My partner (affectionately known here as Duck) and I are heading to Belo Horizonte, Brazil from February-November 2020. I will be doing research through a Fulbright grant and Duck will be doing… who knows? Teaching English? Getting a dog? Doing research? Tagging along with me? It remains to be seen. Stay tuned here!
We arrived in Somerville on Sunday and were pretty blitzed from the red-eye flight and general stress of traveling through airports at this particular moment in time. We discovered last week that our friends Leah and Ariela’s apartment was unoccupied and they agreed to let us stay there for the time being, especially as we voluntarily self-quarantine for two weeks. It is full of furniture and books and is nice and warm, and we are so grateful, especially as we are currently both unemployed.
I keep looking at my calendar and seeing what I would have been doing if life were going on as normal in Brazil: attending book clubs and lectures at the state public library, going out on the bookmobile, observing staff-patrons interactions. I would be in Portuguese class, and giving lectures in Portuguese, and going to Inhotim with my UFMG “buddy.” Instead, we’re here, and not going back anytime soon. We’re sad, and scared, and hopeful, and taking it day by day. If by some miracle we are able to go back someday, I hope to revive the ol’ blog (or start a new one when I can’t log in – I know myself).
And so, life goes on. We cook and eat, and run outside when it’s nice. We read and apply for jobs, video chat our friends and family, hope for the best and wash our hands. It’s all anyone can do right now. I’m trying to stay in touch with my contacts in Brazil to keep learning from them, and I’ve got two books about libraries from them as gifts to help me. But for now, since my Fulbright is officially over, I’m going to stop posting on the blog. Be well, and enjoy a picture of daffodils (my favorite flower) blooming in Massachusetts right now.
Well friends, it looks like our Brazil adventure is coming to a close and our stateside Coronadventure is just beginning. Yesterday morning, we were feeling optimistic about the situation in Brazil (650 cases) vs in the US (14,000 cases) and decided to try to stick it out a little longer here, so we changed our flights to next Saturday. However, within hours the US State Department issued a level-4 travel advisory, and by this morning we had an email from Fulbright that all Fulbright programs are suspended effective immediately.
So this morning, we got back on the phone with United and changed our flights again, to tomorrow (Saturday) evening, arriving in Boston on Sunday morning. We will stay with our dear friends Rachel and Sarah in Somerville, whose home is stocked with board games and laughter (and, we hope, toilet paper), at least for a few months, and we’ll go from there. As with everything, we’ll just have to play it by ear.
I have also applied to a few jobs that have popped up in my field. But also, if anyone knows of any remote jobs that either of us could do, please send them our way!
Right now we’re going to focus on finishing packing and eating the rest of our mangoes. We’ll post again when we’re safe and sound in Somerville. Be well, friends!
Hi friends. We appreciate everyone who has checked in, and also everyone who has not checked in but are thinking of us – responding to everyone would be overwhelming when we are already overwhelmed with news and decisions. Every Fulbright program in every country (and there are usually multiple per country; I think 4 different ones in Brazil) has different recommendations and guidelines based on various factors. Fulbright and the State Department are recommending, but not requiring, that people in my program in Brazil return, so we had to decide and notify them of our decision by today.
At this time, we are not planning to come home. There are so many good reasons both to come home and to stay here. The main factors for us are that the risk of infection is much lower in Brazil right now than in the US, and that we can still get home if we need to. If either of those change, or anything else significant changes, we will reassess. That being said, we did change our flights from November to Friday. I feel more at ease that we at least have a short-term return plan, even if we will rebook at that point for later.
Brazil’s confirmed case count is at 200 as of today. We are hoping to wait it out a little longer to see what happens. Things are starting to close down but people are still not distancing as they should if they were to take lessons learned from places like the US. Still, we are hopeful, and conditions for our social limiting are very good here at the moment. There is plenty of access to food and other supplies, and the weather is fantastic so we have been incorporating more walks and runs as part of our self-care. We live in a suburban-feeling part of the city and are able to avoid people most of the time. We’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, enjoy a picture of this pretty sunset from the other night, and be well!
After lunch today, Duck and I went on an adventure. We walked nearly an hour to one of the city libraries, around the east side of Lake Pampulha and north. We finally reached the Parque Municipal Fazenda Lagoa Do Nado (City Park Farm Lake of Swimming, where swimming is curiously not allowed), which houses a library called the Centro de Referência da Cultural Popular e Tradicional (Reference Center of Popular and Traditional Culture). I learned early on that these 22 city libraries are part of a system of cultural centers and rarely, if ever, exist on their own as neighborhood libraries the way we think of them, but rather are organized by themes. I am very curious to meet with the director of the city libraries (hopefully next week; this meeting keeps getting rescheduled) and see how she envisions the libraries’ role in city life.
