Shopping with Valde in Recife

OK, to tell this story properly, I need to give you TMI -- too much information about myself. I have problems with incontinence which require me to wear protective pads. I thought I had arranged with Holland America to get supplies for the trip, but there was a mixup in communication, and I got much less than I will need. This meant I could EITHER fight with the front office to (a) communicate the problem and (b) negotiate a resolution and (c) wait anxiously to see whether I got what I needed, possibly requiring a return to (a); OR I could figure out how to acquire what I need on my own.

I chose the second approach. The ship's Travel Guide, a American woman of roughly my age, hence someone relatively easy to talk to, gave me the name of a pharmacy in Recife that she said would have what I needed. OK, I thought, I can do this.

I was wrong, but I was lucky. As I walked toward the bus stop the tourist info people in the terminal pointed me to, Valde offered me his taxi service, assuring me he spoke "very good English", which wasn't entirely true, but his generosity of spirit more than made up for it.

Valde is about fifty, maybe 5'6" to 5'8" tall with salt-and-pepper hair and beard and a stocky, muscular build. (If I had thought to take my camera, I could post a picture, but I was minimally equipped for the shopping trip and left it behind.) I'm sure he has as much machismo as any other Latin American male, but he walked with me through the whole process -- or, rather, I walked with him. I had brought an empty package of pads, which he took and showed to various store clerks, asking directions to where the "geriatricos" supplies were, explaining what we were looking for, telling me how many Brazilian reals to get out of the ATM, checking back with me when the price seemed too high to him, carrying the bulky packages onto my shuttle bus, all done graciously and with no sense of embarrassment or distaste or, for that matter, of smarmy servility. He was a knight in shining taxicab who saved me from a fearsome, overwhelming dragon of a shopping trip -- imagine me with no Portuguese trying to pantomime what it was I was looking for! -- and the fact that he kissed me on the forehead by way of farewell just puts the icing on the cake.