A Viagem com o Pedro (Travels with Pedro)

Mação doesnot allow you to get out very easily... Every week i go to the big supermarket that is a 15 minutes walk from home and look at the prizes of bicycles. But, they say bikes come cheap only in summer.

Pedro Cura teaches Lithic technology and is the brother of my professor Sara Cura. The young koora s are these always busy, always pleasant people. Pedro had promised to take me to visit a site that i was working on for my assignment as soon as he could get hold of a jeep and also some time. And this Monday he said we could finally go.

Mação has gone under my skin

For some time now I have been planning to write. But I am in a kind of stupor. I have been in Mação for over two months now. The schedule has become tight. The subjects taught range from geomorphology to palaeo-ecology. Portuguese remains almost as incomprehensible as it always was… There is never enough time for anything. Even so, deep down I feel lethargy setting in…

Mação is constant. You can come back here after two years and find everything as you left it. (It's like going to Ganga Dhaaba and finding Rona Wilson there!) A fifteen minutes walk in any direction takes you out of the town. The number of abandoned houses increase as one moves out of the town-center. In the middle of the abandonment sometimes newly painted red roofs appear like surprises. Its like a game where some one sets out little playhouses here and there for no specific reason.

O ÁLBUM PORTUGUÊS

The Ghost of Mação

It was an early autumn morning in 2004. An old lady was walking through the cobble-stoned street, near her home in Mação. As was usual for the place and time, the road was silent and deserted. It was then that she came face to face with the ghost.

The ghost was very dark and wore a white tunic and was walking towards her. Then it spoke. She ran inside her house slamming the door behind. The petrified lady later told the mayor of the town that the ghost tried to follow her inside and in fact knocked at her door.

Mação...

Ten o’clock in the morning. The sun shines a bright yellow, The air is a strange mixture of warmth and chill. The cobblestone streets cut neatly through the white and yellow houses. The church bell rings out the time. Then there is only the sound of my footsteps…

This is Mação, a little town in the heart of Portugal; nested among the hillocks and in the valley of Tejo. From the nearest hill, Macao is a cluster of bright red rooftops, set in the green and yellow landscape. Autumn is slowly giving way to winter. When you are alone in the street you think you are walking inside a painting.