Pernambuco Gypsy

Onibus - A Tale of Two Cities

2011-12-19T02:28:00.000-03:00

Waiting to let people off before you get on is seen as a sign of weakness

About eleven years ago someone had an idea inRecife. Unfortunately the idea came from a man who wielded power. He was atransport man. A college boy and motorist. Sticking rigidly to Pernambucanocustom he thought about it long but not that hard, pausing regularly for breaksso as not to raise the suspicion of his colleagues. Funds were tight and the mayor’sreelection plan of building another massive bridge bearing his name (but inessence ‘for the people’) needed to be addressed. His brainchild wassimple. Turn off the air conditioning on all of the buses and instruct thedrivers to open the windows and drive even faster. And, obviously, after acouple of hours when Recifences had tired of protesting or forgotten, upthe fares. And if conditions were ripe, implement phase 2.

Phase 2

He’d recently been at a national bus conference inCuritiba where plans had been hatched to colour code the buses according to thedistricts they serviced. The Curitiban think tank also floated an idea soradical (cylindrical bus stops) that when he presented it to his bosses in Recifehe induced a spate of strokes that rendered Recife’s transport mandarinsincapable of even mild infidelity. He was a man eager to make a name for himself.The Curitiban initiative was thought dangerous, much too subversive toimplement. * Surveys were conducted and all the results pointed to massconfusion and fears that buses that were 'the wrong colour' would be torched by rattled commuters. **

Ventilation in 30° heat is necessary

It was decided that the current system wherebybuses had random numbers and came and went as they pleased in the generaldirection of some barrio or other worked perfectly well. Thiscomplimented the convoy system, whereby four buses grouped together so thedrivers could race each other and banter about the football when stationary at traffic lights (or morefrequently not), was a well-oiled modus operandi.Today, Curitiba is a place Brazilians want to live. It works in a kind ofboringly mundane fashion. There’s no madness and that’s because Recife hoardedall of it. But it works.

And while the two cities went their separate waysin terms of human development, it must be said that Curitiba lost something.Tourists go to Curitiba and get the bus and think

Lovely buses. Very efficient. Now, is thereanything interesting at all here?

To which the answer is negative.

Tourists in Recife get an altogether better deal.Taking the bus in Recife is like being in your own snuff movie. With driversreceiving bonuses for reaching 100km per hour between traffic lights a hundredmetres apart and days in lieu for taking corners at 80km per hour, you’d be foolhardy notto quickly toss 50 centavos at the popcorn salesmen that swarm around when thebus is forced to stop. Hell, you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. ***Those in the know avail of the popcorn sellers that brave the erratic trafficto provide you with a snack to enjoy your impending doom. You can tell a rookieby his white knuckles. And it's not unusual for groups of youths to commandeer a bus and surf it while extolling the merits of their quite rubbish and provincial football team.

Wearing a jumper? Me hole.

To add to the excitement, occasionally a bus ishijacked and everyone robbed. But this is quite rare these days, as are thepolice stopping the bus and bringing on scary dogs to sniff the passengers fordrugs, firearms or the heinous crime of having watches synchronized toGreenwich Mean Time. Even Johnnie Cochran once turned down a case saying it was

Just damned unwinnable.

Once you’ve accustomed yourself to the pace of yourjourney there is a veritable funbag of things to enjoy. You can tickle the teenagers that are hitching a lift on the side of the bus or wonder why Recife women shave their moustaches but not their arms. Hawkers are officiallybanned from annoying people but like Gary Glitters Vietnam visa, some do slipthrough the net. Naturally assumed friends of Jeebus make up the majority of the peddlers, whospiel off some guff and hand out pens, CD marker pens, authentic leatherwallets and warm nutritional yoghurts. But sometimes someone sneaks in at astop and is passionate about their product. When this happens it’s a good ideato have both hands occupied. Popcorn is good but that only leaves one hand freeand unless you have a bible handy or a student textbook, reading is frownedupon. At times like these, most lads bury their hands in their pockets andscratch their balls, but that doesn’t always work.

Recife came out better in the driver exchange with Curitiba

One such occasion saw a well (enough) to do ladyannounce that she’d taken the day off work especially to share her amazingchewing gum with us (one part gum, eight parts chalk). She worked in office in the citycentre and was heavily involved in the computers game, apparently. But on herway to work (she didn’t go too much into details) she happened upon an amazingopportunity and just didn’t feel right in passing it up. Deus inspiredher, she said. **** She patrolled up and down the bus waving various flavoursthat were stuck between each finger, like a one armed kid trying to unstick aparticularly sticky stickle brick by shaking it. If only there was a Brazilianversion of The Apprentice I thought as I buried both hands deep in mypockets and hoped she’d pass. Hawkers are drawn to gringos like Ricky Teixeira is to shady dealings. I was put in an impossible position.

You can be shamed into parting with a fewshekels, harassed – as being a gringo; you are obviously rich - or just plainSOLD SOLD SOLD! I bought two packs due to change issues. I wanted to just givea donation but she was in high heels, admittedly high heels that looked likethey’d been swiped from a murder victim, but high heels nonetheless. And if youcan navigate in those things on a Recife bus you deserve payment.

When you arrive alive at your stop, you alight andvow to wash your hands at the first available opportunity. Then you think thatthe Recife Tourist Board is missing a trick here. Alongside

- Beautiful beaches

- Year round sunshine

- Great music

- The Annual National Goat Congress

- Carnaval

Chaos Tourism's guinea pigs

surely there is space for the untapped mine that isChaos Tourism. Ship in the tourists, give them a bus pass and a bottleof Cachaça and Bob’s your uncle. And if the police would only comeon and haul off all the hairy armed women and make them wax on the side of theroad then, and only then could you say Recife is catching up on Curitiba on the Human Development Index.

* The Curitban Proclamation alsoincluded the introduction, on a trial basis, of bus timetables. At this point,the Recife delegation walked out in protest. Looking back with a cold eye of anagenda-less historian, it’s hard to look past the positive input Curitiba’sGerman heritage played. This pales in comparison with Recife’s Teutonicbrigade, albeit seasonal, which was making inroads at this time into theburgeoning sex tourism trade.

** What if two red buses passedeach other on the same street going in opposite directions? Is that possible? Being the mainconcern amongst those surveyed.

Get out of my seat or I'll eat you!

*** Rollercoasters are not common inRecife. Partly because the buses have monopolized thrill seeking and alsodue to the unspeakable horror of getting on a rollercoaster that was bolted together by local handymen. The 5° Rei being the exception of course.

**** If you don’t mention Deus atleast once or twice, you lose customers.

***** A sign that Recife is catching up with Curitiba is the appearance of obese seats and signs on the buses. What is more troubling though is that people let them sit down where they can be nearer to the window and have easier access to wandering cake salesmen that may pass by the window, which is more common than it sounds. Wily street vendors are stocking up on cake and it's hard not to wonder whether there has been collusion with the Prefeitura and the cake baking sector. Corruption is rife in Brazil. However, this cannot be measured in terms of development as obesity here is seen as an affliction rather than a person gorging themselves on coxinhas & Guaraná and refusing to eat any vegetables. Further study is needed.

Whole Lotta Nossa Senhora da Conceição

2011-12-13T21:16:00.000-03:00

But Mam! All the cool kids have these!

Back in the days before Recife was Brazil’s nextBabel*, important bishops converged on the city to select a patron saint. Sentby papal envoy with impressive hats, an oxymoronic group of knowledgeableclergy decreed that auditions would be held to determine who would be posterboy for this soon to be great city. Thanks to the slap shod saint anointingprocedures of the day certifiable miracles weren’t necessary and anyone (exceptnon-Europeans) could throw their hat in the ring.

L-R - Bodeson, Thrombus Oliveira, Hornaldo, Mary X2

Hornaldowas the crowd favourite. Aside from inventing the car horn (and by local logic,pre-inventing the car) two things made him stand out from the othercontestants. Firstly he was able to able to dress himself unaided. Severalwitnesses swore testament, including the local parish priest. Secondly, he hadbeen on time for an appointment on more than three occasions in a six-monthperiod. **

His main rival was the rural hotshot Bodeson.He had the gift of the goat and had commanded a strong following amongstPernambuco’s many frisky farmhands. His other supernatural gift was his innateability to let someone out of a carriage or doorway before pushing his way in.This was popular with the womenfolk although they didn’t yet know why. With chivalrynot due to arrive in Recife until sometime in the latter half of this century,it could be said that Bodeson was a visionary. A Galileo of the nordeste.

Even Nossa Senhora needs her Me Time

A third candidate, Thrombus Oliveira, made alate surge by claiming a miracle. In an act of self-serving martyrdom, heclaimed that he had never ‘chased skirt’ and that his own wife was the solebenefactor of his affections. His subsequent burning at the stake by the localmenfolk was only right and proper. Even the de-tonguing of his wife to stop herspreading vile rumours about non-philandering Brasileiros didn’t doenough to impress the papal plenipotentiaries, who being of male persuasionthemselves, viewed such fidelity with suspicion and downright hostility. Onlyafter the event did someone point out that women couldn’t vote anyway.Thankfully Jeebus hath forgiven them.

After a confusing proportional representation systemof voting, which involved numbers, chaos ensued.*** Head nor tail could be madeout of the vote, so a papal safeguard was brought into play. Sensing thatRecife was not a modest city, the bishops announced to the crowd that afterconsulting with the heavens via secret voice, Mary herself would only be toodelighted to moonlight as the patron saint, should they want her.

"The moustachioed shall crawl or be smote." John 3:19

And like a PlayStation friend who always picksBrazil, Recife went for Mary herself. No local lad done good here thank youvery much. The only stipulation was that every 8 December the good citizens ofRecife should climb a big hill in the district of Casa Amarela and ask her for something. Signed, sealed and shittingafter the meal.

Tradition demands that allsorts of beggars, ne’er do wells, lepers and hawkers line the narrow streetsthat lead up the hill. Unfortunately for the revelers, modern medicine has eradicatedleprosy in Recife. If there was a fee you’d ask for a refund. Busloads of thesupposedly destitute arrive from as far away as Fortaleza to beg for almsand in some case, arms. Setting up shop early is vital. As any sem tetowill tell you,

If you don’t get a goodspot early, you might as well go home.

Holy loan sharks

Umpteen families withmatching holy T-shirts bound uphill with the open-mouthed awe of the trulystupid. They stop off at stalls that specialize in Mary effigies. And everystall specializes in miniature to life-sized statues of Nossa Senhora.You can tell who the most touched is by the size of the statue that they stareat, looking for movement or the hint of a tear.

Up ahead is a young womanwho looks like she’s being dragged against her will by a couple of loyalsisters acting under their crazed mothers instructions. In turns out thoughthat Rosielle is quite happy. She’s convinced herself that if she walksup this hill backwards then Nossa Senhora will give her a husband. Shedoesn’t intend on walking down hill backwards though, which seems like ahalf-measure. I warn her that if she doesn’t, Nossa Senhora couldpresent her with a half-wit. She finds this amusing. Looking around it becomes apparent – it’d be an upgrade. I see Rosielle further on up the hill.Her sisters are looking at some religious tack at a stall. Rosie is stillbetween them, facing onto the street. When she wants to have a goo, they allarc around so that Rosie is facing the clobber and her sisters the street,eyeing up potential suitors.

Perhaps their attention isdrawn to the gentleman crawling and sweating his way up the hill. There issomething strangely comforting about watching the moustached crawl up a hill.Again, I ask him if he will be crawling back down the hill. He fails to give mea thumbs up. Later it strikes me that perhaps his punishment was for crimes ofthe upper lip. Never trust the moustached, especially if they are on theirhands and knees. A stout woman overtakes him with two bricks balanced onher head. I don’t think she is part of the pilgrimage, but you wouldn’t know. She could be just going for a walk.

Sambos ✔ Soup ✔ Arms ✔ Alms ✗

Just like in the bible,near the church are hot-panted girls giving out money lending leaflets. With aprayer on one side you have to doff your hat and commend InterCrédito for tailoring their loan sharking activities to suit themarket. The hawkers at the temple are only selling boxes of candles to put inthe fire pit for Mary so revelers are forced to buy a box of eight.**** This smacksof cheating. Asking Mary for eight different things seems a bit much especially since multiplication guidelines currently aren't working in Recife. She may need to return tospace to tot up the requests.

It was the most soul cleansing day I've had in Recife in some time.

* Diario de Pernambuco,Saturday 10 December 2011.

** Whether he was justlate for a previous appointment and early for another has never properly beenestablished. However, his idea to paint wristwatches on every crucifix in thecity as a means of combatting the Recifensetime concept void has to be looked up as visionary.

*** The city annals recordedthat this was the day that Recife lost knowledge of the number 3. Soonafterwards correct use of the multiplication sign also slipped from localmemory. These incidences are unconnected. Recife has since reclaimedunderstanding of the number 3 but at a cost of losing the number 99, whichclarifies why shopkeepers never advertise products ending in 99, for example NOVA TECNOLOGIA – R$22.98! X3 Parcelas deR$7.68

**** The fire pit awaits...

The Brazilian Calendar - Commemorating the Ridiculous

2011-11-13T22:45:00.001-03:00

World Cup 2014 cunningly has no games on 6 July

Brazilian calendarologists are now enteringtheir busy period. Next years calendars are due to hit the shops soon. Asidefrom their annual struggle to include all the days, calendar makers have twoextra curve balls to deal with in 2012. The first is February 29^th. Whileit shouldn’t come as a shock one must remember that three consecutive years ofassigning the right amount of days to each month takes its toll on the nations experts. The burnout rate is just below that of air traffic controllers. The last time it happened was in 2008 and to quote the chief Braziliancalendar spokesman -

It has been a damned serious business…the nearest run thing youever saw in your life.

By all accounts it was that close. Only alate night November phone call to President Lula finally settled the matter. * Despitefierce pressure from the Ministério de Turismo to put the extra day onthe 6^th February (to prolong Carnaval), printing presses were indeedhalted. But news failed to reach the northeast until it was too late and Pernambucoenjoyed an extra days debauchery that year. Pernambucanosfamiliar with the concept of the calendar will be waiting with baited breathoutside newsagents for 2012 diaries to hit the shelves next week. Rumoursabound the extra day will be added in between 17-21 February. If a tree fallsin a forest and all that…

Thesecond hurdle Brazil’s illustrious calendar men must leap is the widespreadbelief that 2012 will herald the end of the world. In a veritablecalendar-making coup, Brazil got it spot on in 2011, not only disregarding the21 May as End Times but discountingthe revised date of 21 October too. With such a crack team in place, hopes arehigh of a repeat performance. But therein lies the problem. You can only workwith the information at your disposal. 2012 has no set date for the end of theworld. Obviously it shouldn’t come before Carnaval, so when will it come? Withsuch uncertainty around it makes sense to sneak in the extra day duringCarnaval, just in case. There are contingency plans in place however. Printershave agreed to still print 365 (or is it 366?) pages in each diary for nextyear regardless of when the end of the world happens. The New Year doesn’treally start here until after Carnaval, and when you type in ‘plan ahead’ into computers here theybreak. Anyways, calendar makers here have enough on their plate to be worryingabout the Apocalypse.

