Ketchup, catsup, catch up

brace yourself, this is a long one.

So, I’ll be home in a month and week. This would seem like a really long time if I hadn’t already been here for two months. I’m at the point in my trip where i feel less guilty for admitting (at least to myself) that I miss my peoples and home. Okay. So that’s out. I can do this.
So what have I neglected?

My last post of some substance mentioned Ceará Music, the huge annual music fest. I declined to go. I had several American and Brazilian friends who did go, and the Americans proceeded to get slapped and robbed, get lost, or make out with random women (depending on who you were). Two friends even ended up in the society pages of the newspaper, which isn’t uncommon for random white Americans, apparently.

That weekend, I chose to go to the movies instead. We saw the American Brian de Palma film “The Black Dahlia” which was laughably bad, despite Scarlet Johansson. Honestly. Mia Kirshner was in it, and I spent the whole movie thinking she was pretty good (although I completely didn’t recognize her) until afterwards when we discovered she was Jenny from the L word and I realized I had watched a 40s movie version of the same role, more or less. Sigh. After the movie, Charmaine, Lorena, Juan and I got something to eat and then headed to Club Europa, which happened to be the only club in town at the time with any people present and good music (I think part of the problem was that everyone was at Ceará Music instead of the clubs). Club Europe, we quickly realized, was a sex tourist club. As in, loud American and Latin American music (which we loved), specially catering to gross white European and American men who were pouncing on brown Brazilian women in tiiight short clothing. Despite the socio-political atmosphere, which someone could have (and has) written an ISP on, we had a bomb ass time, dancing it up but also being very pensive about the culture and economic structure that created the conditions of such rampant sex industry.

I may have forgotten to post about a party-ish thing I went to in Fortaleza, some Brazilian friends the advanced Portuguese class had made through class. This dude had a swank apartment, the nicer than some I’ve seen in the US. We chilled, ate sushi, watched manu chao concert dvd, among others, sang loudly to music I don’t know how I knew the words to (and sometimes didn’t know the words to), discussed life, the universe, and everything, fell asleep. It was a good night on the other side of town, for real. We ended up hanging out with those guys a few other times in Fortaleza, mainly at Dragão do Mar and also for Andrei’s birthday. Good people who inadvertently gave me a view on how the other other half lives in Brazil. So far, those guys are pretty much my only brazilian friends outside of host family and friend’s hosts families. This is an absolute tragedy and I blame the program and myself for it. I hope my isp gives me some good peoples to hang out with here. Or at least some courage.

Aside from that, there isn’t much to report of happenings in Fortaleza. I neglected to hit both Pirata (cheesy touristy pirate-themed club) and Cuba Libre (the cool-sounding salsa club), but will try to go to when I return to Fortaleza in a month. Two weeks or so ago, we went on our “excursion” to Recife, which is further south of Fortaleza in Pernambuco. Recife was really cool; we immediately liked it more than Fortaleza. We met the women’s group Grupo Mulher Maravilhosa, which was really inspiring. They’re a 31-year old group who work in their community to raise issues of human rights, especially as they pertain to race and gender (but also of class and sexuality). They’ve done a lot, working with the domestic rights laws to make sure they actually work for the women they address, educating people about their rights and systems of oppression, and giving kids political formation whilst teaching them about different professions. Aside from classes and our sessions with GMM, I didn’t do anything much but rent movies with people in my program and stay in the convent-run hotel (another one) complex. Sad. But the down time was really needed.
After a few days in Recife, we finally headed to Salvador. Salvador! Salvador is bigger than Fortaleza, and also blacker. Very visibly. It adds an incredibly different dimension to being here. In Fortaleza, much like the US, I had the “Invisible Man” affect, where you’re told you can do anything if you work hard, but you still end up under the powers-that-be’s shoes or scrutiny (depending on how you act) – invisible because they choose not to see you, or only choose to see you as a certain way. Here in Salvador, I feel much more visible and less of a lone floco here, although most people here can tell as soon as I open my mouth that I am American (other tourists, not so much). We’re staying right on the beach in an apartment. I am always hearing the roar of the sea, day and night. The best time to hit the beach is the morning or right when it gets dark before too late – there’s less people around and it can be calming. The sun can be intense here, but for the past few days it’s been overcast and rainy, which I’ve really enjoyed (although it really shuts shit down). I went to the beach when it was drizzly one morning and swam for excerise and it felt pretty good. I got off of that jogging thing. Maybe I’ll pick it back up in cali. We’ll see…

I haven’t really gone out out here either – I’ve been really lazy and low key a lot lately – but there’s lots of stuff to look forward to, including fun samba and other types of clubs, the strip of gay bars, afro-braz dance classes maybe, trips to the museums and theatres, as well as the various hip hop and candomblé events that I’ll learn about through my and my friend’s projects. Night life is more varied and vibrant here, not just the same sex tourist, regular tourist, or forró scenes (it seems like Fortaleza, despite whatever historical significance, is now just made to support a tourist culture and abrasive forró distractions for the natives that ended up there). I saw the National Cuban Ballet do Don Quixote a couple of nights ago here – it was pretty amazing and I am really fucking lucky. I’ve quickly figured out at least part of the “high art” scene here, and the popular and counter-culture scenes seem cool too.

