My First Visit to Brazil, Part 7: Impressions of Brazil

Hi all,

My days in Rio passed quickly, and then one evening Marisa was driving me to Galeão to catch my return flight home.

It seemed almost surreal to be returning to the US. My life there, my job, all of it seemed to be from another lifetime. It was as if I’d stepped into an alternate universe.

It is difficult to explain, but I felt as though when I visited Brazil, I had come home, and now I was leaving home, instead of returning to it. Yes, I still spoke only a few dozen words of the language, and many things were still strange to me, but I felt comfortable in Brazil. I liked it. A lot.

I knew after that first trip that one day I would call Brazil my home. The wonder is that it took so long to make the move a reality.

People – Brazilians as well as Americans – often ask me why I love Brazil so much. I’ve given this a good bit of thought over the years. In a future post I’ll list several reasons, but the top two are:

1) The natural beauty of this country is staggering. You have beaches of every type imaginable, but also mountains, forests, waterfalls, everything. And it is still possible to find beautiful nooks that are not yet commercialized. Sometimes in the US it feels as if everything has a price tag on it.

2) The people as a whole are very accepting, welcoming, and live-and-let-live. This last quality I found extremely refreshing. In the US, too many people care too much what the other guy is doing or thinking. There is great pressure to think, act, and buy like the group, in short, to confirm. In Brazil, you are freer to be who you are. (More on this in future posts.) And on a related note, I found that people were much more interested in knowing the real me. People don’t just ask questions designed to determine your income. They want to know what makes you tick, what sort of person you are. And they are typically quite accepting.

Brazil is of course not perfect, and at that time it was struggling under rampant inflation (a trite expression, but I think 30% a month qualifies) and all of the concomitant problems: No savings, difficulty planning for the future, etc.

But I looked around and said to myself, “ If the government ever gets its act together, this place will really be something.” Brazil has a lot going for it. It has, for example, natural resources out the wazoo. Land, water, minerals, precious and semi-precious stones, and more. In recent years, large reserves of petroleum and natural gas have been discovered just offshore. Brazil still struggles with entrenched government corruption, but things are improving. Inflation is under control, and the middle class is growing. The average person on the street is optimistic – but optimism, of course, is a basic Brazilian trait.

And the people are clever and are not lazy, as North Americans like to imagine. Brazil and other “third-world countries” in fact are likely to give us complacent, TV-watching couch potatoes a real run for our money in the coming years. Brazil’s star, as I predicted, is on the rise. There is, for those who have vision and are not afraid to work, a lot of opportunity here.

Is there perhaps opportunity for you here? A new life? Come visit and see what you think.

Ate breve. Um abraço, (Until soon. A hug)

John

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