The campaign to expel Brazil from the UN starts here

A reliable yardstick of a state's mental wellbeing can be fathomed by a glance at the holidays it commemorates. The Russianshave a day for remembering the defeat of Nazism; the Americans celebrate MartinLuther King Day, the French have Bastille Day. Brazil has Goalkeepers Day(April 26 or July 6, take your pick). It’s just the way they roll. There is a day for everyone here. Ifyou’re not on the list you’re a nobody! While these days aren’t nationalholidays, they might as well be for the professions concerned – thoughsometimes it can be difficult to tell.

Though football games of importance aregenerally avoided, occasionally CopaLibertadores games are scheduled on 26 April/July 6. This may go some way toexplaining the underperformance of Brazilian clubs in the competition.

- Why did you let in seven goals?

- It’s Goalies Day man.

- Oh, congratulations.

- Cheers!

- Always next year, eh?**

Lets look at the numbers. Brazil has 485commemorative days yet they are crammed into 282, leaving 83 untouched days,accounting for leap years. January and February have only six between them (ifyou discount Carnaval as a moveable feast) while September and October accountfor 131 celebrations, mostly of gawk-eyed bullshit.

What! A white slave in Brazil! You're 'aving a laugh!

October is a particularly ridiculous month,getting the madness rolling early on with a special days for bees (October 3),who presumably are aware of what day it is and don’t sting anyone. The next daycollects the baton and runs with NatureDay, Ecology Day, Dog Day, Saint Francis of Assisi Day beforegoing leftfield and lobbing in O Dia doBarman and O Dia do Poeta as wellas, as well as… The Day of the HealthAgents and Endemic Diseases.

Skip forward a week to the twelfth and thereis another well thought out collection of commemorations. Athletes, Agronomy and Children jostle for congratulations withthe Sea (yes, the actual fucking sea),though all, in fairness, doff their hats to ODia do Descobrimento da América - which is agreat unifier when tensions between the groups inevitably become frayed. Themadness continues with LivestockEngineer’s Day securing a day all on its own (14 October) before wiserheads prevail with O Dia do Normalista on the fifteenth.One would think that all the mentalists have to congratulate the normal with abackslap and beer but I suspect that TheDay of the Normal has an altogether different meaning, devoid of reason.

From here on, things are ifnot ordinary, then just less demented. NationalScience and Technology Day is clandestinely celebrated on the 16^th(atleast here in the northeast). There has been a notable increase of horses inthe region, possibly due to impending doom and the Four selecting the bestthoroughbreds in the region, cos' as my local restaurant tells me, if He’scoming back it’s gonna be in Recife. Soon after mind, this oasis of normalcyquickly dries up and lunacy rings the doorbell and you answer like a fool.

Is there a more worthy day, honestly

For the unsuspecting gringo, a firmunderstanding of the calendar is must. The unlucky can decide to go for a haircuton Hairdressers Day, get telemarketed on 4 July and be duped by a telemarketingoperative drunk on congratulations or go trekking on the 30 September,Navigators Day, when maps nationwide refuse to give correct directions. Manyforeigners have been committed with incurable madness of the head due to thislack of understanding. Don’t go for a pedicure on the 4 December, don’t get internally audited on 20 November (or do, who knows?), play tennis on the 9 June if youdon’t normally play tennis, definitely don’t get a massage on May 25 whateveryou do, you’re just asking for trouble. Never, ever book a flight with a travelagent on 24 April, unless you are adventurous. And spare a thought on the 13April for O dia do Office Boy.

The Brazilian calendar says a lot about howsociety here works. I mean, April Fools Day is shared with the National Day forthe Celebration of the End of Indian Slavery. Go figure.

* Some sources maintain that Lula was all forthe idea but it came unstuck when he counted up the days on his fingers.

** This usually ends in the customary riot and an obligatory conspiracy theory. Brazilians will never accept that their team was just shit on the day. The 1998 World Cup Final etc.

*** With thanks to Ernesto.

**** Anyone interested in a full list of commemorative days can email me.

Urgent - Marketing Graduates Needed

2011-10-26T23:40:00.002-03:00

New concepts in pharmacy indeed - the mad type.

The day you understand Brazilian marketing techniques isthe day you crack Brazil. Something either leaks in your head or shrinks. I’mnot yet sure which but I’ve seen it happen to an acquaintance. And I wasenvious. Couple of weeks back I thought I was there. I’d just gotten off themetro in an industrial estate with a man dressed as a rabbit.

Curious, I decided to follow him. He seemed normal enough.Just getting the metro to work like me like. I kept a safe 15 pace distancebehind him, remembering from nature classes that rabbits are easily startled.Quickly discounting Easter as a cause, I racked my brains. His costume was toomanky to be a children’s entertainer, but then this was a poor enough area.Perhaps he was a traffic rabbit. The most recent spate of strikes (banks & postoffices) has also affected traffic clowns. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumptionto posit that he was some sort of traffic clown scab. Though not discounting athird possibility –early morning promotion for a gay Playboy niteclub - I wentwith Traffic Clown scab.

This is the moment.

My brain hopped. I quickened my pace determined to catch upand announce

You sir are a trafficrabbit, aren’t you?

But before I reached him we turned a corner and my hopeswere cruelly dashed. Not 20 metres away was a veritable warren of rabbitsselling petrol at a Shell gas station. I stood a moment, crestfallen. Rabbittossed his fag on the forecourt. * I consoled myself that at least I had made aconnection between rabbit and automobile. I’m nearly there…

The World Bank has just released its Doing Business 2012 report.Brazil has sunk 6 places to 126, behind economic powerhouses Uganda, Mongoliaand the Kyrgyz Republic while pipping Gaza & the West Bank by a photofinish. Is it any wonder? What must foreign investors think when they go tofill up their cars and are greeted by men in rabbit suits, smiling and smoking?

8:20 in Brazil, 11:00 in real world

We are talking about a society that produced the marketinggraduates responsible for the Big Benchain of pharmacies. I may be missing something, but I’ve been by Westminstermany times, seen Big Ben and neveronce, ever, did I make the connection between the selling of cough medicine andthe houses of parliament. More fool me. BigBen, or Biggie Bennie, in thelocal dialect, have massive replica clock towers emanating from them. I’d liketo say they are incongruous, but a quick glance around the architectural violence of Boa Viagem actually makes them quite stylish, sleek even. Now, when I see Biggie Bennie my first thought is tocheck the time. It appears I am alone in this as where I see ‘clock’; my mind thinks ‘time’. The denizens of Recife have analtogether different approach more along the ‘clock’… ‘ah yes, flu tablets’ line of thinking. Needless to say, while the clock faces do tell the time, they arenever right, anywhere.

Such innovative thinking extends into the pillow industry.Whenever I’ve gone pillow shopping I’ve been seduced by images of the sexyrelaxed by a dose of cushiony heaven. That smooth sinky feeling of the firsttwitches of sleep. I’ll even test drive ones that have grannies advertisingthem. Though the aged will sleep at the drop of a hat, you can find some gems –coffin dodger pillows are more absorbent, which help no end after a heavynights boozing. The Brazilian pillow though isn’t viewed as an item of comfycoziness. Perhaps it’s the constant noise that has brought about thisdisconnect to such a degree that the best pillow in Brazil is brought to you byMarco Pontes, Brazil’s first space astronaut.

Again, proof that I haven’t yet cracked this place canbe seen by my thought process ‘astronaut’– noisy blast off, chance of death, cold solar winds, floating and ablutionissues. I mean, do astronauts even use pillows? Do you need a pillow if youare floating? I just don’t understand.

Universities, from what I can gather, hand out marketingdegrees to the students who can pick out the most unrelated subjects. If Icould have one wish it would have to be MadMen in a Brazilian setting. It would be the LSD visions of a frazzled DonDraper before he Brylcreems his hair, fastens his tie and steps into the realworld. Maybe Brazil got Don Draper’s remedial brother.

Jesus fucken loved the reheated chicken in this place.
The star is not a Michelin one.

The restaurant business is no different. Walk into anyChinese slash Japanese * eatery and you’ll be greeted by a crack team ofBrazilians (with eyeliner providing the eyeslant) with Kamikaze style headbands slicing raw fish. This is what Japanstroke China must be like you think while tackling your sushi. You wonder ifthis violates the code of Bushido andtry to ignore the persistent voice that is screaming Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!over and over in your minds eye.

Defo coming back here. Top notch.

But by far the most effective restaurant advertisingcampaign is the local diner PrepareYourself! Jesus is Coming Back! It’san ingenious marketing campaign. If Jesus has already been what did he go for?Was it some rice and beans? Did he go for the R$7,00 option without weighing his food or play devil may care and risk paying that little bit more? What wasHis opinion on the food? Did He review it online? No matter. The diners keepaflocking back. The owner is coy when questioned. He’ll only suggest you tryeverything and that you’ll know what He had when you try it. You have to giveit to the owner; he’s got the local lunchtime punters like putty in his hands.Productivity in the area must be high – who would want to be sick the day thatHimself repops in for lunch? You’d be a fool, that’s what you’d be. It’s theonly advertising campaign I’ve seen here that makes sense. Fuck your Subways,Bob’s Burgers and Bonaparte franchises.** This is the future.

When I crack it, I’ll let you know.

Pernambuco Gypsy has been marketing like a Brazilian thislast month and has a substantial portfolio of surefire winners.

- Supermarket coupons for prostitute visits with every kiloof bananas.

- A washing machine advertised by Billy Ray Cyrus.

- A sock shop with a big tube of Colgate sticking out ofthe roof.

- Shoes advertised by a rapist.

* Just like electricity can’t kill in Recife, petroldoesn’t combust. And pulling the skin back beside your eyes and smiling isn’tracist at all Ted when referring to Orientals in company or otherwise.

** Bonapartes specialize in French pizzas. I think Napoleonwould be horrified at his legacy.

The Genius of Brazilian Paths

2011-09-25T17:53:00.000-03:00

Where footballers & samba dancers learn how to jink

Brazil has to be admired for its mad, misplaced optimism. Hugeswathes of the population believe that one day

- There will be enough change for all the shops

- Drug trafficking and murdering will cease

- The World Cup won’t be some calamitous shambles

- Jesus will return and live in a condominium in Espirito Santo, naturally.

Lofty ideals indeed. Yet if they are to be realised, thenthings must start at the bottom. Underfoot actually. Until the great urbanplanners of the nation grasp the concept of the level pavement and all theassociated benefits it brings, any such change is doomed.

Most walkways in Recife look like they’ve been constructedby a brain-damaged giant who was contracted to dispense pocketfuls of rubblefrom a height and then splashed some diluted grout on top as an afterthought.* Likea frantic chef adding a forgotten ingredient. So stumbling on a decent flatpavement is like finding €50 on the street. A sly glance around to make sure noone sees, a quick whistle and you’re away in a hack.

Mine clearing specialists from Recife

Warring states could do worse than recruit minefieldclearers from the streets of Recife. With a population accustomed to detectingeven the slightest undulation in terrain, they would make a welcome edition tothe frontline of any army.** The Prefeitura(City council) could act as a recruitment agency. The abundant revenues wouldbe ploughed into changing the city’s walkways from the current state of affairswhere having rickets is an advantage, into a place where the wheelchairstricken can go for walks without buckling their wheels.

While such thinking would be beneficial for citizen andcouncil coffers alike, a combination of cack-handed planning laws and the typeof ball passing that would mock Barcelona have rendered it impotent, dangerouseven. Planning laws in Recife absolve the council of the very basic civicresponsibility of path maintenance. The earnest agreement between constructionmagnate and Brazilian politician to ensure that the construction companyadheres to stringent mechanisms of pavement protection has been photographedand documented.

Brazilian Politician- “As part of the awarding of this construction contract, do you, cousinFernando, hereby assume responsibility for the punctilious upkeep of thefootpath directly in front of the building?”

Construction Magnate- “Oh Yes.”

Brazilian Politician[unsheathing a big cigar and contemplating what fruits the unfortunate but necessarytax on podiatry he will be forced to introduce will bring him mutters] – “Eeeexxxxcelente”.

This meeting was then entered into the system where it isstill in line to be lazily smothered by the stroke-inducing behemoth ofBrazilian bureaucracy.***

Another hole, no not the on the bike

Recife’s hodgepodge walkways reflect the chaotic lifebloodof the city. Were a doctor to examine the city’s veins he would undoubtedlyprescribe dredging of the arteries. But in a state as dysfunctional as Brazil, blood clots are not too much of a problem. Each vein is clotted up like a traffic jamin a mine. Many in the mining community are still to be convinced thatthere wasn’t a momentary delay with the carriages in that Chilean mine and acontracted Brazilian worker just lost the plot. After ruffling in his pocketfor his portable horn**** resorted to default♯3 (afterwomanizing and nonplussery) and started beeping causing a massive shaftcollapse. One suspects the truth will be unearthed millennia from now in a postapocalyptic world, some fossilized BrunoMineiro, eyes bulging, hand welded to a horn that still emits a wisp ofmisplaced rage, like a knifed bagpipe.

It is rare to be able to walk in a straight line for morethan eight strides. Even if the ground beneath is flat, there will be a danglingelectrical wire to remind you to pay attention. Most urban trees I’ve seen arein parks or at the edge of footpaths. However, in Recife they say

Fuck it! Put them inthe middle. Easier to paint. They grow better too.

Sometimes they just miss the path completely and put them onthe road. Which only adds to the terrifying experience of driving in Recife. Kidslook at you funny if you ask them-

“What came first? Thechicken or the egg?”

Blank stares greet you until the penny drops and wee Glabyson corrects you by explaining thatyou should say-

“What came first? Thepath or the tree?”

Nobody knows for sure. Though I have an inkling on the sideof the tree. In geological terms a pavement can be described as

… A more or lesshorizontal expanse of bare rock.

Which came first? The path or the tree? Not even scientists know

João Brasileiro takes the more orless part extremely literally and ignores the bare part. There isn’t enough space on the path for what does begoing on there. The footpath is seen as an extension of the self. So hawkersvending vintage porn, children’s DVDs, oranges, beer, hand puppets, hat stands,budgies and deep fried snacks set up shop in the middle of the sidewalk. Cartsare mounted onto the path and stools are set out should one want a refreshmentwhile deliberating over Boracos Quentes 4.Fat Tapioca women holler at each other and the smoke from sizzling cat orpigeon meat barbequing on a skewer tells you to stick to the road chump. Thisis no place for a pedestrian. Perhaps it is safer to take to walking on theroad, which holds roughly the same survival rates as the house band breakinginto an Erasure number at one of President Ahmadinejad’s inauguration shindigs.

