i made it into another guy's photo album

My fellow traveler Weldon, who stayed at the pousada I was at before I got my apartment, posted a picture of me he took right before he left for Rio. I like it because it catches me at my non-whitest, after I spent way too much time lying on the beach in an attempt to not look so freaking Caucasian. Unfortunately I miscalculated the time required for a fully baked-in look (dammit), as you can see here. I should also point out that I've been awake in the photo for approximately 10 minutes, and this should explain why I look high as shit.

showing up and just standing there actually helps people

There's an article on npr.org, part of the "This I Believe" series, about "The Power of Presence" with regards to volunteering and/or helping others. This is encouraging for someone like me who excels most at showing up and standing around rather than doing any actual work.

some stories won't go away

Some stories just demand to be told. I tend to forget things pretty easily, but when something keeps coming back to me I my guess is it’s a sign that it could be something significant. But who knows what’s significant and what isn’t – rarely do any of us have enough perspective on our lives to see what really matters and what doesn’t, without the benefit of time and hindsight, and wisdom.

To get to the point, I was out at a restaurant in Pelhourinho with one of my favorite profesoras whose name is Conceção and who is probably around age 25. She wanted to go to see a blues band which was good, and pretty loud, and played more songs that I knew than any other place I’ve been since I got to Bahia. Afterwards a Samba / Forro (FO-ho) band came on and the real show began. Forro is an offshoot of Samba which to the trained ear has a distinctive sound but when I tried to get Conceção and her friend Lidia to define it they couldn’t. But they could identify it by ear with little if any problem.

Conceção’s friend was on vacation from where she worked in one of the northernmost states of Brazil, near Venezuela, where she works for a non-profit organization as an educator of Portuguese and other things for the population of what they call Indios (and there’s a name for the tribe too and I can’t remember it - *idiot*). Lidia had long frizzy brown and blond hair, was pretty small, and *extremely* hot. The whole time we were out I was fighting with this Dutch guy named Michel (who, don’t get me wrong, is cool, but when it comes to women men are like sharks with each other – it’s a free for all) for her attention. The situation was not in my favor in this regard because Michel, being one of those Europeans who already speaks at least four languages (German, Dutch, French, English, Spanish, probably others), spoke and understood and joked in Portuguese *way* better than I can. Luckily for me most of my verbal interaction with women, even the ones who speak English, consists of staring at a point between their eyebrows and nodding my head. This worked OK until she paused for me to answer whatever question she just asked me. In some cases I did alright but in others I’m sure it was quite obvious that I didn’t understand a word of what she had been saying. In my own defense I’ll just add that the music was loud as freakin hell, and this didn’t help a lot either.

So luckily for me the dance scene was one of those insane crowds where everyone’s pushing their way through to get somewhere important like in a big rock concert in the States. The good thing about this (for me, at least) is that you can have a good time, and dance, and not have to worry about anyone seeing how uncoordinated you are.

Brazilians have an inexaustible capacity for partying. A lot of the time parties (festas) which include live music, drinking, fights, public making out with strangers, and plenty of other fun stuff, don’t start until midnight or after and go until 5 in the morning or later. So around 10pm on this particular night (a school night, mind you) I was about ready to go, after hanging out at that place for 3 or more hours, but of course the two Brazilian women weren’t. They stalled us for another hour without much problem, by just talking, walking off, whatever. This wasn’t the last time I observed Brazilian stay-at-the-party stall tactics, where everyone’s like “ok, time to go”, and somehow 2 or more hours later we’re still there. Since then it’s happened every time I’ve been out.

So we finally extracted ourselves from the crowd, by shaking our hips from the middle of the restaurant (it was pretty big), through the crowd, and out the back door which was nearly impossible to find. We then meandered our way over to one of the squares in Pelhourinho that are surrounded on all sides by churches. The two Brazilian girls, having had more than a few drinks, were laughing and yelling all the way to another restaurant, where most of the patrons were seated outside and there was a, how shall I put this, rather stout black woman singing up at the front into a mic attached to a small amp and accompanied by an amped acoustic guitarist. She was a great singer, and was singing some song that Conceção insisted that we had to wait and listen to. The song ended but then Lidia requested that the woman sing another one that she wanted, which she did.

Meanwhile, me and the Dutch guy immediately attracted a number of street kids, who came up and very persistently asked for money at various times during the few songs that we stood outside the fence of the restaurant for. There was one “kid” who I’ve seen before, who either looks like total shit from drug use to the point where he’s aged, or he’s an adult with some kind of developmental disorder. He’s small and thin with a child’s body, and head, but his face is twisted to look older – forty maybe. He angrily begged and clutched his stomach but he looked so much like a drug addict that I couldn’t give him any money.

One of the other students from the school, a German woman who has very striking blue eyes, very fair skin and light sandy-blonde hair, immediately attracted three or four Brazilian men who immediately started hitting on her. This always happens, i.e., the guys are on the German woman like flies on shit and the street kids are on the Euro/American guys like flies on shit. Even my cover of “I’m from Malta, not the US” doesn’t fly too well in this scenario.

Usually the street kids know better than to bother asking Brazilians anything, but one kid approached Conceção with his hand out. She was pretty tipsy at this point, and so just laughed and smiled back at him and stuck her face out while repeating what he’d said in a mocking tone. He didn’t say anything but his hand dropped and his face said “aww, just f it.”

I was talking with Lidia and not understanding about 80% of what either of us were saying, and another street kid in rags, about age 10-12 came up to us with his hand out. I shook my head when he asked but then she asked him something like “when was the last time you bathed or ate?”, the implication being that he was a crack addict or glue sniffer, which he clearly was. She put her hand on the short hair of his head and rubbed it in the most affectionate, intimate way I’ve ever seen anyone deal with a street kid or a homeless person, anywhere. She then said something about his eyes and put her hand on his face and pulled his eyelid down. It was too dark for me to see what she was looking at, but you didn’t have to look twice to see the kid was in bad shape. He was completely disarmed by her unexpected compassion, however, and when he saw there wasn’t any money coming he walked off, disgusted.

I’ve never seen anyone in real life act with such compassion to a stranger who clearly didn’t want it. To me it seemed like one of the most selfless acts I’ve ever seen, even if it didn’t result in changing anything. Maybe it did – maybe the kid decided to give up crack that night and turn his life around. Not likely, but it’s comforting to know that there are people in the world who can care about strangers without honestly expecting anything in return.

We watched the kid run off into another corner of the square and down one of the dark cobblestoned streets. As he did so I told her that I never knew how to deal with street people – I didn’t want to give them money if they were drug addicts, because not only do I end up getting ripped off but it just perpetuates their suffering. If they weren’t addicts I didn’t want to fail to acknowledge their humanity by brushing them off or not giving them anything when the smallest amount of money for me could actually pay for a lot of food for them. What do you do? I asked.

She gave a long answer, which I really didn’t understand one goddamn word of, which is really frustrating, because she might have said something pretty profound judging by the tone of her voice. And then she looked me in the eye and held my gaze as she finished what she was saying, and I could see that her eyes were bloodshot in the dim restaurant lights which spilled towards us in the street. I started to look away but saw that she was looking at me intently, and we looked straight into each others eyes for at least a minute, which was on the border of extremely uncomfortable for me or the opposite – very intimate. And she ended her last sentence with “proposição” (proposition). At that point I balked, realizing I didn’t know what she was saying. I was exhausted, though, and I panicked, and so I said “I don’t know”, assuming that she had been talking about the street kid still. But in retrospect I think she was asking me to take her home with me, and I’m not saying I have a big head, because, trust me, I don’t. I could quite easily have misinterpreted her look but there are some human expressions that are universal and this was one of them.

Xmas weekend part 3 (of 3)

With the party over everyone trudged back to the house, relieved that it was all over. I was tired but not so much that I wasn’t ready to go out. But I was still pretty tired – I’d slept 4 hours at Ivanildo’s house and then off and on for about 5 hours in the car on the way to Central.

Earlier, while the speeches were being given in the school, Elaine, who I’d been following around and vice-versa during the party, asked me if I wanted to go out to a Forro dance/music party in the center of town which included a number of different bands and a guaranteed crowd. The catch was that I’d have to pay R$10 in advance which is so not a big deal but some people think it is. Anyway, our plan for the evening was to go to this. It is a gross understatement to point out that when I saw the ratio of women to men in our group (me, Tomas, maybe Ivanildo, and 10 women) I was *psyched*.

Before dinner Ivanildo’s brother Luciano sat me down on the back porch and we talked for a while about how I could help out his organization. I was taken aback at how seriously he was taking me, almost as if I was some sort of (gulp) peer. He’s the owner of a very successful company in Rio, to the point where he doesn’t do anything at this point except own and leaves the operations to someone else (he explained this to me at this time). I became extra self-conscious when I noticed that a lot of the family brought out chairs to (gulp) listen to what I had to say to him, too, which is not good since I can’t freakin speak Portuguese. But in this case I think someone was on my side, and I was able to come across (I think, who knows what I really sounded like) relatively articulately. I think I may have said too many times that I wanted to help them out however I can – I wish I’d come across as a little less enthusiastic on that particular point, but overall I felt very good about our talk.