We walked right by the park because I didn’t realize (or remember maybe) that the library was inside the park. When we walked by as we were leaving, I saw that there was actually a giant sign saying that said “Centro de Referência…” As we walked in, there was really only one path, straight ahead and downhill, so we followed it. At the bottom, there were other paths and buildings and a sign pointing to various features (like the various sports fields/courts and the snack bar) but did not contain the library. Just beyond it was a pink building that we thought was it at first, and was closed with a handwritten sign that said it would be closing at 2pm due to lack of power (it was 2:50 when we got there).
We sat down outside the pink building, facing the snack bar building, where there was also a group of teenage boys on bikes, a vendor selling popcorn and roasted nuts, two police officers on motorcycles (just sitting there, the bikes weren’t on) and a van that said Rede Minas which I looked up and seems to be a local tv station of some sort. There were two men wearing Rede Minas shirts and carrying a tv camera and a teenage girl who was maybe an intern or something. I began to suspect that the library was attached to the snack bar building. After I had sat for a few minutes (it was a long, hot walk!), I got up and circled the pink building and came around to the snack bar building away from the police officers. There was a big sign that said it was the reference center, but also another handwritten sign on the door saying it was closing at 2pm every day due to lack of power. There were lots of other posters and flyers on the door, and beyond the posters, I shaded my eyes and could see into the library. It looked like one long room with bookshelves. Based on the height of the shelves and thinness of spines, I’m guessing it’s a children’s library. Since we couldn’t go in, we walked through the park a little, got ice cream from another vendor, and watched another group of teen boys play soccer barefoot.
When we left the park, we walked 20 minutes southeast to a Methodist church that Duck wanted to check out. A woman buzzed in just as we walked up, and the man who let her in stood and talked to us for a little while, and invited us in. Duck asked if the bible study event listed on their website was happening and if he could come, and the guy said yes. He also brought us in, showed us around, and pressed us to fill our water bottle and use the bathroom. When we left, Duck wanted to continue up the street to FAJE, the Catholic university, but it was going to be another 15 minutes of walking and we were both so hot and sweaty by then that we just called an Uber and went home to rest.
The Uber driver was chatty and interesting, arguably the most useful part of the trip for me. It started, as it usually does, with him asking us a question, which we had to ask him to repeat and explain (of course) so he got the drift that we’re not from here. He told us he’s studying English and French and asked what we’re doing here. As usual, when I said we’re from Boston he said lots of people from Minas go there, and I said that’s why I’m here. I finally got up the nerve to ask him more specifically about whether he goes to the library and he said no, it’s not part of the culture. I asked him what he thinks people do instead and he told me that he started working at the age of 6 selling things, and people work hard and drink a lot and watch Youtube and soccer and just try to enjoy life. He also said that the educational system is bad from the start and kids get the short end of the stick. But he was very proud that his three kids (ages 22, 21, and 17) are all still in school. At the end of the ride, I thanked him for talking with me. It felt like he has shared some very personal history and thoughts with me and I really appreciated it. Hopefully I’ll be able to engage more people in conversations like this, which was part of my research idea to include opinions of people who do not use the library.
I’m laboring away at writing at 10-minute presentation for Thursday about the role of librarians in the 21st century. It’s not that I don’t know what to say (especially not after picking my former boss’s brain a bit yesterday); I think I’ve just got a mental block of some sort since it’s the first big public speaking I’m going to do in Portuguese. I finally finished writing a draft on Thursday (the entire script that I plan to read word for word; my Portuguese is not really good enough to speak extemporaneously yet) and when I read it out loud it was a disaster. I realized that half of it was off-topic and that I had left out a bunch of things. So, back to the drawing board…
Yesterday was the big soccer game between Belo Horizonte’s two main rival teams, Cruziero and Atletico. This game would normally be a sellout (imagine if Ohio State and UMich shared a city), but they were also running a promotion for International Women’s Day where a woman’s tickets were buy one get one free. We live right by the stadium, so on game days we usually dodge cars looking for parking for hours beforehand. It rivaled Carnaval in terms of traffic snarling, general chaos, and trash left behind. There were fireworks set off starting in the early afternoon and continued until after the game ended. Shelby and her husband went to the game and took their motorcycle here because we were able to hold onto their helmets for them (not allowed in the stadium). While we sequestered ourselves in our house, I made hamantaschen (finally figured out how to say baking powder in Portuguese, and also bought more jam).