Even the growing contagions of evangelical churches peddlingtheir Flat-Earth guff ignore the perilous state of the paths. You’d think thatat least they would have an interest in the horizontal. But no! Not a bit of it…While considering the merits of an organized kidnapping ring which would groomkids in the benefits of implementing a flat footpath policy at some point inthe future it dawned on me. *****

It’s all about football and samba. The slithery jinkiness ofyour average Brazilian footballer can be directly traced back to his walkingpatterns. A youngster sent to the shops to buy fags for his ma has to have hiswits about him and concentrate on his footwork. He’ll needs to navigate thelumps, jump over holes and roots, shimmy around the homeless, dodge aroundtraffic when the path is not an option and occasionally outpace death squads incars. The vast majority of footballers hail from poor areas that offer feweropportunities than an armless divorcee hankering after a wank. With Brazil sogood at football, what incentive is there for the powers that be to mend thepaths? ******

And so similarly it is with samba. With your average surfaceas uneven as the moon is it any wonder that Brazilian hips are looser? When wesee the Carnaval parades in the Sambodromoin Rio, the participants aren’t dancing; they are just walking on a flatsurface.

Why would Brazil kill this cash cow? Tourists flock to Carnaval and gringo kids want to play football like the Brazilians. As always with Brazil, there is a reason for everything. It just takes a suspension of belief to get there.

Warning: Big hole here

* This might explain the massive holes on the street…giantsfootprints.

** The average Recifense is prone to unpredictable andprolonged lapses in concentration. Either way, Pernambuco Gypsy has the utmostconfidence that this combination of skills would result in a cleared minefield,which is of course, the ultimate goal of the landmine removal.

*** Or at least someone thought momentarily about it beforebeing distracted by

- A novela

- A man selling ice-pops from a polystyrene boxoutside

- A man on a bicycle blowing on a whistle

- A mistress[es]

- All of the above at the same time

**** The brasileironever leaves home without finely waxed thighs, speedos and a horn of some sort.

***** It would be like The Manchurian Candidate on a localcouncil level. Hundreds of middle to upper management urban planners would beseeded into the Prefeitura awaiting a code word, perhaps Horizontal e Progresso.

****** The only genuinely flat surfaces in Brazil are at the Sambodromo and international airports.

Handymen and Porteiros Part I

2011-08-31T01:06:00.001-03:00

Objects of Mass Confusion

Criminal ineptitude is in no way a hindrance to a career in the Brazilian handyman racket.* Should your tool shed of DIY knowledge extend to discerning a hammer from hammock (or indeed an animal) then come to Brazil and be considered gifted. But why are there so many tool belt owning flâneurs about the place? This can be explained by the long held tradition which dictates that any man-made object with more than one moving part must be recycled until it either

a) Biodegrades

b) Explodes

c) Is used as a murder weapon

d) Outwits its master – not as uncommon as one would think.

e) Or evolves.

Recife’s litter problem can be partly attributed to bits of old Taiwanese tack being stapled once too often to some Pakistani plastic. During their forced welding they’ll form a Thelma & Louise type pact and the first chance they get make a dash for it. Freedom or death! They usually get as far as the road, embrace one last time and go out in a blaze of crushed plastic and screeching tyres. If they aren’t picked up that night by a man in a cart hunting plastic, cardboard and tin cans they will end up in the drains where come next rainy season, they’ll wreak their revenge.

A walk around any centre of commerce is a stroll into the soul of Brazil. Sandwiched between the fruit & veg whoppers and the tack hawkers are the handymen. Their huts have either been (shoddily) nailed to the wall or are behind windows that weren’t part of the original blue prints of the building. Inside there will be a hand held TV, a stool and that smell of hat sweat, moustache and wires. Atop the stool sits a wee chap who knows a man who knows the man who has just popped out for an errand and who may be back soon, depending on multitude of variables, most of which concern food and women.

Panning for the numbers

These are places where you can get anything fixed, or mangled beyond recognition, depending on how you view things. Mountains of temporarily still fans and unsteady stacks of VHS players are the red carpet that announces to the customer that there is an artisan in the house. Out back, 1980s keyboards and CPUs lie abandoned after being panned for their valuable numbers by Recife’s great supermarket triumvirate.

With supply greatly outstripping demand in the quarterly-skilled sectors, is it any wonder that whippersnappers with crushed dreams of becoming the best blender technician this side of the Bolivia drift towards the graveyard of the ambition….life as a porteiro.

Getting a good porteiro is pure luck. I was blessed with Jesus, who excelled at his job. This involved standing at a gate, sweeping, and not fixing problems.** He was in on it you see. Wise. Jesus was sagacious enough to realise that if he tried fixing anything he would make it worse. So he just didn’t. Ever. This showed the kind of canny judgment that made his namesake famous. Hoberto on the other hand, was ambitious.

The porteiro needs to be ever vigilant & alert

With thighs that must make him a first cousin to Roberto Carlos, Hoberto was a night porteiro. This involved a different skillset entirely. No handyman bullshit here. Just an ability to be strong, stay awake and kill (with his hands) anyone he didn’t recognize. He did this by studying the word of the Lord. Sometimes the good book would send him to sleep. Other times he would have a quick nap after teasing one out in what he perceived to be the darkness. Like Liam Neeson, he had a particular set of skills.*** Sadly these didn’t extend to remembering if you couldn’t see people outside if your lights were on or if they couldn’t see you...****

The rule of thumb as regards the failed handymen that haunt the porteiro game is this,

Once his name isn’t Zé, Hey! You’re OK!

They say your most amazing life revelation comes to you at 28. Mine came to realization soon after while failing to change a light bulb.

This is a job for Senhor Zé, the indomitable one-eyed porteiro

I thunk. No matter of twisting, tugging and cursing at the wretched thing would release it from its hold. I found Zé furiously concentrating on rest in his office. Rousing him from the right can startle him. His good eye takes a minute or two to focus after his post-lunch pre-siesta snooze. So I approached from the east and explained the situation. He nodded and his brain confirmed to him the innate suspicion that I was some eejit indeed.

Getting a man to change a light bulb for you is a demeaning business. Thankfully Mrs. Pernambuco Gypsy was not in to bear witness. However, my humiliation was short lived.

Three heads better than one

The layers of ancient masking tape should have been a clue. Instead of replacing the fixture, which would have involved a 10-minute trot to the DIY shop, Zé had been super-gluing bulbs to the rickety ceiling fan. All this came to light after he’d smashed the bulb with a hammer and wrenched the base free with a tool that we’ll both never know the name of. He then proceeded to smear the new light with enough glue to reattach regretful Siamese twins in a Shanghai backstreet.

Striking while the iron was hot, I asked him to cast his eye over the kitchen tap, which was on strike. So Zé unscrews the tap and water gushes forth. Zé puts his finger in the hole in the wall. The gush halts. Zé takes his finger out. Water spurts from the wall. Zé looks at the tap in his hand and says

EEEEIIIITA!

Obviously the tap is not the problem and there is an internal water problem in the wall. Stuffing some rubber that he had in his pocket into the hole to stem the tide, Zé shuffles out for reinforcements. He returns shortly with Félix, a man who looks like he would struggle naming the colours on a rubik’s cube never mind figuring out you can twist it. But he owns a tool belt so he’s a respected second opinion.

Félix takes a tool from his belt and begins to bang the wall above the tap. Zé nods in approval thinking

Why didn’t I think of that?

The banging continues. Occasionally the tool is changed for a different shaped one though with identical results. All the while the sun has passed from one side of the apartment to the other. Laughing in the face of whoever said that two heads are better than one, their collective will is almost broken. Defeated by a plastic tap. But not quite! A decision has been made. A specialist is to be summonsed.

It’s time for the 5° Rei. With trembling hands, the call is made. And we wait…

____________

* The average tradesman resembles a ‘handyman’ only in that he usually has two hands and is exclusively male.

** Although he was teetotal, chatting to the cachaça-eyed porteiro from two buildings down seemed to be part of his job description.

*** A particular set of skills.

****Hoberto was a friendly guy and liked to shake hands when he saw you. What you don’t know can’t hurt you…unless his fly and belt are undone during the shaking. He now patrols Recife’s only golf course, keeping non-golfers at bay.

Supermercado Paraíso

2011-08-14T01:27:00.002-03:00

When supermarkets get these babies, Ordem e Progresso will have won

Anyone who has ever wondered what happened to all the computers from the 1980s should pay a visit to a Brazilian supermarket.

The three big supermarkets in Recife tend to nab the nonpareil of Recife’s checkout ‘talent’. Carrefour can stake a claim as having the crème de la crème. Most of the staff are on nodding terms with the Roman alphabet and can roller-skate at short notice, should the situation dictate. Occasionally confusion prevails. A bottle of wine scans at the wrong price. No problem, Ziniede skates off to check the price. After ten minutes of watching her eye blitz two metre high shelves of beer cans for the correct wine you come to her aid. Swiveling her around 180° you both stare at a massive wine wall. You point at where you got the bottle and she says thanks. Somehow, despite her being on roller-skates; you make it back to the checkout first.

Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me

Taken for posterity

Extra and Bom Preco make up the rest of the big three and employ staff that constantly look like they are trying to focus on a busy fly in an empty room. They can’t be trusted on roller-skates, even with Brazil’s lax health and safety regulations. That leaves the smaller shops to trawl through the burnt out castoffs and disgraced checkout plebs.

Thankfully mind, many of the smaller stores rely on the calculator, which depending on the time of day and the weather can provide a speedier service. Some may scoff when they witness a man who can vote calculating that a R$2 note given in payment for a R$1 packet of gum should yield R$1 in change. They may even posit that having the conscious ability to turn on a calculator should negate the need to confirm this transaction. I am not one of these people. I applaud efficiency. And in Brazil, this is a rare thing indeed. *

There is no pain you are receding.

Societal norms dictate that the customer should never bag his own goods. This is seen as the job of the checkout monkey. Even the slaves refuse to do such degrading labour. As a consequence, things move at a dried out snails pace. Fresh fruit has been known to rot while in transit from shelf to bag. Interpol should put a tail on the owners of Aldi and Lidl in case they visit Brazil and commence summary executions.

After the best part of a year, the anger does subside. The initial satisfaction of berating the checkout staff for previously incomprehensible levels of lethargy has given way to a more supportive approach. This road to Damascus moment arrived after shouting

“For the love of God! I think my feet are turning into roots!”

Management material

And then jesting with the police officer behind me who was buying a crate of beer (and packing) that he should just shoot the checkout guy. He thought I was joking. I laughed more nervously than he did.

Ever since my modus operandi has been to shout encouragement at the staff. Research has shown that people respond in a positive manner to praise. So with this in mind a swift** transaction now gets cheered on with either a

“Congratulations! But work faster!”

Or a

“You’re doing really well today Reginaldo! Keep it up!”

This shift in perspective has generally stood me in good stead though my resolve has been greatly weakened of late.

I’d been watching Walfrido scan through 10 beers. He scanned one ten times in a motion that was quite beautiful in its rhythm. This action was repeated on the next customer’s sizeable collection of domestic washing up liquid. Though enjoying the process, the woman in front of me (Manuella - you get to know people in queues here) had 14 pots of natural yoghurt, 8 cartons of tomato puree and at least 25 cans of coke. I suggested to Walfrido that he scan one yoghurt and then enter X 20, explaining that this would save him having to scan 20 items. Though initially skeptical he gave it a try and lone behold it worked. Ever the conscientious citizen I stood back, happy to have helped.

Now I've got that feeling once again

Difficulties arose when the cartons of tomato puree arrived. Perhaps it was the difference in shape and colour that discombobulated him, I don’t know. He scanned in the first carton, gave me a look. I nodded. Then he proceeded to scan in each of the cartons eight times. I intervened on the fifth. A manager was called. The 1980s computer was not happy with so much abuse so stopped working. I put down my basket, offered my apologies and left.

These are the stages that the non-slave owning gringo goes through when he needs to stock the fridge. This process takes about 7 months.

1. Fill up your trolley with stuff and think that there must be a sensible reason why it took 17 minutes for the three people in front of you to purchase their collective nine items.

2. Have a free beer and maybe some biscuits thinking that it will soften the blow of the wait.

3. Abandon your goods and walk out. Fuming.

4. Devise a strategy. Go late at night. Marvel at your ingenuity. Then curse after discovering that just like the banks that say they are open 30 hours a day, the 24-hour supermarket has lied to you as well. Begin questioning your maths skills but get sidetracked by the dark and isolated streets and the falling (from a height) homicide rate in the city. Resolve to take the next logical step.

5. Join in the old timers and disabled queue and plead mental weakness or put on a spasticated voice.

6. Get seen by an acquaintance. Abandon previously watertight strategy.

7. Start to shop locally, reasoning that higher price will be offset by the misguided belief that smaller stores & no 1980s computers will equate to smaller queues. See an abacus at the checkout.

8. Wonder what they hell you were thinking.

9. Start buying fruit & veg off lads with carts on the street at random times.

10. Realise this as being a futile exercise. Return to the local store safe in the knowledge that it is the lesser of two evils.

Having recently moved across town I am eagerly awaiting going through the list above.

I have become comfortably numb.

* Pernambuco Gypsy is in no position to confirm or deny whether calculators are permanently left on.

** In the loosest possible sense of the word.

Time - Brazil's Last Taboo

2011-06-15T00:12:00.005-03:00

Punctual College - Teaching Brazil about time

Watches are for fools in this place. It is probably the worst possible thing you could buy. Recife sits on a fault line, a mental Bermuda Triangle. Once you (or any electronic devices) enter this space your internal clock twists and then ticks less than it used to. This can be treated, but like emerging from the deep, if you force it you get time bends.

A quick survey of wrists on the bus reveals that time is being abused in Recife. On average there is a twenty-minute margin of error. Though you do get the impression that about half the passengers wear watches the way kids dress up in their parent’s clothes. Thankfully bus stops don’t bother with timetables so nobody is disappointed. If you have no timeframe for anything then you can’t be late. And in Brazil the only people who are early are foreigners.

The concept of time came late to Brazil and as a result is still tussling for legroom. The south of the country had the good fortune to be colonized by large amounts of Germans. The first wave began arriving in the 1820s and a steady influx of eager immigrants combined with a healthy birthrate saw clocks smiling in Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná. The founding fathers of Brazilian independence must have had an eye cocked south when they put the Ordem e Progresso slap bang in the middle of the new flag. But then it all went badly wrong.

Brazil o'clock

In the late 1880s the slave trade was finally being put to bed in Brazil. The powers that be decided that a new wave of 'immigration' was needed. And in what must rank as one of the most catastrophic organizational decisions a newly independent nation has made, Italy was targeted. And the Italians came and kept coming until all the good work the Germans had done was made redundant.

It probably started out harmlessly enough. A young Sicilian got a job winding the town clocks and before the local Burgermeister could fire him a union had been set up. Control of the local stage coaches was wrested from the reliable Schülz Brüders leaving a trail of frustrated Fräuleins waiting at sausage shops for the Fabulous Fibonacci Brothers to arrive and take them home in time to cook lunch.

