things left behind

so this is it: the dreaded day that i am moving back to amsterdam.
2 suitcases packed. still some lose stuff lying around that needs to be found a last nook or cranny in my backpack.
why do we people collect so much rubbish?

and yet, i am leaving so much behind!
some clothes that needed to be thrown away in the first place. some books i have read and do not want to reread. a worn down pair of sneakers. of course the plants and furniture that i bought stays behind.
and memories can not be packed. you carry them with you, until you forget them. and some i leave behind, right here as i step out of the house: the bad ones i am more than eager to forget. about the suffocating heat, bad hangovers, the dirt in our house, the congested traffic, too much rice n beans. gone, the moment i have left.
oh, i leave so much behind.

and still my bags are full.
clothes and shoes, books, cd's, a whole plastic bag full of electronics (oh, these wires!), a puppet i made, a puppet i brought. so much to take away from here. it makes me feel like a homeless person, pushing around all his belongings in a shopping cart.

but how easily i would leave it all behind, all of it - my dearest shirt, my favorite jeans, the murakami book i so much enjoyed, the camera, laptop, cell phone, really i wouldn't think twice - if i could only carry with me to amsterdam the one thing that is no longer mine: my boyfriends love.

the trip

the name of rio's train station, central do brasil, is rather grander than reality. sure, it is not small, but neither is it big. and if you think it connects rio to the rest of the giant hinterland... well, no. a small network of 5 commuter lines feathers out from here, the longest stretch being 30 kilometers at the most.
still, there is a lot of movement in and around the station. on the side of it there is a busy street market. stalls with cheap plastic toys, second hand cell phones, fruit. each stall plays a different tune on full blast. well, they have to; after all, the stall next door is also playing music on full blast.
the station is in the rather dilapidated center of rio. from here you can see christ in profile.
it is 11.30 and i am here to catch the 11.45 to belford roxo.
i am going to meet the boyfriend at his work.

as the train leaves the station the crumbling houses and buildings of downtown quickly make way for the first of a long succession of favela's. improvised 2 story houses build out of unplastered brick, often with seemingly random add ons. probably build as some more money became available. dogs digging in the dirt, kids flying their kites.
christ quickly turns his back on this part of the city.
and as the brick houses are replaced by wooden sheds, and the kids by crack smoking adults, christ has long disappeared out of view. this is then how a large part of the inhabitants of rio live.

i had postponed this trip for weeks. always something came up. and when no good reason stopped me, there was always laziness to prevent me from going out here.
but now, i must go. for i only have one more week left in brazil before moving back to amsterdam.
oh yes, it is over between me and the boyfriend. and so staying on in rio makes no sense to me.

the carriage is neither full nor empty. opposite me there is a couple - he is quite good looking, she clearly takes care of herself but is not particularly pretty. a somewhat strange couple as she is quite a bit older than he is. hm - on second thought, perhaps they are not a couple at all but a young mother with a mature looking son. could be.
there is a lady constantly on the phone. a pink phone. she is wearing pink too.
at the next stop a young woman gets on board wearing diminutive shorts. her belly shows underneath her faded purple shirt. when she sits down next to me her shorts disappear completely under her belly and it looks as if she is naked from the top down. her fleshy legs shake softly like bread dough when the train continues it rattling journey out to belford roxo.

we pass 2 giant deserted industrial buildings. people seem to have set up home in the buildings, like a family of mice building their houses in a mammoth carcass. around it stand rusting cranes on guard.

as i look at the people around me on board i realize there is a lot of work in the world for the boyfriend. he is a dentist you see and this group of men and women here alone could provide the boyfriend with months of work. pulling the mother's/girlfriend's gray rotten teeth - all of them. making an implant there in the gap that guy has instead of a front tooth. instructing the guy next to me to polish his teeth at least every now and then. oh, heaps of work.

the boyfriend... where did we go wrong i wonder.
i stare out at the never ending maze of the favela's. i imagine us running round in them, me and the boyfriend, our conversations as complex and unmapped as these streets. i am chasing him, calling after him 'wait! i want to tell you something'. but he runs away. we catch a glimpse of each other every now and then, at the end of an alley, in the reflection of a window. there he is, up on the roof. and if ever it looks from above as if he is running after me, look again: that is when he is trying to chase me away.
'stop following me', he says.
'only if you stop running away from me', i answer.
he is speaking to me, something about freedom and independence. about other guys. about secrets and privacy. i only half hear the words. i am too busy catching my breath and at the same time calling things back at him. about respect and oh, the usual crap. i don't even understand it myself. i mutter 'yes,but i moved to rio for you'. yes, i did. so what?

we get tired and pause leaning against each other.
'why are we doing this?'
some friendly words. we laugh. we cuddle a bit. and just when i want to hug him he runs away again.

the course we have run is just as untraceable and twisted as the electricity wires above our heads in this unfriendly neighborhood.
every time we try to untangle our arguments each of us pulls at their loose end and we end up making the knot ever tighter.

