1st entry
Trip Start
May 23, 2005
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4
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Trip End
Mar 25, 2006
Sao Paulo,
Brazil
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Git 'r Dun
The first 72 hours of my travels from Seattle to São Paulo seemed fairly hectic: Seven international airports in seven cities (Seattle, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, San Jose, Costa Rica; Lima, Peru; São Paulo, Brazil). The itinerary contained five flights and hours of down time in the airport, including two overnights, etc. But actually, the time allowed me to finally relax. The past 2 months had been a whirlwind of activity. During the week, I had been driving all over Alabama for my job: Bioterrorism preparedness and awareness. Thanks of our work, many of the small police departments in rural Alabama - high on any terrorist's list of places to attack - are just a little more aware of this imminent threat
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. As for the weekends, which are supposed times to relax, no?, they became 48 hour excuses for more distant journeys. In those same two months I made trips to Mobile, Alabama, Athens, Georgia, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Panama City Beach, Florida, New Orleans, and a few others I am sure. Oh yeah, and I jumped out of an airplane one weekend. To top all that off, the weekend before I was supposed to move out of my apartment, pack up all my things and head west, three of my buddies flew out from California to go see one of the mother truckers of all motor sporting events, NASCAR's Talladega. But that is another topic altogether.Don't Mess With Texas
By the time all the hootin', hollerin', and red-neckin' finished in Birmingham I felt like I had already been on a long, strange trip. Possibly similar to one on a windy, dark river in the south where the locals play banjos and stare at you as you float by. In fact I had. My two years in Birmingham had come to a close, durn'it'all. But I still had in front of me the task (or is it luxury?) of driving from Birmingham to Seattle. And the way I figured it, if you are gonna drive 3000 miles across the country, you may as well take the long route and drive 4500 miles. So I packed up my car and headed west for Dallas and spent a few days quickly exploring Texas. Quickly meaning I was pulled over twice for speeding, once doing 97 in a 70. And what is truly ironic about my 260 dollar speeding ticket in Texas is this: That amount of money I ended up sending to the Presidio County Courthouse for my infraction in west Texas is precisely the amount of money I saved by booking the ridiculous, inconvenient flight itinerary that took me through four countries in three days just to get to Brazil
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. In fact, the violation equaled the price of my airline ticket! Now, when I bought the flights my rationale was 1) that I was saving a whole bunch of money and, 2) the five days it would taking me to get to Brazil weren't costing me anything. I don't know when my mentality changed, because when I got pulled over going 97 MPH in Texas I certainly had no reason to be in any hurry. And taking my time wasn't costing me anything. But still I sped. I was guilty with no contest. Maybe the cop put it best (after he gave me the ticket) when he said, "You really need to slow down." Duh! The Terminalator
After Texas I visited some of my wonderful friends in San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco to finish the trip. Then back home in the Pacific Northwest I spent time in Seattle with friends and a weekend on the rain-forested coast of the Olympic Peninsula, possibly my favorite all-time spot anywhere, ever....ice. My damn point - which I could have just summarized with this sentence instead of recounting the last two months of my life - is that I felt like I had had hardly a minute of free time to just myself for weeks and weeks on end. But after only a few hours in the airports on my way down to Brasil I was reborn a free man. Not a free man like free to roam around the duty-free zone of the airport like Tom Hanks in that one movie I won't mention here, but free to be in my own space of mind
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. Given there were strangers all around me. But none of them wanted anything to do with me. They all hustled about doing their business and stressing their flights, while I had several layover periods that lasted between 2 and 24 hours to clear my mind or to bask in thought over what the next few months would hold in store for me. Before this time, I hadn't had a free moment to even speculate about my new life in Brazil, where I would be experiencing a new culture, a new language, and a new way of living.E=MCWhoCares?
