In England it is common to meet people who are attune to Politics. Whether they only know two names, or whether they can name every party member since the beginning of time, everybody knows that the Government is a sham. This is exactly the same as Brazil. The people have a very strong dislike for the Government. An example of this is when the Government builds a new road but runs out of money, or cannot be bothered to finish it, Brazilian people will simply use the half-built road out of spite. They organise million-strong protests in all major cities, they organise riots, or they silently riot from home. No matter where you are or who you are, it would appear very few people in Brazil trust, or even care for, the Government.
There's a lot in Brazil that needs fixing, a lot that needs some care, a lot that needs a paint job, a lot that needs to be knocked down, swept up, and started again. There seems to be an underlying sense of laziness in Brazilian culture. Not a good-kind of laziness, not a 'put your feet back and enjoy a gin and tonic and a book in the gazebo darling' kind of laziness, but a crippling one that leaves a large amount of the population on the street outside their houses watching the world go by, day in, day out.
We have met people who go against the grain and are wonderfully talented and productive people, who are swimming against the current to find their feet. When we first arrived we stayed with the wonderful family of Mario and Erica, and their two sons Talles and Teo. This family live in Nova Igassu, a town (which confessed by them to be ugly and similar to a favela) just outside of Rio. Mario and Erica work in the city, in good jobs, and the two boys go to University, and have ambition and drive to live good lives. They are educated and they can think for themselves. I remember very well a long conversation we had on the last night that I stayed at their house about Politics in Brazil and indeed the rest of the world. Quite possibly the best memory of that night was when I recorded (by request) Teo sending a message to David Cameron and Tony Blair in which he told them they were 'fucking wankers'. A hilarious, true, but possibly controversial comment, which left us laughing and crying for a long time. Wherever one goes, all you have to do is throw a rock and you can find someone who hates Tony Blair.
Being attuned to world politics is a rare trait in Brazil, and I don't think we will find many other people who are similar to Talles and Teo in that regard. It really showed me how lucky we are to have a general sense of knowledge of these things in England. Of course you can avoid learning about it, in school or otherwise, but there is still an average IQ that allows people to generally have an opinion on things. In Brazil you hate the government, and possibly riot and protest, but that's about it. I think if the people here had a better image of what things are like in other countries, it would be beneficial to people here in Brazil. I sound arrogant and like a stereotypical white-elitist, yet we have been in some parts of Brazil that seriously need re-colonising. The Portuguese didn't do a great job in some places.
Thursday 2 April 2015
A Sprinkle of Context
Contextualising things is never fun, especially as a writer who is most often suited to fictional writing, where you can avoid contextual information by forcing your characters to have a flash back or a dream or something equally as creative. So I'm going to be brief here, for your sake, but mostly for my own.
I landed in Brazil on the 1st January 2015 with £1,200 in my Barclays Bank account, my guitar, a back full of clothes, and a small hand-luggage bag with my laptop, phone and iPod safely wrapped inside. I had no expectations on what my time here would be like, due to the advice of my friend Tom who was also standing beside me in the blazing sun as we walked out the airport into the 30 degree sloppy heat of Rio di Janeiro. Having expectations is never wise, whether they be good or bad. If you expect the worst and get the worst then yes, you're better prepared, but you can be assured that however you imagined the worst turning out, it happened in a completely different manner.
After a stressful arrival in Heathrow where I had to buy two tickets to Argentina for March so that we were allowed to enter Brazil on a tourist visa, we had finally made it after a connection in Rome, to our final destination of Brazil. We were happy, tired, sad, hungry and poor, in a foreign country, with foreign people, who spoke a language we didn't know, to go and stay with people we'd never heard of, and pay with a currency which made no sense.
