The many faces of Brazil and other parting reflections

Oh Brazil, you won me over big time! It was with mixed emotions that I headed home on Tuesday. On the one hand, I was exhausted from touristing and being in transient mode and it would have been ideal to stop and stay in one place for a couple weeks at least. The honeymoon, the excitement of a new place with new people and the exoticism and romance of travelling, was beginning to wear off as minor incidents began to highly annoy me. It is the fork in the road where you either decide to stay put for a while and try to adjust and begin some normal life activities or just go home. Of course this is not the time for me now to just hang out in Brazil indefinitely (but maybe in the future?) so home it was! And my readiness to end the transient-ness became instantly clear as, during my 24 hour-plus transit home from Brasilia to Sao Paulo to Toronto to Vancouver, my level of irritation with the airlines, the airports, the staff, and my fellow passengers exponentially increased over the course of the day. It even bubbled over to the server at the Taiwanese noodle joint down the block from me that I went to grab take out for lunch when I arrived home in Vancouver.

My great privilege to experience this country has not escaped my FULL awareness. In three weeks, I had the opportunity to see a number of the many faces of Brazil. From the sparkling, dazzling and groovy Rio de Janeiro:

To Curitiba, the Europe of Brazil:

...a highly-educated, 'cultured', well- kept, eco-conscious city. 

To Olinda and Recife, a tourist gem and impoverished city, respectively:

((Of course I didn't take pictures of the impoverished parts of Recife)).

From the tropical, isolated beach paradises of Pernambuco:

To the dusty and dry serrado of Goias:

Mysteriously scattered with refreshing oases:

The charm of Perinopolis:

And finally to the red scorched earth of the capital, the seat of their lapsing democracy, right angles and perfect lines, Brasilia:

This country, both the vast amount I saw and what vast amount more to see, from what I can tell, is a country made up of a multiplicity of paradises; around each corner another dazzling, enchanting, magnificent spectacle of natural and built landscapes, often in surprising places.

It is teeming with life that is cool hanging out with us humans; from wall lizards to beach lizards to toucans and parakeets, beach pigeons, frigate birds, parrots, to butterflies so big and brightly coloured they can only possibly be from your fantasies, to ants so tiny and organised that they can easily steal your picnic without you ever noticing, to scuttling camouflaged crabs and zebra striped fish, to stray dogs and cats, to bats, to banana-thieving and wrestling monkeys, to Izzy the pug.... at this point it wouldn't shock me if unicorns were also native to Brazil.

It is a welcoming and warm culture:

...where food is love:

It is a nation of people who take great pride in their regional traditions, from the puppets of Pernambuco:

..and the masquerade of Goias:

...to their national unifying celebrations like Carnavale and Festa Junina:

They take great pride in the abundance of their beautiful landscapes, their diversity, their resources their hospitality and generosity. Yet even as a country of great social, cultural and material abundance so much material poverty continues to exist.

Status consumption in many parts of Brazil is rampant while at the same time there exist pockets of people trying to create an alternative, more simple way of living.

There is an almost Canadian-level of politeness (please, thank you, no thank you, no thank you, I'm sorry, excuse me... but in Portuguese) while at the same time men everywhere adjust their crotches regularly in public while snorting their snot back up their throats very loudly. If I was less of a cultural relativist I most certainly would have left Brazil with ZERO Kleenexes left over due to culturally-insensitively offering them to the ubiquitous snot-snorting-swallowers.

It is a deeply religious, 'moral' society in which Brazilians continue to have archaic laws around abortion and gay marriage yet fear for their personal security on a daily basis,with a lingering, omnipresent shroud of distrust of politicians, the poor, and police at all levels. All the while there is tits and ass everywhere on the beaches.

It is a country of dichotomy, contradiction, and extremes; the visible manifestation and lived experiences of one of the greatest national equity gaps in the world (according to the GINI coefficent).

I began the trip with immense anxiety about my safety and the fact that I was going alone exacerbated not only my safety concerns but also began to simmer some other anxieties that perpetually exist in the depths of my gut: the anxiety of being 'doomed' to walk this earth alone, a spinster...oh a spinster doing wicked awesome shit, of course...but still experiencing wonderfulness and magnificence alone while EVERYONE else gets to have instant travel partners in their romantic partners with whom to split not only the travel bills but also with whom to split the experience of the journey (since I've been back I've only had fleeting thoughts about the fact that my trip would have been half the price with a travel buddy but alas such is the inequitably expensive life of the 'free woman'). 

While meeting many wonderful people with whom I experienced lovely moments superficially lent to my understanding that we are never truly alone, it was in the moments of solitude that I welcomed ultimate connectedness, free from all anxiety about life: the past, present and future.

"If man sees Truth in the morning, he may die in the evening without regret" -Confucius

      

The final paragraph of my paperback travel companion, Henry Miller's Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch (in my opinion, arguably his best work), reflects the end of my short but eventful  journey more beautifully than I ever could:

"And that is why I choose to remain here...where to give thanks to the Creator comes natural and easy. Out yonder they may curse, revile and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world, with noble, ancient trees, scrub and sage brush, wild lilac and lovely lupin, with poppies and buzzards, eagles and humming birds, gophers and rattlesnakes, and sea and sky unending. Finis".