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.