While things never got as bad as mobs going about town snapping clock hands from their faces or elderly gentlemen being forced to watch their time pieces being stamped into the dirt, there was a steady decline. A hidden, sickly abuse of time. This suspicion loomed large until recently. Even the military dictatorship was at a loss on how to synchronize watches. The 1964 coup d’état looks all the more impressive given the obstacles watch synchronage must have posed to the army in those nervous hours on the morning of 31 March 1964. These were pre-mobile phone days too. At least today if you call a Brazilian friend to enquire why he isn’t at the pre-arranged meeting point (a bar) he will say:

I’m arriving! Relax. Take a beer! What time is it? Nine already?! I’m on the bus. I’ll be there in 5. *

Apparently the military took power in one day. The winners write the history and all that...

There are other theories as to why time is the red headed stepchild of Brazilian society. One of the more interesting is related to the African slave concept of time. More slaves were shipped across the Atlantic to Brazil than anywhere else. The average African had planned his day around events rather than the clock. The day was divided into periods rather than set blocks of time. The sun rose so you got up and I dunno, went for a hunt and then had some lunch, did some business and then the sun went down.** With such a huge influx of people came their ideas of time. This is especially prevalent in the northeast, which was where the majority were sent to do backbreaking work on the sugar plantations of Bahia and Pernambuco. You can still see the influence today, as your average Recifense is particularly adept at avoiding giving you a set time.

I’ll see you after lunch!

Leonardo will say - which can be anytime after lunch that day and before lunch the next – though it will, in fairness, be generally in the same calendar week. On the occasions you do nail down a time your appointment will be late or call an hour later to cancel.

The northeast has always been Brazil’s mezzogiorno, and like in Italy it has been the victim of mass emigration to the industrialized regions, and hence a major contributor to the slow creep of time abuse throughout the country. However, there are some bright spots emerging. Pernambuco Gypsy has had the pleasure to witness two such movements.

Curitiba - round bus stops

The first was in Curitiba, where a conscious effort was made to change the denizen’s attitude towards the wonders of timekeeping. Curitiba is seen as the most organized, green and forward thinking city in Brazil. Part of this drive involved the simple idea of erecting lots of real clocks on the streets. Simple. People would set their watches by them. It was easy to see who was late and who wasn’t. And now they have bus timetables and fancy shaped bus terminals – a sure sign of progress.

The second is a revolutionary new kindergarten school in Recife. Colégio Pontual, or Punctual College, is leading the way in the way clock reading. Successful applicants must be able to select a clock from a line up that also consists of a cucumber, a dog and a mirror (a digital watch is used when applications exceed places). It is too early to tell whether the programme will change hearts and minds. ***

But then Brazil wouldn’t be Brazil if things worked properly. Who cares if the plans for the Brazil 2014 are staggeringly behind schedule? It’ll happen, so get your bets down on Neymar arriving late in the box to bag the winner against Argentina in World Cup Final. The only time Brazil understands is party time!

* Brazilian gets up from sofa, thinks worse of it and sits back down for a bit. Gets up again and takes a shower before calling his mum while looking at himself topless in a mirror. Then leaves to wait for the bus but decides a quick manicure would be a good option and gets talking to the girl who is doing his nails and gets her number before deciding to wait for her to finish work to go for a drink. Answers phone apologetically and assures you he is literally a minute from the bar and would it be cool if his new girlfriend came?

** A vast simplification obviously.

*** Banks here are particularly vague; one calls itself Banco 24 Horas while others tell you they are open 30 hours a day.

Noise Noise Noise Noise Muito Noise

2011-05-08T03:05:00.014-03:00

Taste & Decency Free Zone

It’s become a weekly ritual. So much so that life without it seems unimaginable. * Every Friday around half 5-ish, Flavio parks his music cart on the corner two blocks away. He puts stones behind the wheels to counter the effects of gravity and vibration. Then he turns the dial to

ROCK.

This is my cue to go grocery shopping. The opening riff to Thunderstruck gets me mentally prepared for finding ways of purchasing a cucumber without having to give my CPF number to a check out girl who is incapable of closing her mouth. By the time I get to the local supermercado Flavio has changed the mood to something more in tune with vegetable selection. Whistling along to The Winds of Change while deliberating over which rectangular tomato (by EU standards) to buy is oddly comforting. Perhaps it makes me empathise with the lack of fruity variety in the pre-1989 Eastern Bloc. There’s a thesis in there somewhere… But then I think NO! They have foot long bananas here. I shouldn’t complain.

This is the only pleasure I get from noise in Recife.

Having sold some Yes CDs Flavio moves off to another corner somewhere else thinking

Slippery When Wet on the corner of Rua Capitao Zizinho, yes, easy money, works every week.

By the time I get home the vigilantes are power-whistling on their bikes to frighten away potential thieves. When the last coconut has been squeezed into the fridge they’ve succeeded. Then the beeping starts.

Brazilians reach for the horn so regularly that it is considered an extension of the body. A recently parked Brazilian has similar feelings of loss to someone who has had a limb amputated. As any amputee knows, the cold (below 25°) accentuates the feeling of loss. ** It takes a good hour for drivers to cease jerking their hands to where the steering wheel should be. This can cause problems, especially in restaurants or in church. ***

The gentleman's response

For around two hours every day, people beep to alert their porteiros to open the garage doors. Porteiros are trained to recognize the beep of every vehicle on their watch. My building has 96 apartments. You can see their frontal lobes pulse if you care for that sort of thing.

While being an affront to taste and decency, this instance of beepage has a purpose; most instances fall into the category of cuntery. The months between February and May are the worst. Why? The Pernambuco State Championship. There are three football teams in Recife that have a chance of winning the tournament, Sport, Nautico and Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz supporters generally don’t live by the beach (or have cars) and Nautico supporters seem to be well rounded humans (the odd bus burning aside) in comparison to the beep-whores that support Sport.

When Sport win, which they regularly do, their supporters start beeping until they run out of noise. It goes like this

EHHHHHH EH EHHHHHHHH, EH EHH EHH EHH-EHH EHHHHHH.

It is like a skangers thought process. Other drivers reciprocate. Grown men race onto their balconies and scream incomprehensible grunts hours after Sport have won and wait for other imbeciles that they don’t know to abandon their family dinners and respond, irrespective of company. How does one combat such things? Eggs. I abide by the laws and go about my business. I buy a dozen eggs a week and boil about two. The rest are reserved for the only option available to curmudgeons. **** An unboiled egg lobbed from 20 metres up packs a satisfactory dent on the rare occasions you get the trajectory right – hasty lift journey and small talk with porteiro=alibi.

Though I must add that that all noise during World Cups and Carnavals are to be encouraged, as are arguments involving the Brazilian tactic of speaking rapidly, incoherently and deviating exhaustively from the subject matter in an authoritatively loud manner. Which constitutes a win, regardless of any facts.

However, these are all minor infringements against Brazilian society in comparison to the culture of the Salao de Festa party. They usually start around lunchtime. The smell of beef wafts up. You think

Man I’d love some of that, smells divine!

Cross hairs aligned. Tell me when Cap'n

Then the music starts. At first you don’t mind so much, thinking, like a simpleton, that it’ll stop soon. Five hours later, having suffered the worst offensive against ears since the opening barrages of the Battle of the Somme, you crack. Shell-shocked you stumble to the fridge for your eggs, imagine the whistle of one of the vigilantes and attack even though you know it’s futile. So you leave the building for a walk, bulling and listening to angry revenge music. But no matter where your feet go to you can’t escape.

You wander to the beach looking for the calm solace of the shark infested waves. You sit down and breathe and order a rum & coconut but before said beverage arrives a solitary plump middle-aged middle-manager with kids from an accountancy firm arrives and opens his boot. He sets the speakers in his boot to

EXPLODE

He takes off his top. You mentally vomit, down your drink and ruminate about what Reginald Perrin did.

This scenario replicates itself for km². Though in Recife numbers make as much sense as Jedward so you rephrase that as km⁸ and no one would be any the wiser.

Brazil's only anti-horn sign

So what can you do? Well, you can either be ‘with us or against us’ which is a fudge in itself. There is no point in being against. It gets you nowhere – unless you discount the immense personal satisfaction of temporarily disrupting a graduation ceremony in the school next to your apartment by distributing yolk without discrimination. *****

So you go home defeated****** and plug in all available electrical appliances into your many orifices and hope that sleep takes you before an unexpected power surge.

* The only similar feeling I know is of demonstrating the magic of an electric kettle to an unsuspecting local and witnessing scenes similar to the guy who cast the triangular wheel to the dustbin of history.

** Any porter will tell you tales of finding lads in the parking lot sitting in their cars and beeping at 3am. Comfort beeping.

*** Such behaviour is regularly misconstrued as possession. Thankfully most churches have a modified Bat-phone under the alter to calm the flock. Once the pastor reaches for the phone a hush settles. Sprinkler systems have been abandoned as a response to the frequency of benches (resin-coated wood with inbuilt compasses set to ‘zoos’ complete with animal checklists) being sized up and fashioned into arks.

Last Thursday rumours spread like wildfire that the city reservoirs had burst. Schools closed. Business stopped. Roads didn’t work. Tack whoppers with horses and carts were advised not to travel in convoys of four so as not to add to the panic. Trees close to churches have axe marks. It was a false alarm. But those in the know know it’s a sign. One of many.

**** Empirical research shows that stress is alleviated by lobbing eggs at cunts beeping in cars.

***** Successfully negotiating the four holes of a T-shirt on two consecutive days can warrant a ceremony where all extended relatives are invited is not unusual.

****** But if you listen to this song all is OK!

Cheap Credit & Chocolate on Tick

2011-04-15T22:23:00.013-03:00

Nova Jerusalem beckons my son

In recent years Recife has firmly planted itself on the rock n’ roll map. All the big super-groups visit. Simply Red, A-ha and Seal have all moved the denizens of Boa Viagem to tears in recent months, not to mention the near riots when the Cranberries rolled into town. Cutting edge as these acts are, there is only one show on in town for the next two weeks. And that’s Jesus. He’s back in town by popular demand for another two week run.

In what can only be described as a Lesson in the Evils of When Access to Cheap Credit and Oval-Shaped Chocolate Collaborate, supermarkets are offering 200g Easter eggs on higher purchase. Twelve easy interest free repayments later, you’ve paid for your egg. And with Easter falling earlier next year, followers of the Lord will be making double repayments on their eggs come April 2012. Have the lessons of Ireland’s property bubble (putting all you eggs in one basket) not been learned? Recife’s Easter egg bubble is a disaster waiting to happen. But you can’t argue with what He would have wanted, not when there is a higher power at work.

JC in a combi, heading to work

Obviously Brazil is a very very holy country altogether. A glance at the names of big cities and states give testament to this proud heritage – Saint Paul, Holy Spirit, Christmas and Bethlehem of Pará (so named so as not to be confused with Bethlehem in Palestine). And then there is Nova Jerusalem, home to the world’s biggest walled religious theatre that specializes in crucifixions. It has been providing Pernambucanos with their annual crucifixion fix since 1968. Tickets prices are weighted according to the importance of the day. Spy Wednesday will set you back R$50, Holy Thursday and extra tenner and Good Friday, the veritable money shot, a princely R$80. Holy Saturday takes a step back with a R$60 entry fee. Curiously though, there is no resurrection show on the Sunday, which is somewhat disappointing.

Banksy woz ere

Perhaps the Globo soap stars that play the main actors must be back in Rio for filming their brain melting soap operas on the Monday. Maybe the organizers are teasing the audience with the possibility of a sequel. Though a more likely explanation is fear of angering the man upstairs, readers of his debut novel will know he was wont to fly off the handle willy-nilly. TV is bombarded with ads for the show. They start with a synopsis of the events of Good Friday and then pan to the sponsors which include a paint company, a bank, women in bikinis advertising a revolutionary hair product and some biscuit companies. Halleluiah!**

Luckily however, if you can’t make it, one of Friday’s shows (they do three a day) is broadcast live on national TV. This could be due to the city itself being really small. With an expected 10,000 for each show, all the inns will be full. This means it’s boom time for bus companies. The city is around 200km from Recife. This can be treacherous as apparently they allow traffic going in different directions on the same road outside of the city. The traffic clowns don’t tell you about that, the bastards. One student of mine is particularly worried about this, as he’ll be bussing it. But with a coach load of rosary-beaded devotees, accidents shouldn’t be a problem. And if the coach has an obligatory massive JESUS sticker on the front then all bases are covered.

Just like you can tell the wealth of a city by the plumpness of its pigeons, you can measure the soul of the city by its graffiti. Recife is riddled with religious iconography. Every second vehicle has a reference to the Jesus while any wall can be subjected to a Banksy style attack - though without the style. You regularly receive sermons on the bus and taxi drivers see no incongruity with having two bibles (one for the passenger to dip in and out of on the journey) and a Playboy sticker on the back of their cars.

Drogheda has soul

Being of holy bent is also a prerequisite for a successful business. Many of the water providers proclaim that their water is Agua de Deus while illegal satellite providers usually have some reference to getting a better reception due to their service being 100% Jesus. Indeed, some language schools pencil in a Holy Supper event into their calendar where the teachers perform the Last Supper for the parents and students. Being cast as Judas is a sure sign that your number is up at the end of the semester. They like their drama do the Brazilians. None more so than the be trodden supporters of my local team Santa Cruz – Holy Cross – who have been praying for some divine inspiration for years. And with the culmination of the Pernambuco Championship over the next couple of weeks, perhaps the team could do worse than to set up camp at Nova Jerusalem. If they don’t win it after that, I’ll be starting a petition to change their name.

* Book your tickets here.

** TV ad for the big tele-spectacular!

Numbers - Part I

2011-03-24T22:49:00.006-03:00

R$69.06 a night? - With that price we'll be beating off tourists with canes

After a good healthy queue behind a woman holding a poodle, Juninho motioned me to the counter. Pleasantries were exchanged and I handed him the earphones. The barcode reader, like most electronic things here, was broken. I closed my eyes. Juninho made three ham-fisted attempts at data transfer before giving up. Eventually a shift manager trained to recognize all the numbers was summonsed. Up beeped the princely sum of R$6.78. I offered him a R$10 note. He shook his head and I knew he didn’t have any change. They never do. I wasn’t in the mood to receive my change in sweets so we were at an impasse.

Calling the shift manager over twice in one transaction would have been professional suicide. He thought. I waited. He thought some more and eventually a shape fell through a hole and Juninho smiled

-You can insure your headphones against theft and breakage for an extra R$4.20. Forever.

-Done.

Obviously management material, he added the cost of the insurance and presented me with a bill of R$10.98. I thanked him for his patience and turned to go. But there was a snag. He needed my CPF number (social security number) to complete the transaction and I didn’t know it. He looked worried until a nice woman at the next counter offered me the use of hers. This left poor Juninho in a moral quandary. As Thereza wasn’t buying the earphones I couldn’t use her CPF. What to do?