He told me that Central, and Bahia in general, had an agricultural economy which was way too dependent on the weather and therefore entirely unstable. In recent years there’d been more drought than rain, and people were just barely getting by, if at all. Few were able to sustain themselves without assistance. And there wasn’t a whole lot of assistance available, at least not from the government. Luciano mentioned corrupt politicians, which is a huge problem in all of Brazil. I think he even said that his brother (Ivanildo, I guess, or maybe another – I didn’t understand it all) had run for local office but was beaten by a presumably more seasoned politician who bought at least 60 votes to put him over the top. Buying votes is common because people are so poor, and for obvious reasons this makes the whole process seem relatively hopeless. Lack of faith in politicians, said Luciano, was one of the things that motivated him to start the organization to try to help people out who weren’t being helped otherwise.

He went on to say that they had to find alternate means of sustaining themselves. One of these was to sell home-crafted goods abroad, and as he said this he had one of the older women of the family bring out some knitted handbags and placemats, and some glass-blown and color decorated / painted cookie (or whatever else) jars, among other things. Everything was very beautiful, and had the price tags on them showing prices that were unbelievably low for the quality of the craftsmanship. I didn’t get it all, but I think he said that he was hoping that I would be able to take some of these crafts back to the States, or New York, and see if there was an interest in selling them by means of fair trade, where they could be sold at a price that was profitable to both the seller and the craftspeople. I repeated that I’d do whatever I could to help him. He explained some things in English when I didn’t get all of what he said, but for the most part he talked slowly and I could understand him just fine. He said he’d taken an English class a while back when he was getting an MBA at a UC Berkeley-affiliated school in São Paulo. This was the only time anyone said anything to me in English during the whole weekend, except for a few one- or two-word phrases that most folks who have taken a few years of English in high school remember.

We had dinner, which wasn’t a whole lot different from lunch, which was fine with me. Beans and rice are a staple, along with some kind of meat which was I think a side of pork. Meat is a big deal in Brazil, more so than in the US, especially in churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) and so most meals include the possibility of large portions of meat. There’s also the fried manioc flour, called farofa, that’s often mixed with beans (it was here) and is an absolute staple with every Bahian dish. Luckily for me this combo hits the spot every time so I was more than happy to put away a couple of portions of everything. And it’s always topped off with the (as I’ve mentioned before) in my opinion ultra-sucky strong mini-coffee with sugar known as cafezinha. It’s quite lame, yes, but this doesn’t keep me from drinking it. You just know who the foreigner is (if you didn’t already by the too baggy clothing) by looking for the one with four times the normal serving of cafezinha in his cup, who’s also complaining that he doesn’t feel one iota of caffeine buzz.

So the women got *all* decked out for the party. If you haven’t been keeping track, I’ll point out that this was at least the second time they had all changed clothing on this particular day. I had plans to wear the same goddamn thing I was wearing all day, which really sucked, but at the last minute I remembered that I had an obscene neon-yellow polyester shirt which was *perfect* for this kind of thing, and which probably by itself made me look about 10 years younger.

The women wore, for the most part, brightly colored blue or green tops, all of which had the characteristically Brazilian very low cut neck in the front (nice!), and either dark short skirts or dark shorts. In minutes they went from looking like they had been doing hard labor all day (which they were) to heading out to own the night, which they also did. I don’t have a picture of this because I am a total idiot, but if it ever happens again (and I really hope it does) I’m making a mental note right now not to forget to capture it on film.

Before we left to go out I jokingly asked Ivanildo if he was coming with us, and he made some joke about how his wife wouldn’t let him out and I laughed. She’d just had their third child, a daughter (they also have two sons, Mateus, 10 and Tiago, 6) and had the perpetual baggy eyes and slow movements of a full-time mom. Later I saw that Ivanildo was changing his clothes again, and it turned out that he *was* going, which was awesome, because he’s a very social guy with a great sense of humor, and although I was thrilled to be going out with a lot of women, it always helps to have a little guy support too. Someone to stand next to when you don’t have the balls to ask a woman to dance but at the same time don’t want anyone to think you’re their alone.

Around 6 people piled in Ivanildo’s little car and the rest of us walked. I assumed we were going to meet them there but it turned out that Ivanildo just drove slowly beside us as we walked toward the town center. At one point I very loudly asked “Why don’t you guys just walk?” and to my utter joy this evoked peals of laughter from both inside and outside of the car. I was getting real nervous about having to dance, and when everyone laughed I was able to relax enough to take a deep breath and tell myself I was not going to be thought of as a complete idiot when we hit the club. Self-deception can help you out a lot in situations like this.

By this time I’d began to realize that Elaine’s interest in me had gone beyond simple curiousity, since we’d been sort of hanging out together for most of the day whenever there was free time, and there was a lot while things were getting set up, etc. I had no problem with this because she’s very friendly, very different from anyone else I’ve ever met, she doesn’t speak a word of English. I don’t know if she’s attractive in the conventional sense although she has a knockout body, but even for a superficial male like me things like this are immaterial when you’re in a completely new and different place with people who have adopted you into their family and circle of friends as one of their own.

So as we walked to the center of town, ready for a night out, Elaine stuck by me as if she were attached to my elbow. I thought about how just a few days earlier she’d shaken her head at me, annoyed and frustrated that she couldn’t understand me nor I her, and now she was talking my ear off about life in Bahia and the different types of music and parties they had. I was really happy that we’d gotten to know each other so much more, and likewise with everyone else.

The center of town, I must say, was *hopping*, especially given the fact that it was dead as could be during the day. There were motorcycles parked everywhere, guys driving through with pimped-out little cars blasting loud heavy-bass music, and there was a roar of many voices that came from the crowds of people walking down the street and the others sitting in outdoor restaurants or on the edges of bars. This was all in a small town-square kind of area. We stopped in front of what looked like a club and waited a while. Eventually it was determined by whomever was in charge (no one) that we were in the wrong place so we started down some side streets towards a large outdoor facility that was either a concert venue, or a football stadium, or more likely both.

There were a lot of people inside the stadium but it definitely wasn’t packed, and for a while people in our group just stood around and talked. The minute we got there, though, Elaine took me out towards the stage and ordered me to learn to dance Forro with her, which I was more than happy to do. There really isn’t that much to it; it’s so simple I don’t know why they call it Forro dancing because it’s not terribly distinctive from other dancing with a partner, except you move your feet in a very natural way to a semi-samba beat. After we had been dancing for ten minutes or so, and the music changed songs, I yelled to her “So that’s it? That’s all there is to it?” She didn’t understand what I was trying to say, and I spent the next 10 minutes trying to explain what I meant and failed utterly. The music started up again and we went back to dancing.

She asked me what I liked most about Bahia. I said the people, the food, the weather – standard answers. She asked what I didn’t like. I said the coffee. I asked her the same and I don’t remember what she said she liked, but I do remember her saying the thing she disliked the most was the violence, which I understood. You may not see violence every day in Salvador and the outlying cities, but the threat is always there, and that’s almost as bad as the violence itself – the fear that some fucked up shit might happen when you’re least prepared to handle it, like walking home from the grocery store carrying a bunch of bags and thinking what a dick your boss is.

I danced with Elaine for the first few songs but sensed that she was trying quite unsubtly to steer us away from our crowd, which made me a little nervous, so I suggested we head back and hang with them for a while, which we did but everyone was still standing around mostly except for Adriana who was dancing crazy but she’s just that kind of person. The kind that demands to have fun regardless of the circumstances and isn’t letting a bunch of lame-assed squares get in her way. She’s the kind of person you want to watch dance because she just makes it look fun. Anyway, she eventually made her way over to me and demanded that I too dance with her, which I did for a while, and it was great.

There are a few moments of that night that I’ll never forget, but I know that one of them was later on, maybe about an hour before we left (we left at 3am), when Adriana uncharacteristically spoke very slowly to me, yelling over the music, to tell me essentially this: “It was really good to get to know you this weekend. We will all miss you when you leave tomorrow.” She couldn’t have done anything else that would have made my day more than that. 24 hours before, she and I in a room alone was like opening the icebox to get out some ice cream, and then she said what I’d been thinking exactly, how very fortunate I was to have made so many new friends who I knew were really good people, who know how to have fun and have a realistic perspective on what is important in life. I don’t regret a damn thing about picking up and leaving New York now. I never really did, but any shred of a doubt left my mind that night.

I danced with them all, and they are all beautiful women one way or another. I’ve had many days here which I felt were in at least the top 100 best days of my life, and this one was one of them. I was nervous to dance at first, but with Elaine’s help I got past it, and later on when we were dancing in a group and in a circle, and I started to get self conscious, I said to myself “just … relax” and I was able to do it without getting bent out of shape out of self-consciousness again. I couldn’t do that – be myself, completely – very much in the States. Maybe here I feel like I can start over. I think, though, that there’s something about the people here that makes me feel less self-conscious, although at times when I’m conscious of being a foreigner that’s clearly not the case. But when I’m with friends like these, it doesn’t seem like there’s much that’s important other than now, the moment.

One of the women eventually got a little too tipsy and fell over, and was led by a few other folks in the group over to a seat on the side of the dance area. I took this to mean that we were leaving soon but I was way wrong. It was another hour or so before we left.

