What the hell was I talking about again?

ratkiller identity revealed

2006-08-07T15:25:00.000-04:00

Here she is, folks. Approximately 4 and a half feet of merciless rat-killing power. She may not look scary (actually, she kind of does), but with a broom she's just plain dangerous.

Her name is Dalvina, and she grew up on a farm, basically. She has no idea what the Internet is, so me telling her that I posted her picture there for all to ridicule, point and laugh at will be met with the same blank stare I got when I asked for the keys to her son-in-law's car. Which is the part of the reason I'm posting her picture here for public ridicule.

It's a victimless crime.

OK, 1 victim.

mattress-eating rat update

2006-07-18T13:03:00.000-04:00

I know there's been a lot of chatter going over the wires regarding the details of the rat that ate Tiago's mattress, and I'm going to do the best that I can to clear things up and provide a little more detail.

OK, the chatter part may be a little exaggerated but there are some new developments.

The rat did not eat the entire mattress, as I'm sure some of you were wondering. He in fact only burrowed into it to escape being squashed by whoever the hell was chasing him around Tiago's room.

So here's the timeline:

1) rat is discovered in 6-year old kid's (already pretty freaking small) bedroom, in a pretty freaking small apartment. he shares the bedroom with his brother who's 10. or 11. i can't ever keep track.
2) everybody runs screaming
3) someone gathers their wits and starts chasing the rat around the bedroom
4) the rat runs into a hole that s/he may or may not have already chewed into the mattress
5) nobody sees this, and everyone assumes the rat went home
6) the babysitter folds up the mattress and sticks it (presumably the same day) on top of a bookcase (or armoire, whatever the hell you call those things you put clothes in that are 6' tall or more) in the room
7) the rat is still in the mattress and can't get out because it's folded. presumably s/he breathes through some tiny hole that may or may note be chewed, and lives on a diet of, you guessed it, mattress, and his/her own urine.
8) someone decides to hang the mattress outside, who knows why - maybe because of the rat urine smell, or the fact that it seems lighter (or heavier) than before. anyway, it's either hanging outside or propped against a stone wall.
9) a neighbor, a middle-aged Portuguese guy who has no job and whom I've never seen wear a shirt, sees, while walking his rediculous fancypants poodle around the condo, that something is moving inside the mattress and deduces that it's a rat.
10) he tells Tiago's mom
11) Tiago's mom tells everyone else
12) everybody runs screaming
13) to everyone's surprise, Dalvina, the mother in law of Tiago's aunt (4'8" tall, talks in an extremely high voice, with a thick bahian accent, and has a face like a prune), gets her shit together enough to kill the rat. the details are shady on how exactly this was done, although i'm going to stick to my theory of bludgeoning, given motive and available rat-killing means. i'll update this page as details on this story come in.
14) the mattress is retired and Tiago's dad, Ivanildo, buys a new one.
15) that's the kind of shit that has to happen for someone to get a new mattress around here.

duque de caixas slum visit

2006-07-12T09:53:00.000-04:00

i'm still in Rio, at least until tonight or tomorrow.

two days ago i went to visit a slum that my organization supports with one of our schools. the slum is literally on a pile of trash, and the people who live there make a "living" by going through the trash for stuff to eat and sell. if it sounds insane, it is. the shacks they live in are surrounded by trash, and the kids can't go to school because they have to work combing through the trash. the government does nothing about it because the people who live in the slum are seen as a necessary part of the recycling/environmental process/policy, which is to say it's easier to just ignore them. i have pictures which i'll post when i get back to salvador. you may not believe that i was actually there - it might be easier to think that i just PhotoShopped some images together. the police don't go there because the drug cartels control the area. we had to get what is essentially indirect permission from the drug lords to tour and take pictures, and we were accompanied at all times by members of the union of catadores (trash-pickers - yeah, they're unionized), because otherwise we would have been schaperoned out, or just as likely, shot.

UPDATE: I posted the photos of the Lixão, as it's called (means "big trash" in Portuguese) here. For the most part you don't see any of the people who live there up close. I was accompanied by Ivanildo (black shirt) and Rita from the organization, in addition to two residents of the Lixão (green shirt, blue shirt) who were (or still are) catadores at one point, and who are active members of the union now. There was also another resident, a woman, who was a school teacher there who met us as we were walking through the favela and told about some of her (insane) experiences of living there.

There are more details on the living conditions in the Lixão here.

You can see the smokestacks of the Petrobras Brazilian oil refinery from the Lixão, which only adds to the hellish image of the whole place, since they spout fire and are surrounded by a huge cloud of smoke from both the burning trash and the refinery. It is also an incredibly ironic image since Petrobras is the biggest contributor to gross national product in the country.

One of the people at the organization pointed this out to me in one of the pictures I took, and he said "Look, it's hell (pointing to the trash in the foreground) and heaven (pointing to the Petrobras smokestacks in the background)."

I disagreed - "No," I said, "It's hell (lixão), and the devil (smokestacks)."

A round of freedom fries for the Italians!

2006-07-09T20:34:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong ... I don't have a problem with French people. That is, at least, no more of a problem than with the rest of humanity, with whom I actually have a big problem. I didn't like that they beat Brazil, but I did like that they went on to LOSE (ha ha) in the World Cup final to Italy today.

I'm in Rio de Janeiro right now. People had been telling me since before I got to Brazil (before November) that I had to see Rio, there's all this blah blah blah to do and whatever. And I was always like, Listen, man, I know Brazil, all right? So don't go telling me what's cool and what's not.

Turns out I was wrong. I don't know shit about Brazil, or at least I didn't until I got here on Saturday morning (at 5:30am, I should add). Rio, while like any city has its problems, including a pretty significant threat of violence, is an amazing place. It's far more modern than I expected - more like Buenos Aires than Sao Paulo. The architecture is incredible, and the place is just freaking huge. It's one of those place, like New York, where you could live for 10 years and not know 10% of what there is to do there. Especially if you sit in your apartment reading books all day and not answering the phone because some annoying douchebag thinks its a lot of fun to go to some club and oogle at chicks, none of which either of us have a chance with.

i got a fever and the only cure is ... more TRIANGLE

2006-07-07T17:09:00.000-04:00

I'm sure by this time you're wondering the same thing I am, which is: How does one train to become a triangle player for a forró band? Is it a full-time job? Can anybody just jump up there and do it? Could I do it?

You're thinking of course "Sure, you idiot, it's the freaking triangle, for crying out loud." And I would answer, "Have you heard some of those triangle parts in the forró songs?" When I first heard a triangle used in a forró song I thought it was something mechanical like a synthesizer or some weird-looking exotic percussion instrument, but nope, it's everybody's favorite party instrument, the triangle.

To get some idea of what I'm talking about, check out this song. And then try to play the part on YOUR triangle.

heading to rio tomorrow ... at 3am

2006-07-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

I'm sure that all of you (both of you) are sick of me saying that I'm going to Rio and never delivering on my promises. Or more likely you forgot I even mentioned it. Either way, it looks like it's going to happen, since we bought the tickets last night and are on our way tomorrow morning. That's right, at 3am, because we are some cheap freaking bastards and that's when the cheap flights are.

Of course, things are never easy, so when the travel agent put my credit card through last night it was rejected. So he called up somebody and they said "leave out the security code" (i.e., the 3-digit security code on the back of your card to prevent fraud), which he did, and it worked. NICE. You really got to hand it to security/credit card companies these days, making things secure by coming up with technology and then making circumventing it the only way to get anything done. Some slow claps for these folks.

It's cheapest to go to Rio via one airline (TAM) and come back on another (Gol). The credit card worked for TAM but not Gol. And before you start telling me why it didn't work, Captain Obvious, you can just save it. We already tried our secret little trick of leaving off the security code for Gol, too, but they were too smart for us.

So we're leaving tonight but who knows when we're coming back. ETA for return is Wednesday morning, depending on flight availability and/or price. I could stay for a couple of weeks and no one, least of all me, would notice. Unemployment and lack of responsibility and/or commitment, as I'm sure many of you know, has its perks.

The following may cause some of you to puke or at least want to, and to those folks I offer no apology. It's your fault for wasting your time cruising the web and not being astute enough to know how to avoid mediocre sites like this. Here's the following: anytime the word "Rio" comes up, the song of the same name by Duran Duran (look it up) comes into my head and won't leave for a minimum of two hours. The funny thing is that I don't think any of the lyrics (I'm NOT wasting my time looking them up, at least not until I finish writing this) even refer to the city in Brazil. The Rio Grande river, yes, and some woman with the name Rio. Who the hell names their daughter Rio anyway? You'd think the same wit the Duran Duran guys used to pick a hairstyle would have transferred to lyric writing, but apparently not.

Have you ever noticed, too, that a song can be playing in your head for hours and you didn't even notice it? And then something happens, like you involuntarily start singing it or the cloud of whatever else you were thinking about passes. And you're like, "Wow, I've had that song in my head for a really long time and I didn't even notice it. I got to try to concentrate on some other more inane song, like anything by Abba, to get it out of my head." It's a viscious cycle, because the songs only keep getting worse.

Anybody with me on this one? Hello?

vermin revisited

2006-07-04T09:54:00.000-04:00

Ivanildo's son Matheus has been sleeping at his aunt's place for the past couple of weeks or so. She lives in the same building complex, about a 30-second walk away, and to be honest, it's a much nicer place. They have a couch which doesn't look like a Goodwill reject, which is always nice. I can't say the same, unfortunately, for his parents' place. Why am I writing so much garbage on the minutiae of daily life here at the Janus building in the Condominio Sistema Solar, in Pernambúes? Because the reason Matheus is sleeping at his aunt's is that A FREAKING RAT ATE HIS BROTHER TIAGO'S GODDAMN MATTRESS.

I'll attempt to soften that blow by saying that the rat in question is no longer with us, thanks to a 100-year-old-looking prune-faced woman named Dalvina who lives in the complex. She's the mother of Ivanildo's brother-in-law, David (get all that? I'm lost too.) Apparently she told Ivanildo that "That Matheus (pointing to me, as opposed to Matheus the 9-year-old) doesn't understand anything I say." Ivanildo said that he quelled the urge to say, "Dalvina, we don't understand anything that you say," because she's from the interior of Bahia, aka the Sertão, and talks with a really thick accent using rustic words and in a very high voice.

I don't know how exactly she killed it, but my guess is that it was through bludgeoning or beating of some kind. I don't think there's shovel around, but there are brooms, so maybe she did it with that. I really wish I had a picture of her that I could post here (and the deficit of conscience required to post pictures of people and make fun of them without their knowledge) so you could get some idea of how hilarious (and scary) it must have been to see this short, slightly overweight old woman chasing a mutant, mattress-eating rat around with a broom or whatever.

When you take into consideration her life experience, my guess as a homemaker and/or similar domestic profession, you can see why she was the most qualified to take care of the rat problem. My guess is that she's killed more than a few of those sons of bitches in her time, and at this point she's probably just plain deadly when it comes to this type of thing, a "rat ninja", if you will.

And while we're on the topic of gross vermin, you should see how blasé people are about other things like cockroaches. All the women here wear havianas or sandals or something else that leaves their feet nearly bare. This, in addition to the proliferation of (again, mutant) cockroaches in the apartments and all of the sidewalks in the condominium or on the street, leaves them susceptible to the inevitable cockroach crawling over their bare feet when they're not paying attention. I, of course, when I see this happen to them, brace myself for what I'm certain will be a horror-movie caliber scream, but it never comes. They just brush it off, or do nothing, and don't even chase it down to kill it when it goes on its panicked little way. I, of course, am inclined to jump on a chair and scream like a little schoolgirl whenever I see one of these things, but luckily no one has witnessed anything like that yet. They do laugh, though, when I jump at the sight of a cockroach, or at least a big one. "Matt's afraid of cockroaches," they say, laughing and pointing. And in the same breath at least one of them will give the expected horror-movie scream when she sees a freaking half-inch-long caterpillar. Go figure.

that's it, i'm out (slams wad of cash on the table)

2006-07-03T14:45:00.000-04:00

Well this weekend sucked. Not just because Brazil lost to, of all teams, freakin' FRANCE. Mostly because Brazil lost after I blew R$179 on an official Brazil world cup T-shirt. Chances are that the value of it dropped by around 50% 2 minutes after the game ended, and I only got to wear it for one match. The thought crossed my mind while I was buying it that, "I might just be jinxing the whole team by buying this right now." So not only did Brazil lose, but it's looking like it's probably my fault.

Additionally, I still haven't paid up on the (first ever, I should mention) World Cup pool that I entered with people from work back home. I think I'm going to ask if there's a prize for last place, since I've demonstrated a surprisingly consistent ability to pick which team will lose and designate them as the winner.

I went to a bar/luncheonette/restaurant with a bunch of coworkers on Saturday night, to watch the game, and even though Brazil lost it was a lot of fun. And crazy. The last time I heard so many people screaming at the TV was in college at 3am on a Tuesday, sitting in my apartment with a 1/2 roommate/case of beer ratio and watching Jenny Jones.

They took it surprisingly well, though (the Brazilians). There were only a few people crying and it was mostly women. One of my coworkers spotted a woman crying in the street and motioned for me to hand over my camera so he could capture it on film. The country's team may have lost, but at least we have a picture of some anonymous woman crying to point and laugh at. So it's not a total loss.

Brazil vs. Spain today

2006-07-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

In a little over 3 hours Brazil will play France in the World Cup. Of course all of the games in the finals are important, but this one holds special significance, since France beat Brazil 3-0 in the final in 1998. All of the Brazilians I know remember that game quite well and are still bitter about it.

Brazil played much better in the last game (against Ghana) than in any of the previous matches, but they still weren't up to the expectations people had for them here. Most people complain that they played poorly last match, and were out-played by the Ghanese team but just had more luck (and the Ghanians less). There were a few who said they thought Brazil played well, and emphasized that even if you have perfect passes all the time, if you can't score then you're not going to win.

That's the situation Ghana seemed to be in at the last game. Unfortunately for them the Brazilian goalie played very well, and had a couple of very lucky saves. Also Brazil's defense played pretty well, considering that their offense seemed pretty inconsistent.

On an individual level, though, you really got to hand it to the Brazilian players. Ronaldo's goal, which tied the game and broke the record for number of goals scored by an individual player in the World Cup (15), was the result of an amazing fake where he stepped over the ball, faked right, and went left past the goalie to kick it into an open net. Zé Ramalho's goal (Brazil's 3rd), came after he kicked the ball over the goalies left shoulder with a high and surprisingly graceful tap of the ball in the air, after which he ran past the goalie and tapped it lightly into the goal in the manner of a behind-the-back pass. The flies were buzzing in and out of my mouth quite freely at that point.

Yesterday I bought an official Nike Brazil World Cup shirt, which is supposedly the same as the players wear. Number 9 (Ronaldo). With the exception of rent and tuition for my classes, at R$179 (~$75) I believe it is the biggest purchase I've made in Brazil. That's around 2 weeks salary for the majority of people in Salvador. I was afraid that it might go up in price (yes, it's possible, although hard to believe) if Brazil wins any more games so I bit the bullet and did it. That's my excuse.

I also entered a World Cup pool a few days back with some guys at work, and I have very consistently picked the loser of nearly each major semi- or quarter-final game to win. Gambling and sports have always been a magic combination for me.

worlds colliding

2006-06-30T16:02:00.000-04:00

Well, it was inevitable. There wasn't really any doubt in my mind that if I stayed here long enough it would have to happen. Everyone knows that you really can't call a friend a friend until you sit down and watch Spinal Tap with them, and that's what I did last night with a few of my Brazilian friends. It was by their request - I wouldn't have dared to initiate this kind of insanity on my own since the blowback could be huge and I might never recover.

I've written here before that my friend and coworker Viny (I think he's 19) is a huge fan of heavy metal, or more specifically, death metal. (At the risk of getting totally off topic I'll just say that the idea of death metal appealed to me in principle, when I knew nothing about it, but once I heard and saw it performed a few weeks ago it was clear to me that it really just plain *sucks*.) Apparently Viny read in an interview with the guitarist and drummer of Primal Fear that Spinal Tap was their favorite movie. This, rather than my repeated suggestion, in pidgin Portugese that "You really gotta see that movie," is what got him to ask when we could get together to see it.

Even though Viny did ask to see it, I knew that I would be taking on a lot by watching it with him and especially Ivanildo, who is at best skeptical about anything related to heavy metal and never has a problem berating the crap out of Viny over how bad he thinks metal sucks. Luckily my (copied) DVD has Spanish subtitles, which helps out Portuguese speakers quite a bit. Both of them laughed at least a couple of times at language-only jokes (as opposed to some kind of physical humor) so they understood a good part of what was going on on their own. I of course was laughing my ass off the whole time, and many, many times was the only one in the room laughing. I'm more used to the opposite situation: everyone else in the room laughing and me being like "What? What?" ("Que? Que?").

Even the times when I stopped it I could tell that I wasn't getting through with a lot of my very circumspect explanations and again with the pidgin Portuguese. But, all told, they laughed a hell of a lot more than I expected them too. This was in part, I'm sure, just because I was laughing and they got their cues from me. Also since there's a lot of jokes that are either vulgar and/or regarding sex, they were able to relate without me explaining (thank god) since those subjects are somewhat universal, at least in comedy.

The one part which got fewer (i.e., none) laughs than I expected was when I explained the title of "Sex Farm Woman." I may not have translated it right (although I just checked it on AltaVista/BabelFish and it was the same) but all I got was blank stares. I, of course, could barely keep from laughing while I was talking, in part because of the subject matter, and also because of the situation. The concept of "working on a sex farm" is of course in itself pretty funny, but when in the middle of trying to translate it into Portuguese you think to yourself "I'm trying to explain 'Sex Farm Woman' to people in Portuguese," it's surreal in a very funny way. I almost had to ask myself "How much stranger could this situation be?" And the answer was: None, none more strange.

bombs you can take home and the festival of São João

2006-06-26T12:24:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday was the festival of São João, which is a pretty big deal around here (yes, kind of like me), to some people even bigger than Christmas. The kids have this week off of school, and the only work anybody did this past weekend was to lift the 10oz beer glass from the plastic luncheonette table to their mouths.

Before going out to Camaçari to sit and stand in the rain and listen to mediocre Bahian country bands for 5 hours, I went with my neighbor/boss and his wife and 3 kids (aged 6 months to 10 years) to go and purchase the largest “arsenal” (Ivanildo’s word) of fireworks I have ever laid my hands on. Where the hell was this s* when I was 10? Prohibited by the government, as it should have been. Thanks to modern technology and surprisingly poor judgement on the part of the population, it is more easy to blow your hand off in Bahia than it’s ever been before.

Rather than go into the details of every little type of explosive whatever that we bought, I think it’s probably sufficient to just post a picture of the aforementioned arsenal and describe maybe the most interesting piece of equipment we got our hands on. We drove out to a place near the airport where there were a bunch of equally-sized shacks reminiscient of the kind set up at a fair where you go to lose your money shooting a water pistol into a little hole, for one of those rediculous pookie dolls or whatever they’re called. This is one of the few places in South America where I’ve seen a very prominent NO SMOKING sign. We looked around a few different of the shacks before settling on one where we got all of our arsenal. We spent a good 15 minutes deciding what to get, in between desperate shrieks on the part of Ivanildo’s kids to “Get this! Get that!” as you would expect. Towards the end there was a conversation between Ivanildo and the saleswoman that I didn’t understand, but he asked me to give him half of the R$20 or so was required for another woman to leave the shack and go behind it to some stash. Apparently that’s where they keep the fireworks that are too dangerous to keep in the shack, illegal, or both. My guess is that it was both. She came back with 5 of what looked like rolled-up 25 cent pieces with wicks on the ends of them.

After dinner we lit a little fire (not my idea) to light all of the stuff from, and commenced blowing s*it up. I fried my hand pretty good on a couple of large bottle-rocket type things, which I didn’t know you were supposed to throw in the air after you lit them. To be honest I don’t know if the original designed called for lighting them while holding them in your hand. Shouldn’t we stick them in the ground? I asked Ivanildo, but he gave me the kind of look you get from your friends in high school who have already gotten laid and you’re still a virgin.

I let him light the first one of the what we later called “hand grenades.” Not only was it loud enough that it send everyone running and covering their ears once it was lit, but you could feel the blast from 20 yards away *in the air*, which was something I’ve never experienced before. Ivanildo verbalized exactly what I was thinking when he said, “Imagine what a * real hand grenade* feels like.”

If you are a redneck and you would like to meet rednecks from other cultures, then you should come here for this holiday. On Saturday night around 10pm Ivanildo drove me and 4 women to the nearby city of Camaçari to go to what I’d call a massive public dance party / concert. It’s the kind of place that if you drive 10 miles further you will be in a cornfield surrounded by confused-looking donkeys with a rope around their neck that isn’t tied to anything. Camaçari was *packed*, primarily in an enclosed area that was in front of a stage and surrounded by people in tents selling food and drinks at insane prices. We got there before the first band played, and it was crowded enough that we weren’t necessarily elbow-to-elbow with people but it was unavoidable to brush against people, sometimes a little roughly. A woman (I hope it was a woman) in a train of maybe 10 or so 20s or younger women pinched my ass so hard that I turned around quick as lightning to see who it was and may have even let out a girlish yelp. She of course was gone by that time so I didn’t get to see if I should be flattered or disgusted. Damn.

A forró band came on first. I thought they were all right but everyone else said they sucked. Then after a 30 minute or so intermission a Bahian country singer came on, and I didn’t have to ask because it was *clear* that he sucked. But everyone knew all the songs, which was a little scary. Because it sounded a hell of a lot like American country music. Suddenly I realized that there were a hell of a lot of people wearing straw hats, and everyone was wearing jeans. What the hell is going on here?!!? These people are, like, hicks! The evidence had been there for some time but it took the country music for me to see it. I’m normally the type to try to enjoy myself as much as anybody (i.e., dance despite my clear lack of coordination, eat pigs feet, etc.) but this was too much. While everyone danced around having the time of their lives and singing the lyrics to all the songs, I stood there frowning with my arms folded, at least until my feet hurt so much that I sort of rocked back and forth just to try to give each one a break. It didn’t work too well.

you and your deodorant

2006-06-26T10:54:00.000-04:00

I just posted a really long comment to a post on my sister's blog regarding the importance of deodorant choice as related to personal identity. You can see her post and my original comment, which is copied below, here.

I realize that I may be on or crossing the line into plagiarism, but I wanted to be sure to make sure I had my record of what I thought was some pretty insightful commenting, and that everyone would see that even though my posts aren't as frequent as they used to be, I continue to contribute (in quite a profound way, I might add) to online discourse (I refuse to say bl*gosphere).

