Pants On Fire

There are two lies people living abroad in a country not of their native tongue deal with more than any other.  One they are told, the other they tell.

The former is how "good your new language is!"  It truly is amazing that even I know I pronounced things funny, conjugated everything in the wrong tense, and called you a woman, sir, but thank you.  Also, since I am aware of my own awfulness, this is no longer a compliment, but a perverse slap in the face.

The lie we tend to tell ourselves is actually more of a stretched untruth:

"Que pena, pero no hablo español." 

"Je suis très désolé, je ne parle pas français." 

"Me desculpe, mas não falo português."  

Sorry dude, I just don't speak your language.

This is an untruth on several levels, all of the speaker's own choosing.  For me, I understand a good deal in Portuguese, but if the speaker is too fast, slangy, or accented, then "I don't speak Portuguese."  However, since I do understand some things, oftentimes I use this catch-phrase to avoid a conversation.

Case in point, today at the grocery store on the way home from work:  All I needed was to grab some bananas, detergent, and eggs.  In and out.  Except when the oldest man in all of Campinas steps in front of me to complain about the price of papayas.  (This is not a figure of speech; he honestly wanted to vent his rage over the mark-up of the fruit compared to another shadier grocer a few blocks away.)

He spoke.  I understood the gist of his topic of conversation.  I decided I wanted no part in it.  I smiled and told him I didn't speak Portuguese.  You don't put yourself between the deer and the rifle unless you want to get shot.  I wanted to go home, not discuss the economic principles of papayas in Brazil.

Usually this lie works.  Normally people either smile back out of embarrassment or pity - sometimes suspicious eyebrow raised contempt - and step slowly away, lest they catch whatever language-related contagion you're carrying.  Not Grandpa Papaya!  He eyed me with a look that was both inconvenienced and stern; as if to say, "I didn't ask you if you spoke anything.  I told you the price of papayas is ridiculous!  Do you agree or not?!"

Also, I should mention I was cornered.  The man with a cane and four liver spots on his left cheek had me between a stocker's push-cart, the yogurts in the freezer case, and the now-infamous papayas.  And he was waving the ad from the other grocer in my face, clearly enough that I could see - thanks to the circle he drew around it - that, indeed, the papayas are cheaper a ten minute walk from here.  He was so adamant about them that I actually looked down at the bananas in my hand, concerned I had grabbed something else and he was just trying to be a good fellow consumer.

I reminded myself on the walk home that I used to use the verb "to comprehend" in lieu of "to understand" when I was trying to avoid conversation in Colombia.  Even the street beggars would look at you with pity and shake their heads with that one.  Time to go to the dictionary...

Big Island, Big Reward

The emerald-hued coast of Brazil between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro can't be described as anything less than majestic.  The Atlantic seems to rise up to meet the brilliant green coastal slopes as they plunge into the sea.  This spectacular view is what we were greeted with every morning from our rainforest lodging on the hillside of Ilha Grande.

After hitching a ride to the historic sea-side town of Paraty, taking a couple hour bus ride to the small port-city of Angra dos Reis, followed by a 90-minute ferry ride, we finally arrived on the shores of Ilha Grande, the largest of a smattering of islands just off the coast of Brazil's mainland.

The village and bay of Abraão.  Mainland Brazil is in the distance.

Being awakened by parrots isn't such bad vacation wake-up call.

Making progress on my 52 in 52...

Breakfast of champions

Now-a-days Ilha Grande and its more than 70 scattered beaches is tourist mecca, filled during holidays and summer weekends with day-trippers from Rio, wandering hippie back-packers, surfers, and Argentines on a cruise-ship stop-over.  But that wasn't always the case.  Though never continually inhabited, even by indigenous populations, until the 1800's, the island has served many purposes in its short civilized history.

