This is my first week of work here in Soho, London. I had a bit of sluggish return to work, after travelling for three weeks in Brazil.
Still jet-lagged, tired from a long trip from Sao Paulo via Mexico City – I left SP at 5pm on a Friday and only arrived in London at 12.30pm on Sunday. Now I am slowly going back to normality…
Obviously, I always look forward to going to Brazil, because it is my home. But every time I have visit, I now have a feeling that the inexorable passing of time did exactly what I feared the most: turned me into an almost-outsider.
So much has happened since I decided to board a plane to London in 2002, at the peak of my twenties, fearless, ready to work hard and play even harder.
During the time I’ve been away, Brazil has seen the explosion of mobile communications, expansion of broadband, contactless cards, the lot. A million different brands appeared and I am not familiar with many of them.
People’s interactions have also changed so much. Eight years ago, there was much more of a need for face-to-face communication between groups of friends, as not many people had money to buy a mobile or access the web. Today, use of SMS (torpedoes, as they are called in Brazil) is widespread, as is Orkut, Facebook, etc.
Before I continue with the old rant that we are ‘losing touch’ (because that isn’t true; Brazilians are more connected than ever), I would add that people there have changed because the social and economic environment around them has changed.
Sure, Brazil continues to be home to a lot of inequality, with 15 million people in metropolitan areas still in a situation of total misery (the total population is 190 million) but on the upside, it is one of the last countries affected by the recession and one of the first out.
This has had a really noticeable influence in people’s lives and in their confidence about the future.
My mum’s house, for example, is in Diadema – one of the most violent areas of metropolitan Sao Paulo – but her home has increased 35% in value nevertheless. A river at the end of her street had slums built on both its margins five years ago, which has now been removed and the river will be canalised to give way to a new avenue.
And the lives of everyone I know are much better than they used to be. Even my mates who moan about their situation have all the comforts of a modern home, like internet, cable TV and etc, manage to go out and get plastered and have a standard of living that is much superior to that of someone earning the same wage in London.
I could go on and turn this into a full country analysis, but suffice to say I am very excited about Brazil, its many opportunities and I am full of optimism about a future there, even if it means I will have a lot of catching up to do.
Many friends of mine have said they heard me saying that someday I would go back home a thousand times… Perhaps that wasn’t quite true a few years ago, when I was changing my mind at the same speed I change my underwear and generally too busy planning the next rave weekend or binge drinking event to think too hard about anything else.
Maybe my fast-approaching 30th birthday is bringing me some much-needed sanity, I don’t know. But now I have great plans and I have been lucky to find someone who is just as excited about a new life in Brazil as I am, and together we will make it all happen – 2010 is our year!