One of my favorite things to do during periods of copious free time, especially while traveling, is to think about the relativity of certain concepts. Every person on this rapidly deteriorating planet lives in his or her own reality. This reality is a mixture of the person's sensual perceptions, their interaction with other individuals in their world, and the way their culture shapes their conceptual relativity. Time, for instance, we think of as a relative concept because physicists tell us that time and space are intertwined. But we can experience this relativity in a more personal manner. Sometimes it seems like things take forever to pass, like when you are waiting for a bus or sitting in a boring lecture or when you are in extreme pain or experiencing a rush of adrenaline
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. But when you are entertained or feeling pleasure, daydreaming, or concentrated on a specific task, the time can literally fly by. What I realize over and over while traveling is that time is also culturally relative. When I first bust out of the US for an extended travel, my mind and feet are ready to go full speed and to have things run smoothly. To have everything planned to the minute. But the rest of the world doesn't flow like that. And being stranded in airports on the way to my destination in South America was a perfect reminder of what is always to come. Every time I move to a new country I must adjust to the rhythm and flow of the environment and the culture. It can take a week or more to feel the flow. But when I finally do, I stop silently complaining if the bus doesn't come on time, or at all. I cease to speculate how much time will pass before a certain event happens. And I no longer fret when I can't make a transaction at an ATM at a specific moment. At least I try not to. My torrid pace - which seems like an innate tendency to always be in motion, but is really a by-product of my fast-paced culture - begins to slow down and become more in tune with the surroundings. The speed slows but time still marches on. When this transition of relative time takes place for me I can take a 36 hour bus ride or wait all day for a train (or spend 3 days in airports) without batting an eye (whatever that means).Pain Don't Hurt
Another relative concept is pain. Nearly all of us reading this are economically privileged, whether we admit it or not. Especially relative to those in less fortunate areas of the world. To maintain our level of comfort we spent 90% of our time indoors, the majority of which is in comfortable cars, artificially acclimatized buildings and heated water
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. This luxury, after months and years, makes me soft, I always realize when I step back out into the third world. At first, things seem taxing or uncomfortable or foreign. But eventually my tolerance to pain, discomfort, and general hassle increases. It takes a while. The first few months I see people in what I would consider to be unbearable pain. Those with significant untreated injuries or living with chronic pain. So many people sleep in the streets in extreme heat or cold. How do they live like that? But sometimes I think that it might not be painful for them relatively. They might feel okay, relatively speaking. Because they are living in this reality and it could be that they are completely adjusted to it. I guess what might be more important to me than somehow finding out how much they are truly suffering is how I feel about their suffering, Relatively speaking, I hardly ever feel pain compared to them. The few times I feel like I have suffered are more emergent situations, such as breaking my leg or busting out my teeth. And that hurts hella, at least to me. When something like this happens I am so immediately aware of my relative suffering that I cannot imagine a more uncomfortable situation. But many times I am feeling so good compared to that level of discomfort that I am not even conscious of pain or any bad feeling. It's only when something is really causing pain or suffering when I look back and say, "I wish it was like it was then." But at the time previous to the current discomfort I wasn't appreciating how well I had it to begin with. Example: One time in India (blah, blah, blah) I was stuck in standing room only on a bus for 10 hours in 100+ degree weather with humidity during this terrible pre-monsoon heat wave that killed thousands the year I was there. Entire families of eight were packed into seats that should have sat only two. My head was in my chest because the bus roof wasn't high enough and the back of my head would slam up against the metal ceiling of the bus on every bump
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. I was breathing deeply and hyperventilating in the heat, almost passing out; only still standing because the bus was so packed there was nowhere to fall. I remember counting in my head that I was touching ten different people at once. I felt sorry for myself until I looked around and noticed 75 other people on the bus who were in the exact same situation as me. But to them it was just another day. They weren't complaining. It's in these situations that my perspective changes concerning relative suffering and I think, "The next time I am sitting on a fluffy couch in an air-conditioned room sipping an ice-cold Zima watching "Friends", I will appreciate the luxury. Or maybe not. Or I can just do what many under-privileged (and dare I say under-educated) do and rationalize my current discomfort by saying, "It's God's will." But I won't go there.Let's Stop That And Start This
Day two of four: Landing in Costa Rica was a treat because I hadn't been there since 1992, when Costa Rica was just beginning to experience its tourist boom. That's right; I went there when it was "cool." I had a night to kill in C.R., so I took a taxi to the closest town to the airport and had myself a modest, solo night on the town. In any Latin American city, village, town, or hamlet of any size, the first thing you have to do is orient yourself (or orientate, as the English say
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. And I might could tend to agree, for you are 'finding your orientation' not 'finding your oriention'. But then again, 'being disoriented' sounds better than 'being disorientated'. Someone look it up and get back to me. That would be greeeeaaaaat. Thaaaanks.). Anyway, I was becoming orient(at)ed in the main plaza of Alajuela, Costa Rica the next morning when I finally felt that the great pleasure of being in a foreign country. Here I Am, Rock You Like A Peruvian!
