional Portuguese baked bean casserole. The entire pig had been butchered by Fernando and was neatly arranged by cut on a tarp in the utility room, waiting to be stored in the chest freezer, while two ladies prepared linguiça  (the local sausage) that would be smoked outdoors later.

An entire pig neatly stacked in Telma and Fernando's garage

Telma's neighbors help make linguiça the traditional way

When everything was ready we were invited to sit down at the long table set for twelve. Fernando’s mother, a widowed mother of ten, sat at the head of the table with all of the relatives. It wasn’t until we had finished lunch that I realized that we were only the first shift—all the neighbors in Fazenda had been invited. Telma told me later they had fed thirty that afternoon.

Telma’s husband Fernando is an all-around handyman, architect, builder, you-name-it, he-can-do-it type. He had re-built the artist house we were in from an old stone cottage into a comfortable house with all the modern conveniences. Moreover, he’d done it with a certain artistic flair for the picturesque. He showed me some of the written material from a correspondence course he was taking in practical architecture from the University of Lisbon.

Most other Florentinos are like the da Silvas: jack-of-all-trades and completely self-reliant. They’ve had to be, they’ve been isolated for centuries.

Nowadays supply ships come from Portugal every other week, loaded with foodstuffs from the European mainland and with every other necessity for the island, from cars, building supplies, and furniture to electronics and computers. Life is much easier now than it used to be even fifty years ago—cars, trucks, and cell phones are common, two wind turbines near the east coast provide power along with hydroelectric generators. There were no power outages during my stay there. There is a free "internet cafe" available at the public library in Lajes, and a number folks including the da Silvas have private internet connections for their home computers.

But even so, when the seas get too rough the ships may not be able to come into port at Lajes or Santa Cruz as scheduled. I was told that neighbor island Corvo’s 800-odd brave souls, with no natural or man-made anchorage, can be totally cut-off for months at a time during the winter’s bad weather.

The lighthouses on both north and south ends of Flores are essential for Trans-Atlantic navigation. In desolate Ponta Delgada on the north, considered a hardship post, three to four families alternate the duties of the lighthouse. In Lajes, two families take turns tending the lighthouse.

We were at the café in front of Telma’s house one evening when she introduced us to Jose and Fernanda, one of the couples who are the lighthouse keepers in Lajes. The couple invited us to tour the Farol. They were on their way home, it would be no trouble. Marylee and I followed them, amazed at our luck.

The lighthouse in Lajes das Flores with the full moon rising

Jose, the lighthouse keeper, holds a 3000-watt incandescent bulb from his collection of old equipment once used in the lighthouse

Jose’s father had been the lighthouse keeper in Lajes, and it was with obvious pride that he had followed his father’s footsteps. Every thing in the lighthouse was meticulously in order, clean, and ready for use.

The beacon itself is now entirely automated—a computer controls the starting sequence to turn the light on about twenty minutes before dusk. Jose has kept a fascinating record of obsolete equipment relating to the lighthouse operation: old megawatt incandescent bulbs, machinery and documents. The workshop had everything a machinist might need to fabricate parts and was so clean you could eat off the floor. I could see some of this eventually becoming part of a museum, a future tourist attraction.

Jose led us up the tower on a narrow circular stair to the farol (the beacon), and we stood on a ledge about 12" wide, looking out into the darkness pierced by the beams. He cautioned us to not let the rotating mechanism of the beacon touch us. The Fresnel lens is impressive in size, its brass trim beautifully polished.

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The Fresnel lenses of the Farol at the lighthouse

I had been told there was a folkloric dance group in Lajes, and the post- mistress, Esmeralda, was the director.

 While I was mailing my home-made painted postcards (there were only two kinds of cards available for purchase) I asked Esmeralda about the dance group, and she told me they met on Tuesday evenings. Her directions to the rehearsal hall were hard to follow, but she described a logo on the house: a hand on the neck of a guitar, and that seemed enough to go on.

