Impactful Author José Saramago Dies at 87

Portuguese author and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, whose chilling Ensaio sobre a cegueira was published in English as Blindness, and later made into the movie of the same name, died today at his home in the Canary Islands. Usually, his stories analyzed human behavior in the face of incredible circumstances, such as the plague of sudden "white blindness" that hits an unnamed city in Blindness. Saramago outlined the disintegration of society as both the inability to see and the accompanying wave of uncertainty sweeps through the population, with the book being much more disturbing and graphic than the film (i.e. read the damn book, slackers!).

The movie version, released in 2008 with Julianne Moore and Danny Glover, was filmed mostly in São Paulo because of the city's relative lack of distinguishable landmarks (for most people outside of Brazil), which supports an atmosphere of urban placelessness that is the reason for Saramago's omission of proper nouns in the novel; the events portrayed could essentially happen anywhere.

Like Gabriel García Márquez, Saramago was a master of magical realism, making fantasy tangible in the lives of his protagonists, but unlike Gabo's fanciful Caribbean dreamscapes, Saramago danced around the fringes of nightmare and sometimes crossed over into the darkness. Get thee to a library and get lifted!

Here's the trailer from the film:


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An Afternoon in Brasília, Part Deux -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With the Paycheck I Just Got

I know the numbers are hard to read, but let's try and follow along anyway, shall we?

Mode of Transport
Green Line = Bus
Red Line = Foot

1. Spot where the bus dropped me off in the vaguely-named block, SHIS QI 15, for a doctor's appointment (Brasília's full of vaguely-named blocks. "SHIS" means South Sector of Individual Habitations in Portuguese. Don't know what the "QI" stands for). Time, 5:30pm. Appointment, 6:15pm.

2. Point where I realized that I was entering SHIS QI 13, and not headed towards Bloco "O" in QI 15, the location of the doctor's office. Decided to head towards the lone commercial strip in the block and ask for directions.

3. Point within the commercial strip where I encountered at least four people who either couldn't give me directions to where I was going, or gave me convoluted directions in a language I didn't understand. In addition, there was no ATM in this commercial strip and I had no cash; therefore, a cab was out of the question. My appointment was in 15 minutes. I found a lady who spoke rudimentary English who told me I could walk to the office in about 20 and pointed me in the right direction.

4. Point where got pissed at seeing the bus stop where I'd disembarked a mere 35 minutes before.

5. Point where I stopped and wondered if turning right would mean a short cut. I continued straight, of course.

6. I got to the gotdamn medical park and spent another 15 minutes running from building to building asking people in white coats where my doctor was located, only to have them tell me with pained faces, "You know what, honestly, I don't really know. Ask the doorman." Y'all don't know shit in Brazil, do ya? Time of arrival at doctor's office, 6:20pm. Appointment, 6:15pm. I wish somebody would have told me I had to reschedule.

Liked that? Read about another afternoon I had recently in Brasília.

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An Afternoon in Brasília -or- Why I'm Gettin' A Car With My Next Paycheck

Like Florida and California and any other sun-shiney place that boomed in the 50s and 60s, Brasília's spread way, way out. So an afternoon of running errands without your own private vehicle just might look like this:

12:00pm - You finish work early with the anticipation of making a deposit at the bank, stopping by the TAM office downtown to pay for a plane ticket that can't get paid through the website because of a glitch, and pick up tickets for Saturday's tango and milonga event at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (because if you wait until Friday, they'll be sold out...trust).

12:15pm - A kindly coworker whose waiting for her own lift to the airport offers you a ride to the bank, which is on the way. That's 3 reais (pronounced hay-ICE...as of May 25, 2010, USD 1 = BRL 1.85) and at least 30 minutes of walking/waiting/bus time saved.

12:30pm - The friend arrives to pick you and your coworker up. They chat about flying up to Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, to work on a government project and return two days later.

12:50pm - You arrive at the bank, take a number, almost make it to the counter when some relatively-healthy-looking 50-year-old shows up and gets to skip you because he's "elderly," but aside from that, you make the deposit with relative ease.

1:15pm - You run out to the bus stop to make sure you catch the bus actually headed to where you're going. The first bus that passes is not one that's going where you're going.

1:35pm - Neither is the second.

1:50pm - Neither is the third.

1:53pm - A small car with three women and a male driver pulls up and yells, "Rodoviaria" (which means bus station, which is where you're going). You say, "sim" and one of the ladies squeezes in the back while you squeeze into the front seat with the broken seatbelt and hope to high heavens that homeboy doesn't wreck the car. Oh, and your knees are pressed into the dashboard, so really, you wouldn't go anywhere if there were to be an accident, you'd just have shattered kneecaps.

2:10pm - You arrive at the Rodoviaria, thank your driver and tup him the R$3 you would have paid the bus driver, then navigate the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília, dodging cars, soaking up sun, and feeling heady about the fact that you're navigating the few blocks through the concrete ant farm that is downtown Brasília.

2:22pm - You get to the TAM office, located at the once-grand Hotel Nacional, and take a number: 162. They're now serving number 148.

3:40pm - You leave TAM, ticket in hand, but got-damn if it wasn't like pulling teeth to get them to waive the R$30 "administrative fee" for processing a ticket that you should have been able to do yourself, if it hadna been for that glitch. Cute office manager, though.

3:42pm - The free "hourly" shuttle bus to CCBB, which is located way off in BFE, despite its rich and profound cultural programming doesn't come until 4:50pm. You say, "screw that," and walk back to the Rodoviaria. There's gotta be a bus heading that way.

3:58pm - You ask a couple of random, blue-shirted bus drivers which greenhound is headed for the CCBB until you score; the driver of your chariot agrees to drop you off as close to your final destination as possible.

4:16pm - The driver drops you off as close to your final destination as possible: on the side of a six-laned highway with traffic zooming by at, I don't know, 100 kilometers per hour and the CCBB squarely on the opposite side of that highway and a barbed wire fence. Lucky for you, the sun's starting to hide behind some clouds, so that should cool things down a bit.

4:19pm - You dash across three lanes, then straddle the middle divide.

4:21pm - You dash across the other three lanes.