After much debate Juninho withdrew my R$11 from the till and gave it back to me while Thereza footed the bill. I waited with her while she bought four bottles of discounted hair conditioner before fixing her up away from the glare of the shift manager. She wrote down her number and email address and told me not to hesitate to contact her should my new earphones come to any sort of grief.

Do you understand numbers?

Numbers, like time and good manners, are a source of bewilderment in Recife. I have checked school mathematics books and they are all in there. But using them is like trying to play pitch & putt with two broken arms and dyslexia. As a result pricing makes little or no sense.

Phone credit can only be purchased in odd denominations- R$12, R$17, R$24 & R$37 while the Diplomata Hotel entices travellers in with its promotional rate of R$69.06 (the 6 cent being a deal breaker). And in the way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic, the Diplomata is a hotspot of diplomatic intrigue and whiskey drinking on the porch. Well maybe the whiskey drinking, granted. The concept of pricing items at say R$4.99 has yet to take off. You know you have been given the gringo menu when all the prices are either rounded up or have a .99 in them.

I invented numbers my son, worry not.

All this is in spite of the Sudoku craze that has swept the city. It is unusual not to see someone with Sudoku on the bus at rush hour. It seems to be a status thing, rather like the lads who carry around bibles and Filofaxes to signal intelligence. I have come to the conclusion that that most Sudoku players, far from taxing over the correct sequence of numbers, are in fact remembering the nine numbers required to complete the square. Fill them all in and you win!

Numbers were dealt a further blow in recent weeks when the Polícia Militar cracked down on illegal bingo dens in Boa Viagem.* The local news had extensive coverage of the raids. Old timers were filmed shuffling out, hiding their faces with their hats while the grannies hid theirs with the poodles they had left tethered by the railings outside - a tell tale sign if you know what to look for.

That night the news had an exclusive interview with one of the bingo victims/winners. Her face was in shadow and her voice like Baron Gerry Adams in the 1980s.** She recalled when the heavily armed military police raided one of the countless bingo dens along Boa Viagem.

It was horrific. They physically stopped us from pulling levers and told us to get up. Some of them were nice boys and helped us. Others just unplugged our dreams. What will we do in the mornings now? Bet on lizards climbing trees?

This particular haunt prospered for two weeks before the owners got greedy. Unhappy with a two week pre-tax profit of R$92,387 they installed one-armed bandits. Word spilled around. Old-timer undercover cops infiltrated the joint, befriending their brethren, ultimately betraying them. No ties, no regrets. Better that way. The owners, disgraced in the eyes of the law but not the people, face an uncertain, windowless future. Which is some recompense, considering their crimes.

The bingo scene in Recife used to be above board. Hell, you could go to a joint so big you could boot an O’Neill’s ball hard as your foot would allow straight up in the air and still not hit a roof. Things became so sophisticated that they even got in computers that worked. All you needed to do was enter your numbers into the machine and it did the work. If it flashed you won. A man in a dickie-bow would come over and place a trophy atop your screen and give you a free rum and some toasted cheese sandwiches. How times have changed. It is the nearest to pre-Castro Cuba I’ve known.

* I have a particular fondness for bingo, having learnt my Portuguese numbers 1-69 inclusive while pitting my wits against the elderly and the night whores who frequented the joint waiting for dark.

** She sounded rather like this, though it was hard to tell about the beard due to the light.

Dwarf Waving & Police Hatchbacks

2011-02-12T00:03:00.009-03:00

Pass to the same colour jersey once in a while

“Horse down! Horse down!”

could be heard on the radio. But we had other things to amuse us. It was an hour before kick off and some idiota dad was educating his son. Today’s lesson was

“How to wander into the wrong area wearing the most offensive clothes possible in any given situation”.

After a healthy pelting and language that would make a pimp say

For Jesus sake lads, will ye watch the language

four policia hatchbacks rolled up, lights flashing, and species that give the finger to Darwin’s theory were piled into the back seat for their own protection. A cool looking cop guarded the car with his shotgun. Soon after, another genius limped towards the car, having been set upon for being an eejit. A crowd gathered around him and tried to get the kicks in before the police opened the boot and told him to get in. Which he did, without fuss, in fairness to him.

Division 4 supporters

The sun was being such a bastard that men had to take the peculiar step of using their T-shirts as turbans. They must have put sun cream on their backs but either ran out of or didn’t have any anti-wrinkling face sun lotion to even contemplate such a demented decision. Especially when there was a lad with a fully array on a hatstand for a fiver.*

All thoughts were on the big game. Santa** v Sport in the Pernambuco State Championship. Santa are currently languishing in Serie D, after depth charging from Serie A to having a whole league created for them by the Brasilian FA in consecutive seasons. That said, some illustrious names have plied their trade at the Arruda - Rivaldo and the Creedence Clearwater Couto to name but two. Despite such consistent shiteness, they continue to draw the crowds. Last season their average attendance was the third highest in Brazil. Sport are like Peter Andre, having their Mysterious Girl chart topper (a disputed national title in 1987) and then hanging around trying to get dates with A-list models ever since, occasionally scoring a Jordan but more often than not being a talentless pest. Some would say they are mutually exclusive, but not me.

Getting in to the ground is usually a very scary affair. Your lungs do be so squeezed that nobody smokes until after halftime. This time however, I signed up to an amazing scheme whereby you give R$100 of receipts to a girl near the supermarket and she credits your card with a ticket. You miss out on being acquainted with the sweaty backs of a thousand scary young fellas, which lets you concentrate on living and wondering how many sexy police women will be patrolling the anti-hooligan moat with German Shepards. I am a big fan of this. As the flag says, Ordem e Progresso.

A first touch Mick McCarthy can only dream of

The football itself was insipid. Most of the players could control the ball like it and their boots were made of sticklebricks. But after that things went awry. Whoever had the ball would look up and pass it to the other team. The ref’s whistle came as a relief to the eyes. It made me think of the rousing half time team talk I gave St. Ita’s Special School FC against bitter rivals Dundulk Specials XI; pass it to Jason, everyone is afraid of him and he knows which direction to run. And his mam is even scarier than his dad.***

The only highlight of the first half was waiting for the Santa physio to come on with his magic sponge. Instead of making a beeline to the injured player, he would put the head down and run in an arc, which, Brasilianly, ensured he got there much quicker and at an angle more conducive to effective physiotherapy. When your team is called Holy Cross and your sponge hasn't been dipped in holy water, then you should be accused of dereliction of duty. Needless to say, Lazarus himself would have been proud of the swift recoveries of the Tricolour warriors. The physio did his best later on to undo his sponge work by flopping twice on his own players.

Half time saw the kids come out and display the future of the Brazilian game. In hindsight, perhaps it was a bad idea what with the heat and the girth of the star striker who after bundling his way around the goalie, lacked the energy to tap home. As he lay beached but trying to head the ball in the direction of the open net our attention was drawn to our right as dwarf in a Santa jersey was being held aloft and waved like a flag, much to the delight of the crowd. Happy times.

Recife's EU butter mountain

Santa came out with renewed vigour and scored almost immediately. The ground rocked. It was like walking on the Dublin Holyhead ferry in choppy waters after a few pints, you lift your leg to walk and the floor rises to meet it. Sport tried to respond but couldn’t, despite Santa’s best efforts. Carlinhos Bala, aka Little Charles the Bullet, ran at the defence time after time only to be hacked, chopped and scythed to the ground. Santa were too good and with 10 minutes to go knocked another past Sport’s reserve keeper, courtesy of Cuecinho (Little Underpants to his friends). Their first choice keeper Saulo had hilariously done his cruiciate while celebrating a towering header during the week. By some miracle it finished 2-0. It was the first time that Santa had beaten Sport since no one can remember when.

The full time whistle saw badge kissing and sky God pointing on a scale not seen since Brasil won the 2002 World Cup. Most of the players joined the club about 3 months ago, but their love for the club was such that I think they will never leave. To top off the celebrations, a giant cake (from 6.55, or just watch the highlights of the game like) was wheeled out to the centre circle. It was Santa’s birthday the previous Thursday gone and this is what they do. Top of the Campeonato Pernambucano!

Santa lost 0-3 three days later to a bunch of clod footed farm labourers from the countryside.****

*In stark contrast to Ireland, hat stands are ten a penny in Recife.

** Supporting the Tricolor is much like cheering on Louth. You know they’re doomed. And if they do manage to find themselves in a staring glory in the face events will conspire to ensure failure.

*** The mam came to a parent teacher meeting with her newborn and introduced me as her future teacher.

**** May not be an accurate description but I stand by it.

***** Santa's quest for promotion to Serie C can be followed by the excellent and ever positive I See A Darkness.

The Chester & Related Poultry Gatherings

2011-01-15T01:52:00.015-03:00

With such a wide diversity of animal life in Brazil, it seems strange that the locals would want to invent more. But such oddness can be traced back to the Dutch, who after founding Recife either forgot to look behind them and marvel at the 5,000km of expanse or just played to their strengths and began reclaiming land from the sea. It is this logic that has sidelined the turkey as the traditional Christmas dinner of choice. The Chester® was invented by Perdigao, the second largest food processing company in Brazil. The closest to an image we can get is of these Perdigao mandarins whispering about its wingspan. Regular emails to Perdigao about this mutant

Why the name Chester®?

Are male Chesters® called man-Chesters? And if so, marketing opportunities are going a begging…

Do they have sex bits?

have been stonewalled.*****New shit has come to light*****

Why is it so popular? One theory suggests it has to do with wanting to escape Brazil’s slave-happy past. Brazil only abolished slavery in 1888. Not far from Recife, the thriving tourist beach Porto de Galinhas (The Chicken Port) was a major drop off point for slaves arriving from Africa. Cunningly, slaves were given the codename Galinhas (chickens) in a sleight of hand that would surely have had code-crackers in Bletchley Park utterly stumped. Recent moves to rename the resort Porto de Chester® are ongoing, though interestingly, none of the recent election candidates could provide a definitive stance on the issue.

Desperate woman tries to nab last
Chester on Xmas Eve

Without wanting to descend into poultry smut, locals will tell you that you get more breast for your buck and that the meat is not as dry* as that foul turkey beast. They’ll even go as far as to proclaim it to be a more viable option pricewise (which it isn’t). However, as long as you have the old

What came first? The Chester® or the Egg?

line up your sleeve… Recently, other Chester®-wannabes have started to infiltrate this lucrative market. The Blesser, The Fiesta and my personal favourite, the local Brickster have all swelled bellies this Jesus Day past. My first dalliance with The Chester® came at the family Christmas before last, when it was given pride of place for dinner. Despite my objections to eating invented animals, I chewed on the Chester® and vowed

NO MORE! NEXT CHRISTMAS WILL BE DIFFERENT!

It worked, sort of. This Christmas Chester® was dumped for The Fiesta. This did result in a clandestine purchase and roast of a real turkey which was divided evenly and fairly with a fellow traveller who prefers not to be named for fear of familial retribution.

Coming from a Chester®skeptic background makes you see other Brazilian-animal interaction in a different light. It is not uncommon to see lads giving their caged budgies an afternoon stroll and for many, the words ‘goat’ and ‘Garrincha’ conjure up uncomfortable images of awkward first experiences. Pernambuco in particular has a rich history of animal veneration. The local Animal Exposition in Caxanga is a must on the social calendar**, as is the annual International Goat Congress. But the social event of the year has to be the Corrida das Galinhas.

Man, bird & gash on tap for a year

In the Frangodromo in São Bento, grown men chase chickens around a fenced off track. The goal is to reach the end of the circuit behind your chicken. Furious preparation goes into it. Months are spent running behind your chicken, clapping furiously and devising secret signals. (Unfortunately I was unable to procure a Rockyesque training montage but this is one of my new years resolutions.) But that is only but part of this triathlon. If Olympic jockeys showed the footage to their horses they would just dirty protest, such is animal solidarity in competitive sport these days. Part two of the competition is to eat two cooked chickens as quickly as possible. But there is a twist. Contestants must stuff their faces in view of their own chickens, which must qualify as a form of cruelty.*** Then, participants compete to give the most convincing chicken cluck.

Sounds easy? You try it after a cut throat race with two full chickens in yer gut.The winner trousers R$500, the envy of the town**** and his (and the chickens) feet on a pavement of fame. They are paraded around the town sitting on the front of a van, chicken in hand. For anyone thinking of taking this in during a visit to Brazil, good news is that chickens coached to a fairly high level and can be rented for a nominal fee.

* Always such a dampner.

** Highlights include paying R$2 into an old darkened bus where a sexy woman turns into a Monga before your eyes. It is a terrifying experience.

***Chesters®, Bricksters etc. are banned. Personally I feel they should be allowed, as while they would undoubtedly bring an advantage in the foot race, their superior size would bring problems during the eating round and offer more edge of the seat stuff for the spectators.

**** Plus unending lady perks one would imagine Interested in sending a loved one a Chester® dance? Click here follow the Cira Sua Danca link, upload your face, and your are in dreamland.

***** A Perdigoon went into the Chester® coop, took a snap of this alleged Chester® and sent it to me. Said goon said all the info I asked about was on their website. I can confirm there is no section called 'Chester® Sex Bits'.

Is this a Chester?

If Africa Didn't Exist

2010-12-22T14:36:00.006-03:00

Imagine there was no Africa

I can remember watching TV Globo soon after the 2004 Asian tsunami. The news anchor, solemn faced like he'd had a double sided stroke, suddenly sprang off his seat and walked over to a giant digital screen where a sexy woman was standing. A map of the world appeared. Big red arrows showed the epi-centre of the quake and the direction of the tsunamis. With only a handful of Brasilians caught up in the disaster something else was needed to stop the masses from turning over.* Attention spans here are generally weak and would read like the report card of that kid that was in everyone's class who had to stay back a year.

While the woman was sexy, she was clearly opposed to plate-tectonics because when she clicked a button, Africa disappeared from the screen.

Imagine there was no Africa

said the anchor. The big red arrows got bigger and headed over where Africa once was and pointed straight to the Brazilian coast. It was estimated that the waves would be at least 20 metres in height by the time they smashed onto Brazil. Later that night the station clarified the situation by confirming that Africa was indeed still there but stressed that tsumanis were a serious business and vigilance was required at all times by coastal dwellers, regardless of Africa acting as a buffer zone. Since then I have been in love with Brazilian diagrams.

False reporting. One Wedding, Two Murders & a Suicide actually

Which brings me to a story that happened here at the weekend. It could pass as a soap opera story line. Every bride's worst nightmare. What happened was this. Rogério, the groom, drove to where the reception was gonna be with his .38 pistol, like all nervous grooms have done, and stashed it for use at the party. Later on, during the reception he snakes out and comes back with his pistol, hidden. Around two in the morning he decides he has had enough of married life and shoots the wife, killing her instantly, then he finishes off his best man before turning the gun on himself. Tragic! The comic strip below is an account of what happened in the local broadsheet, The Diario de Pernambuco -

Rogério arrives with his pistol

Where's me wife then, thought crazy Roger...

Crack! Bang! I've had enough of your crap dancing...

Roger goes looking for his best man...

Your best man speech was shit!