Friday I had my first Portuguese class (PLA, or Portuguese as an Additional Language) at the university. My classmates are all European (Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Greece) and our teacher, Junot, is from Rio de Janeiro and has a carioca accent, where they pronounce Rs at the end of words with a hard R sound, instead of an aspirated H sound. He’s also an anthropologist who spent several years in the favelas of Rio and shared with us some of his experience from that, so I emailed him after class to ask if he would have dinner with me and Duck so they can talk shop. The class seems less structured than I expected, but we just talked until we hit a grammatical question, and then talked about that for a while, and then went back to conversation. The room we’re in is very echoey so it was really hard to hear but by the end of class I was much more used to it.
After class, Duck and I went downtown to the synagogue. Normally I probably wouldn’t go so many weeks in a row, but we’re trying to get to know people and the people who do go every week definitely noticed. We have one particular friend who seems to know everyone and has been introducing us, which is really nice. In the interest of full disclosure, I am partly trying so hard because I want to make sure we have somewhere to go for Passover, which feels not very far away!
There were probably over 80 people there last night, mostly because they are hiring a new rabbi and the one candidate (I think) was here to lead Ma’ariv and give a d’var. He was also leading a learning session on Saturday. Everyone was very enthusiastic about him, and we got a few minutes in with him to talk about New York (he graduated a year and a half ago from JTS before returning to Rio for his first pulpit). He had a stronger carioca accent than Junot so it was a bit hard to follow (the hard R but also ending words with a “sh” sound – talvez is pronounced talvesh, for example), but he led a nice service and would likely be a good fit.
The weekend (o final da semana) was chock full of hanging out with other Fulbrighters, between the raindrops. Victoria invited us over to her house on Saturday, which was great, and then I met up with Cara and her family on Sunday at the Hippie Fair downtown and we ended up getting caught in the rain, going to lunch, shopping at the mall, and having a beer. I’m still struggling to find shoes that are comfortable but also professional (more or less) that I can wear with my capris, but we may have found it this time.
Monday morning found me down at the State Library again, this time rushing late through the rain from the wrong bus to Eliany’s office. She brushed off my apology (“everyone is late, especially when it’s raining”) and took me on a 2-hour tour of the library and the annex, which is being renovated. I met people in every department, but my recorder’s battery cut out after about 15 minutes. I came back the next day, Tuesday, for what I had thought was going to be sitting on desk in the Braille section, but turned out to be attending the Reading Circle event that they have every two weeks.
After the tour on Monday, I took the bus to the UFMG (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, where Marilia teaches) to take the Portuguese placement exam and hopefully get placed into a class by tomorrow (classes start Friday). I got there early and so was sitting and eating my PB&J and checking my email when I read the one that said the test had been moved up an hour and to a different building! So I jumped up and ran out in a panic, somehow managing to find my way to the correct building through the mud and peeling off my raincoat. They had allotted three hours for the test, so it wasn’t too big a deal that I was half an hour late, and I wasn’t even the last person to arrive. The test consisted of three essay questions (based on reading some texts) and an oral interview. I finished after an hour and a half and made my way home.
Other highlights from the week so far are that we braved the absolute pouring rain on Tuesday night to go to an English language meetup group, which was fun and an easier way to do some out-of-the-library research on people’s opinions about the libraries here. We also went to the Federal Police today and got the registration process started. We had to show them all sorts of documents, almost as much work as getting the visa, and they will email us when our IDs are ready. (Anyone who is staying in Brazil for any length of time has to register with the Federal Police within 90 days; it’s been giving everyone in my cohort fits and we’ve been sharing advice about what obstacles we’ve run into; luckily we didn’t have any trouble.)
The rest of the week should be pretty light, just working on my presentations, going to our other Portuguese classes, and daydreaming of sunny getaways. It’s been so rainy and damp here that I want to start using my travel allowance now to go somewhere warm and sunny, like Curitiba or Santa Catarina! Duck really wants to go to Ouro Preto, which is known for its churches and history but which is also quite likely to be rainy. Apparently the March rain is so famous, especially in BH, that there’s a song called Aguas de Março. Needless to say, I can’t wait for April!