The real question you have to ask yourself when making this kind of purchase is, as television tells us, "What deodorant best reflects my personality?" And that's a tough one. I relied Speed Stick Musk for years, until some douchebag in marketing or whatever decided to discontinue it in the late 90s, I'm sure because it broke into whomever's sales of cologne. I say this because I used to get all kinds of complements on my cologne, and I was more than happy to reveal how sharp I was by saying "Actually (clever-looking, self-congratulating grin), it's my deodorant." I'll admit when I realized that it was being discontinued I had to make non-trivial decision of whether I should buy every remaining stick I could find and stash/horde it in a warehouse somewhere. Of course it's always much easier to do nothing so I did that. But it was really tough having to revaluate my brand (and come on, let's face it, your choice of deodorant is pretty much the basis for your entire personality, as the title of your post implies.)

The one time I deviated from Speed Stick Musk was a complete disaster. It was my junior year in high school, and since I had limited funds and it was post-Christmas I decided to use the much more expensive smelling sample-sized stick I got in my stocking or wherever. Things went fine until I was almost at school, looking listlessly out the front passenger window of the van, until I realized that my eyes were shutting themselves on their own. I opened my window a crack and I was able to pry them open enough to say, "Mom, I think I'm having an allergic reaction to my deodorant." She was of course rather skeptical at first, although she had to be impressed at my ingenuity if she really thought I'd thought that one up to get out of school for a day. But no, it was true, and we had to head back home where I washed my armpits and used somebody else's deodorant. The tough part came when I showed up late in the vice principal's office and stated (I remember it word for word) "I had an allergic reaction to my deodorant," and handed him the note from mom. He, strangely, didn't bat an eyelash, and even said, "I know that smarts," as if a) he'd had the same experience, and b) he thought my armpits were on fire from some kind of rash, which they weren't. I don't think either of us wanted to go into detail and he told me to get the hell out of his office.

Sorry, Japan (not really).

2006-06-23T10:31:00.000-04:00

The quietest moment I’ve experienced in the past 7 or so months came yesterday immediately after Japan scored a goal against Brazil in the World Cup to take the lead in the first 30 or so minutes of the game.  Complete silence in my neighbor’s apartment, as well as on the announcer’s mic, until he remembered who he was and then let out (quite unenthusiastically) the requisite long shout of “Goooooaaal …. !”

For those of you who don’t follow this kind of thing, which up until about a month ago included me, Brazil then came back to win 4-1.  The first goal was scored by Ronaldo with a head shot, which was fed to him by another player from the right who bounced it off *his* head (!).  Granted, there’s a lot of juggling back and forth in football (soccer) where things are frustrating and maybe a little bit boring, but seeing a shot like that live was something I’ve never experienced from a watching sports point of view.  I’ve never been a sports fan by any measure, as I’ve said before, but yesterday afternoon I was riveted.

Ronaldo’s second goal tied the all-time world record of number of goals scored in the World Cup by a single player (i.e., in his life) and passed Pele’s record of number of goals scored in the World Cup by a Brazilian.  The big news is that “Ronaldo is back!”  Where did he go? you might ask.  He, along with the rest of the team played quite crappily in the first two games, and there were complaints that he was overweight and sluggish, partly because there had been such high expectations of him and the team.  But he was in near-top form yesterday and I would say that people here were very nearly completely pleased with his performance yesterday.  Let’s hope he keeps it up.

Oh, and the US lost to Ghana yesterday which ended their chance for making the semifinals for 2006.  At least 5 or so people who thought they might be the first to break it to me yesterday said so in a subdued voice which made me think they were expecting me to break down and cry, which to them would be understandable.  I never fail to surprise – I was like, “Yeah, whatever.  Are you gonna eat that?”  Which of course was met with somewhat bewildered stares and blank faces.  I’ve told people millions of times what little attention is paid to the World Cup in the States, but it’s so contrary to their world view that they don’t seem to be getting it.  As an example, the sports section of the New York Times web page had as its lead story yesterday a feature article on an all-out-fighting league that’s like boxing where you can kick, scratch, etc., and the article on World Cup was about 5th down the list.  Not heavy coverage when you consider it was the US’s last chance for a shot at winning the whole thing.

And if you’re getting the strange feeling that the universe might be unraveling at the seams, I’m just as freaked out as you are.  Me discussing sports with anybody in real life or blogged is a first for everyone.  Don’t expect it to last, and if I suck (and I’m quite sure I do) don’t hesitate to say so.

Go Brasil.

anybody know what the Brazilian word for "football" is?

2006-06-20T16:46:00.000-04:00

It’s probably not a surprise to hear that being in Brazil for the world cup is *quite* an experience.  Not only is it an engaging phenomenon to watch, but it’s downright contagious.  I, like most Americans, found football (I won’t stoop to calling it soccer until I’m back in the States) to be interesting in theory but a little slow and frustrating to watch on television, because scoring seems elusive and there’s a lot of time spent trying to get possession of the ball.  I’ve only seen two games thus far – the ones in the past week versus Croatia and then Australia two days ago.  But man, I’m hooked.  I’m now the one telling everyone else in the room (~5-10 of my Brazilian friends) to shut up so I can watch the game.  On the day of the game everyone, and I mean *everyone*, gets dressed up in yellow and green, from grandmothers to 2-year old children.  Each game is, without exaggerating, the equivalent of a national holiday.  Everyone goes to a party that is as big or bigger than the superbowl parties in the States.  Lots of the parties have a band.  The public areas all have wide cinema-sized projection screens for people who don’t have TV’s to watch the game.  Everyone stops working and the streets are deserted for the duration of the game.  Any suggestion of doing something productive while the game is going on is met with stares of incredulity.

On Sunday, I woke up from my (now increasingly regular) afternoon nap to the sound of extremely loud fireworks outside my bedroom window.  As should be to no one’s surprise, regulations on the sale, distribution, and use of fireworks here are much more lax than in the US.  It’s really easy to get your hands on something that when you light it makes a really, really loud sound, and also has a pretty good chance of blowing your hand off.  But I guess that’s part of the fun.  Because of the buildup for the festival de São João (festival of Saint John), fireworks have been going off during the day and night with increasing frequency since I arrived here a few weeks ago.  The World Cup games only add to the reasons for setting something off that is guaranteed to deafen anyone within 10 meters or so.  Before the games there is a crescendo of loud bangs, and even the smell of gunpowder in the air, until the game starts and you here everyone cheering in the streets and in their homes.  Then during the game, if there is a goal scored by Brazil (or sometimes even if there’s not) fireworks go off everywhere and you can hear everyone yelling and cheering in their respective apartments or wherever.

During the game vs. Croatia, when the first (and only) goal was scored by Brazil, my neighbor’s kid (I was watching the game at his place because I don’t own a TV) ran outside to light some unbelievably dangerous-looking minibomb.  I, having no access to this kind of firepower in my own country, ran after him of course.  Unfortunately because it had been raining all freaking week it was nearly impossible to get a match lit let alone ignite the firecracker-thingy.  The kid tried a couple of times unsuccessfully, until I wrestled the matches and 2 remaining bombs out of his hands to show him how it was done.  After a number of unsuccessful tries and lots of swearing in both Portuguese and English, I gave up and so did he, and we ran back into the apartment to watch the rest of the game.

The next game is Thursday, versus Japan.

Brazil's first world cup game today vs. Croatia

2006-06-13T11:34:00.000-04:00

Today is the first time Brazil plays in the world cup games.  Let me clarify that: today is the first world cup game for Brazil that I have any awareness or care about, since I’ve never had any inkling to or idea how to follow sports.  Until now, of course, because in Brazil *everybody*, and I mean *everybody*, is absolutely fanatic about it.  Old ladies.  Pimps.  Kids, their parents, teachers, and even their pets.  I’m wearing my one green and yellow shirt that says Brasil, not because I thought it would be cool but because one of my friends strongly suggested it, as if I might get beat up if I didn’t.  So if you see a picture of me later on looking about as American and/or non-Brasilian as possible, but wearing my Brasil shirt, keep in mind that I was only doing it for my own safety.  And because some hot Brasilian girl I know said it would be cool.

From what I’ve heard (I haven’t been there yet), there’s a huge public television set up in Pelhourinho where everybody is going to watch the game.  That’s a short walk from where I work, but today it is freaking pouring rain out, like it has been for the past week or so.  Which from what people say is out of the ordinary.  One guy told me that once it started raining at the beginning of June it wouldn’t stop for at least a month, and based on what we’ve seen so far that’s looking like a pretty accurate prediction.  But according to everyone else this level of unrelenting rain is very much out of the ordinary.  It doesn’t really bother me a whole lot except for the whole part about getting wet.  It can be pretty heavy at times, too, so it only takes like 5 seconds between the door and the car to get pretty thoroughly drenched.  On the bright side at least you’re not really cold once you get wet, at least by New York standards.

There’s a ton of things that have happened since I’ve been back (between 1-2 weeks, can’t remember exactly) that I should write about but don’t know if I have the time here to do it.

The second or third day I was here I was in the city of Feira de Santana (for the second time), about an hour outside Salvador.  Feira is about as third-world-looking a city as you could get.  Wandering around the marketplace makes me feel like I’m in an Indiana Jones movie.

There’s something I’m allergic to in the apartment I’m in right now, which is where I was living when I left.  I developed this skin rash which isn’t real serious but which itches like hell, like bad poison ivy.  I’ve been spending way too much time just trying to figure out what the *hell* it could be that’s making me itch, and of course there’s an infinite list of things it could be.  I went with a friend from work yesterday to a health clinic, just to see if I could get some relief and maybe an idea of what the problem might be, but as expected the doc didn’t have any more idea than I about what might be going on, but he did proscribe a bunch of things.  So now I have about 3 different types of girly lotions, all of which could, as far as I know, be toothpaste, to put on my rash.

I went to what I believe may have been Salvador’s first Heavy Metal music “festival” at the Rock ‘n’ Rio café at the Aeroclube with my friend Viny.  My standards of expectation were pretty low but it was pretty bad, since there were some death metal bands which just plain sucked.  Or maybe I’m just getting old.  The scene was a little piece of home, though, in a time-warp sort of way.  Imagine a crowd of Brazilians in eyeliner wearing Iron Maiden shirts (myself included – the shirt, not the eyeliner) and you’d have some idea of what the scene was like.  It’s probably better that you have someone like me to report on such a surreal scene than to come out here and see it.  Iron Maiden in Iceland was much, much cooler.

back in BA

2006-06-01T12:58:00.000-04:00

I'm back in Buenos Aires, only for a day since I leave for Brasil tomorrow. I was in the States for around three weeks, to attend my brother Joe's (congratulations, Joe!) graduation from college, meet up with friends in New York and Maine, and even do a little (gag) business networking. The most frequent questions I got while I was home were the following, from most common to least:

Why aren't you tan?
Are you going back to work when you come back in November?
How many women did you sleep with?

The answer to the first is that I was in Buenos Aires which isn't tropical like Brasil, and since it's autumn here it's actually pretty cold (60 degrees and partly cloudy, right now) there weren't a whole lot of opportunities to get sun and/or go to the beach. But even when I was in Brasil I didn't get very tan unless I tried very hard since I was doing a lot of work inside and lying on the beach getting a tan, while it has its perks, to me is just really, really boring.

The answer to the second question is that I have no idea. I'm keeping all options open, and there are some very good prospects for when I come back, but who knows if they'll be there or where my head will be when I get back. A lot can happen in 5 months. But also nothing can happen in 5 months, so the only way to find out is to wait. I have been sort of poking around at graduate programs in Spanish/Portuguese language and literature. This is sort of a separate thing from work since I'd most likely still take a job somewhere if I went back to school.

And the answer to the last question seems like a Catch-22. If the number is low, then I'm a loser and everyone will know about it within days, and if the number is high then I'm a man-slut and everybody will know about it within days. While I'm as vain as the next guy, the idea of me being the subject of this kind of gossip is nauseating at best. My standard answer for this question is a knowing smile and nod and, "The women in Argentina and Brasil are *very* attractive" which of course is exactly true.

Buenos Aires is LOUD

2006-04-19T20:42:00.000-04:00

NOTE: The following blog entry is available via audio (read by me, lucky you) at
http://www.drycellar.net/podcast/19-04-2006.mp3, and additionally via podcast at http://www.drycellar.net/podcast/rss.xml. Please understand that these are quite experimental, beta, or whatever at this stage and neither the writing nor the reading is that great. If you want to laugh read http://partyinpangrati.blogspot.com. I should mention that I was able to mix in a song on the end of the last one (4/19) which I am pretty freaking proud of and think is pretty funny (that's one of us). So enjoy, or if you don't, sorry, you get what you pay for.

You might not guess it, but in Buenos Aires, 80s music is a pretty big deal. I, being a big fan myself, have no problem with this, but there's something a little skewed in an anachronistic kind of way when you see people dressed in very modern clothes but the soundtrack is always 80s.

I guess it helps a little that some 70s fashions, maybe even late 70s or early 80s, appeared to have reemerged (everywhere, not only Argentina) as well. I´m talking about Puma sneakers, and pants and jeans that aren't necessarily bell bottoms but definitely make references to bell bottoms.

So I'm all for the 80s music. But one thing that I'm not into is the level of noise generated by traffic, buses primarily. Maybe because the streets are more narrow, like in Europe, and the buses and cars are so close to the curb and me when I'm walking on the sidewalk. But MAN, those things are freaking loud. Are mufflers really that expensive? It seemed like the double-sized tandem buses in NYC were always much quieter, although I do seem to remember that they're pretty loud if you sit in the back seat. And maybe everything in NY is already loud so you don't notice a bus so much, but I don't think this is true.

I've noticed sort of a general trend in South America, first in Brazil and now here. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of concern about people's "right to peace and quiet" like we have in the States. Maybe I'm spoiled, but peopole here and elsewhere on the continent seem to have the nerve to, say, start jackhammering pavement right outside my window at 3am, whereas in the States that kind of thing is generally frowned upon, at least in my experience.

It could also be that I have no job now an have time to notice things and get annoyed at them, which is sort of a natural progression for me. I seem to remember that when I worked I felt quite comfortable knocking complainers for having "too much free time to worry about anything important."

podcast

2006-04-18T15:29:00.000-04:00

Did I mention how cutting-edge I am? This post is accessible as a podcast (http://www.drycellar.net/podcast/rss.xml) or a direct audio download (http://www.drycellar.net/podcast/18-04-2006.mp3). If you don't know what a podcast is then you should probably get the hell off my site and go stick your head in the nearest trashcan (I'm not kidding! Let's go! To the trashcan!). If I don't get too many people telling me it sucks (which is actually quite likely since I have such a low readership as far as I know) I might even make the podcast a regular thing. Or I'll just keep goofing off and do neither podcast nor blog post, which is probably most likely.

Hasta luego. Buenos Aires rocks.

ah, the joys of homestay

2006-04-08T17:50:00.000-04:00

I have determined that my homestay 'family' are in it for the money, because no other explanation makes sense, and because it's the simplest (occam's razor).

My sister suggested that they probably think "He's the best homestay dude we've ever had." That's probably true, because I'm sure to never be there, and I've gotten up everyday before them so they've never had to make me breakfast (which is one of the 2 meals a day I'm supposed to be getting for my U$130 aweek).

The other night, I think it was Wednesday, the mom (Liliana) got home kind of late. I don't know what the hell she does, I think nothing (kind of like you, Anne-Marie), and this supports the "in it for the money" theory. She banged around the kitchen for maybe 30 minutes and then told me dinner was ready. In this particular case dinner consisted of two hamburger patties and a CRAPLOAD of powdered potatoes. I understand that maybe she's got stuff to do (that's not true, I don't think she does anything), but powdered potatoes? What is this, the army? Jesus, lady, try to at least fake an effort.

I also heard that Argentinians won't touch ground beef because they're such connosieurs with all the beef. I have no idea if that's true or not but it sort of added insult to the whole thing.

She made up for it the next day with a huge steak, which I ate all of because in Brazil it's pretty bad to leave food on your plate. Afterwards I felt like a fat pig, which is what I was.

And then today I woke up late (9am) and when I was about to leave someone buzzed the front door. I waited for someone else to answer it but no one came, so I waited for whomever was buzzing to leave. But after about 15 minutes of persistent buzzing every 2 minutes or so,with me talking to myself in the mirror repeating the phrase "I can't believe I'm going to have to deal with this bullshit," I was thinking maybe someone forgot their keys, so I answered it and it was two peasants (you know what I mean). I explained to them that I was a student and I didn't speak Spanish, and that nobody else was home. So what did they do? They freaking went off in Spanish as if I was a freaking Spanish literature scholar. I actually understood a lot of what they said (but I didn't want them to know that) which was that the kid (I think he was with his mom) was there to do yard and housework, and that Liliana said she'd be home, which she wasn't. I gave them Liliana's daughter's cell phone and I left them there, like 2 turds.

So then I come home around 4pm, to take a shower and crash, and I hear both women are home. The daughter, Valeria (yeah, she's hot) locks herself in her room whenever she's home, so whenever the mom wants to talk to her she has to knock over the sound of punk rock and whatever other quasi-rebellious music coming from the room. This time Valeria was asleep or something, because I heard Liliana knock for about 15 minutes at 2 minute intervals (yes, again), and I was like, these people are trying to drive me nuts with the knocking and the buzzing. I wanted to run out there and just be like "JUST BUST IT OPEN" but I didn't have the balls, and they wouldn't have understood me anyway. But I bet Valeria would have opened the door then :).

So later on I came out of my room to ask Liliana if she'd gotten in touch with the peasants, and as I was like "Hello", I saw behind her through the window to the garden that the kid was working there. So then I tried to explain that he and his mom were there earlier and I wanted to make sure they'd gotten in touch with her, which they obviously had but I'd already started talking and I didn't know how to back up. I tried to bail with an "ok no problem" but she was like"what, what?" so I tried to explain again and she said, "You mean, what do you do if someone comes to the door and there's nobody here?"So in a continued effort to bail I was like, "Yeah" and she said don't let anybody in, which is obvious. So it's confirmed that the American is a moron.

I should add that I originally signed up for a shared apartment with other students, minus the family, but apparently 3 weeks is too short a time for the school placement service I went through to get their shit together, so I had to start with the homestay. It seemed OK after the first day or two, because they were nice, but then they just freaking disappeared and started doing weird things like feeding me powdered potatoes. The people at the school were like, if you want to change, you can do it any time and it's no problem. No problem for them, maybe, but I'm the one who has to drag out my massive bag of luggage while the two women stand by the door spitefully, arms crossed and not helping. Because of my fear of that scene, and because of the chance, however minute, that the girl's boyfriend might dump her between now and next Sunday, I'm going to try to hang in there.

Buenos Aires

2006-04-07T14:52:00.000-04:00

I'm in Buenos Aires now, and somewhat settled, so hopefully the temporal distance between blog posts will be a little shorter from now on. Maybe not. Who cares.

I'm here for at least the next couple of weeks, at least, and maybe longer. I have a week more of (Castilian) Spanish classes, and then who knows what's going on after that. There's a voice inthe back of my head (one among a chorus) telling me I should go to Venezuela, the new anti-Bush Mecca (that's a loaded phrase) and I guess I should decide pretty quickly since airfares definitely aren't getting better with age.

I just saw 3 cops on the sidewalk next to a parked Fiat compact cop car with the blue lights on. It looked like they'd just resolved some problem or other, and they were saying goodbye. OK, no problem. Except they gave each other cheek kisses goodbye. Not a recipe for establishing authority among the civilians, if you were in my country, but hey, I respect cultural differences. Definitely different than Brasil and the States. But other than that I could almost be in New York. Or maybe Paris is a more accurate comparison, because the coffee / cafés not only kick the ass of anything in Salvador, but NY definitely has some catching up to do on Europeanization as well, if that's their aim, which I'm guessing at this point it probably isn't.

And the very European-seeming Argentines (if anyone read this blog I'm sure I'd be offending someone at this point) may not be terribly economically astute, but they sure know cofee. I'm sure that being 5 months in the coffee creativeness wasteland that is Brazil is clouding my judgement, but you take a look at a cafe menu here and there's a minimum of 10 different ways of getting coffee served, without even resorting to making up stupid names like "frappucino" (which I have refused to ever say out loud).

A cappucino like you would get in New York is called "café con leche" (that means coffee with milk) in Buenos Aires. A cappucino in their terms is the layered drink you get in a clear, tall glass with a stem that's made especially for cappucino.

And, as is usual for me, I'm totally going overboard in an effort to overcompensate for 5 months of substandard coffee. Moderation has never been my forté. After Spanish class today, I was eating at a café / pizzeria when 2 other students, a German woman (big surprise) and a pre-med student from Atlanta. I had an espresso before and after the pizza, at which point the Doc said "Now I know you're addicted to caffeine", as if this wasn't the first time it had crossed his mind. We've known each other 4 days. But I'm happy that he's comfortable being honest with me. Tell you what, Dr. Hipguy - thanks for the unsolicited diagnosis, but in the future keep it to yourself. Let's try (both of us) hanging around with me after 24 hours sans caffeine and see what kind of psychotic rampage results. It'll be fun because Gretel here can watch me jam the stack of orange napkins down your throat. O wait - sorry - esophagus.

Belch after dinner when you meet the parents?

2006-03-31T08:05:00.000-05:00

Ivanildo and Jamesom (motoboy) and I had a conversation earlier this morning where we debated which cultures it was acceptable to burp in publicly. I think Jamesom (he talks fast so I don't understand everything) said that in Japan and China it was either acceptable or expected, or rude to not do it, after a meal. I could be wrong about what he said and even if I did get it right definitely don't quote me or him on it. I could research it but I have a lot of stuff to take care of before I head to Buenos Aires (at 7am tomorrow, sigh ...).

Our conversation began because Ivanildo let out an enormous belch while we were sitting around doing work (or in my case, pretending to do work) in the office. I didn't even really notice, but then he said (in English), "I'm sorry, Matt" in a poignantly insincere voice. He then attempted to defend himself by saying it was acceptable in his culture. I asked him if he would do it the first time he went over to his girlfriend's parents house, and he admitted he probably wouldn't. We agreed that after the first time it's fine. Jamesom said that in some or all cases he would be comfortable doing that, although I'm not sure if I completely believe him. Anyway.

Ivanildo's son Matheus told me two days ago that the people here were planning a surprise party for me and Adriana, whose birthday it is today or approximately today. I'm trying to pretend like I don't know what's up, although it's hard to fake for me.

And last night Cintia told me that when I talk my eyes bulge out, or rather, I have big eyes. She said also that I use a lot of facial expressions to communicate, presumably to compensate for my lack of language skills. This is in striking contrast to what my American friends have seen/heard, which is a monotone voice accompanied by an equally bored/jaded/expressionless face.

news

2006-03-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

Today is the 457th birthday of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where I have lived for the past 5 months.