4:36pm - You arrive at the ticket booth of the CCBB because it's located on the exact opposite side of the complex from where you crossed the highway and have to circle the entire thing on foot. Brasília really does hate pedestrians.

4:40pm - Tickets purchased! Next free shuttle bus departure back to downtown is at 5:50pm. The free wifi is out. You've got paperwork for your job to do while you wait, and eat an overpriced pancake wrapped around some chicken and cheese at the gallery cafe.

5:25pm - The shuttle bus arrives, but the driver says it isn't leaving for another 25 minutes. Real quick, snap some pictures of the twilight sky being covered over with rain clouds and some of those cool cosmic-clover streetlights they have all over Brazil.

5:50pm - It's actually pouring rain, uncharacteristically, since it's supposed to be the dry season. The bus departs. You can't see shit out the windows.

6:28pm - After fighting through a sea of flashing tail lights, the shuttle arrives at the drop-off point closest to your house: a taxi stand near the subway station at which there are no taxis standing. It's still raining, but not pouring. Some people are like, "screw that," and walk out into it. You do, too.

6:35pm - You're walking faster than the pack of cars inching along the road next to you and you're glad you didn't waste money just sitting in a cab. Your shirt's getting soaked, though.

6:49pm - You arrive home, your three goals accomplished.

Total elapsed time: 6 hours, 49 minutes.

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5 is Never Enough

Many Americans might think the question of how many continents exist on Earth should be settled (of course, the demotion of Pluto as a planet a few years back ought to remind everybody that even "established" facts can change). But in Latin America, where I've lived and worked since 2005, the established number of continents students learn is five: Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and...America.

Already, us United Statesians are considered arrogant for claiming "American" as a nationality, when it's seen as a continentality akin to "European" for most in the rest of the hemisphere (that's a whole other post), so trying to separate the Americas is viewed as a knock against Latin Americans: "North Americans don't want to be on the same continent as Latinos." This, of course, conveniently ignores the grouping of Central America and the Caribbean, regions soaked in Latin-based languages and their associated cultures, soundly in North America.

I've had arguments with both students and other professors regarding this slight difference in continental calculation. Fivers argue that America should be counted as one landmass because it's so separate from the others, and that Europe, Asia, and Africa—all three of which are connected to each other—should be counted separately because of the varied cultures. Poor Antarctica is consigned to continental limbo because she has no human population native to her frozen expanses.

I, a staunch sevener, counter that technically, there should be four continents, since the very word comes from the Latin, terra continens (thanks, AskOxford!*), which means "continuous land." Ignoring the divisions caused by the man-made Suez and Panama canals, America, Eurafrasia, Antarctica, and (maybe) Australia are each continuous lands. My argument, however, is that since Eurafrasia is indeed considered three continents by both camps, North and South America, connected by svelte and sexy Panama and her 37-mile waist, should only naturally be counted as separate. And, considering continental drift and geologic history, the isthmus that comprises Central America is indeed very, very young, having risen from the ocean a scant three million years ago, while South America started separating from Africa 130 million years ago and North America from Europe 70 million before that.

I don't know how the Brits or other English-speaking countries view things, or how many continents other teachers accept in their classes; on my tests, it's seven. Get it right.

*In the interest of fairness, I consulted the Real Academia Española for the official Spanish-language definition and got cada una de las grandes extensiones de tierra separadas por los océanos ("each one of the large extensions of land separated by oceans," basically, no real help for either argument).
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Executive Decisions -or- Sometimes, It's Okay to Pass

For those of us averse to a sedentary, monotonous lifestyle, there often comes a point when we have to make executive decisions regarding our time, our resources, our needs, and our wants. I'm both extremely sociable and intellectually inquisitive, so living in the capital city of a large South American country known for its highly-sociable population and culture, executive decisions have been the order of the day, almost every day.

Had I not committed myself to an every-third-day blogging schedule, posts at Fly Brother would be haphazard and sporadic, reflecting the random socializing that inevitably presents itself whenever more than two Brazilians get together. As I'm inclined to accept any welcome diversion to the mental and sometimes emotional strain of penning new text, it takes major focus on my part to decline the enticing offer of movie night or an embassy cocktail or karaoke or sushi with the crew, especially on school nights (booty calls, however, always get answered; y'all know how it is).

Now, if my professional objective were only to stack then spend bills, rolling out every night would gravy. But to appropriate a recent tweet I ran across, "a real writer's job isn't to be popular." That particular tweet referenced an article on the responsibility of journalists, or any event chronicler, to report the truth, no matter how unpopular or even dangerous doing so might be. I take that quote, however, on a much less profound level to mean you can't be a real writer and be hanging out all gotdamned night; not unless all you do from noon to four, once you wake up, is write. Sometimes, you just gotta say, "nah...I'll pass. Thanks, though" (you do, however, still want to be invited to stuff).

And it's not just about writing; it's about balancing your life in such a way that all of your projects become manageable and still get done, whether or not that's raising well-read, well-rounded kids or starting a business or planning your first round-the-world trip. After all, life's too short to just be focused on work, but ain't none of us heir to a hotel dynasty. Like they say in Spanish, unos por otros (basically, one thing for another). Yes, you may have a twinge of regret about missing one thing or another, but when you've finally reached your objective, you won't regret not doing what it took to get there. And there will always be another movie night or embassy cocktail or booty call (though maybe not with the same person, since you flaked out the last time).

So yesterday, instead of meeting up with a large group of friends for the closing day of the Robert Polidori retrospective I'd been wanting to see, I decided to stick around the house, stock up the fridge, finish preparing two tests, call the important women in my life and thank them for their interminable maternal love, deflect the few regrets that did arise about waiting too late to get to the Polidori showing, and continue conceptualization of upcoming Fly Brother expansion.

I've also decided to cut my planned two weeks on the road this summer to only nine days, starting with the TBEX '10 travel blogging conference in New York, followed by a week of fellowship with two very good friends in Toronto (holla TDK and La Femme Nikita). Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City were originally on the itinerary, but it felt wiser to shorten the trip and deepen the finances available to me in NYC and YYZ than to spread myself too thin across eastern Canada. Executive decision.

And now, I can buy a nice video camera and take you good people with me on some of my fly-falutin' adventures. See...it's all about you, baby (wink).

