Collection of stories - Brazil
- Linda Chen
- Dec 21, 2019
- 9 min read
I did two things the day after I arrived in Brazil. I went to find a hummus place and went to find a gym.
I had zero, literally zero Portuguese and Euclides, my boxing coach, had zero, literally zero English. I couldn't even remember now how, but we managed to express ourselves. He gave me his name card and we used Google translate to talk on WhatsApp.
Within 4 days I arrived in Brazil. I was boxing.
And that's how my life and my stories in Brazil began.
1. Adri
I was in the 7 am class and Adri was assigned to be my translator for that class. That's how she turned out to be the second friend I made in Brazil. And the second time I went back to Brazil, I became her roommate. I thought Adri came to class often, but later I realized she didn't. It was just my lucky day.
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Adri is not a typical Brazilian. She has a very particular way to express her care and kindness for someone else. She's not kind to everyone, unlike other Brazilians and she's also not very expressive. I even felt like she kept a distant with others, not only physically but also emotionally. She almost never tell others' her life stories or struggles unless you ask.
Her working hour is from 7am (time she left the house) to 12am, 1am, 2 am or 3 am (time she's back home) depending on the days. We almost never see each other during weekdays, sometimes even during weekends. Her early days for arriving home were around 9pm. That's how busy she was. She was working on a project to help a Brazilian company to IPO on Nasdaq.
Sometimes when Adri came back home early (like 930pm), she would ask how my day went and I would tell her, but she would respond in a way that's completely off track. You could tell she was not listening.
However, she would travel for almost 2 hours (one-way) to come to the airport to pick me up on the day I arrived. She would take the day to celebrate my birthday with me. That day we went a bakery that was 2-min walk away from our apartment, but she has never been to after 3 years of living there. She would think for weeks about what gifts to give to my mum. She would give me her blanket immediately without me asking, because she saw me putting my jacket on top of my quilt. She did all of those things and many more without me even asking for it.
That's how she expresses herself.
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"I always have a big dream and I want to see the world. I felt my town was too small for me. My teacher at that time told me, if I study accounting and be an accountant, I could work for a big company and go to a big city. So I did." Adri started her career at PWC and now she works for the one of the best investment banks in Brazil.
"I had a job back in my city, working for a family shop. However, I wanted to come to São Paulo, to do another degree and find a job but I didn't have enough of money. After the family that I worked for learned about my situation, they gave me the money. That's how I could come to São Paulo."
"They GAVE...you the money?" "You never needed to pay back for them?" I asked without believing it.
"No, they just gave the money to me, without asking anything back. They were very nice people." Adri answered.
I looked at her with a half smile and some doubts on my face.
"So, do you still talk to them now when you go back home?" I asked Adri.
"No, we lost contacts. It was a long time ago." Adri answered.
I wondered what would that family might think about their actions. I'd like to believe Adri is so willing to give now because she was being given a lot too. That family didn't ask for anything back from Adri, like Adri never asked anything back from me. The help she gave me, helping an unknown foreigner being in Brazil is not something I could pay back either, but I will help the next foreigner, the next helpless person if I encountered.
2. Mussi
You might be curious about who was my first friend in Brazil. And that's where the hummus comes in. It was the restaurant owner of that hummus place that I walked it on the second day I arrived in Brazil.
You can say São Paulo is cultural mixed hub compare to other cities in Brazil. SP especially has lots of Lebanese and Japanese immigrants but these immigrants were mostly older generations and therefore the second generation has pretty much been brazilianized. Mussi is one of that second generation of Lebanese in Brazil.
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"When my husband and I were doing business in China. A man looked at my husband and asked: You really believe Jesus exist ?" "And my husband answered: of course." Then Mussi bursted into laughter after she told me this story.
I smiled and looked at her intriguingly. Mussi never took anything to heart. She's so light hearted.
"Oh in China, you guys drink so much my god. I couldn't do it. The other day, my brazilian partner looked at me and asked why I didn't need to drink. I told my partner, I told the Chinese I couldn't drink because of religious reason hahahahahahahaha"
I laughed too this time. That's Mussi.
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Mussi is a very expressive person. I think part of it comes from the Brazilian culture and part of it also comes from her family origin, the hospitality of Arabic culture. She told me, in Arabic, they often say:"where to spend friends?". It means friends are not like money; money finishes but friends never. So spend money on friends.
She always has a big warm smile, always laughing, always high spirit, She would post how much she love her kids and show off her husband at least once a week. She would reply my Instagram stories almost 8/10. She likes to joke, likes to message, likes to use roses and kisses emojis.
She owns two restaurants in São Paulo, exports metal waste from Chile to Southeast Asia, recently just established a new e-commerce website and planned to export goods from China to Brazil, AND mom of two kids, but she still managed to reply my instagram stories 8/10. Imagine her energy...
Mussi plans to sell her restaurants and move to Shanghai because she loves the bustling of China and plans to settle her kids in Dubai to study.
Mussi granted me help many times in Brazil, most importantly, she welcomed me like a family member. She really acted like my big sister. She wanted me to know her kids (though I tried to avoid hahaha), invited me to church together and she even asked her family to take care of a friend of mine who travelled to Lebanon.