The first Brazilian astronaut is going into space very soon. He said he was going to bring a Brazilian flag and soccer jersey with him in the hopes that the national team would win the World Cup. How bringing a jersey into space will help with this is of course a little unclear, but I'm sure the thinking is that anything helps.

And for those of you who were on the edge of your seats about what I'm going to say next, the winner of the most recent round of Big Brother Brasil is a Bahian woman, for the second time in a row. She gets to take home R$1 million. Sweet. Or as they say in Brazil, "Otimo".

And I'm leaving for Buenos Aires on Saturday (April 1). I should be there maybe 4-5 weeks and then I'll be back in the States for my brother's graduation from college, and then back in Salvador at the beginning of June for a few months at least. I'm not willing to look much farther into the future than that. I'm very much looking forward to European-style coffee and different street smells.

Colgate helps sex life

2006-03-24T09:30:00.000-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning with what looks like either a large bug bite, poison ivy, or some other sort of irritation in the left corner of my mouth. People at work say it’s probably a spider bite. Regardless of what it is, I don’t like it and so I wanted to do something about it. Adriana, a friend at work, who is known to be a big fan of home remedies and other such useless things, told me that she had something to put on the corner of my mouth to make it look less freakish. After disappearing into her cubicle for a minute, she came back with a small bottle of Colgate gel toothpaste, which she claims will fix pretty much anything (one of my friends at my real job recommends Viagra for all of the same problems). So I quite stupidly decided to humor her, since I know nothing about dermitology, and the result was that I had a patch of blue gel toothpaste smeared in the corner of my mouth for about 5 minutes, with about 3-4 coworkers laughing and pointing, including Adriana. After she had caught her breath, another coworker went into her purse and got something that actually helps for this kind of thing. I very quickly rubbed off the blue stuff and put on the stuff that might actually help. My face still felt cold from the toothpaste and smelled like it too. I brought the house down I mockingly suggested a little later that the toothpaste might even help people out with sexual problems.

what is wrong with you people?!?!

2006-03-15T10:45:00.000-05:00

One thing that just bugs the living bejeezus out of me is when people can’t find things to keep themselves occupied. How hard is that? I mean, just think of what you want to do and do it. I’ve never had trouble with that. I guess some folks don’t know what they want, or maybe aren’t creative enough to find something interesting out of everyday life (which I can sympathize with). But I find that so many people, in so many different places, in every stage of life and on a daily basis are looking to others to provide them stimulation, and they’re very often disappointed.

The guy next to me at work is playing computer Solitaire for the 10^th time in the past hour. I want to turn to him and say, “Your life is shit.”

a glimpse at family life in Pernambues

2006-03-11T10:48:00.000-05:00

My boss is my across-the-hall neighbor. He got me the apartment for the month, which was quite convenient, uncomplicated, and cheap, at least from my point of view. I should point out that he's really not my boss because I don't really work there, since I'm a volunteer. So at least he can't fire me, if, say, I decide to hammer a poster to the wall (unlikely, but possible) at 2am on a Tuesday. It's a real comfort knowing that.

He always invites me over for dinner. And I always accept, even though I always feel weird doing so, because I have no food, since I have no refrigerator. They eat pretty much the same thing every night, with slight variation: beans with meat and spices mixed in (feijao), rice, sometimes spaghetti with red(dish) sauce, and either chicken or sometimes the frugal side of pig or cow parts. Luckily for me I'll eat just about anything, especially when it's free. If you don't like beans, though, and you live in Bahia, you're sort of out of luck. Luckily I do. One of my Bahian friends doesn't like seafood, which is like saying you're from Italy and don't like pasta. Bummer.

Living in close proximity to my boss/friend and his family provides me with an interesting glimpse on day-to-day life of a Bahian family, which is essentially the same as an American family except none of the men are ever wearing shirts (so it's like Kentucky, I guess). My boss/friend, Ivanildo, has two sons (ages 5 and 10) and a 2-month old daughter. Every night he comes home and dons the same pair of blue oversized Bermuda shorts. He then spends the rest of the night (in his shorts only - no shirt or shoes) yelling and swearing at his sons, and playing with some electronic gadget or trying to get his their toys (Power Rangers, toy trucks, a yo-yo I gave them, etc.)to work. Don't get me wrong, he's a great Dad, but it's one of those households where as long as you're not a kid swearing at an adult, it is acceptable for the adults, and to a lesser degree, the kids, to use profane language. For instance, he taught his son Matheus to say "shit" in 3 different languages: English, Portugues (merde), and German (schise). Education, of course, is always paramount ;).

moved to Pernambues until April 1

2006-03-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

So I moved into a new neighborhood, called Pernambues, which is the most populous bairrho in Salvador. It’s pretty poor, to say the least. By American standards it’s a slum but by Salvador standards it’s a few steps up from a favela (slum). Lots of people live in cheaply and quickly built brick buildings (complexes?) that look as if a swift gust of wind could knock them over without a problem. Some of them don’t have windows, just window holes, and doorways without doors. Mine, luckily, has a door. And isn’t too bad, except there’s nothing in it. Except a lot of mosquitoes. Which have been experiencing a pretty high mortality rate since I moved in. As has the skin on my feet and lower legs. Anyway.

I have a twin-sized mattress on the floor of my bedroom with no pillow and a sheet that stretches over it. My landlady also gave me a couple of sheets to use as covers which I haven’t really used because it’s been hot. The air circulation, too, isn’t nearly as good as my last place, which was on the 9th floor and had a lot of wind. This place is on the first floor, and for security purposes it’s not a real bright idea to keep the windows wide open all the time. Most of them have Compton-style security grates (that look like you’re in jail) on the front to keep out fat people.

The place wouldn’t be too bad if there was anything in it, which, unfortunately, since I’m only there until April 1st, there isn’t. I think I’m painting a worse picture of it than it really is – the tiling in the bathroom is nice as hell, as well as the kitchen. It has two clean bedrooms and the rent is cheap as hell (~$166/mo). It has two bathrooms, although only one has a working shower and the other the only working toilet, so you can’t do the one-stop shopping you’re used to when using the bathroom in the morning. Plus the wiring on the shower that works is faulty. I know this because when I tried to adjust the head I got zapped. Not bad but I didn’t want to do it again.

That reminds me – I’ve been shocked by what I believe is no more than 110-120 volts on three separate occasions, in three separate places, within the past month or so. The first was at my last apartment when I tried to plug in my hair clipper in the outlet next to the mirror in the bathroom. ZAP. Ow. No more using that socket. The second time was when I tried adjusting the shower head in the bathroom of my new apartment. It didn’t feel quite as strong that time, maybe because my nerves were already fried from the other place. But then I was over at a friend’s house (SHE lives in a slum – another story) and when I took a look at her computer to try to fix the sound, I got zapped pretty good, probably around 5 times, because it took a while to fix. The clue should have been in the net of power cables that were hanging down from the ceiling, particularly the one that came down to rest on her bed with approximately 6 appliances jammed into it through the use of (quite unsafe, I might add) splitter adapters.

“Are you getting shocked?” she asked when she saw the look on my face around the 3rd time it happened.

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” I said.

post-carnival reverie

2006-03-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

Carnival ended last week, and for most of the locals it was a welcome relief. And to be honest with you, 6 days and 7 nights of all out partying is a bit much even for the biggest diehard partyer. Plus all the music is really freaking loud, so I'm sure there's plenty of people with permanent ear damage as well. Most of my friends who live here skipped town for the entire week or longer, and although I had a great time being here (you have to try it at least once) I can see why years and years of this would eventually wear you down.

Last Thursday, after dropping my brother off at the airport, I caught the Excutivo (that's what they call a public bus with air conditioning) back to the neighborhood where I live. I saw another guy waiting outside the bus while he was polishing off some acarajé, which, granted, is pretty messy to eat, before jumping on just as the driver took off. I noticed this guy because he was tall and had hair that I would term "high-maintenance", in the sense that it was long, sort of dredded but maybe more like Sammy Hagar's, and he kept running his hands through it. You know, like a girl. And he was clearly conscious of being an "ultra-hip dude", what with the hair, sunglasses, wildly colored t-shirt and bermuda shorts, and Nikes.

So who gives a crap about this guy? Well, it gets so much better. As the bus pulled away I had my head turned towards the window and was listening to my generic iPod-copy MP3 player. It's called a Wolverine, presumably which means in a contest it would eat an iPod with no problem. The guy sat down a few seats in front of me and to the left. I turned from the window to look to the front of the bus when I saw out of the corner of my eye that Ultra Hip Dude had the front of his hair caught in something that looked like a cell phone. I tried to get a better look at it, and decided that it wasn't a phone. I still don't know what it was, but my best guess is that it was a transparent green plastic toy, size and shape of a cell phone, that had a propellor at the top. And of course this is what this jackass had his hair caught in. I started to laugh, quietly, but the laughing got out of control quickly enough that I had to turn back towards the window and cover my mouth so he wouldn't hear me. A couple of times he threw a nervous glance over his shoulder to see if anyone had seen what was going on. Time dragged on into a good five minutes or more, and it seemed like that his hair was pretty much epoxied to the propellor toy. He must have tried it out with his hair too close to it, and it got caught and wrapped around the propellor. Which of course is awesome. But seriously, he's lucky he didn't hurt himself.

Anyway, ten minutes later I'm thinking to myself, OK, he must be unstuck by now. I looked back over at him. Nope. Still stuck. I started immediately laughing out of control but luckily he didn't hear me. At this point we were both getting worried about what would happen when he got to his stop, or worse, what would happen if the bus filled up, because that thing was really in there. As time passed he was getting more nervous and looking over his shoulder more frequently.

Eventually I decided to get on with my life and forgot about the guy. A little while later I saw that he had escaped, and was looking very cool again (phew). It was sad to have to leave my brother at the airport because we had such a good time over the past week, but this guy made up for it a little. I should mention too that he looked about age 40.

Carnival day 2, when the foreigners really start freaking out the locals

2006-02-26T08:36:00.000-05:00

So, we went out with our first (of two, the other was last night, Saturday the 25th of February) bloco on Friday night, and it was awesome, much better than anyone could have even described. It was officially the second night of Carnival but the first big one. My brother Anthony and I met some other English-speaking folks that I know and we went downstairs to where (quite by chance) the float / truck for our bloco, called Eu & Você (Me and You) was parked. There’s a band that plays with each bloco – ours was Timbalada, which to the people who know what they’re talking about is the best one of the Salvador Carnival bands. The most popular, by far, is Chiclete com Banana (Banana-Flavored Gum), but their crowd is a little more obnoxious and less concerned with good music and more with drinking and having a good time (and hey, no arguments with that here).

So to briefly describe the way things work (full details are at http://bahia-online.net/Carnival.htm), the most secure and participatory way to enjoy carnival in Salvador is to buy a t-shirt for a particular bloco (ours cost around $65 and $75 for Friday and Saturday night, respectively) which lets you stand, dance, drink, make out, and otherwise party within the bounds of what we in the States would call something like a float. There are usually two huge trucks, the first with a big sound system and the band, and the second with bathrooms, concessions, and emergency facilities, which people gather around and walk the Carnival route with. There are two routes, Avenida / Campo Grande and Barra / Ondina, of which we were a part of the second. The Barra / Ondina route runs right past my apartment. The people with the t-shirts (there were probably around 2000 in Eu & Você) walk with the floats inside the boundary of some ropes which are held by security personnel outside the trucks. Along the way people watch the parade from either the street or things called camarotes, which are like balcony seating that is temporarily installed along the street for Carnival. You have to pay to stay in the camarotes, which have things like dance floors, drinks, air conditioning, and seating. These are for the people who prefer to take the less participatory (*cough*, lame) route of enjoying Carnival. In the Campo Grande route I also saw some bleacher seats that were set up there, and I’m certain you had to pay for those as well, although I’m also sure that they weren’t nearly as comfortable as the camarotes.

I’ll try to just point out the highlights because there were so many great things and I’m sure I’m forgetting most. Also you just have to be there. My favorite, I think, were a couple of goofballs who decided to try doing capoeira without putting their beer cans down first. Then there were the equally drunk guys who decided to have one guy pull along a kids Barbie-themed suitcase (with a pull-out handle) and drag it while some other huge guy rode it. Nearly all of the 10 or so really drunk guys who later tried to ride it ended up falling flat on their ass. Things got a little crazier in the last half of the route, when people were feeling the effects of the beer ("I am definitely drunk now", said one of our companions). Certain songs had cues which we we foreigners were unaware of, at which point people would run at full speed towards the front of the float, and then towards the back. A big gap would open up between both ends, and people would be laughing and yelling, and rightfully scared, until the cue came along, the music turned up, and everyone raced to wherever it was they were supposed to go. You would see a crowd of a thousand or so people stampeding towards you, which meant you had essentially no choice other than to run with them, stumbling and pushing people in front of you. To some this may sound horrifying, but it was really, really fun.

But before all this, while we were assembling at the meeting point for the bloco, there were people who were (for a fee, nothing here is free) painting people’s arms, legs and faces with white war-looking paint designs, something that the drum players for Timbalada do when they play and which people in the Timbalada blocos are known to do as well. Then around sunset, which you could see directly to our right over the ocean, the drum players all showed up above us on the float, decked out in the aforementioned white paint designs and looking totally, totally cool. After a few sound tests the guys started drumming and one of Timbalada’s three (one woman and two men) singers came out, dressed in green tights and a pimp-style coat, and sporting a huge, fake afro (it looked better than it sounds), and the crowd (it was now a crowd, strangely) in and around the float roared and started dancing and jumping up and down, and we started walking up the hill, very slowly, towards Farol da Barra.

The bloco wasn’t nearly as packed or violent or disorganized as I had expected, although I think things may have been different with other blocos like Ana Banana. Most of the time you could just walk along casually (in step to the beat of course) without being hemmed in by a lot of people. Later on, however, things were definitely much more chaotic, and we got packed in like sardines for maybe 30 minutes at a time at least twice. This wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been so many people (read: men) with their shirts of who you could feel sliding past you, lubricated by their (and your) sweat. Needless to say my brother and I showered quite thoroughly as soon as we got back, around 5 hours after we started :).

One other cool thing that they do from the camarotes is that they throw little party-favor kinds of things into the blocos, which everyone tries to catch while pushing, shoving, and clawing everyone else out of the way. The party favors were either bandanas with the camarote sponsors’ insignia on them, and in some cases there were cheap plastic soccer-like balls. My brother Anthony caught two. I’m glad he was able to come to Carnival in Salvador to find out what certainly would have been an otherwise undiscovered and therefore wasted talent. He caught the second one when there was this *gorgeous* woman who I could swear was Margareth Menezes throwing Skol (beer) bandandas down at people in our bloco, aimed right at me. I *swear* that I saw the guy next to her look and point at me, and tell her to throw me one. She did about five times, each of which I missed because I’m too short and because my brother pushed me out of the way at least once. He said I could have it but I told him I wanted one that I earned. A few minutes later I recanted and tied it around my head. He said I looked like a cancer patient.

People who act crazy in the blocos are called pipocas (popcorns) because they jump up and down. I had heard this many months before and determined that I wanted to be a pipoca, so I spent a lot of time jumping up and down during the parade and as a result my feet killed when I got back. While most of the Brazilians sang along to the songs while dancing, I spent most of the time jumping up and down with my hands raised and yelling "WOOOHOOO!", which, if you don’t know the words to the songs because they’re in Portuguese, is a good fallback plan. People don’t know for sure if you don’t know the words – maybe you’re just really happy, or drunk, or both.

carnival has arrived

2006-02-24T09:46:00.000-05:00

... and I wasn't referring specifically to the freaks that showed up (i.e., me) a few months ago. This is the Brazilian carnival you hear about going on most often in Rio. But Brazilians and others in the know (such as astute travelers like myself) that the best carnival is in Salvador. And it really is, like the biggest party in the world. More on that later.

Last night was the first night and my neighborhood, which happens to be the center of everything, was packed. People had camped out earlier in the day to get a spot to sell things like food and beer, and when my brother and I arrived from the beach last night around 8 there were crowds of people, mostly younger folks, swarming towards Farol da Barra, which is the lighthouse that's across the street from where I live and is one of the centers of carnival activity.

U2 was also here, I should mention. When I went to pick up my brother at the airport (he's staying for the week) on Wednesday, there were about 20 teenagers waiting to welcome Bono & Co. here (20 people? that's the best you people can do?) along with a bunch of TV cameras. I don't have time to explain now, unfortunately, but the whole superfan / TV promotion combo, complete with the guy who was apparently appointed to rev up the crowd, was humilitating.

One of the few intelligent things I did before carnival started was to buy a plastic stool which my brother and I were sharing to stand up on and look out the tiny ventilation window of my bathroom which faces the street where all of the carnival floats go by. This was pretty cool, because we were able to see what was making the *incredibly* loud music coming from the street and take some mildly lame pictures of people dancing in the streets around the floats.

We were exhausted from the inanely long bus ride to and from the beach (which was almost worth the trip) so we actually went to bed kind of early, despite all the really loud music. I had previously been a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to sleep through it, but you can always count on laziness to pull through - I slept like a baby. And this morning, surprisingly, everything was dead quiet - only the occasional rustling of people sleeping on cardboard on the sidewalk changing position. My brother and I will be participating in one of the blocos tonight, which promises to be *awesome*. There is much, much more to write about, but with him here and all of the other stuff to do, it's hard to keep up with the writing. Much more later.

entomology 101

2006-02-15T06:35:00.000-05:00

On Monday I went to work and was feeling fine until about 10am when I was suddenly just real tired, and had the beginnings of what ended up as a splitting headache.  In addition, I’ve had an on and off cold for the past 3 weeks which is very very minor but doesn’t want to seem to go away.  By the time 2pm rolled around my brain was throbbing and I just wanted to go to sleep, so I left and grabbed a cab (this is rare) so I could get home as fast as possible and do a face plant into my bed.

My apartment is on the 9th floor, and the wind at this altitude (height? I don’t know)  is usually pretty strong.  This is good, because it means my apartment stays cool if I leave the window open.  I’ve never really used the ceiling fan, which is pretty amazing given how hot it’s been here.  One of the great lessons of my time here is that you can live without air conditioning in a tropical climate.  Amazing.

So I got home, threw everything into the corner, stripped down to my boxers (I apologize if that gives you the kind of visual you could have lived without today) and slumped into my bed.  I was maybe 20 seconds from heavy, dreamless sleep when a freaking bug landed on my face.  I did what anybody would do which was to say something like “Ffffmmff” and frantically brushed him off my face.  It turned out to be one of these antlike bugs that show up wherever there’s food, but are about as harmless as can be.  I flicked him off my covers and tried to go to sleep again.

Within 2 minutes I felt another tickling on my arm, and of course it was another one of those bugs.  I swore, and swatted him away too.  Before I could get to sleep another one landed on my face.  At this point it seemed like a pattern.  I looked at the ceiling and yeah, there were a few of them crawling around there, but what were the chances they were all losing their grip and landing on my face?  Not likely, I thought.  And I didn’t really want to get into a deep analysis of the whole situation because my head was throbbing, I was so tired I could barely stand, and so I said f it and tried to go back to sleep and ignore the problem.  But nope, it happened again – another one landed on my face.  And this one had wings.

At this point I realized that they must be flying in the window.  Right outside are a bunch of palm trees and tropical shrubs, which I’m sure make a perfect home for these guys.  The wind must have been blowing them in.  I saw also that the ones with wings would land and immediately drop their wings, which looked to me like some sort of post-adult stage.  Fascinating.  Now get the f out of my apartment and let me sleep.  Save it for the Discovery Channel audition.

What really sucks is that if I closed the window I would lose my wind and the apartment would get hot, making falling and staying asleep more difficult.  At this point the whole situation got to my head and I sort of lost it.  I got my broom, got on my bed and killed all the bugs on the ceiling.  Then I went and found all the ones on the floor and stamped them out too.  “No more flicking, guys!  It’s a showdown now!  You brought this on yourselves!”  Luckily my neighbors don’t understand English.  I wasn’t too far from running in circles in my apartment (in boxers, mind you) swatting at my head and yelling like some sort of lunatic.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  But of course what day and time would the quasi-ants decide to plan their invasion but when the target was most vulnerable.

Eventually I got rid of them all and calmed down a little bit.  They didn’t seem to be coming in the window any more, or at least with less frequency, so I left the window open.  I then repeated the aforementioned face plant, and fell asleep probably within 10 seconds.  I’m sure I had more bugs landing on my face while I was sleeping, but I was so down for the count that it didn’t matter.  Fine with me.

sometimes reality likes to give you a nice boot in the ass

2006-02-13T19:47:00.000-05:00

Well I did something really stupid. Which was to accept the invitation of my coworker Viny to go play soccer with him and his buddies at their soccer club in the neighborhood of Jardim somethingorother (I think Jardim Brasil), within sight of shopping Iguatemi. Granted, he’d been bugging me about it for weeks, and despite my misgivings assured me that there were enough old men and uncoordinated people (apparently one of the normal goalkeepers has some sort of physical deformity) that I wouldn’t have any problem keeping up with them. But what I was most assured by was the unlikelihood that someone like Viny, who is a very easygoing, unperturbable, taking-naps-in-the-waiting-room-in-the-middle-of-the-day-at-work kind of guy, would turn into a screaming, cursing maniac running up and down the field driven by a seemingly endless supply of energy and a passion which he shared only for bad European heavy metal.

As I waited for the bus to Pernambues (Viny’s neighborhood) I think I heard a voice way in the back of my head saying something like “OK lets recap here. You are on your way to play soccer with a bunch of Brazilians. Brazilians.” but I was somehow able to shut him up. This was in part because I was so nervous to get the right bus and find Viny’s house, which it turns out is pathetically easy but I screwed it up last time and didn’t want to have to call him again and tell him what an idiot I was, again, for not being able to find a specific place in the city, even given excellent instructions. On the bright side another volunteer who wanted to come left around the same time and never made it (hee-hee) because he caught the bus to what amounts to a dirt road at the other end of town. And still another voice in my head (I have many) said “Oh come on. What are you afraid of? It’ll be a hoot.” And I smiled and thought to myself, yeah, what am I afraid of? I had forgotten that this was the voice that, when I listened to it without question, quite often got me into situations that went horribly, horribly wrong.

I felt a pang of anxiety when the bus passed what looked like a club field, that was under lights, with guys in quick-change colored jerseys playing each other. I hope that’s not where we’re playing, I thought to myself, somewhat jokingly and laughing to myself (because, come on, that would be crazy). Viny had made the whole thing out to be very informal – I pictured a bunch of guys in shirts and skins playing on an unmarked abandoned field, or something like that. Not anything organized.