I remember noticing a few things that went against my original perception of Brazil. Stereotypically Brazil is hot, tropical, full of amazing beaches which are full of amazing women, home of the coconut and country of an overwhelming amount of 'wonders-of-the-world'-deserving architecture. None of this was obvious as we walked out of the main airport in Rio, Galeau, where all you could see was a load of tall, gray, concrete structures that looked like the inside of a multi-storey, and a road full of taxis with weathered Brazilian men trying to grab you and take you away to God-knows-where. We made it, in one piece surprisingly, after a ridiculous taxi drive to the Monastery of St Benedict in north Rio. Yet again, nothing as expected, tall, white, dark inside, gold adorned Church-style Monastery was completely against the norm of my expectations.
A huge, gargantuan amount has happened here in Brazil. Far far too much for me to write in one sitting unless I decided I wanted to dedicate the younger years of my life to composing a new Bible. However I wish to write anecdotes, and my comments on the stuff that has happened here, with as much (or as little, depending on the story) detail as possible.
The most important thing to realise is that Brazil has not, by any means, been a big ole' load of jolly fun, rather a stream of different roads all leading downhill at times. Of course, often the worst moments in our lives are the best experiences, but it certainly never feels like it at the time.
Yet, contextually, I am here, and have been here for three months. I am alive, and well, three-thousand mosquito bites, a fall off a skateboard, and about twenty colds later. I have money (very little), I have friends (at the beginning about thirty, now I can count them on one hand) I have two books (one read, one half read) I have my laptop, my phone and my iPod. These things are what have meant the most to me over the last three months. Sadly I cannot take all these things home with me. Apart for the mosquitoes. Those buggers can stay in Brazil.
I landed in Brazil on the 1st January 2015 with £1,200 in my Barclays Bank account, my guitar, a back full of clothes, and a small hand-luggage bag with my laptop, phone and iPod safely wrapped inside. I had no expectations on what my time here would be like, due to the advice of my friend Tom who was also standing beside me in the blazing sun as we walked out the airport into the 30 degree sloppy heat of Rio di Janeiro. Having expectations is never wise, whether they be good or bad. If you expect the worst and get the worst then yes, you're better prepared, but you can be assured that however you imagined the worst turning out, it happened in a completely different manner.
After a stressful arrival in Heathrow where I had to buy two tickets to Argentina for March so that we were allowed to enter Brazil on a tourist visa, we had finally made it after a connection in Rome, to our final destination of Brazil. We were happy, tired, sad, hungry and poor, in a foreign country, with foreign people, who spoke a language we didn't know, to go and stay with people we'd never heard of, and pay with a currency which made no sense.
I remember noticing a few things that went against my original perception of Brazil. Stereotypically Brazil is hot, tropical, full of amazing beaches which are full of amazing women, home of the coconut and country of an overwhelming amount of 'wonders-of-the-world'-deserving architecture. None of this was obvious as we walked out of the main airport in Rio, Galeau, where all you could see was a load of tall, gray, concrete structures that looked like the inside of a multi-storey, and a road full of taxis with weathered Brazilian men trying to grab you and take you away to God-knows-where. We made it, in one piece surprisingly, after a ridiculous taxi drive to the Monastery of St Benedict in north Rio. Yet again, nothing as expected, tall, white, dark inside, gold adorned Church-style Monastery was completely against the norm of my expectations.
A huge, gargantuan amount has happened here in Brazil. Far far too much for me to write in one sitting unless I decided I wanted to dedicate the younger years of my life to composing a new Bible. However I wish to write anecdotes, and my comments on the stuff that has happened here, with as much (or as little, depending on the story) detail as possible.
The most important thing to realise is that Brazil has not, by any means, been a big ole' load of jolly fun, rather a stream of different roads all leading downhill at times. Of course, often the worst moments in our lives are the best experiences, but it certainly never feels like it at the time.
Yet, contextually, I am here, and have been here for three months. I am alive, and well, three-thousand mosquito bites, a fall off a skateboard, and about twenty colds later. I have money (very little), I have friends (at the beginning about thirty, now I can count them on one hand) I have two books (one read, one half read) I have my laptop, my phone and my iPod. These things are what have meant the most to me over the last three months. Sadly I cannot take all these things home with me. Apart for the mosquitoes. Those buggers can stay in Brazil.
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