Eddy in Brazil

Holidays! Although the school year here is not structured into terms as in Australia, with regular two-week breaks for every ten weeks of school, we have had quite a few holidays over the past few weeks here in Espiríto Santo. The Easter weekend, and the two weekends that followed were all long weekends, spanning 3 or 4 days each. This made for a nice time off school, and also gave the opportunity to travel here and there. My mate from school Diego da Matta invited me on the first two weekends to travel with him. The Easter weekend we spent down at Camping do Siri near a place called Marataízes, roughly three hours drive south of here. The following weekend I travelled with him and his sister to Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. The third weekend Uziel & Daiane went to a church convention, also in Minas, during which time I stayed home alone for a weekend!

So, the Easter long weekend started with Diego's parents dropping us off at the camping on Thursday night. Oh nearly forgot, the night before I went out with Robertinho's older sister Nanda and her friends to Com Vento, one of the nightclubs in Vitória. Roberto is a mate from school, and Jarryd is now staying at his house. The night's theme was Psyfunk, hence a selection of
trance music and later Brazilian funky. Here is us:

I'm not homesick yet mum!

At the camping we set up our four man tent, which despite its size, failed to house my abnormally long legs. Diego's parents later left and we walked around to get to know the camping. Diego had been before. Very nice grounds, adjacent to the beach, plenty of trees, clean bathrooms. The camping is 30 years old and so has a bit of tradition to it. There were two other friends from school. We mucked around lots, playing bocha, a form of bowling, and of course going to the beach daily, where my sunscreen (30SPF) failed to adequately protect from the sun. We fished for Pitú (freshwater shrimp), in the little creek, catching up to twenty which we later cleaned and made a Moqueca of (a seafood dish). There was a lake nearby where we swam, jumped of the bridge etc. Just being able to be a kid again felt good, people grow up too fast. There at the lagoa (lake) at one of the kiosks we ate bolinho de aipim and drank Pinacolado, juiced pineapple fruit mixed with condensed milk, ice and plenty of vodka, served in the original pineapple. Very fancy. On Saturday night, as the "older kids" we were asked to play monsters and hide in the dark and empty section of the camping. The little ones then got to search for us with their torches and throw water balloons. I was a giant Gorilla and I think I may have scared some of the little ones a little bit too much... The part about the water ballons had skipped my ears, so it was a nice surprise having giant sacks of water land on me out of nowhere. It hurt copping them in the face! I hadn't taken any precaution in let's say wearing boardshorts and taking of my shirt underneath the cape... So I was soaking wet by the end of it. But it was good fun. On Easter the kids had a easter-egg hunt, while we preferred to stay on the beach. At the end of the weekend we caught the bus back home to VV.

A short week of school passes and we are off again; this time to Minas Gerais. MG is the state west from here and the bus trip there is about 7 hours. A very hilly and winding road. Diego and I went caught the bus at 8:00am on Friday. On Thursday night, I tried to invite all the Australians to go out as a group. We only managed three out of five, Jarryd, Louis and I, but it was good fun all the same.

Louis and Eddy!

I barely touched the matress at Diego´s house, before we it was time to catch our bus to Belo Horizonte. Diego was born there, and most his family lives there. Good thing I could sleep on the bus. We stayed with Diego´s Vovó, or grandmother, and she is literally half my size (I have photographic evidence). She had just turned 85 and would do anything to make us feel at home. She said "fica à vontade vui" (make yourself at home) about every minute and apologised that we had to sleep on the floor, asking jokingly "você caiu da cama?" (did you fall out of bed). Diego's cousins showed us around. His uncle is the president of Rotary and also of América, a big football club. I just found out this club has a partnership with Feyenoord Rotterdam, hmmm. Diego's dad owns the dairy company "Da Matta", very big in Brasil, and so you can see how these people are near the top of Brasil's wealth ladder. All in all, BH is a big city, with a bigger economy than say Vitoria. It appeared pretty clean to me, although a ot of people find the city ugly. Sunday night we went and saw the movie "V de Vingança" or V for Vengeance, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers (Matrix trilogy). It's awesome! A quiet day on Monday, and after a nice sushi dinner (sushi is my new found love, it's so good) we caught a night bus home, where I again struggled to fit my legs in the limited space provided; (thanks for the genes Dad).

From L to R: Cyntia, Leonardo, Nayara, Marcelo, Paola, Diego and I

The final long weekend, as I mentioned, my parents had to travel to Minas Gerais, and so filho Edgar stayed to look after the house. This gave me a taste of what it it like living alone, even though it was just for 3 days. Friday night, however, I already had my ticket for the O Rappa show. O Rappa is one rasta, Bob Marley looking guy with a big band including a Dj, guitarists, percussionists etc. His music style, is a mixture between rock and reggae, very cool. Show was held in a big gymnasium with lots of people, similar to the Trivela show.

Here's the whole group

O Rappa!

A view onto the crowd from above, at least a couple of thousand

The rest of the weekend I mainly stayed at home, trying to entertain myself. Failing, it led me to doing groceries, washing clothes and vacuum cleaning the apartment. Mum you would have been proud. On Monday the Aussie boys hit the beach for some Aussie Rules football. Lots of strange looks from were received, as nobody was quite sure what this strange sport was. At sunset we climbed Morro do Moreno, which his a big hill that overlooks both Vila Velha and Vitoria. Very nice views, and i'll be back no doubt with my camera.