When we did leave, eventually, we were all able to pile into the car because a few others stayed back and provided enough room for the rest of us to all sit squashed together in the car, which, when you consider the male/female ratio again, was pretty cool. We arrived back at the house, and the drunk girl had to be helped out of the car and sat down on the couch in the living room. This was all done good-naturedly and no one blamed her for being an idiot, and she didn’t do anything obnoxious like pass out or puke or anything. She did, however, start crying once she sat down on the couch, for what reason I don’t know, but I think “because she was drunk” is sufficient explanation.

And then the craziest thing happened. With the drunk and crying girl things seemed to be sort of descending into chaos, which, hey, is no problem, but then I think someone else needed to be helped out of the car, and one of the women helping the other woman get out is maybe the most beautiful woman in the world, and she asked me to hold her shoes while she pulled her coworker out of the car. I’d danced with her before and was more nervous about it than with anyone else because she’s so good looking, and because she was clearly a very good dancer, and I clearly am not. So she got her friend out, and I sort of pushed the shoes in her direction (they were very girly and I was uncomfortable carrying them around). She grabbed them, and my hand, which I was also very happy about, and led me back to the front door of the house where people were standing in the doorway not knowing what to do about the crying girl. As we approached the doorway her grip on my hand grew tighter and tighter, to the point where I’m sure she was squeezing as hard as she could. It didn’t hurt (I have very bony hands) and hey, I wasn’t complaining, but then suddenly she released her grip and fainted on the ground, in the dirt, right next to me.

I was so shocked and surprised that I didn’t have time to react and try to catch her or anyhing. I just looked down and she was on the ground. She’d passed out in a way that was almost like in the movies, too, where she didn’t hit the ground very hard but did it rather gracefully. For this reason also I thought fleetingly that she was faking. I’ve never seen a woman just faint like that before, although I’ve heard it happening a million times. I bent over her and Ivanildo ran over, checked her pulse and paused for a minute. I said something like “What … (the hell)?” but he just gave me the hand (a polite hand) and told me to wait a minute. Maybe she did this a lot, because within a minute or so she woke up and we pulled her back up, and without even dusting herself off went and sat down on the couch to console her drunk and crying coworker.

My reaction, of course, was “But what about our holding hands? Did you forget about that already?” I really hoped there wasn’t an amnesia component to her fainting spell, because the hand-holding really was a highlight for me. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Approximately 3 minutes later I did a face plant into a bed in Ivanildo’s grandmother’s guest room, which I shared (the room, not the bed) with Tomas. We slept for 3 hours before we had to get up to go wait for a bus for an hour which then took 11 additional hours to get back to Salvador. I’ll save that story for the epilogue to my book.

Xmas weekend part 2 (of 3)

(continued from yesterday’s post – I know you were all on the edge of your seats from the cliffhanger I left you with yesterday. I tried to wrap it up this time but it looks like I’m going to have to make one more post tomorrow before finishing my Christmas weekend story. Trust me, I want it to be over just as much as you do.)

After milking the remains of the afternoon for all it was worth, we headed back to the house to get ready for the party which started at 3 in the afternoon. Everybody got all dressed up except for me, since I don’t know shit about shit (but that’s OK because everybody expects it by now). My job during the bulk of the party was to take pictures since I’m the only one who has a digital camera, and to sort of just stand there as the example of "one of our volunteers", as opposed to, say, our solitary volunteer. Actually there are others but I think they have the sense to come in only a few days a week and then sort of get on with their lives. I’ve never actually seen another volunteer there except for when I first went with a German guy from my class and that was only twice.

The party was held in the new school which is maybe a block away from Ivanildo’s mom’s (aka Dona Rita’s) house. There was a line forming outside as we walked in, and there were already maybe 500 people sitting in the seats that had been placed in the largest (of maybe 5 or 6) rooms in the building. There was a relatively large yard out back that had enough medium-sized trees of similar size to feel like an orchard. Ivanildo had told me earlier that there were plans to later convert the yard into a football field and other sports facilities, but for now it was to be where kids and parents would be able to have what was probably the closest thing to a Christmas dinner for most or all of them. Before the things officially started there was already a line forming in the back yard, which started at the back door, of parents but mostly kids dressed in rags who were clearly hungry and waiting on pins and needles for the food. I don’t know if they did this because someone told them to – I’m more inclined to think it was out of habit, and that they were thinking that if they showed a willingness to be orderly then maybe the people in charge would start distributing the food more quickly.

Ivanildo and I went up on the stage as inconspicuously as possible in order to take some pictures of the crowd, and to photograph a banner that was being held up by two other members of our group which announced the event. There were about 10 chairs on the stage and a large banquet table. The chairs were for trustees of the organization’s board of directors, which included a number of lawyers, journalists, and other professionals from the area who had moved to bigger cities like Salvador and become successful. I had been standing out front a little bit earlier, watching the line get bigger and taking pictures, and a middle aged, somewhat unkempt woman with brightly colored tight clothing that made her look like she might have just come from the gym, stepped out of the car and said something, a joke perhaps, that made some of the people outside laugh. She seemed a little crazy to me, but she was smiling broadly, and when I went back inside I saw that she had gone up and sat in one of the board of directors chairs. Later she gave a riveting speech when asked to say a few words in which she yelled some kind of Che-esque battle cry for the proletariat – "ever forward!" "working people of the world unite!" – not that but something to that effect. I have no idea if she was a communist either but she definitely was on the side of poor people.

Eventually things were kicked off by an MC who I didn’t really get a chance to meet but who was part of our group. He called Ivanildo’s brother up to the stage and he gave a presentation on the history of the organization, its goals, growth, etc. Luckily people didn’t have to wait until he was done in order to start eating, because by this time the picnic out back was in full swing and there were groups of unbathed little kids in rags wolfing down food (hot dogs? I can’t remember) along with their parents. I walked in and out a few times, in order to get some pictures and to listen to part of the speech. I started having problems with the lens of my camera – I think there was dust on the inside of it – and I got a little frustrated later on at how some of the pictures came out. At one point I was standing in the crowd and looking through the pictures of my camera, when a woman next to me shook my arm and I looked up to see that Ivanildo`s brother Luciano was on stage pointing at me, and had just said "And we have volunteers here, one from the US – Matheus, you`re from New York?" I nodded, dumbstruck, and people started clapping. Later on he did the same thing but this time asked me a question which I didn’t understand a word of, and I answered by nodding and saying yes. I was probably agreeing to work pro bono for the next 10 years, not knowing what I was signing up for.

Each of the members of the board of directors were then asked to speak for a minute or two, and from what I could gather the speeches were all very similar: the person had grown up in a desperately poor neighborhood, had found a way out through education or a profession, and was back to try to help others in the city. The means to do this were through education, job training, and economic development to bring the city up to speed in the world economy. And lastly, Luciano called up his mother (Dona Rita) and her mother to stand up and for people to clap since it was they who were the glue, as he said, that kept everything together. The organization (and culture) is very family-oriented, and I think that the two women symbolized the familial bonds that had inspired a lot of the work that went on here.

Things wound down and then came the time for the gift and food distribution. There were something on the order of 200-300 large bags of food that were to be given to families who had a coupon which certified that they qualified for the bags (unemployed with children). There was a set of two small wooden doors with windows cut in them which had one or two men and a few women blocking it with their bodies so that people couldn`t just rush in and grab a bag and run off. From this point on things descended into chaos. People were pushing their way to the front, some kids got trampled, and there was lots of yelling in the cramped hall outside. Still, the people in charge were able to keep things relatively under control. At one point there was a relatively large, tall man who pushed his way through to the front and good-naturedly demanded his bag. He did have a coupon, so he was entitled to one, so he was let through and got his bag. He tried to exit the same way he came which was against protocol, but he started getting belligerent and so was let through. During the course of this he had an exchange with Adriana which nearly came to blows (she doesn’t take shit from people), and he pushed his way into the hall holding the bag over his head and yelling something back at her. Later on he came through again, and tried explaining how he was entitled to another bag (someone had asked that he claim their bag for them – whatever). People knew this was b. s. but he was let through anyway in order to avoid an incident which we were definitely at risk of having. He came over to me at one point to say some things in a purportedly joking way, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. He got one other bag but after that he left and no one saw him again. This was the last incident we had like that.

(to be continued, and completed, hopefully, tomorrow …)

Xmas weekend part 1 (of 3)

I made a characteristically half-baked attempt to sum up my weekend, and came up with nothing, so I’ll try to paraphrase here to spare you the details if you don’t want to read more (I’m sure you won’t. The details are for my own purposes of documentation). But even before that let me meta-paraphrase: Did you ever see the Seinfeld episode where Kramer moves to LA and ends up as an extra in a hard-rock music video, and is dancing around crazily like an uncoordinated lunatic with a bunch of young people? That was my weekend, except most of the people were my age. But there was lots of crazy dancing and my hair was sticking out most of the time.