I told my mom before, to me, I felt Adri and Mussi were like the angels who were sent to protect me in Brazil.
3. Cynthina
"If you looked back to the decision that you made 1 year ago, what would you think?" I asked Cynthina. She's from Taiwan. She was working for KPMG Taiwan as a senior position before she decided to quit her job and came to Brazil to gain a master degree.
"Sometimes when life is too difficult, I really want to slap myself in the face hahahahaha" She answered.
"However, I think you have your whole life to make money. If you could find the job that you like and if the job could give you the skills that you want, you can work happily until maybe you are 80 years old." She continued.
"So go learn the skills that you want to learn. I think this should be only measurement you use when you are looking for a job now. No matter how much money you make now, 10 years down the road, they wouldn't matter at all." She said.
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I rarely admired any peers but Cynthia was one of the rare cases. Cynthia's mum had a very different way to educate her kids compare to many typical asian families. Her mum told all her kids that she would not sponsor anyone a penny after they graduated from university. Therefore, Cynthia needed to plan her saving before she left University and she has been fully financially independent since she graduated.
All the costs that she encountered when studying in Brazil, including tuition, housing, and living costs were all at her own expense. Therefore, at that time, she needed to make a decision of quitting her job, which means cut off her main financial income and came to Brazil.
The reason was simple. She didn't want to just settle down when she was only 20s', she wanted to experience something different, and want to learn new skills. I admired her courage to make the decision, and her abilities to manage the costs and consequences.
Cynthia and I became very important emotional support to each other in Brazil, partly because in our culture, coming to Brazil is a ridiculous decision, and partly because the people that we encountered in Brazil, many brazilians, could never understand our struggles.
Asia's infrastructure, especially for places like Taiwan, Singapore, is even much better than many European countries. So many small things in Brazil often drove both of us crazy but we got no one to talk to, like you cannot throw your toilet paper inside the toilet, like how the metro waiting lines in Brazil were so so unorganized, like how sometimes Brazilians think they were being nice but in our culture, they were just being rude and disrespectful.
Cynthia and I didn't meet very often but when we met, we talked for hours. We often turned those frustrations into jokes to tell to each other and laughed about them together. That's how we supported each other.
4. Chan
"I am from a very humble family, not like those European CEMS students. My father was just a truck driver and my mom works at a supermarket back in my hometown. What would you imagine my fate to be?" Chan asked.
Chan and I were roommates for the first half of my Brazilian life. Our rents were probably the cheapest among the CEMS students and our house have so many mosquitoes that I bought the strongest mosquito spray and used it every day. We often joked between ourselves: we were the homeless in the CEMS cohort and we live in the Amazon.
Chan doesn't believe in fate. She said it's she who changed her own life. Chan received a full scholarship from Hong Kong University and she persuaded her parents by using the excuses that: it's free.
That's how she left her small city, a 3rd or 4th tier city in China and began her international journey. Then she studied French in university and exchanged to Europe. She worked in Milan for 2 years and she was doing CEMS in Bocconi, Italy. Yes, her life was completely changed since then and she earned it.
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Though our living condition back then were not fancy, we both really liked our balcony. We had a balcony at the back of our house. It was spacious but it was empty. It only had a poor light bulb hanging on top. Under the dim yellow light, there was a cheap plastic white table and a cheap plastic chair.
However, we enjoyed those nights together. We would bring another chair from inside of the house, and would take some snacks, beers, cigarettes with us. We would talk, laugh, drink and smoke under the night sky until until the breeze gets chills, until the street music quite down, until AMs.
We talked about everything; everything in the CEMS, laughed about how ignorant other people were about our culture; everything in our personal lives, our struggles and our dream for the future.
Chan now went to Shanghai and works for Hilti. It was a big decision for her because both of us have been so scared of going back to our own culture. We were scared of the dogmatic parts in the Chinese culture, like how women should behave, like the notion of marriage and family, like the mainstream beliefs of how one should live one's lives.
The good news is that she enjoyed Shanghai so far. And I think for people like us, we will not give up on living the life that we want no matter where we are.
5. Final words
The year of 2019 was basically my life in Brazil. It was not easy, but it was certainly not boring. In the card that Cynthia wrote to me before I left Brazil, she said:"River knows this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
I made the decision to return to Brazil but I left without having any achievements I could brag about (lol, yea that's how superficial I am). At first I felt like I made a mistake; it was a wrong decision.
I told my Portuguese teacher, I said: I finally could speak some Portuguese and understand what people are talking about now, but I am leaving. I felt like all these effort would just go into waste. If I don't tell anyone I have been to Brazil, all these were just a dream.
She replied: Well Linda, it is not a waste. Now you knew our country, you learned about our society, our culture, our conflicts and our struggles. You had different experiences and that's enough.
When I look back now, I think maybe she's right. The people that I met, the kindness I have received in this journey, the things that I learned, and the stories that I collected are treasures and big gains in life already.
"There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." meanwhile, let's appreciate the journey.
-- Dec. 21st, 2019
@ A Starbucks in Richmond, B.C. Canada
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