THE OTHER BRAZIL

THE OTHER BRAZIL

It’s been a long time since Brazil entered the list of places where one can go kitesurfing.

But today I want to talk about the other Brazil, this Brazil that, if you went only for kitesurfing, you will not be able to discover.   Me, the pioneer  by nature, was not satisfied with just going to Brazil and  kitesurfing.

There was more, much more than that. I went once, then I came back, and a third time and then I stayed to live there  6 years.  For this reason, in this writing I want to speak from another angle, from the human angle.

 

There are going to be five little stories that are not really important.  Just  a reminder that when we go on a kitesurfing trip to some distant place, and if what interests you is kitesurfing, still, you should not let other things, escape your attention.

Live, learn, contrast. Although it seemed that you don’t have much time for anything other than kitesurfing, at least you should try it.  We only live once, you shouldn’t forget.

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Neither in Copacabana beach nor in Ipanema, there is usually wind, as shown on the map of Rio de Janeiro.   The purple arrows indicate the most usual wind directions,  this is why it will be understood why there is usually no wind on those two beaches.

The most usual wind direction there is the one that coincides in coming from the area behind all the buildings, almost all of them 20 stories high and more, which make impossible for any “clean” wind to reach the beach.

Altough there’s a chance especially when the weather gets warmer, mostly at noon and on the outside, that is, not applying to Copacabana or Ipanema but on Barra de Tijuca beach that it will be created a sort ot thermal and being able to blow 10 to 12 knots side onshore from the left,  but enough to have a session, especially if like nowadays, almost everubody if riding on a surf board and with the sole intention of riding the waves, which in Barra are much bigger than in the other city beaches.

I am also uploading here on this post, a link about what was my last trip to Brazil, this time, many years after, back in 2013.  Starting in Rio, at  Barra de Tijuca beach, which is where the wind blows.
But don’t click on the link yet please, better keep reading here under until the end of the report, when you have finished reading everything, then you can check about our last trip.

Sadly, there’s no wind at the famous beaches in Rio, but what there is, is football, soccer with a volleyball-type net in between, this… and wave surfing even though the waves are not the best in the world, but at the end of Ipanema beach, in Leblon to be more precisely, it is where waves enter with better orientation than in the majority of beaches in the beaches of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

On the other beaches towards North and on Flamengo and Botafogo beaches, and then, much further, on the beach of San Corrado, on the Southern part of Rio, soccer is also played in the sand.   But this last beach, San Corrado, is in front of the largest favela in Rio, so visiting it is completely ruled out because of how dangerous the whole area is.

So, with a ball they play with the feet, with their knees, with their shoulders and with their chest, and they play at a very high level, they are great players,all of them, man and women, because they practice it from a very young age, mostly playing in couples although the normal thing is that there are 3 or 4 players on each side of the net.

But this report is not going to be about soccer neither, neither wind,  nor kitesurfing.

What I write down here is bound to remember that saying: man does not live olny from bread.
Neither bread… nor wind … There are other things in life and these lines have that purpose, to help us remember it.

Actually, all this writing I am going to divide it into several parts. Each one is going to be a different story, and they come from memories that come to my mind, sometimes, mostly around midnight, when I’ve stop working, answering e-mails from people who want to take lessons of kitesurfing, done new uploads of other reports on the blog, the small repairs of kitesurfing equipment and all that, because… after all, what are we, but … slaves of our memory?

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Ok, here is the first of this stories:

Due to the detail of the pavement, in the video that we will see a little later, it can be seen that it must be the promenade beach front of Copacabana, which is where Tom Jobim had his home and where the musician Jaques Morelembaum together with his wife, Paula and the pianist Ryuichi chose to record their LP Morelembaum2-Sakamoto: Casa

But let’s continue… I, really, was more from Ipanema beach than from Copacabana.  To be exact, I lived on the beach front of Leblón, which is that part of the beach where, further south, Ipanema changes its name, and there, on Borges de Medeiros street, where the canal known as “El Jardin de Alla” separates the two pieces of the same beach, that’s where I lived. On the corner with Ataulfo de Paiva street. Who could Ataulfo be? …I don’t know, I never did find out…

I also remember, despite the certain distance until the sand and the 14-story height, that is where my apartment was, the rumble of the shoreline wave when it broke, was like a clock that did not stop, marking relentlessly the passing of the hours of the night.

