Vagabonding through Brazil

From language student to dog-walker and house-keeper

2006-12-20T03:27:00.000+01:00

There´s been rather drastic changes in the role of the not-so-long-ago freshly arrived tiny, non Portuguese-speaking language student you saw walking the streets of Barra. What´s become of him is your image of the standard, sweaty macho Brazilian playing frescoball on the beach. And the jelly, sticky stuff that you´ve seen his body drenched in (which you thought was sun-melted butter) is in fact coconut tanning oil applied abundantly to enhance the phenomenal topography of the torso.

Well, nearly all of that has happened ;-). Since Silvia left for Europe three days ago, I have had the apartment to myself. And the dog. So, if only for a week, I get to experience being an apartment-owner and dog-keeper in Brazil. Participating in Brazilian body culture will have to be a future task.

Regina, Rafa, Silvia, Sofia and I

Me & Sofia

The corner next to where I live, is inhabited by five or ten rather seedy figures. These homeless young men of Brazil will annoy, incommode, tire or even scare you with never-ending "amigo" calls. When you don´t respond, the calls turn into loud curses and body movements around the waste (where a gun can be hidden) intended to scare the shit out of you. As great as these mens indifference to human life might be, they hold animals in high esteem. You will see them feeding the neighbourhoods street-dogs with the very food they´ve acquired from hours of begging and hustling.

Silvia picked up Maria - the dog I´m now the proud walker of - from that very corner. The men revere that dog and thus also the woman that´s taking care of it. Because of that, walking the streets of Barra is now a great pleasure. I get good chats and happy faces from virtually everyone and don´t need to feel unsafe at night. It´s even worth having to clean up her xixi (pee) from the kitchen floor every morning! (Mark, Susan and Miles - you better copy these lines right away - for future evidence purposes - before I change my mind and remove it all!).

Campo Grande, Vitória and Barra - neighbourhoods by the sea

Me - by the beer

Nature´s best

Chillin´w/ the Swedes

Kristoffer and Claire

Word up

Last week I went to a paradise island called Morro de São Paulo. It´s a mere two hour boat ride from Salvador. I loved the place and learned that incredible craziness makes a perfect match with white-sand coral beaches, particularly so in form of dusk-till-dawn parties on the beach, abundant in alcohol (and other substances too, if you wish). Met a bunch of Swedes at the pousada. Good old Gothenburg fellas, plus two lads from Helsingborg. Good times.

In order to get back in time for class on Monday, I decided to go back with the Sunday afternoon catamaran. The friendly Argentinean guesthouse owner helped me reserve the ticket. Thereafter, a handful of (co-)incidences made me miss the boat. It sunk. 128 passengers managed to get life vests on before the boat capsized. They floated around for four hours uncertain of if rescue was under way. One person never got on the coast guards´rescue boat that night. I´m one lucky son of a bitch.

Ivan w/ friend

Acaí: Brazilian fruit, Caribbean style

Matt and Claire -
traveling the world

Beautiful Etilme

Henke at dusk

Blending fruits

I´m nearly done with my Portuguese classes. It´s been very intense and I´m looking forward to have some time to let everything fall into place. In fact, I´d like to have much more than four weeks for that process before going home. Aconteça o que acontecer - whatever happens, happens - is still my approach to the possibility of an extended stay in Brazil. I´ll keep you posted.

Christmas will be a calm event. On Friday I´m headed to one of the beaches north of town. There, Sheila and I are going to kick back for two days or so. On the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I get on a plane bound for Rio de Janeiro. The Marvelous City. I can´t wait, Rio is the type of city that you make your home and since doing that two years ago, I´ve been longing to return. This visit will be spiced up with New Year´s celebrations on Copacabana and through meeting up with old friends. You will hear more as whatever happens continues to happen.

Until then,

Joakim

By the way, the blog entries are now open for comments also for non-members. I´d be very happy if you dropped a line. Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese works, too ;-)

Sunset in Salvador

2006-12-06T22:26:00.000+01:00

Today, as many times before, I stayed at Sheila´s after the end of class. She dug out a bunch of Brazilian records which she played for me, while devotedly translating the texts. Similtanously, her body language expressed the often duplicate inverted messages in the music. "Fazer jogo de palavras" - to play with words to invert messages - is abundant in much of the samba, MPB (Brazilian popular music) and tropicalissimo that Brazil still moves to. The need of refining the word-play techniques sprung out of the limited freedom of expression during the dictatorship.

There´s a ten-minute walk from Portuguese class to home. The nature changes from edifice-scape to city-scape to sun-and-sea-scape in Porto, where the city meets the sea. When walking home today, I picked up some groceries at the supermarket in the middle of the above mentioned city-scape. Coming down to the waterfront, I entered sunset-scape. The red, glowing ball in the sky - in Swedish called "sol"- seemed bigger than ever before and there wasn´t even a cloud there to stop it from having it´s fire turned out in the sea. I just had to throw my clothes off and go for a quick swim. I left a few bags of groceries, an old school-bag with books and every single peace of sorrow in my life on the beach. After the sunset, I simply slipped my feet into my flip-flops, picked up my bags and left - behind - my sorrows.

I´m just about to leave the house behind, too, even if just for a few hours of drinking beer with new acquintances. I´ve been informed that one can´t comment my blog entries without being a member. So? Send me an e-mail ;-)

Truly yours,

Joakim

Thoughts of A Language Student

2006-12-02T00:16:00.000+01:00

Three weeks of doing it Brazilian style! Time worth commemorating with a few reflections.

It never ceases to surprise me how ones outlook alterates when moving. Three weeks in Barra have presented new situations and experiences equal to a year at home. Or two.

Being abroad learning a language and a culture makes me feel strong. Communicating in a fourth language is stimulating. So is playing music - a project I´ve accepted as key to happiness and independency in my life but procrastinated for so long.

Other feelings prevalent during this time have been dependency, insuffiency, vulnerability. In these respects, from time to time this cultural experience for me has meant going back to childhood. Which isn´t bad - the openness to influences childhood stands for is perfectly suiting when wanting to learn new stuff fast! I´ll leave the period of sorting out what I really like and what I don´t to the future. Right now I enjoy simply living life in the fast lane, absorbing everything I can from this country of mind-blowing rhythms and beautiful language.

The language studies are going fine. Although frustrating at times, I´m making improvements almost every day. I believe the key to happy language learning is to accept moments or even days of defeat merely as a part in the ever-lasting spiral staircase of learning a language. In that way, moments of defeat also represent moving up a step rather than the opposite. Which of course is just a more complicated way of saying that we learn from our mistakes ;-)

I go out a lot. Spent yesterday in the historical centre of town (pictures coming up soon), going to a concert on my own. Going out to dance with yourself and the world as your only company is great fun which I can warmly recommend! Tonight is Friday night which means going out with my teacher (see her homepage at http://www.basicalingua.com/) and the other students at the school. Should be good fun although it inevitably means being trapped with the English language for a night. On the other hand, being understood for once perhaps isn´t so bad after all ;-)

Enjoy the pictures!

All my love,

Joakim

Assim é Salvador!

2006-11-17T22:00:00.000+01:00

Salvador is beautiful... Here are a few pictures of my hosts Silvia and Rafael and of the Barra neighborhood where I´m staying. Enjoy! A more detailed status report is coming up soon but for now I´ll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Com muito carinho,

Joakim