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~ Guyana – Brazil – USA

Three Worlds One Vision

Monthly Archives: October 2011

Halloween: Trick or Treat?

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Fun activities for children., Halloween, Halloween Day, Jack-o'-lanterns, Superstition, Trick or Treat, Ward off evil spirits

October 31 is Halloween Day here in the United States. This Sunday afternoon, several of my neighbors will take part in a Pumpkin Carving Competition. I will not be competing but will be there to add my two cents.

While Halloween Day is filled with lots of fun activities for children and their families, this important American tradition perplexes me with its weird blend of mystery, magic, and superstition.

Stores and specialty shops drain the blood of the Halloween buffs.

Witches and skeletons, in black and bloody orange, scare the living from house fronts.

Haunted houses and parks echo with screams of frightful delight.

Ghoulish jack-o’-lanterns, gouged out from big-bellied pumpkins, ward off evil spirits.

Happy children, decked out in costumes, flit from house to house for candy free.

Adults, in a macabre feast, play out fantasies behind masks so true.

Spider webs of superstition still cling.

The dead and undead with witchcraft dispelled.

Death is just a trick of the gods, Precious.

Be happy! Give me some more of that treat.

Overcoming My Reluctance to Speak Portuguese

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in About Me, Brazil, Working Life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

brasileira de coração, Embracing the Brazilian joy of life, Re-born in Brazil, Speaking Portuguese in Brazil

Brazil Wins FIFA World Cup 2002 (www.copadomundo.uol.com.br)

My greatest struggle in becoming fluent in Portuguese was overcoming my reluctance to speak the language. It embarrassed me to make mistakes when speaking to others: incorrect verb tense and endings; incorrect word gender; and, worst of all, the inappropriate use of a word considered offensive or with a sexual connotation in Portuguese.

It did not help when the secretary of the small firm where I worked told me one day in exasperation, as I struggled to give her a telephone message: Você é a minha cruz (You are my cross).

Clients referred to me as aquela gringa que enrola tudo (that foreigner that confuses everything).

Such remarks did nothing to build my battered self-esteem and self-confidence in conquering my place in the workplace. Thank God, the owners of the firm valued my English-speaking skills!

A young man – who I will call Carlos – helped me to unknot my tongue. Before Carlos joined the firm, I had spent my two-hour lunch break locked up alone in the office: a spacious house with a swimming pool in the backyard. Everyone else returned home or went out for lunch. Carlos rode a motor cycle and, oftentimes, joined me for lunch in the kitchen. He had lots of questions about my origins and why I had come to live in Fortaleza. He was the first non-English-speaking Cearense ready to listen and decipher my jumbled speech.

I do not believe in chance or coincidences. Carlos only stayed with us for three months: Enough time to help me overcome my reluctance to speak in a foreign tongue.

Years later, when I started to dream and think in Portuguese, I made an unexpected discovery. In embracing the language, I was embracing the Brazilian culture – their way of thinking and being. The Brazilian people are passionate, so evident in the way they play football (soccer). They are not inhibited in expressing their emotions. I experienced this in the workplace, among my neighbors and friends, and on the streets.  Telling someone “vou te matar” (I’ll kill you) is as acceptable as saying “eu te amo” (I love you).

In overcoming my reluctance to speak Portuguese, I was able to gradually let go of my Victorian, British-colonial bottlenecks and embrace the Brazilain joy of life. I became a new person. Even the way Brazilians pronounced my name – Hose-ah-lee-a-nee – baptized me with a new identity. I was re-born in Brazil. I became uma brasileira de coração (a Brazilian of the heart).

Brazilian Friend of the Heart

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in About Me, Brazil, Human Behavior, Working Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Amigo do coração, Fortaleza, Gay, Gay co-workers, Learning Portuguese, Ponte Metálica, Preconceptions, Sexual orientation, Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa, Surviving in Brazil, West Hollywood

Source: Photo by tmpdan, selected for Google Earth (www.panoramio.com)

Fleeing to Brazil where they speak a language different from my own rocked my world. On arrival, I could utter in Portuguese only bom dia, boa tarde, boa noite, obrigada, por favor,  and com licença.

My husband’s Guyanese-Brazilian friend loaned me a Portuguese-English textbook. With nouns having male and female attributes and verb-endings that changed with you and me, and all those others, the Portuguese language seemed a formidable language to learn. I set a target of memorizing ten new words a day. A pocketbook-size English/Portuguese dictionary became my closest companion. For the correct pronunciation of words, I found help in watching the popular novelas de televisão, Brazil’s soap operas.

Help came the day my husband came home with an English-speaking, Brazilian young man willing to teach me Portuguese. He was the life-buoy I craved for surviving in Brazil. I will refer to him as Gabriel.

The afternoon Gabriel took me, my husband, and two sons to the Ponte Metálica – the famous ‘Bridge of the Englishmen’ and remnant of the former Port of Fortaleza – I was unable to squeeze my way out of the packed bus to get off with them. I had to remain on the bus until the next stop. My sons were relieved to see me; Gabriel apologized for the crowded bus. This was the first of many popular places around Fortaleza that Gabriel took us.

Gabriel shared with us some of the dos and don’ts of Brazilian life. He did not make fun of me after I told a store clerk that I was looking for shoes pra você (for you) instead of para mim (for myself). When he graduated from the State University of Ceará, he invited me to join his family at his Graduation Ball.

Through Gabriel, I learned of an opening for a secretary at the Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa, a private school for teaching British English and culture. I got the job. After working with them during January and February 1989, I secured a position of import/export assistant at an international trade consultancy firm.

