News Flash from Sao Paulo - This Ain't No PlanetBrazil

I arrived on Saturday in Sao Paulo, facing a 2-week transition period before heading north to PlanetDC. And what I’ve discovered here is NYC below the equator and in Portugues. Maravilhoso! This city is home to 20 million inhabitants and 12.5 million restaurants. Within the first two days, I had taken in a 24-hour music festival featuring an array of the best bosso nova, samba and MPB on earth; I attended a opening of a new labor building and had a chance to hug Lula; and I shifted from bikini beach wear to sweaters, slacks and my cowboy boots. It was a chilly, rainy fall in this cidade grande below the equator.

I stayed in a trendy neighborhood called Vila Madalena (the Adams Morgan of SP) with Carolyn, an American woman who left DC 7 years ago to work in SP, and never returned. I met Cida, one of only 10 AfroBrazilian woman in the county with a Phd, and whose organization, CEERT (link) promotes racial and gender equality in the schools and businesses throughout Brazil. I visited all kinds of art galleries, satiating my culture craving, after 6 months hanging out in a beach town. The Pinicoteca, the MAM (Museo de Arte Moderna), the Niemeyer Latin America Museum. I rented a bike in Itapuara Park, the Central Park of SP, and rode through groves of palm trees and bamboo, around lakes and fountains, and around an exposition on saving the Mata Atlantic Rainforest. I hung out all night in Bar Brahma drinking chopps and dancing to the infectious beat of the house samba band. I visited an Italian cemetery, and an artisan village called Embu, and stood at the intersection of Av Paulista & Av Sao Joao, made famous by a Caetano Velosa song. I hung out with Jarbas and Angela, from Tom Ze’s band, and did some jamming in their apartment. And I took the Metro everywhere, the only sane way to navigate the sprawling neighborhoods of the second largest city in the world!

Take a look at my photo gallery of favorite pics. I know most Americans head straight to Rio for big city Brazilian action; but I don’t think they know what they are missing in Sao Paulo.As you can imagine, escaping this city was not so easy. I had only managed to eat in perhaps 20 restaurants – Italian, Japanese, fusion, and the obligatory Saturday afternoon Brazilian feijoada feast – but I still have 12.59980 million to go. Next trip.

Ate logo, Sao Paulo.

Saudades for Planet Brasil

Dear Friends,

I am getting ready to depart Planet Brazil, and I want to give you all a quick update before take-off. I know - it’s hard to believe I am leaving already. I feel like I’ve just landed on this new planet, unpacked my bags, and gotten used to the change in atmosphere – and now I have to go. So I will be leaving with some mixed feelings. In some ways, I am ready to touch down on US soil and relax again into my comfort zone, and reconnect with my people and culture and language. But in other ways, I will be feeling ‘saudades grandes’ (big missing) for this place with which I have come to feel a real connection.

It’s taken exactly 6 months for me to feel part of Joao Pessoa, Paraiba, Brazil. It seems in just the last two weeks, I’ve gotten over the ominous language barrier, and can carry-on whole conversations with people in Portugues, moving beyond just the topic of weather (i.e., Esta muito quente hoje.) I can sit around and drink beer with friends (well I’ve always been good at that) and understand more than half of the discussion swirling around me. And I can even offer my own two centavos, sometimes more, if I am drinking cachaca. I can ask for directions, and understand the response, keeping esquerda (left) and deireita (right) straight in my head. I can even give directions now too. Earlier this week, a man stopped me in the Centro Historico and asked, “Moca, where is the prefeitura antiga?” I was proud to understand him and be able to give him an intelligible answer.

I’ve also gotten to the point where I can make transactions with vendors without being ripped off. This is a biggie for a galega (blond/white) Americana – the Brazilians get $$ in their eyes when they see me coming. Just yesterday, at the lake, I found two guys with their shoe shine boxes, and I stopped them to repair and polish two pairs of my favorite Brazilian sandals. They did a great job, but then tried to sucker me out of 20 reais, which is what the sandals cost in the first place. I said no, noa preco especial Americano para mim, obridaga (no special American price for me, thanks). And I took R$12 out of my wallet and told them ‘so isso’ (just this) matter of factly. They took the bills smiling, and told me to return again (volta sempre).

