Portugal, like much of Europe, has been sweltering under a prolonged heatwave for most of the past two weeks. Temperatures remained over 38c (100F) for days and soared in some parts of the country as high as 47C or 116F. With the hot temperatures came the wildfires.

Fires are common in Portugal each summer but they popped up with a vengeance in July this year. Each time I spot a plume of smoke billowing in the distance I worry. During two decades living in New Mexico I saw the smoke from several deadly fires that consumed tens of thousands of acres and took weeks to extinguish. And this spring there was the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon which become the biggest fires in the state’s history.

But the Portuguese seem to have learned a valuable lesson from a disastrous fire in 2017, which claimed dozens of lives near the central town of Pedrógão Grande. The Portuguese firefighters, Bombeiros, spring into action almost as soon as the smoke appears. Usually all signs of the blaze are gone within a few hours.

This year has been a test

Between July 5 and July 11, multiple fires broke out within 5 km to 15 km of where I live near the towns of Ferreira do Zezere and Tomar, in central Portugal. Bombeiros units from all over the country rushed to the scene, officers from the Guarda Nacional Republicans (GNR) controlled roads near the area. They even closed some major highways temporarily.

Thanks to the swift response, most of the smoke would be gone by the next morning. But as the temperature rose again and the afternoon winds kicked in, the ominous clouds of grey, brown and dirty yellow smoke would reappear. News reports attributed the new blazes to wind-blown embers which ignited tinder dry vegetation in the surrounding areas. At one point, I drove toward a nearby village and saw a line of cars stopped by the roadside. The occupants were standing watching the flames burn a hillside about 2 km, roughly 1.5 miles away.

During the evening, friends and neighbors sent messages back and forth checking on each other. Two of my friends had to evacuate for a couple of nights because the flames came within a half mile or so of their homes. I kept a suitcase packed with vital papers and other important items by my door in case I too had to leave. Luckily it didn’t happen.

Aircraft bring water to extinguish the fires

The drama in my area of central Portugal lasted for about four days. During that time planes and helicopters rumbled overhead all day long, carrying precious water from a nearby reservoir to douse the flames. I say precious, because Portugal is in a drought situation. Everywhere the lakes, rivers and reservoirs are seriously depleted.

Thankfully, the fires have now calmed down. A friend of mine who lives near a forest that has been mostly obliterated was deeply grateful to the Bombeiros when they told her that her home was safe. The Portuguese regard their firefighters, most of whom are volunteers, as heroes. I wrote about them in a recent article in Portugal Living, the online lifestyle magazine I’ve been freelancing for.

I have been living in Portugal for almost three years now and I still hesitate when I come to an entrance door and see the sign ”puxe”. You see, the letter ”X” in Portuguese is pronounced ”sh”, so if you say the word ”puxe” it sounds like ”push”, but really it means pull!

The Portuguese word for push is ”Empurre”. To the native English speaker, this is so visually confusing. So I stand at the door and think ”push or pull?”

One of the other words that just seems weird is the word for dog; ”cão”. It is pronounced “cow”, or more correctly, pinch the top of your nose as you say cow and you will get the proper nasal sound that is used when you see the letter combination ”ão” in a Portuguese word.

Portuguese is full of nasal sounds. Bread is ”pão” which sounds like pow, again, holding your nose. Hand is ”mão”, pronounced mow, to rhyme with a nasal sounding “wow”.

You get the idea.

I’m fortunate to be one of those people that loves words. Learning languages is kind of a hobby with me. Some people like knitting or quilting or cooking. I like learning how to communicate with people in the countries I visit or have the good fortune to live in.

In my experience, the English speakers who come to live in Portugal tend not to become very proficient in Portuguese. Probably because many Portuguese are only too willing to speak English. Often when they say they only speak a little, you find they can quickly wax eloquent on all kinds of subjects. The Portuguese are good at explaining things in great detail.

English speakers often say that people who speak a different language talk so fast. We forget just how fast we normally speak. Try watching an evening news broadcast on your local TV station. We also forget how many variations of English there are. Think about the differences between “British” English and ”American” English, and then break those huge generalizations into the innumerable local accents in the UK and the US. Add in Canada, Australia and New Zealand–remember listening to Jacinda Ardern– and you’ve got a vast range of linguistic variations.

I went to University in Dublin, Ireland, and a lot of my friends were from Belfast. I can’t even begin to try to give a phonetic rendering of how people from Northern Ireland say ”cow”! Watch ”Derry Girls”.

It’s been a long journey with a lot of ups and downs, but seeing my novel finally up on the Amazon website is a thrill! It’s a mystery set in the fictitious city of Las Vistas, New Mexico where hotshot reporter Elizabeth “Digger” Doyle has a nose for exposing intrigue at City Hall — And there’s plenty of that in a city where politicians are cosy with developers whose projects damage the environment.

I’d like to thank all the friends who helped encourage me to keep writing, and those who read the manuscript and gave me invaluable feedback. All those comments helped me keep working to come up with better ideas and to polish the writing.

A bit about the author

I’ve wanted to write ever since I can remember. When I was a little girl I used to tell my brother stories as we walked the few blocks to elementary school in El Cajon, Calif. I had freelance articles published when I was a student at Trinity College Dublin. I got my first real job as a journalist when I lived in Norway, writing and editing for the English language newspaper The Saga Weekly. Later, when I had children, one of my favorite things was to make up stories for them at bedtime. They always preferred my made up stories to books.

I was fortunate enough to land a job as a staff writer with the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico’s largest daily. During the 18 years I worked there I wrote thousands of stories covering an array of business, political, environmental, police and feature topics. Some of the shenanigans I observed provided the initial inspiration for this novel.

It is now available in paperback and kindle format from Amazon. If you live in Portugal you can get it through Amazon.de. I hope you will enjoy it!

And you can find out more on my Amazon author page.

(Author’s note: I wrote this blog post almost a year ago, after I had read about the horrific events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Sadly, so much is still the same. Gun violence has become more prevalent and nothing is done to address the real problem–the prevalence of weapons of human destruction.)

LOSING A CHILD is the most gut-wrenching experience that can happen to a parent. It isn’t supposed to happen. Your children aren’t supposed to die before you. But it does happen sometimes, and we become members of a club no one ever wants to join. 

Their little faces remain forever young in the photos that surround you, haunting you, like phantom pieces of your heart.

I lost my 11-year-old son to a rare and devastating illness many years ago and I am still haunted.

There are so many emotions; pain, despair, rage. The questions; why them? Why now? What did they/I/we do to deserve this terrible thing happening?

When numbness finally comes it is a relief from the pain, but it is always with us, like a severed limb that will never regrow. 

I write this not to gain sympathy but to draw attention to what the parents of those 19 children in the small Texas town are facing. It will affect not only them, but their other children, their nieces and nephews, their grandchildren. It will ripple out throughout the families and neighborhoods, and eventually to the next generation.

The parents in Uvalde will live the rest of their lives asking the questions. And the terrible thing is; that despite so many of these hideous incidents, and their increasing frequency….. NOTHING substantial has been done to prevent them. Why the lack of courage to make change? Americans pride themselves on living in the land of the free. Where is the freedom in having to go to school surrounded by armed guards? Having to live in constant fear?  Is that freedom? 

I moved to Portugal three years ago and feel safer and more free here than I ever did in the US.