Brazil, home of the Amazon, is huge. The Ocean is huge – Miles and Miles of empty space as I watch it each Sea day from the treadmill in the gym on the 10^th floor of the Silver  Whisper – with the unbelievably graceful Albatrosses gliding above the wake in the wind. There is so much Space! These were my reflections as we focused our concentration and all the tiptoeing, dribbling skills we could muster for the substantial challenge of finding a way through the masses to get closer to the Ocean at Porto da Barra Beach, in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Check the photo – Mission Impossible! The multitudes upon multitudes of sweating, suntanning, oily bodies, umbrellas, picnic baskets, soccer balls. Vibrating, voluminous beating music. Not a millimetre of space. Scents and Odours of curious foods.  And no  – we did not come here to source an accessory for our mobile phones nor any of the wide variety of other products the vendors were so energetically touting. The water  – once we got into it, was like a bath. Personally  – I prefer the colder waters of Cape Town. No English! Just about none at all – except for the odd surprise when someone helps out to assist in a tower of Babel type conversation. We felt safe. An exhilarating, terrifically enjoyable experience.

“When I need you  – I just close my eyes and I’m with you, only a heartbeat away…..Miles and Miles of Empty spaces between us” – The Leo Sayer song of the 70s that in Habonim we morphed into: “Miles and Miles of Empty Spaces between my ears”  Discipline, I keep telling myself, is the key to filling those spaces! Empty is not good (?)

All of a sudden I am filling some space with subjects and themes I never thought would fascinate me. Yesterday I went to three Presentations, all in preparation for the Antarctic experience: “Oceanic Birds of the Southern Ocean”, “Earth’s Polar Opposites” and “Diving into Whale identification”. I never thought I would become captivated by the Albatross – incredible birds: the striking beauty of their gliding flight, the scale of their wingspan, the years at a time without touching land, their mating for life. At Sea Scouts in Port Elizabeth I was in Curlew Patrol and proudly so. I never coveted the Albatross Patrol. If I knew more about the Albatross then, I probably would have! (Our Patrols, if memory serves me right, were Curlew, Kestrel, Penguin, Seagull and Albatross).  My primary previous knowledge about the Albatross was acquired from Monty Python – John Cleese selling Albatross at Interval. Turns out that that is Fake News: “I don’t have any choc ices mate. Only this Albatross. It doesn’t have any flavour. It’s an Albatross. Of course you don’t get wafers with it”.

Last night we shared supper with a USA couple and again family stories about children who left their parents and didn’t see them again. The spaces then, only two generations ago, were so much greater than they are today! And with the advent of the internet we can be so much closer than was possible to imagine even less than one generation ago…

How wonderful and special it is to be able to regularly speak with and see our children and (if I may say) especially our grandchildren, from out here along the coast of South America, so many miles away from where they are in South Africa.

Not so fortunate our grandparents and great grandparents. See the photographs attached of Sheryl’s paternal grandparents’ wedding:  Sascha Edelstein z”l (14/12/1888  – September 1971) to Sophie Nicha Werbeloff z”l (1893 –  21/06/1941) on 31^st March 1921, at the Roland Street Shul in Cape Town. Both were born in Sasmarken (now Valdermarpils) in Latvia. Sophie passed away tragically in De Aar and Sascha in Cape Town. Profoundly sad that not one of their parents, all four of them still alive and well in Sasmarken Latvia, are reflected in the family photograph of this happy occasion. Despite their relatively high station within the context of their town in Latvia, it was simply not practically possible, unthinkable, for them to be at the wedding of their own children!

In Sasmarken the Edelsteins lived opposite the Werbeloffs (“Verbelovs”). Wolf Itzikov Edelstein (1857 – 1918) z”l  and Tamar Edelstein ‘nee Hirshberg z”l (1858 – 1921, born in Minsk) were Sascha’s parents. Wolf was the landlord of the town’s only bakery. He also owned the only facility in town where men working for him prepared the uppers of leather shoes. He was the first man in town to own a gramophone, which he probably bought in Riga, and people would go to his home to listen!    Benno Loserov Verbelov z”l and Shayna Verbelov z”l were Sophie’s parents. Benno and his brother Meir were partners in a yard goods store, which also had some hardware items, like the steel strips that were the wagon equivalent of tires.

The story is told that, around 1914, when Oupa Sascha was called up to the army in Latvia and didn’t report for duty, he was caught and locked up in jail. Fortunately the local Police Station was on the Werbeloff property and the Verbelov’s managed to bribe Sascha out of Jail. Wolf then paid two boatmen to take Sascha at night to Germany, from where he found his way to England and then to his two brothers in “Southern Rhodesia”.  Sascha, who was in love with Sophie before he left Latvia, had to wait five years before he could bring her out to South Africa in 1920, to marry in Cape Town in 1921.

So Miles of Empty Spaces it seems means entirely different things to different people at different times…. While spectacular Rio – our last stop in Brazil is already many miles behind us, it still feels just a heartbeat away!

Written by Raymond