Into South America by Motorcycle Granja Ceara Brazil

Our Journal

Granja

The next day we spent at the river jumping off the bridge. We were swarmed by kids the whole day asking questions non-stop. Here are some of my favorites…

Do you speak all the languages?

I see you have a compass on your watch, is that because sometimes you wake up and don’t remember where you are?

And then one of the older guys got really frustrated as I couldn’t understand him. He kept saying I don’t understand anything while the others disagreed, that you just had to speak loud and clear. So with crinkled forehead he forced his words out slowly and loudly. All of a sudden, a light went on and he smiled and said, “Ohhhhh, you can understand some of the words I say, but you don’t understand all of them!”

"What language do they speak in Venezuela?"

"Is Venezuela near Italy?"

At the river, we met a teacher at the local high school. One her daughters, a university student, grilled me in a political discussion about the US, Brazil, and Cuba. Any American traveling through Latin America should be prepared for this, you’ll get it a lot from University folk. Cuba is often idealized whose failure to produce economically isn’t because of an oppressive dictatorship but because of a long standing US blockade, intervention, and bullying. Earlier this year Brazil temporarily changed their visa policy for tourists, responding to new restrictions on Brazilians entering the states. For a week or so tourists were delayed for hours while they were fingerprinted and photographed. An American Airlines pilot made the mistake of shooting the finger at television cameras, an image that played repeatedly in the media. Meanwhile tourists were greeted with lays and kisses welcoming them to Brazil. But this is mostly on the political level and day to day encounters are overwhelmingly positive.

By the time the forro concert rolled around we were well known in town. The moto boys quickly grabbed us and introduced us to everyone. The girls wanted to dance but as soon as they saw we didn’t know much about forro we were quickly passed to the not so attractive friend. Four fights broke out, one involving the police, and as always, dancing went on the whole time, The drinking was intense and it went until dawn ending with the boys at a spot on the river to watch the sun rise.

We ended up staying in Granja for a few days getting shown around by motoboys, invited to lunches in family’s houses, trips to the river, football games, hanging out on the plaza at night watching capoeira, walking around. An older guy Wagner came by to pick us up and drove us to towns in the interior only accessible by dirt road. We stopped at a family’s house and took them out to a swimming hole. We sampled all the fruit in their backyard, some homemade cheese, and coconut juice. The family had a lot of ducks and insisted that we take on back with us to eat. A couple of days later Wagner had us over for lunch for the duck. His wife had killed as he couldn’t bring himself t do it. Wagner has lived in different part of Brazil working as a mechanic for 20 years and has driven all over the country. Pictures in their family album show him as a hippie with long hair and some wacked out clothes from the 70’s in front of his Mustang. On the same street live six of his brothers and sisters who all have families and his mother lives in an adjoining house. Every night, the chairs are pulled out in front of the mother’s house and the whole family sits and talks. It’s a party every night. One thing I’ve noticed that Brazilians have over other latins is that they are intensely curious about the outside world. The brothers held nightly discussions and asked all kinds of questions. It helped that Wagner had a deaf daughter who sort of spoke and house signed at the same time. But a lot of the time, the small town dialect and rapid conversation left me lost.

In the weeks before Christmas bands of children wander around town at night performing Boi. Explaining this is difficult since the locals don’t even know how it originated or what it actually means but a bunch of masked boys dance around a dancing bull telling jokes and pulling people up to dance with the bull. There are songs accompanied by drums and a triangle. There are multiple groups and close to Christmas we were seeing two, sometimes three Boi performances a night.

Hospitality for these people means that if a stranger shows up at the house at mealtime, he is sat down and served the first and biggest portion, not important that someone else may not eat that meal or have to go looking at another relative’s house for food.