Well, we made it through Carnaval! A couple of times we found ourselves at blocos where everyone was singing along to the music and dancing so freely and I have never felt whiter! My Puritanical blood rebelled against even trying to imagine my body moving in those ways. While things were closed, we killed time by running, studying Portuguese (on our own – no classes from Friday to Thursday), working (on one of three presentations I somehow agreed to give in Portuguese in a few weeks), and watching The Good Place. We tried to go to the mall on Monday with Shelby but it was closed, not that she could have gotten to our house through the bloco anyway (one of our runs accidentally took us through a bloco that took us half an hour to get through!). By Wednesday I was going so stir-crazy that we went over to Victoria’s house and hung out with her and her lovely family for a while, which was really nice.
Yesterday I had a long-awaited first meeting with the state library people (the director and two department-heads, plus my advisor)! I was really nervous. Even though they spoke slowly, I still left feeling like I had only understood about 20% of the conversation, and I think I agreed to do another talk (10 minutes this time). The staff members I met with are all really nice and I have a meeting on Monday with one of them so she can give me a tour of the library.
Also as we were leaving, I asked Marilia if I could get a library card and she helped me go to the children’s desk (the adult section is closed right now for a reason I didn’t catch) and get one, and then she took my picture! It seems very fitting for a children’s librarian to get her library card in the children’s room, and for her “grownup” to take her picture like she’s a kid 🙂
Here’s the answer to the last trivia question: The word “hockey” in Portuguese refers to rock music. The Portuguese R at the beginning of a word is pronounced like an H, and they have a hard time with words that are not consonant/vowel/consonant/vowel, so with a word that ends in a consonant sound (rock, Marc, Duke) they tend to add an “ey” ending to make it easier to say. (So yes, Marc becomes Marky!)
Ok, new trivia! Which of the following is NOT a topping on cachorros quentes (hot dogs) with the works, as you might find at a food truck at a Carnaval bloco:
a) ketchup
b) white sauce
c) red sauce
d) batata palha (tiny crunchy french fry-type things)
e) corn
f) raisins
If you want to take a stab at it, I’d love to see comments on this post!
We made it to our first synagogue experience in Brazil!
We went down to the synagogue a bit early (around 5:30; services started at 7) because there are lots of street closures downtown for Carnaval and we weren’t sure how long it would take. We located the synagogue just to make sure we knew where it was, and then went to find a snack. We ended up down the block at an Arabic place and got a few carne and veggie fritters (almost like oblong falafels) and some sweet baklava-like desserts. (But NOT baklava – I asked “baklava?” and the woman behind the counter said, “para levar?”, ie, to go?)
We killed as much time as we could and then showed up at the synagogue around 6:45. We presented ourselves to the guard outside who knew who we were immediately, asking for the guy in the office to hand over the copies of our passports that we had emailed to the secretary last week (along with our CPF numbers and the name of the synagogue we attend in Boston and its rabbi). He waved us in and asked if we’d been there before, with none of the interrogation I had been expecting after my last experience (Guatemala, 2003). Duck and I had had a conversation about what ID to bring, especially since we were going to be near Carnaval stuff and were nervous about getting pickpocketed. In the end we brought our driver’s licenses and CPF cards, not our passports, in my small black purse and it was fine. I also put my Star of David necklace back on for the first time since we went to the Lebanese church. I had left it off partly so as not to out myself as Jewish and partly because we’d been warned against wearing jewelry at Carnaval (I didn’t wear my watch on Wednesday night, for example), but I left my wedding ring on in equal parts because: I like it, it was inexpensive, and if someone can actually get it off my finger, more power to ‘em.
The guard walked us in and through a space that was less of a hall and more of a room and had really long leather sectional sofas. Off of this space were bathrooms, a staircase going up, some smaller rooms (an office?), and a room at the back where a group of maybe 15-20 people were mingling and drinking coffee. The guard got the attention of an older man, who greeted us warmly (and whose name I didn’t catch but turned out to be the chazzan) and asked if we were from Israel. He introduced us to a guy in his 50’s or 60’s named Chaim and generally fussed about us and got us water – the bottle on the table was empty so he took two cups outside to a bebedor on the patio (which was next to a pool! Fancy).
We didn’t meet many people because people pretty promptly shuffled upstairs to the sanctuary at about 6:55, but it seems this mingling happens every Shabbat at 6:30. There were about 25-30 people at the service in the end, which surprised me (more than I expected; as the chazzan said, especially because it’s Carnaval – I had been wondering what impact Carnaval has on the Jewish community, if people treat it as completely secular or if they abstain from celebrating because of its Christian roots).