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On Fear, Frustration, and Freedom

It's been a month since I moved to Brasília. My apartment's set up (except for Internet) and I've already got a cleaning lady to spruce it up once a week. I've had my house-warming party, hung out at pool halls and nightclubs, done my first embassy event, developed a nascent group of friends, started Portuguese lessons. The job's going as jobs go—filled with meetings and paperwork and the counting of days until the next payday or holiday. And thirty days from the start, I look back on the journey thus far and ask myself if this is what I wanted.

After having lived in Latin America for four years already, I'm certainly not a novice to the concept of international relocation. But that doesn't make me immune to the fear and frustration that go hand-in-hand with sometimes unrealistic expectations. I mean, according to popular opinion, breathing the very air of Brazil is supposed to render all of life's woes trivial and moot, the closest thing to paradise on Earth, The Dream. But interminable bank lines don't factor into that paradisial opinion, or innumerable phone calls to get Internet hooked up at home, or having your name misspelled on important documents, or Subway charging twice as much for as sandwich as in the States and still running out of tuna. None of the frustrating aspects of establishing a life abroad factor into the romantic notion of moving abroad, of moving to Brazil. I'm even guilty of believing the hype a little bit, myself.

And along with that frustration comes the fear that I might not be making wise decisions, that I have less than a decade of “youth” left to make mistakes and figure things out, that pre-existing friendships and relationships with people in other places are in jeopardy due to my physical absence, that anything I've worked for up to this point in terms of building a life could disappear in an instant, or that everything I've worked for up to this point in terms of building a life doesn't amount to a real life at all. The fear of having nothing to give and everything to lose. The fear of insecurity and misunderstanding; that if I fuck this up—this grand, elusive, esoteric exercise—things are bound to consistently and irrevocably remain fucked up. There's nothing like the isolation of living in a foreign country by yourself, no matter how friendly the people or how open the society, to bring out neurotic introspection. It's an inextricable part of the process. Because moving to another country isn't just a corporal endeavor.

So for those random Tuesday nights when the weather sucks, friends are occupied, foolishness is on television, and frustration and fear begin to work on my mental and emotional well-being, I have this bit of literary inspiration that I copied down ages ago in Washington to pull it all back together:

When nothing in the world matters, when you've lost everything, there is perhaps a moment when the only thing that can count, the only thing you have left is choosing your own direction; looking your demons in the eye and proving to yourself that you are more than they. If only for a second, an hour, a day. That you are a man, that you have will, that there is something in you that they can not destroy, something that remains even if it is buried so deep you'll never see it again. That you can save something, even if it isn't yourself. And knowing, for the rest of your life, even as what you have is not a life, even as they reclaim you and send you back into their hell—knowing that, perhaps only for that one shining instant, you were free.

-Alan Howard
"Theseus"

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Moving to Brazil in 21 Easy Steps

1. Say, "I'm moving to Brazil, dammit!"
2. Find a friend who has just passed on a teaching job in the Brazilian capital, not your first choice of cities, but only 90 minutes away by air from your first choice of cities.
3. Interview with your prospective employers via Skype from San Francisco.
4. Respond with a resounding "yes" to the offer of employment they email you an hour later.
5. Compile all necessary documents for the visa process: college degrees and transcripts, birth certificate, passport copies, money orders; order background check from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
6. Beg your wily friend from grad school to take the papers to the Brazilian consulate in Miami for "legalization."
7. Listen to your wily friend from grad school cuss you out about having to wait in a long-ass line, having to use her own cash (since the Miami consulate doesn't take money orders), and having to come back another day to pick up the documents.
8. Listen to your wily friend from grad school tell you that they couldn't "legalize" your grad school degree and transcripts because they were issued in the District of Columbia.
9. Wait until your wily friend from grad school sends the documents back to you in Jacksonville.
10. Beg your bestest buddy from back in the day to take the transcripts and notarized/apostilled copy of your degree to the Brazilian consulate in Washington for "legalization."
11. Listen to your bestest buddy from back in the day cuss you out about having to wait in a long-ass line and not having the consulate take anything because the money order (this consulate only took money orders) was for $10 and they only needed $5 because they could only "legalize" the transcripts and not the degree because it was a copy and not the original, which is framed and put up in storage somewhere.
12. Listen to the consular officer in Washington tell you over the phone in English and in Portuguese, in spite of your pleas of logic and reason, that they cannot accept the notarized and apostilled (by the Florida Department of State, no less) copy of the graduate degree and to send the original so they can punch a hole in it.
13. Look through storage somewhere for your original graduate degree and overnight it to Washington to your bestest buddy from back in the day can take it to the consulate so they can punch a hole in it.
14. Listen to your bestest buddy from back in the day tell you that the turn-around time for the two documents you needed "legalized" is seven days, not the two days posted on the consular website.
15. Have your bestest buddy from back in the day listen to you cuss out the entire country of Brazil from the rooter to the tooter.
16. Read with trepidation an email from the school official handling your visa process that he's going on Christmas vacation to Europe before the papers will get down there and that the mid-January moving date is most likely now going to be mid-February.
17. Try to convince Brazilian consular officials in Washington to process your two documents in less than a week, then accept the inevitable as they tell you they'll try to have them done before the one-week deadline, but they can't make any promises.
18. Have your bestest buddy from back in the day FedEx the documents, "legalized" exactly one week after they were submitted, to the school's lawyers in São Paulo, since the administration's already on holiday.
19. Wait.
20. Stare holes into your computer screen when you see that your work visa has been approved the day after Carnival, along with several foreign members of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra.
21. High-tail it to Miami, walk the final documentation (including police background check) through the consulate on Tuesday, flirt with the receptionist handling your file who still charges you the full $231, pick up the visa on Friday, board the plane on Saturday.

And voilà! Brazil.

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An Old Rant Revisited

Today, five days into my new life in Brazil, I got pissed for the first time since I arrived. It was at the gym and it involved a cultural and linguistic misunderstanding. As my Portuguese leaves much to be desired, I was reminded of this short essay I wrote, almost four years ago to the day, while living in Barranquilla, so I thought I'd share. Careful...there's cussin.

Rant

When living in a country where the language is not one you were taught as a child, often there are no words. Literally.

