Reminiscenses

Just the other day, in class, Flora and I were talking about events that happened in our childhood. She mentioned her first day at school and I was impressed by her eidetic memory. My visual memory is way worse than hers. Now, please let me tell you the figments that I still remember about my first day at primary school. It was 1968. Exactly the year that we saw bunches of students out in the streets protesting and, according to my father, making a big mess. Of course I didn't understand a thing, but in a a way I could sense there was something really weird going on. Something in the air, that made adults lower their voices or even stop talking when children were around. Furthermore, there was a moment of profound grief when a young nextdoor who used to play ball with us simply disappear, vanished from university, went to class and never came back. There was a general mourning, very similar to the one I had just seen when my granny died, except for the boy's body strangely never showed up. On that year, an uncle came to live with us for a while because he had been approved as a student at medical school. My parents used to host young relatives who came to study in the "big city". The thing is, on the day that I thought was my uncle's first day of class, he came home barely standing on his own feet, smelling like a pig, covered with flour and eggs, paint and godknowswhatelse! It took me some time to recover from the shock, especially because of his lovely Roberto Carlos hairstyle totally shaved! If you know this Brazilian students tradition, you will picture it. In my mind my uncle had done a huge mess. This time, we all heard my father talking to him, out, loud and clear. Students shouldn't talk too much, or be friends with people they did not know well. My father would always advise us to stay out of trouble, whilst my mother would remind us to take a jacket along. A few days later it was my turn to start school. Up till then I had gone to kinder garden - as preschool used to be called. It doesn't count as school because it was only playing, says my eldest brother. One year and a half of "knowing-it-all" ahead of me, my brother had told me about school rules and punishment (he was expert in the latter). I knew from the beginning there was going to be trouble because, so far, I had never been able to remember rules or behave like a lady. Can you imagine me at the age of 6 or 7, having to stand still, in line, without talking, or, worse still, without smiling too much? I felt was sure to come back home bald, painted and so miserable I would not stand upright. I did not want to talk to anybody, or look at no one. I was so terrified that they would make me disappear if I said something that was not to be said, or if I were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Well, there I was, tinny and skinny, standing in line, holding hands with my uncle, trembling so much that people could hear my knees clicking against each other. So said my uncle. I remember it slightly. As this has become one of the family's favourite tales, I'm quite sure my uncle exaggerates when he acts it out, year after year in the annual family get together. Although I can almost feel my knees shaking when I think back about those days. Who wouldn't have imagined things? And, besides, who isn't a bit afraid of what is yet to come? To Flora

Our eleventh man

Around here, we’re quite used to foreigners moving in and out. Globe trotters, tourists immigrants, refugees from all sorts of places, with all diversity, they have a lot in common, they all have to face barriers and frontiers that go from subtle to very strong and even astonishing, just for being expats. I distinctly remember this African guy that I met in the 1980`s. He was one of the Higher Education Exchange Program students at UnB. Even though he spoke Portuguese, like all of us, he did it in a very peculiar way, a mix of the Portugal pronunciation with the creole intonation, which resulted on something difficult to understand sometimes. We became friends easily, though, for from the beginning, he never missed any of our political students’ meetings, where he really fitted in. The students from the Exchange Program were all male, which made it a little bit harder for us, girls of the pedagogy course, to socialize. Usually, the gender barrier is as strong as the ethnic one, despite modern premises, so, most girls had an ambiguous attitude towards my friend. They wanted to integrate, but maybe just didn’t know how to do it properly. They wanted him to feel accepted but instead they made him feel like an outsider. And besides, he was extra shy. Some were just nasty and started laughing at his way of talking. They mocked his shyness too. Worse than taking the mick out of him, I believe, was that some people would just leave him talking alone, all by himself, in the middle of a sentence - I recall two or three people doing it - simply because there was a general idea that he was not understandable at all. Well, if on one hand my friend had problems making friends among the girls, on the other hand it was no big deal being accepted among the boys. In a couple of days the only barrier he had to face was one of that protects the other team’s goal. Apparently, in the male field it doesn’t matter in what language you’re yelling, as long as one can keep the ball on one’s feet moving and away from the adversary. My friend did more than that. As he happened to be one the greatest football players back there in his country. He even had taken part in international competitions in communist countries. Once he told us that in one of his trips to compete in Russia, people would surround him in the streets asking the funniest questions about his color and they would ask rub his skin to check if any black ink might come out. Meanwhile, he thought to himself how come people were so white, almost transparent, so one could see their tiny little red and blue veins! Immediately after telling us this story in class, he became our eleventh man! Our hero, our savior, the one that would honor our house forever, the living memory of our dear “faculdade de educação”! At that time, our male teams always needed to borrow male players from other courses. If my memory serves me well, it was because some of our boys would rather play in the girls’ teams – much more fun! At a certain limit, boys were allowed in female teams, while girls were 100% prohibited in male teams. For once in a lifetime, we had a complete male soccer team. And it was not only that, we also won our one and only glorious CUP in history, for first place in a soccer competition. After that, my African-hero-friend had no problems to grab girls’ attention for a while. Which makes me wonder, why, after all, women don’t usually like football, eh? To Matheus Last week we were jogging our memories before talking about how easy or how difficult it is to live abroad. Someone mentioned that the bullying foreign students suffer in Brazilian schools is very similar to the one Brazilian students get when they`re studying abroad. The activity in class made me open the doors of memory and immediately start walking down memory lane. I picked up one story that came back to me to share with you. I always knew, for some reason, I`d have this story written before I reach eternity.