I got to Viny’s place where he lives with his aunt (Edilza) and cousin (don’t remember her name even though I’ve asked and heard it at least 10 times – I think it’s Mara). We got ice cream and hung out for a while before going to wait for Viny’s uncle (different side of the family) to come pick us up in Pernambues “Center”, which is one of those centers that’s only a center of anything because somebody put a sign there that says Center. The uncle was late but eventually picked us up, along with about 10 people (his entire family including what looked like his mom) in the back seat of a Volkswagen Rabbit or something similar. I got to sit in the front despite protesting, and Viny sat in the back after physically picking up another one of his cousins who had been sitting there, who looked about his age (18), and simply placing her on his lap.

The minute Viny’s uncle pulled away from the curb the words I had the feeling that I was riding in what could best be described as the Brazilian Millenium Falcon. In the sense that you know there’s no way we’re ever going to lightspeed and it’s loud as hell. And if Archie Bunker was driving it, because that’s who Viny’s uncle most reminded me of. He never smiled until he dropped me off at home at the end of the night (we were both happy for that), and even though I know he was wearing a tank top team jersey and bermuda shorts he still sticks in my mind as having worn a wifebeater and boxers with black socks, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth even though I never saw him smoke. His expression was exactly like Tom Cruise’s in Minority Report when he injects his face with a chemical that makes all the muscles go dead. And luckily, I didn’t feel comfortable enough with my Portuguese to say “Should I get out and push?” My guess is that they would have failed to see the humor.

So we drive up to the field under lights that I passed in the bus on the way there and my heart jumps to my throat … but then we pass it. Only to pull into a different field under lights. Son of a bitch, I say to myself. Actually, I’m a little better with Portuguese now. Filho da puta.

I get thrown a red jersey which lands in my face since the game’s already started and we jump on the field. And immediately I don’t have any idea of what the fuck I’m doing.

Ever have that dream where the pilot of your 747 flight dies from a heart attack and you’re thrown into the pilot’s seat and have to land the plane? Come to think of it, me neither. But about 15 minutes into the game 2 thoughts came to my mind: 1) how fucking long is this game, and 2) I think (I’m not sure, but I think) I am way out of my league here, so to speak.

Let me tell you why I … suck. I’ve noticed, after having been beaten over the head with practical advice on participating in sports and still somehow been able to absorb almost none of it, that a lot of people say, when they’re complimenting an outstanding player, that “S/he really knows how to move without the ball.” Isn’t that nice. Unfortunately for me, I’m one of those people who has no idea how to a) move without the ball, or b) what it means to move without the ball. If is supposed to be running in one direction, I'm at a full sprint in the other direction. If the best thing to do at a certain moment is to cut around in front of the goal, you can be sure that I'm standing with hands on hips right behind the guy with the ball. Needless to say, this kind of behavior doesn't go over well with a bunch of Brazilians who are out for blood, club league or no.

And of course there wasn’t any time to explain that I have a bit of a handicap when it comes to understanding colloquial, adrenaline-fueled, swear-ridden Portuguese. There is one very bad word that is most commonly used as an exclamation, that can best be described as an equivalent to fuck in terms of potency, but the latter seems to be a little more versatile as different parts of speech. I heard this word yelled once every 30 seconds, and more than once it was in reference to something I had done or had failed to do. And it wasn’t like “, that guy (me) scored another goal!”, it was more like “, you’re on the blue team, you stupid idiot!”

So, after an excruciatingly long hour and a half, the buzzer went off and the lights went out, and since I have been on this continent I have never breathed a more deep sigh of relief than I did then. Everybody headed back to the clubhouse to get drinks, and that’s where Viny said, “You played good.” My initial response was, “I’m sorry, were we at the same game?” And he was like, “No, for the first time, you played well.” And I’m thinking to myself, So other people have come here, done worse, and they decided to come back? Not likely.

I know he’s going to ask me to play again next weekend, because that’s just the type of hospitality I’ve been offered here very consistently from day one. And although I’m inclined to give some unbelievably lame excuse for not being able to make it, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. Maybe the whole team will get in a big truck accident and will resort to having to play in wheelchairs, in which case I might have a chance of playing at their level.

cultural exchange well underway

2006-02-09T06:28:00.000-05:00

Cultural exchange is, of course, a clear theme of my volunteering project at the organization I’m at right now, and it was in that spirit yesterday that Ivanildo and I agreed that I should teach him how to curse at his employees in English.  The thinking here is that he would be free to fully express himself without having to worry too much about anybody’s feelings.  And let’s face it, we’d all love to go around not having to worry about people’s feelings – lots of people already do and they’re doing just fine.

The most difficult part of this process, for me at least, was deciding which curse, swearword/phrase or whatever would be most expressive and at the same time most useful in a variety of situations.  So I started going over a number of my personal favorites.  I don’t know if it’s the crowd I’m running with now, or (bad) luck, or what, but most of the mechanical things I’ve encountered in Salvador, from light switches to PCs, are broken in one way or another.  And usually there’s some level of surprise there when something that has every reason to be working just fine craps out (or it’s clear that it crapped out long ago) when you hit the power switch.  This level of disappointment, in my humble opinion, can really be expressed in one way, and that is by saying, in an obnoxiously loud and sometimes overly nasal voice: “What the f*?”

I must admit that not all of my motivation here was truly altruistic.  I know this is hard to believe based on the clear selflessness I’ve thus far exhibited in this particular instnace.  Providing myself with a little entertainment at the expense of my hosts seemed like a relatively victimless crime.  OK, maybe there are a few victims, maybe even potentially as many as 15 (the number of employees) but wouldn’t you rather not know what your boss is saying when it’s clear that he’s pissed at you?  I figure I’m doing these poor bastards a favor, that happens to also be extremely funny (to me) when properly executed.

It took us a good 15 minutes to get Ivanildo to properly pronounce the chosen phrase and with the correct emphasis.  Then he asked what it means, and I kind of had to be honest, which was to say “Nothing, really.  It means ‘What is this?’, when you’re angry, and the last word is a really bad swearword, but its literal meaning doesn’t really apply here.  It’s like saying ‘What is this?’ in a way that lets you know I’m pretty angry.”  A the same time I had to qualify that explanation by saying that people use the phrase all the time, with varying levels of seriousness, so the meaning depended almost entirely on context and could be either really funny or really bad, or both.

So immediately after I gave my explanation and we practiced the chosen phrase a few times, Adriana walked into the office, probably just because she was bored, and Ivanildo belted out with a barely recognizable “Whut tha foc?!”  His pronounciation and emphasis were all wrong, but I told him he was on the right track and with practice he’d get better.  Adriana, of course, barely flinched, since I get the feeling she’s seen it all, especially from this guy (they worked together at a previous job).  After pausing momentarily in the doorway as Ivanildo struggled to half blurt, half spit what to her was gibberish, she walked to the corner where the coffee serving area is and proceeded to make herself a cup.  Apparently she’s used to him yelling gibberish, unprovoked, late in the afternoon.  After all, that office is pretty hot.

The fruits of my labor were reaped, however, when a few hours later Ivanildo and Adriana were in a half-joking, half-serious argument about something I couldn’t discern, and it escalated to the point where they were both talking at the same time and not listening to the other person.  When it was clear that nobody cared what the other said, Ivanildo threw up his hands and yelled “Whot thafoc!”  I laughed for a good ten minutes.

And on the drive home, just as he was dropping me off (Adriana and Edilza were crammed in the back with a bunch of groceries we’d picked up at the Bahian equivalent of Costco) some jackass decided to do a 10-point turn in the middle of the very busy Avenida Sete de Setembro where I live.  While we didn’t have to wait, since Ivanildo, being the “don’t have respect for human life” type of driver that most Bahians are, swung into the oncoming traffic lane around the guy while he was shifting to reverse.  It was still annoying, however, and so I put in my two cents, which was to throw up my hands and yell “Filho da puta! (son of a bitch)”  And apparently my timing and emphasis were correct, or at least partly, because Ivanildo didn’t stop laughing until I’d stepped out of the car a few blocks up.

not everything can be funny, unfortunately

2006-02-08T07:11:00.000-05:00

Every few weeks, a different woman comes into the front office where I work, which is also the waiting area, and asks to speak to the boss.  The only thing these women have in common is that they look tired and are very quiet and shy.  They come to ask for help, and Ivanildo tends to be a little standoffish with them, I think because he has to be prepared to say no, and also because they very often cry and that’s difficult for any man to take, especially when the crying is for a really good reason.  Sometimes he’s able to say yes and sometimes he has to say no, because in order to receive assistance (usually in the form of food and/or school supplies) the family being given assistance has to have both parents unemployed, with children.

Today a woman came into the office and was let in by Alessandra, who comes in in the morning and leaves in the afternoon to work another job.  She’s very thin, with long brown hair, about 25-30, and wears the kind of clothing that an American teenage girl would, which is pretty common for women her age here in Salvador.  She also does the bulk of the administrative work in Castelo Branco and maybe one or two other schools.  The woman who came in was dressed like any mother you’d see on the street coming home from the supermarket, but from what little I could gather I guessed that she had come to ask for food.  I think she had applied already and was following up, because Alessandra then sat down with her and went over some form that had already been partially filled out.  The waiting area is across from my desk (which is “mine” in the sense that I sat down there one day without asking anybody and have remained parked there ever since) and so they were sitting probably 3 feet away from me.  I could hear what they were saying but couldn’t really understand what it was – no surprise there.  I’m at the point where I can now almost always figure out where a word starts and where it ends, but as far as what they mean I’m still for the large part quite lost.  After they’d gone over the forms the woman showed Alessandra something she had hand-knitted in white, which held together a few 2” steel rings.  It was very pretty but still not finished – it looked like it might be a placemat for a dinner centerpiece or something like that.

Soon afterwards, however, the woman started to cry, very quietly.  For a moment I couldn’t tell for sure if she was really crying, and I sort of held on to the hope that she was trying to sneeze, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case.  It was the kind of crying that she was clearly embarrassed about and was trying unsuccessfully to hide, and because of that sounded much more sincere than anyone who is simply looking for sympathy.  Alessandra got up to get her a glass of water, and for a moment she was sitting across from me crying while I was typing at my computer.   I felt pretty useless, and cold, because I didn’t look up.  I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her and I didn’t know what to do.  I also didn’t want her to think I didn’t care but I think I probably came off that way.  Europeans and Americans have a reputation here for being cold, and I’m sure that’s exactly what she was thinking.  It’s mildly comforting knowing that she was likely to have blamed it on my culture rather than the fact that I’m just an unfeeling bastard.

While Alessandra was out getting the water another woman knocked on the door.  Her I recognized – she works for another non-profit organization along the same lines as ours, and this was the third time she’d been here, I think to ask Ivanildo for financial assistance.  The past two times he told her he couldn’t help her (he struggles just to pay their own bills) but apparently she’s very persistent.  She sat down next to the crying woman and said some things to try to comfort her.  She spoke as if she knew the woman from before – maybe she did, and was here to help her get assistance.  The second woman had a constantly agitated, can’t-stop-moving and won’t quit insisting on getting money sort of disposition, which made me a little annoyed at her presence.  It sounded like (again, I couldn’t understand all) she was saying something like “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine” to try to get the woman to stop crying, but to no avail.  The woman stopped crying once Alessandra arrived with the water, but after another half hour or so she resumed.  She stayed only for another 10 minutes after that, and then both women left.

I try to make things sound funny here because I want the (few) people that look at this blog to come back, but obviously it’s not always right to be looking on, say, the bright side of people’s suffering.  The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering, much of it needless, that goes on where I am now and in the world.  Bahia is the poorest state in Brazil, with an estimated 80% of its residents classified as poor.  Minimum wage is something like $300 a month, and there’s many people who would do just about anything to get their hands on that kind of money.  I know that when I get back to the States there will be many things that I no longer complain about, and probably more things that I will be angry about – i.e., other people complaining about stuff that’s just silly when you compare it to what millions of people have to do here just to scrape by a living.

this post not for the squeamish (vermin details)

2006-02-08T07:10:00.000-05:00

I was just now typing on my computer, sitting on my couch, and out of the corner of my eye what did I see but *the* biggest cockroach come slowly walking out from under where the bathroom door attaches to the doorframe.  Not crawling, mind you – this was much more dignified.  Like, Hello, I’m a big fucking cockroach, and I’m going to walk anywhere I damn well please at a leisurely pace.

After the obligatory “Oh … my … god” I looked down at the floor next to me and the plan of action was clear.  Two heavy flip-flops right there.  An arrogantly slow vermin.  In less than a second, after a loud crunch, he was happily (for me) pancaked under the sole of my flip-flop, which I’d used to swat him by hand.  But the horror was still there.  I spent about a minute waving my arms in the air and running in a tight circle uttering a blood-curdling “aaaaaAAAAHHHH!!” because of what I’d just seen and done.

Squishing an inch-long roach you see on the sidewalk under the sole of your foot is one thing.  But when you have to kill a big one, with a lot of force, using a flip-flop that’s in your hand, it almost feels like you’re killing a mammal (maybe a small mouse).  It’s gross not just because it’s a scary-looking bug but because it’s like, a big animal.

pictures of volunteer workplace

2006-02-06T08:15:00.000-05:00

Recent pictures me and the people I work with at the organization I'm volunteering for are here.

next time you're thinking of inviting yourself ... don't

2006-01-30T07:06:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to meet Vinny Saturday night to play soccer (futbol), but I realized about a half an hour before I left to wait for the bus that the whole plan was crap, or as they like to say here, chato.  I was getting on a bus, with a co-former-student of the Portuguese language school who is getting somewhat annoying in his propensity to invite himself along to stuff, to go meet Vinny in Pernambues and then go to Shopping Iguatemi (which is much easier to find than Pernambues) to play futbol.  So I was pissed.  And kept asking myself “Why don’t we just meet at Shopping Iguatemi?  This plan is chato.”  So by the time I’d been waiting along with my freeloading, self-inviting Portuguese language pal (who insists on speaking English all the time – NOT cool) at the bus stop for about 30 minutes with no sign of the Pernambues bus, and multiple buses for pretty much every other neighborhood from here to Recife, I was a little steamed.

I just read that last paragraph again and realize that I write run-on sentences with too many and long dependent clauses.  For the both of you that read this blog, I apologize.  I would revise it if I had the time but recently I’ve had none.  I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing at this point, but hey, it’s reality.  Again, my apologies, and if you continue to read you have my utmost and most heartfelt thanks.

We waited for half an hour, with the other student speaking to me in English and me answering in short, choppy Portuguese sentences.  Finally I was so pissed that I gave up and started speaking English, and said we should find a phone.  I was inclined at this point to bail, but somehow when things go to shit transportation-wise it always seems to turn out OK, so I didn’t give up hope.

To get to Vinny I had to find a public phone that was off the main road because you can’t hear anything on the phone near the bus stop since the buses are so freaking loud.  So I had to walk a good 5 minutes around the corner, out of sight of the bus stop.  This practically guaranteed that once I turned the corner, all 3 Pernambues buses were going to show up, but I was at the end of my rope as far as the waiting went.  Vinny has no phone and lives with Edilza, so I called her cell phone, not knowing if she was going to know what the hell I was talking about because I still have a tough time talking on the phone in Portuguese.  Fortunately I had no problem there, and got Vinny.  I told him the situation and he was like, “No, you still have time.”  I didn’t have the patience or vocabulary to explain to him that we probably already missed the bus and would have to wait at least another 30 minutes or so, by which time the futbol game would have already started.  I asked him if we could meet him at Shopping Iguatemi and he said it was way too complicated.

I really hate to bail but in some situations it’s just better to cut your losses.  I did have a backup plan which was slightly more attractive – I’d read in A Tarde (local newspaper) that the Stephen Spielberg movie Munique (aka Munich) was playing at a few theaters in Salvador this weekend (ironically, one of them was Shopping Iguatemi) – and at this point it seemed like a much more realistic plan, even if I did have to endure going with the self-inviter.  So I gritted my teeth and told Vinny I thought it might be better if we just postponed until next week.  He, being perhaps the most laid back Brazilian I know (and that is freaking laid back) was like, “Sure, whatever.”  But I insisted on beating myself up about it and frantically apologizing at least 10 times on the phone and later the next day when I saw him at Adriana’s for a Spanish-food-party (more on that later I guess).  I’m sure he could have cared less.

I hung up the phone.  We walked to Shopping Barra, which is way closer, to see if it was playing there.  Unfortunately there’s only 2 theaters – one was the Jim Carrey movie and the other was a Brazilian comedy (which you wouldn’t even be able to begin to comprehend sucks so much worse than any American comedy) so we grabbed a bus to what we thought was Shopping Iguatemi.  Turns out it leaves from the neighborhood of Iguatemi.  So we (i.e., the self-inviter) had to ask someone on the bus how to get there, and found out that we’d have to get off and take another bus, basically in the opposite direction.  So after jumping off that bus in the middle of the most busy intersection in Salvador and sprinting across the street to beat the cabs coming down the road thirsty for tourist blood, we caught the right bus and arrived at our destination.  I was so freaking hungry at this point that I had just stopped talking altogether.  The movie started in 15 minutes so I decided to go the health food route dinner-wise, and bought a huge popcorn and a couple of candy bars.

At this point you may find yourself asking the question:  Why would anyone not tell a self-inviting person to just go away.  It’s not like he’s your friend.  And he invited himself ... he’s asking to be told to go to hell.

The answer is that I’ve unfortunately had a lot of experience with self-inviters.  I’m not sure if my experience is similar to others (there’s not a lot of data on the subject as far as I know, anecdotal or otherwise) or if I have some sort of quirk that attracts self-inviters.  I have gotten so annoyed at this type of person at least once or twice that I’ve flat-out told them to get the hell out of my face.  And although doing that can be mildly rewarding in the short-term, I always feel like a complete dick afterwards, usually for years.  In part this is because the phenomenon of the self-inviter is tragic.  The same kind of people are often described of as “clingy”.  They tend to have some sort of minor social problem.  In my co-student’s case I think it’s that he has an ultra-cynical sense of humor, which to him is funny but to humans is insulting, and he’s missing the gene makes him sense that last part.  And he usually does fine in social situations, with the exception of inviting himself places when it’s clear that he wouldn’t be otherwise.  Most people can’t say no.  You might say that he takes advantage of most people’s politeness and so deserves to be told to go to hell, but that’s a fine moral line and my experience tells me it’s better to be on the safe side and not do that.  Although I really would like to.  Unfortunately unless there’s some sort of lucky coincidence which results in the de-escalation of tension (i.e., my level of annoyance) the likely end to this scenario is that I will blow my top and lose it on the guy in a way that makes me look like an irrational maniac.  All I can do is hope that when this happens it won’t be in front of people I know.  Because then you get the “Hey man, you really freaked out back there.  You alright?”  And nobody needs that.

But back to the movie - I should mention that the popcorn had to be the goddam saltiest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.  It made jerky taste like oatmeal.  And the only reason I bought 2 candy bars was because I was in a hurry at the food counter to get my stuff and get a seat, but the jackass selling the stuff, a kid in his early 20s, was exactly the kind of sweet-talker selling the same crap back in the States.  I couldn’t understand (and didn’t really care) a word of what he was saying, but I said I wanted a candy bar with my large popcorn and he said something like “Well, you can get 2 candy bars for 50 cents more” or whatever.  I said I just wanted one, and he gave me a look like I was crazy, and really just didn’t give me an opportunity to purchase the one candy bar, which of course is their goddamn business strategy.  I think that luckily for the both of us I wasn’t willing to get into an argument with him about it, because if he’d been an English speaker I think things might have gotten ugly.

HIM:  You don’t want the second candy bar?  It’s only 50 cents more ... It’s practically free.
ME:  Listen, dickfuck.  If you don’t give me what I ask for, I’m going to take this cup of colored straws from the counter and jam it down your throat, make my own shit back there, and then it will ALL be free.  So just give me what I want.

Like I said, it was probably better that I didn’t understand him and just caved in.

The movie, by the way, was well worth the trouble.  In the sense that I was quite realistically horrified out of speech when it was over.

At this point you may be saying to yourself.

let me give you a scenario of what my life is like

2006-01-25T08:36:00.000-05:00

The following is nearly the entire contents of a note I wrote to my sister this morning. I think she will forgive me for cutting and pasting to here.

Although things here are going well, there of course are always snags. Let me take this opportunity to give you a bit of a scenario of what my life is like. The people at "work" I think are glad enough to have me there that the other day my "boss" told me he thought they (around 15 employees including him) had gotten so used to me being around that it would be strange when I left. This made me feel great. However ...

I've been working on totally revamping their web site, which when I got here would have been a D+ high school science project but which I've demonstrated can be made into a fully functional site that can accept credit cards, get updated daily by them with little or no pain (they were paying R$300 a page previously), do photo albums, search functionality, multiple languages, and freaking fry eggs even. It's all there, I just need the go-ahead from them to switch the page over to the new one (a process which takes around 0.5 seconds). I told them at the beginning of last week I'd like to switch over at the end of last week, and they were like, OK, cool, we just have to have it authorized by the people in Rio.

And of course I've been bugging the shit out of the boss daily: "did you talk to so-and-so ... blah blah blah" and he's always just like, "i still have to talk to him today." I've told them that given the amount of work I've put into it (easily 40-80 hours) I have to get a go-ahead from them before I invest any more, since I don't want to do a crapload more work if they're just going to decide not to do it. And they're like ... OK. But I'm getting the feeling that they're stalling. Which is fine, so I asked multiple times "please tell me what I can change to make it better or more like what you want." And so far nothing from that end.

The work I've done for them so far is something on the order of $5000-$20000 US, which is close to the entire net worth of their operation.

Basically at the end of this week I'm inclined to tell them that I'm going to stop coming in until they decide what to do. Which would just be silly because of all the friends I have there now. And when I listen to that voice that encourages me to do vindictive things, I usually end up doing something really stupid.

I don't think there is any easy way to deal with this. My approach right now is to step lightly, since I did already kind of come in and tell them what we're going to do with the web pages. And I'm sure I'm close to stepping on someone's (or many people's) toes by taking over the whole thing myself. But ... hopefully you can understand my aggravation. Ah, what the hell do I know - based on past experience I'm probably letting all this crap get to my head too easily.

my backyard just happens to be a helipad

2006-01-23T19:53:00.000-05:00

For a couple of mornings in a row I got really annoyed because I was quite rudely interrupted by the sound of a freaking HELICOPTER outside my window. In New York you kind of get used to this kind of thing, but you also get used to it going away. On one of the mornings in question, the helicopter sound seemed to persist for an inordinate amount of time, as if the guy was hovering right out the window. So once the sound started to move away I felt somewhat relieved and went back to reading The War of the End of the Worldby Mario Vargas Llosa (it’s awesome). But then the sound freaking came back, and that’s when I started thinking, well it’s about time the CIA decided to recruit me out here but I thought they were supposed to be a little more subtle than that. Of course this would explain a lot regarding the war and pretty much everything else they were supposed to be doing and apparently, um, weren't.

