This.Beautiful.Chaos

Living someone else's day.

christyzinn — Fri, 3 May 2013 13:10:00 GMT

I spent the night in a favela. In case you were wondering, it was a first for me. In this neighbourhood withstood the describable abode of a newly acquired friend, with whom I met that evening to embark on an adventurous hike starting at an ungodly hour the following morning.

Upon arriving at the nearest bus station, I am fetched, and sitting on the back of a Honda scooter we put-put over to the house of a family member, where I am offered a humble dinner of rice and beans to eat, and a kitsch cd of reggae music to listen to. It is rare for Brazilians to indulge in food without a fizzy refreshment accompanying their meal, so I anticipate the offer. “Quer água, ou água,” my friend jokes – do you want water, or water? – and places a glass of drinking water on the table in front of me.

It is not long before the time has come to make our way home. On any day prior, had anyone asked, I would confidently have assured him or her that the characteristics of someone well-travelled and infinitely adaptable reside starkly within me. This bull-strong mentality was about to get flagged.

I clutch the backseat handlebars throughout the ride home, resisting the bumps and bends of a dirt road caked with filth and narrowed between two walls that constantly change but in truth all look the same. As the windows we struggle past open small portholes into another way of life far different from mine, of people unbeknownst to any municipality-upgrading scheme that ever may have existed, the realisation that “choice” is in actuality an unaffordable luxury for some hits me between the pupils of my widening eyes. My mind cannot help but keep repeating, I never want to live like this, I never want to live like this. But people live like this. Without.

The smell of open sewerage drives into the singular space as we open the doors to enter, and the attempt at ignoring it distracts my desperate urge to find a coping mechanism. It is after midnight, and the droning sounds of this populated human jungle are only clarifying – urban nature at its rawest.

As I lie on my back in the heat and noise and pungent dark, my stomach sinks into a vacuum above my spine. Hunger, silent, conspires with my inability to sleep despite knowing that there would be nothing in the fridge if I had the audacity to look, nothing spared in the oven if I cared to peak, and even if by stroke of luck there were something to savour in either of these places, my pride would anyway not have had the confidence to help myself to it.

I spy sea food.

christyzinn — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:51:00 GMT

And so it is that after six-weeks of being in a city of Brazilian sea and sunshine I am having my first, much-anticipated sugar cone of soft-serve – nuts, chocolate sprinkles, wafer and all: across the road from my city apartment in the midst of Pontes Vieira Avenue traffic. No, it’s not how I envisioned the moment. But a day of culinary exploration only has one appropriate ending in a seaside town such as Fortaleza, and that is with ice cream. A different attempt at closure would just not have sufficed.

Why did I wait so long to redeem myself of my cravings, you may ask, when the number of times I’ve frequented the sea along with all it’s sand-roaming ‘sorvete’ vendors has led me to believe that I must have been a mermaid in my past life? If there is one thing I have learnt, travelling on a budget the size of my newly acquired Brazilian bikini with the hopes of stretching its seams over the bum and breasts of an entire year does wonders for disciplining a sweet tooth.

My meanderings today led me to a fish market that has to be one of the most exciting and authentic treasures these beaches have coughed up. Wooden box stalls marked in hand-painted numbers line their counters with the morning’s catch. The timely rumblings of lunchtime nudge my brow in the direction of one particularly diverse selection of raw delicacies. Fish frosted and fresh as salt, I cannot help but pick one out, and 500g in a plastic packet later the thought enters my mind of what to do with the flapping thing.

Behind the hustle of sweating locals chopping guts and crushing ice, my eyes fall upon a shabby restaurant overlooking a quietly beautiful bay donned with the type of small, wooden, might-just-sink-on-a-windy-day fishing boats that idle as introductions to an industrial port nearby.

I decide to approach the chef wearing milkman rubber boots and hovering over a steaming outdoor gas stove. Looking him in the eye, and desperately resisting the urge to look him down again, I questioningly lift my pink scaly lunch towards him for lack of Portuguese expression. He understands exactly.

On observation I realise I am not the first with this idea, and sit down to share the humble atmosphere with fellow diners who have also surrendered their buy to a sizzling pan of oil and garlic in a makeshift food shack backstage. As I wait, my mind lingers on the sound of fickle waves crashing not far ahead, and the rising aroma of cooking seafood.

A metal pan placed on the table slanting just over my lap disrupts my daydreams and the sight and smell of succulent fish, spitting hot and deep-fried, consumes the ravenous instincts I share with the mouths and hands of those eating around me. I do not even stop to recognise the moment as yet another culinary experience acquainting all senses to the life of another people.

Understanding a Culture through Food - Flavours of Brazilian festivities

christyzinn — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:44:52 GMT

The thought that any nationality could beat the South African with the amount of meat he consumes was not one I readily conceptualised until I spent a sweltering Sunday afternoon with thirty-odd Brazilians.
It is Easter Sunday, and I am sitting on the sidewalk of a dirty yellow street in Conjuta Ceará, a quaint but bustling low-cost settlement on the outskirts of Ceará’s capital city. Amongst plastic chairs and tables, shiny warm-skinned people and the buzz of Portuguese laughter, my language limitations reduce me to a nervous observer of the flies that patiently waft around the plates and furniture and faces destined soon to be smeared with flavour.
The smell of churrasco, a South American-style barbeque, consumes the air, and it is not long before it mingles with the humidity resting on the skin of every family member to whom I had recently and enthusiastically been acquainted. A series of spitting steaks are slapped onto the plate in front of me, and before I can blink the steam from my eyes there is a clamour of knives, forks, hands and skewers lunging for the first of what would be a persistent six-hour delivery of morsels from the sizzling flame.
Cheap Brazilian funk blasts through the improvised speakers, adding to the heat of festivities. One-litre bottles of cold Skol beer are placed on the row of tables to counteract this, and are eagerly grabbed by large male hands, leaving the bottles with fatty finger imprints naturally avoided by gliding droplets of condensation. The atmosphere gets louder as the meat gets hotter, stomachs are gratified, and the simplistically happy atmosphere draws from within me a deep sense of belonging and content that etches a smile to my face. The relaxed temperament grows, and as segments of carne, fat, beer and Coca-Cola are carelessly splattered on the tables and occasional shirt of merrymaking participants, it is accompanied relentlessly by the hastened fidgeting of flies nobody seems to notice.
It came to be that the diligent attempt I had made to sacrifice meat for the forty days of Lent was retributively made up for in one sitting. For despite my cynicism regarding the origin of the donkey-sized mass of meat so avidly cooked and distributed to snatching hands that day, I promptly decided that it be best not to ask any questions. My conscience and I would have had to settle for the trusty accompaniment of rice and beans had I not wiped caution from my dampened brow and flicked it to the dusty street.