Celebrate! This party's over! I'm going home!

I'm sure you'll agree that a tragic story was well told in comic strip form. Not to sound heartless but I do hope they follow up with a comic-book strip of the funerals as I couldn't picture what happened after reading the news report and before I saw the cartoon. I fear this might happen again.

It's not just grisly domestic bloodbaths that get the comic book treatment. Occasionally there is a physics and football column in the paper. Below we can see what would have happened if Roberto Carlos's incredible curvy free kick against France in 1997 had not hit the back of the net. A complex formula shows us that the ball should have come to a standstill in the French 6 yard box. But the truth is it did go into the net. If it didn't go into the net and was not impeded until it lost all power then it theoretically this might have been possible. But it didn't. As Liam Brady would say

If my granny had balls she'd be my grandad.

But that doesn't matter. Never let the facts get in the way of a good diagram.

The ball would have gone into a corkscrew motion until it exploded or didn't exist any more, like Africa

*Usually to the endless, mindless soap operas or popping on a DVD of men with long ironed hair singing what sounds like the same song for three hours, occasionally winking at a different camera or switching the words amor (love) and coracao (heart) around but generally consistently being cunts.

The Barber Transfer

2010-12-03T20:55:00.008-03:00

Antonio, por favor. Barber extraodinaire.

Sometimes you just know. I knew before I got there, intrigued. We had to go to his apartment to get it. He only works from home now. A recent heart attack put paid to the stresses of everyday salon life. The cut and thrust gets to you. The smell of hairspray. All those perms, bleaches and listening to frozen faced wenches and their vicious gossip hardens the arteries like cheese left out. And if that doesn't chisel away at your innards the posters of 1990s male models with wanker hair on rocky beaches, staring at the sea pining for some Dakar bound sailor would most certainly induce a powerful stroke.

His wife* offered to cut but once you are over 12 letting a woman cut your hair is saying

There's something wrong with me.

So with the grudging directions of the snubbed we made our way to his apartment block. I was sweaty as a monks cax by the time we got to the building. A hidden porter buzzed us in and told us our man lived in 506. The couches in the hallway hadn't been sat on in weeks and the dust drifted lazily through air like many of the residents did life. At least the lift worked, even if it shuddered and you jumped a little when it stopped. The old corridors were poorly lit and the sun outside made everything darker. The first 506 we went to was obviously the wrong 506. A youth in his underpants silently thumbed us on to the next 506.**

After a minute or so the door was opened by a bra-less black slave smoking a fag who didn't ask us who we were and just said

Come in.

She exhaled postcoitally and disappeared down the corridor and into the kitchen, never to be seen again and casting doubts as to whether she existed. Any doubts as to whether we'd just walked in and were sitting on some strangers sofa at half one on a Friday afternoon were soon quashed. A worn white barbers chair sat sadly on the carpet beside the massive HDTV and recently used VCR.

After some minutes Mr. Barros himself came in, looking dishevelled and friendly. His shiny purple tracksuit top half zipped up revealing more chest hair than was decent. He grumbled about the lack of an advance call a bit but didn't ask how we got in - so the escravo does exist I remember thinking. Mr. Barros set about unfurling the plastic sheeting that protected the neglected living room carpet with the gusto of a happy crackhead. He was wearing pointed black boots. I liked him.

Unit of weight in Recife

Mr. Barros is what Mauro Shampoo*** could have been if at some point he hadn't decided to wage war on time and begun regularly injecting himself with bulls blood and getting Mrs. Shampoo to fix long Mexican pubis implants to his head. His springy hair has thinned considerably in recent times though you suspect it has plateaued to the point where it could still effortlessly maintain a King Size Snickers without wilting.

...He'd been recommended to me for months but I'd demurred. A whisper here, the odd phonecall from my sogro telling me to call around later to check out his hair...

I found myself with a towel around neck staring the wall while the the unkempt sitting room was being transformed as suddenly as the Batcave. A mirror was put on to the wall and all was good in the world. Brazilian hairdressers have one default cut. Once you understand this concept things don't seem so daunting. Constant cajoling, encouragement and praise needs to be doled out.

Antonio, por favor

No wonder Antonio, por favor's heart attacked him

was measuring my hair (with what to all intents and purposes looked like a calipers) when I asked him to go tighter all around. His breathing got a little more laboured but I suspect this had more to do with what he was up to before we arrived unannounced. Either his wife hadn't phoned on or he'd been too busy to answer. In his wisdom he figured a Führer style parting complimented my face. He enquired as to my satisfaction and my response didn't matter. He sensed unease in the style and quickly remedied it by switching the parting to the left. We nodded to signal the end as men do to barbers, who know the signs.

After a thorough talcing by a lovely soft orange brush all over the face we were finished. All smiles, we embraced. A light squeeze only as I was wary of his heart though I'd have loved to have bear hugged the fucker. Antonio, por favor suggested a return visit in a month though reiterated his preference for the advance call so he could set up some tunes and maybe a little coffee.

We parted on the street, him for a walk on the beach before his next client, me to look at some holy lads adding big red anti-Satan letters to the church which shares part of the building. VICTORY WITH GOD they taunted, for some reason. They didn't notice my Hitler-do. Their sign was protection enough.

I've been back since, Antonio, por favor stuck on The Rolling Stones Live from Toronto on the telly for me and sang along with words that were no language. At one point during Let's Spend the Night Together he left the room only to come back doing a Jaggeresque walk which took an uncomfortable 10 seconds to complete. Oh, scissors in hand all the while too. Snipping. No problem to him, he said

That Mick Jagger, he is some lad! I can't believe he's not a gayboy! Lets take a break for some coffee.

Which we did.****
________________________________________________________________________

* All barbers are married to hairdressers.

** Having previously worked as an occasional postman, I instantly thought that an A and a B affixed after each number would solve this problem. This was before I thought about it and realised that such things aren't problems here at all. Such thoughts and solutions to non-existing problems would be considered subversive and the bureaucratic calamity such a suggestion would unleash could very well set in motion a series of events bewildering enough for the participants to question the fabric on which order and progress is sustained and inadvertently cause the collapse of this whole sorry affair. Recife as a 2014 World Cup Host City would be doomed. And nobody wants that.

***After the Mr. Shampoo's scalpery during the World Cup (see previous entry) I decided that a man who professes to be a barber but also acts and has a regular slot as a football pundit on local TV can't be taking his coiffuring duties seriously enough. Even if his business card proudly states his manliness.

**** It seems that Mr. Barros is so good at cutting hair that some Italians wanted to take him to Milan, where they said he would have been a revelation. He decided not to go in the end. Apparently he demanded a driver who spoke Portuguese and a rent free apartment.

Traffics Clowns and Rabbits & John Hume

2010-09-20T01:51:00.007-03:00

Traffic wardens Brasilian style

There are certain things about living in Brasil that induce the kind of terror that Stalin himself used to wield before his morning moustache grooming. My list includes surprise domestic meetings with big hard shelled insects, the high levels of homicide committed by Brasilian women, the growing spectre of dubbed cinema, extended family arriving unannounced and with no time frame for going home, being converted to one of the many Kakáesque churches and being peer pressured into sambaing. But none is as terrify as getting into any car that I am not in control of.*

This is a situation I regularly find myself in. Much as I trust most of my motorised friends, you just can’t trust the madness that does go on in the lane beside them. I’d always put down the bizarre meanderings of Recifense motorists to the heat. As is common knowledge, the sun knocks the already unhinged off the doorframe, and badly chops them up for the type of firewood the homeless burn in metal barrels under bridges.

So it didn’t come as such a surprise to me when I found out about the traffic clowns.** They come at your vehicle in unamusing troupes, like all decent clowns do. They don’t discriminate either. If you are stationary at lights, and on the phone, the nearest clown will stroll out into the middle of the road and demonstrate through the medium of mime the dangers of multitasking while behind the wheel. If you encroach onto a zebra crossing they’ll embarrass you so much that you’ll either reverse post haste or run the risk of public humiliation at the hands of a contracted man with blue hands, red hair and little prospects. Who wants that? Who wins?

While clowns don’t have the authority to give you a ticket, their word is gospel to the nearest traffic warden. They have little notebooks and pencils and have been trained in rapid white glove removal techniques should the situation require it. They can be compared to pilots as regards vision, a clown that can’t correctly take down the reg number at 40 metres is shunned by his colleagues and considered a spent force. While these valued public servants may have no dignity, they wield much power. And they form the basis of my election questions. Recent conversations with a colleague went something like this:

Felipe, do you think there is any correlation between the huge rate of road death in Pernambuco and the fact that the city council employ clowns to administer driving advice?

No, I think they are quite funny. They help spread useful advice.

Despite much enquiry and endeavour, they remain largely unaccountable clowns.

So, should I learn how to drive in a city that employs clowns to administer driving advice? First answer on a postcard gets some clown shoes and an all expenses paid for trip to the Hospital de Restoracao where my students say it is better not to be a card carrying organ donor, cos if you are close to death the doctors will just say fuck it, we need a plump liver for Rafael in cubicle 7, and that will pay for a weekends skiing in Bariloche, I owe his brother a favour.

No white-washed wall is safe

Election fever has taken hold in Recife. October 3rd is polling day. Voting is obligatory here, if you can’t vote you have to justify yourself. The quality of candidates must surely qualify as a fantastic reason not to bother. Your average Joao Sabão reckons that they’re all up to their nipples and flailing in some vile cauldron of horrible corruption soup.

Bruno - Stands for who the fuck
knows what

At least they have have a voice. Listening to this shite being blared out non stop for the past month is difficult. This particular candidate, Daniel Coelho (Daniel Rabbit) is relying on a cunning play on his name. I asked a friend of his why, thinking that Pat Rabbitte never stooped so low as to rely on the literal meaning of his name to gain votes. He reckons that (in no particular order) loads of people here have nothing against rabbits, loads of people are third world poor and recognise the rabbit as a particularly cute, and rabbits have never been associated with badness.*** How can he fail?

Every candidate employs lads to drive around polluting the peace, even the poorer candidates have paid goons that cycle about with speakers cellotaped to their bikes blaring out catchy political tunes that make you want to swallow as much stones as come to hand, or pierce your eardrums with knitting kneedles. All his posters have a rabbit painted on them. How can he fail. Other candidates have had huge circus tents erected on the main thoroughfares, oblivious to the age old mantra that being associated with clowns is not necessarily a good thing when running for office. But if the council employ painted fools to guide the motorists of the city, can you blame them?

Your vote is your voice,
you stupid cunt

My personal favourite is a guy called Sergio War (Guerre). I don’t know his policies on war or clowns. You can (are forced to) listen to them all day and not hear one policy iniative that doesn’t include ‘fighting for Recife’, ‘Lets get back where we belong!’ etc and so forth until you eventually apply for Brasilian citizenship so you can vote for Robin, Hulk or see what John Hume is up to these days...****

* I have no idea how to drive, at all.

** I have seen one run headfirst into an electric pole to demonstrate the perils of speed and while the public sector bill is large, I’m unsure as to whether it covers the rugby like blood capsuls said clown was spouting.

*** Watership Down is not on the school cirriculum here, as far as I know.

**** And other assorted lunatics.

A Little of the Morning, A Little of the Evening

2010-08-20T00:41:00.036-03:00

Putting the Poo in Boa Viagem's Poodles

One of Brasil’s enduring qualities is her delightful ability to regularly slap you with a surprise. It was before 8am and I’d already raised an eyebrow and chinstroked in company. The lift doors had barely closed when the neighbours slave bid me good morning and handed me her business card. Common courtesy in such situations is to reciprocate but I didn’t have one to hand/have any at all. Technically she should have been in the service lift, but you find yourself letting these things go now and again. I could tell that Carlos, the retired architect, was outraged and in between floors if you listened intently you could hear his mind screaming ‘Insolence!’ and cataloging the incident for Friday’s AOB at the bi-monthly residents meeting.

Carlos’s departure brought Isabelle* to life. She’s been slaving for 5 years and considers herself an ironer without equal in the locality. Naturally a talented cleaner though she knows others more skilled than she. I’ve been in the market for an non-live-in escravo** for some time now and her slaveskillset does match my requirements. A reliable escravo is notoriously difficult to commandeer these days.*** My previous lodgings were a purpose built for a live-in. It had what we call a slave cave (Black hole of Calcutta type affairs with room enough for a bed, a single socket and a shelf for a telly) which could only be locked from the outside, for security reasons.

Isabelle was bringing out her masters repulsive poodle for his morning shite while I was going to the beach for my daily coconut. A guy blaring out tunes about shaking yo ass and whatnot usually wakes up the stragglers at this time as he wheels his CD cart to the beach. Today is no different. As it is winter, the hound had a rain jacket (with hood) and doggy trainers on so he wouldn’t dirty his paws after decorating the path with his glistening muck. It is a common early morning sight to see huddles of young black women from the surrounding towers sitting in the shade with poodles, Yorkshire Terriers or those hairless rats that middle-aged women like to carry around in handbags. The women smoke, while the poodles group poo. As a rule, dog dirt comes in threes. Good to know as a daily flip flop wearer.

Giddy up horsey

On my way back home Isabelle saw me from across the street and began to mime someone ironing (while restraining a dog and smoking). I gave her the thumbs up and promised myself to seriously consider allowing her be my weekend escravo. Slaves can be awful charming you know. Her proposal deserves some serious thought as I hate ironing more than I hate some stranger cleaning around me while I hammock aimlessly and look at the enormous multi-coloured towers that obscure the view of the sea.

Dusk arrives pretty damn quick at around a quarter past five every day all year. The unmarked bus stops begin to spill out onto the road and just like the dusk, the beepers begin their daily ritual. You soon become deaf to the hum of traffic and the shouts of the unhinged as they head back home to be mad there instead. You forget that the non compos mentis travel too, though are rarely seen in transit. Lights begin to flicker madly on the hill behind the airport where the buses are headed and across the skyline and the excitement of urban life is hard to deny. This is when you hear the vigilantes.****

They cycle around the neighbourhood until dawn blowing whistles in uniforms that attempt to assert some semblance of authority. They seem to be quite effective as I’ve yet to hear one suddenly begin blowing like beholy for other vigilantes to come to his aid. The whistle has a dual purpose. As well as warning ne’er do wells to stay the hell away or else, they also reassure the community that they are being protected by an unarmed man on a bicycle in a city with one of the highest gun crime rates in the world.

The next step up on the career path seems to be a condominium security guard. These guys sit alone on stools outside plush towers with a walkie-talkie and a gun looking for some rakish reprobates to shoot at. Natural progression determines that they eventually become policemen. You can tell as they substitute the whistling for leaving on the patrol cars flashing lights at all times.