I left to go help with a Christmas party and new school opening for poor folks in the interior of Bahia, a place which gives "middle of nowhere" a new meaning, thinking that I’d be back to go to another Christmas party on Saturday night with a (woman-but-not-girl-)friend. This involved (not at the time to my knowledge) a 6 hour drive out there in Ivanildo’s car, a 12-hour (!) bus ride back, two nights sleeping over first at Ivanildo’s apartment and then at his mother’s house in the "city" of Central (pronounced "sentrow"), along with about 30 of his closest relatives. Additionally, nearly all of my female coworkers who range from age 25-35 and also went. During the course of 3 or so days we went from being acquaintances who wouldn’t talk to each other unless absolutely necessary to being very good friends. I am thrilled with this new development and at the same time sadly preoccupied with how difficult it will now be to say goodbye when I leave in March. And not only did I totally miss my party appointment with my friend, but it turns out that she had changed our plans while I was gone from "meeting to go to a party in Barra" to "a (Christmas) weekend overnight stay in a resort town which may or may not included us sharing a room." I’m sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking, i.e., WHAT THE F?

I am nearly positive that Ivanildo asked me if I wanted to come help him out on Friday with the party he was helping put on for these folks in Central. Later he mentioned we’d have to leave on Thursday night to get there in time, and I was fine with that. I didn’t realize until I got to work on Thursday (and he didn’t elaborate until then, I’m sure on purpose) that I would be staying at his apartment (his wife and 3 kids were already in Central) Thursday overnight, and that we would be getting up at 4 am to make the (again, 6-hour) drive out there, along with Adriana, one of our coworkers. Nor did I realize that Ivanildo was going on a 4+ day jaunt all over the state of Bahia, covering something on the order of 1000 miles, in order to oversee Christmas activities at all of their community centers. He had to have known that I had no idea I was signing up for this whole thing, and for this reason explained it in detail when I got to work on Thursday. I explained to him that I had to be back on Saturday (this was true) because just that (Thursday) morning I had confirmed with one of the women I got set up with by my Portuguese school to "practice language study" that I would meet her in my neighborhood (Barra) on Saturday night.

And speaking of practicing language study, there have been two times that one of the administrative coordinators at my language school has told me she has someone who would like to meet with me on a semi-regular basis to "practice English with a native speaker." Presumably I would also be able to practice my Portuguese with a native speaker, so I was all for it. But I am now in favor of calling this practice what it is: pimping. Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not complaining. The most recent "language student" is a young and attractive woman who I went out with (on a date – let’s also just call that what it was) and spoke Portuguese the whole time. I was even a little bit forceful about making some attempt to speak English but she wasn’t into it. Which from the learning point of view is fine with me because it’s a great way for me to learn Portuguese. But we’re no longer meeting for the reason we were intentionally hooked up (heh) for. So it’s pimping, and I’m the whore. I guess we all knew this anyway, so it’s probably not such a remarkable revelation.

(Brief diversion / explanation: Ivanildo is the boss (some people call him "chefe", which is the Portuguese equivalent), if you could call him that, at the place where I "work", which is to mean I volunteer to work there. It’s nice because I can’t get fired and no one can really tell me what to do. Or they can tell me what to do but I’m under no real obligation to do it. In one very small and non-airconditioned office are me, Ivanildo, and Vinny, Ivanildo’s either cousin or nephew, who likes extremely bad 80s-style hairband metal from Europe, where apparently it’s making some sort of comeback or never left. In the other bigger room, which is airconditioned, are about 8 women in cubicles who solicit donations over the phone, listen to music, and do pretty much whatever else they want. These include Adriana, Marcia (MAH – sha), Elaine (ee – LINE – uh), and four other women whose names I don’t remember and feel like an asshole (and should) for not remembering. I have huge crushes on at least 3 of them, and all of them went to Central on a big rented bus with a TV/DVD player except for Marcia and one whose name I don’t know but she rides a motorcycle to and back from work.)

So the chefe and I drove out to his place which is on the outskirts of Salvador and which is probably one of the poorest neighborhoods I’ve ever spent the night anywhere. This is remarkable because for Salvador the quality of the neighborhood was actually pretty good. Across a river is Castelo Branco which has many residents who are near-starvation poor. Ivanildo remarked somewhat emotionally how disturbing it was to him that people in his neighborhood were doing fine but just across the river, well within sight, there were people living destitute lives with few people who seemed to care about them. He didn’t say a word, or I’m guessing even think, about the rich families scattered around Salvador who live in apartments most New Yorkers would be jealous of and who drive expensive Mercedes or Audi cars in a city which has a huge problem with poverty and its symptoms – lack of education, drug use, street children.

Ivanildo had told me his wife and kids had left for Central a while back, so it was surprising when he buzzed the door to his building and a woman’s voice answered and let us in. We walked to an apartment door which had a Compton-style jail grille door which had to be unbolted after the real door was opened. And it was Elaine who answered it, which was also surprising. She was cooking us dinner and had been arranging some of the boxes of toys that were scattered around the place. Ivanildo’s apartment was small and in disarray, but in my opinion not entirely out of the ordinary for what you would expect from a lower-middle-class family of 5 who have neither the time nor desire to fix the many little things that were sort of falling apart as things in tenement apartments tend to do. For instance, you had to flush the toilet by pulling up on a wire that was visible through a hole in the wall above the toilet where there had clearly been a knob of some sort but which apparently broke and someone decided to just remove.

Ivanildo apologized for the condition of his apartment and I waved my hand to show how little I cared. He then showed me where I’d be sleeping, which was a small room with a kids bed and which was fine with me except it was a little hot. I opened the window a little but not so much that I thought someone could get their hand through the security grate, the window, and down to my neck while I was sleeping on the bed. Ivanildo then led me back and urged me to sit down at the little formica or whatever dining table in his living room.

I will eat anything except raw onions, and there are even exceptions to that rule at times. For some reason people assume I’m a picky eater, maybe because I’m thin, and when Elaine brought out the food, which consisted of beans, rice, pork, and spaghetti with sauce, Ivanildo asked me if it was OK and I was like, "Yeah, sure" and didn’t even pause to offer it to anyone else before I started helping myself when he was like "Because, you know, we can get you something else if you don’t like it." And I said "No, really, I’m fine (and would you just let me please start stuffing my face)." But he still seemed to think I was just being nice by eating it, which I was not.

I didn’t know how old Elaine was at this point but I found out later that she is 29. Her skin is the darkest African-looking black and she has a raspy voice. Like all Bahians, particularly the women, she sings more than speaks when she talks. She has a perfect body and clearly not a knockout-beautiful face but I think she’s attractive regardless. In the office she had made a few attempts before to talk to me, even though I understood little of what she said and vice-versa. She seemed to get a little easily frustrated at our communication problems, but I could tell that for her to make an effort like this was significant, and that I appreciated very much. She too said things that made me think she thought I was wolfing the food down in order to make everyone feel better rather than because I really liked it. For this reason I told her afterwards, when we were alone in the kitchen, that her food was the best I’d eaten in the 7 weeks I’d been in Bahia. I realized as I was saying this that this was a total lie, and that what I’d meant to say is that it was the best home-cooked meal I’d had there and way better than what I usually ate, but I have a very limited vocabulary. I think she liked me before, but this sealed the deal, and though she said I was lying I could tell that this flattered the crap out of her, and hey, that’s cool.

A little later her sister and a friend of Ivanildo’s (whose name is either Tomas or Marciano or something like that) came by. I didn’t get until later that they weren’t a couple and just came by coincidentally at the same time.

Later when Elaine explained it all to me the dialog was like this.

ME: Ohhhh, I see, that’s your sister.

ELAINE: Yeah, what did you think I said when I introduced her as my sister?

ME: I was just smiling and nodding and saying ‘Sim’ (Yes). I don’t understand a word of Portuguese.

ELAINE: Oh yeah.

We did, of course, have this conversation in Portuguese. No one on this whole trip spoke English except Ivanildo’s brother Luciano later on when we had a little powwow. I’m so psyched to have been able to use that word in a sentence. Those of you who know why will understand my wretched despicament.

We then used Ivanildo’s VW Golf-sized non-Golf model VW to move a bunch of boxes of toys from his building to the rented bus which was parked down the street (it couldn’t make it through the dirt road to his building). There I found most of my other coworkers loading themselves onto the bus and a Scorpions Live Acoustic DVD into the bus’ player. I don’t think anyone except Vinny liked Scorpions but they didn’t have anything else – I think the DVD was donated for reasons which don’t need explaining here.

Ivanildo and then went back to his place and hit the sack, at around midnight. At 4am I woke up to see Adriana shuffling around the hallway to load some more stuff into the car. Adriana has long braided hair with brown highlights and a look on her face like the earth could crack in two and she would still be unfazed. Before this weekend she was polite and said hi to me, but I sort of felt like to her I in my unfamiliarity with the language and the organization was just an obstacle to getting whatever it was she needed done, along with the rest of the world.

We headed out and I fell asleep in the back. The terrain alternated between tall grass with scattered bushes and low trees, and what I guess you would call forested hills with visible red soil where the road cut through them. I could tell we were getting far from civilization by measure of what I like to call the "donkey index", which is the ratio of donkeys to people in a particular area. The road was mostly asphalt but some of it was dirt, mostly where there was construction being done. There was also about a 10-mile stretch of asphalt road that was so ridden with an archipelago of massive potholes that Ivanildo had to slalom between either side of the road and alternately brake and nail the gas to make good time. As we passed some villages, there were speed bumps along the way to slow down the traffic. One of these Ivanildo nailed at at least 30mph, and luckily I was watching and saw it coming and ducked so I wouldn’t get knocked out cold from hitting my head on the ceiling of the not-Golf.