So at this point I was thoroughly ticked off, and was just like “What the f*?” to the point of where I must have blacked out from being so annoyed and forgot about it until the next morning. But then it happened again and I started to think, “maybe there is a pattern here … “ I’m pretty slow so sometimes you really have to drive something through my brain before it takes hold. Anyway, the morning after that I heard it again, but this time noticed that the sound was coming from the back of my apartment building rather than the front (where it had sounded like it was coming from before but because of the acoustic mayhem caused by the loud noise of a helicopter I couldn’t properly identify). I stuck my head all the way out of the back window of my apartment to mitigate the acoustic effect somewhat, and it turns out the sound was coming from what would be my backyard if I didn’t live in a 9th story studio. There’s a hill out back that’s covered mostly with thick palm trees, and the sound of a helicopter starting up came right from there. After staring for a good 10 minutes I actually saw a guy in a yellow signaling jacket and a rotating helicopter blade.

So it only took me 2 months to notice. Maybe since vacation season is in full swing people are taking the helicopter out for a spin with more regularity, hence me noticing finally.

While this kind of thing may be only mildly interesting to you (not that the rest of any of this crap, i.e., my blog, should be of interest to anyone) it’s of particular interest to me because there was a recent image in a Brazil travel book I read of something like “the rich traveling above the fray of impoverished millions in helicopters, etc., etc.” which to me is a pretty revolting image but I’m finding that a lot of the things that are either joked about or thought to be true by would-be conspiracy theorists here have more truth to them than anyone would want to think.

Through some fluke which I’ll explain elsewhere I met and was invited to visit the ultra-ritzy high-rise apartment of an *extremely* well to do family here in Salvador. I didn’t see a sniper eyeing me through his scope from the top of the building as I rang the front gate buzzer, but I knew he was there. The apartment was the entire floor of a highrise (which had a pool, was immaculately clean, etc.) and would have made David Bowie feel like his Manhattan apartment was a bachelor crash pad in Queens (sorry Queens, but it’s true). None of this would have bothered me so much if the mother of the family hadn’t been an employee of, yup, the local government. Maybe it’s just coincidence but not likely, since government corruption around here (this state, and this country) is well known to be rampant. You wouldn’t expect a clueless idiot like me to come into contact with this kind of reality, but there you have it. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Bahians (even men) sing when they talk

2006-01-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

Bahians sing their words, even the men.  I’ve heard that said about Italians, and it sort of gives you the gist of what the Italian voice sounds like, but here they really do sing, not just talk in a musical way.  It may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not.  It may even sound a bit effeminate on the part of the men, especially in the context of a machismo culture, and to us it definitely is.  But there are a lot of apparent contradictions regarding the machismo and what is and is not considered manly.

The difference between an English speaker like me and a Bahian (as distinguished from a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who doesn’t necessarily sing Portuguese) is that the allowed tonal range of the Bahian is much larger than the American’s.  When I speak (and I never noticed this until now) I keep the tonal or range of pitch pretty steady, meaning it doesn’t detract often from a certain pitch which people call my “voice”.  I may change the volume up or down depending on my mood – quiet for sad or tired and loud for laughing or yelling – but the pitch stays pretty even.

Not so with Bahians.  I’ve noticed that when they get angry (I’m thinking of men here) or start making jokes, their voices get almost as high as if they were imitating the way a woman talked.  Not shrill, because that brings to mind a dissonant quality, and because it’s not necessarily unpleasant to hear, but it’s definitely high, much higher than any American or most European men would allow their voices to go.

Brazilian motto: The immediate need is the only need.

2006-01-20T06:23:00.000-05:00

The other day I watched my pirated copy (they call them “roubado” here – “robbed”) of the most recent Star Wars movie, and spent a few minutes after I’d shut my laptop off basking in awe of how sucky all of Lucas’ new movies are.  I see now why he did episodes 4-6 and then 1-3; if he released The Phantom Menace in ’77 there would have been a bunch of geeky little kids coming out of the theater, pushing up their glasses and saying, “That was like, garbage.”

And speaking of garbage, we got a new (new to us – I think it’s ‘refurbished’) air conditioner in the office today.  Previously our air conditioner was a table fan, so anything is a step up.  The level of incompetence demonstrated by the AC installers was trumped only by the level of incompetence demonstrated by Ivanildo when he tried to put back all the wall and trim installation that the AC guys had taken down.

As he started doing this I asked him “Shouldn’t the AC guys do that, since they took it down?”  He shook his head and gave the international sign for “I’m not waiting around for those morons to come and try to put it all back.”

The lesson for today was that the Brazilian motto for getting work done is “The immediate need is all that matters.”  This is demonstrated in a number of places other than my work area.  The plumbing, for example – you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet (that’s right, welcome to my world … although it’s not as bad as it sounds) anywhere in Salvador because the pipes are too small.  And why are the pipes too small?  Because the attitude when they were installed was, If no one is going to see it, why bother doing a good job?

I was able to see Ivanildo use this philosophy in action as well, for example when he had to move some piles of books over to shove the crappiest, most unstable and rusty ladder I’ve ever seen against a wall to nail up the ceiling trim.  Rather than just pick the stack of books up and place it elsewhere on the floor, he picked them up 3 or 4 at a time (since he had something else in his other hand and didn’t feel like putting it down) and stacked them on some other precariously balanced stacks of books, not even trying to even them up to stabilize things.  And just because by some miracle they didn’t fall didn’t mean that it would take anything more than a cricket running across the top of them (a distinct possibility) to make the whole thing start to (quite annoyingly) slide into the middle of the office.  But who cares if it doesn’t happen when you’re around, right?

While he was doing this I was standing behind him with his nephew Vinny, and I started laughing because it was so blatantly rediculous.  Vinny joined in too, but I get the feeling he was just taking a cue from me, since this sort of activity seemed to be pretty routine judging by the nonchalant way everyone seemed to be just watching and staring while Ivanildo went on a Home Depot Anti-Christ rampage.

Getting back to the ladder – I got on it first, since I way less than Ivanildo and he’s smart enough not to be the first to get on a ladder that looks like it was made during the Depression and barely survived.  And it started to break, so to fix this he took a length of network cable that I told him to throw away since it was defective and used it to tie the faulty ladder step to the ladder so that it wouldn’t fall off while one of us was on it.  “Better than falling off,” he said, referring to the granny knot he used to tie the network cable together.

Ivanildo used this same ladder to tape up a piece of styrofoam he used to block the space above the air conditioner where the wall used to be (and which I guess the AC guys sawed off).  He had his niece, age 13, use the measurements he took by marking a piece of plastic to mark the piece of styrofoam.  So it was no surprise that it was an inch longer than necessary.  But rather than take the 3 seconds or so to chop off the extra inch, he just taped it (packing, not duct) to the wall with the rest of the garbage that was already up there.  Again, it was all going to get covered by part of the trim that overhangs, so unless some drug dealer or squatter is watching from one of the adjacent (abandoned) buildings, no one’s going to see it anyway.

But imagine if you were that squatter.  Would you have the decency to yell across the courtyard something like: “Hey man, that piece of styrofoam’s not flush!  It looks awful from this angle!”  Or would you be one of those antisocial squatters whom all the other squatters say is a dick because you take some sort of secret joy in NOT pointing out your neighbors aesthetic screwups?  God!  You’re such a … dick.

Edilza's BD party continued

2006-01-19T09:48:00.000-05:00

(…somewhat continued from last post) Ivanildo and I headed back to his apartment for Edilza’s birthday / fejoada party last Thursday, after first stopping at the most enormous supermarket in Salvador.  Even by American standards it was huge.  You could buy lingerie and a wide-screen TV in there, even though the focus was on food.

I asked him what should I bring in the form of a quasi-present and he directed me over to a bottle of cheap Merlot, which I put in the fridge when we got to the apartment and never saw it again (I guarantee it’s still there).  For me I also bought some Argentinian maté tea, which if I’d bought in the States I’m sure would have had some sort of elaborate packaging emphasizing the ethnicity of the whole thing, but in this case it was wrapped just like a box of generic tea at home.  That box, too, is now sitting on top of Ivanildo’s fridge and I doubt it’s going anywhere (including to me) anytime soon as well, since I forgot it when I left.

When we got there Ivanildo’s neices were sitting on the couch watching TV, and Edilza was at the kitchen table drinking a beer.  I noticed that she and Ivanildo drank steadily throughout the afternoon and into the evening, and while he was clearly affected to the point of laying down on his back and going to sleep, Edilza’s demeanor didn’t change a whit as far as I could see.  Later on she did lie on the couch with her head on Ivanildo’s neice Lara’s lap (Lara and her cousin live with Edilza while away from home in Central for school vacation), during which time she did smile and talk a little more.  I think she’s at least a little sad, though, and lonely.  All of she and her friends seem to want boyfriends but don’t have them as far as I can tell.  I don’t understand why because Brazilian men are notoriously aggressive and these women are always going out dancing.

Most of the women have grown up either lower-middle-class or just plain poor, and my guess is that it’s tough to for them to find someone they’d consider husband material.  But I should stop before I say something insensitive (if I haven’t already) because I really don’t know why.

No one made any sort of mention of it being Edilza’s birthday, to the point of me wondering if I’d understood right.  But later on an older woman from the neighborhood came by and brought her a small steel dish (looked sort of like an ashtray but she doesn’t smoke) wrapped in green tissue paper.

When she finally got up to go I made a special point to wish Edilza a happy birthday (I probably didn’t even say it correctly) and she seemed surprised (in a good way) and smiled and blushed when I hugged her goodbye.

And since then, she’s gotten a little warmer to me although almost imperceptibly – she now says “Good Morning Matheus” (in Portuguese) every morning, which is a huge step in our relationship.  I of course made sure to subvert the whole thing yesterday when I just happened to be reading The Onion online when she walked in and looked at my laptop screen.  And hey, that’s no big deal, since I don’t get paid and plenty of people goof off here, with or without the internet.  The only caveat was that at the top of The Onion page was a questionnaire / ad that said “Which Man-Thong is the Funniest” (or something like that) with a row of male crotches all wearing different colored thongs.  I didn’t notice this until the door opened and I looked out of the corner of my eye at Edilza, who was in the process of doing the not-so-subtle turn to the left in disgust at the new volunteer who is now clearly extremely gay.

Bonfim festival, fejoada, and chicks with crooked teeth

2006-01-16T12:29:00.001-05:00

I've been really lax in writing to the blog lately, and so out of nothing more than sheer terror I started to write just now. There's been a ton of things going on recently, some of which I've documented elsewhere but which I haven't really posted anywhere public. Anyway, maybe I'll talk a little about those things.

I think partly it's because I don't know exactly how to make all of it funny. Not that it's sad or anything. Maybe I should lower my (already quite low, most people would say) standards of funniness.

Two friends from New York, one Brazilian woman and her husband, coworkers of mine, left yesterday to go back to New York (and work, ha ha) after being here for a week. I love the idea of me, a foreigner, guiding someone around their own country, so I was more than happy to help them out with things to do while they were here. And luckily I think there was much more to do here than they even had time for, which I'm really happy about.

The Bonfim festival was on Thursday. This starts in the morning around 9 am, and something like 1 million people from outside Salvador come to see it. I could tell on the bus to the city center that the tourist index was way up, since there were clueless white Brazilians choking the standing area of the buses and making me late.

(Small aside: this reminds me that Friday morning I got on the bus and an older woman tourist, presumably a holdover from Bonfim, sat down with her friend next to me. I had to sort of shuffle over and put the book down that I was reading, and she was like "Oh, no, don't move because of me." I didn't really care one way or the other but I kept the book down ... until she started talking in my direction. I don't know for sure if she was talking to me or to her friend, but I think she was one of those people who has to fill up every living second by spewing garbage out of her mouth, and this is the kind of person that I truly cannot stand. So I pretended to read my book which was clearly not Portuguese. It is somewhat of a comfort and very useful to not be able to understand, or at least to pretend not to understand what people are saying. I think if I really tried to understand I could have gotten the gist of what she was saying. But I was mercifully able to pretend that wasn't the case.)

So the Bonfim festival parade starts near work, and ends up 8 or so miles (or is it kilometers? I don't remember) later at the Bonfim church which is the most famous of Salvador's 100 or so (I'm not exaggerating) churches. I was told that it is, or once was, very religious in nature, or more so than things like Carnival which I would term as more "drinking" in nature. But from what I saw it was all pretty commercial and in some cases political. There was a group marching that was holding up red communist flags with a yellow hammer and sickle and presumably some other Brazilian mark. And there was the group of "give the land back to the native farmers" people who were essentially protesting - I was told that the government really does not like these folks but has no choice but to tolerate them. Seems like a pretty tough gig to be a poor farmer AND on the government's shit list.

The parade is a bunch of floats and groups, and also just visitors who want to do the 8-mile/kilometer walk, and that's a lot of people (potentially 1 million or more, I guess). I was told it was covered on TV like the NYC Thanksgiving Day parade. And to be honest it was just as repetitive and boring. There's not a whole lot of available variation on the theme of "walking in a huge group in a parade." There were some guys doing what looked like pretty authentic Capoeira, and some guys playing drums that was also pretty cool, but not much else that was noteworthy, and for this reason I watched for maybe 30-45 minutes and then headed over, with the Chefe (boss, aka Ivanildo) to his place for something far more worthwhile, which was our coworker Edilza's (ay-DIW-za's) birthday and fejoada party.

(Another aside: Ivanildo has taken to calling me "Newton" rather than "Matheus", which when you hear him say it is hilarious because he mispronounces it worse than most Brazilians do with Matt (Match). My coworker, when she came by the office with her husband, was taken aback when people were calling me Matheus, saying that my name was Matt. I explained that I'd given up on using Matt here because no one can pronounce it, including most of the women I've gone out with, so like, what's the point. Later Ivanildo and I got to talking about name order and how different cultures derive family and maiden names, etc., and he said that he was confused when on official documents US and/or Europeans put their last name first. I showed him my drivers license, which has things this way. Either this just confused him more, or he likes Newton better than Matheus, but anyway, he's now at least four or five times a day yelling from his office which is adjacent to my (the receptionist's, which I am, essentially, since I'm always getting the goddamn door) office, the following: "NEWTON? POR FAVOR? (i.e., "please come here for a minute so I can ask some trivial question which I know the answer to but will ask anyway because I want to smile when you come in because I think your last name sounds funny")"

Edilza is hands down the coolest chick I know. In Brazil. If the place I work were in any way organized or carried on with the pretense of any sort of legitimate business she would be the office manager. She's very serious and diligent about all of her work, and is extremely dependable, which around here is quite, quite noteworthy. She's also shy as hell and has a bunch of dead teeth. She's like most people around here - grew up without any money to speak of but has the kind of life which I don't think is bad. The word that comes to mind is integrity.

I think she wants a boyfriend, and her shyness betrays a sort of underlying sadness. But when she smiles, and for a moment you get to see those discolored, crooked teeth, it makes my week.

Itapúa praia

2006-01-09T07:24:00.000-05:00

I went to the beach yesterday, for the first time in a while, with some folks from work. And I remembered why I don't go to the beach that much: it's boring. I might be being a bit harsh here because I had as good a time as could possibly have been had talking, making fun of and being made fun of by the people from work. We went to Itapúa beach, which, judging by the amount ot people there, has to be one of the most popular beaches in this hemisphere. All along the beach (and there are miles and miles of it) there are restaurants and cafés, the tables and chairs of which are placed right in the sand only a few yards from the water. Itapúa is particularly narrow so the water is right there, but at the same time it would be nice if there was a little more room between you and the screaming kids and other people splashing around in the water. There are a few much larger, much nicer in my opinion beaches near the airport, which have names like Flamingo and Ipitanga, but they're a 20-30 minute drive away, which is part of the reason they're so much nicer because fewer people have access to them.

Ivanildo picked me up in front of my building around 10am. I wasn't sure if he was going to show because it had rained hard a little bit earlier in the morning, and for an hour or so was completely overcast. The big difference in Bahian weather and someplace like, say, New York, is that in NY you know that if it rains a lot in the morning it's a good bet that it's going to be raining for the rest of the day. In Bahia it can pour for two hours in the morning, and there's still a 90% chance you'll have sunny weather for the rest of the day. Yesterday was a mix - it rained a couple times in the afternoon while we were sitting on the beach, which wasn't a problem as far as getting wet is concerned. We were under a big umbrella and in bathing suits anyways, and it didn't do much more than sprinkle a couple of times. The downside, for me anyway, was that it was tough getting any steady exposure to sun to get some of that desperately needed skin color. I sat in the partial sun for a good two hours, sweating my brains out for a good part of it, and this morning I still look like the whitest Whitey McWhiteguy you've seen anywhere.

I must admit that although I like to swim I am in no way a fan of the seaweed or whatever other plants it was that were choking the water when I went in. There must have been some offshore storm or something because there were washed-up plants lining the beach and underfoot when you stood in the water. I could only stand it for maybe 10 minutes before I felt something wrap around my ankle and decided I was too skeeved out to stay. And then when I went into my pockets looking for my keys, etc., (which I'd forgotten I'd put in the bag I'd brought with me) I got a couple of handfuls of seaweed instead of what I'd been looking for. The folks in the car ride back weren't really impressed, either, when I put my sunglasses on after taking them out of my pockets; it took me a minute to realize that the reason I couldn't see anything was because the lenses were splotched with broken spinach-looking-like pieces of seaweed from my pockets.

One highlight of the beach was our waiter, who sprinted everywhere he went. This looked particularly dangerous when he came sprinting from the food shack and jumped off the 3 or so steps that divide the restaurants' cooking areas with the part of the beach that people sit on. He got at least 3 feet of air one time. And many times he was balancing a tray of drinks or whatever, and was somehow able to take the impact of landing in the hard sand without dropping anything major. I really wanted to stop him at some point and make some wisecrack like, "Pick it up, will you?", since this is one of the few complete sentences I'm able to formulate. In my recent experience, however, it's sure-thing jokes like these which always bomb terribly due to some unknown by me cultural difference, or just as likely, extremely poor timing on my part.

always keep the doorman happy

2006-01-02T10:10:00.000-05:00

I just saw my (off-duty) doorman, Jorge, in the lobby. He was stinking drunk, and I’m quite proud to say that at it was at least partly because of me.

This morning, when I finally got my ass out of the apartment and headed downstairs to try to find a place to make a cheap international phone call to my New York Brazilian friend’s São Paulo cell phone, he was suited up and sitting on duty at the front desk. He gave me this trademark ultra-wide smile shows his exposed rear gums where he had some teeth pulled. I know its not his fault but this makes him look even goofier than he already is, which is a lot. He stuck his hand out with the thumbs up sign (the Brazilian substitute for a wave) and yelled something unintelligible as I passed by. I stopped and turned around and answered him with the word that I know best and use most in Portuguese, which is “What?"

He repeated what he said, but this time it was faster. I managed to glean that he was asking me if I had a good time last night. I said I did and I thought there was about 10k people out there but he said the TV said it was more like 9 or 13k (I didn’t understand which) or whatever. Then he said a bunch of other stuff and I made the executive decision at that point that we were going to go with the “smiling and nodding” strategy with the thumbs up for emphasis.

As I walked out the door I realized that I had agreed to drink beer with him tonight which is a bit of a problem since I don’t drink. So I got all stressed out about how I was going to explain the deal to him. It’s a tough situation, obviously, because I really want to be on good terms with the guy, and for him to ask me to come drink some beers with him is a pretty big step in our relationship, and I wasn’t sure that explaining to him that I couldn’t drink after I already said I would drink with him wouldn’t be offensive to him.

So when I got back he gave me the gummy smile and the thumbs up again, and made some reference to beer drinking, and I explained to him that I didn’t drink. His face sort of fell, and I guess mine must have too, because he took the opportunity to say something like, “In that case, why don’t you buy me some beers?” I felt a tinge of being taken advantage of but I was willing to do anything to smooth things over, so I rushed outside and got him 2 Skol tall boys. Skol is the [insert the shittiest brand of beer you know here] of Bahia, and therefore the most popular. When I came back and handed them to him, I wasn’t sure he’d been serious because he was speechless. Maybe by now he just knows it’s not worth saying anything since I understand around 30% of what he says.

I left one more time and as I passed the desk again he had a grave, near-tears expression on his face and put his hand over his heart to show how much all this meant to him. I got a little teary myself.

Then when I came in about 5 hours later after the Daniela Mercury show a block away (another huge crowd of ~10000) I felt someone following me right after I walked in. After pushing the buttons for the elevator I turned around and there was Jorge, his shirt untucked, bloodshot eyes nearly too shut to see, and swaying back and forth like he might do a face plant into the lobby floor at any minute. He put his hand over his heart again and this time said something that was intelligible not just because of me but because he couldn’t talk, and he hugged me and called me his amigo 2 or 3 times. I almost had to pry him off me and say something like, “OK, Jorge, I have to go in the elevator now so I can go upstairs and sit in my room and stare.”

I should note that while I was writing this and listening to “Feels So Good” by Van Halen (yes, with Sammy Hagar – I like it, OK? Jesus) with my shirt off, I did a headbanging, dancing half twirl towards my kitchenette area and fell over on an empty 20 liter water cooler bottle. Those things jump right out at you if you’re not careful. And no, after that I didn’t Feel So Good.

i made it into another guy's photo album

2005-12-29T17:44:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-28T06:12:00.000-05:00

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)

2005-12-28T06:08:00.000-05:00

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)

2005-12-27T06:10:00.000-05:00

(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)

2005-12-26T05:46:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-22T06:09:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-18T10:47:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-17T18:02:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-12T12:19:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

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!")

2005-12-10T09:01:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-07T06:48:00.000-05:00

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.

first volunteer experience approximately 15 minutes of real work, just like my job back home

2005-12-04T19:43:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday at 1:30 I went with two other students, the German guy and a Swiss woman, to help out at the aforementioned Instituto Central de Cidadania. Of course they had a lively chat in German the whole way so I mostly stared out the bus and elevator windows on the way there. Which is fine with me. On the bus there was a tall, beautiful black woman who was looking at me, who wore dark glasses, was tall and wearing jeans and a yellow t-shirt, and had a bad leg which could have been a prosthetic, so she walked funny when she got off the bus. The busses here are so cramped in the back (because that's where you have to pay and there's a guy sitting that at what amounts to a desk and cash register) that she had to essentially walk over me to get by. This is bad, but I assume that any woman here who has even a fleeting interest in me is a prostitute, since it's legal here and they are everywhere, and so I was dying to know what the deal was with her but who knows. She kind of looked like trouble, regardless of what she did for a living. And which is why I found her attractive.

We got off in Pelhourinho and had to walk a few blocks before taking this thing that's like an elevator but not, that gets you from Cidade Alta from Cidade Baixa and vice-versa. It's on a rail, so think of a San Francisco-like rail car that runs on tracks at a 60 degree angle.

