Made in Brazil

It’s the equivalent of that Spring break college thing we have been exposed to for most of our lives through Hollywood films. For most students in Joburg this means it’s time for that customary trip to the coast with all your pals.

Cape Town is lovely, but the student budget will not be able to deal with the costs. So for the most, it’s that time to hit KwaZulu-Natal. It will be Umhlanga, Durban or Margate – depending on who you are. As a socially awkward youngster I chose to forego all that and visit a friend in Brazil. There is always so much pressure to have a good time or pretend you are having one.

Group decisions are always a pain and you were just with these people every day for the past few years. Why on earth would you want to go on holiday with them? So as my friends were raging it up at the coast I quietly boarded a plane to Sao Paulo. It would be the first time I was travelling solo.

I know you think what will follow is a description of Rio. I must be the only person in the world who went all the way to Brazil and didn’t go near Rio. I was visiting a friend I had made on my travels. She lived in the south of the country far from the famed Rio.

I recall asking her if we could go to Rio and her response being one of horror and fear: “No, it’s too dangerous.” Dangerous? I’m from South Africa, man, there is no such thing as dangerous. Rio never did come to fruition. I think it had more to do with the fact that we were 18 and didn’t have the money to be jaunting around the country. So off I went to Curitiba, a lovely city in the south. A city I would later discover that gave South Africa the idea for the BRT system.

They used a similar system when I was there and it worked wonderfully. From the onset I really liked Brazil. I didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I blended in. People came up to me and spoke in Portuguese. When one shopkeeper asked me something and my friend told him I couldn’t speak Portuguese he quipped that he could swear at me and I would totally smile and nod.

The nice thing about living with a friend is you get good insight into their family. So, in Curitiba I met all her family, including quirky cousins. When she fell ill and had to go to hospital for a few days I had an interesting few days communicating with her family in sign language. Or as her cousin later put it, in caveman.

Brazilians were incredibly warm people though and as an awkward 18-year-old I really got the opportunity to grow. I was always considered a bit strange for my taste in music and pretty much everything else. For the first time I fully embraced my quirkiness and let it flow. To my surprise I found I wasn’t much different to everyone else and that perhaps it was South Africa that was quirky.

Curitiba was just the beginnings of my adventure in Brazil and as time passed I found that I fell more and more in love with the country. So much so that I fully wanted to be a Brazilian. Why, I don’t know.