We have now been in Brazil for over a year. Almost two weeks ago on March 3rd, AJP said to me as we walked to school, “Mom, one year ago today we arrived in Brazil.” I was impressed with his memory. Since that day, I have been thinking about what this past year has meant. Since I love lists, here is a list of some things I have thought about over this week.
1. The church here is amazing. Yesterday, we stayed after to renew our Temple Recommends and I saw a woman from the other congregation that shares our building. She was carrying a number of bags of clothing to donate to Deseret Industries (Our church’s equivalent of Goodwill). It almost made me cry because the congregation that shares our building is almost exclusively made up of favelas. I was struck that a group that has so little could give so much. I have been so impressed with the faith and commitment of the Brazilian members.
2. The sheer size and diversity of Brazil. While we have not seen nearly any of it, I did not realize how massive and varied this country is. It goes from the Amazon jungle to the temperate cattle raising region. It has one of the largest (if not the largest) wetlands area in the world. It has the beach and the mountains; hot weather, cool weather and in between. Brazil a truly beautiful country.
3. The racial component of Brazil is complicated. It is also very subtle. It is not uncommon here to hear people comment on their skin color. For example, “Look at how white my sister is and how black I am.” The U.S. perspective historically has been the “one drop” rule. This rule applied regardless of actual skin color. However, in Brazil it is not that way. So much of your race is defined by how you physically look. Once, we saw a family come to a meeting at church. The parents both looked of African descent. However, of their three children, one looked of African descent, one latino and one white. None of the children were adopted. They were an often occurring anomaly here in Brazil. With all the complications, a phase I heard once seems to ring true, “To be black in Brazil is to be poor in Brazil.” I wonder sometimes if the subtle nature of race has made it more difficult to overcome the barriers.
4. The “Brazilian way” is an interesting way of saying, “when you know someone, things get done.” Brazil has an incredible bureaucracy. It does not matter if you want to get through customs or get a divorce. Everything has many forms and long waiting periods. One has to jump through many hoops to have anything get done. However, these hoops magically disappear when you know someone. One example happened to a friend of ours. A coworker of JTP was having problems with his internet. He had waited four months for it to get fixed with no results (the whole time paying for the service with no hope of refund.) JTP mentioned that he had a friend that worked at the internet company. The co-worker resisted any interference but finally lost patience and asked JTP to speak with his friend. Within hours of JTP talking to his friend, JTP’s co-worker was contacted and an appointment was set-up. That’s the Brazilian way.
Living in Brazil this past year has been a wonderful and challenging experience. I have grown personally and our family has become stronger. We look forward to another great year!
1 comment:
happy one-year anniversary! here's to year 2!
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