So I'm grocery shopping the other day when I come out of the store with my food in a cart pushed by a teenage bag boy. We walk out into the very narrow parking area to get a cab to run me and all my crap the four blocks that i had just walked from my house to the grocery store.

Well, the width of the parking area is a serious issue because a woman was parked in her minivan, emergency lights flashing, reading a magazine, basically blocking any car from passing to her left, but also blocking my grocery basket from passing to her right.

All we needed was one inch of space. A pulgada.

The bag boy taps on her window and asks her to move up a little, as does the taxista. She’s like, I'm waiting on this parking space, pointing to the car next to the cab.

"Disculpa," the taxista says, apologizing for his error. I'm like, "No, no disculpa. She thinks the whole world has to wait for her. Other people have things to do today and all she has to do today is shop (I was 99% sure of that, given what I’m learning about the culture). I gotta get to work," I say. She hears me, which is good, ordinarily.

So the other car pulls out, she pulls up, and we start loading the cab with my groceries (well, the bag boy and the taxista do it...you can pay people to do everything here). Then, and I got myself into this, she gets out of her car and starts talking, without looking me in the eye, "Lo que es aracataca. Aracataca bucaramanga bucaramanga barranquilla mompós.”

See, this is what happens to me when I'm annoyed or pissed. All the Spanish goes out the window and I end up having a thousand things to say in English and two words of Spanish.

Whatever she said, the bag boy and the taxista look at me for a retort, and all I can get out is, "I don’t know what the fuck she just said so lets just get this shit packed and get out of here" in English. Not having the time to engage in a lengthy confrontation with ol girl, nor trying to sound like a damn gringo who barely knows the language, I then say to their blank faces (in Spanish) that my Spanish isn’t good when I'm mad and I have to get to work. So much for going native.

(It's important to note here that I'm pissed a) because I would have won the argument and b) instead, I came off looking like a blithering idiot).

Later in the cab, when I'm calm, I say in Spanish, "All the she had to do was move up a fucking inch. She's a gotdamn sociopath, blocking the whole damn driveway when, if she knew the dimensions of her vehicle and how to drive the bitch, everybody could get to where they had to go." The taxista agrees with me, saying "Cali cali bogotá. Bucaramanga mompós."

I think I might be hard of hearing. Either that, or these fools ain't speakin' Spanish.

See, this is the thing. I've been blessed/cursed with the ability to mimic sounds almost perfectly. My French accent is so good, when i say "Pardon, parlez-vous anglais?," people ask me what for? (I guess that's what they say...they don’t say yes or no, so i assume that they assume i speak good French). I picked up the Dominican accent of Spanish so well during my time there, that people called me a liar to my face when i said i wasn't Dominican (more on that later) despite glaring grammatical and vocabulary mistakes. All that mattered was my ability to roll my r’s in words like ferrocarrrrrrrril and puerrrrrta and RRRRRRRRRRRRRepública Dominicana, whereas all the other Americans still said stuff like car-row.

So when I start speaking, my great accent is coupled with a decent vocabulary and a functional grammatical structure which indicates initially that I'm a native speaker. My "local" appearance also helps. But then, a few sentences later, folks start thinking, this muhfucka ain't from roun' heah. Hmmmm.

Well, when I'm angry about something, I really do lose it. It's like a foreign person in the U.S. who can hardly get a complete sentence together when she's short-changed a dollar at the grocery store. She might really need that dollar and she knows the cashier did the shit on purpose, so she's hot, all the while thinking, "Beeyotch, if we was back in China and you tried that shit, my posse woulda strung you up from a tree and slit you from guzzle to gut, then boiled the entrails and fed em to the pigs." But all the frazzled pobrecita can get out is a feeble, "give...me...dolla." Cuz when you upset, you ain’t got time for all that thinking and translating foolishness.

So next time I see ol' girl in the parking lot, I'll just break out into a refrain of "Move bitch, get out the way."

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New World in the Tropics

Image by Robson Cesco

New World in the Tropics is the title of a book written in the 50s on modern Brazilian culture by famed Bahian anthropologist and scholar, Gilberto Freyre. It's also the theme under which I embark on another journey, begin another chapter in my life. I started writing this blog as my four years in another tropical country, Colombia, were coming to an end. I've not written much about my time there because those years proved infinitely challenging, both positively and negatively, and it may be a while before I'm prepared to pen detailed memoir of my life on the crown of South America. Also, I wanted Fly Brother to focus on international traveling from a—my—black perspective that extended beyond the boundaries of one particular place. And that boundless outlook remains the focus of the blog, even as I (and you, dear reader) settle into this new world in the tropics—Brazil.

The Re-Invention Tour
Tomorrow morning at 7:15, I will depart Miami, arriving five hours later at Manaus, capital of Amazônia, before continuing another three hours to Brasília, capital of the continent-sized nation of Brazil. I think it's important to note the distinction of the two capitals, as the Brazilian state of Amazonas is as large as many nations and has a distinct history and culture centered around the indomitable Amazon River and its besieged rainforest, dark green on the map and spanning nine countries. Brasília, by comparison and not unlike the great American city of Washington, was built from scratch almost as a coming-out party for this burgeoning republic of the future and as a paean to man's mastery of nature. Despite having been to the country five times, my travels have been relegated to the coastal cities that most reflect the face Brazil shows to the world; this move to the Brazilian interior, a place as foreign to me as the Australian Outback, will be a move to another Brazil, to another world far from sand and samba, yet informed and shaded by it. Of that, I'm excited.

I'm also excited about the opportunity for reinvention. I've got a clean slate in Brazil. Not that I did anything untoward in Colombia, or even the States, that necessitates a complete change of identity (well, besides some bad financial decisions, maybe). I'm talking about having a blank canvas on which to draw anything I want, on which I can be anything, do anything. I can learn the guitar and be a hit gringo bossa nova singer. I can write two or three novels set in Brazil. I can stay put in Brasília after my two-year teaching contract is up, I can move to Rio or São Paulo or Recife, I can go back to Colombia or off to Germany or to Vanuatu (2006's happiest place on Earth, if you didn't know). I can create new experiences, interactions, friendships, relationships, loves and hates (hopefully much, much more of the former than the latter). Point is, even moving to Brazil after many years of voicing that desire is proof that I can do what I set my mind to. It may not be easy or happen on the timetable I set or exactly the way I envisioned it (yet), but there it is: accomplished.