We stopped at a gas station and I switched with Adriana in the front. Ivanildo offered to let me drive but I said I was OK. I then realized he might be tired and I asked him this but he said no so I went back to sleep.

We arrived in the city of Central around 10:30, surprisingly good time. I don’t know how many people live there but I’m guessing it’s at least 10,000, maybe a lot more. It’s a lot like pictures I’ve seen of other cities (notably Lencois) in the interior of Bahia. The houses and buildings are for the most part a single story, and are all built adjacent to each other with few if any spaces between them. The roads are light brown-red brick and the buildings look like white or red clay. Maybe a little bit like a Clint Eastwood western, but that doesn’t quite describe it either. I’ll post a picture.

I didn’t know until we were at his mom’s doorstep that this was Ivanildo’s hometown. He then proceeded to introduce me to the 10 of the 30 aforementioned relatives, none of whose names I remembered. His mom, who I think is a widow, is very well-preserved and the matriarch of the family. I’m not just saying that to sound literary. People called her Dona Rita, which of course invokes a Godfather kind of air to the whole thing.

And come to think of it (and I’m not just saying this to sound funny, although it might be funny anyway), when she offered me her hand, I shook it but grabbed it in a way that I got just the top of her wrist. I thought this was because either she had some kind of deformity or her hand was wet and didn’t want me to get wet, but I wonder now if she was holding it out to for me to kiss it. Ooops.

Ivanildo showed me all over the place – his parents’ house, the backyard, and the new school which was right down the road. Among other things it will be one of the first public, free Internet-wired buildings in the town. It was very noticeably renovated, which I think is intentional as a sort of psychological thing to make people feel better about the neighborhood. The big problem for the people of this town and nearly the entire state of Bahia is that they have an agrarian society which is unfortunately very subject to drought and is therefore very unstable economically. In recent years people have found it much harder to scrape a living out of the land because of the increasing number of droughts and competition from corporate and world-economy farms. Ivanildo and his brother’s organization has as one of its goals an effort to find an alternate source of income for people across the region, in addition to boosting education and marketable job skills.

A few of my female coworkers, and a couple others who I hadn’t met, were busy wrapping presents in one of the large rooms of the school. I, being little more than luggage for the bulk of the trip, volunteered to help out, and Ivanildo, to my disappointment, hesitated for about 0.01 seconds before unloading me there like a sack of busted bricks. I wrapped about 5 trucks and a couple other things, and helped gather the trash together before we were done. I was a little slow, due to my language handicap. I didn’t know how to say "invisible tape" until I was stuck without it, at which point I learned that the Portuguese word for it is "durex" (no trouble remembering that one).

We were about to head back to the house but Elaine suggested that we check out the town. So we went – me, three or so women, Ivanildo’s son of about 10 who is also named "Mateus" (my name in Portuguese), and his friend from the night before who will heretofore be referred to as Tomas. He’s a professor of philosophy and sociology in Salvador (not sure which school – Salvador has at least 3 unversities). We wandered around a little before coming up on one of the ubiquitous bars that pepper the cities and towns of Bahia. These consist of a house-sized, single-story building with an open front wall and five or six plastic tables surrounded by plastic chairs. The bar itself is plywood since most people sit at chairs or sometimes stand at the bar if they’re coming in for a quick shot (one guy did this while we were there, looked like he had some miles on him). After sitting down for a while and not understanding a thing anyone was saying (and, incidentally, not really caring) I heard my name come up and realized they were talking about my language skills. One of the women from the office who is very quiet but whom I like a lot, because she’s very nice and I think she gets a lot of work done, said something to the effect of "He speaks pretty well but he doesn’t understand a damn thing." I wasn’t insulted by this (it being quite accurate) but was rather flattered by the revelation that she a) knew I existed, and b) had been paying enough attention to what little I said in Portuguese to make a pretty astute observation about my lack of language skills.

(to be continued in the next post ...)

a favela de Camaçeri

About a week ago I went with my volunteer group to another favela on the outskirts of Salvador known as Camaçeri, where the agency I'm working for runs a school foor poor kids which doubles as an adult education and community center.

I left with Ivanildo and young woman named Marcia who has been working there for about 5 months. I think Ivanildo takes one or more of the women who work at the main office with him each time, since they sit on the phones all day and don't otherwise get much of an opportunity to meet the people they help. I insisted that she sit in the front on the way there - every time (there's been like 3) that I've traveled with Ivanildo and a woman, I've done this, and the women sometimes look at me like I'm being weird. Brazil is known for its "machismo" culture, so maybe I'm breaking some sort of rule by letting them sit in the front but I'm past caring at this point - I'm sure I've committed enough fauxes pas since I've been here that adding a couple more onto the pile won't make much of a difference. I just hope Ivanildo doesn't think I'm trying to avoid conversation with him. He probably does. Oh well.

I don't know if I've said so before but people drive crazy in Salvador, way crazier than in New York. I'll elaborate on it in a later post. We started navigating the maze out of the center of Salvador to get to Camaçeri. Marcia spoke way too fast for me to understand, to Ivanildo, but I could tell from her tone and the fact that she kept saying the Portuguese word for boyfriend and girlfriend that she was talking about her friends and/or coworkers and their romantic lives. At one point she yelled something in my direction which I didn’t quite understand, and Ivanildo pointed his thumb back towards me and told her, effectively, that “You have to speak slowly when you talk to him or he won’t understand”, which sort of reinforced my self-perception as being mentally challenged from the standpoint of the Brazilians, but whatever. He’s right – I don’t understand a word they say when they talk fast.

I could tell we were getting closer to the school when the frequency of “donkey eating trash and / or grazing on grass while tethered to a rope leash” sightings began to increase exponentially. The buildings became much less sparse, more run down, and lower to the ground, and the roads had more dirt than asphalt. It was on one of these roads that we were going along on at a pretty good clip when we *nailed* a dog. There was a tractor trailer coming in the opposite direction, and I was staring out the windows at the donkey when all of a sudden I heard the truck honk loudly and then there was the force and sound of a great big BUMP in the front of Ivanildo’s car, and I turned around to see the medium-sized, white dog just go limp on its side behind us. It all happened very quickly – I didn’t actually see it happen because it was so fast. Later Ivanildo showed me that a corner of his bumper had come loose from the front because of the force of the blow. I guess it all could have been a bad omen but things turned out fine.

The school was in a neighborhood where all of the houses were relatively run-down, seemingly deserted and single-story only, so that everything seemed very low to the ground and you could see relatively far in any direction. The place seemed kind of dead but I think that was because it was mid-day and people were either at work or hiding from the blazing sun. We went first into the school, which was separated into at least 3 different classes: the first was maybe ages 7-10, the second 3-6, and the other was probably like 10-14. Each class had between 10 and 20 kids and they were all overjoyed to have visitors. Ivanildo told me later that they think foreigners are very interesting and for this reason drop everything when one or more come to visit. I took pictures of them with my digital camera and then showed them what they looked like, and they were all thrilled by this.

The kids were very, very friendly, and very happy, I’m guessing just to get a diversion from the normal routine. I wonder sometimes if they know or care that they are poor. They seem OK now but I’m guessing later on the lack of educational facilities starts to effect them pretty severely when they try to find jobs or when drugs and other teenager challenges hit them. I don’t think drugs are as bad a problem in Camaçeri as elsewhere, but my guess is that unemployment is pretty high. I think most or all of the parents of the kids in this particular program are unemployed and at or below the poverty level.

The school had only very rudimentary furniture and other resources (books, paints, etc.) which is what the organization is trying to change. After visiting the school we walked up the street a block or so to where they were renovating a building that would become the new school, with better all-around facilities and with more space. I think that most or all of the women who were working there (about 5-6) were teachers, and the rest were men who I’m not sure if they were volunteers or what, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

One of the teachers who was doing the painting, the one who seemed to be in charge, asked Ivanildo to help her out to resolve some accounting problem with some materials they had bought and/or returned from the local building supply place, which was right down the block. We went there and got a drink of water while he worked it out with the woman who was working there. Marcia and I were kind of just standing around, and she asked me if I liked kids and I said yes. Again there was another instance where I really wished I could have spoken Portuguese better, because most of my small talk was limited to short, choppy sentences. On the bright side, though, my few words don’t seem to have bothered her much. Every time she sees me now she makes a point to say hi and do the cheek-kiss thing, which most men/women friends do here but for me as a repressed American is still a little weird, in a good way :).

I work Segurança – i.e., I'm unemployed and I live with my parents

One thing which has absolutely mystified the hell out of me is the existence of self-appointed "Segurança" (security) guys in the street standing in the street who, when someone is trying to park on the side of a normal city street (residential or commercial), will run over to the car, blow a whistle, and tell them where to park based on some unknown algorithm which presumably determines the most efficient parking configuration. Many of these guys have quasi-official-looking shirts or jackets that have Segurança written across them on the back in big block letters. An unsuspecting foreigner (i.e., me) would assume upon first glance that these guys are appointed by the city or whomever is in charge on some sort of official business which tourists would not normally concern themselves with.