There's nothing like that feeling I get when I first reach the Promised Land - that is, a land that promises not to, unprovoked, unilaterally invade and conquer other nations in the name of greed and ignorance. No, the feeling I got when I first heard the sweet musical notes coming from the musician in the center of the main plaza in Alajuela, Costa Rica is unparalleled and indescribable. But I will now describe it. A tiny Andean man stood in the 80+ degree, humid heat, decked out in full Peruvian mountain gear (wearing woven wool hat covering his ears and thick, woven alpaca shawl/blanket covering his torso, along with other unnecessary, heat-trapping clothing). What the hell is this? Where did my plane land? Bolivia? But when he began belting out his next song on his electronically amplified panpipe I knew right where I was. You see, he was playing a high pitched version of a monster rock ballad by the German band The Scorpions
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. I don't think anyone else in the plaza recognized the song. The kids just went on eating their ice cream cones, the teenagers continued making out, and the adults sat around and remained generally unemployable. But this sight and these sounds nearly brought me to my knees in laughter. That probably-drenched-in-sweat, Peruvian man, standing there in a plaza in central Costa Rica playing an embarrassing style of American music by an excruciating 80's hair band from Germany on his amplified native instrument was more than I was ready for. "Welcome to Latin America," was all I could muster up to whisper to myself. It's good to be here.Big Trouble In Big Brasil
I made a quick transfer in Lima, Peru to board a red-eye flight to São Paulo. Part of me wished I had emptied out my bags and stuffed the tiny Peruvian from the plaza in Alajuela into my bags so I could drop him off where he belonged, so he would not have to endure that agony any longer. We flew across the continent, over the steamy Amazon, and, as the first light of day hit the horizon, we were descending into São Paulo. Now, I have flown in and out of some megopolises before: helL.A., NYC, Paris, Istanbul, Cairo, New Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, etc, but I have never seen such an intimidating skyline as has Sao Paulo
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. The scary thing is not that you can see city buildings forever in one direction; it's that you can see them in every direction. Sometimes I fly into a city and complain that the airport is 30km outside the city. Well, Garulhos International Airport is 30 or so km outside the center and is still in the city! Damn, I say. This organic monster of nearly 20 million, the third largest metropolis in the world, was to be my new home. Nobody down here would be keeping track of me except me, that's for true.So, You Decided To Move To Brazil
There comes a point in many people's life where that person is taking in so much sensory information that it can't all be absorbed. This thriving city has been throwing an overabundance of sights, scents, smells, sounds, and whatever the other 4 senses are, my way. Some would say that this is the most opportune time for a sensory purge in the form of a catharsis. The casting of a piece of fresh, organic, raw artistic output. Not me. I say shut the f*&# UP! and try to organize this mess of humanity into thoughts. This would take days. Fortunately, I didn't have to try to make sense or schedules because my new host family (mom, a 50 yr old architect, and son, a 20 yr-old student applying to school for journalism) had all sorts of plans for me the day I arrived
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. Yeah!?Here's One Way To Beat Jetlag