Gooooooooooooooooooooool!
So now, it's time for more goal-setting. Having been gainfully unemployed but steadily traveling since June has resulted in a financial deficit that needs reversion into surplus. I'm serious about the guitar lessons, but also about perfecting my Portuguese to a level that allows me to translate literature to and from English. I'm going to learn how to play soccer...er, futebol, dammit (capoeira, meh, not really big on handstands and such). I'll have the first draft of a novel set in Brazil by the end of my first year there. I'll volunteer with a youth organization at least twice a month. Besides a week in New York (TBEX '10) and another in Colombia (tying up loose ends), I won't be on any international flights for my first year in-country, opting for Amazon river-running, five-hunnid-mile dune buggy treks, and the humbling grandeur of Iguassu Falls to sate my wanderlust. And, of course, Fly Brother will be continually updated, with mostly international content infused with weekly ruminations on my Brazilianization.

So now it begins, this renaissance of sorts. Colombia honed me in many ways, sometimes painfully, but always necessarily. It's time to apply those lessons as I continue on my quest for self-actualization. And I'm suited up and ready for my new world in the tropics. You coming?

Image by the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism

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The Importance of Going Places for Yourself ~or~ Even The New York Times Occasionally Doesn't Know What the Hell They're Talking About

Inside the Walled City, Cartagena

A few days ago, The New York Times published its list of the "31 Places to Go in 2010." My former adopted country, Colombia, clocked in at number 26. Certainly, the country is worthy of inclusion on this list; the cultural and geographic diversity alone make it a stimulating visit, and it's not any more dangerous than much of the US. But it was the last line of this almost-four-paragraph blurb that had the needle scratching the LP in my head: "It has even prompted some travel bloggers to call Cartagena the next Buenos Aires."

Now, first of all, I'm always annoyed when people dub something "the next" anything, as if there's a problem with the original something and it needs to be replaced. In fact, for me, that phrase serves as a warning: stay away from Panama because it's becoming "the next Costa Rica" (read: overrun by drunken Spring Breakers and monolingual retirees).

Granted, travel writers and people in general tend to compare places with others, and that's OK, especially if the comparison is couched in the writer's own experience or relegated to certain aspects of a place, such as its nightlife or cultural impact. But as much as I've compared São Paulo and New York, I would never call São Paulo "the next New York." New York, for one, ain't goin nowhere and São Paulo's too busy being the next São Paulo to be anything else. There's also the danger of glaring generalizations and a glossing-over of history, which, as modern and supposedly culturally-sensitive writers, we're supposed to be avoiding as much as possible. So comparing a tropical colonial port and resort town with a national capital in a temperate climate with a ludicrously different set of demographics and a population 13 times as large is comparing apples to airplanes: they both start with "A."

I Googled the offending phrase to identify these mysterious "some travel bloggers" that the Times references. "Some travel bloggers" turned out to be one travel writer named Liz Ozaist, featured in Budget Travel magazine back in 2008 with an article titled "From Cartagena, With Love." The subheading (or super-heading, really, since it appears above the title): "The Next Buenos Aires." Now, in fairness to Ms. Ozaist, she probably had nothing to do with the addition of that, to my mind, inappropriate heading. She most likely submitted the article to her editor with the title, which alludes to her father's love for the place ingrained a couple decades before her trip, and hit the road for her next story. I would think it's the editors at Budget Travel (Lawd, they prolly never gon publish me now) who got it wrong. And though I was drawn in to the article because of Ms. Ozaist's attention to detail and the interesting characters she meets, I got thrown every time someone compared Cartagena to a place that I feel bares absolutely no resemblence whatsoever. "'Cartagena reminds me of Venice,' [Todd] says, 'it has that same intangible magic about it.'" That's how Cartagena makes Todd feel, and it's certainly valid, but I will say this: Cartagena's surrounded by water, but ain't nary a gondola floating around in what I would hesitate to consider canals.

"Buenos Aires by Air"

Now, I must admit that I've never been to Buenos Aires myself. However, as a student of Latin American history and culture and as a traveler who has spoken to many people about Buenos Aires, I have a pretty decent idea of the kind of city that it is: fairly affluent (for Latin America), boldly planned with broad boulevards and Parisian-inspired architectural flourishes, sidewalk café culture, and peopled largely by the descendents of many European immigrants.

On the other hand, for most of my time in Colombia, I lived less than a 2-hour drive away from Cartagena and spent many weekends rambling the streets of the "walled city." I called up a good friend who had also lived there, married a Colombian girl, and honeymooned in Buenos Aires:

Ring, ring.

"Hello?"

"What's up, T? It's Fly Brother. Lemme ask you something. How would you compare Cartagena and Buenos Aires?"

"What do you mean?"

"The two cities, how would you compare Buenos Aires and Cartagena?"

"In what way?"

"Just, like, in general. Like comparing DC and New York, how would you compare Cartagena and Buenos Aires?"

"You can't compare them. They're not comparable."

"Well, they're both Spanish-speaking cities in South America."

"That's about it."

"I thought so. Thanks, and Happy New Year."

Click.

"Bazurto Market Buses, Cartagena" by CadeJ.

Cartagena's a small, provincial capital supported by tourism and secondary port facilities. The streets of the old quarter are narrow and, like most Spanish colonial cities, disorderly. Most of the people are descendents of the African slaves that passed through the city's gates as the principal slave port on the Spanish Main. It's a place for a slow, sunny Sunday afternoon in a hammock, listening to some Cuban son, knocking back the aguardiente; a beach town with fruit sellers and hair braiders and high-rise condos to prove it.

While Ms. Ozaist makes one reference to Cartagena reminding her of one particular neighborhood in the Argentine capital, she alludes to Havana, Cuba's capital and Cartagena's closest relative, at least three times in her article; that is the city most evoked while strolling along cobblestone streets under grand arches and pastel facades, something I can speak to personally, having been there thrice. The unmistakable African influence, from the cooking to the music to the lilt of costeño Spanish, that sets Cartagena in the gilded frame of other New World treasures such as New Orleans, Santo Domingo, and Salvador da Bahia, is the single most noticeable feature that separates it from Buenos Aires (also a former slave port, but most folk don't even know that).