In actuality, however, these guys have no authority other than that which they claim themselves. Having someone tell you where to park or help you out of your car, or even help you carry things out of your car, wouldn't be so bad if they didn't demand payment for it or "help" you regardless of whether you asked or not.

When I began to realize what was going on, I said to myself "It couldn't really be possible, could it? That a grown, able-bodied yet unemployed man could just buy a whistle and a shirt that says "Security", plunk himself down in a plastic chair in the street and claim that he was the parking manager?" Eeeeng. Wrong again, Mojambo. It's true.

I've heard stories from people who parked here and São Paulo, who said that when they came to get their car and refused to pay the self-appointed parking manager (because they'd only parked for something like 10 minutes) that the guy had said something like "But I watched your car while you were gone!" My answer to that is, Does that mean if someone were to pull out a gun and a crowbar and steal the car, that "Segurança" would come to the rescue? I'm guessing ... not. And who is most likely to point out to his buddies that a nice new Mercedes with a kickass stereo just pulled onto his street and was just left there for what could presumably be an indefinite amount of time? And, who is most likely to key the crap out of some return "customer" that Segurança has seen before and knows won't pay? And if you know you're never going to park there again, what is the incentive to pay off the Segurança guy? How do these guys make any money?

For some time I could not fathom how the system could survive – a) why this sort of thing was allowed to persist by the cops, and b) what was the incentive for the self-appointed security detail if no one was under obligation to pay them. My initial guess was that the cops had bigger problems to deal with than Segurança issues, and that the guys who did the Segurança were so dirt poor that any money was better than no money.

I think my big problem with these guys is that they just look like trouble. They don't look like security, they look like drug dealers. If they were old men who couldn't do anything else, it would be one thing. But they tend to be perfectly able-bodied young men, my age. I suspect that they have to have some level of physical ability in order to defend their territory should the need arise.

Last week one of my Brazilian friends set me straight. The cops leave Segurança alone because Segurança pays them off. And at least some (or maybe all) of the Segurança supplement their "legitimate" jobs with drug-dealing. This would explain the reason why they all look like drug dealers, and sort of hover around people in the sketchy way that drug dealers in a third-world country tend to do. My hunch about them being more likely to theft the car than anyone else turns out to be valid – years back they would have had no trouble taking the car stereo out of a car they just "helped" park. Now, however, car stereo theft has evolved to utilize more civilized methods. Now, instead of breaking the windows, they cut the rubber seal from around the car windows, lift the windows out of the car and carefully place them in the back seat, and take the stereo without further damaging the car. This is an apparently more socially acceptable means of ripping off your neighbors. And there's a theft pecking order – apparently in the past there was some guy who tried to steal a car on the street where I first stayed here, and was caught by the police after Segurança called them – a striking example of the system actually "working". The attitude is very Animal House - "Hey, is that guy stealing a car on my street? F that! I'm calling the cops! I'm the only one authorized to steal cars on this street."

transvestite crackhead hooker

Brief Post Preface: My apologies to my readers (both of you) for not posting for the past few days. I've just gotten over a bout of particularly severe laziness and I think I'm back on the wagon (or off, I can't remember which is which) with the regular posts, hopefully. On the bright side I haven't been completely idle - I've managed to not get promoted to the next level of Portuguese class on account of my lack of vocabulary, social skills, and all around ineptitude (I fit in just fine here). Additionally, I have actually moved on to what you would call a job, if your definition of a job is showing up at a sweltering hot office with no AC to try (with the same ineptitude demonstrated in my class) to help out, for no pay and speaking the local language like a caveman, a non-governmental organization (no government here is good) that tries to help out kids and unemployed parents in poor neighborhooods.

So, without further stalling / throat-clearing / cliche-strewn verbal masturbation, here's what I got:

--- begin actual post ---

Imagine this: you're sitting across from a young woman (a friend - chill) in an outdoor cafe on a cool summer night. The street is lined with old cobblestones, some of which could have been there for up to 5 centuries. Plastic tables and chairs, like the ones people put on their back lawns, are set up alongside the buildings that rise up on all sides of the narrow streets. There's music playing from a few streets over, and there's an air of festivity keep afloat by the constant chatter and outrageous bursts of laughter of men and women over some bottles of cheap beer.
The tables are strewn with unwrapped and half-smoked packs of also very cheap, noname brand cigarettes.

Sounds pretty nice, huh? But it can't be nice because this is real life and real life, at least when it's mine, has to be weird, and if it's not weird then I'll make it weird. So there's more.
IYou're speaking to your (relatively new) companion in a foreign language, the first one you've been able to speak with anything near fluency other than your native language. This alone is something you would never have seen yourself doing only 5 years ago. And you're around 5000 miles away from home, in a country that up until a year or two ago would have been unfathomable for you to visit, let alone live in for any length of time over a week. It's South America, for crying out loud – the connotation of those words makes it seem farther away than Europe (well, at least some of it is, actually).

While you're talking in this quasi-gibberish, which, somehow, you've been able to understand and learn enough of to have a relatively coherent conversation with a native speaker, you see a couple of tables down that there's a very thin (drug-addict thin) street person dancing in the front of the table to attempt to elicit a reaction (or more likely, money) from the table's occupants. Meanwhile you're trying to keep the conversation at your table afloat and not sound like a caveman when you talk, even though you know this is probably unavoidable (the caveman part). In between bites of your food and trying to concentrate on what your friend says, you say to yourself, 'Please let that person not come over to this table.' At that moment you realize that although the person is wearing a dress it is in actuality a man dancing in women's clothing. And to be more accurate it is a transvestite male hooker with a high voice, a lisp which you can detect even in Portuguese, and a very flat chest (don't they have duct tape here?). (S)he's not one of those transvestites who wants everyone to know that he's a transvestite, he's probably just an addict who doesn't have the time or desire to make himself look very womanly, or like anything other than a skinny man wearing a cheap dress.

And of course he does come over, and he's apparently selling copies of the local theatre schedule and guide in order to buy some crack. So before you can decide how the hell to get rid of this guy, your friend is like “Oh yeah, I'll take one” and starts poking around her purse for the R$2.50 the guy wants. While you were praying to the god of yuppie expatriates that the guy wouldn't come over, you'd failed to pay attention to the fact that your friend had been talking about how much she loves local theatre. But to get back to the moment, of course she doesn't have change. No one does in this country – there's some kind of taboo over giving money back after getting money, but everyone goes through the hassle anyway. It's like there's more effort generated in getting aggravated over having to give change than would actually have been spent if the parties involved had just dealt with the change in a sane manner and been done with it. But that's the subject of another post.

So she gets up from the table, after arguing with the transvestite prostitute, to get change from a food stand across the street. OK, no problem. It is noteworthy, though, that during the arguing over the change the transvestite finds it necessary to take of his wig, revealing what looks like a newly-cropped head of hair, cut in such a way that it looks as if some animal had chewed it off. After the haggling, however, she absentmindedly and for no apparent reason plops her huge purse on the table and FREAKING LEAVES IT THERE. This would not seem so strange to you in certain places in your own country, but in this particular place and time, you can be assured it is complete insanity. The purse is huge and pink, and made of what is probably fake leather, which to you is indiscernible from real leather except it's pink. And it weighs probably about half as much as your friend, who has a very slight build and would probably blow away in a heavy wind.

So even though you really don't know your new woman-friend (the one at the table, not the cross-dresser) terribly well, you swing your left hand over the top of the table and put it on the purse, fully expecting to have to flex your arm hard within the next 10 seconds to keep whomever grabs it from the table from stealing it. Meanwhile the transvestite is now dancing in front of your table, but has graciously sensed that you are not at all interested in even idle banter while your companion retrieves the aforementioned change. He just wants his crack money. Which sort of makes the rest of it make sense because now you realize that his street dance was more of a crackhead inability to stop moving rather than an artistic kind of thing.
Luckily she comes back and the purse is safe without incident. The crackhead transvestite prostitute gives her an air-cheek-kiss and dances back into the night, to the beat of the drum music which could be the soundtrack to Heart of Darkness.