In the sanctuary, there were rows of pews facing front with a balcony above that was unused. The bimah had some pretty aggressive stained glass and many surfaces covered in what looked like blue velvet cloths that had gold tassels and sequins spelling out chai or in the shape of a Star of David. We sat on the right-hand side near the front, right behind a row of people all there together; they stood for the mourner’s kaddish so I think they don’t come a lot and only came for mourner’s kaddish. Down our row to the right and maybe one row behind us was a man and woman who were talking nearly the whole time; Jews the world over talk through services, it seems. There was a woman singing very loudly and semi off-key a row or two right behind us and a row of about 9 people in the front pew of the left side all wearing white shirts and black/blue pants who turned out to be the chorus. In front of the choir was a young man who played an upright piano that was somehow amplified in the way that temple instruments are way over-amplified. At one point Duck commented that he was playing completely from memory, but I noticed he had a smartphone propped up on the piano’s music stand so I bet he had some music on there.
The chazzan put on a traditional Ashkenazi giant tallis, which I found really comforting to see, and did a pretty traditional, if abbreviated, Ashkenazi kabbalat shabbat, all singing except for the page calls and an occasional reading in Portuguese. The website said the synagogue was “egalitarian and inclusive, in the spirit of liberal and reformist communities around the world” which is pretty vague so I wasn’t totally sure what to expect, even down to how much Hebrew there would be or whether there would be a mechitza. (There wasn’t, which is good; the synagogue I went to in Guatemala had one, which meant that the non-Jewish male friend I brought with me once couldn’t sit with me and nearly got kicked out and I was low-key nervous about such a separation from Duck, though he knows the service pretty well and how to handle himself in Jewish spaces.)
We sang Yedid Nefesh, 2-3 psalms (salmos), and an abbreviated L’cha Dodi (1,2, 5, and 9). He mostly did tunes I recognized (or mostly recognized with slight variations) which was lovely, including tzadik katamar. There was an interesting song that was sung responsively – maybe Yedid Nefesh? Ma’ariv was really short and silent, with a repetition, followed by a medium-length Aleinu. Two people read longer speeches that I didn’t understand; the second one was maybe a d’var.
At one point while the second person was reading her thing, the chazzan gestured to Chaim, who came up to the edge of the bimah and the chazzan bent down and whispered into his ear, and then he came up to us and asked our names. We told him, and then he went back to the chazzan, who nodded. Duck looked at me and I said, he might say something about us, to welcome us, but he could also invite us up on the bimah to do something. It reminded me of the time in Phoenix when my two goy friends and I were invited up on the bimah for Kiddush and I was horribly embarrassed. For some reason I wasn’t embarrassed this time. Anyway, it turns out the chazzan was just welcoming different people, including the group in front of us and the two of us, who he said were from the US. After, at the Kiddush, a few people came up to us to greet us in English and we got many warm “shabbat shaloms” which was nice.
The trippiest thing was trying to follow along in the transliteration. It seems that in Portuguese transliterations, the chet, with its guttural ch, is written as an underlined r (r) not to be confused with the regular r, which was pronounced as a resh. For example: “Mi ramora baelim Adonai, mi camora nedar bacodesh.” Ha! Also where we might have a y and another vowel, they just put an i. I was also enthralled by the fact that they did Mi Sheberach with the Debbie Friedman tune but subbed in Hebrew for the English parts. I’ll try to get my hands on a copy of that one.
The service ended with a rousing singing of Shabbat Shalom (hey!) for which the chazzan joined the choir and they all stood together at the front, and then we were invited up to the third floor for Kiddush. At Kiddush, we talked to a woman whose son lives in a suburb of Philadelphia and a guy named Tiago who told us his name (Tiago, Santiago, James) comes from Jacob, which I didn’t know. It seems that the rabbi moved or retired or something and the previous rabbi comes back every other week; he’ll be back next Friday and we should meet him, Tiago said. The chazzan fussed over us again, bringing us challah after motzi and urging us toward the table of snacks and desserts. They served Manischewitz for kiddush, which delighted me.
Overall people were really friendly and I am looking forward to going back! We were among the last to leave and walked a couple of blocks up to the bloco, which was again pretty boring, and then we caught an Uber home. Duck asked the driver to let us off at the bloco by our house but I thought he meant he wanted to just walk the rest of the way and I was wearing dumb shoes so I pushed back. Once we were home I realized Duck had wanted to go to the bloco so I offered to change my shoes so we could go out but inertia caught us and we just went to bed.
