Someone told me awhile ago that it was possible to buy peanut butter here, just not at the cheap little supermarket.. but the other one has it. Well, I have been into the nicer grocery store many times and often scanned the isles for peanut butter, more out of curiosity than craving. There are many many types of jams and jellys and nutella and generic nutella, but I never saw peanut butter. I finally found it a couple of days ago, of course, I should have known, it was stocked right next to the butter in a refrigerated section.
Just finished a very common Portuguese lunch with olives, bbqed fish, salad, potatoes, and some creamy dessert. I passed on the cafezinho which most Portuguese people take after their lunch. I was talking with a colleague about how the Portuguese cafes are so similar all over the city.. how I can buy the same pastry or sandwich or bbqed sardine or bread or cup of coffee pretty much anywhere they serve breakfast or lunch. Also, names are very uniform. When I was invited along to play basketball at this tiny gym with the international slanted key every other person on my team was named João and the other two girls there were both Joana. Well, as I learned today, here in Portugal there is a list of names and you pick one from the list for your kid. There are no invented names. The list of accepted names is here: http://www.rnpc.mj.pt/civil/NomesAdmit.pdf (also specified as male or female) and the names that were not admitted are here:http://www.rnpc.mj.pt/civil/NomesNaoAdmit.pdf. This is how they preserve the Portuguese culture.
1. Bairro Quinta da Serra Médicos do Mundo Office
2. Learning about healthy foods … sorry i dont know how to flip these pictures.
3. Noite Saudavel van at the Santa Apolonia Station
4. At the beach with couchsurfers
5. Presentation about UFOs in the Amazon, Gustavo of SIT you should contact this guy, it will fit nicely into the Resource Managment and Human Ecology theme.
This week with Médicos do Mundo I am working in what is basically a slum on the outskirts of Lisbon, about a thirty minute bus ride from Praça da Comercial. Tomorrow we’re hosting an event to demonstrate what people should be eating.. especially if you have diabetes or high blood pressure or if you’re cooking for little kids.. etc. So, today was interesting walking around with one of the nurses to distribute the fliers (written in Português or Creole) to invite everyone we could find to come to the event. It’s a common story that a person only eats rice and potatoes because they dont want to spend their money on a balanced diet. For me it was a chance to learn how to say a few phrases really well in Portuguese, repeating them so many times, and to step briefly into many different homes. There is a little blurb about the event on the MDM website www.medicosdomundo.pt/index.jsp?page=news&lang=pt&newsId=255 and it shows the MDM office in this project.
There are lots of problems in this neighborhood. AIDS is definitely a presence, especially as the majority of the residents are coming from Guine Bissau and Cabo Verde, or at least I met a lot from there, and they’ve got a very serious problem with AIDS.
So, besides preparing for this festival of what you should eat and observing the routine of people that come to the MDM office with various aliments that they hope the nurse can help, this week I also did a few miscellaneous things. One day I went to Servico de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF) to accompany a person from MDM who was trying to help a Caboverdeano get his 9 year old son here, but there had been problems with the papers.. etc etc.. this for me was several hours watching the processing of hundreds of immigrants to Portugal. It wasn’t health care, but as this project is so integrated into the community they do what they can..
My social life in Lisbon has been revolutionized by couch surfers. Couchsurfing.com is where people network to crash on each others couches. But it turns out that there is a very active Lisbon group and they have regular meetups. On Friday night I randomly showed up and was suddenly thrust into a group of very interesting, diverse people. Mostly Portuguese, but also lots of international people that are either staying on the couch of someone in the group or using the network as a way to have automatic friends to go out with in each city they visit.
It was with people I met through couchsurfing that I finally tried eating snails here in Portugal, a popular appetizer. I wasn’t going to order a platter of snails for my own, so it was convenient to be with Portuguese people eating snails. They actually like them! It was with couchsurfers that I tried another Portuguese drink served at one specific place called puntapenacona which is coffee mixed with beer. As a side note from the couchsurfing, another Portuguese food I’ve recently tried are temoços. I sought this dish out because another traveler told me he loved them and he made me feel bad that I didn’t know what it was. BUT now that i have tried tremoços I wish I had been able to argue with him.. they’re not great. A tremoço is a big yellow bean that tastes like it has been soaked in saltwater and you eat it after removing the thick skin with your teeth and popping the fleshy part (the endosperm) into your mouth. For me, this seemed equivalent in sophistication to eating peanuts at Hero’s in Claremont. With the help of wikipedia I have just learned that a tremoço is a lupin bean.
So I met the couchsurfers at a dinner for couchsurfers.. that led to invitations to go surfing the next day. Sadly, the beach was too windy going the wrong direction and nobody was surfing, but the beach, Praia Grande, was excellent. There were five “couchsurfers,” two Portuguese, one Belgium, one Australian, and me.
I missed the day we learned about gypsies in school. Gypsy in Portuguese is cigano. I’ve been learning quite a bit about gypsies this week.. for example the older men and women wear black, and will continue to wear black for a couple of years, to mourn the loss of the patriarch of the community. There was recently a big disturbance in the community when one of the guys “stole” away his wife, but that is now settled. This is common knowledge for people around here. Well.. now I know.
This week I am working with Projecto Sementes. Check their blog for an awkward picture of me picking up trash with the kids! It’s summer break, and while I was working for them it mainly felt like the center was dedicated to keeping the kids busy, but they do a lot of stuff with the entire community I just didn’t see as much of this aspect, only spending a week with this project.
This neighborhood used to be a slum on the outskirts of Lisbon, but then the city built a bunch of apartments. The neighborhood used to be a center for heroine, but that is not a problem here now. Apparently the kids in this neighborhood call themselves the Taliban and on the other side of the highway they are called the Americans… Every day is different.
