Back in Brazil, in my girlfriend's rural hometown. It's alright, if a little Catholic, and her mum runs the prayer sessions at the church, whilst the neighbours are idol-smashing evangelists. There are five churches here, which is remarkable since there is almost nothing else - a chemist, a construction shop, a supermarket, but no internet shop. Subsistence farming is all that there was a few decades ago.
My parents came here once, and one night we went out for caipirinhas - rum and lime and sugar and ice. After various aunts and cousins had managed to source some limes from amongst their various in-laws and grandchildren, we were sitting amongst the cowboys at a spit and sawdust bar, sipping our iceless caipirinhas, and my dad asked how the town came to be founded.
"There was a drought," said the oldest cowboy, chewing a piece of straw (seriously, he was). "It was so dry that we had to go all the way to Aracuai to get food, and the animals were dying. So we raised a holy cross, that one by the square. Everyone from around the valley went down to the river and took a stone to the foot of the cross so that it might rain. But it still didn't rain, so we buried a kilo of salt and prayed to Saint Sebastian, and the drought came to an end. That is why this place is called São Sebastião da Boa Vista."
My father was left speechless. He and the cowboy, both in their mid-sixties, were trying to communicate across an abyss of incompatible perspective.
The other day, my girlfriend found the original flag of Saint Sebastian discarded in a field - it is seventy years old, the oldest thing the town produced, and no-one gives a monkeys. Whatever culture there was has been swamped by TV, and Brazilian soap operas espouse the same values that Dynasty exported a few decades ago. Her father grew up literally naked in the forest, he used to hide when people passed by because he had no clothes. He never learned to read, but he quite happily hides in a tree for six hours straight, making the calls of various birds, waiting for an armadillo to stray into his shotgun sights.
His son watches cartoons every day and plays playstation religiously. He is the result of an incredible apocalypse, from subsistence farming to Woody Woodpecker, in fifty years.
Where is it all going though?
My parents came here once, and one night we went out for caipirinhas - rum and lime and sugar and ice. After various aunts and cousins had managed to source some limes from amongst their various in-laws and grandchildren, we were sitting amongst the cowboys at a spit and sawdust bar, sipping our iceless caipirinhas, and my dad asked how the town came to be founded.
"There was a drought," said the oldest cowboy, chewing a piece of straw (seriously, he was). "It was so dry that we had to go all the way to Aracuai to get food, and the animals were dying. So we raised a holy cross, that one by the square. Everyone from around the valley went down to the river and took a stone to the foot of the cross so that it might rain. But it still didn't rain, so we buried a kilo of salt and prayed to Saint Sebastian, and the drought came to an end. That is why this place is called São Sebastião da Boa Vista."
My father was left speechless. He and the cowboy, both in their mid-sixties, were trying to communicate across an abyss of incompatible perspective.
The other day, my girlfriend found the original flag of Saint Sebastian discarded in a field - it is seventy years old, the oldest thing the town produced, and no-one gives a monkeys. Whatever culture there was has been swamped by TV, and Brazilian soap operas espouse the same values that Dynasty exported a few decades ago. Her father grew up literally naked in the forest, he used to hide when people passed by because he had no clothes. He never learned to read, but he quite happily hides in a tree for six hours straight, making the calls of various birds, waiting for an armadillo to stray into his shotgun sights.
His son watches cartoons every day and plays playstation religiously. He is the result of an incredible apocalypse, from subsistence farming to Woody Woodpecker, in fifty years.
Where is it all going though?
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