By nine the mindless novelas have begun. The lottery seller has chained his patio table and chair to the lampost and started off for home when the dramatic music starts. Naturally you’d think it's that fucker with his cart. Not tonight. An old car has pulled up nearby with a flashing light on the top. A woman gets out and starts reading a homage to a mammy from her adult son. There is cheese and goosebumps everywhere. Surely the poor woman must be mortified. It seems like she is refusing to come out. I picture some botoxed hag embarrassed beyond caring and trying to grimace bursting onto the street and vomiting on the woman, sending her packing before publicly disowning her idiot offspring. No such luck. With no movement on the part of the mammy, the ante is upped. An explosives expert gets out of the car and fires a rocket at the apartment in an attempt to blast the mammy out.

It works. Seconds later she arrives, sobbing. Mammy and son embrace and you can’t help but think what a complete pack of saps.

*Pronounced Is-a-belly.

** Slave.

***The locals will all swear they are like part of the family, albeit one who never gets photographed with the family, even if they do pay for a basic health plan for her.

**** Security guards are called vigilantes here and they look like they are handy with knife attacks from bicycles.

Sunday in Brazil, a Televisual Feast

2010-07-25T16:04:00.012-03:00

Brasilian TV

While free to air television in Brazil has yet to descend to the murky depths of Italian TV, it must be close. There are three types of programmes here. Football, Telenovelas and general muck. A quick flick across the channels of a Sunday lunchtime brings up the following:

TV RECORD - Tudo é Possível has a show about Japanese men riding pigs rodeo style, and a monkey dressed up in a shirt and tie being ‘tricked’ by smarter (just) Japanese lad into pouring a cup of orange over its head. Monkey see monkey don’t do, ‘cos monkey has seen that man has poured orange juice into the glass he is being asked to pour over himself. But the joke is on the monkey, because the glass is actually just full of torn up paper. And when it is overturned on the monkey he flinches. Hilarious.

Next up two people put tights over their heads and walk in opposite directions. A sort of ‘tights of war’ scenario. The two protagonists stagger about eight metres apart before the tights rip in half. We are treated to slow motion replays of their contorted faces, which resembled my face before I saw the surrounding 20 bikini clad girls shimmying in a semi circle at the back. Occasionally the camera lingers a little too long. But can you blame the cameramen if the only other shot is of two adults pulling apart a pair of tights with only their heads? Next.

GLOBO - An in-depth documentary about how some trees resemble some animals. Flick.

TV CULTURA - How many bearded men in swimsuits can you fit in a kiosk filled with water and a gorgeous model in a bikini? Keep watching and find out. Nah.

BAND - We have analysis on Brazil’s new manager, Mano Menezes by a sexy young thing in jeans so tight that if they aren’t painted on then she has definitely had some internal organs removed for the duration of the show. She is certain he will do well. I’m convinced. Midway through the analysis is morphed into an ad about shoes. It has the same people in that were just discussing the new appointment and spinning new shoes appear on the screen. Before this can be digested new images appear of old footballers and what they look like now. Remember Bruno Potato, the telly says, well this is what he looks like now. He has no neck. Right. This is followed up by a goal from a 1995 meeting of Botafogo v Fluminense. The spinning shoes are now back and I’m not sure if when they mention quality and flair they are talking about are shoes or the manager. I go on.

SBT - Do Mundo Brasil - Here we are treated to a show of the top 10 internet moments of the week. A man in an office flicks something at another man across the table, who reacts by leaping onto the table and stumbling across over the monitor, launching himself onto his tormentor and thrashing him about the head with his keyboard.

But before you can stop giggling, some supple skinned goon with a mic is on his way into a Sao Paulo favela to meet the enormous Sonia and improve her life by buying her things. This is a weekly ritual amongst the Sunday family shows. It allows the poor to think that one day they can aspire to live like the rich, and the rich to feel that they have a social conscience. But really its just one big TV ad for local hardware & electric shops dressed up as empathy, by cunts.

They go into her bathroom. We’re told it is very small and has ‘muitos problemas’. Sonia must be delighted with herself for contacting the show about her problematic bathroom. In a Rockyesque montage, Sonia is brought to a shop and shown a catalogue of different coloured houses. She goes for orange. The neighbourhood gets busy baking cakes and slicing olives while Sonia and her jumbo sons relax in a country house with a pool. We see her two love balls taking shots at each other, which is pointless as they both entirely cover their goals. You get the impression this was the producer's idea. The sons are not impressed. You can almost smell the BBQ they’ve been prised away from, probably at knifepoint.

Mum's personal life is dealt with in depth. She has a passion for some crooners called Leandro & Leonardo - I'm pretty sure I've heard this tune before somewhere... She wept when they took the numerous framed photos of the duo down off her bedroom wall. The poor woman is in shock, so much so that she allows a sinister looking bald man to apply some Maxton (the dye of the stars) to her head before agreeing to be flown to the northeast. Two seats are booked for our heroine. Next time we see her she is showering an uncomfortable Leonardo (who judging by his outfit, needs the cash from this job) with love bites by a swimming pool. We are not told how the night progresses, but Sonia seems to have forgotten her problematic bathroom for the time being.

Helicoptered from the airport to a field near her street, a golf cart ferries her up the gentle slope to her spanking new orange palace. She waddles up to the house which is now covered by a huge blue sheet with a yellow bow. The parade in her honour, resplendent with marching band, dancers and locals with spaghetti hats passes her by. A crane waits patiently to unveil the house. The neighbourhood crowd are going mental like they’ve no idea what the house looks like. The countdown begins. 10! 9! 8!....but wait what’s this?

...The bastards have cut back to the studio to show a quick documentary about a factory that makes washing machines and kitchens that dwarf Sonia’s new orange house. You suspect the presenter has had his gaff kitted out by this crowd. The audience applaud this fabulous factory and everyone is in a draw for a dishwasher. Lovely. Gaybo would be proud.

And we are back. The drape is lifted. Sonia cries. Three models dance outside the house while Sonia is interviewed. She really wants to go in but they won’t let her yet. More speechless crying is needed to complete the tear quota for the show. Heads are sure to roll at SBT if one of the similar rival shows out jerks them in the tear stakes. While she composes herself the camera zooms in and out on the salmon** house from different angles.

The turnaround is astonishing. The house understands Portuguese. When Jumboson says ‘telephone’, it rings! And best of all, forevermore, whenever the word ‘music’ is uttered, Leandro & Leonardo begin to croon. It remains to be seen whether they will do a follow-up show to see if this HALesque house has taken control. At the risk of crass a generalisation, I predict a long drawn out struggle punctuated by extreme lethargy on both sides.

The problematic bathroom has been transformed and the last we see of Sonia is her pounding across the tiles to give the shower head a kiss or perhaps herself a well deserved hose down after the previous nights exertions with the Leandro-less Leonardo.

For some reason Kaká’s churches TV station has disappeared so I’m off to fix some lunch before the Santos v Sao Paulo game.

* Downtime for the dancing girls. They aren't a patch on the Irish version mind.

** The presenter is appalled by the garish colour of the house and can't bring himself to call it orange.

Taking the Locals Advice

2010-07-22T01:38:00.027-03:00

When the locals advise against doing something, that is usually a good yardstick. Don’t swim in the sea. Why? You’ll be eaten by bull sharks. Ok. Don’t walk around with your camera and bumbag like a tit. Why? A motorbike will stop beside you and a weaponised youth will persuade you you don’t need it. Right. Don’t buy drugs off prostitutes. Why? The cops are usually in on the scam and even when you pay them they’ll keep your shit. And so on.

So it is only now, after the event that I curse myself for not listening to sound advice; Never go to the cinema of a Wednesday. Why? It’s half price, so all the poorer people go. This doesn’t mean that the place does be rife with artful dodgers, or beggars choking up spools of consumption in the aisles. It just means longer queues than normal. Also, midweek seems to attract more imbeciles. As I stand in the queue behind around a hundred people I am asked to get out of the way for a photo. A childless middle-aged couple, with adult brains and the vote, are posing in front of a giant Shrek: The Final Chapter 3D cut out, with their thumbs up. Perhaps my father-in-law was right and the dictatorship wasn’t such a bad thing after all. They would have had police to take these people away and re-educate them better.

There is the customary special queue* (Fila Preferencial) for the elderly, the pregnant and the wounded. I ponder asking an old person to get the tickets. I select one, but I’m told that he is not 65, just poor enough to look it. As the queue nears its completion a suited woman squeezes past everyone and goes straight to the cashier. A man runs up to her and gets her to buy two more tickets for his auntie. I wait for someone to crack and finish her off with a back and to the left. Given that there are on average 4000 murders in the state every year, I think it this would be a warranted addition. If called as a witness, I’d say I seen nuthin.

To my left people who dress up when they go to shopping centres are attempting to blag their way into the Fila Preferencial. One of the party of 30 somethings has a broken arm, which hardly warrants entry in my book. It works though. The whole party of wankers get through. I ask the cinema man in the tie what constitutes being disabled. He points to the lady’s broken arm. I point to her three able bodied friends. He shrugs. I tell him I have really sore leg hair. He looks at me. I ain’t going nowhere. I tell him he is a spa in English, which is not right but helps all the same.

Of the eight films on show, the only one that isn’t dubbed is also the only one with Tom Cruise in it. I’ve always disliked him, not because he’s mad. He just annoys me with his grinning and his running. He reminds me of a lad I went to school with who always grinned when he ran. He was no fool, just conceited. I can stomach dubbed films less than I can Cruise. So after the 40 minute queue and customary argument over the price** we go in late. Cruise is already holding onto a windscreen on a motorway, grinning at Cameron Diaz and shooting between quips. Bastard. I know he will survive the film too, which makes it worse.

I’m in bad form at this stage. I’d been looking forward to some sweets and a coke for the film but all the shop has is Pepsi and Halls sore throat sweets. Halls seem to be Brazil’s equivalent of Ferrero Rocher. (Oh Ambassador, these cherry flavoured Halls are really spoiling us). They have also stopped selling beer, the pricks. I try to pay by card but it is impossible. The popcorn technician tells me I should buy three packets of Halls and a coke for a tenner cash. This is the easiest way as he also has no change though he has got four flavours. I decline his wares. Circumstances have conspired as they often do here. I once spent an hour trying to buy toilet paper, visiting three different supermarkets and failed, for various reasons. During the film I think of this and wish that was what I was doing.

The audience gives Encontro Explosivo*** a standing ovation.

* Portuguese can be confusing. Some words kinda look like English. I saw a parking sign that said Idoso outside a bank once and presumed it meant it was for Idiots.

It made sense I thought. At least 5% of those people I have met here I would class as morons of varying degrees. Idoso means elderly. There are no special spaces for eejits.

** It’s R$9 in but the cinema has no change tonight and the laser card machine won’t accept Mastercard or Visa. So it is really a tenner in and a tidy skim for the staff.

*** Encontro Explosivo is Knight & Day in English. Film titles here make no sense.

Hicks, Bangers & Science Books

2010-07-10T00:56:00.012-03:00

There seemed to be more limbless lads knocking about the traffic lights* at the start of June. It puzzled me for a week. I soon realised that all the commotion was the build up to the Festival of Sao Joao, which finished up last week. A peculiarly north eastern event, it serves the dual purpose of bridging the gap between Carnavals - a year obviously being criminally long - and masquerading as a religious celebration. Though officially a holy holiday it also celebrates all that is tremendous about being a hick. Somewhere over the years those lines got blurred. Evidently there is much to rejoice in, as it goes on for a month. Matutos** migrate from the interior with sacks of sticks, branches and the type of chopped wood that would fail a special needs woodwork class. The sacks are emptied and stacked in campfire fashion on the paths. These chaps arrive about a month before the festival and if you’re smart you pick up your bundle before they sell out and the second wave of matutos navigate their way to Recife with substandard wood.

This is all secondary mind to the bangers. For a solid month, the noise is punctuated by gargantuan explosions. You could seldom count to ten without a bang that would make you wish you were a sniper or at the very least the owner of a tazer. It sounded like a war, though it being Recife, a very lazy half-arsed one.

I’ve been following the latest craze from the balcony. For the last couple of weeks the local men have been gathering by the tapioca stall on the corner to let off fireworks. Instead of pointing the them into the air, they (thankfully) lay them flat on the road and try to avoid them as they streak around the place hitting cars and walls and occasionally striking some topless spa. The more clued-in lads borrow motorbike helmets though still go shirtless (a bit like the local fast food joint where the burger technicians wear hairnets and face masks but don’t use gloves). The tapioca woman does be nonplussed by all the commotion, doling out food no bother. The picture of Jesus on the counter is protection enough. The only problem occurs when some genius figures out the instructions and points his rocket skywards. This causes untold panic on the balconies overlooking the square. You suspect they aim their rockets to the heavens on purpose, but you can just never be sure. One hopes that the US doesn’t suddenly invade the Amazon (a common concern here for some reason) causing universal conscription and undoubted panic amongst artillery officers the country over.

However, the glue that sticks this strictly religious festival is the glorious forro dance. (It really kicks off at 1.04). Everywhere you go you have the incessant jangle. It can cause mental fatigue. Every bar gets infected with a couple of lads whining away in the corner on their squeeze boxes singing the same song over and over, or maybe many many similar sounding songs. Not even the locals seem to notice the change. There does be no escape. The buses, which draw every type of mentalist handing out pens or singing, you can understand. It’s when you get in a lift and there is a lad in the corner saying nothing, hammering away at his triangle that you begin to crack and look at your palms for hairs.

So all of this was going on in the midst of the World Cup. It was hard to tell the difference between Sao Joao bangers and World Cup bangers. I went to a cloistered market in downtown Recife to watch the Brasil games. You had to get there early to bag a seat in front of one of the tellys mounted on beer crates. The atmosphere would be oozing, the beer flowing and every few minutes some knobend would walk too close to the telly causing the reception to go snowy. After said unfortunate had been pelted with whatever finger food was at hand, normal service of not actually watching the game but being comforted by there being a TV to focus on whenever a communal intake of breath was intook, was resumed.

It was during one of these moments that I took the opportunity of purchasing a book of elementary science experiments (in English) by a traveling literary salesman who had obviously done copious amounts of market research and come to the conclusion that the best place to sell third hand foreign language science books was during the quarter final of the World Cup when Brasil were in desperate need of a goal. Best fiver I spent all day. Hardback too. I’d been attending to my valve when the Dutch equalizer went in. There were no curses or gasps, just silence. The commentator, fair play to him, still did the customary GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! celebration, though it was, admittedly, as if Father Stone had grabbed the mic and droned...gooooooool...

The mood about the place afterwards was pretty shitty. Though this being Brazil, folk don’t get downhearted for long. After all, the fear of Maradona winning the World Cup was extinguished the next day. The sheer volume of noise that erupted after every German goal was twice that of when the first goal went in against North Korea. Brazil are out, Sao Joao is over, but at least the Argies can’t brag.

*Stopping at traffic lights in Recife presents many hazards to car owners and passengers alike. During the day you are constantly pestered by -
-Fire jugglers
-Pushy window washers who can wash up to 5 window screens in under 20 seconds
-Clowns
-Clowns on stilts, they often juggle though find it hard to bend down to collect
-Sexy ladies promoting mobile phones and/or political parties.
-Leaflet pushers & newspaper vendors
-General lunatics who sometimes just want to talk
-Kiddie beggars and the odd Mormon

Perhaps this is why Brasilians like to break the lights with a quick two touch honk. The main avenues have four to seven lanes depending on the time of day and the traffic lights are replicas of the starting lights in F1 which count down to AND THEY’RE OFF!