Wednesday evening, Duck bounced all around me like Tigger until we left for our very first Carnaval experience. He did all the research online and found two blocos (Carnaval block parties) on the other side of our neighborhood (Boston readers: think of our neighborhood as JP, so a smaller segment of the city, but still quite large) that were starting about 2 hours apart: one at 5pm and one at 7pm. I got home from registering for my free Portuguese classes at the University (!) a little after 5. Duck was so eager to go that we got in an Uber and arrived around 5:30.
The street was quiet. Vendors in their bright yellow “Vendedor Oficial” vests stood behind their wooden carts full of ice and beverages topped with a yellow umbrella, and/or a wooden T that holds leis (for men) and flower crowns (for women). We were wondering whether we missed the “parade” but then our excellent powers of deduction showed us that the vendors’ wares were full, the streets were clean, and the municipal cleanup crew were also sitting back, doing nothing. It must not have started yet, we reasoned (after a fruitless conversation with a vendor who I think was trying to explain Brazilian time to us), and so we went exploring.
We wandered past a Jewish cemetery, got some snacks, poked around another livreria, and eventually went down to the other Carnaval site around 6 or 6:30. Again, we watched vendors set up and people start to trickle in; a band did sound-check and then recorded music started to play spottily. Around 7, the official start time of this bloco, people really did start to come and by 8 it was a bit crowded, but the band still had not started. There were lots of teenagers and lots of people wearing glittery eye makeup that Duck joked about getting for me (I gave him my best withering stare). In all, it was pretty boring, frankly – and not even that good for people-watching. Around 8:30 we gave up and headed home because we are old people (also partly because I had a chat date with my cousins, which I try never to miss)!
To be honest, I’m not that into Carnaval. The chaos and the drinking and the costumes – it sounds a lot like Purim, or Halloween, neither of which I have enjoyed for some time now. I met up with another BH Fulbrighter who is here with her family and she said someone scared her 13-year-old into not wanting anything to do with Carnaval but she is going to insist that he experience at least something, which I think is wise. In the US, we don’t get much exposure to it unless you live in New Orleans, so it’s this big mystery, but most of the people I’ve talked to here are not that into it and just estão a toa (doing nothing). I imagine we’ll give the one in our neighborhood on Sunday a go.
In the meantime, we’re going to try again to go to synagogue tonight! We might also come across a bloco while downtown. For now, here is a picture of me working super hard in terrible conditions (before we went swimming this afternoon):
This afternoon Duck managed to get me out of the house and downtown to browse at some livrerias. As in Spanish, this word is a false cognate; it does not mean library (that’s biblioteca) but rather bookstore. But the two we went to today were not what you’re thinking. One, called Pauline, we arrived at after much confusion (including a wrong bus that gave us an opportunity to take the metro!) was crowded with tables each holding stacks of individually shrinkwrapped books, and lots of notebooks, pens, and other stationery-store type products. (Duck bought a book about the history of some church or another in Brazil. Classic Duck.) The other one, which we found in a tall building that we first went to the wrong floor for, was called João Paulo II (yep, John Paul II, no relation to the Pope confusingly) and basically carried only school textbooks. We got an English-Portuguese dictionary here, small enough to tuck into either of our bags if we needed it.
While we’re talking about books, this seems like a good time to tuck in the pictures of the São Paulo library where we spent some time. I got a nice tour from Anjelica, the librarian who worked there, including the different types of materials they have. Gibis is the word for comic books/graphic novels, and are different than desenhos animados which are less sophisticated. One of my favorite things at that library was seeing Diary of a Wimpy Kid being translated as Diary of a Banana on a display table of children’s books!
It was, in most ways, just like a small branch library in the US, though maybe a bit less used. There were only a handful of people there in the 1-2 hours we were there. We did have to sign in and put our bags in a (free) locker. Anjelica did say that people didn’t really know they were there and that there’s another public library not far from there, Biblioteca Parque Villa-Lobos, that gets more attention. They try to have events in the outdoor space that you can see in the first picture and sometimes the sounds draw people in from the street, but attendance can be spotty.
As we departed after orientation, I asked my cohort in the Whatsapp group to let me know if they come across libraries in their cities. Today I got a message from Alexis, who shared the website for the state library in Aracaju, Sergipe, which is basically the Rhode Island of Brazil (smallest state, located in the Northeast; total population under 3 million, population of Aracaju ~600,000). She actually linked me to this site I hadn’t come across yet and seemed pretty comprehensive of all the libraries by state and then by city, which should come in pretty handy, so double thanks to her!
Horntoes in Brazil