We met Ivanildo, the volunteer coordinator, at his office in the central part of the city, which is a bit run down and sketchy-looking but I think it's relatively safe in the day. He seemed a little bit stressed out, and was a little less talkative than usual (I've met him twice so who knows how he usually is). We got in his car and drove for about 20 minutes to the poor neighborhood (called a favela in Portuguese) of Castelo Branco, which is right by the main road that takes you in and out of Salvador. By "main road" I mean a two-lane, cramped street with a bunch of street lights to slow everybody down. Ivanildo told us later that the government didn't want tourists coming in and out of the city this way, because you'd end up driving by the favelas, and did its best to make sure tourists entered and left via plane only.

The distribution point for the food packages we were going to help deliver is a Catholic church that's on a hill that overlooks the favela. Most of the houses in the favela are brick, with holes for windows but no actual window installations. They sort of just look like stacks of bricks placed in a valley of dirt, which was originally a forest or jungle that was cleared away. Ivanildo said that violence (at least towards us) wasn't much of a danger here because there wasn't much visible drug trafficking going on and there weren't a lot of guns around. The people are just dirt poor. I got the feeling that they were too poor even for guns or drugs. It was mostly women and children, but a few men were waiting in the church as well, sitting in a wide circle to stay out of the sun, which was pretty oppressive. We got there around 2:15, and the truck which was coming with the food and supplies was supposed to have shown up at 2:00. We're on Brazilian / Bahian time here, though, so it wasn't much cause for worry at that point.

Three hours later, however, the truck still hadn't arrived and I think Ivanildo was on the verge of taking us back. While we'd waited, first in the church and then outside where kids were playing, he and a woman named Alexandra, another coordinator with the organization, had been frantically calling the delivery people on their cell phones to try to get the food there as soon as possible.

For the most part, the women and children didn't seem particularly unhappy, although I'm sure they were bored, and anxious to get the food. Part of the anxiety may have been that some of them weren't sure they'd be qualifying to get the food, since there's strict criteria on who gets food and who doesn't: you have to be unemployed and with children. The men tended to be quiet and middle-aged. This was one of those times I'd really wished I spoke better Portuguese, because I think they probably had stories to tell. They looked like honest, hard-working, normal guys, (as much as you can tell that by looking at someone, which is little to nothing) but I didn't have any way to talk to them, really, to find out what they were like.

The food came finally and the men did most of the work helping the presumably "high as shit" truck drivers to get it off the truck and into a corner of the kitchen. There were something like 50 20-30 pound bags of what looked mostly like beans, which is a staple around here. Everyone crowded around the corner and got into a semi-organized line, and Ivanildo told us he wanted to take pictures of us giving the packages to these folks with these big labels he taped onto them that had the name of the organization. Before giving them out he made some speech which I caught very little of, but the gist was that this was made possible by donations from all kinds of people, and that it brought people from all countries together to help each other. And everyone clapped, to my horror, presumably for us, the (white) people who just happened to be picking the bags a meter off the floor and handing them to the next person in line.

So we handed them out and each person had to stop and pause and have their picture taken getting the food from whomever it was who handed it to them - the Swiss woman, the German guy, or me. This was a bit awkward for a lot of them, understandably, and for others they probably could have cared less. If it was me I wouldn't have been thrilled about it. One woman said "God bless you" to me as I handed it to her. I wanted to feel good about it but I left with a pretty empty feeling because I felt like I was taking credit for a lot of stuff I just didn't do.

I talked with both of the other students when we got back and we agreed that Ivanildo did get something out of it from us, which was the PR value of the pictures. I'm guessing he plans to post things like this on his web site, including a caption along the lines of "Look, there are white people (pictures are proof!) who give a crap about what happens to poor folks in the favelas, even if they didn't technically do any work."

One hilarious postscript to the whole thing was that on the way back, the Swiss woman sat up front and started flipping through Ivanildo's CD book. She tried a few and then landed on this one that was a computer-burned blank, and he was like "Oh yeah, that one's great." She pops it in and what comes on but "Don't Want No Short Dick Man" by the notoriously obscene techno group 20 Fingers. Now that was worth waiting 3 hours for.

noteworthy cultural observations

2005-12-03T12:22:00.000-05:00

The other day I saw a woman in her mid-40s wearing a transparent, lime green dress, with a (gag) black bra and g-string which were as visible as if she hadn't been wearing the dress, or whatever the hell it was, at all.

I saw an ad for Guarana soda just a few minutes ago in which some "ultra-hip dude" and his girlfriend are going through the package store, buying chips and then Guarana. He gets a bag of chips and one soda, and she follows him by getting an armload of both, because apparently either she's into heavy consumption or she knows him better and that he's a heavy consumer or whatever. Anyway, before he gets to the counter he stops by the condom dispenser, and gets one (whatever), and you can guess what she does. The fat, pasty, disgusting white lady corner store employee behind the counter looks at him with disgust as he lovingly places the condom on top of the chips and soda, but then gives a knowing smile as his girlfriend dumps a big pile of condoms on the whole thing. What a hoot.

i got a fever, and the only cure is ... more cowbell

2005-11-30T20:10:00.000-05:00

Last night another one of the profesoras - a bit of a deceptive term, since this one (her name is Concecao, pronounced con - seh - SOW) is only about 25 - from the school took us out to see some more local music. This time it was a percussion group made up of students and professors from the Universidade de Federal, which is supposedly the best of Salvador's 3-4 major universities.

One of the first songs was led by a professor who spoke very quietly (ironic for a percussion guy), was very thin, and dressed "like a beatnik" as one of my classmates observed, with a white flat golf hat, Lisa Loeb glasses and a black button down shirt and jeans. He started off playing waist-high bongo drums (or something like that - I don't know what the correct name for them is) and a few minutes into the song there came this roar of big bass drums from the back of the auditorium. Everyone turned around and around 10 kids with various sized drums, from large bass to smaller snare and bongo-style drums, marched down the main aisle with broad smiles. The sound was amazing. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

But ... once everyone got onto the stage and behind the professor, guess what he picked up? That's right, a cowbell. And he used it to lead everyone else with this unbelievably good percussion conversation, where he would hit the cowbell in the direction of a particular part of the band and they would answer back with some either simple or very complex response. So, basically the glue that held the whole thing together was none other than ... the cowbell.

A lot of what they played sounded like it could have been made up (oh, sorry, "improvised") on the spot, but after taking a step back I realized it had to take an incredible amount of skill and patience to be able to play this kind of music, and to get good at it. There were so many minor parts where one or a couple of musicians would wait essentially the entire song to hit their drum once or twice at the end, or in the middle, and for these people I'm not sure how they didn't fall asleep before it came to be their turn. A lot of them were clearly superior musicians, though, and it looked like they played percussion in addition to a number of other non-percussion instruments.

One particularly interesting instrument is the barimba, which is essentially a bow (one you hunt with) that gets held at the bottom, and the string gets struck by a stick (which presumably was originally an arrow) which makes a twangy, otherworldly sound and which has an amazing range of available tones. There's also a hollow shell, something like a coconut, attached to the bottom which when struck either close to or away from the player's chest can make a number of different percussive sounds.

And lastly, there was this hollow, tube-like horn that was made from a tree trunk, about 5 inches in diameter and probably 5 feet long. It sounded like one of those huge horns that Tibetan monks use and sort of sing through in this incredibly deep way, which makes them sound sort of like frogs. I'm sure my description is not doing any of this justice, but it was another one of those experiences that could happen only here and which I'm sure I'm not appreciating nearly as much as I should.

going to volunteer

2005-11-29T06:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday a classmate and I went to the city commercial center, near Mercado Modelo and the Lacerda elevator, to see about doing volunteer work for an organization that the school has an affiliation with. The organization has a website here: http://www.centraldecidadania.org.br/. Ivanildo was the name of the volunteer coordinator / manager we were supposed to meet there. We took a cab because we were late, which turned out to be a good thing because the cab driver dropped us off on the right street, which we would have had a heck of a time finding if we'd taken the bus. The building was very government-looking, austere, a little dirty, and somewhat institutional-looking. We took the elevator to the 5th floor, which turned out to be a bad idea, since it took forever and we would have made it up the stairs in about 1/10th of the time. In the hallway all of the doors were white, with no signs on them, and numbered like apartments. The doors all looked like they had been there since 1950 and never cleaned.

Ivanildo answered the door and greeted us warmly. In fact, every Brazilian that I've met here and had an interaction with beyond 5 words has been very, very friendly. He had us sit down at his desk, handed us two inch-thick stacks of pictures showing past activities, and proceeded to speak very slowly in Portuguese to explain what it was his organization did and what we would be doing. I was *shocked* at how much I was able to understand just by the fact that he talked so slowly, and I realized that he must be doing it perfectly for our benefit. At the end of our 30-45 minute meeting, he mentioned that volunteers always told him to speak more slowly. He also said (hehe) that we spoke very good Portuguese, which I let flatter myself for all of about 3 seconds. The people sent previously must have had guidebook-level language skills.

He explained that the organization wasn't government funded, because it hadn't been in existence (<3 years) long enough. They therefore survived on what looked like tiny ($10 average) donations from individuals and corporations, and a large chunk of their donations came in the form of goods and/or services from respective corporations. There were a couple of bags of beans and a stack of used books in the corner of the room that he pointed to as an example of this.

The organization was in the process of building a new education facility for after-school type programs, which once it was complete would be pretty nice but still had a lot of work to go. Their work was primarily with families that had out of work parents or were so poor that the parents might as well not work anyway. They provided things like food, educational materials, and educational programs and guidance for kids up to age 14.

I get the feeling that like many organizations in the States, there's sort of a staged approach to volunteering that lets them check you out and vice-versa, so that if either party bales then no one is a whole lot the worse for wear. He said we should meet him Wednesday, at which point he would drive us out to what presumably is their distribution facility, and we'd help load up the truck with packages (food, books, etc.) to be delivered to families in poor neighborhoods. He also said that they needed help translating their (very modest) web pages into English.

So me and 1-3 other students are going to show up there tomorrow to help out with the distribution. Since we'll be dropping them off in poor neighborhoods, I'm preparing myself to see some crazy and/or horrific shit. At the same time I'm really looking forward to it, since it was so surprisingly easy to communicate with Ivanildo, and since I'll actually get to help out some of the people here. Poverty is written on the sleeve of so many people you pass in the street, and it is just everywhere you go.

The city commercial center is right on the edge, or so I've heard, of some really poor neighborhoods as well, and it did look a little bit dirtier than an upscale neighborhood like Barra. It's linked to Pelhourinho by the Lacerda elevator, but you can also take a cheaper elevator / rail car which costs 5 centavos vs. the 1 or 2 reals it costs to take the elevator. This is like 2 cents versus 50 cents. So we went up to Pelhourinho and my German friend told me about the time he almost drowned and was in intensive care for a week. But that's another story.

German guy has quasi-hookup/date with our teaching assistant

2005-11-27T14:39:00.001-05:00

So the German guy who's in my class for God knows what reason since he speaks Portuguese fluently went out on a date last night with a woman who I can best describe as our teaching assistant. You might find yourself asking a perfectly good question here: Isn't that against the rules? The answer, is, of course, yes, it's completely against the rules and maybe even against the law, i.e., teachers "fraternizing" (where fraternizing = making out &c.) with students. Which, to be honest, is pretty silly anyway since everyone is an adult and few are under 30. But god knows gossip makes damn good copy so I'm running with it.

I should mention here that our TA is approximately 25-30 years old, and has what could be described diplomatically as a full chest. She always wears low cut shirts, which is not out of the ordinary for a Brazilian woman of any age.

I walked by the bust stop (I mean bus stop) on an afternoon last week and saw her waiting there, and she said that my classmate had asked for some help finding his way to get an innoculation that he failed to get before he arrived in Salvador. She then went into this whole big deal about how it's against the rules, blah blah blah, for her to help him out but she was going to do it anyway. And she made a huge deal about how we couldn't tell anyone and I promised not to because, like, who cares. I never quite got why she was telling me this but I said if she needed any help I'd do what I could. I get the feeling now that she was using me as a barometer to see how good/bad I thought it was that she help him out or whatever.

So a couple of days later he tells me that she told him that she can't take him to the hospital or whatever to get inoculated because it's against the rules. Fine. No problem. He of course spent 3 hours on a Thursday switching between 5 or so different buses and ending up at a hospital that couldn't help him. La dee freakin da, I said. At least it wasn't me (laughing and pointing).

But then yesterday he tells me that she asked him if he wanted to "hang out" on Friday (last) night. I asked why and he said, somewhat unenthusiastically, that she said she "needed help with her English." Apparently she's taking English classes at a university here and might possibly get a job at my school teaching Portuguese. On Friday she taught our class, which I had to miss because I was still sick. Turns out it was the best class to miss because one of the teachers had everyone in all the classes get together at the end and sing some traditional Bahian song which the German guy told me was unbelievably painful but that's a whole other story.

He tells me about this English language social get-together or whatever and I still am not getting what it's all about, and so I press him and finally he says, "I think she likes me." So like any good buddy of 2 weeks I start immediately ridiculing him. He starts rolling his eyes, totally not into it, blah blah whatever. He calls her like he promised he would and they meet at one of the malls here, along with a couple of her friends, I think a guy and a woman.

So during the course of the evening our TA does the following: a) tells my classmate that she loves him, b) won't take her hands off him, c) tries to kiss him and I don't know what his level of resistance was (or not), d) tries to get him to stay over at her aunt's place for the evening, which is apparently major taboo (i.e., having your potential love interest stay over at a family's place if you're a woman). But hey, it's love - she said so, so f the rules, dammit.

My boy is a bit on the fence about the whole thing, to a level which I don't understand. I think he has trouble saying no, which I can understand, because she's definitely nice. I don't think he's terribly attracted to her on a physical level, although he has spent approximately 70% of our class staring at her chest. He was shaking his head this morning and asking me how he got into this, and I said "What did you think was going to happen?" For an answer I got a blank look into space lasting about 7 minutes.

Well it turns out that he wasn't cool with staying at the aunt's (loser), and sort of tabled the whole idea of whether or not the relationship will continue and to what level. He told her that he had promised me we'd meet in the morning to go to the beach. Which was true, but if he ditched me I could certainly have cared less, especially given the circumstances. We met but didn't go anyway because it's been cloudy and variably rainy all day.

This afternoon we were sitting on some building steps while I was stuffing my face with acaraje (Bahian shrimp quasi-taco) and he asked if I'd gotten the homework assignment from our teacher. Like any intelligent person I came back with "No, your girlfriend gave it to me." I am such a crazy character.

For my part, yesterday evening and night was spent watching Batman Begins for approximately the 900th time (I brought the DVD with me). At one point I pulled a bit of fuzz out of my navel. I wonder how long that'd been there.

my new favorite word

2005-11-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

I read a book review on Amazon.com where a guy described a book he thought was poorly written as "craptastic". Awesome. From now until probably the end of next week my only aim in life is to figure how to shoehorn this word into conversation.

manioc

2005-11-26T21:12:00.000-05:00

... is a kind of large root, that is a staple of Bahian food. You see it for sale on the street, at vegetable stands, in the supermarket, everywhere. It looks like the small, slightly twisty and/or warped trunk of a small (2-3" diameter) tree, with thin dark brown bark and very white beneath. The ones sold this way are meant to be cut up into slighly smaller, say, 6" long, pieces and boiled. Once boiled it's much softer, like when you do the same with carrots, and has the taste and consistency of stringy potatoes (consistency like sweet potatoes but taste and color like white potatoes) but maybe a little bit more sugary. Alone it's not that great, just like boiled potatoes on their own aren't that much to talk about, but with whatever you'd put on potatoes - butter, sour cream, etc. - it's really, really good.

Manioc roots are also ground down into a kind of flour and then fried, and then served as a side dish like rice with almost every Bahian main course, which inevitably has some kind of seafood as its main ingredient. The name of the fried flour stuff escapes me at the moment but it's sort of a dull yellow. The best way I can describe its taste is like french fries with the consistency of something like heavy wheat flour, although that doesn't really do it justice because it's definitely heavier than flour. You can eat it straight but most people mix it with a sauce of some kind or other, of which there is no shortage here, so that it goes down easier because otherwise it's a bit dry.

As many of you already know, I've never been one to go off at any length about any kind of food. Beats me why - my guess is that my lack of interest in the details of food has some genetic basis. But food is a strikingly integral part of Bahian culture. I can't imagine trying to describe the place without describing the food. When I was home in the States between trips to Salvador and someone mentioned Brazil, I would think first of the food more than anything and it would take me back instantly. And, besides the people here, it was one of the things I missed the most when I was gone. I know that any extended amount of time away from Bahia will be painful if for no other reason than being away from the cuisine. Coming from me that is an insane thing to say, but it's true. It's one of those things I never would have guessed or understood if I'd never come here.

Pelhourinho, Olodum, Argentinians, Germany

2005-11-25T17:08:00.000-05:00

One of my fellow students, the guy who was determined to be at the same "level" as I (but who clearly speaks and understand Portuguese far better) is German. He speaks English without an accent, Italian, French, and (surprise!) German. We went to Pelhourinho this past Tuesday because Olodum plays there. I'd seen them already this past Saturday at the African-Brazilian music festival at the Farol, but it had been a week or so since I'd been to Pelhourinho. Everybody's always talking about it, since it's the historical district and the place to be when you're going out, so I went despite the 40 (~$18US) reals it cost to get in to see the band.

I was a few minutes late to meet him at the bus stop, and coincidentally as I arrived a bus that could've taken us there left the curb (typical). We waited for a few minutes for another bus, and skipped a few express ones because of the cost. A man asked us in Portuguese if we wanted to share a cab with him and the woman he was with, presumably his wife, and we said yes since it would be much faster. Once we got in the cab it turned out, after a few moments of trying to figure out what everyone's native language was, that the couple was from Argentina and had only been here a few days on vacation. Once this was established everyone switched from pidgin Portuguese to English. I told them I was planning on going to Buenos Aires in March or afterwards, and they said they lived in a suburb of that city. When I told them I'd heard that Buenos Aires was a great place I got somewhat unenthusiastic agreement from the man, I'm guessing (hoping) because he didn't completely understand what I said.

A song from Nirvana on MTV Unplugged was playing on the cab radio, and when it switched to a different song on the same album I realized that it was a CD. I asked the driver if he liked Nirvana and he said yes, that he also liked Led Zeppelin and a couple other of what I'm guessing were British-American rock bands that I couldn't understand because of his accent. The German guy suggested he might be playing this because we were in the car, which was very possible, but to me it seemed like a lot of work just to increase your number of tourist cab fares.

The driver, like all the cab drivers here and in any major city, was a complete nut, weaving at high speed and at one point screaming at a car who had been blocking us that they were idiots. Cab drivers must have a high rate of heart disease and high blood pressure, because they almost unfailingly get more aggravated and prone to road rage than anyone else, which is unfortunate since most of them spend 12+ hours a day driving.

We got out at Pelhourinho and paid, and the fare came to just a little more than a bus when split 4 ways. Before shutting the door I told the driver in Portuguese that Nirvana was "way cool". He laughed through a newly-lit cigarrette, gave me the thumbs-up (which is often substituted for a wave here) and we shook hands.

The popular neighborhood of Pelhourinho, like anything else in Brazil, is a mix of different types and styles. Large, open courtyards surrounded on all sides by European-style churches border an intricate maze of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with tourist shops, military police stations colored in shades of brown, and Bahian restaurants. On a Tuesday night the streets are crowded with tourists and locals, and you can't walk a block or so without being approached by young restauranteurs waving you towards their restaurants with a copy of their menu.

I can't help think of it as being like the Latin Quarter of Paris, or what I imagine New Orleans looked like before this year's hurricanes.

We ate a small dinner at a restaurant that I would rate at marginal at best, since the food was overpriced, not well-prepared, and the service left quite a bit to be desired. Plus they were playing Jackson 5 tunes while the band (outside, in back, where we sat) tuned up. Despite the drawbacks there were plenty of what looked like locals swarming in once it hit mayb 8pm.

We'd heard that Olodum went on around 9:30 or 10, which gave us something like an hour and a half to kill, so we wandered around the streets, stopping to watch a few bands play on the temporary stages set up for the evenings. There were also a couple of groups of kids and young women playing Olodum-like drums. The sound of these drums covers the whole range of percussive sound, from deep bass to tap-tap-tap little snare drums, and regardless of the song or beat it is utterly mesmerizing, almost instinctivey appealing. And the groups are usually between 15-20, sometimes maybe 30 members, usually all ages. There's also a wide range of enthusiasm. One girl in the group we stopped to watch for a while was dancing in sync with the beat, as the drummers for Olodum do (it's part of the show), doing things like twirling her drum sticks high in the air and raising her arms in an elaborate, ceremonial way when she wasn't drumming. Another woman who looked bored beyond sanity, shoulders slumped and eyes wandering around the crowd, though mostly looking to something unidentifiable on her left, played on of the medium-sized snare drums. When it came around to her to do what was probably the longest solo of the particular beat they were playing, she barely flinched. She was really good, but it looked like she was ready to graduate to more challenging work.

Mesmerizing as it was, you can only see so much of this kind of drumming before it gets repetitive. Plus it's a great environment for pickpockets to work in, so we moved on after about half an hour. My feet were getting tired and I suggested that we sit on the steps of one of the churches that surrounded one of the big courtyards, in a well-lit area where other people were sitting. My friend had a caiphirina (local rum, sugar, lime drink) and I had a spring water which I had thought was carbonated when I bought it but turned out not to be (dammit).

I think we were talking about the political situation with the war in Iraq and the world economy, and somehow we got on the subject of Germany and the current economic conditions there. This was a continuation of a conversation we'd had earlier at dinner about the newly elected female prime minister of Germany, who had been officially sworn in that day. In this earlier conversation he'd described one of the more powerful political parties, which he described at one point as being as far to the right as was legal in that country.

Since there was all this music playing as we sat on the church steps, I said that I liked Brazilian / Bahian music although it was notable that they always seemed to be yelling "Brazil!" in their songs. Not that the same doesn't fly in the US, I added, particularly in Country music but elsewhere as well. He said, interestingly, that he'd been brought up to not talk too much about his country, or brag or boast or doing anything that was explicitly patriotic, for obvious historical reasons. Only recently had there been sporting and other international events where German flags were very prominent. I pointed out that even if Germany had reason to keep their patriotic voices in check, there was much for them to be thankful for, one of them being that it was one of the largest (4th? US-Japan-China-Germany?) economies in the world, and this seemed to be proof that it had sprung back from the war. And he pointed out too that it had been 60 years already and Germans, at least, had to move on.