The weekend I arrived there was this tiny, little thing downtown they call "Parada Gay." For you non-specially-trained translators, this means Gay Parade. This year it was the largest gay pride parade in the history of the world, with numbers of participants and attendees topping 2.5 million! It was enough people to be an entire "País de gays," my clever host's son, Pedro, pointed out. Imagine if you will, NYC's Broadway so jam-packed with people from bottom to top that it is not possible to see the actual street anywhere along the length of it. Now imagine 50 semis with trailers parked the entire length of that street. But instead of the trailers being 20 ft. high metal refrigerated boxes containing produce, the "floats" in this parade are 30-foot-high, fifty-foot-long walls of speakers. On top of each of the massive speaker/trailers are about 20 muscle-bound, shirtless greased-up men in nothing but thong underwear. Imagine they are shaking their money-makers to the sounds of anything from techno to trance to samba or whatever music is blasting from the wall of speakers below them. Imagine that most of the semis are sponsored by some pro-gay organization and nearly all have an enormous arched rainbow of balloons floating merrily (or gaily, I guess) above. Now stop imagining and look at these pictures (they are not mine but they will give you the idea):
http://inexo.com.br/~danton/fotos/mineira/parada-gay/
This Ain't No Place For Children
The interesting thing about this parade was that these floats were not the parade
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. They were not moving anywhere in this large crowd. They only provided music. The 2.5 million spectators were the real entertainment. We were the parade. Our group was diverse: My senhora, her two sons (one brought a girlfriend), my Boss, who is a doctor, and her husband, who is an engineer, two gay public health students from Berkeley, who were on a trip through Brazil together, A PhD student from Berkeley currently working on some projects in Brazil, and her husband from Oaxaca, Mexico, along with several expats. Some of the colorful costumes that no doubt manifest during carnaval were worn by supporters, some of whom pranced in the streets covered in nothing but paint and giant plumes of feathers. Street vendors sold plastic bottles of wine, shots, and beer from makeshift carts, trays, and coolers. Hundreds of transvestites roamed in packs, flagrantly manifesting to the crowd their "femininity," or proving who had the tallest heels, the largest saline-filled chest or the most-hairless body. After passing several of these groups, my host mom's son felt compelled to tell me, "Not all the girls in Brazil are so tall, muscular, and have shaved chests. I will show you." Boy was I relieved. There were also plenty of non-gay spectators to be scrunched up against as the current of bodies carried us past truck after truck of beats and booties. Being a straight, blonde gringo, I was actually surprisingly free of harassment. One drunken man (I think) was pressed up tight against me in a particularly crowded stretch of street, and he whispered into my ear in slurred English with a Brazilian accent, "Zhoo are zo boootifooo!" I guess that's meant to be a compliment
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. Thanks, om, person.Life Goes On Long After The Thrill Of Cross-Dressing Is Gone
My first Sunday night was a successful attempt at getting to know my neighborhood, and its multitude of cheap watering holes, often referred to as botecos. At a boteco, you bring however many of your friends who feel like imbibing in an unstimulating environment, much like that of a dive bar. Small, square plastic tables and chairs are set up outside of a bar where you sit and order round after round of cheap, locally-brewed bottles of beer (Bohemia, Brahma, Skol, and Antarctica are all top sellers), which you pour into glasses until the bottle is empty. If you empty enough bottles, the last bottle is sometimes on the house, called a sidera. Without music, you are forced to rely on your intoxicated friends' banter as the only source of entertainment. But it works fine. And before I knew it, it was Monday morning and time for me to start my job. Finding my way to Santa Casa Hospital in downtown Sao Paulo via the bus system Monday morning was a lesson in...humility. If this city can be analogous to an anthill, then I felt like one of them "special ants." One with several missing chromosomes. Literally, I was riding the bus. But figuratively and culturally, I was riding the short bus. I realized it was going to take some time to adjust to the madness that is São Paulo, or Sampa.