Other news: Sex tourism is rampant though, and we’re much closer to it, staying in this richer touristy area than with host families like we did in Fortaleza. We do our best to avoid contact with the other Americans we’ve met at our favorite café/internet spot as we know what their intentions are for Salvador (we’ve overheard certain sketchy convos). On certain days, depending on what I’m wearing and if I’m alone, it seems like if I make eye contact with anybody they’ll start naming prices. Other days if I make eye contact, it seems like the Brazilian men won’t leave me alone until I buy something or hook them up with one of my white girl friends. Either that or it’s an older man who’s in love with me. quite the mixed kettle of fish. It’s hard, because you have to blame nobody and everybody for the state of things – the state of poverty for so many people permits sex work as a viable job, and the state of wealth everywhere sustains that. we get grossed out by the white guys and the slow, butchered Portuguese come ons, but they will get some in the end, and no matter how bored the girl looks, she’ll get paid. There’s no room for me to butt in and condemn the guys or any one else because it’s normalized here. How do you get rid of a centuries-old cultural construct? So, please, don’t ask me how the men are here. Some are cute. Some are not. A lot that we meet, native or not, are sketchy. that is not to say all guys here are sketchy, just a lot that we have met so far that may just be in this area. i mean, non-sketchyness doesn't advertise itself the way sketchiness does, you know? i'm hoping to meet some cool brazilian friends outside of this (touristy) area.

Queer life is a little more visible and accepted here, as evidenced by more stereotypically-queer looking people and the occasional rainbow flag. I haven’t really hit the gay district yet (they actually have one here) but I intend to. Like, soon. Pronto.

Here, we’ve met with the group CEAFRO, which deals with black women’s issues, especially in regards to domestic work. They’re a lot like GMM, only blacker and a little more militant. Also, the education runs differently – the women of CEAFRO are professors and stuff, while that was less likely in GMM. Also, Candomblé has a presence within this group as well, as well as stuff that deals with religious persecuted (hence, Candomblé). My advisor for my ISP is a prof that works with CEAFRO, and she’s pretty bomb (even though I said I would try to use that word less and bom more).

Black women here are more visible. There’s a greater variety of natural styles of hair and education levels and jobs and colors and on and on. You could be or do so much more of almost anything here (not to say that women are doing everything here in large numbers; the traditional isms are still cutting us down and leaving us out, but there is a sense of strength and presence here in certain pockets that I haven’t experienced in Fortaleza and have experienced to a very small extent in the US). Apparently, Salvador and the town Cachoeira (which we visited and is kind of like a more colonial, smaller scale Salvador, sort of. That’s not really a fair description, but I can’t think of a better one right now.) have received a lot of “Roots” tourism from Black folk in the US who come to learn about the Diaspora. Beautiful. That tourism, in turn, helped bolster rights for black people here, because black Americans wanted to see black Brazilians working and living around them, so hotel and restaurant and tour-leading people had to get off their racist-discriminatory asses and hire some black folk. Tourism redeems itself a little with that. It’s really beautiful to be here and affirm blackness, seeing people around me in this country with a similar racial history and know that we’re connected and capable and strong. Diasporas are beautiful, and we need to start uniting or affirming our connections over history.

Um, I had said I was going to post about the group dynamic and my own shit, but I don’t feel like it’s worth getting into right now. People have had various complaints about the program and the director and certain unlucky occurrences, but não me importa muito agora. Know that things are good, maybe even better, now that it’s just a few of us together in this apartment. (it’s actually just the people of color in the program living together in this apartment. Coincidence? But this does come with its fair share of heated discussions and grievances, of course.) I am able to have more alone time and do my own thing and indulge in my selfishness. I’ve been thinking a lot about my need for independence but also for change and to figure out what’s important so I can start being more responsible. Blah blah, I totally want to get home and see people I love and move out and get an apartment in LA or New York or México or something. I need to get out! But first: my isp. Which is going reallllly slowly, because I haven’t really met anyone yet (lots of exchanged emails though). Blah blah blah. I think this was a pretty good catch-up post.

I’ve been waking up hella early here. Sometimes I go to the beach before anyone wakes up, sometimes I just stare out the window (I love doing that from our apartment here). I’ll end with a pic:


This is one of several views from our 10th floor apartment, in the early morning after a nighttime thunderstorm. Lovely.

Ps. If anyone wants to email me the latest (and steamiest, yes?) episode of lost, I would love you forever (or at least until February, when the second half of the season starts). Abc.com only wants to let US viewers stream the eps for free.

Pps. my use of the word American in these posts (and else where) is problematic (as I’ve known before I even left the country), as I know that the term can be applied to a wide range of people, not just those from the states. I do try to say I’m from the states or the us as much as possible, but I lack an adjective / descriptor that clearly specifies this (although I do like the word norteamericana sometimes). Hello, US? Can we come up with an easy and non-ignorant way to say unitedstatesofamerican?