A Swede in Brazil

In 1890 my great grandparents immigrated from Sweden to Brazil.  To encourage immigration, the Bazilian governent payed the passage for immigrants from Hamburg, Germany, to Rio De Janero.  My Grandpa, John Francisco Johnson, was born two years later, on September 17th, 1892, in Santa Barbara, Brazil. 

Grandpa's parents decided to go return Sweden a few years later because they were unable to stand the intense heat.  Grandpa was only a baby, but he remembered the stories his mother told him about living in Brazil.

Sometimes the heat was as high as 130 to 135 degrees.  Great Grandma Johnson's legs would swell from the heat and then crack open.  Some of the cracks were large enough that she could but her finger in them.  In Brazil there were flies that would lay their eggs in people and the eggs would grow into worms and feed on the person's skin, making huge sores.  When grandpa was just a baby a fly stung him and the worm grew larger than a finger.  His father had to boil his knife and slit the skin open to get the worm out.  Grandpa had a convulsion and they thought he surley would die, but he came out of it all right.

Sometimes the intense heat would bring on sever cloud bursts.  Grandpa's parents had only been able to build temporary housing shelters of bamboo and rough lumber.  One such cloud burst came on so fast that his father didn't have time to run to the house to help his mother.  It was so bad she had to crawl under the bed which was nailed to the side of the house, and there cling to her two boys with one hand and the bed with the other to keep from being washed away.The following year his mother returned to Sweden with grandpa and his older brother Sigfrid, but his father had to wait for another year until he earned enough money to pay his way home as well.  They were all very happy to get back to home.