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Published: January 28th 2009
I must apologise for not having written anything recently, however it is harder when one stops travelling and has a fairly simple routine. However I suppose I can share a few observations and, of course, give some news.
Firstly, the latter.
I am now in my second week of Portuguese classes, and I am greatly enjoying them. It is challenging but satisfying to be confronted not only with the more basic vocabulary but also with more complex grammatical constructions of the language, which allows me to express myself more fully. I have now been joined in my classroom by Mathias, an extremely friendly Argentinian. Through him I have met many people (and his presence has lowered significantly the cost of the lessons). I think I have now (mostly) come to terms with the Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, which is not as obvious as I would have thought.
The letter 'r', for instance, is pronounced as a French 'r', except when it is in the middle of a sentence and followed by a vowel, in which case it becomes a Spanish 'r'. The letters 'lh', are pronounced 'li' (or like the 'll' of 'llamar' in Spanish). The letter 'o', if at the end of a word, is pronounced 'u'. If an 'e' is at the end of a word, you pronounce it 'ee' (or 'i' if you are French or Spanish). If a word finishes with '-de' or '-te', these will be pronounced '-djee' and 'tchee' respectively (or -dji and tchi if you are French or Spanish). With those rules in mind, I invite you to pronounce the following sentence Brazilian Portuguese style:
"Rio de Janeiro, a Cidade Maravilhosa" (Rio de Janeiro, the Marvelous City)
Apart from that, I spend a lot of time in the hostel in which Mathias works as a barman, as I can meet a lot of people there. The surprisingly large amount of Argentinian tourists that visit Brazil allows me to keep my Spanish alive and well, and to practice differentiating it from Portuguese, which is not that obvious initially.
In terms of my impressions, I must admit that I find Brazil slightly stranger than I expected. Naturally, my perceptions are bound to be fairly superficial as I have not been here for long, but I still feel as if there is some truth in the following. Beaches are always packed with people (mostly Brazilians, not just tourists), and there seems to be a sense of pretty constant euphoria during the many parties that occur in the streets at night. This may also be due to the combination of carnival and summer, but you do get the impression that Brazilians love to samba, party, play on the beach, etc.
However, one can also see such poverty, racism, corruption, drug addiction, that it is a bit shocking to see that coexist with the relative opulence and indifference of Brazilian mainstream (or perceived as mainstream by foreigners) society. I very often get the impression that, despite knowing about all of these problems, many Brazilians are just not interested in politics. I have yet to have political discussion with a Brazilian. This is obviously difficult to understand for me, as it something I am truly interested in and I generally fail to comprehend indifference towards public debate (but that's because I am a politics geek). But given the amount of energy and enthusiasm with which people party, one cannot but think that if a fraction of that was devoted to improving the country (in a political sense), it would make such a difference.
As of now, the most political statement I have managed to extract from a Brazilian was that dictatorship, as a system, was really out of fashion nowadays. I am sure that there are many politically engaged Brazilians, but I have not had the opportunity of meeting any yet, which is why I get that impression. Perhaps one of the reasons for this (apparent) lack of politicisation is that much of the activity of civil society happens in the favelas, outside the more obviously perceivable domains.
I enjoy Brazil, but it is difficult to enjoy it fully as one must always be careful in large cities due to violence. I would probably not enjoy living in such large towns, as one must always be careful with where one walks, who is around you, and a simple wrong turn can have dangerous consequences. Most blocks of flats in residential areas have large gates, with security cameras and guards. Those people generally live in fear of being attacked, robbed or even killed. As a tourist, I can only observe what is the surface of the phenomenal amount of violence that occurs in the favelas, but it is still quite disturbing, and the sense of indifference I perceive towards it (apart from fear) is uneasing.
I met two completely stupid and irresponsible tourists a few days ago. One Russian and the other Italian, they told me that they went into the favela to buy cocaine. They explained that to do so, all you had to do was walk up a flight of steps, at the top of which were two men, one with an AK-47 and another with an M-16, who guarded a table at which a man would sell cocaine. I was really shocked not only at the account but also at the behaviour of these two tourists. They fully knew that to buy cocaine (indeed buying anything illegal in Brazil) was to condone and encourage a system in which entire areas are ruled by armed gangs of murderers and criminals, far away from State control, and ruin the lives of many children who get drawn into these systems with the lure of drugs, weapons and influence. Unfortunately, these two tourist didn't seem to care. I imagine it must be easy, in Europe or the USA, to consume these substances without thinking too much about the consequences, but anyone who sees and truly understands this process but still continues is really a full accomplice of these criminal gangs.
OK- that was really a lot for today. I could really write much more about this, but I know that the above article was not really structured and bit vague, so not so easily readable and probably not overly informative. I would love to back up these impressions with facts and statistics, however these are not easy to obtain. Firstly, I imagine, because data on the favelas must be hard to draw up. Secondly, I have difficulties in finding decent politics books around here, with solid data. Thirdly, reading Portuguese is pretty tiring for me still, so I am quite slow.
On a lighter note, I am planning tomorrow to go the the island of Morro de São Paulo, until Sunday. So whilst there were no new photos today, there should be many more next week showing a lighter (and more superficial) side of Brazil.
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William
non-member comment
Of course as a tourist you have to be more careful because some bad people may try to take advantage of you but I'm brazilian and i live in a bigger city then salvador( Belo horizotne which is the 3rd largest city here) and dude, its really sad that tourists aways have the same impressions about brazilians, that all they know how to do is drugs, parties, caipirinhas, churrasco, etc........ this is kind of true(not the drug party for me lol) but hey every country has their upper and lower side do you agree? I've lived in the US and I can tell you, people use way more drugs there then anyone that I know and i mean, maybe the poorer here use lots of drugs but there the middle class guys like me and my friends(who don't do shit like that) never even seen in front of