Paredão de Som

I’m traveling a little lighter today, and my photos are going to be sourced from Google images. If you’re anything like me, you’re likely to dismiss this cautionary story. In the past few weeks I’ve been warned daily of the risk of being robbed and it’s something that I read about before coming to Brazil. Knowing this risk, I bought the cheapest digital camera that I could find rather than bring a bulky, touristic Kodak. 

When I stepped away from the Luau, which is a party near the beach along a couple kilometre stretch of highway, and went to the bathroom,  I turned on my Camera and lit myself up like a firefly making myself a target for an opportunistic thief. With the music from the party pumping, I did not hear him coming and he grabbed it from behind me and took off. I had my runners on and chased him into the dark, but he was faster than me and got away.  The whole experience lasted just a couple moments but it served to teach me a valuable lesson, for the price of a cheap camera. 

1.       Wrist bands are for more than the occasional drop, use it.

2.       There is safety in numbers, clique but true.

3.       Download your pictures often, back up your files

 

The hardware is not particularly important, and it could have been something more valuable that a few photos that I lost. A story was related to me by my host later that weekend of a time when his laptop was stolen with his doctoral dissertation, a work in progress, still on it. 

While petty theft may hold your interest for a moment, Fortaleza is also famous for one of the largest thefts in history.  The Central Bank was robbed a few years ago by a group who tunneled underneath the building into the vault from a couple blocks away. There is now a movie about it called ‘Assalto ao Banco Central’. It was the second largest bank robbery in the world. According to the Federal Police, based on estimates from the weight of the stolen notes (3.5 tons), were stolen about $ 164.7 million. The notes would stack to a height of almost 33 km.

While being stolen from was a dark moment it also had the unexpected and unintended consequence of highlighting what honest, friendly, and generous most Brazilians are. If not for the dark how could we appreciate the light? It was not much longer before the sun rose on the Luau and the party of thousands began to disperse.  We went to the local market and I was treated to a breakfast at the littlest soup restaurant. We started the day with a good Caldo de Mocotó (Pig’s foot soup).  

Seemingly spontaneously the Luau forms along a remote 2 kilometres stretch of highway outside the small beach town Paracura. Here the Walls of Sound (Paredão de som) compete, each one pumping its own remixed beats and punctuating each of the thousand dancer’s steps. The two lane road, lined 2 and 3 cars deep, is filled with party goers and lit by the full moon, strobe lights, cars emergency lights, vendor’s lamps and lasers. It’s a palm tree-ed moonscape of sand dunes, emptiness, and ocean which surround it and absorbs the monumental vibrations emanating from these road side obelisks, these 10 and 20ft walls of sound.  If you ever need to communicate a product message to this demographic, a Paredão de som (Wall of Sound) may cut through the dirge of radio and television advertising targeting the 18 to 29 set, but it also may means competing with 10 to 15 other walls of sound.

Paredão de som (Wall of Sound)

Over the past week I have conducted a few interviews with the business at the Incubator in the IFCE and researching potential research partnerships for applied research between Niagara College Canada and the IFCE while identifying potential incubated companies which have the skills and capacity to commercialize the research and developments that result from these partnerships. 

At one of the hour long interview and SWAT analysis’ of the company I began to get a feel for the fun corporate culture of Azul Technologies. Picture a group of a dozen friends working on developing some cutting edge online services and business process management software. 

I’ve found that preparation is particularly important when going into a meeting in a new language. What we have found works best when communicating with Business Owners is having reasonable well informed question prepared in advance.  Prior to meeting with the companies I prepare questions and produce a rough translation with Google Translate, then have it corrected by my Translator. Then as the meeting proceeds, I take lot of notes about what is being translated. 

There is a saying “that people don’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone.” I don’t entirely agree with this, which is also to say that I don’t disagree entirely. With regard to language; being about to effortlessly articulate my thoughts to friends and colleagues is something that I have usually taken for granted in English speaking regions. Here in Fortaleza not being able to speak Portuguese has the side benefit of being forced to listen much more attentively and consider more carefully the words I choose to use to mistranslate my thoughts and meaning to local people and colleagues who want to communicate. 

