Friday 13 February 2009

Boa noite

Maria is 15 years old. She’s one of Conchita’s six daughters and sons – if I haven’t miscounted! And, to add clarity to this text, Conchita is the mother of the family I’m staying with, after two short “adaptation” days when I slept at UPAVIM.

When I arrived to this family’s house this last Tuesday Maria was celebrating her birthday. So, I was welcomed to the place with a party, a birthday cake, music, the all family and some friends too. It couldn’t be better, right?

I started teaching Maria some Portuguese today. She’s studying tourism in school, so she’s really keen to add other languages to her native Spanish. Since she’s also only starting to learn English, our hour today was spent working on pronunciation in both languages, which I guess is not the most orthodox – or effective – way of doing it. But she insisted on the Portuguese…

The enthusiasm rose during dinner – around 6.30pm – when the family was laughing while trying to read my “Quando for grande quero ser engenheiro” t-shirt. I think they now understand what I mean when I say that Portuguese is really close to Spanish, despite the strange noises that come out of my mouth.

The t-shirt actually says a lot to Orlando, Conchita’s oldest son. He’s 19 and has started studying construction engineering. This is a large and humble family, cared by a hard-working woman who always has a smile in her face. She’s one of the success stories of UPAVIM, as she has been around since the beginning (something like 20 years ago) and has put to the best use some of the resources that the cooperative makes available to the mothers who work hard: a position as kindergarten teacher, and ways of supporting her children’s education.

One reference more: Jeffrey. He’s 3 years old and Conchita’s first and only (so far, should I say? :-)) grand son. He has been amazed at my hairy arms and legs since day one. He passes his hands and head through them while carrying a fascinated look in his face, and then starts laughing like crazy. The family members who are around follow suit. I had this before while travelling in South East Asia, so I guess I just need to start getting used to it…

He’s really sweet. He loves drawing, so I have not many blank pages left in my notebook… I leave here a picture of one of his drawings – my favourite. It’s an elephant. :-)


Back to Maria. I taught her today the first basic conversational phrases in Portuguese, so I said goodbye to her and the family in Portuguese too: “Boa noite”. I’ll follow up on that tomorrow.

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