In 2007, the Times published this article, offering up a true serving of Cartagena's richly tragic past and present. The author, Tim Parsa, seems to have researched the history and culture of the place before penning the piece, an effort that appears to be lacking in this week's Times blurb by Denny Lee (Did you just Google Cartagena, dude?).

I'm not saying any of this to poo-poo The New York Times or Budget Travel or any particular travel writer or editor or whathaveyou. All I'm saying is that folks, travelers in particular, need to research multiple sources beforehand, then visit a place for themselves in order to get a real sense of their destination. Clearly, relying on media (including Fly Brother) can mean getting erroneous descriptions and untenable comparisons in a subjective attempt to make a place seem more or less appealing than it is.

Unless, that is, you combine both Times pieces and surmise that Cartagena becoming the "next Buenos Aires" means becoming the "new gringo mecca." If that's the case, I'll be off trying to find the "next Cartagena," someplace Spring Breakers fear to tread.

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Conclusión y Comienzo: Annual Review 2009

Conclusión - 2009
Before heading down to Copacabana for last year's countdown, I sat with a very good friend on the balcony of our apartment in Rio and, from a deck of Osho Zen Tarot cards, selected the card that would indicate my karmic/spiritual/essential theme for the year: "conclusión" (that would be "conclusion" in English). As these mystical consultations can be from time to time, my selection proved prophetic. 2009 did indeed become a year of conclusion, from ending a challenging work situation in a difficult environment and completing one of my major life goals (for the first time, anyway) to bowing out of a few long-standing but unhealthy relationships and transitioning from an archaic dependence on CDs for the more modern MP3 musical format.

During the first few months of the year, I was confused about continuing at my job as a high school English teacher in Barranquilla that offered me financial security, versus pursuing artistic goals that may not provide immediate remuneration. Added to the uncertainty was a severe case of incurable vagabond neurosis, so I chose to not renew my contract and embarked on my first round-the-world adventure. Between June and December, I traveled to 16 countries:

• Brazil (Rio and São Paulo)
• China (Hong Kong and Macau)
• Colombia (Barranquilla, Bogotá, and Cartagena)
• Egypt (Alexandria and Cairo)
• Germany (Berlin)
• India (Agra, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai)
• Ireland (Dublin)
• Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)
• Panama (Panama City)
• South Korea (Seoul)
• Sweden (Stockholm)
• Turkey (Istanbul)
• UAE (Abu Dhabi)
• UK (London)
• USA (Chicago, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington)
• Venezuela (Caracas)

From a creative standpoint, despite barely posting timely content on my own blog, I had writing featured on, or was interviewed by:

• American Airlines' Black Atlas
• Black Expat Magazine
• Writer Anja Mutic's blog, Ever the Nomad
• Matador Network
• Scottish travel blog, Sharing Experiences
• Travellious
• Yes But No But Yes

And I've expanded my social network exponentially, crossing paths with blogging luminaries like Farsighted Fly Girl, A Brother in Sweden, Adrianne of Black Women in Europe, Nikita the Traveller, Felicia of This Time in Seoul, Stacy of Bisous from Paris/Baci from Rome, Anja Mutic, Brian of No Debt World Travel, The Green Pharmacist, and Brandie of Out and About Africa, in addition to forging new friendships and creating new memories.

Lastly, I've found a pair of investors who are interested in seeing Fly Brother soar to greater heights. You'll learn more about that later.

Comienzo - 2010
"Comienzo" means "beginning" in Spanish, and though I'm using that word for the title of this particular section since it applies to new projects coming down the pipe as well as renewed energy and focus (and it fits nicely with last year's word, "conclusión"), I'm lifting my official word for the year straight from the prolific Lola of Geotraveler's Niche: discipline!

Regardless of whether or not we're talking about staying on task, on budget, on diet, on an exercise plan, on time, whatever, it ain't gon get done without discipline. So with that in mind, here are some of the upgrades and objectives I've plotted for 2010:

1. A deepening and diversification of what you can find here at Fly Brother. This includes a fresh and clean podcast where I discuss issues related to travel, culture, history, and music, and interview interesting and otherwise fly folk, appearing bimonthly (on the first and the fifteenf, naturally). I also plan to update the blog with text, photos, and video at least ten times per month (allowing for one less in February, of course), and to monetize the site through travel-related products that I produce and sell directly, as well as inspiring products and services produced by others and available through affiliate marketing.


2. An increase in overall presence and name recognition. I'll accomplish this by submitting articles to both print and web-based media (my goal is a minimum five articles published on highly-trafficked websites and five published in print during the year), creating fan pages on MySpace and Facebook, participating in travel writing forums, and establishing Fly-Brother.com. I'll also work on increasing my own personal accessibility by tweeting more frequently and responding to every email personally within ten working days.


3. A shorter, yet exhilirating list of international destinations for the coming year. Living in Brazil means trips to cities I've not yet visited, such as Brasília, Florianopolis, and Recife. Argentina rises to the top of the list, with non-stop flights to Buenos Aires from my new homebase. This summer may bring a two-week volunteering project in Haiti, followed by a week of R&R over the border in the Dominican Republic. And on tap for next Christmas, should the stars align themselves appropriately, is a Southern Hemisphere Round-the-World trip featuring Australia and South Africa. Who's down?

With my readers as motivation, cracking the whip whenever discipline fails me, 2010 will rock. So get them seatbelts fastened and those tray-tables in the upright and locked positions. It's time to get fly.

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Wow.

As 2009 ends and I prepare my annual review à la Chris Guillebeau, I had to stop and think about the insane amount of experiences I've had and people I've met along the way. "Whirlwind" can barely capture the appropriate velocity of the past twelve months, during which time I went from living in Colombia to prepping for a move to Brazil, and an index card bluebrint of arrows and airport codes turned into a series of places and faces that passed all too quickly from dreams to memory. Since bringing in 2009 with millions of people on Copacabana Beach, I've been to 35 cities in 15 countries on five continents. Wow.