It's taken a while to write this up.. I am writing this section on the 5th of May, which is my Vovó's 85th birthday! Unfortunately I can't be in every continent at once, (even though I try really hard) but nevertheless my thoughts are there in Gulpen. Proficiat Oma!

Gringo out!

This exchange is no fairy-tale and it's not supposed to be either. Apart from the obvious discomfort of being taken away from home, thrown into a foreign place, with different customs and a unknown language, there can be just be plain bad things that happen. Just like they happen at home.

You may have noticed in my posts so far, although I focus on the fun things I do and the nice places I visit, I also comment on some of the harsh realities I come across. Brasil, as I see it and as is well known, is a country of "extreme extremes", and hereby I am of course referring to the inequality of wealth distribution. It's a country where the richest one percent of the people have fifteen percent of the wealth , and the poorest forty percent has less than a tenth. An equally interesting (less numerical) fact is that Sào Paulo has more private helicopters than any other city in the world, more armoured limousines and armed security personnel. Yet at the same time there are currently 45 million people living in conditions of poverty. Brazil is second to South Africa, as the country with the biggest inequality of wealth ditribution in the world. This great divide, you can safely say, is roughly divided into blacks and whites. I could recite a little Yoda-style "poverty leads to desperation, desperation leads to crime" type cycle, but that's basically what it is. So crime...

Saturday the 8th of April, there was a churrasco at the church here, the second one since I've been here. I invited Sammy and Jarryd to come too, as we had plans to go out afterwards to a birthday. Churrasco is a brazilian barbeque, with large chunks of meat, heavily marinated with salt, speared onto spits and cooked over a coal fire. When cooked, the meat is then sliced and cut up into little pieces to be passed around. About 8 o'clock the three of us plus Cleverson, my friend plus the guitarist at church (17 years old) went to call over another guy from church, Renato. He only lives two streets away, all in centro de Vila Velha. Lost in conversation we walked one street too far, so we took the next street and walked around the block finally ending up at the house. We let another resident inform us that Renato wasn't in so back we went. Just before reaching the corner of the street, three black guys (couldn't have been all that much older than us) approached us from the rear, all of them on bikes. One pretended to ask Cleverson for street directions before getting off his bike, slamming into the ground as he did. At this moment I knew, as it's always in the back of your head, plus all of a sudden, the situation seemed to be just right for it. Say bye to what's in your pockets I thought. Their demands were quite clear; "carteira! carteira!" (wallet). The scroungy short one decided to empty my pockets, sticking his fingers in his shorts, signifying he was armed. I didn't resist in giving my cell phone and the loose note of ten reais that I had. Thankfully boardshorts have only one pocket... He was pretty delighted at the sight of my phone, calling over the other one, but other than a house key and a scrap piece of paper with the address for the birthday of that night, I had nothing more to give. The second threw the key hard against the ground and the three mounted their bikes. I picked up the key and looked at the others, all looking pretty stunned. We walked calmly until they were out of sight and then ran back to the church. It's all a compressed memory now, as things like that happen in seconds. The total loot: two cell phones, 120 reais in cash and a watch.

Yes, not happy about that. We tried to find the ladrões afterwards, having a pastor, a sergeant from military police and a federal police officer in the car, hahaha. They are all associated with the church. We didn't find them, which is probably better that way. Because it would have led to more nastiness, probably a fight or whatever. Numerous people tried to call my phone, and a few got an answer. A lady picked up one one attempt, and as it turned out the phone and the rest of the goods had already been traded in for drugs at the local drug point or Boca da Fuma (smoke-mouth). Apart from the monetary loss, my phone had quite a few photos on it and all my contacts and phone numbers, which will take some time to re-attain. Luckily we weren't personally harmed. Most of these muggings are solely in the interest of gaining money to trade for drugs, and unless you resist or do something stupid, the ladrão won't try to hurt/kill you. We did the right thing, by staying calm and just giving whatever we had. I don't think they were armed, and people I've talked to like to put up a big voice and say "Oh why didn't you run or beat the guys"!!? Easily said, but it all happened in a split second and I don't think it's worth the risk. Good news is, insurance will pay all, and the fact that three gringos got robbed and that I am without a cell phone is a continuous source of jokes.

It seems like following this incident on the 8th there has been a spree of looting or attempted break-ins in the area. The furniture store across the road had an attempted break-in, luckily the guy that lives on the opposite corner was woken by the guard dog in time to scare off the criminal. This same man informed us that two nights ago our car had some interest and nearly got broken into. Sabor da Terra, the restaurant where we eat almost 3 times a week was robbed by two ladrões with revolvers during lunch time last Tuesday. Took over 2000 reais and robbed the clients. On the same street the car-wash got robbed and just today a jewellery store on the main road behind our block got robbed, and shots were fired. Police presence is minimal and their atitude and naturally I now feel less safe and am more aware slash paranoid. You can see how racial prejudice arises like this, because my gut feeling tells me now that whenever a black youth passes (on a bike or on foot) and he looks a bit suspect; this guy is a ladrão. I know this is an unfair judgment, but on the other hand you can't blame me. And the possibility that he IS a criminal is higher, that's just a fact! And in a way it would be ignorant and stupid of me to ignore that...

Anyway. I'm not trying to scare anyone, nor trying to make it sound like my life is hanging by mere threads, but it's part of life here, part of Brazil's makeup, I view it as a good experience, despite the fact that we got mugged... =P

I think I'm done for this post. I don't spend much time on the pc and the computers here don't allow me to upload the ton of pictures I have for you guys. I am still writing however, and I have a couple of other posts lined , they're just waiting on photos.

Até a proxima pessoal!