No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man or woman is an island, but every one of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition and country and nation and sex and language and many other things, and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean.
Amos Oz
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Good hair, Bad hair
Good hair in black communities is the term used for straight, docile hair – white girls’ hair. From a young age, black girls are taught to force their hair into submission by using relaxant, a name as sweet as the product is toxic. On a chemical level, it is linked to ovarian cancer. On a social level, it reaffirms power politics. In reverse, bad, bad hair is the term used for the natural, the wild, the unkempt, the untamed – words that, incidentally, are also used to chastise a woman.
Outgrowing relaxed hair takes years – around the same time it takes to outgrow those norms spoon-fed with Kellogg's, Nestle and Coke.
Young men and women in Brazil live at home until they move in with their future spouses. Shared flats among peers are still quite rare, and, allusively, are called republic. Living with the parents is both a cultural and financial question. But this means that sex is not so straightforward. First, as a man, you need a car to pick up the girl. Most likely, you don’t have one yourself, so you’ll need to borrow it. Then, you need a place to spend time with your beloved. That will be a motel, with prices ranging from 10€ to 200€ per night. That’s a lot of money, so you have to be sure it’s worth it. This is why many guys have numerous potential love interests simultaneously, neatly arranged in Whatsapp threads. At some point, one of them will push forward and the heavens will align for the promising constellation of car-money-motel.
Blitz is the Brazilian term for an organised police patrol, stopping cars to search for drugs or drunk drivers. For a few years now, Brazil has had a a 0% alcohol tolerance, which means that almost anyone will be crossing the line of legality. Mostly it is young, black men that will be stopped, asked to step out of their car, stand up against the wall with arms and legs spread wide, and searched thoroughly – a firm reminder of their standing in Brazilian society.
Tanya hates Rio. She really tries not to – “but things just don’t work here.” She’s American, a special needs teacher who lived in Hong Kong and Barcelona before moving to Rio to be with her Brazilian boyfriend. They’ve been together four years; now they’re married. In her 20s, she was on antipsychotics that her doctor told her were sleeping pills. It took her years to feel things again. She took one pill many years later and slept for 27 hours straight. The Vipassana course was an opportunity for her to think about her relationship with Daniel; about how she is always angry at him, despite herself, despite him being just lovely. She used to beat herself up about it, now she knows it runs in her mother’s family and is ready to tackle it. She’s certain that these ten days have allowed her to make a fresh start with it.
Daniel picks us up – he’s an hour late. Tanya has been waiting at the gate all that time. Fifteen minutes into the drive, she starts snapping at him. Laura and I keep talking, but she knows we can feel the tension; worse, she feels it herself. Daniel asks her if she’s ok, she hasn’t said a word in ages. She looks out of the window – “I’m just trying to keep the peace.”
I meet a 30-year old backpacker from the South of Brazil. His hair is white blond, his face burnt by the sun. He could be German – his ancestors were. He asks me about my impressions of Brazil. Somewhere in my answer, I utter the words “corrupt, complicated.” He shrugs his shoulders. "What do you expect? Brazil is like a child whose parents were already completely fucked up, who came from slavery, from wars, from terror. No wonder that child has a lot of issues to work through. But it’ll grow up.”
Brazilians love waterfalls. And selfies. When both come together, sparks fly across the air - the promise of endless possibility.
Simona is from Argentina. Two years ago, her father was travelling on a boat from Argentina to Brazil, and disappeared. She went on a Vipassana course, and has been meditating two hours a day ever since. When I ask her if she feels a difference, she nods vigorously – “it’s incredible. I look at people and see their gaze change.”
She has a friend in France who often will send her a text message, “I’ll be sitting now.” Then they sit together, across time zones, and meditate.
10 days of silent vipassana meditation. Not speaking for 10 days meant a lot of things. Interestingly, it did not mean solitude. We were forty women with different faces, bodies, histories. Had one been asked to tell where these faces are from, there would have been guesses like Poland, Germany, Italy, North Africa, India. I doubt anyone would have said Brazil. Yet all but four are from Here, this strange melting pot of histories, bound together by sticky sugar cane and words.
He has a few friends in Paris that were adopted from Brazil. They told him about an organisation that helps find the biological parents. So he got in touch. And, unlike most others, he was lucky – they tracked down his family.
Victor’s biological parents live in a favela in the rural North-East, along with five of his siblings. He’s the only one who was given up for adoption, probably due to an extramarital affair. Last year, he spoke to his mother via a translator. Soon now, his Portuguese will be good enough to speak to her in his own words. But he’s finding it hard to pick up the phone. Every Friday, he says he’ll call her tomorrow.
As I left the meditation hall one morning around 5am – the sky was still a dark shade of blue, a few birds were rustling their feathers in preparation for morning chants – I walked past a caterpillar, suspended in mid-air, inches away from my nose. Looking up, I saw a thread of silk catching the moonlight. Up, up, up, it seemed like the point of departure was a thick green leaf, four metres from the ground. By all means, the caterpillar’s weight should have ripped the silky thread apart – instead, he was slowly descending toward the ground, an inch at a time, leaving behind an evergrowing silky thread. I followed him down. As he reached the ground, he slowly, delicately placed his bottom on the earth, then paused for a minute. But only for this one minute – then, after what seemed like a fruitless mission, he jerked himself off the ground and started spiralling around his own axis as he engulfed his silk, feeding it back into himself. I waited until he was out of reach of passing meditators, then walked on. When I turned around again, he had disappeared into the green sky.
The Portuguese word exploraçao has two meanings:
exploration, and exploitation.
Vendors on the beach this Sunday
Acaraje* 1
Agua/Cerveja 5
Queijo coalho** 9
Crisps 3
Picole*** 7
Mousse 1
Ice cream 1
Sunglasses 0
Sunscreen 3
Beach towels 1
A la carte**** 1
* Traditional Brazilian dish made from beans and deep fried in dende (palm oil). Served with spicy shrimp paste, ground cashews and palm oil, and topped with fried shrimps
** White cheese cubes on a stick, melted and browned over portable coal oven, seasoned with oregano or honey
*** Popsicles – strawberry with dolce de leite is the most popular
**** Ordered on the beach and delivered from a nearby restaurant via runner
A boy of 10, 11 years playing in the water with his brother of 15. He’s slightly chubby, often looks back to where his mother is sitting with her friends and having a beer. The older brother throws sand at him; the younger starts to cry, points at his brother and looks to the mother for attention. But she doesn’t budge. Full of pain and frustration, he throws sand back at the brother. The mother laughs. The boy turns around, half surprised, half elated to have caught his mother’s attention; he seems to grow taller with her appraisal. He throws sand again, this time more forcefully, full of meaning.
Gringo – a brief etymology
In Latin American countries, the word gringo is used derogatively for anyone who isn't from South America. In Brazil, gringo refers to anyone who is not Brazilian, and has no negative connotations.
There are many theories on the etymology of the word, this is a favourite: if you want to live in the US, you need a green card. So when you're waiting at the border, what you need the official to say are the magic words – green, go.
Viv is French. She’s one of those women you immediately recognise as being foreign in Salvador, even though she’s lived here for fifteen years. She wears her hair short, bleached beach blonde, her sunglasses comfortably propped on her head as if it's where they’ve always been. She moved to Brazil with her French husband, in search for a better quality of life – a slower pace, sun, beach... They had three children together. But she wasn’t happy. She wanted to break up, and he probably knew, she thinks now. When their daughters were 9, 8 and their youngest barely 1 year of age, her husband took the two eldest on a holiday to France and never came back. If she wanted to see her daughters, she’d have to move to France, he said. It was his way of keeping them together, in France. But she stayed in Brazil, married a Brazilian, and turned the page. She speaks to her daughters on Skype, and misses them a lot. But she can’t go back – her life is here, she says. She’d taught her daughters how to take care of themselves, how to clean, cook, be independent – so she doesn’t worry for them. “They’ll be fine”, she says, and looks out to the sea, where her youngest is playing in the waves, joyfully shrieking, looking back at her mother.
V&G - Part I
V is 23. When she was 17, she met G, 25 years older than her. She wanted him straight away, he was hesitant because of the age difference. Her father is what she refers to as “crap” – a drunk, irresponsible man who never cared for her. When she started going out with G, her father wanted to take G to court for sleeping with an underage girl, but the court stripped him of all parental authority. A year later, she was pregnant of Flora. G and her broke up, but went on living together, for the little one’s sake. If she were pregnant now she’d abort, she says; she’s liberal about her body and women’s rights, even though Brazil isn’t. She shrugs. “But anyway, abortion is only illegal for the poor.”
V&G - Part II
G is 47. He’s been drunk every day for the last 35 years – “I’m surprised I'm still alive”, he chuckles as he downs his staple drink, Caipirinha. A long time ago, when he was already drunk, he’d promised his mother to name his first daughter after her, but later realized what a hideous name she had. She was even happier though when he named Flora after his grandmother instead. When I ask him about V, his face turns dark. “She tricked me,” he says. “She told me she was on the pill.”
The legend of the pink dolphin
In the 1850s, rubber became a desirable commodity, and one that was only found in the Amazon. Before extracting hundreds of thousands of seeds to plant in their Asian colonies and thus terminating the Brazilian rubber boom, the British used indigenous slaves to extract the rubber from the trees. Whilst the rubber tappers were at work, the slave owners would visit their homes and rape their wives. The shame and the pain were unbearable. Thus, a legend was propelled into existence. Enter the pink dolphin, who can transform himself into a human form, and, appearing to be the woman’s husband, “seduce” her before disappearing forever, leaving the woman to deal with the consequences.
One day before going out for a swim in the TapajoÌs river, I ask Bata, a native from the area, if it's dangerous to swim whilst menstruating, lest there be piranhas, caimans et al. He nods gravely and says, "I’ll be right back." He returns with a huge clove of garlic. "Keep this on you", he says, "it’ll keep the pink dolphin at bay." And he chuckles.
I meet Abrahan in the shadows of a beach bar in Atins. When he sits down opposite me, I can’t see his face, but I can hear his smile. He tells me about his life – he restores and sells ancient jewellery. He has a wife and two kids – three kids, he corrects, and shakes his head laughing. “I only just found out about the third one.” 20 years ago, he’d had an affair with an Indian woman in the Amazon. Does his wife know about it? He shakes his head. In her culture – she’s Indian, too – that’s just not possible. “You mean cheating?”, I ask. He nods. Then, two years ago, the woman got in touch with Abrahan, announcing that he had an 18-year old son. He's spent a lot of time with him since, travelling together for long periods to get to know his third child. He feels closer to him than to the other two – they don’t know about his existence.
His daughter just had a child – being a grandfather is even better than being a father, he says. It comes with all the beautiful aspects of parenthood, but without the responsibility. “And I swear”, he says, “when I looked into the little girl’s eyes for the first time, I felt an instant connection. I saw my grandmother.” His voice cracks – “it’s the first time I’ve told anyone, I could cry on the spot.” He gulps, and then laughs, a deep, full roar, hungry for life.
Manuka is 21. He’s lived in the desert of Lençois de Maranhenses his entire life, he knows the dunes like the back of his hand. His mother is 37. She had her first child aged 14, from a boyfriend she didn’t think she'd end up marrying when she met him a year earlier. She then had one child every year for the next four. Now they’re all adults, helping her in the guesthouse that she runs in the oasis they grew up in. It’s slowly shrinking due to climate change, Manuka predicts it’ll be gone when he’s 70.
He’s a reserved young man, who gives me space to walk and be silent. One evening, as we walk through the dunes under starry skies, he says, “A man that I guided once told me that if you see a shooting star, you can make a wish, but that you shouldn’t tell anyone.” I nod.
After a few minutes in silence, Manuka turns and says, “But I’ve never been sure. What is it you shouldn’t tell – the wish, or the fact that you’ve seen a shooting star?”
Winnie the Pooh
On our second day of walking through the desert, I tell Manuka about Winnie the Pooh, a bear with two friends, a donkey and a piglet. “He doesn’t like to work, and loves hanging out with his friends, going on adventures, looking for honey.” A few minutes go by, then Manuka asks, “but how does he survive? Does he trade things with others?” I must admit I don’t know. “It’s a children’s book,” I offer, “maybe there’s just no need to work.”
Manuka shakes his head in contempt. “That’s just lazy.”
Home
I had collected a few beautiful bright orange shells at Cova da Onça beach in Boipeba. Back at the pousada, I rinsed them in the sink, the sand gushing away in small cascades. I left them on the table and went to sleep.
That night, I woke to a loud clonking sound. I assumed it was leaves falling onto the roof, but the sound kept coming – clonk clonk clonk. I went to the bathroom to check the shower wasn’t dripping. Nothing.
As I went to switch the light off again, I spotted one of the shells on the bedroom floor. Two tiny slugs were feverishly scurrying about to move the giant shell, twenty times their size. Each time they moved it, it rolled a little further toward the sea – clonk. My immediate reflex was to pick it up and put it back on the table. Just as I was reaching out, it struck me – it's theirs to inhabit, not mine to take.
The entire book is available here