Gabriel was discreet about his sexual orientation. At the university, where we had our first Portuguese lesson, young women flocked him. I never saw him holding hands with another male. Only after knowing me for some time did he disclose that he was gay.

Gabriel taught me that a person’s sexual orientation does not change one’s humanness; that our preconceptions about others rob us of the opportunity of getting to know brilliant and generous individuals who can change our lives for better. Knowing Gabriel, I was able to embrace and work well with gay co-workers at a West Hollywood retail store – enriching my life experience.

Gabriel was my first Brazilian friend, um amigo do coração (friend of the heart). Many other generous people journeyed with me during the sixteen years I lived in Brazil. You will meet them by-and-by.

Young Bullies

09 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Harassment, Jamey Rodemeyer, Jiu-Jitsu, School bullies, Suicide among our young, Victims of bullies, Young bullies

Source: “Back to School Bullies Cartoon” by Bryant Arnold, 22 August 2011 http://www.cartoonaday.com

On 18 September 2011, 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer committed suicide. He could no longer endure the hatred unleashed on him by young bullies.  Jamey is not the only child victimized by bullies. The US National Center for Educational Statistics (www.nces.ed.gov) revealed that, during the 2008-2009 school year, 28 percent of students aged 12 to 18 reported that they were bullied in school. Most bullies favored ridicule, insults, and rumors to torment their victims.

What kind of youth drives another human being over the edge? Such a person must be filled with anger and hatred. Such a person could not know what it means to be loved or to love. Such a person lacks tolerance and compassion.

We have failed as parents and educators when our children and students treat others with contempt and take delight in their suffering. Our children are reflections of what we teach them through our words and actions, and our failure to pull them in line when they go astray.

I raised my sons alone after their father left us in Brazil to return to our native land Guyana. They were six and eight years old at the time. When my younger son was eight years old, he became the victim of bullies in the condominium where we lived. It was my responsibility to protect him from harm. I spoke with the bullies. I met with their parents.

One particular bully – a sixteen-year-old boy – was persistent. His mother was a good woman. Like me, she was doing the best she could to raise her two sons on the right path. Following the advice of the school counselor, she had enrolled my son’s tormentor in a jiu-jitsu class to learn how to channel his anger. I empathized with her struggle and predicament. But I had to make it clear to her and her son that I was prepared to take legal action to put an end to his harassment.

When we had thought that our ordeal with bullies was over, more bullies lurked in Middle School (a private school). My son was ten years old when – in the presence of the school coordinator (head teacher) – I confronted my son’s bullies: a group of four older and bigger boys.

Our young bullies need help. They, too, are victims. They are victims of tumultuous family relationships. They are victims of parental neglect and rejection. They are victims of a society that demonstrates a lack of tolerance and compassion towards people of different sexual orientation, different religions, different races and ethnicity, and lower social status. They are victims of a society that glorifies and awards the aggressor on purportedly real-life TV programs.

Without help, and without being held accountable for the harm they inflict on their victims, our young bullies will continue to drive more of our children to despair and suicide.

A ‘Dress Down’ World: Amazon Indians Threatened by Economic Progress

02 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Brazil, Guyana, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amazon Indians, American Dream, Belo Monte Hydro-electric Dam, Dress down, Economic collapse, Economic progress, Indigenous peoples, Martin Carter, Season of oppression, This is the Dark Time My Love, Xingu River

     Source: Article “Brazil judge halts work on Belo Monte Amazon dam”           BBC News, UK, 28 September 2011

In the days of my youth in Guyana, a woman told me that we lived in a dress down world. It took me several more years to appreciate her vision of the world.

To understand the general usage of this Guyanese Creole expression, consider the following scene:

“Son, dress down a little lemme sit down,” the woman said to the young man sitting on the bench in the waiting room. Together with two girls sharing the bench, he moved down to make room for the woman.

Under dictatorship rule in Guyana, many of us had to dress down to give our jobs to relatives, friends, and enablers of those in power. In the United States, working people at all levels have had to dress down to hand-over their jobs to lower-paid workers in far-flung places across the globe.

Like the poor everywhere, the indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Amazon forest have never had a seat on the bench. Since the contract for the construction of the Belo Monte Hydro-electric Dam on the Xingu River – a tributary of the Amazon River – was signed in August 2010, the Amazon Indians along the Xingu River have been fighting a fierce battle to preserve their rivers, the jungle, and their way of life.

When completed, the dam will become the world’s third largest hydro-electric power producer. The Brazilian government expects to create thousands of jobs and provide electricity to 23 million homes. The estimated 40,000 inhabitants to be affected by the construction of the dam must dress down for economic progress. You can learn more about the Belo Monte Dam at http://amazonwatch.org/work/belo-monte-dam.

In the name of greater profits and economic progress, more and more people have lost their seat on the bench. Here in the USA, the American Dream is a faded dream for millions of Americans. Economic progress becomes an empty shell when millions of people must dress down and live on the fringes of society.

I leave you with the poem – This is the Dark Time My Love – by one of my favorite Guyanese poets, Martin Carter (1927-1997). Although written in the 1950s, during Guyana’s struggle for independence from Great Britain, it is still relevant to our present time of economic collapse.

THIS IS THE DARK TIME MY LOVE

This is the dark time, my love.

All round the land brown beetles crawl about.

The shining sun is hidden in the sky.

Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.

This is the dark time, my love.

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.

It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.

Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

Who comes walking in the dark night time?                                              Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?                                     It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader                                     watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.

Poems by Martin Carter, Edited by Stewart Brown & Ian McDonald, 2006.

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