It’s surprising how much we learn when we decide to listen and take an interest in what others have to share. I continue to meet women and their life stories during rides in app cars. Each trip is an opportunity to think about the world from a different perspective, understanding the journey of someone who also ran a lot to be there, in that direction.
In the last month, I met some Brazilian drivers. We laughed, shared memories and wishes for the future. Different accents that carry memories, landscapes and feelings; awaken imagination and curiosity. “How are you?” greeted the girl from Minas Gerais as she placed my suitcase in the back of the vehicle.
I immediately recognized that welcoming speech that seems to invite you to a coffee with warm cheese bread. The kind reception already indicated lively prose along the way. Whenever I hear this cadence, I remember the year I lived in Contagem (MG) to do a postgraduate degree. These were times of effort, adaptation and good friendships.
Having lived in Portugal for fifteen years, the driver that afternoon was a woman who paved her own path. She emigrated alone, worked as a caregiver for the elderly for ten years and has been driving passengers to destinations for four years. Despite her present smile, she revealed that she has lost enthusiasm due to the lack of respect and neglect experienced in Portuguese lands. “There’s always someone looking at you the wrong way. Hatred is more explicit. The media has encouraged people to expose their feelings more – for better or for worse,” he reflected.
The other day, I had a tight schedule to arrive at a training session when I was greeted by a driver from Rio who was born in Aveiro. At 65, she is retired from a long career in law, but remains active. She is a professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, she also graduated in Anthropology and began studying the topic of immigration.
We exchanged views on the well-known attendant law, we talked about politics and how the religious factor can mobilize emotions. With his anthropological knowledge, he warned: “In the face of Sociology, we study the SELF in front of the OTHER and, when we put a face on that OTHER, it becomes easy to manipulate”. In a way, the woman from Rio de Janeiro ends up carrying out a social experiment when dealing with customers. As you interact, you discover the ideologies of each passenger and their behavior in the world.
On a trip to a meeting, I met a woman from Pernambuco who has lived in Lisbon for nine years. In Brazil, he worked in the commercial area, in Portugal he works as a driver in an app car after resuming his career post-maternity. She commented on the difference in commissions offered in the two markets – “Insurance doesn’t make money here.” – and about the project to return to the real estate segment. Drive life with daily experience in finding better routes.
“A man prayed in my head and God said I would change country.”, another driver, born in Goiânia, a city known as the land of pequi, told me. A story that could be one of fantastic realism, but which materialized twenty-six years ago, while he has lived in Lisbon. She has already tried to bring her daughter and mother to live together, but both have not adapted to the cold climate. “I don’t see myself there (in Brazil), I love it here.”, he explained, reporting the critical situation of the three brothers who live in Leiria, after Kristen’s depression: “It’s chaos. You know when there’s a war and it ends? Everything is destroyed.”
This Saturday, I met another Brazilian, from Paraná, who has lived in Loures for twenty-four years. He emigrated to stay for just two years, tried to return after ten, but failed. “I thought it was strange, how can we not adapt to our own country?”, he recalled when he returned to Brazil for a short time. Living permanently in Portugal, last year, he took his twelve-year-old son to spend some time with his roots. “He is proud to be Brazilian.”
We said goodbye and I started thinking about what it would be like to return to Brazil for good. But for now, the only move that is planned is to a new address. Starting next week, I will begin a period of adaptation within the same land.
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