My learning curve just got a bit stepper a couple days ago when I moved into a room in an apartment with a family who speaks Portuguese primarily and I’m not able to relay on friends to translate everything. It’s in a nice building a couple of block from the beach in the Meireles neighbourhood about a kilometre from my English speaking colleagues. 

One person I’ve met here in Fortaleza, a multi-lingual guy from France, who has lived and grown up in Italy, Poland, France, and now studies in Brazil, has said that “You need to live in the country to really learn the language.” I agree that to be able to fully grasp what is being communicated, with body language, intonation, and each regions unique idiomatic phrases that you’ll agree being immersed in the counties culture. It’s invaluable and speeds learning immensely, but there are of course obvious exceptions; you may know a few yourselves.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many people who are exceptionally fluent in English who have not yet had experience in an English speaking region. These people I believe tend to be the exception rather than the rule. 

I sat in on an English class during the first week of classes. With a couple of exceptions the boys and girls sat shyly on opposite side of the class and there was a couple of freshman covered in paint and shame. We were able to communicate with a couple of Students by writing in English, with the aid of a dictionary, and passing a note book back and forth. While sitting there I was reminded of every misunderstanding and criticism I’ve levelled at Professors delivering material in there 2^nd or 3^rd language. Next week I’ll be in their shoes delivering a Seminar on Student Government governance and activities in Ontario. 

I was invited to join my Portuguese teacher’s family’s weekend trip to Paracuru. It’s about a 90 min drive Northwest of Fortaleza. The Beach house is near an expansive, non-commercial, and non-residential beach with massive sand dunes (Duna de Areia) in one direction and a dozen beach bars (Barraco de Praia) and surf shops in the other. On one of these sand dunes we went sand boarding.  

Brazilian Sandboarding

Picture a snowboard, a little smaller to reduce drag, made of compressed plywood and laminate like a snowboard but without the metal edges, and minimalist bindings; just straps for you bare feet. Victor and I meet up with a group of kids who had constructed a few jumps. While the construction material was different, I have to mention how surprised I was to see that their Jump building techniques were identical to the way my friends and I would build jumps on my home Hill, Searchmont in Sault Ste. Marie. They would dig with the end of the board and shovels smoothing and perfecting the ramp while packing it with their board on their feet. 

While you can carve you turns on a Sandboard, there is more friction so before each run you put some candle wax on the base of the board. While carving a bit less, sand rides a lot like snow. A decade of snowboarding experience was definitely not a skill that I thought would be transferable to Brazil. When trying to communicate with other riders about tricks and techniques I was surprised to find that many of the names of tricks are the same as in English.  Some, myself included, may feel that snowboarding is better than sandboarding, but try and go snowboarding in your swim suit (Calção de Banho) or Bikini (Biquini). 

At Niagara and Mohawk College I’d taken classes in Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, and French but Portuguese was unavailable. Whether its Sandboarding or enjoying a meal with locals, frankly I had undervalued the simple utility and pleasure of being able to communicate in the local language. I had expected to be able to rely on English and was not surprisingly wrong.  If I’m going to learn Portuguese I’m going to have to start watching a lot more dubbed Dora the Explorer. Thankfully written Portuguese is similar to other Latin languages and communication can also take less explicate forms.  

It’s said that greater than 70% of Communication is not explicate spoken language but body language, intonation, gestures, facial expression and more. I did not really accept this as entirely true until I had a chance to live in a country where I did not know more than a few phrases.  What then are some of the implications of the majority of the communication being non-verbal?

One implication then is that interaction and rich communication with people is possible regardless of whether they understand each other’s language. There are obvious limits to the depth of meaning which can be conveyed, but it’s still possible. Another implication of body language is that in the presence of people we are communicating constantly. If then communication is a continuous state of being, then greater self awareness of what it is that we are conveying when in a new culture may merit some additional attention. Some questions to ask could include; is my body language open or closed? Intonation and pace appropriate? Are gestures expressive and meaningful or perhaps offensive? Body language is as natural as breathing, but also is learned.

I’d like to hear about some of your examples or personal experiences. 

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