A short walk from the largest town, Vila do Abraão, one can find the ruins of Lazareto, a quarantine facility used for immigrants from Europe as a way to keep cholera from making landfall.  This same building was a used later for a number years as a jail before being imploded.  In some of the tinier inlets, small beach communities exist, as do the remnants of long-gone sardine canneries.  On the south side of the island, facing the open sea, in the town of Dois Rios, lie the remains of Brazil's Alcatraz, the Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes (IPCM).  The prison was active for roughly 100 years until it too was imploded in 1994 (notice a pattern here?).  Dois Rios also goes down in infamy as the home of a wealthy plantation owner who, from the relative isolation of his location, supported the continued trade of slaves well after its national prohibition.  Without the economic stability of illegal human trafficking and the jail, Dois Rios is a now sad shadow of its former self, albeit one with a gorgeous beach.

Praia Lopes Mendes - at around 3km long, this white-sand beach is touted
 as one of the most beautiful beaches in the country.

The remains of a window from the imploded jail at Dois Rios.

The Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes' outer wall.

The 200 year old aqueduct in the jungle used to bring water to the
quarantined immigrants just outside of present-day Abraão.

There are no true roads on Ilha Grande, save for the dirt one connecting Abraão and Dois Rios, and the only vehicles on the island are government related, so the only mode of transport from one site to another is by trail through the rainforest or water taxi along the shore.  Ilha Grande has found a balance; its tourist infrastructure is intact and healthy, but so is its ecology.  Whether you're looking for wildlife and rustic communing with nature, a candle-lit shrimp dinner on the beach, a look back in time, or a day of rowdy drinking surrounded by thong and speedo-clad revelers, Ilha Grande can deliver.  The reward is simply getting there!

Election Hangover: Brazilian-style

I imagine that would be with a caipirinha...

Living abroad I do get the pleasure of missing out on the endless barrage of election season attack-ads, unsolicited dinner-hour phone calls, and earnest neighborhood canvassers.  (I don't get to avoid the self-annointed politicos that seem to exponentially multiply all over my Facebook newsfeed by October.) This is the second time (and country) I have been outside of the US during a Presidential election and I still find the fascination leading up to and the discussion after, well...fascinating.

Four years ago in Cali, Colombia, Obama's
election was front page news for the city's
and country's newspapers!

Being three hours ahead of EST, I went to bed with only a small handful of States calling.  In the morning - according to Facebook newsfeed timestamps, it seems many did not go to bed - only Florida and Alaska remained and the numbers spoke for themselves.  Gobama!*

At school my first encounter with the "day after" were the Brazilian high school seniors who have there lockers located right outside my classroom.  Little do they seem to realize that tinted glass is only vision-proof and I am privy to every 7:45am opinion - drunken weekend updates, who the "bastard teachers" are, and latest YouTube sensations as well - that goes down as I casually set up the lab activity for the day.

The best thing about high school seniors is that they know everything.  They also speak with dogmatic conviction, provide no evidence for anything, and think they're the oppressed ones.  Some choice lines from this morning, from both sides of the aisle:

"You know that Obama only won because he's black and white people feel guilty about it."

"Romney, like, ran companies and so he knows stuff about money.  Americans obviously want to be poor 'cause, like, why the f*** would you not make him President then?"

Brazilian President since
2011, Dilma Rousseff.

Later at lunch some Brazilian colleagues were discussing, in general, how interesting they find the who voting process in the US.  The fact that there are only two main parties is mystifying.  In Brazil the political parties change like a chameleon's colors, and there are usually so many a candidate can win with far less than half the vote.  So, while Americans often yearn for more choices, Brazilian generally would prefer fewer.

Brazil also is no stranger to corruption.  They are envious of the fact that, in the US, a person with any kind of criminal record wouldn't likely be let anywhere near a convention caucus with hopes of throwing their name in the hat to run.  Whether its a good or bad thing to have an ex-convict running the show in a country is a whole other topic, Brazilian politicians often have open ties with some shady pasts.

At the end of the day, however, it seems Brazil would likely be a "blue state."

*In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit I did not vote.  No reason, just factors.  The main one is that I currently am semi-stateless.  Last election the vote I cast counted for Wisconsin, as that was the last place I was registered to vote in and I still paid some taxes there the year prior.  Now my official address is in Minnesota, however, during the brief period of time I was home over the summer I was more concerned with whether I would have a visa or not that thoughts of November were nowhere to be found.  Plus, absentee ballots are only counted if it is close so...next time - I promise!