The first thing I noticed in Manaus, besides the fences that were topped with razor wire and broken only by security gates, was a shop along our way selling bananas. It was 2 am, and an old man was asleep on a plastic lawn chair. A boy lingered near a counter. The shop was all open air and well lit by a couple of bright fluorescents. The lights, the old man, and the boy provided services, that a fence’s absence did not.

We awoke to meet our guide for the next two days in the city. He was small in stature, and rail thin. Under his clear, blue eyes his cheeks were deeply tan and glistened already that early morning in a mixture of humidity and sweat. His jeans fit snuggly, but he wore a simple cloth belt anyway and it hung loosely around his waist.  I would find him to be something of a philosopher, despite the occasional tourist trap accustomed to his trade.

On a small bus we would be introduced to the rest of the city which sat on the left bank of the Rio Negro, and our guide referred to as ‘The Capitol of the Jungle.’ Street side were more open air shops, speckled in pastels faded by time or besmirched in grime. These same colors, off hue, made their way back in the houses and shacks beyond. The brightest colors came from the occasional well tended flower and fresh graffiti.

In these shops were an arrangement of mattresses, cars on old stands in repair, various plumbing pieces hanging from ceilings in diameters too large for most to use, and more plastic lawn chairs. In one was a half pallet of brick and a few scant bags of mortar. On top of them were apartments augmented with shoddy wooden balconies lined in laundry.  Connecting it all were an array of wires and old satellite dishes.

From the streets out front the old gathered, the young played, and more entrepreneurs emerged selling unpackaged but assorted car chargers, waxed paper wrapped tamales with trapped moisture thrown in, and bottles of water which may have been filled for the second time. Near the man selling car chargers was a young woman with children holding a sign in Portuguese. It was hard not to believe they were all of the same family.

Down the alleys radiating from our street was a hodgepodge of deconstruction and building.  Both seemed to take place over such an extensive period of time it was possible to differentiate the going up from the coming down.  There were clusters of lumber shacks in places that looked like little more than tinderboxes.  In other areas they were made of brick, in a slapshod construction method which left seems only partially filled with mortar, which brought to mine the earthquake devastation one sees on the news. There were also church towers and domes and apartment high rises, anchoring all of it to a psuedo-stability in regards to time.

There was a bleakness to it. A claustrophobic feeling that comes when you follow an alley to its end. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the people here could be happier than our own. It did seem beyond the realm that they had more opportunity.

But this was all in old Manaus. On its west side were fancy gated communities, now topped with electric fencing and carpeted in green yards meticulously cared for. There were signs attracting buyers to the developments yet to come. Elsewhere in the city was a mix, with western infringement nearly always fenced like it was the night we arrived.

Before we left the blue eyed Socrates of Manaus, our bus had asked him to speak of his own time growing up there. Taking the mic, he spoke only of the ancient history of the place, going all the way back to clashing continental shelves. It was as though there were no distinction between the place and him, or he only a more recent manifestation of it.

“We are square,” he concluded; “the world is round.” As true in a gated community as it is in the alleys of old Manaus.