He quietly mentioned something I already knew: there are elements still in Germany, particularly in the poor regions of the East and elsewhere, that try to revitalize fascism or racism or whatever mix of anger and hate there is as a result of poverty, not unlike in radical Islamist circles, as my friend rightly pointed out. Germans are as disturbed if not more so than the rest of the world about the existence of these groups and the tension they arouse, particularly in a society that wants to remain open and free but at the same time move on from its past. I asked him if he'd seen the movie Der Untergang (Downfall), which was a German-made, fictionalized account of HItler's last days in the bunker during the Battle of Berlin, and he said he was one of the few of his group of friends who hadn't. He said, too, that according to Germans who had either seen HItler regularly or known him (it wasn't clear to me which), the actor that played him nailed the part. So much so that when he got into character on the set either before or after shooting, some people were genuinely scared by his presence. If you've seen the movie, which if you haven't you should, I think you'll agree. I told him that the part that struck me most about the film was that when things went wrong Hitler blamed all of his generals for their incompetence, and said something like "You can't even win a bloody battle, and I went an conquered a continent all by myself!"

He seemed particularly saddened by all of the beautiful places in Europe that had been destroyed as a result of the war. I hadn't heard anyone speak of this with such conviction before.

The human tragedy, in my experience, at this point is something that is always implicitly registered, as if even between two people who have never had direct experience with it (who in the world hasn't seen its effects?), it will never be forgotten but at the same time is still too almost horrific to comprehend, much less discuss with a level of true understanding. I think there are those that would caution against allowing "implicitness" not evolve into amnesia, and I would agree with that.

Anyway, it turns out that Olodum wasn't playing that night. But who cares.

The cop who was watching the club where they usually play told us they were in Brasilia for the weekend and would be here later, presumably next week although I couldn't really confirm this. The cop was exceptionally good-natured, and come to think of it, most of the cops I've talked to in Pelhourinho are very friendly, which is surprising when you look at them because they look like soldiers.

it was a nice evening until some dude put on The Eagles

2005-11-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Someone in a building adjacent to mine was playing "Hot in the City" and then "L. A. Woman" (Doors' cover) by Billy Idol, which, when wafting over the tops of tropical trees and bushes that you can see outside my window, is eerie in an early-evening, 80s-throwback sort of way. It was what I'd almost call a poetic moment until the same jackass switched over to The Eagles, first with "Hotel California" (OK, on fringe of cheesy, but acceptable), and then totally destroying it with "Tequila Sunrise" or whatever else that crap song is called.

I am currently skipping the first school-organized social outing that I've missed so far, because I can't keep from sniffling all over the place because of the cold I've got. I'm also freaked out like I always get with these things that I'll give it to someone else, so I might end up skipping class tomorrow too. I was there today and every time I sneezed everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me, and made little if any effort to mask their disgust at my condition. Not that I blame them. Because of that I'm guessing I might not show up tomorrow.

But back to the 80s music floating over the palm tree tops - I don't know if I'll ever get used to seeing a palm tree out my window. I don't expect that I will, and I think that's a good thing. One reason to come here was just for a change, and I definitely got that. At the same time I'm comfortable enough here that I don't really feel like it's a whole lot different than anywhere else. Strike that - anywhere else I've been. Take Palm Springs, CA, where I was a few years back for a rock-climbing trip. There was a man here in my Pousada who said he'd lived there, and that sort of brought that place to mind. To me there's more visible differences between New York or Maine and Palm Springs than there are between Palm Springs and Salvador. Or maybe just fewer differences between the latter two than you would expect. I'm sure there are people who disagree. But the parts of the world that I've seen, at least, which is primarily what most would still call "The West": Brazil, US, Canada, Western Europe, Moscow and St. Petersburg, are far less different from each other than I ever expected.

either I'm paralyzed by the meaninglessness of life in the modern age, or this cold is starting to get to me

2005-11-23T15:04:00.000-05:00

My guess is that it's a little bit of both. Plus I stubbed my toe on the corner of my bed last night when I was coming back from the bathroom in a somnambulant stupor, and I think I might have broken it. Either that or it's gangrene that set in already, 'cause it's blue. It's so freakin blue and purple, actually, that I took a picture of it and posted it here. And let me just tell you, the picture doesn't do it any justice. It's much worse than it looks. Only someone as super-manly as me could have weathered it in the middle of the night without crying, which I almost did.

I really shouldn't be complaining, since for all intents and purposes my life these days is pretty much summed up by the lyrics of Margaritaville, sans the drinking (Does he even talk about anything besides drinking?). I did start to get a little nervous, however, that all of my previous posts were so brimming with positivity that they were starting to lack authenticity.

So I have a head cold. It happens almost every time I go to another country. The first time I left the US, in 2000, when I went on a 3-week train tour of Europe with my sister, I caught a cold like the first day, which provided me the opportunity to subsequently annoy the living crap out of her with my irritability and snot for the proceeding 3 weeks. And I think that the second time I was here in Salvador I had a cold almost exactly like what I have now. You would have thought I'd have picked up the immunity last time. Guess not.

My (and others') theory is that foreigners haven't been exposed to the same bugs that the locals have, so we don't have the immunity that they do.

My Portuguese teacher advised me to get and drink some kind of herbal tea that's got garlic in it. The added bonus is that I'll be repellent to vampires, women (didn't need the garlic for that), and people in general. Sweet.

apartment pictures

2005-11-23T05:23:00.000-05:00

Pictures of the interior of my new apartment are available for viewing here.

Brazilian coffee just plain blows

2005-11-22T06:30:00.000-05:00

It's true. As much as I like to tout all the things I like about this place, there's a cultural and logical black hole smack dab wherever they started to think about drinking coffee around here. Which is kind of weird, since as I was reading last night in A Death in Brazil, coffee was one of the, or maybe even the only (I was tired) major crops that the Portuguese and Spanish profited from in the years after dividing up South America between themselves.

In Salvador people drink black coffee, relatively strong but not terribly strong by US standards, out of these little plastic cups that are like the ones that come with a bottle of cough syrup. And they put lots of sugar in it. Soooo ... I say to myself, What's so great about that? And the answer is: Nothing. Drinking a "cup" of coffee here (called cafezinho, "little coffee") makes me approximately 1/16th as happy as I would be if I drank what I consider to be a normal sized coffee. And of course you can't walk into a luncheonette and be like "I'd like 16 cafezinhos please, and my friend here will have an additional 16 cafezinhos, and we'd like 1 more group of 16 cafezinhos to go (ignorant tourist smile)." There are some places here that serve large cups of coffee, but they cater to tourists, so going there makes you feel like ... a tourist. And there's also places that serve espresso European-style but again going there makes me feel the same as when I'm buying "authentic" New York paraphernalia (a 6" tall plastic Statue of Liberty") at a Times Square shop, of which there are approximately 1000, and all their stuff is made by slave children in some Beijing suburb.

So my coffee maker is this little one-cup deal (I'll try to post a picture here) that is iron, cup-sized, and has a little hook-shaped tube going over the top of it that looks sort of like a little faucet. You put water in the bottom (enough for a cafezinho glass ... sigh), coffee in the part of the cap that has a metal filter, and screw the top on and put your cup on the top. You put the whole thing with the cup on the stove, turn on the gas, and ... there's no pilot light.

That's right. I had all this set up last night, and was looking forward to placating my pre-caffeine buzz anxiety/exhilaration when I realized that I needed a match or lighter to light the gas stove. There's a lighter on the fridge which is of course spent (thank you landlady), so I had to go walk like 5 blocks to find a place where they sell lighters. And of course my Portuguese sucks so no one knows what I'm talking about ("luz para fumar?" is what I said), and the fact that I'm gesturing frantically like a heroin addict in withdrawal is not helping either. Finally I get one at a gas station, trudge back to my place, start up the stove, and hide behind my fridge while I'm watching the thing heat up, because I'm not sure I set it up right and I want to be protected in case it explodes.

So when it came out, quite anticlimactically, I drank it in approximately 0.03 seconds, which is 10x as much time as it took to put sugar in, and thought to myself, only 15 more to go.

got an apartment, finally

2005-11-21T15:12:00.000-05:00

After about a week of wrangling with various opportunists who are looking to rent temporary apartments, I was able to secure a studio and slept there last night. The owner is a 40-ish woman who apparently is moving elsewhere in Salvador but wants to keep her apartment, presumably to make money off people like me. She was a bit of a wheeler-dealer, and lucky for me the deal was brokered in part by the owner of my pousada, and Irish guy named Sean who has lived here for 22 years. He was able to translate her furiously fast Portuguese for me, and talked her out of making me pay for the electric bill, which she wanted me to do but usually isn't part of the deal with temporary apartments here.

When they were talking, he told me that she said 2 things I should note: 1) careful when pulling down the window shade because it can fall off, and 2) she would prefer that I not have a lot of women coming in and out of the apartment. If she only knew how little she had to worry about regarding 2). I told her this through Sean but she seemed skeptical. When we were walking to the apartment (a block away from the pousada) I asked him what she meant about that, and he was like "I think she doesn't want you to bring a lot of hookers there." Whoa, people - I just met this lady and already I'm bringing hookers in an out every night? Don't I get a chance to prove my trustworthiness before being chastised like this? Aren't I innocent until proven guilty?

Sean went on, "It's really none of her business - you're paying the rent, you can do whatever you want. She can't tell you what to do." I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated his willingness to defend my rights to have prostitutes in my apartment, but we got in the elevator and they all started talking.

The apartment is relatively small, being a studio, and it's a bit girly, which is actually probably a good thing since people are always telling me that my apartment is so clearly a bachelor's, what with the microwave on top of the stove, etc. I would like to note that above the bed is a Picassoesque painting of two naked people in a passionate embrace and kissing. And yet somehow I'm the one generating all the concern about being sexually deviant.

The biggest perk about the place is probably the doorman, whose name is Jorge, who is always shaking my hand and putting his arm around my shoulder, and giving me the thumbs up (we've known each other two days). He was speaking all kinds of Portuguese to me and I sort of nodded for a while, but afterwards I sort of leveled with him and said I didn't understand Portuguese very well. This didn't dissuade him one bit, except when I was moving my last few things in he yelled to me as I was getting into the elevator "Wilkommen!", of course accompanied with the thumbs up. There are tons of German people here.

Cidade Baixa

2005-11-19T10:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday all the students and teachers at the school skipped class to go to Cidade Baixa (Lower City), the part of the city that (I think) is closer to the ocean. Cidade Alta is the rest, which includes the historic district of Pelourinho. There's an elevator called Elevador Lacerda which lifts people from Cidade Baixa to Cidade Alta, over a sketchy neighborhood. It's probably about 5 stories high and it reminds me of something out of Planet of the Apes, where you have some bizarre technological anachronism rising out of a scattered mix of sprawl and rubble.

In Cidade Baixa, there's a bunch of boat docks, slips, and all other things nautical, including nautical supply shops, which, coming from that kind of environment growing up, was a bit surreal for me. On the way there we passed a number of poorer neighborhoods, which consist largely of dense groups of shacks in varying degrees of disrepair. From what I've read, a third of the city lacks what we would consider adequate sanitation, and I'm guessing that some of the neighborhoods we passed were in this sort of condition.

On the brighter side, we stopped in the neighborhood of Rebeira at an ice cream place which claims to be the best in Salvador, complete with awards from the local restaurant review section of the newspaper. The cool thing about the ice cream there is that they had flavors that we'd never see here, like Kiwi, Guava, Passion Fruit, Mango, and a bunch of different nuts that I don't remember the name of. The guy behind the counter was frantically handing out samples of different flavors on little wooden spoons, so that by the time I was ready to order I had ten (not exaggerating) of them in my hand, and was pretty full. So I was like, OK, I'm good, let's go, but everyone else wanted to actually buy something (sigh). So I asked for Guava and Mango but somehow this got mistranslated to Kiwi and Mango, I think. It was pretty good although it was a little more on the sherbet side than I would usually get (in lieu of something more fattening :) ) I got it because one of the teachers said I couldn't get chocolate, only "frutas". Also when I got to the last 2 inches or so (sorry, 5 cm) my cone exploded and I had to stumble over and toss it in the trashcan. For some reason the folks I was with didn't even acknowledge that I spilled it all over myself, which I was very, very grateful for. They kind of just sat and stared, which was very refreshing and different from what I'm used to. In my experience people are more likely to sit and stare when you clearly need help with something, but then smother you with attention when you wish they would just look the other way. Not here. They sit and stare without prejudice to help or ignore.

We stopped also at the most famous church in Salvador, called Bonfim, where (gulp) people hang pictures of their sick or dead loved ones to solicit help from above in healing them or sending them on their way. It got pretty hair-raising in some parts. There were some very explicit photos of sick people, and hanging from the ceiling were wax casts of arms, heads, legs, etc., of aforementioned sick loved ones. On the front steps of the church that we descended on the way out, there were a number of poor, mostly elderly people asking for money, and there was one woman on the steps who looked like she had elaphantiasis in her legs, which I've heard is a problem here for people who can't afford proper health care.

Some pictures of yesterday are here.

they strain the milk here

2005-11-18T06:40:00.000-05:00

I was at a luncheonette last night. They're everywhere here - small places that serve lunch, coffee, and and exotic juices from local fruits (mango, passion fruit, others whose names I don't know) which are very popular. This place is right up the block from me and serves as a luncheonette, food market, bar, and general social center. Almost every place that serves any kind of food or drink here serves beer. Places that look like cafes won't have coffee (this from experience) but they always have beer.

At this particular place they tend to serve beer in what looks like 20oz bottles, and they have these little mini-cooler things (similar to the kind of thing fat American guys hold their Budweiser cans in at the beach, a "coolie") which they put the bottles in to keep them cool. They drop them in the cylindrical main part of it and put a cap on it that leaves only the mouth of the bottle exposed. And of course each mini-cooler is an ad, labeled with a particular local beer. The really budget beer here is called Skol, and I think I saw it in the supermarket for something like $1US for a six-pack. There's also something called Schin (I think) which looks like it might be a little better.

But last night I went up to the counter and asked for a coffee. Normally here it's served black, in small cups similar to espresso, with the option for a lot of sugar, which is how most people take it. Unfortunately it's not really espresso, just regular coffee which is relatively strong but, to be honest, in the available small quantities doesn't really do it for me. There's a sugar substitute here which is also very popular, which is a clear liquid in a bottle and is available at any restaurant. I haven't ever tried it because it looks pretty gross, and one of my friends recently put too much in his coffee and he said it was awful.

The woman at the counter asked if I wanted it with or without milk, so I asked for it "com leite". She then proceeded to strain about 1/4 cup of milk into a small coffee cup, and then filled it with the traditional 1/8-cup or so of black coffee. I immediately understood what the straining was all about, based on my experience here. The milk always has chunks in it. I guess this is from it lying around in tropical heat (which really isn't that bad right now) for anything more than a minute or two. Every time I've had coffee in the pousada here, there's been chunks. Small ones, but chunks nevertheless. I'll admit, it took a bit of getting used to. But they'd have to do a lot more than that to come between me and caffeine. Bring it.

movies

2005-11-17T06:48:00.000-05:00

I saw a movie in a theater A History of Violence for the first time last night. The other English-language movies that were playing were Chicken Little, Saw II, and The Legend of Zorro. One of these was dubbed and the others (including Violence) were subtitled. I was told by someone here a while ago that around 50% or more of the movies in the theaters here are American movies, usually subtitled but sometimes dubbed.

I went with a German guy, same age as me, who is new at the school this week and in the same class as me. He wanted to go to Iguatemi Shopping, which is the biggest shopping center here (and probably in Bahia, we also surmised). After speaking with some locals at the bus stop we determined that it was muchfaster ("Mais rapido, mais rapido ..." they said) to just grab a cab, which we did. It was about a 10-minute drive and cost us something like $R20, which translates to maybe $8-9US.

We wandered around for a while looking at stuff, talking about differences in German, American, and Brazilian culture, staring at women, and eventually making our way up to the theater. We got tickets and stopped to in the food court which had a Sushi stand.

Now don't get me wrong. I love this place. And I might be a bit of a snob when it comes to Sushi and/or Japanese food. Both are very popular here, but the quality of it sucks, and last night was relatively typical of my overall Japanese-food experience here. Part of the reason it's so popular is that there's a lot of Japanese-descended people living in Brazil. You'd think they would take more care in promoting their culture, but whatever.

We got in the theater, which was very nice (stadium seating and a great sound system) but which had the air conditioning cranked and was absolutely the coldest place I've ever been in in Brazil. I don't know what the thinking is there. Maybe they're trying to keep you awake. Our movie was good (it was my second time seeing it), but maybe for something like Saw II they don't want people dozing off. Who knows. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've seen here :).

the classical music group in a nearby apartment are playing Beatles covers

2005-11-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

There's like a 3- to 5- piece classical (or whatever) group in one of the neighboring apartments here playing Beatles covers. Right now they're on "Revolution", although I think I heard "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" before, and a couple others. There's a flute, a bassoon (or something else deep) and a couple of strings (violin and cello?). It's people like these who do the kind of legwork that's earned Brazil the reputation as the partyingest country in the world.

turns out my Portuguese is just hand signals

2005-11-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

So this is my third time in Bahia. I'm thinking and telling people back home before I go "Well, I don't know Portuguese, but I know enough to get around." It's really very similar to Spanish, which I took 2 years of in college but forgot most of, blah blah blah.

Well, guess what. Turns out I can't speak Portuguese for shit. I was in class today with a new student, who has a much better grasp on the language than I, and I didn't have a goddamn clue about a goddamn word he, the teacher, or anybody in the school spoke to me today, in Portuguese, English, Farsi, whatever. It was like I'd had my brain wiped clean over the weekend and left only with the minimum neural facilities to get me to class without wetting myself and sit there with my mouth open, staring blankly.

Luckily for me tomorrow is a holiday celebrating the day Brazil officially became a federal republic. Hopefully by Wednesday I will have learned enough to avoid being demoted to the class where they go over the alphabet again.

weather, shrubberies, and soccer (futebol) in Salvador da Bahia

2005-11-13T08:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday and today have been thus far completely overcast with cloud cover. This is the first time it's been like this in all of the (3) times I've visited Salvador. The first time I got caught in a restaurant when it started pouring buckets, and I think the same might have happened one day of the second week I was here, in July. Today we have the addition of wind, which we didn't so much yesterday, which leads me to think it's fixin' to rain a bit (or more likely a crapload). There are so many trees around the pousada (and everywhere, now that I think of it) that when the wind blows you can hear all the leaves of the trees slapping together, and it sounds like rain. I just now ran to my window to see if it was raining, and it turns out it was just the wind in the trees. I get the feeling, based on a hunch and on my previous experiences, that this is the kind of place where if it's raining, you'll know it.

Other than this weekend the weather has been very dependable - sunny with few if any clouds in the sky, low- to mid-eighties, and not as much humidity as I expected. AC is around but not ubiquitous, but most places have ceiling fans, which in combination with drafts coming through windows, seem to provide sufficient ventilation so that no place is really uncomfortable. Friday was one of the first days that was hot enough to really be noticeable. In class I noticed my shirt sticking to me only after being there a short time. Sweet.

And speaking of the trees - one difference (not as major as you would think) about a tropical climate vs. somewhere like the northeastern US is that, left alone, even in the cities, things will start growing out of everything. In NYC and other US cities the concrete seems to prevent trees and other big plants (weeds and grass notwithstanding) from just popping up. Not here. Either by design or by natural adaptation, or more likely by a combination of both, there are tons of bushes, trees, plants, you name it growing out of everything, from peoples houses to the beach to major thoroughfares. There's definitely lots of trees that are intentionally planted by the city, but this is supplemented by nature with its own landscaping.

My brother Tom had asked me if I had seen any soccer (futebol, here) games since I'd been here and I said no. Turns out I'm just extremely unobservant. Since he asked about it I've noticed that on one end of the beach (what I think is east of Farol da Barra, the lighthouse) guys play pick up soccer on Saturdays and maybe other times. If you keep going east past that beach (this is where I run every night), there's a place calling itself the Spanish Health Club, where last night they had what looked like a relatively major local game, under lights, with a lot of the locals and passersby cheering and yelling at the players, who were in official-looking uniforms. I stopped just in time (quite typically) to see the last 2 minutes or so.

The same end of the beach that has the pick-up soccer is also the best surfing spot. I've got to try it at some point, because I've spent hours already just watching people surfing down there. It's mezmerizing. You can lean against the wall/barrier which keeps you from falling off the walkway near the beach, and just sit there and stare at surfers and skimpily dressed women, and watch people go by. What more could you ask for?

And speaking of the barrier, that's where the origin of the name of the barrio I'm in came from. It's called Barra, which in Portuguese means barrier. The barrier, which keeps people on the walkway and water from coming into the street and neighbhorhood, stretches around the corner of Farol da Barra, I'm guessing for something like a mile or longer. Or 3km. Whatever.

the biggest barrier to intercultural harmony is produce

2005-11-12T12:10:00.000-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that the major obstacle in the way of complete intercultural (at least in Western society) harmony is produce. I think that my sister would agree. This is based on my recent experiences, which, due to the fact that I never listen to anything anyone tells me or pay attention to anything I read, very closely resembled hers.

The K-man canonized the importance of fresh fruit when he got banned from his local fresh food market. People just can't live without it. It's healthy, it's fresh, it's delicious! It's 1/8 of the 4 food groups. And as a single man used to living in New York City, it became one of the few things I looked forward to when coming home from my mind-numbing job.

In an earlier post I related my run-in with the supermarket folks here after not labeling my apples properly which is evidently very not cool, both here and in Athens. Since then my Portuguese has improved a good 0.0037% so I have still not bothered to try to figure out how to properly label the fruit there. Luckily for me, on Thursday we had a class field trip to the produce market that was closest to the school, which is now my de facto fruit source. The cool thing there is that the guy follows you around and does the labeling himself. The uncool thing is that he follows you around. I don't like picking out fruit under pressure. I can't closely inspect the surface of a pear with some dude breathing down my neck. I mean, like, what's the rush? I'm the only one here at 8:30 in the morning. Whatever.

And that's another thing. More than in New York, people here are easily annoyed when you hold things up while trying to be polite. I was in Shopping Barra an hour ago (yeah, I found it, and it is sweet) and as I'm approaching one of the escalators a woman approaches at the same time, so I pause to let her go in front of me. Apparently that's not cool, or I'm some sort of sucker, because then the group of 2 women and 1 man behind me all try to cut in front of me. As if the frozen yogurt stand they're on their way to is going anywhere.

an ode to Guarana

2005-11-11T19:09:00.000-05:00

The food in Bahia is fantastic. Most of it is seafood, and comes with this semi-optional little cup of hot sauce which if you take more than a teaspoon of it will pretty much just desintegrate your brain. But I'm guessing there will be plenty of other opportunities to go into detail about the food, which I'm sure I could write volumes on. I'd like to take this little slice of our time together to talk about one of my favorite indigenous Brazilian phenomena (besides the women, beaches, architecture, literature, etc. - you get the idea), Guarana, pronounced Gwah-rah-NAH. Guarana is a shrub indigenous to Brazil and Venezuela that has fruit which is the source of the taste in a number of caffeinated soft drinks referred to under the umbrella term "Guarana". Any respectable Brazilian restaurant in New York or elsewhere serves it, and I think you can buy it in some stores in some of the outer boroughs. There's a Brazilian restaurant on Central Ave in Yonkers that definitely has it (can't remember the name, something like Brasilia), and my guess is that Churrascurria Plataforma in midtown has it too. If they don't they suck and don't go there. If they do, they're awesome because the food is really good, albeit a little expensive.