In the morning, at 11 o’clock, every day, I was already waiting on the sidewalk for the “executive bus” to pass, picking up those who could afford to pay the extra money that the bus ticket costed, that air conditioned vehicle which would take me to Barra de Tijuca beach, which is where the kitesurfing scene was.

In the second beach bar, at the beginning of Barra de Tijuca, is where the kitesurfing action took place and where Marcelo Cunha, a renowned local kiter, had his school and it was there that, at that time, back then in  1998-99, you could see the projected 16.4 meter area Wipika kites, because back then people were not shy about using  a big size kite.

Now, everyone uses kites of a maximum size of 12 meters, and it is not that there is more wind now than before. It’s  because everyone is riding a surfboard and they just want to ride the waves, so big size kites and twin-tip kitesurf boards just don’t interest them anymore.

But let’s get back to our stories, what life was back then.   In fact, as at that time it was the beginning of internet, not like now, when, whatever you are looking for, you can always find it on Google, if you wanted to discover the chords of a bossa nova song you had to listen to the record or cassette and find the chords yourself on the guitar.

This, or buy some chords book, which weren’t easy to find either -nor even find where to buy the book of chords- and get those chords in writing, but for that you also needed to have the songs first, to be able to listen them througly in order to guess which were the chords … and that’s where things became even more complicated.

So you had to walk streets and more streets looking for music stores where they had old records or cassettes of bossa nova, a music that had its heyday back in the 1960s, and in that Rio to which I had returned for the second time, this time in the year 2000, you had to walk the streets until yo’d be able to find one of this stores, more likely a second-hand music store, and there, look for -and find if you were lucky- the music you wanted, to end up trying it later on my guitar.

Ryuichi al piano y Paula y Jacques … the song’s name: “O grande amor”.

In this first story, what I want is to remember a specific night, in which I had decided to go out for a walk and go see some live music.

This, in principle, should have taken place in what was then known as: Bar Vinicius, a bar with live bossanova music, of which I was a frequent customer, by the way, not far from where I lived… but this day not, so, so I decided to try a new place.

I took a taxi and gave the taxi driver the address of the music venue that I had chosen reading in the pages of the Rio newspaper, but after a while and despite the fact that it was my first time in Rio, I understood that the taxi driver was trying to trick me and taking me in the opposite direction from where we were supposed to go.

I pointed it out to him, but it was no use, the taxi driver insisted on taking me to other place instead to the adress I gave him, although I supposed it was not going to be a kidnapping, without doubt it was going to be a large sum of money at the end of the ride , if I let him continue with his plan.

Therefore, in an act of courage, taking advantage of the fact that the taxi had to stop at a red light, opened the door of the taxi and  get out quickly, without stopping or looking back again.

I can imagine the anger and frustration of the taxi driver, but in an instant, I had already crossed Viera Souto Avenue, which is the one that runs parallel to Ipanema beach, and in a moment I had mixed with the people who were walking on the sidewalk, and with it, become untraceable so that the cheater taxi driver couldn’t continue with his plans.

… to realize that, a few meters from where I was, it was the Laura Alvim Culture House, a place that I had not even heard of then but, given the circumstances, perhaps it was the most advisable thing, to disappear from the scene .

And, as it turned out, at that moment it seems that there was a live music concert there, already started, and a box office where you could buy a couple of tickets… so: why not?