One real challenge for me has been working my photography exhibition, and carrying-on complex discussions with customers, and even the press, about the places I have traveled, the motivations for my work, and my future plans, all in quasi-Portugues. But the discussions have gotten easier every day. And when I closed down my show yesterday, I found I had sold half the pictures off the walls of the gallery (and even collected most of the money). Now my photos will have homes here in Paraiba, and I won’t have to haul them back to the US.

As I am getting ready to leave, I’ve also discovered my regular spots, places I frequent, like Paulista’s barraca (outdoor bar) on the lake. Here we are, Paulista, Cris and I, with the ‘wall of infamy,’ Cris’s caricatures of the bar’s best customers, in the background, and a plate of kibes in the foreground. Paulista enjoys political conversations, especially making fun of Georgie Bush, and he serves the best kibes and coxinhas in town – little fried appetizers you eat with fresh squeezed lime and hot sauce, and down with cold Skol cerveja. Paulista keeps a clean, quiet and alternative-lifestyle-friendly atmosphere, so the place attracts all kinds - writers, artists, retired folks and single moms, and students. Besides Paulista, I also have my favorite salao de beleza, Beleza Marrie, and my amigas Anna e Rosa, that take care of my nails and ‘Brazilian waxing,’ while I watch horrible novelas on the little flickering TV in the corner of the shop. I even have my favorite gas station, where they bring you tiny cups of strong sweet coffee and water to your car on a silver tray. Of course, gas costs about $6 a gallon here, so you get what you pay for I suppose.

But the most important thing about the life I’ve cultivated on PB, is that I’ve discovered some true friends. These are not the people I met at the beginning of my adventure who smiled and kissed me on each cheek each time they saw me, and promised to invite me to dinner every time, but then never did. My true Brazilian friends are the ones that call me on a quiet Sunday morning, when I’m not sure how I’m going to fill my day, and invite me to the beach for beers and ensopada de carengaju (crab soup).

These are the people who drag me out of my apartment on to see a movie at the mall, like Brokeback Mountain, and let me marvel out loud during the movie about the beautiful US scenery.

These are the people who invite me to hang out on their veranda and play bosso nova music and try composing songs together, with a Brazilian beat and American lyrics combined.

These are the people who sit patiently while I try to eek out a grammatically correct sentence in Portugues, and marvel at my first ‘joga de paravalas’ (play on words) in my new language.

These are the people that take me shopping on my last days on Planet Brazil to buy coisas Brasilieras (like Sao Braz coffee and Amazon soaps) at the cheap market in Torre.

These are the people who organize a dance celebration in my honor, because I won’t be able to stay in Brasil for Sao Joao fest, on the count of the visa.

These are the people who take me sailing on a windy day and disembark on a shady riverbank so I can take pictures and sip champagne.
These are the people who ask me when I am coming back (Ate quando?), and make sure I know I have a place to stay with them when I return.

I’ve discovered the key to happiness on a new planet is finding true friends, connections, people that give meaning to a place. Cris, Babeta and Junior, Monica, Gilva, Wallison, Jane, and others.

So this blog post is dedicated to friends – to my new friends (meus novos amigos) on Planet Brazil that I will leave behind, for a little while, until I am allowed to return. And also to my friends back home on Planet DC who I will be reconnecting with soon.

Obrigada e abracos para voces, Anne

Copyright 2006 Anne Pellicciotto

The Brazilian Gods Must be Crazy

Meus amigos. Well I may have found a life here in Brazil, but I seem to have just lost my hard drive. I contracted a Brazilian virus, and it wiped out everyting on my computer - all my documents, photos, programs, settings and favorites – the works! I was sitting in the mayor’s office awaiting a meeting with the director of marketing and tourism, to get support for my upcoming photography exhibition, when a string of ominous red error messages popped up on my screen; and then it suddenly went black and blue. When I rebooted, all that was left were the original setting, and in the My Pictures folder, a couple stock photos that come with Windows - an olympic runner in the starting blocks, a vista of the Rockies - mocking me. None of my three thousand photos, evidence of my life these last 5 months on Planet Brazil,were left.

