Some Slight Weight

By Elia Susskind

Cornell University

Class of 2013

Arriving at Fazenda Teotonio Wednesday evening, I took in a sigh of relief. We had left Fortaleza at 17:30 as the sun was beginning to set. As the land fell under a darker shadow, the traffic got heavier, the roads we took contained more ditches and potholes, and just as we escaped the rush hour traffic and picked up some speed, the air conditioner sputtered, spat, and cut out.  Our open windows provided relief from the stifling heat, and I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut as fat, biting grasshoppers (which I swear must have been waiting on the side of the road for the precise moment to successfully launch themselves in through the window of a passing car going 100km/hr) would find their way onto my lap, in my hair, or deflected off my forehead into the car’s crevices only to later find their way to my heels to take mouthfuls of my skin. For one who was slightly squeamish around sporadically moving insects to begin with, having them attack me in silence through the window at night was an event that took some getting used to.

After an hour and a half of driving Dr. Xico pulled into a gas station and idled up to the side of a large freezer instead of the diesel pump as I was expecting. “Picoles!” He exclaimed, and excitedly patted my hand before opening his door and bouncing out. Picole is the Portuguese word for popsicle, and the freezer contained hundreds of them.  “Caju! Manga! Coco!” Dr. Xico made a small pile of popsicles on the freezer’s sliding door in front of me. I tried to slow him down and assure him that one was really enough but he would have none of it. He hurriedly paid the station attendant, scrunching his nose and scoffing when I offered him money, and then he scooped up the popsicles in his arms and presented them to me like a frozen bouquet. Leo and Saul smiled, waiting for us near the car. I handed them both two or three popsicles before we took off.

“Caju,” or cashew was by far my favorite popsicle flavor. The next day I would learn where cashews came from as Dr. Xico would come to a screeching halt on the side of the road to point out the tall, broad based trees growing from sandy plots. The flavor is nutty, and sweet, and is used in many other treats like soda, juice, and ice cream. I had never previously liked the taste of the cashew nut, but here the flavor is boiled down and purified to create a sweet, rich treat that I have learned to crave.

After three and a half hours we finally reached our destination city. Dr. Xico pulled in to a gravel lot in front of an open air restaurant painted entirely in lime green. “Presciso uma cerveja…vamos,” Saul, Leo and I all glanced at each other and I could tell they were both harboring the same hunger and fatigue as I. But we gathered our wits and followed after Dr. Xico – he was the boss. Obviously familiar with the establishment, Dr. Xico smiled, waved, and kissed cheeks of almost all the people in the place before we settled into a large table in the center of the floor. He ordered a tall bottle of beer and poured some into all of our cups. “Saude!” we clanged our glasses together and celebrated our arrival at Teotonio.

The farm is located down a long dirt road beyond the small town center. We were welcomed at the front gate by a tall, handsome man waving his arms and squinting in the car’s high beams. Dr. Xico cut the engine in front of a house with glowing windows and voices emanating from within. I stepped out of the car to find that the air was almost cold. I wrapped my bags around my shoulders to carry them inside, but was soon left with nothing as my luggage was swept away by various men wearing matching orange shirts.  “Don’t worry, your bags are safe. They are bringing them to your room,” Leo assured me in English. An appropriate time for a quick language change, I decided.

The table was set and pots of steaming food were brought in to welcome us. We piled rice, beans, steaks, and bread onto our plates. Later we were showed to our rooms. I could barely keep my eyes open, but found my way into the shower and then into a most luxurious queen-size bed, and didn’t wake until a blaring siren sounded at 7am indicating the start of the work day.

We drove the equipment out to one of the barns, and met up with the other travelers who had arrived and had already gone to bed by the time we came in the night before.  We set up a small lab in a hut with electrical outlets for the microscopes, and a work station near the cattle chute with the ultrasound and anesthesia. The task was ovum pick-up. Felipe would pass the ultrasound rectally and a long, cannulated device intravagionally through which he could insert a long suction pipette. Using the ultrasound to visualize its location, Felipe then directed the pipette to the ovaries where the applied vacuum would suck out any available oocytes. Once the sample was collected, it was passed on to Leo and Saul to have the fluid observed under a microscope and the oocytes separated from other cells, and placed in a nutrient-rich medium. The whole operation was incredibly fragile. My job consisted of administering lidocaine epidurals and washing and prepping the perineal region of each cow before she walked into the ultrasound shoot. Jabbing a large bore needle into the caudal spine and then cleaning manure of external labia was perhaps a bit less fragile than extracting oocytes but, as I was reassured, I still held a very important position in the process.

Fazenda Teotonio is home to the most successful milking Guzera cattle herd in the world. Guzera are a breed of Zebu cattle (Bos indicus) that proves to be incredibly hardy in the harsh, semi-arid climate of northeast Brazil. More recently, the Guzera has been crossed with European breeds like the Holstein, Jersey, Charolais, and Brown Swiss to produce a more productive (milk/meat) animal. Fazenda Teotonio breeds a Guzera/Holstein cow to produce milk on a commercial scale, but its most prized herd is the full-blood Guzera which are housed in separate barns a few kilometers away.  We drove out there to see them.

The Guzera are giant, silver/gray, bellowing beasts with massive horns that stretch up and curl back over a great big dorsal hump that sits upon their shoulders. Their movements are heavy and deliberate. A few of the farm workers introduced us to the prized bulls who were kept in a separate enclosure – a ring of beautiful wooden box stalls surrounding a shaded, dirt plot on which to strut their stuff. I was allowed to have a photo taken with one bull that was apparently particularly friendly with tourists, and as I stood there waiting for the shutter to click and scratching the animal’s giant flank as I was instructed, I kept a cautious eye on his boulder of a head that ever so slightly tilted my way as the camera flashed.

Guzera cows give birth to bright white calves the color of fresh snow. Their eyes, nose, and hooves are jet black and their ears are long, sloping things that seem to provide the calf with its first challenge in the post-uterus life. As we approached the maternity pen we were advised to keep our distance. The cows lifted their giant heads as we passed, making baritone grunts and bellows that could only be taken as warnings.  

The cows are milked by hand: one man holds a bucket, stool and stick and another holds a long bamboo pole attached to a rope that has been cinched down around the cow’s massive forehead. Alongside the cow stands the calf, providing both a stimulus for oxytocin-induced milk let down as well as a source of protection for the milker. Once, in a moment of confusion, a calf was taken away too early and the wild-eyed cow let out a thunderous bellow, and charged the gate, dragging both men (more wild-eyed than she) along with her.

We walked the remainder of the pens testing the tension in the fence’s barbed wire, discussing management of the new milking parlor that is to be finished in a couple months, and sometimes just standing in silence, appreciating the cattle as they continued and continued to be. My mind would drift at times, relaxing on the language so that the men’s voices became mere sound. The sun was setting over the jagged rock-topped mountains on the horizon; a deep purple became the sky. My senses were heightened; I could smell the chopped sorghum still steaming from the sun’s heat, and I could hear the sound of wavering tree branches as they bent under some slight weight. The Guzera became notions of heat around me, and once, as I had drifted slightly behind the others all caught up in the beauty of the place, I felt the slightest spray of sand upon my heel as though something was following me not so very far away.