If someone had asked you years ago where you thought you'd be, it was probably anything but the situation just described. And if you'd been told you'd be here by your own choice, and be OK with it, you would have said the person was crazy.

pulled a swift one by deleting a big blog entry before i could post it

I wrote a 750+ word plus rant last night on how unfortunate it was that Governor Schwartzenegger didn't grant clemency to Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the nobel prize nominee on death row who started the Crips but later wrote childrens books and worked to undo the cycle of violence that he helped create. My rant was more political than usual so maybe it's a good thing that I accidentally either overwrote, misplaced, or failed to save the right copy of it and all I've got, besides what I'm writing here, is like the first 2 sentences on my hard drive. I suppose that was bound to happen sooner or later. I'll paraphrase: the guy I've been working with at the place I've been volunteering asked me if I'd heard about the execution, which happened yesterday morning, and I said yes. I was really surprised that he even knew about it, since people here seem to randomly know some things that go on in the States and not others. He said that people in Brazil were following it closely, and my rant went on to deride the current US administration for usurping the leadership position of the US for its own ends and dashing the hopes of the world for a better future, which, unknowingly to many Americans, is what the US is for a lot of people, particularly poor people, around the world. The guy (Ivanildo) also asked me whether or not I believed in God, what religion I had, if any, and we got onto a relatively complex philosophical discussion which is remarkable mostly because it was possible even with my pidgin Portuguese - more to his credit than mine since through experience with foreign volunteers he's gained the ability to express himself in short, choppy sentences.

kickass concert almost turns into riot

There was a festival this weekend (big surprise) called the Mercado Cultural, which featured, among other things, an art show and cultural exibit at the large park area of Salvador known as Campo Grande. The months of December, January, and February denote the holiday season, and therefore the party / music / cultural scene swung into high gear this year starting on December 1^st. I had heard that the art show wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about, and I did see some of it on Friday but they were already packing up when I got there (9-10pm). I got the feeling I hadn`t missed much. The music scene, on the other hand, was something else. There’s a public band shell theatre near Campo Grande called O Concha Acústica do Teatro Castro Alves where I had been once before to see another public show, and on Friday night I saw Chico César e Quinteto da Paraíba. Chico César is a guitarist who played this particular night with a string quartet and a drummer. The name that kept running through my mind when I was watching him was Paul Simon (when he was good). The best way to describe it, I guess, is a mix of traditional folk acoustic guitar and modern rhythms. I don’t know if that’s really accurate but it’s the best I’ve got. I think most of his music were love song or ballad type of things, and they were all very good. The crowd, as a result, was all ages, and towards then end the music got a little bit faster and he ended on a danceable tune which everyone liked.

Last night, however, I returned to the shell to see Nação Zumbi, a band from Pernambuco (state north of Bahia) which the local paper said “is one of the major names in music for Brazilian young people, with a wealth of vibes at the extremes of traditional roots and contemporary pop … reinforced with rock, dub, trip hop and psychedelia.” Chico César was all right, but these guys were awesome. The band consisted of a great guitarist, singer, bass player, drummer, percussionist, and three additional drummers who played traditional bass-type (i.e., held with a strap over their shoulders) drums like Olodum. They were loud, guitar-driven, and hard-rock sounding, with a lot of distortion and wah-wah complemented by MTV-inspired stage moves. They kept from sounding cliché through the use of the drums and skilled musicianship, and I’m sure the fact that the singer was singing in Portuguese added to the exotic sound for me.

Towards the end, however, things nearly went tragically wrong. They were playing a fast and loud song which everyone was dancing to, including some young men (and one 40-year old guy who peaked out 15 years ago) who started moshing. Some of them were pushing each other towards the stage. A large, muscular man in shorts and a tank top somehow made it past security and up onto the stage, to the surprise of the lead singer, who got a nice big hug from this guy. In seconds there were around 8 security guards surrounding this guy who was ripped off the lead singer and very forcefully thrown into the security area (where the guards stand) below the front of the stage. The guards, in addition to some bystanders, proceeded to drag and kick the guy to the side of the stage. People were booing and my guess is that they were calling for an ass-kicking, which is what this guy was almost guaranteed to get in about 1 minute. The lead singer, however, followed the security guards and yelled at them not to hurt him, and at one point jumped off the stage and I’m guessing got between the security guards and the guy and made sure they didn’t hurt him. At the same time, in the right hand corner of the stage, more people spilled into the security area and began kicking the guy who was on the ground, and more booing ensued. At this point people where I was (up in the back) started looking around at each other, thinking probably what I was, which was that we were teetering on the edge of a riot. I sort of braced myself for what I expected was going to be some crazy shit.

At every event like this there is a military police presence, and in the past they’ve been known (at least during Carnival) to dish out a good beating to anyone caught stealing or otherwise interrupting the festivities. I’ve heard that this has been curbed somewhat in recent years by the fact that all MP groups now require that at least one woman cop be with them at all times, and this seems to keep the men from beating people up so much. With regards to this particular incident, the MPs had not yet gotten involved, but my sense was that once they were there wouldn’t be any turning back. I was also a little surprised that they didn’t respond very quickly – maybe they were trying to let security handle it before they stepped in.

Luckily, however, the lead singer, who was now in the security area between the the guards and the guy who jumped on stage, managed to calm everyone down. Additionally the guitarist got on the mic and said something along the lines of not wanting any violence, that’s not what they were about, etc. People started cheering when he said this, and the lead singer managed to persuade security to let the guy who had jumped on stage back onstage with the band. He (lead singer) then repeated what the guitarist had said, and the guy who jumped on the stage said something as well that I couldn’t really understand, but was something along the lines of “these guys are great, we just want to have a good time, etc.” and everyone started cheering loudly. Afterwards the guy was very gingerly and anxiously led offstage to the left by some other security guards. The lead singer said they were going to take a break and then come back to finish the show.

By this time people started pouring out of the theater, however, and only the diehards stayed. I wasn’t sure I’d understood what was going on with respect to the return of the music, so I decided to take off too.

I don’t know why the lead singer was so adamant about making sure the guy who stopped the show wasn’t hurt – he had to be angry and shaken up. I have a theory, though, which may or may not carry any weight. There are many people in Brazil who are no strangers to violence, at times even at the hands of the police throughout the years. If something similar had happened in the US there would have been violence, because of our unending thirst for it, maybe because we glorify it on TV and in movies and don’t understand what it’s really like in real life – horrible. I think that the lead singer knew that things were not going to be pretty if the show erupted into a riot, and was willing to do everything possible to avoid it, just because he knew how bad things could get, and had seen it in the past enough to know he didn’t want to see it last night.

at the luncheonette

There’s a luncheonette on the Rua Afonso Celso, around the corner from my apartment, a few blocks past the pousada I stayed in for the first two weeks I was here. I’m talking about this one in particular because I think I’m a few visits short of becoming what you would consider a regular there. ‘Regular’ in the sense that I go there at least a couple times a week, order the same thing (sanduiche americano) every time, and my interactions are limited to a few words and short choppy sentences indicating what I want to eat and when I’ll take the check. Luncheonettes are central to the social life of Bahians, since the biggest meal of the day is lunch. The one I’m talking about is different from the others in that it seats more than most, doesn’t have outdoor seating, and serves also as a food and necessity market, with a bread and pastry counter in the back and fruits – bananas, mango and watermelon, and others – on display in the front and in the fridge on the right wall. To the left and towards the back is a fry-cook counter and a mini lunch buffet. There are two rows of square plastic chairs and tables in the middle of the floor, and there are 3 or 4 circular tables pushed against the front and back walls. On a Friday evening the place is very lively and serves as a local bar / restaurant. Behind the fry counter there’s a row of liquor bottles, so not only can you get beer but you can get mixed drinks too. One of their specialties and main attractions is the variety of fresh-squeezed fruit drinks (“sucos”) that they serve, of which there are at least a dozen different kinds. Watermelon, mango, guava, pineapple, and various combinations of these and others to mention just a few. I think the place is family run. Sadly, the status or rank of the workers corresponds almost exactly to skin tone. The man who I think is probably the owner is about mid-50s, smokes incessantly, and regularly helps himself to the coffee machine at the fry counter. When he’s not standing in front, smoking and drinking out of a little clear cafezinha cup and joking with customers, he’s sitting out back at the checkout register. He’s not what you’d call good-natured, but he’s not antisocial either, just quiet, stoic, and looks like maybe he’s got a lot on his mind. He’s also what you’d call white by Bahian standards. I think he has a daughter who also works the register occasionally as well. Same level of stoicism or ambivalence with her. She’s pretty, 35 maybe, but would be much prettier if she smiled once in a while. The two people who are there so much they probably just sleep there are the woman behind the fry counter and the guy who is the “waiter”, if that’s what you call him. They have darker skin, like indios. Whenever she deals with me (clearly a tourist) she wears an unfazable blank expression, but when she jokes with the locals her face brightens to a very friendly smile. I don’t hold this against her, incidentally – I still like her. She’s always wearing a black baseball cap and a bright yellow shirt with the name of the place (which escapes me at the moment) on it. For the most part the waiter, who wears a white shirt like a cook or dishwasher, gets and replaces customers’ 20oz beers from the bottle-shaped mini-coolers that are on all of the tables. All of this is done amidst joking and good-natured ribbing. And of course at the bottom of the labor chain are a woman and a man, both mid-20s and dark black. They wear the same bright yellow t-shirts. She serves as secondary cook and waitress, and he does the moving around of the milk-crate style boxes full of cheap beer that go into and out of the big fridge in the left corner and right side of the place. I should mention that from outward appearances, all of the workers there get treated just fine, and it`s probably as good a place to work as any because of the social scene if nothing else. There is a real sense of community – all of the locals know all of the staff, and all are treated as equals. But even in a positive environment like this you can clearly see racial and economic stratification, which in Bahia is as apparent if not more so than anywhere else I`ve been.

street kid took my bag of chips ("mmmfff - hey!")

I was waiting at the bus stop in front of the school on Thursday, with one of the instructors (woman) and another student (guy), so that we (me and the other guy) could take the bus to the commercial center of the city to go to the place we've been volunteering. Because of our appointment I hadn't had time to get lunch, and so I'd stopped by a deli near the bus stop and gotten those kind of things you get for lunch when you have no time, little money, and little foresight for how you'll feel afterwards - ripples chips, a bag of cookies, and a soda.