I entered a room half full of people, a large space, but not too large, and it was almost completely dark and the place had tables and chairs all around, while in the center, illuminated by a soft light, there was a figure that with a guitar, was interpreting music. I sat down in the first vacant place I found and…

Wonderful!  … What that man was playing was… how to express it?   It seemed like that story of the Pied Piper of Hameln, that old story of someone who, playing the flute, made the rats follow him, delighted with what they were listening…

To cut a long story short, that was one of those evenings that are never forgotten in life.   What wonderful music!, what a masterful interpretation! What a voice! … what sweetness in the songs he played, in the chords, in the arpeggios and what an unparalleled guitar!

The artist’s name was Vitor Ramil, he played his own music and was originally from the southern part of Brazil, from Porto Alegre, where his inhabitants are known as: Gauchos.

A link to one of the songs of that magical night:

 

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It was not until the bus arrived that I was not sure at all… when I was already sitting inside the bus… neither.    Sweating like a horse after a race, squashed between the people that filled the bus and not even sure if I was heading in the right direction, I couldn’t help but remember Arlindo, the taxi driver.

Arlindo!    Indeed, an unreliable character… Brazilian taxi drivers are like that, and the worst part of the story is that the fact of being a taxi driver and going after the dollar as if his life depended on it, did not prevent him from forgetting about me and left me waiting like an abandoned dog, in front of the entrance of my apartment, waiting more than an hour for that taxi that will never come…

And that is easy to guess, because the man was busy with other things and had forgotten about me.    So much talking to convince me and take me to see the training of a samba group… to finally get over me…

Because I had to walk streets and streets and even change buses twice until I finally got in the right direction, with the fear that I had that any criminal would rob me at gunpoint anywhere, which, in fact, it could be possible, although nothing happened to me.

I calculate that I traveled at least 25 or 30 km from where I lived, on the beach of Leblón, to the neighborhood of Olaria, headquarters of the Cacique de Ramos bloco.

I finally arrived at Rua Uranus, in the middle of the favela!
Ok, everything there looked like favelas to me, in fact, from where I had taken the first bus, leaving what is known as the South zone, that is, the first line of the beach, everything seemed like a favela, which, sometimes it wasn’t, a favela, not at all, but… the ignorance of the city that I had at that time, due to the big city that Rio is, together with the news that were so frequently in the newspapers about crime and terrible things that happened  … had its effect on my European imagination.

 

You should see how big city Rio is!    And that had only been the first part of the trip … to see how I was going to solve the trip back to my home, since that was necessarily going to happen at night and very late… mmm… things didn’t look good

Actually, the whole idea of going there and seeing the rehearsal of what would later become the parade of the Samba school at the “Sambodromo” had been Arlindo’s own.

He was the one who messed me up: I had to go see the bloco, I had to attend a rehearsal… I had to attend a “samba de roda” and see the pagode group live: Fundo de Quintal and their incredible pagoda/samba

Well, I was there, June 17, 2001, a day that coincided with I don’t know what claim of the population against the city council for wanting to increase the price of the bus and that it would redound to the detriment of the entire people who travel by bus in Rio and also from the members of the bloco -or samba school- that is, from all those who have given their lives and their reason for living  to the arrival of the Carnival and also, of course? how else could be? to what happens over the weekend with Flamengo or Botafogo or whatever their football team was.

http://caciquederamos.com   

In the end, as I said before…nothing bad happened to me. I joined the party, as one more, I enjoyed the pagode, -pagode is a style of music-, although outside of Brazil only Samba is known.   So … I had 3 caipirinhas that left me a little more affected than I expected and … Arlindo the taxi driver, in the end, answered his cell phone and came to pick me up before someone robbed me or did something bad to me , some of those thousands of Indians, and… I’m saying thousands, because the bloco was something to be seen, a tremendous number of people, and that was just a rehearsal.