Backups, you ask? Yes, I have them, but from December 2005 and before my departure from Washington. Despite the valient efforts of a few techie expert friends back home, to back me up and instruct me on continued vigiliance with viruses and backups, I was completely lost, with no idea how to recover – electronically OR emotionally.

At times like these, when you are in a foreign country far from home, with few resources at your fingertips, you wonder why you came. It’s not just the computer virus, it’s all the many hardships and hurdles and mistakes piled up on top of each other. Every single day is a challenge, just getting small tasks done when you don’t speak the language proficiently – catching a bus, getting directions somewhere, buying a cake for someone’s birthday, coordinating an evening out with some friends, or even simply making a phone call using the crazy system of credit cards they have here. Everything takes so much energy. So now, with the virus spread through my computer, I had another gigantic task ahead, to cure it, with little energy to spare. And to keep the doubts about my existance here from spreading through me.

But my photographs have been such a significant part of my meaning on Planet Brazil. My camera has kept me company, when I have no one with whom to share the beauty or surprises of this place. My camera has also given me a language with which to communicate my impressions and feelings, where there’s been no one who understands English. Now, without the pictures, where was the evidence of my adventure here? And more practically, how was I going to proceed with my show?

After slinking out of the mayor’s office, I headed home, and cried the whole way across town. I even scared off the poor children who approached my car at a stoplight, as is the routine here, to clean my windshield and earn a few coins. I was not in the mood today. When I arrived home, I made some lame attempts at meditative, postive thinking, telling myself stuff like: ´Anne, what’s important, the bits and bytes of ideas, just figments of my imagination, or my imagination itself? My memories are still here – the lessons and stories and encounters and images are imbedded in my brain and heart – even if they aren’t still buried in my hard drive. Get a life.´ Then I went to the beach and drank some strong caiperinas.

But a window of opportunity opened up. Cris hooked me up with a guy named Rodrigo, a Brazilian techie with a reputation for recovering files and drinking cerveja (junto - together). He showed at the apartment later that night, and I prayed we´d be able to communicate using my first grade Portugues and his first grade English. Luckily, it turns out that technology is universal, as is the language, which happens to be English. You just have to speak the words - hard drive, click, email, virus, BIG problem - with a Portugues accent. So we managed to get by, with the help of many beers, and some special software Rodrigo had is his bag of tricks. After of hours of searching and cleaning, 2 packs of cigarettes, and all the beer in my fridge, he found my files hiding in some deep, dark corner of my hard drive. 45 separate folders of Brazil 2006 photos were back, along with my files of writing, research, finances et al. I managed to shoo Rodrigo out the door around midnight, before he passed out, but not before he repeated for the third or fourth time his lecture on the risks of the Internet and the many sneaky Brazilian virus creeping around out there. Obrigada, tcheau.

While problems still abound in my computer world – I still can’t use certain programs, and have lost all my outlook emails and contacts, and I am blogging from a net cafe because my machine won´t let me – I was back in business. My show was on in one week, and I had lots of work to get done - invitations and gallery arrangements, newspaper interviews and production of the exhibition. Ahhh, meaning again on Planet Brazil, gracas a deus.

Since this mini-disaster, I have had a successful exhibition opening in Joao Pessoa, featuring 30 of my best photos of Paraiba – Terra de Luz – do Olho de Estrengeiro (Paraiba – Land of Light – From the Eye of a Stranger). I was lucky-enough to get write-ups in all three of the city’s newspapers, with front-page features and pictures of my photos AND me. Nossa. Now people are recognizing me on the street and saying hello, which is a strange thing, because oftentimes I have felt invisible.

Have a look for youself at a few of peoples’ favorties - above ´Janela ao Brejo´ (Window to the Wetlands) and here to the left ´Conoas Esperando´(Canoes Waiting). More soon, the computer gods permitting.