´Boy, we have a problem´ sad the military officer as I arrived at the archive this morning...and now I know how a hot air balloon feels when it loses its air.
To make a not-so-long story even shorter, it turns out that the Sergent who I dealt with last week didn~t have the proper authorization to sell the photos....
Now of course, said sergent could have called me on my Brazilian cell phone (of which he had the number and of which I kept with me all week) or he could have emailed me (using the email address I gave him and told him was the best way to contact me in case there were any questions whatsoever...), bu for whatever reason, he didn~t.
And today there is another soccer game, which means said sergent did not come into work today and won~t be in until Monday, which is great considering I leave for Fortaleza on Sunday. All of which means I get the please of trying to figure out via skype whom I need to get authorizaion from, how to get it, to get it, then to get photos developed, figure out how to wire the money, get them to air mail the photos to Fortaleza.....simple, right?
The upshot of all this is that A) I now know something I didn´t before, namely that the photos exist and are of good quality; B) I have the phone number of the archives and the person´s name who was friendly and helpful; C) I know this is how the `game´works, the silly trying-to-conduct-research-abroad game that is, and D) I´m damn persistent
What did put a little air back in my balloon was getting back on the subway (mind you I had to go across Rio this morning to get this wonderful news) and see all the ridiculous people dressed up in yellow and green mohawks with fake giantsunglasses and kazoos, creating a giant bit of insanity in the subway car at 9:30 in the morning before the 11:00 game...thank you fools, the manifestation of the insanity that took the air out of my little balloon.
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