It's only now, looking back, that I realize the magnitude of those statistics. After all, while on the road, more attention had to be paid to details like food, lodging, transport, and other logistics than to the entire scheme as a whole. Outsiders had the luxury of awe and wonder; I had to figure out how to get from the airport to my CouchSurfing host's house and where I could find wireless Internet.

Now, I think about the new friendships forged, the old friendships strengthened, the innumerable moments that I yearn to repeat, the people with whom I want to hang out again, dance with again, smile at again, hug again, make love to again, meet again, and say goodbye to again. These memories serve as bittersweet affirmation of the transitory nature of life; that nothing is permanent and every present moment is just that, a present to be treasured.

So, at the end of this calendar year, I give thanks to the Cosmos for 2009 and everyone in it. And for 2010 and everyone in it.


2009 from Fly Brother on Vimeo.

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United to the East, AA f/Fly Bro, FB Winter Tour

United joins Delta in Africa

Photo by AV8NLVR
Last week, United Airlines announced service from Washington-Dulles to Accra, Ghana, continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria. When the flights start in May, UA will become the second major American carrier to serve the Motherland, giving the large Nigerian population in the DC area nonstop access to the country's largest business center and former capital. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines already flies to Accra and Lagos, as well as Abuja, Nigeria; Dakar, Senegal; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Cairo, Egypt, though they've announced several routes to other African destinations in the past year that either have been terminated or never took off for various reasons. It's nice to see other airlines taking the (lucrative) chance of serving Africa, but I can't imagine the in-flight service even approaching that of the European airlines already flying from the US to the continent via their hubs.

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AA's new black travel website, featuring Fly Brother

Photo by caribb

In October, American Airlines started a travel website centered around the black travel experience called Black Atlas. Headlined by writer and "travel expert-at-large" Nelson George, the site highlights 27 domestic and 15 international destinations sure to resonate with affluent African-American travelers. Readers can submit blog posts detailing their experiences on the road, as well as search for airfares with a special interactive map. They've also been kind enough to feature ya boy, Fly Brother, and his scribblings on Salvador da Bahia, Paris, and Mexico City. Now, that's fly.

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Fly Brother Winter Tour 2009

LOS ANGELES, November 18-23
NEW YORK, December 11-20
ORLANDO, December 20-26
MIAMI, December 29-January 6

If I'm headed your way, shout me!

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Detours

We interrupt Fly Brother's Round-the-World Adventures for this important existential rumination:

Back in March, while finishing up my fourth year of living and working in Colombia, I was struck by a post-quarter-life crisis of modest proportions, elucidated not quite succinctly in this long but engrossing post, "Fly Brother and the Curse of the Aimless Intellectual." Basically, I had no idea of which of many paths to take: writing full-time and working part-time, working full-time and writing part-time, traveling indefinitely, loafing creatively, etc., etc. Eventually, I settled on traveling around the world for three months, then moving to São Paulo to concentrate on a novel whose storyline is set there. I chose to follow my immediate desires and attempted to let the universe steer me towards unlimited creative energy and subsequent financial success through the associated creative endeavors. There was nothing to it but to do it. But several things have happened in the course of my trip that have thrown my original plan off course.

First, I fell in love with Berlin. I felt like I was cheating on my baby, Sampa, but I also felt like Berlin could give me some of the things SP couldn't: ease of travel, logistically and economically, to other regions including Brazil; a larger artistic platform from which various creative projects could be developed more thoroughly; and better earning potential.

Second, I ran out of money. It's impossible to plan and calculate every expense in anticipation of a trip, especially one circumnavigating the globe. I completely miscalculated ($8 hot dogs in Sweden did not bode well for the budget) and ended up at the mercy of friends and family, essentially borrowing, begging, and (well, almost) stealing in order to complete my journey. I wasn't stationary in one place long enough to earn any real money and need for immediate income generation caused me to re-evaluate my timetable for resuming traditional employment.

Third, my mother was involved in a serious car accident: three cracked ribs and a totalled vehicle. She's doing well now, surrounded by her friends and the rest of my family, but I decided to cancel my Australia ticket and go home to Florida for the first two weeks of November. Ahm comin' home, Ma! At her urging, I've not cancelled my Brazil ticket yet.

But Brazil still not a foregone conclusion anymore because I'm actually being drawn more towards travel writing than book-length fiction. It could be the combination of being on an epic journey and the relative ease of penning articles from the road versus novel chapters in interminable need of rewriting, and as I ruminated in previously, it's much easier to base myself in Berlin or, say, Hong Kong and travel cheaply than be in Sampa and expect to pop out of town for the weekend.

Subsequently, I've found two paths toward offering something of a balance between the finances and the time: returning to high school teaching or joining the Foreign Service. I do think teaching in Barranquilla was on the extreme end of dues-paying when it came to student discipline and social life in the city, so I'm thinking that other schools in other places (like Brazil, Germany, or HK) would be a touch less stressful. Meanwhile, the benefits package for foreign service officers is unequalled, and My President is in the process of expanding the diplomatic corps. How fly is that?

I'm starting preliminary paperwork for both career paths. The uncertainty is anxiety-inducing, but I guess I should just enjoy the ride and see where the cosmos takes me.

Stay tuned.

We now return you to Fly Brother's Round-the-World Adventures, already in progress.

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The Ubiquitous Fly Brother

As the Beatnuts say, "there's no escaping this:" I'm everywhere, folks. Over the last few months, I've been interviewed or asked to submit text and photos to a couple of travel- and culture-related websites either in anticipation of my big trip, or relating to my time in Colombia. Three features went live this week:

Down-home jet-setter, Brooklyn girl, and Lonely Planeteer Anja Mutic solicited a slice of Fly Brother's life in Colombia for her blog, Ever the Nomad:

[In Bogotá,] altitude and frequent rainy cloud cover conspire to keep temperatures hovering in the 50s and 60s. Colombia's equatorial latitude ensures the city a Frigidaire-like ambiance year-round; ergo its national nickname, La Nevera, “the refrigerator.” With heating systems being a luxury, most houses have barely more than a fireplace to keep things hot; my old apartment in Bogotá's historic district was situated in a drafty, Iberian-style colonial home, built with an interior courtyard intended to cool the structure in toasty Spanish summers but only served to suck out what little body heat I could muster in the Andean heights. Click here for the entire piece.