On Monday I went to a Portuguese University to take some Portuguese classes.. I went early in the day to verify the information, then returned at 6 pm when the class was supposed to start. Well, apparently there isn’t another person in this city that wants to take Portuguese right now because they told me that the classes actually were not going to happen.
So, I was walking home from the University and passed a gym. The woman working at the front desk showed me around.. it’s called “Fitness 4 Women.” Apparently they don’t have normal gyms around here.. and it’s rare to see someone running in the street. SO, I joined this gym. I go every week day and it’s usually almost empty.. so I usually have a personal trainer.
There are no treadmills or anything aerobic.. a lot of different combinations of stepping on boxes to get warmed up. One of the walls is painted lime green, two are mirrored so it seems like everything is green, with pink yoga mats and grey machines. One of the three trainers, the only guy trainer, also wears matching lime green and black outfit. He gives a lot of thumbs up and winks for encouragement (winking is definitely more popular here than in the US).
This is no Ducey Gym. I haven’t been able to push myself quite as hard as working under the Goldhammer regime. It’s nice to be exercising again.
Yesterday I stumbled upon, and decided to participate in, the Alfama Marathon of Photography. The goal was to respond to twelve prompts by taking digital photos in the Alfama neighborhood and go to six checkpoints within the given time period. I do not expect to win any prizes for my photos. Some of the questions I didn’t really even understand (there were no English translations). But, I did met some people and saw some interesting parts of the neighborhood. I also got a t-shirt that says “THINK after leaving Portugal” in English. The event was well attended, and I was out of place not to have my digital SLR. I have never spent that much time with photography as the main focus. One of the stops was a public structure for washing clothes where they had a fado group performing. Another was this little Romanian Orthodox church that I did not know existed. It was a nice random way to spend the afternoon. Then I went out to Barrio Alto with a new friend from the photo marathon. This is the link to their website, where eventually, I expect, the results from the competition will be posted: http://blog.app-alfama.org/
Reflecting on this past thursday reminds me of an independent film that I just flipped to and I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to mean, and nothing really significant every happens but the whole string of events make it bizarre and therefore holds my attention. First, to set the scene, this movie is in Lisbon and the sun is brightly shining.. its like everything is viewed through a yellow filter, actually. Then, whatever language it is filmed in is vague, so it’s all subtitled to make a little cohesion (this is because some of my life is in Portuguese, some in English, and some i dont really understand but I have it in my head anyway). So, the main character, whom you never see (i dont have a mirror in my room so I never really know what I look like anyway) wakes up and goes out to lunch and eats a big fish. Then, she goes to the metro station to pick up her card, just running errands… Now it gets weird.
A colleague at MDM has arranged a Portuguese lesson for me in a part of town that I have never been to before. I get on the bus which I assume goes there and am staying as alert as possible. When I think I’m close, I ask the person next to me and show him the post-it note i have with the address. He tells me to get off at the next stop and take this other bus to go up the hill or something.. But, i think he’s wrong from my previous consultation with my map. So I get off on four lane, main street that seems completely isolated, then I instantly start to get sweaty. Visualizing the map in my head, I take a smaller street up to the right and walk for like two minutes and then, miraculously, I pass the sign that says CAIS, the organization that I am looking for! But, since Im a lot earlier than I expected to be I keep walking and buy some Cheetos, but they’re a weird flavor and it’s very disappointing.
I return to CAIS and peep inside; it looks empty. I ring the bell of the green door a little old woman appears and she is expecting me. She tells me that i must use the other door next time, but since its my first time she leads me through the building to this long trapezoidal courtyard. The classroom where my Portuguese lesson will be was empty and she has me sit at one of several tables outside in the shade of a huge tree dropping little yellow flowers all over the place. THen this Slovakian guy appears who she introduces me to, and asks him to introduce me to the teacher. He tells me about eight times to not be scared (in english) and I’m trying to correct all of my body language that could be convincing him that Im scared (this is weird, but not scary). Then a couple of other students showed up and class started.
THe teacher asks me my name and where I was from, both questions that I am able to respond to in Portuguese. Then, she asks her other three students to ask me questions. There is the Slovakian, a Sri Lankan, and a Nigerian. They don’t ask me anything until the teacher basically put the words in their mouths. At one point someone asks me if i worked, “yes, i work here, do you work?” “No, I’m a refugee here”. Just casual language class discussion… Ultimately, this class is not what I’m looking for. The material we covered is a little bit more elementary than I want, but the experience was interesting. I take a bus back to the metro, escorted by the Nigerian even though I assure him I would be fine.
At work I go out with Noite Saudavel. It is not particularily busy: some people stop by to pick up condoms, some old people need some pills, some guys need to swap syringes. I stay in the van for observation of some patients, and stand outside with the Ukranian some of the time, pointing at things and being told the how to say it in Portuguese. Then the Portuguese people laugh at the cycles of mispronounciations.
Then, this bus driver shows up (recognizable by his kaki colored collared t-shirt embroidered with “carris”). He explains that there is a woman that won’t leave leave his bus. I have no idea what he thinks Médicos do Mundo will do, but we cross the street to where the bus is parked and there’s this old woman sitting in the very front seat. She doesn’t say anything or respond to questions such as “where are you going?” “do you need help?” etc… she shakes her head and nods sometimes and is clutching a key, presumably to her home, in one hand. MdM talks with her for a bit, but no progress is made and then they call the police. So, a few minutes later three police show up and they persuade her to leave the bus by gently guiding her arm. The old lady gets off the bus and starts walking down the median of this busy street. One of the workers from MdM accompanies her for a little while, but she knows where she’s going, apparently, and still isn’t talking to anyone. So then we go back to the van. That’s all.
I eat lots of this:
