Travelling Up North, some Portuguese lessons

Having spent much of October occupied by travelling and visiting friends/family, I spent the first week of November sorting out my dissertation and doing a bit of studying, but finally got around to writing an update on life here.

Between the 6th and 18th October there were a sufficient number of feriados (public holidays) to justify a bit of a trip away, so I booked a flight to João Pessoa, in the far North-East, where some friends from Leeds are studying.

If you take a three hour flight from England you could reach such exotic climbs as Morocco, Greece, Russia or Iceland - all with very distinctive cultures and ways of life. However, upon taking a journey of similar length from Rio to João Pessoa, it was hardly radically different. Although João Pessoa, with just over a million people, is bigger than cities such as Leeds, it has little to do and is very calm and tranquil, devoid of the hecticness and edgy feel of Rio. You do feel very isolated up here - its the most easterly point of the Americas, and closer to Africa than much of the rest of South America. It's a very beautiful part of the country though - the beaches are glorious and the sea is populated with dolphins, turtles and sharks, all visible from the shore. The cost of living is notably different - the price of cheap accomodation in Rio is the same as a very expensive place in João. There is a mixed feeling of resignation and content here - the Northeast is second only to the tribal areas in the Amazon and the dry interior as the bottom feeder of Brazilian society. The emmigration rates are very high, in fact it's probable that there are more people in Rio from the north east than the whole of João.

The biggest contrast, however, was the university there. It had more of a primary school feel to it - no building was more than one story high, and everything was very close together. The place was littered with stray cats and dogs and the unplastered red brick walls resembled favela buildings more than an educational institution, and as for the one toilet I had the pleasure of using, well I've seen higher sanitary standards at Reading Festival. All in all, a marked contrast from the private equivilant I attend in Rio (scoff scoff). The trip to João Pessoa was a pretty interesting experience - it really made me appreciate what Rio has to offer, and as it was the first place outside of Rio de Janeiro state I had visited, it served as a good introduction to what the rest of the country has to offer.

After a week or so in João Pessoa, I got on a 16 hour bus to Salvador, Brazil's second biggest tourist destination, the former capital, and the pivotal port in which millions of slaves arrived in centuries gone by. Although the centre of town where I stayed was a tourist haven, it was probably the most Brazilian place I've visited - whereas a lot of Rio reminds me of Europe, Salvador brought back memories of Bolivia and Peru, what people might call the 'real' South America. I spend a few days here enjoying myself as a tourist - Salvador is famed for its street entertainment, such as capoeira (a dance/fight routine originating from slaves shipped from Angola) and berimbau (a one stringed traditional Brazilian instrument players. The journey home was surprisingly smooth. Although I had prepared myself for a long bus journey back to Rio, I was surprised to discover that a two hour flight was only a few reais more than the 27 hour bus - unless your afraid of flying or extremely environmentally conscious (hi Dad!) then you'd be nuts to get the bus. Maybe it would be a good idea for the government here to tax airlines to encourage a greener form of travel, but Brazil being Brazil that seems a pretty distant possibility.

Nearly 2 weeks ago marked the second and final round of the Brazilian Presidential election. It was won by Dilma Roussef, who succeeds Brazil's most popular president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known just as Lula. Although this was expected to be a peaceful transition, as both leaders are in the same party, it made me realise that since I've been in Brazil, I've seen virtually no form of protest. This is in strong contrast to the rest of Latin America, particually Buenos Aires, where I seem to remember regular demonstrations (not including the weekly assembles on the main square regarding Videla dictatorship/Falklands fiasco). Not to mention Europe - take Athens for example,the recent protests and strikes that affected the whole of France, and the protests in London this week. Even though Brazil is booming economically and the standard of living is increasing for many, there is still a lot of issues such as massive inequality and institutional racism - you wonder why these problems are not taken to the streets.

Although many see this time abroad as a glorified beach holiday, which at times isn't far from the truth, I have definately seen an improvement my level of Portuguese. I have been reading a lot, which I find is one of the easiest ways to learn. I got myself a copy of Ozzy Osbourne's recently released autobiography a few months back and was able to learn a lot of vocabulary. For example, there is no direct translation for "to pass out" (through excessive drinking) - the Portguese use "to faint" in this context, which doesn't convey the true sentiment of the English word, but the fact that there is no equivilant shows that maybe the Brazilians don't take their drinking to the levels that us English do. In addition to this, I have been trying to read at least a few newspapers a week. In order to save money, I often buy the tabloids, which are predictably bad. They are full of the usual stories of Z-list celebrities, favela violence, bus hijackings etc. If you want Rio to live up to the image given in the film City of God, then these papers do it justice. Sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous. The headline of one of the tabloids, "Mais", which I bought today for the first and last time, was "Girl chokes to death on chewing gum". Seriously?.

In addition, I have noticed some more general idiosyncracies of the language. They have the funny habit of putting "eee" on the end of words totally unnecessarily, such as MceeeDonalds, chipeee, Pinkeee Floyd, lapeeetopeee, etc.. I've noticed a habit of reluctance to translate English words too - lanche is lunch, time is team (pronounced the same), and shopping is erm, shopping. This sometimes sounds pretty ridiculous, especially when they do it wrong, for example they don't seem to realise which is the noun and adjective in 'heavy metal'. As a result, the genre is, when shortened from 'heavy metal', to just 'heavy'. Understandably however, since the noun often preceeds the adjective in many languages. Apparently, these 'impurities' are far less common in 'real' Portuguese (as my Portuguese friend referred to it as).

Off to Belo Horizonte tomorrow, taking advantage of yet another public holiday to see friends and go to a gig. Hope all is well wherever you're at.

Jack