Previously I'd had occasion to walk the street, mostly at night, eating something or other while I'm walking. I had the feeling, for no particular reason at all, that I was breaking some sort of unwritten rule. I think this was because I hadn't seen anyone else eating on the street in all the time I'd been here. Why do they sell stuff on the street but no one ever eats on the street? I'd been asking myself this, and now I think I know the answer.

I'd been busy stuffing my face, alternating between chips and cookies, and talking to the instructor, when probably 5 grubby street kids literally ran up to me and starting sticking their hands out. They were all talking at once in a chorus of high voices, and I, thinking I was used to this kind of thing, said no, no and started to tell them to go away. But then in a flash the bag was no longer in my hands and I was standing there as if there was now an invisible chip bag in my hands, because I hadn't had time to realize what had happened. I sort of just stood there with my mouth open with one or more potato chip shards hanging off the side of my face.

The guy I was with said "Why don't you chase him? He's right there." The kid had run off, and then come back with the bag of chips to gloat. The main reason I didn't chase him, at that moment, was that I had the bag of cookies and soda with me and I didn't think I could handle carrying that and chasing the kid at a high rate of speed, and if I'd handed it to either one of my companions I the kid would have been done eating by the time I'd done so. In retrospect I'm very, very glad that I didn't chase the kid down. I had no doubt I could have caught him, mostly because I am one fast mother fucker with huge pecs, as at least 4 people have pointed out in the past week. But then what was I going to do? Get my chips back and eat them? No thanks. Stomp on them so that he couldn't have them (someone suggested this afterwards)? They're my chips - who's the idiot in that situation? Beat the crap out of an 8 year old? That would be a great scene for the Salvador evening news - white tourist, on his way to do charitable work, kicks the crap out of poor black kid over a bag of chips.

I told the story to my language instructor the next day (the classes always start with "what did you do yesterday?" which in language class is fine but in real life is probably 50% of the reason I'm still single) and I asked her if she thought the kids were orphans or not. She said it was likely they had parents that were either drug addicts or alcoholics. There are kids like that here everywhere, who are on the streets barefoot with parents that are for all purposes completely absent from their lives. Many of the kids sniff glue or smoke crack. One of the other instructors told us that 15-20 years ago, before Salvador got caught up in its own drug epidemic, a woman could walk the streets at night without any concern at all. But with drugs came violence and street people in much worse shape and more dangerous to civilians than before.

artistic talent where you wouldn't expect it, and yet another sad coffee episode

I got into a mini-argument a few days ago at the beginning of class with one of the students who is very skeptical of some of the school's teaching methods, particularly the analysis and / or reading of Brazilian poetry, and perhaps to some degree music in order to take a sort of alternate route to fluency. It's his last week and he says he wants to do "serious" study. I said "What, you mean like drills (who wants that)?" and he was like, well, at least rules or something. And I said but that's going to be dry and abstract and non-interactive, etc., and he was like yeah well and anyway you get the picture. I'll tell you what his problem is - he's bored because he signed up for a class even though he ALREADY SPEAKS PORTUGUESE. I think he did so just to meet girls.

This whole discussion was prompted by the fact that we were asked in class to compose a poem in Portuguese based on some books of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso that the profesora brought in. They were mass paperback sized, and must have been ancient copies because the bindings had fallen apart and she had to hold the pages in a stack like a deck of cards. The paper was heavy enough and the binding dead enough that you could lay these little books flat. What I found almost astonishing was that my classmate, after having disparaged the whole poetry-writing-as-language-teaching concept, went on to co-author with me (I did little other than write it down) a poem which I thought for a first draft and for someone who thought this whole idea was pretty darn good. I'm attaching a copy of the picture that "inspired" this, the one that we chose, and the poem in Portuguese and then English:


Monsieur Boileau

Eu gostaria de sentar com você agora
Nesta mesa
Tarde, noite, as duas horas na madrugada
Beber absintho com você,
Falar com você
E jogar domino ou cartas com você.
Mas você mora no seu mundo
E eu moro no meu
E eu não vou falar com você agora
Nem tempo algun.
Tempus fugit.

I would like to sit with you now
At this table
Late at night, at two in the morning
Drink absinthe with you
Talk with you
And play dominoes or cards with you.
But you live in your world
And I live in mine
And I will not speak with you now
Or any time.
Tempus fugit. (Time flies.)

On a completely different topic, I spent 3+ hours yesterday afternoon with a 16-year old daughter and her mother in the mutual interest of learning the other party's language. You think this sounds weird? Well I was there. This came about through the school - one of the coordinators got a call from the mom, who it turns out just flipped through the yellow pages and saw the school as one of two names in the book, and she asked if there was a native English speaker her daughter could practice with since she was going to Canada for a month in January. It made sense then that the only reason I was qualified for this kind of work was my unique status (strange, since everyone speaks English) among people in the school as a "native" speaker.

But of course my first reaction was whoa, whoa, slow down here - let's deal with the real problem first: Why the hell is this girl going to Canada? Whose idea was it to send her there?

Kidding aside, she and her mother are paranoid, based on previous experiences in the States, that the girl won't be adequately prepared language-wise before she gets there. Despite the fact that she's living with a host family and already speaks English fine, as far as I could tell - definitely far better than I can speak Portuguese. Anyway, me and the taxi driver spent a few extra minutes trying to find the location of their apartment, which turns out to be by far the absolute nicest apartment I've seen in Brazil yet. It was the entire floor of a posh building, with an insane view and waaay expensive furniture, and the cleaning lady was working her ass off the entire time we were there. Also, after meeting the mom, daughter, and younger son, she brought me a glass of juice on a (i swear i'm being serious) silver platter. With a freakin' white doily. At this point I'm pretty used to feeling like I'm on a different planet, and for this reason I wasn't too terribly fazed about the platter / doily, but I was awed by all their stuff. The mom works for the government of Bahia, in the department of labor or something related to that.

We went to a bookstore for the mom to pick up some books or cards - i wasn't really paying attention - and talked while in the car, mostly in Portuguese which was primarily to my benefit. The mom spoke English as well as the daughter, and I sensed that she wanted to take advantage of my presence to improve her own speaking skills as well. They asked me if I wanted to go anywhere and I said I could use some coffee, so they took me to what looked like this posh coffee place which specialized in espresso and desserts, etc., with waiters dressed in vests, you get the idea. Without putting much thought into it I ordered a cappucino, which was cool until it came.

Let's just say that some people here adhere to a very loose definition of the word cappucino. What I received, in a very nice glass I should add, was a couple of scoops of instant cappucino mix dumped into the top of a glass of lukewarm water and barely stirred. I took a sip of it, not realizing what was going on, and thought to myself, oh, they must put some kind of cake or something in the top of it. Keep in mind that this whole time I'm trying to keep up with the conversation, in Portuguese, which the mom is speaking relatively slowly but the girl is burning through like it's the verbal Indy 500. The girl saw the look on my face when I realized what I was drinking, and asked her mom in Portuguese if that's what a cappucino was supposed to look like. I didn't want it to be a big deal so I said something like Oh I bet you just have to stir it. 10 minutes later I had stirred the crap out of it, having started feeling the early indications of tendonitis in my stirring hand, and there was still a (smaller) archipelago of undissolved cappucino mix on the top. I was finally just like the hell with it so I pounded the whole thing except for the last quarter inch since I didn't want them to see the cappucino-mix sediment that would clearly have been left in the bottom of my glass.

It was a little weird, but it was cool too. I think we're meeting again next week. And tomorrow the same coordinator at the school wants me to meet with a woman with a similar request, who (thank god) is a little closer in age to me.

major milestone acheived as laundry is done for the first time

Before everyone freaks out, let me just add that I had previously been washing the, um, essential clothing via hand, and was prepared to do this until I was way comfortable with Portuguese, until I realized how freakin' long it takes to wash any significant quantity of clothing by hand.

For a while I've had a laundry place nearby scoped out, and I went in yesterday and stared with my mouth open at the price list on the wall for a good 5 minutes, and then looked back at the washers to try to figure out where the hell I put the coins in. I'm guessing that I'm not the first one to do this because one of the workers there came up and asked if I needed help. She was very, very friendly - I'm not sure why I thought they wouldn't be, and explained how much it cost for me to wash my own clothes vs. me dropping it off, which luckily they do here - woohoo! The price difference is R$5, which comes out to around $2, so guess freakin' what? I went back up to my apartment, stuffed all my clothes in a bag and came back and dropped it off. As I write this my clothes reek of the comforting scent of detergent.

I think the woman who helped me out was the owner, and though she didn't say it, her body language was like "kid, i've been doing this kind of thing for years. I've seen it all." Before she took my clothes she counted out all the items and wrote it out on a bill, and then when I came to pick it up she counted them again in front of me, to prove that she hadn't lost anything. I was ready to just pick the stack up as soon as I got there, and once she started counting I was like, well, whatever. As long as the pile is relatively close to the size it was when I dropped it off, I'm good. There's nothing there that on an individual level I would be concerned about if it never showed up again.

The milestone here is not so much the clothes (though to most people that might be the critical issue) as much as the fact that I was able to interact with a Brazilian, for the most part with language and not hand signals, and that I understood her well enough (and she understood me) that I was actually able to get something useful done, which, to be honest, doesn't happen a whole lot around here, with me or other people. Not that I object to that.