Guarana Antarctica, the most popular brand of Guarana soda, distributed by PepsiCo (see the Wikipedia article) tastes a little like 7UP or Sprite, but frutier. And it's brown. But not in a gross way. Anyway, just check out the picture. It's the coolest thing in the world, and I've been belching the alphabet and obscenities in honor of it since I got here.

I would also like to point out that it totally kicks the ass of Hazelnut Spread, a concept so absurd that it could only be the brainchild of people who spent their childhood watching television and getting beat up after school not only by the jocks, but by the nerds too.

bow down to the samba king (that's right)

2005-11-10T12:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the world might just as well stop turning because I went out to a samba club with a bunch of people from the school last night and we had a blast. For those unfortunate souls who have the free time to stumble across my blog without actually knowing me, this was totally out of character. But since I had decided beforehand that this was going to be The Summer of Matt (swat at bee circling my head), I had no choice but to accept the offer when it came to go out.

We all met in front of the school at ~10pm, and until about 5 minutes before we left it looked like it was going to be 5 women and me, which didn't make me feel good at all. Thankfully a British guy named Daniel showed up in a tank-top, shorts and flip-flops, fresh from a Capoeira lesson.

So we get in some cabs, show up at the place which is about a 10 minute drive from Barra. It's $R5 to get in the door. The door being the door to the high wood fence of a narrow, open-air space in between some 2-3 story apartment buildings. There's a big yellow banner sign over it facing the street saying in red lettering that it's an auto demolition lot. That's right. Maybe they move the chairs in the morning. On the way in I'm thinking it's going to be some dimly-lit New York style dance club, but it was almost the complete opposite - brightly lit, with a bunch of white plastic lawn chairs and tables with red tablecloths, a very modest bar in the back, which was more like a kitchenette, and guys selling drinks and kebab-type meat sticks from behind stacks of milk crates. There was an old woman sitting next to the bar in the back who took peoples orders, gave change, and then gave you a ticket with the name of your drink on it which you were to hand to the bartenders. This woman ended up being a bottleneck for the whole process since she was pretty cranky and slow, a bad mix for a high-energy Brazilian samba club. When I went to get a water there was nobody in line but once I paid I had to push my way through for or so rows of Brazilians pushing forward to pay for their drinks.

The band, up front, was something like 8- or 10-piece, with a 6-string bass player, a couple of drummer/percussionists, a guy with what looked like a ukelele and sang like a tropical Tiny Tim, and a few other instruments that I can't remember and/or identify. There was no stage and the band all sat on low chairs or just leaned against the back wall.

We sat down at two tables we pushed together, everyone got drinks, and we talked for a while since nobody was dancing. There was one Braziliera who was standing up front near the band who was movin' and shakin' in such perfect sync to the music that I even wanted to dance. She was probably 35. Her boyfriend was like 45, drinking a beer, and standing there with such an ambivalent expression on his face you would have thought he'd been lobotomized an hour ago.

Then suddenly about an hour into it people just started walking up to the front and dancing, and then Rosaria, the woman from the school who organized and schaperoned the whole thing, got up and beckoned everyone else to come. Me and the two women I was at the table with were initially hesitant. The dance floor, though, was so crowded and chaotic that it was basically just a group of people standing shoulder to shoulder, some moving in a quasi-dance motion and others just standing there getting drunk, smiling and laughing. Who finds that kind of thing objectionable? Not me, so I went up there and started dancing like Steve Martin doing his King Tut skit. With everyone so closely crushed together this was no problem at all, and in no way uncool, which is quite a departure for me.

Our party included two tall German women who were very popular with the Brazilieros, particularly two guys, one who was very tall and pretty young, and another who was shorter but more built, about my height. The first guy was pretty drunk and the second guy was stinking drunk, but otherwise not terribly objectionable. The second guy, if you could get past his deadpan expression and lack of tact, was freakin hilarious. His "maneuver" to get women to dance with him was to drunkenly lean into them, grab them around the waist and slowly start to hump their leg, or whatever (still not smiling). He did this with about 15 different women, many more than once, for the next hour and a half. All but 1 woman I saw pushed him away or ducked out of his reach. Rosaria was vigilant and defensive enough to fend off and/or push away any of the Brazilian men (who are known to be rather persistent) once things seemed to get a little out of hand. She did a lot of waving of her finger at these guys which seemed to stop them dead in their tracks.

So I was feeling pretty good, I'm movin, I'm shakin. But everyone is so close together that I can't keep from stepping on people's feet, all of whom are wearing sandals vs. my thick-heeled oxford dress shoes. And Daniel, who is clearly running on fumes at this point, is dancing to my right and looking at his feet to try to keep to the beat, and keeps knocking his skull against my shoulder. But he does it so regularly that I'm guessing he either doesn't care or can't feel it, even though I hit him pretty hard. Eventually he goes to sit down, with total respect from me since he's been doing all-out physical exertion for the past 6 or so hours.

So I understand that Brazilieros are persistent with women - no problem. But I'm not a woman, so I'm not used to this kind of thing. And so the women I'm with are having no problem fending off guys, and to some degree I'm sure are flattered by it. But as the reluctant descendant of Puritans I'm dying over here - and lets face it, what really matters in this situation is my feelings. This 50-or-so year old guy is pawing the woman from our group next to me. She's smiling, and pushing him away a little. He's smiling, and then they both look at me and I'm not smiling. He offers to shake my hand a couple of times which I do with reticence, but I decide to just go on dancing but keep close to the women I'm with because I'm freaked out (probably for no reason) about what the Brasilieros might do.

Eventually everyone is sweating enough so that I can feel all of my clothes sticking to me and getting soaked (yuck). Around 00:15 I look at my watch, a couple of people ask me what time it is, and we decide to go. I'm still so into the music, though, that I dance/push my way back to the fence and out the door, and still can't keep from tapping my foot and doing the occasional hip shake (it's contagious, people) once we're out on the street. Which is swarming with cops, who in Salvador look like military. They are wearing brown fatigues and berets, bullet-proof jackets, and at least 2 pistols each strapped their thighs and legs. Later the guy at the pousada tells me that they go specifically to the places that tourists are known to frequent, and also that sometimes schools, when they plan social activities, will call the cops to tell them where the students will be so that there will be a police presence there. I'm guessing Rosaria did this.

We're standing outside and the woman from our group who was being pawed next to me pops her head out the door and is like "Why are we leaving? I was just starting to have fun ..." We get into cabs and head back to Barra. Rosaria wants us all to be dropped off just outside our pousadas, but we decide to get out on the corner at the convergence of all our routes and walk the rest of the way, which at this time of night is not necessarily advisable. I make the 3-or-so block walk home all right, but stay tensed to break into a full sprint if necessary, and keep looking over my shoulder. Things are fine, though. I get back to the room, peel off my clothes, and cruise the 'net for an hour because I can't get to sleep.

And here we are.

I am your father

2005-11-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

I don't know what we ever did without the Internet.

drums in the night

2005-11-09T13:21:00.000-05:00

I went to a Bahian restaurant in Pelhourinho last night. For those of you that don't know, Pelhourinho is just about the oldest part of Salvador, which itself is very old, so it has these European-style, very narrow cobblestoned streets. Somewhat like Florence if you've ever been there, with tall buildings and a lot of old churches. Anyway, at night it's real dark in some places, although it's relatively safe. The local government loaded up the place with cops since the neighborhood was cleaned up a few years ago, to keep from scaring away tourists. Dani and I took a cab there. If I were the driver I would have taken us to the edge of the neighborhood and told us to walk the extra two blocks or so to get to the restaurant, since the streets are so narrow, crowded, and bumpy, and some of the turns are so sharp that it doesn't look like even the small cars they have here can make it without nailing a building corner. This guy, however, drives us up to within a block of the place (there was a barrier to keep cars out of the end of the street), over head-shaking, whiplash-caliber bumps and through the aforesaid turns that I was sure he was going to destroy his car on. Plus there's more people there than I've ever seen during the day, and this very loud, deep, heavy drumming sound is coming from the center of the old city. The streets are lit but some of them are still very dark in places. We get out and start walking around looking for the restaurant, and eventually have to walk right past / through the group of people who were doing the drumming. There were probably 10 kids with drums and 10 adults (the latter had the bigger ones). The type of drumming they do is inspired by the local group Olodum, who did the drum part in the beginning and elsewhere on the Paul Simon song "The Obvious Child" from Rhythm of the Saints. The music has some African origins but is considered a product of Bahia. It was very, very loud, especially since our restaurant was near the center where the drums were being played, and at one point the bass sound was coming through the wall and past my eardrum to the point where it felt like they were drumming on my brain. Once the food came I sort of forgot about it. It's the kind of bass sound that you feel more than hear - bone-jarring but in a positive way, if that makes any sense.

stumbling around Barra like the clueless tourist that I am

2005-11-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

So I pulled a couple of winners yesterday, a few things that are bound to happen when you're a foreigner living semi-long-term anywhere. The big shopping center here is called "Shopping Barra", and I decided to try to find it yesterday after doing some general familiarization with the neigbhorhood (i.e., walking slowly, tripping on loose cobblestones, and looking up at the buildings). Of course the map which clearly shows its location was back at the pousada but I'd already been walking around a while and didn't feel like making multiple trips back and forth. So I went to a couple of places that clearly were not Shopping Barra, and on the way there, 2 different Brazilians - 1 guy in a car with his buddies and 1 woman walking on the street - asked ME where Shopping Barra was. Being the helpful guy I am, I said "Eu no falo portugues", which, loosely translated, means "rob me". The guy looked at me in disgust and peeled out, and the woman smiled and shook her head and kept walking. Hey man, I'm doing the best I can here just trying not to trip over the goddamn cobblestones in these freakin flip-flops, which, incidentally, I've only ever really used for maybe a total of 3 weeks in my life. The funny thing is that people are always asking me directions in New York or wherever, and I am almost always the last person you want to be asking how to get anywhere. But apparently no matter what country I'm in I look like the guy who knows where stuff is, which, sadly for these people, is far, far from the truth. I've even walked rapidly in the opposite direction after confirming to myself that I gave exactly the wrong directions, just so that the person couldn't find me and be like "Hey man (pointing and shaking finger), you told me the wrong place to go! And I came back here just to tell you that! Because I have all sorts of time, being a lost tourist and all, or in some cases locals ..." You get the idea.

There's more (sorry). I poked around for about half an hour at the supermarket I eventually went into (which was clearly not part of Shopping Barra) and settled on apples, crackers, and seltzer water as things I couldn't live without but didn't need a fridge for. I saw an older woman weighing her produce on a public scale there and thought to myself "They don't expect us to weigh and label our produce ourselves, do they? Because that would be silly." Well, guess what. I got to the register and the guy doing the bagging gave me an evil glare after the woman doing the ringing up handed him the bag of apples to go label since the stupid gringo failed to do so. He was amazingly fast, however (probably because it's so freakin easy), and I got away with my food which I guess is really all I cared about.

And finally, I stopped at a newsstand later last night to get some paid phone cards which are required for the payphones here (I don't have a cell and I refuse to get one). The woman told me how much it cost, which came out to $R18 (~$7US), but me, not understanding numbers in Portuguese, handed her the equivalent of about $50US. Lucky for me she was nice, and laughed and shook her head and was like "No, no ..." and just took the two $R10 bills I was just about throwing at her.

At the end of our Portuguese class this afternoon I asked the profesora if we could learn numbers tomorrow. She said yes.

Did I mention I got internet-connected today?

2005-11-07T19:36:00.000-05:00

... which is the reason that this is my 4th (I think) post of the day. I have wireless internet (which I'm paying for, sigh ...) until I'm out of this place around the 18th, at which point I'll either get a semi-temporary apartment or move into a cheaper pousada (like the one one of my classmates is at, more on that later).

So check THIS out: the kid who set up the wireless here (he was working at the front desk today) not only set it up with WEP encryption, which for your average not-technical person is relatively impressive, but he even uploaded a pirated version of the firmware to his access point. The firmware was hacked (presumably by someone else) to give more features, including something which changes the WEP key every 30 minutes (and no, it's not WPA). Very, very impressive. He said he taught himself this stuff. And English, too. I told him I could juggle.

I had my first day of Portuguese class, which was awesome, mostly because I felt like I was in college again. If I'd only brought my torn flannel shirts, overworn upside down u-shaped baseball caps and Chuck Taylors, it would have been complete. There are 2 other students in the class. One is a woman my age from London who is on leave from BBC radio, and has done what I want to do, i.e., traveled from Central America on down to here over the course of a number of months. The other is a man younger than me (mid-20s maybe) from Switzerland, who speaks German, French, Swiss, and English, and likes to play guitar. The woman speaks Spanish. I speak English. Also my instructor's name is Maria, from Itabuna, with an Arabic last name and who is middle-aged. There's also a student teacher who sits in the back of the room and doesn't say anything but takes lots of notes. She's from Bahia (Salvador, I assume).

The class was just plain awesome. I can't say exactly why. Maybe because it feels like I'm doing something like a mix of extended vacation and/or going back to college, all in a tropical setting. I'm 100 yards from the beach and from Farol Sol, a lighthouse which is a central part of the Carnival festivities. Of course I probably won't be in this exact spot for that, but I hope to be here for at least part of it.

If things continue as they've gone for the first few days I've been here, I'm going to be just fine :).

smells fine now

2005-11-07T19:34:00.000-05:00

I was looking at some of my earlier posts and saw how I complained about the mildly funky smell of my room at the pousada. Well, either it went away or I'm used to it now, and I could really care less which of those it is :).

ants

2005-11-07T19:29:00.000-05:00

OK, so one minor complaint I have here in the pousada (hostel/hotel) I'm staying in in Salvador is that there are hundreds of very small (smaller than anywhere in the US that I've seen) ants everywhere. You can't really see them unless you're looking at something white and/or glassy like the sink, but when you sleep you can feel them crawling on your feet, etc. The first few times this happened I brushed them off but then after the third one or so I was kind of just like "the hell with it" and let them crawl around, which seems harmless for the moment. I'm guessing this is not the last I will have heard from the ants. It is fascinating to watch how fast they can move for their size, though. Not faster than the ball of my hand, unfortunately for them.

been here two days and already a crazy weekend

2005-11-07T14:31:00.000-05:00

Daniella took me to what I guess you would call a bloc party yesterday, in a neighborhood that could best be described as "like Compton". I of course was a) the only white guy, b) the only person who didn't speak Portuguese, and c) the only person with my mouth open the entire time, for numerous reasons. We were there for maybe an hour before some HUGE dudes came by, one of them with dreds and tons of tattoos, and they sat down right next to us. The big guy with the tattoos asked me where I was from, and I told him I was from America. I should point out that as far as I can tell right now, there are many tourists from South America (Argentina, etc.) and Europe (Germany, Spain, etc.) in Salvador, but very, very few Americans. For this reason I'm finding that I tend to generate a bit of a spectacle when I say I'm American. Most people can tell I'm not from around here, but they don't know for sure where (Italian? Spanish? they say). I'm thinking in some of these cases it may be best to just say yes rather than correct them, and pray they can't speak Italian or Spanish or whatever.

Anyway, the house with the dreds shakes my hand, nearly palming my entire arm in doing so since his hands are so big. He knew some English because apparently he practices / works / teaches Capoeira (the local traditional martial arts / dance from Africa and slavery times) in Pelhourinho, which is the major historical and tourist area. The smallest of his two buddies, who still outweighed me by probably 50 pounds without a shred of fat on his body, spoke (in Portuguese) with what sounded like a lisp and gave me his phone number to call in case I wanted to learn Capoeira, which of course I do, but from what Dani says maybe not from these guys "because they may want to hob (rob) you".

So the guy with the dreds then asks if I want to smoke a joint, which I said no to, but which I took as an offer of friendship. Later Dani pulled me aside and said she thought these guys were drug dealers (to which my answer was "yeah, so?") and that they were bad people. I didn't put the two together but whatever. She said she thought they were wanting to sell us drugs, which if they were would definitely knock them down on the coolness scale.

I caught one of this guy's other boys checking out this one Brasiliera who was wearing next to nothing and nearly coming out of her dress, and we met eyes for a second. He gave me the thumbs up and I smiled and nodded and we both laughed hard.

I should also mentioned that they served Feijouada at the party, which is a sort of bean stew with chunks of pork and pork fat, spices, etc., and rice and salad. I've had it before in New York with black beans, which was good. This was made with white beans by one of the friends of the girl whose birthday party (and apartment) it was, and it was awesome.

arrived in Salvador, finally

2005-11-05T14:33:00.000-05:00

I´ll be honest - the suspense was killing me more than anything, but now that I´m here I don´t feel so totally lost as I thought I would be. Don´t get me wrong; I´m clueless, and everyone here knows it, but my level of ignorance can only decrease so that´s a good thing. Even having slimmed my life down to 2 (one of them huge) bags and a box of books, I felt like I was lugging around far more than necessary. And of course now that I´m here it´s looking like I won´t need any of it. I´ll probably end up just shipping it all back home.

My room in the hostel is very nice-looking, much like Van Gogh´s room in Arles or (this one´s for you, Anne-Marie) our room in Hotel Castelfidardo in Rome. It does, however, have a bit of a ... smell, which of course is one of the reasons it´s temporary.

Well, the first big challenge here (after taking an hour nap - I got like 2 hours of sleep on a 20-hour-total plane ride) is to procure a phone card and start calling people. More to come later. Tchau ...

a little more than two weeks to go! woohoo!

2005-10-18T16:39:00.000-04:00

I know that nobody reads my blog so I won't apologize for not having posted anything in the past month or longer. The goal (of this particular blog, anyway) is to document my travels abroad, and since I haven't left yet I have to admit there's not much to report. But, for those who are interested, here's some details on where I'm going and where I will be:

The place I am going to is described briefly here. The Salvador da Bahia board of tourism (many pretty pictures) is here. I will be taking Portuguese classes and volunteering through this school, and the hostel (Pousada) I will be staying at when I get there, at least until I get more permanent accomodations, is here.

look what i did to my couch

2005-08-20T21:12:00.000-04:00

My friend Craig from work and I spent a good 2 hours trying to figure out how to get it out of my apartment and load it into his truck, but apparently the guys who brought it in were right, it's not possible to get out of the building without destroying it. They left out that the reason for that is that they stapled it together more sloppily than if a couple of chimps had come in and set it up for me. Jennifer Leather quality. So I borrowed my other coworker's reciprocating saw and took care of the problem in all of about 7 minutes. Check it out.

Book World Laments Lack of Great Fiction

2005-08-17T14:15:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News is running an article about how there's no great new American novel this year. Apparently Michael Cunningham and Jonathan Safran Foer's new novels came up short of expectations. Ha ha.

It looks like Yahoo!'s got a whole news section on literature and authors. Cool. I didn't know that.

BBC Radio "In Our Time" show

2005-07-22T12:39:00.000-04:00

The BBC Radio has a show called In Our Time which explores the "history of ideas." They recently had a show on Machiavelli, who was also recently written about in a Salon.com book review.

Brazil governor vetoes walls around Rio slums

2005-07-21T11:13:00.000-04:00

A Yahoo! News article is saying that Rio's state governor vetoed a plan to erect walls around the city's slums to protect residents from stray bullets from gang wars. Anybody see that movie City of God?

Scientists Raise Alarm About Ocean Health

2005-07-14T01:02:00.000-04:00

If you've ever read Timescape by Gregory Benford, you know about the nightmare scenario of what happens when the global food chain is disrupted at the lowest (e.g., plankton) levels. Yahoo! is running a story which indicates that scientists may be observing that scenario right now.

Colm Toibin on plot in his new novel and Henry James

2005-07-10T21:25:00.001-04:00

I'm reading The Master. In an NPR interview, Toibin said:

"James's stories are really much better [than Toibin's Master]. They're much better organized in terms of plot and development. I had to stick to the facts, you know, and the facts of an ordinary life don't give you the great shape of one of those cathedrals of stories that James made for something like The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove."

G8 Information Centre

2005-07-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

I don't know if there is a more official one, but there's a U. of Toronto web site that has a lot of documentation on the G8 group.

Captain Obvious from Homeland Security raises terror level

2005-07-07T11:49:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News, via AP, reports that "The Bush administration is raising the terror alert to code orange for mass transit in the wake of London explosions, U.S. officials said Thursday." Is this what we're paying billions of dollars for? Telling us to watch out on public transportation after there was a major terrorist attack at another metropolitan subway? How did we get to the point where a) this kind of information qualifies as news and isn't instantly ridiculed, or dismissed as irrelevant by the press, as it should be, and 2) our government has the nerve to say things like this as if it is acting in an official capacity? This is damage control, ass-covering, and nothing else. I live in a corrupt, police state, and am lied to by my elected officials daily on matters that concern life and death.

books I have from the library

2005-07-06T18:58:00.000-04:00

Want to know what books I have checked out of the library right now? (Do I have a choice? you ask.) :

Europe Central, by William T. Vollman
You Bright and Risen Angels, by William T. Vollman
The Motorcycle Diaries, by Ernesto Che Guevara
The Seasons of a Man's Life, by Daniel Levinson
Hatchet Jobs, by Dale Peck
Refusing Heaven, by Jack Gilbert
The Master, by Colm Toibin
The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
The Sleeper, by Christopher Dickey

The Toibin and Roth books are one-week express checkout, so there's probably a slim chance I'll get both of them read. The Motorcycle Diaries I started, and it's good, so I'll probably finish that. Europe Central is enormous, I'll be satisfied if I finish just a single story in that. I want to read them all, though. Sigh ... so many good books, so little time.

I finished Snow, by the way, and it was fantastic. Orhan Pamuk is my new favorite author of the moment.

cool New Yorker article about US/Iran/Israel intelligence

2005-07-02T15:33:00.000-04:00

The New Yorker is running an article this week about come (former?) employees/members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who are either indicted or being indicted for espionage. The government claims they passed American intelligence on Iran to Israel. Reading this kind of article, which never seems as authentic or exciting as it does coming from this magazine (compare U.S. News, which blows), always makes me want to join the CIA. But only the black ops units like the one Jason Bourne was in.