 Flores watercolor painting: The Chicken Coop Across the Street

Huffing up the hill looking for the rehearsal hall, I saw an older lady walking in the same direction. Seeing me looking around she asked what was I looking for, and when I explained, she said in perfect English, "I’m going there myself. I’m one of the singers in the group." Turned out she and her husband had lived and worked in California for years. They had come back to their native Flores to retire, and amused themselves singing with the folkloric group.

The songs and dances they performed were traditional; they had learned them in their youth, and now they were enjoying passing them on to the next generation.

The dances were mostly on the daisy-wheel mode, with different patterns of crossing over, twirling as couples inter-twining. The songs were primarily happy in sound and similar A-B-A structure.

The group performs with costumes during the Festa do Emigrante, the Feast of the Emigrant, which takes place in July, when the island celebrates the return of all the Florentinos who have emigrated to other lands. I would have loved to have been there during the festival to see them perform in costume.

One of the most unusual aspects of Flores’ culture is the cult of the Holy Spirit that has developed there. Solidly Catholic, the people of Flores are a very close-knit community. The Feast of the Holy Spirit is celebrated in each village on a different day of the year, rather than on the designated liturgical day.

The tradition is that on the eve of the holiday, an all-night vigil is held in the cult house, marked by a logo with a silver crown on the door. A German lady who had witnessed it told me there was drumming in a shamanistic ritual during the night, and prayers.

The Feast took place in Fazenda while I was there, and Telma invited us. A parade lined up to enter the church for mass, with a young woman dressed in red carrying the crown following the priest and acolytes. The mass seemed very moving, particularly when the old priest spoke to the congregation during the sermon. I gathered he was a native who had come home after many years of serving in other lands—they were his flock, and his love for them and theirs for him was palpable.

After the mass, the parish hall was opened for the feast: the parishioners had been cooking the caldosa (boiled beef soup) and roast beef since the night before, to be served with pão doce (slightly sweet bread). Everyone who showed up would be fed in shifts. The hall could seat maybe a hundred at a time sitting at long tables.

Marylee and I went in with the second shift. We were quite an international group sitting at our table: a retired German couple, one Swiss woman, and two Americans. It was wonderful to share this special feast with the people of Fazenda and feel a part of their community.

The feast after mass

On my next-to-last night there, Marylee and I went out for dinner at Pierluigi’s restaurant in Fajã Grande. We enjoyed some very unusual appetizers made with a plant, whose name I have forgotten, that grows on the local rocks and was pickled, and some delicious homemade pasta.

Pierluigi told us before he opened the Argonauta B&B he had brought his mother to the island to teach a couple of the local ladies how to make pasta the Italian way so he could have a reliable fresh source for the restaurant.

On my last scheduled night there Telma and Fernando stopped by briefly. I tried to say goodbye, but Telma said it wasn’t time to part yet, I wouldn’t be leaving tomorrow. How did she know? She said they had been listening to the weather report—there was a bad storm coming, and the plane wouldn’t be able to take off from São Miguel, much less land in Santa Cruz tomorrow.

Perluigi and girfriend cook in their restaurant at Argonauta

From my attic I could hear the wind picking up during the night, and then the rain. The early morning gloom revealed rain crashing against the panes, and the scrap of ocean visible from my window was churning like a washing machine. It certainly looked as if nothing would be flying today. But I called SATA airlines to inquire, and they assured me they were flying, so I had to get to the airport. It seemed like an exercise in futility, but there was no choice. The flights direct to Boston were scheduled only twice a week.

This small painting (done from memory immediately afterwards) shows what we saw of the road that runs between two of the lagoas in the central massif of the island. Beyond the hydrangea bushes bordering the road, white froth was the only sign of the location of a very steep drop into Lagoa Funda, while on the other side of the hydrangeas the shallower Lagoa Rasa was erased by the churning rain. There weren't any other cars in sight (only dire necessity would force anyone to drive in a storm like this), so at least we didn't have to worry about a collision.

 Nearly abstract watercolor painting: Storm in Flores

After waiting at the airport for a couple of hours, they finally told us the plane could not take off from Sao Miguel in the storm, and would not be coming to Flores. So we had to do it all over again driving back to Lajes, although by this time the wind and rain had slackened a little.

END OF FLORES SERIES