500 Years of Brazil (1 of 3)

I don’t know where you are reading this, perhaps hanging round an embassy or consulate trying to get a visa, perhaps on a dreary Monday morning in a down town cab in NYC, or perhaps on a beach in the NE of Brazil, or even at work (as I am writing now) but what ever the location or demographic you and I probably share something in common. I guess that as you reading my thoughts you and I both have an affinity for this crazy place we call Brazil.

I feel comfortable with people like yourself, the fleeting encounters in crowded airport lounges, the smile, the flash of visas and the smattering of Portuguese we have picked up, the way we compare Rio and Bahia with London and Paris and they way we gravitate towards our own, whether we be in London, Lisbon or Amsterdam. People like us I understand, we are the romantics, the realists, the masochistic, but above all we love, and claim to understand Brazil. It is the other people who worry me.

They say every journey starts with a single step and mine began one wet Saturday night at the magnificent Fortaleza airport. It’s late, almost midnight and lightening is flashing across the sky, we are tired, sunburnt and the atmosphere is pregnant with unfinished business and portent. You would guess from the people around me, people I have come to love in such a short time, that I am leaving for good instead of a three-week recruitment drive around Europe.

Such is the nature of the people here that I am sucked in to the culture, the place, the time and only when I have finally assimilated the wonder of Fortaleza and Brazilian hospitality will I be burped out again, and sent off on another rampant crusade across the city, or in this case the globe. For now, it’s a sad parting and even the immigration officer, who stamps my passport with flair reminds me to come back soon – as if I could forget.

And then I am in Lisbon, jostling and fighting to get my next flight, I am hearing what seems to me like a bastardised form of my beautiful Portuguese and getting curious looks from people as I flirt with the pretty stewardess to get today’s London paper, and I am chatting to the man next to me passionately about Brazil, about the food and the people and he wants to talk about the political situation in London. I explain I have been away for two years, and no longer care or even need to care and he returns to his paper – disgusted. And I wonder, what is this country doing to me, why do I love it so much.

And then I am escorting some Brazilians, new found friends from the flight, through immigration in London, fighting with the officials for our baggage, apologising for the delays, the rudeness, the chaos. I am fretting, London, I am your son, don’t you remember me? And then I am hurtling down the M25 and I am animated, calling my dad rapaz at every opportunity and punctuating every sentences with Brazilian gestures, complaining about the grey, the cold, the steering wheel being on the wrong side, and my mother is sitting in the back thinking who is this guy who once was my son, and I know, I know they will never understand my passion until they see Brasil�and I am giving out presents, talking ten to the dozen, and watching their eyes glaze over.

And then I am in Copenhagen, running to get a plane, and sitting down and launching into a monologue to the poor guy sitting next to me, telling him to invest, to visit, hell – just give me the money, do anything, get to Brazil, get to the north east – quickly. And then I am in Poland and it’s cold and I am digging clothes out my ruck sac and complaining and missing cold beer, lobster and rapadura. I am bouncing towards Warsaw and still talking ten to the dozen about Brazil, the chances to invest, the work we do, how my students are the best and how Brazil is not a country but an adventure.

And then I am lecturing and expecting a tough Q+A session:

Does Brazil have roads?
Does Brazil have houses?
Do you really go to work in a boat?

And I want to scream and to strike out, but I can’t because this is my job and…I can think of no other reason. These people are professors! I console myself over a bottle of vodka – they know no better. And then the world is polarised – those of us who have tasted forbidden fruit and the rest of the world. And everything is clearer…

Read all three parts of 500 years in Brazil
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

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