the lady with no pants wakes me out of my daydream. she offers me a sticky sweet. 'obrigado.'i could do with something sweet now.
she herself pops the last sweet into her mouth, puts the wrapper back into the plastic sweety bag, now full of empty wrappers. only then does she throw the whole bag on the floor of the train. oh well, it is a start.

we must be getting near to the final destination, to belford roxo. and even though the improvised houses now make way for regular, 'real' houses, there is hardly any improvement. rubbish everywhere. poverty. somehow it does not feel as if we are 'getting' anywhere.
but here we are. final stop.

what a strange trip this has been - just now, but also the past few months. enjoyable, though not always beautiful. friendly people all around me, but sometimes rather harsh. an interesting view, always, even if sometimes painful. it has been one hell of a ride.
i took it alone though, i think. never was i in the same train as the boyfriend. he didn't want to come on board of my train and did not let me on board of his.
does he not realize you can travel on the same train and still have your own journey? look at different things, even sit apart sometimes?

so i have come all this way to this strange place that does not feel like a destination. but as a friend once told me: the journey is the destination!

i find the clinic easily. the boyfriend greets me with a smile. not a kiss.
'lets go for lunch', he says.

we walk in silence.
the boyfriend is no longer 'the boyfriend'. he is that guy that used to love me. my ex. that friendly dentist with perfect teeth. that crazy idiot that held out with me and my nagging for so long. he is andre.

we walk back past the station.
there is a whole row of minibuses next to the station, waiting to take people even further away. on to the next destination: parque são joão, OMCB (whatever that may be), b. vermelha, locaretti. exotic.
i too must catch a minibus or a train or walk - to the next destination.
i will go there alone.
even though i still hope andre will (somehow) be able to join me.

wired

it is difficult to take any picture in rio without wires on it.
electricity wires.
telephone wires.
tv cables.
wires to keep everything together.
wires to wire up wires.

so i decided to take a picture of wires.

tropic-arctic

it is winter.
in rio that means it rains sometimes.
some evenings i wear a (light) sweater: 16 degrees is too cold for shorts and t-shirt.
it means it only gets warm enough to go to the beach once or twice a week.

brazil, however, is more than rio.
the north is tropical. it still heats up to 30+ degrees there.
and in the south - it actually gets cold.
very cold this year.
below zero.
this is news.
not in 20 years has it been this cold.

one newspaper opened with the headline:
'european temperatures'

funny. guess they will be surprised to hear about these temperatures as being european in say, greece and italy.
next winter, when the frost sets in in scandinavia, the newspapers there should open their editions with:
'brazilian temperatures'.

just like brazilians should not think of the whole of europe as 'just below the arctic' neither should europeans think of the whole of brazil as a tropical country.

though i must say, today it is sunny in rio. hm, beach later today perhaps?

ps i added a new link under my favorites to the right: 'gilberto gil - chiclete'. an amazing live performance. fantastic to see somebody perform and be so completely 'in the moment'.

no beach, no samba, no bikini

everybody knows carnival. to many people this fest even captures the essence of brazil: sweating bodies, dressed in flimsy but colourful costumes, dancing to the irresistible beat of the samba, the beach never far away, plenty of beer and caipirinha flowing to heigthen the spirits (and lower the already rather low social and sexual barriers).





but how many people know this other big celebration, the festa junina? (read the wikipedia article for some background)
in many ways it forms the opposite of carnival. it is mainly, but not exclusively, a party for children. it is celebrated throughout the months of june and july (hey, why only have 1 month of parties if you can also celebrate 2 months?) the party originates from the interior of the north-east of brazil. this part of brazil is like carnaval: hardly any foreigner knows anything about it.
well, all countries have a province, a state or a region that they like to make fun of. in brazil it is the north-east. a dry, backward region, full of hicks and goats.
and during the festa junina the whole of the country dresses up like the north easterners (well, of course an exaggerated version of it), wearing straw hats, checkered shirts and funny old fashioned little dresses. they play brasilian country music (oh yes, it exists and is just as awful as the north american relative of it) and eat typical north eastern sweets and food.
during a party the grounds of the party are just like a fazenda in the north east. on these giant farms the boss had the right to marry people - and to put them in prison. so sure enough, a festa junina is not complete without a prison and a priest, wedding people for the duration of the party.
no beach, no samba, no bikini's.

for me, it just shows how huge and varied this country is.
i just finished reading braziliaanse brieven, (thank you, tom!) a great account of life in brazil through the eyes of a european. on returning from one of his trips to brazil the author is asked by a friend if he likes brazil. he is briefly puzzled by the question. the country is too complex to like or dislike. there are too many aspects to a country as vast and diverse as brazil. he replies: "do you think europe is a nice continent?"

what's in a name?

i met jeanne d'arc a few weeks ago. she lives right here in my neighbourhood.
ben hur lives just down the street.
messias lives quite a bit further away, in vidigal, a favela near ipanema.
jesus lives there too.
hanibal lives in a different state. as does teorema.

names in brazil are literary fantastic. they are as varied as the skincolour of the brazilians, as their hairdo's, as their ancestry (the latter of course partially explains the diversity in names).