**Hicks, pure and simple.

World Cup Traffic & Mauro Shampoo

2010-06-16T01:26:00.012-03:00

Champagne with himself

They’ve been waiting for today since Roberto Carlos bent down to tie his laces in Germany and let the scoundrel Henry in to bag the winner.

The estimated 8km tailback that stretched along the beach was, according to the local TV reporter in the helicopter, “the usual World Cup traffic”. It was 8.15am, only 7 hours more beeping* til the game...

The domestic slaves on their early morning walks were instructed to show the patriotism of their owners poodles by decking them out in Kaká jerseys (the rest are just too dark) instead of the usual designer gear. Or maybe there was an act of mass dog walking rebellion this morning. Social strata gets blurred when the Selecao play. You could sense there was something different about today. Lads with drums and vuvuzelas were waking up the rich at half six in the morning. Direction? The beach to get a good spot for the big screens, or if the middle class are to be listened to, the best places to pickpocket and engage in general perversion.

Needless to say nobody took work seriously today, which here in Recife, is saying a lot. The locals have been busy working less than usual in their shops by painting them green and yellow and putting up enough bunting to shame any country road in the darkest depths of Meath during the All-Ireland. In a dedicated act of patriotism that would bring a nod of approval from the Dear Leader Himself, the local bakery has taken to colouring all foods the colour of Order & Progress. Today was the first time I had a salad-less all green ham roll. The alternative was a green & yellow cheese burger, cheese dyed, obviously.

The buses, which usually accelerate to around 70km per hour between stops (at 100m intervals) ran faster. Fat washerwomen types in Robinho shirts handed out wedges of cake and a Forró group sitting in the back seat provided the music for the people who didn’t have seats to dance to. Which they did, causing untold social awkwardness to dance-dyslexic types like myself when trying to negotiate the way to the exit doors. I could never imagine strangers locking legs and dancing on public transport in Drogheda.

Firecrackers went off all day. Everywhere.

I thought it a good idea to pay a visit to Mauro Shampoo - Footballer, Film Star,Hairdresser & Man , to get the low-down on the game. I gave him a call at his salon, the Estadio de Shampoosao and after shouting

-Show! Show! Show!

a couple of times began to speak like a man who hasn’t had a film about his life aired at the prestigious Manaus Film Festival and agreed to stay open if I got there in 20 minutes. No problem with these buses. I found him in his wife’s salon sitting in his Ibis jersey looking nervous. We walked to the Shampoozao, which is quite simply the most amazing barber shop in the world. The floor is marked out as a football pitch and part of the pre-cut ritual is to try a few keepie-uppies while he tells you about the time he cut Rivaldo’s hair and how he is a close confidante of Juninho Pernambucano’s family. The walls are plastered with photos of himself scarring the heads of the great and good.

I’ve been to Senhor Shampoo’s before, usually after a couple of drinks and only for a short trim or a shave. I should have been worried when he swung the chair away from the mirror so we could have a better angle to watch the latest bulletin about Kaká’s troublesome groin. But he was telling me about the time he trimmed Ricardo Rocha’s moustache** and I lost track of time. Mauro’s thinning scissors didn’t stop going though and when he swung the chair around my hair was wispier than a pre-implant guitarist for the Quo.

He must have noticed the look of horror on my face, but being the consummate professional, he didn’t flinch. Instead he reached for the magic sponge of the Brasilian hairdresser, a quick rinse, towel dry and a slap of talc. When this remedy proved ineffective we conversed on male pattern baldness before he asking me to tug his thick black curly mane again to show me that he didn’t suffer such misfortune. It had the springiness and texture of hairy Mexican pubis (or baked horse hair), one would imagine. After insisting on slicking my hair back in the Berbatov style, though not quite succeeding, we did some farewell headers and I left in search of somewhere with a number 2 blade.

At the risk of an appalling pun, I’d cut it too fine before the game. So a quick hatless rush to the bar ensued. I’ve never seen such excitement or such fickle fans. Kaká was mocked after a few loose passes. After 20 goalless minutes the general consensus was that Dunga should be removed, preferably before the end of the half if at all possible. When the first goal eventually came, even the police, who’d stopped for some refreshments, let go. Firecrackers went off inside the bar and the 10 year old topless waiters began running up and down amid the smoke, making it dreadfully difficult to order a beer. I hate shouting at unfat kids generally, but sometimes some discipline is warranted. Thankfully the waiters calmed down enough to resume their duties before the next one went in.

Next up is Costa da Marfim. Victory is assured. It’s weird being in a country that has a great chance of actually winning the thing, though it doesn’t ease the pain of November 18th 2009.

I love Brasilian footballers names, from Socrates to Dunga (dopey), so if there was a World Cup for lads with interesting names then I reckon this team of current Brasilian players would be a shoe in for the title:

Portuguese English Club

Gum - Wrigleys
George Lucas
Bruno Batata - Bruno the Potato
Willian Magrao - Big Skinny Willian
Richardinho - Little Richard
Elvis
Jackson
Tiago Tigrao - Tiago the Big Tiger
Eduardo Ratinho - Edward the Little Rat (Capt.)
Fagner
Eric Bandeira - Eric the Flag
Gilberto Matuto - Gilbert the Hick
Carlinhos Bala - Wee Charles the Bullet
Bill
Bruno Mineiro - Bruno the Miner

*Beeping here is a skill. A beep can signal many things;
-Hello.
-Fuck you.
-Move over.
-You look foreign and I am in a taxi.
-Hey there’s Fernando (swerve), alright! Lets take a beer later?
-Hmm you look very sexy indeed, I’m slowing down.
-I am going to turn now perhaps left or maybe right. God will decide.
-I couldn’t be arsed stopping at this red light so it’s not my fault if there is a crash as I’ve given ample warning.
-And more often than not, drivers beep while driving straight for no known reason I can see other than plain fecklessness.
So this morning's cacophony of beepage could rival anything that the plastic horn is doing in South Africa. This went on until just before kickoff.

** 1994 World Cup winner from Recife.

Bingo & the Death Peddler

2010-05-27T00:55:00.008-03:00

The driver got back on and asked anyone if they knew where we were, again. He’d been asking some young lad and his lady friend for directions. But the happy couple seemed to get more from the exchange than the driver, having gotten him to take a couple of snaps of them posing by the bus. They then cycled off into the dark. We’d been lost for about four hours and it would be light soon.

Carnaiba, famed for fervency of its bingo playing population and lack of men, was where we were headed. Most sperm carrying males have left for Recife and other cities with trustworthy electricity and tarmac. Our late arrival meant missing the guts of the weekly market. We only saw some dusty looking cowboys leading some goats away and two youngflas trying to flog some bricks. Our guide told us we hadn’t missed the serious business of the day, the bingo.

It seemed that the whole town was in the square, making the shade work and waiting for the bingo bus to arrive with its numbers.* Once underway, silence was the order of the day. Any non-digit related jabber was akin to walking in front of the telly during a football game. After two hours of furious bingo, every microwave, goat and unmatching pair of Hi-Teck runners had been claimed.

The Snowball, as any keen student of the game knows, requires one to be skilly and quick wristed. However, in this part of the world, it is kept sacred and only doled out on special occasions. I got the impression that the serious students of the game were using the days match as a practice run for such an occasion. Prizes include perhaps a date with a man in a non-goat related business and with no blood relations for 40 miles...

Such concentration should be rewarded with cold beers on rocking chairs. We watched the women do stuff that seemed necessary, like sweeping and then throwing buckets of water over the path before repeating this at twenty minute intervals until it got too dark to continue. While horses didn’t outnumber cars, it was mighty close. And there were more goats about the place then either. The few rusty trucks that lay around seemed proud to announce that they were under God’s protection. Though a growing number of Jesus trucks could be seen claiming they were exactly 100% in support of the son. The horses pulling traps had yet to be branded on either way and I suspect a shrewd blacksmith might earn himself a wee nixer or two if he put his mind to it.

As dusk finished, an aul lad on a bicycle came towards us, breathing heavily and clearly struggling with having to navigate the uneven streets and keep a grave, serious tone at the same time. His bike had a trailer with two big speakers strapped on and he held a microphone in one hand. Sombre music blared out as he read out the weeks death notices. The occasional woman, brush downed for the day, would come out and offer him a drink, which he’d politely refuse, forgetting to switch off his mic. He only did the one round so you had to make sure your ears were on form. He didn’t look like he had long left in him and I’d be interested to know if when the time comes he’ll announce his own earthly retirement before slumping forward on his bike.

The next day’s ride to the local tourist hot spot was spent trying to remember the previous night’s Matuto (hick) party, where scantily dressed 15 year olds scouted the crowd for eligible bachelors that looked like they could button their shirts right and be trusted in company with forks. There must be a lot of disappointed girls this morning, I was thinking as I tried to locate my seatbelt.** I can remember being terrified by the fist sized frogs that kept hopping up to our table, and unlike pigeons, who will give a half arsed flutter away when goaded, these beasts knew no fear. I had been repeatedly saved by a weirdo called Gianotte, who would dance them away from me and then enquire about my general well being. He was all hips and broken English and a little too eager about my health.

After an hour of rolling plains and distant inky mountains bulging into the sky we reached the mountain turnoff for Triunfo. The sign post urging caution against the steep ravines and treacherous curves was riddled with bullet holes. Nobody seemed too worried. The excitement in the car was growing as we weaved up past banana plantations. Jumpers had been packed, as Triunfo has been known to be very cold, at times breaking barometers during 18C cold snaps. Triunfo means Triumph! by the way, though Jayzeus knows how it got its name. Less than Mediocre would be more apt.

It wasn’t long until we found out why the place was called Triumph! A decaying grey ski-lift was the source of the tourist industry and that, coupled with a lifeless man made lake and a handful of plastic swans seemed to sustain a thriving population. Peer pressured into risking the lift, we got on and marvelled at the rather magnificent view of stagnant green water and poor urban planning. If Athlone ever gets a ski-lift, the local councillors would do well to undertake a fact finding mission to Triunfo.

The excitement of the lift wasn’t enough to pacify our party however, so before we could emanate the old Pope we were whisked into the swans and cast adrift on the lake. After peddling to the centre of the lake the excitement got too much so we let the breeze take us. Five minutes later we were bobbing against a concrete wall, lighting a fag and trying to get the guy in the nearby bars attention so he could fetch some refreshments. Despite frantic waving from the rest of the crew, HMS McVeigh stayed docked until the 20 minutes were up and we had to peddle back to the rotting boardwalk.

The outing reached its climax when we went to a bar to listen to a pagode concert. A familiar face was up there. Gianotte, far from being the local weirdo (which make no mistake is a title more difficult to win here, never mind retain, than back to back World Cups) was up on stage, an accomplished clarinetist who when we left him had a mere 12 hours previously been dribbling at frogs. The music was fantastic. We stayed there for 5 hours under a scope of trees by a stream transfixed. And I can’t wait to go back.

*I hadn’t played since my old bingo haunt, The Bridgeford, burnt down when a weekly snowball dispute got out of hand, circa 2004.

**Back seat belts have only recently become compulsory and it will be a years before you’re not accused of being an absolute homosexual for wearing one.

Painting Trees and Professional Bank Queuers

2010-04-29T23:55:00.011-03:00

Sometimes you wake up here and you’re not sure if you’ve really left the bed at all. At the gate I met Zé, our consistently ineffective porter,* shoelessly watching a man painting a tree. At least I thought he was. I always forget which side his glass eye is on. It turned out he was waiting for some compost for the wee garden he has created. He’d gotten another delivery of old toilets, into which he’s since planted a variety of ferns and exotic plants. The delivery was late but Zé wasn’t fazed. As everything is always late here, things cease to be late and just arrive on the same day, at some stage, sometimes. I left Zé to concentrate on his waiting and headed for the trees.

I’ve often heard it said that there is no such thing as a stupid question so I asked the young man with the brush,

-Excuse me, but why are you painting this tree? He didn’t flinch, and continued to paint, but seemed surprised someone would ask.

-I have to finish all of them by lunchtime, he said.

I could see his logic. It was after nine and he’d already done one but had at least five more to go, depending on his remit. I persisted.

-White is a good colour, you can’t go wrong with white. Can I have a go?

He handed me the brush and I did a few strokes, trying to initial my work near the bottom of the trunk. Sadly he didn’t have any other colour on hand. He seemed quite happy, a job is a job after all. While I was weighing up the merits of offering to pay him double to paint the next tree orange he said,

-I still have to paint the electric poles, but they are easier, less crevices. I nodded sagely and wished him luck. The trees had to go with the wall you see.

I’d been putting off going to the bank for weeks. It can take up to an hour on a slow day to get seen in a bank and if you are a foreigner with a wispy grasp of Portuguese bankspeak it can be a nightmare. Getting into a bank here is only a slightlier more pleasant experience than going through security in Dublin airport. Once you’ve rebuckled and got your wits back you get a ticket, gaze at the throng in front of you and try to suss out a professional queuer, or a tout.

They are not easy to spot. I had an idea that they would be shifty, but not too shifty. The shotgun wielding security guards in the reinforced steel cubicles overlooking proceedings have put heed to that. So far I have seen just the one, a tout; well to do with light beige slacks clocking the new arrivals with a subtle poker hand. A man walked straight up to him, an exchange took place and he sat down. Ten minutes later his number flashed up and braving the tuts and squinted eyes in his direction he paid his bills and left. I waited another hour, not confident enough with the etiquette to skip the queue. The tout left, perhaps to get some water, but returned with another ticket not long after. Unlike the five minutes outside a ground before a big game, you can’t call the bank tout’s bluff. There is no frantic trading or deals to be had. He can always replenish his stock.

The other option you have is to coordinate your visits with a pensioner, a mammy with kids in tow or a polio victim, for which there are special queues. Brazil is very progressive in this area (On the buses they even have reserved seating for the morbidly obese - the signs have to be seen to be believed!). However after much empirical research, I have found that pleading dyslexia/idiocy/underactive thyroid/ingrown toenail/mental weakness just doesn’t pull any weight here. Manys a shopping basket I have abandoned after being directed to the back to the normal queue. It’s just not worth it. As a rule getting anything done takes at least 20 minutes. Happily though, the exception to this rule appears to be the drink. They say you are never more than 10 metres from a rat. Here you are never further than a dignified 40 second trot from a beverage. It’s the heat. And it hasn’t fallen under 30C for 5 months.

*Apartments here usually have a porteiro who is responsible for the opening of doors, the removal of rubbish and general anti-robbery duties. I would like to think Zé lost his eye fending off some frenzied assault on our apartment and that his general lethargy is a direct result of post-traumatic stress. He doesn’t work after 6 or at weekends, when things tend to get hairy.