 

By the time they parade in the Carnival, they can mobilize up to half a million people. Here I upload a link so you understand what I’m talking about. Cacique of Ramos … and the group Fundo do Quintal.

and… here is a detail of the performance of the Pagode group …. because it is about the music and the dance, about that and about the rehearsals for the Carnival parade… that moment when O Bira, name of the man who plays the pandeiro, and who was at the same time the president of the bloco, when he stops in the middle of the stage and starts dancing with that samba step…. What a rhythm! … can there be a rhythm, a more spectacular cadence? … qui-ri-qui-tum qui-ri-qui-ta! … qui-ri-qui-tum qui-ri-qui-ta! ….

and a photo 100 meters from my street, already on the boulevard just where Leblón began, at sunset with the “Dos Irmaos” -the silhouette of the two mountains in the background-

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It must have been December 22th or 23th ,  year 2004, when that Belgian guy and his wife arrived at the hotel, she was Brazilian and pregnant, it was not long before their baby should born.   After a while,  the Belgian guy became interested in the kitesurfing course after seeing the beach action and the kite parking that had sneaked into the piece of beach in front of the hotel.

All this, despite the fact that I had tried to mark, without success on my part that space with a roll of plastic tape with red and white stripes that, from coconut tree to coconut tree and in the direction hotel-beach shore, because I wanted to leave that space so that the hotel guests could cross without having to jump over the kites and the mess of lines and bars that were scattered everywhere around.

Nothing, vain pretense, that was a jungle of kites, kite boards and lines, to the point that when I wanted to teach a lesson I had to go 200 meters from in front of the school, where there was an area of ​​sand free of obstacles .

The next day we started lessons and during breaks, which religiously took place at the beach bar of the Golfinho hotel, which is where I had my kitesurfing school, he told me what the main object of his vacation in Fortaleza was.

The Belgian guy had a company in Luxembourg and was dedicated to the subject of plastering false ceilings and throughout the year he was asking among his clients to obtain donations of money to do a good deed when he arrived in Brazil for Christmas.

It is already known that in the country where the man lived -Luxembourg- there are few poor people. So, our hero, proselytizing about his cause among his clients, was getting voluntary financial contributions to…  once at Christmas and in Brazil, buy all the toys he was capable of and so, dressed as Santa Claus, on December 25th, go to the farthest reaches of the interior of the state of Ceará and bring a little hope and joy to those poor children.

Since I thought it was a really great idea and since on the 25th, I had proposed myself not to work, I went with him to see what was going on.

How could I imagine the way these people lived!, even though I had been in the country for five years and I thought I had seen it all… but no, although the poverty of the 621 favelas in Fortaleza is something truly shocking., the poverty of the people who lived in the country side was… something else.

Those people who had been born there and had stayed there, all their lives, subsisting in what could really be called “in the middle of nowhere” with almost nothing to eat, escaped human comprehension, a curious contrast when compared, for example, with the calçadao -or sidewalk of the avenue promenade- that runs along the beach of Fortaleza and the “skyline” of skyscrapers of designs so advanced that they are not even seen in Europe.

I went back to the hotel realizing how lucky I was,  we are, I mean, and feeling a great pity for all those disinherited from life and great respect for that Belgian guy who, without anyone having asked him, and with a figure that I believe recall was around 14,000 euros, he was in charge, during the following 6 or 7 days, together with the logistical help of an NGO in the area and several trucks, to carry the toys, as well as many sacks of rice, feijao (black beans), flour and basic food items so that those poor people could have Christmas parties, and when I say “poor” I know that no one can imagine what I am referring to.

If there is a heaven for good people when they die, at least a bit of that heaven, it must be waiting for that Belgian guy.

And to celebrate that remembering that taking care of and educate children is always a good idea because one day they will be older and if we have treated and educated well, this will always have a positive effect on society, this is why I write this lines.

And … nothing better than a video of Zeca Pagodinho where … He also says: There is no ugliest thing than the one who is complaining … even though his belly is full.

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