sure, a lot of people have names i can recognise and handle. names you expect in latin america. like fernando, monica, carlos and maria.
but then there are plenty of pretty weird names.

first there are the classical names. marcus-antonio, flavia, thiago, regina, homero, attilio, cesar. i like these names. they keep alive a cultural heritage. i think it is a pity in holland not more names like this are given to our babies. there is nothing wrong with 'rembrandt' or 'artemis', is there?

also classical, but typical of brazil are the indigenous names. these however are just as rare as all other traces of indigenous life in brazil... also, they are too strange for me to remember.

more history, i think, is hidden in 'vander', 'vanderlei' and names as such. clearly they are derived from dutch (or german) surnames. these often start with 'van der' or 'von'. some completely unbased ethymology makes me suspect that this part of the surname has been given to (descendants of) slaves as a first name.

the next category of bizarre names in brazil has much more to do with spelling than with anything else. for example ueslei. read it out loud. exactly - wesley! other 'misspelled' names i have read are uetney (whitney), jhon, ualter or valter (walter). in a way these name form the opposite of the above category: by changing the spelling they take away the ethymology, the roots of the name. oh well, whatever...

also good for a surprise are names referring to almost anything american. a not uncommon name here is washington. of course washington used to be a name in the usa as well, but what about ualtdisnei (yes, walt disney..)?

the most spectacular names however are the completely made up names. as if 3 random names have been written on a piece of paper, the paper has then been shredded and reassembled to form a complete new name. and oh boy, the results are amazing! there are some patterns - like endings in '-son' and '-ton' for guys and '-ia' and '-ildes' for girls. but really, anything goes...
some examples? adilson, ivanildes, cleverton, helton, hercilia, ...

please try to brazilify your name in these 3 easy steps.
step 1:
change the first vowel of your name for another vowel.
step 2:
add a letter at random somewhere in your name. if this is difficult, remember you can always add an 'h' somewhere...
step 3:
for guys: add -ton, -son, -ei or -lei at the end of your name.
for girls: add -ia, -(i)ldes or -(a)cia at the end

let's try with my own name...
eric --> aric --> arnic --> arnicson.
a friend's name...
merel --> murel --> murtel --> murtelcia
perfectly brazilian.

alternatively you can swap around syllabes, add your second name in the middle of your first name, feel free to experiment.

it is of course exactly this feeling free to do whatever they want that has happened with brazilian names. sure, they have a heritage - of portugal, italy, europe, of the indigenous population - and a reference - of the usa, of britain and france. but these are no more than guidelines. brazil is now no longer a colony, it is no longer part of any culture or heritage. it makes up its own history and its own culture.
including its own names.

super troopers?

1. ipanema beach. people are yelling. a guy is running away, stepping on towels, treading on people. more yelling. sure - i would yell too if someone steps on me! the police is chasing the guy. the police catch him.
but... it does not stop the yelling. it causes even more yelling. fore the people were cheering on the guy in his escape. how naive was i to think people were shouting at the guy; i was simply assuming the thug running away was the bad guy, the police the good guys - and the crowd would be on the side of the good guys, right?
wrong.
now that the thug is caught begins the next chapter. the beach go-ers start throwing all kinds of stuff at the police; empty bottles and beer cans filled with sand, coconuts (it is still a tropical country), shoes.
more police appears.
more shouting.
more throwing.
even more police.
so many policemen.
wow! where do they come from?
policeman with hand on gun.
oops - getting scary now.
police wins the battle. thug and 2 other guys get taken away.
crime of the bad guy? smoking pot.

2. 2 handsome cops. one black-black, one latino-black.
black cop is backing up the car, onto the pavement. he is not very agile, perhaps also because he is on the phone.
the latino-black guides his colleague. he is not very good at guiding his colleague, because he is checking out the results of the illegal lottery - a list pasted to the house that the police car just hit...

3. we get stopped by a cop. a 'blitz': several policemen, randomly stopping cars and mopeds, checking papers, license plates, etc. routine.
also present are some guys from the municipality, ready to tow away cars should the paperwork not be what is desired.
the boyfriend forgot his papers. no problem. we are not far from our house. i will jump into a taxi to retrieve the papers.
as i get back 10 minutes later the boyfriend is on the phone. i hand him his papers.
'what's a matter?' i ask him.
'i will tell you in a minute'
boyfriend shows papers to cop.
cop nods, points out that license will expire this month and then sends us off, on our way.
100 meters after our release the boyfriend stops the moped.
'these guys from the municipality - they don't tow away cars or mopeds at all. they just ask for a bribe and then let the people go. ofcourse they split the bribe with the policemen.
i have seen 3 or 4 people escaping fines and getting towed away - just now in 15 minutes!'
(i guess what is shocking to me most is not only that these guys explicitly ask for bribes, but also that people are so easily prepared to pay the bribe. corruption only works if the ordinary people participate...)
the boyfriend calls the special department against police crimes ans bribes.
no one answers the phone...