Expatriate Americans Adrianne George and Reginald Smith of the quarterly online magazine, Black Expat, interviewed me in the spring about permanent wanderlust and my then-current position molding the minds of future Colombian leaders in Barranquilla:

Describe your first trip abroad.
My first trip abroad was a six-week foreign exchange home-stay in Sweden in 1994, organized by Youth for Understanding International Exchange. I spent five weeks with one family in the far north of the country, a place of midnight sun, deadly mosquitos, and stewed reindeer called Råneå. My last week was spent in the capital, Stockholm, where I was first exposed to the wonders of European topless bathing. I was but a mere sixteen years of age. Continue reading here.

Lastly, photojournalist Lola Akinmade of Geotraveler's Niche and the Matador Travel Network was so inspired by my Fly Packing abilities that she asked to republish my luggage photo-odyssey on the Matador Goods blog. Check that out here.

Many thanks to these good people for highlighting a brother on their sites, and thanks to all y'all for reading and inspiring me to write.

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"I'm Not Afraid of the Future"

When people hear about my round-the-world trip, they immediately envision the project in its enormous scope. They count the cities, the continents. They wonder aloud at the spectrum of cultures to absorb, people to meet, experiences to be had. Their jaws slacken as they conceptualize the voyage and formulate their personal version of "Can I go with you?" They ask if I'm excited.

Up until today, my excitement was (still is, somewhat) tempered by the necessary and very boring, unglamorous, and sometimes-frustrating process of planning and executing a three-month round-the-world trip, followed directly by a trans-equatorial move. Confirming flights, securing lodging, organizing finances, locating addresses, preparing documentation, and packing bags necessarily shift the focus from the grand scheme to logistical minutiae; I don't have time to get very excited about the endeavor as a whole because I have to look at and manage each step as it comes in order to keep from missing a step. And this is indeed the grandest endeavor I've ever undertaken.

The past few months have been marked by a series of miniature milestones that I've anticipated anxiously as they approached: the end of the school year and my move from Colombia, visiting friends in Venezuela and Panama, reconnecting with my family in Florida, soaking up positive energy on the West Coast, retracing my steps in DC, celebrating my impending departure in New York. These events have come and gone, and nothing's left now but the departure itself—a launch from my country, my culture, my friends and family, my familiar into the unknown. No returning to a job in a month. No coming back to my honey or dog or goldfish or plants in a week. No plan other than to collect as many experiences and as many life-long friends around the world as possible over the next three months, then make a go of life in the Big Apple of the Southern Hemisphere. It's deep, y'all. Enough to frighten most people.

In fact, I almost succumbed to the fear, myself. Coming back to the States, I felt bombarded by the propaganda of American capitalism: buy, buy, buy! I started to feel like a loser because my cell phone couldn't take pictures or tell me how to get to the closest Italian restaurant or bake a birthday cake. I felt like I needed to come back, get an MBA, get a "real" job, and start acquiring things. Thank the Cosmos that all my plane tickets are non-refundable. I'm not disparaging folks for having all the latest gadgets and flyest kicks and the new-new whip; but I've learned, mostly because of traveling overseas, that memyselfpersonally, I don't really need those things. Stability, yes. Accoutrements, no.

And right now, on the cusp of the next chapter in my life, I'm suddenly, unexpectedly ready for the unknown.

Unafraid.

And excited.


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"Sharing Experiences" Gets Fly Brother to Share

Last week, Edinburgh-based writer Andy Hayes featured me on his travel website, Sharing Experiences. This is my first international interview and I was honored to have been profiled. Here's an excerpt:

To explain the name Fly Brother, I need to lay down a little cultural background knowledge. In black American vernacular, “fly” as an adjective refers to something attractive, roguishly sophisticated, and well-put-together, be it a possession, a concept, or a person. “Brother,” of course, is a nod to my being an African-American male. The usage of Fly Brother, then, speaks to both my affinity for air travel and my roguish sophistication (*wink*).

Read the entire interview here, then continue exploring Andy's engrossing site.

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The Hours

One of the main areas of anxiety about moving to another country—in my case, Brazil—is the mystery surrounding vocation. Not vocation solely in terms of source of income, but also in terms of how time is spent and managed, how hours are filled. When I first moved to Colombia, I had a university position lined up before leaving US soil. Not so, this go round. As I've mentioned on this blog and repeated incessantly in real life, moreso to convince myself of even the possibility, I plan to go to São Paulo and write. A novel, to be specific; the travel writing and all immediate income-producing pursuits being relegated to secondary priority until a suitable first draft is completed. That is the plan in its most abstract, essential form. But what had induced panic attacks on several occasions over the last few weeks was the inability to plan a route between Point A — establishing myself in Brazil — and Point B — completing a marketable book-length fiction project. How was I going to write if, after this three-month hoof around the globe, I got to a city of 20 million people with less than, say, $500 in the bank? Wasn't the idea of quitting my teaching job to go write to not have to take up another teaching job once I got to Brazil?

Then, in Portland, I wound up at Powell's City of Books. Among the tomes I purchased in this cathedral to the written word, I saw Michael Cunningham's The Hours on the sale rack for $6.95. I'd always liked the movie and heard good things about the book, so I bit. And on the train from Portland to Seattle, I read this section, from icon Virginia Woolf's perspective as she contemplates the life of the titular character in the novel she's writing, Mrs. Dalloway:

"This particular novel concerns a serene, intelligent woman...who is preparing for the season in London, where she will give and attend parties, write in the mornings and read in the afternoons, lunch with friends, dress perfectly."

Not exactly one of the more striking lines of prose in this remarkable work, but for me, it was an instant literary Rand McNally, a AAA triptych of comportment and action: I will write in the mornings and read in the afternoons, lunch with friends, work in the evenings (language or accent-reduction classes, probably; maybe introductory Spanish). And every now-and-then, I'll give and attend parties (but I'm a Gap Inc. kinda guy, so...). I may stray from the route occasionally because of circumstance or chance, but the endpoints are fixed and the map is drawn. Nothing's left but to fill the hours until I arrive.