I would do it all over again….

After returning home from Brazil, I must say I am experiencing culture shock. I went from being surrounded by people sharing every meal with someone, to doing things on my own. I still value my personal time, but I found that the people around me are an extension of myself when my life functioned around the presence of others in the home. Mealtimes were my times to practice Portuguese and learn about the habits of my hosts, and integral time in the day for building relationships. As a result of visiting Brazil, the importance of sharing meals has heightened for me. Some people would get a little offended or hurt if I did not share my meal with them, which leads me to believe that meal time was not only a time to find nourishment, but to spend precious time with people. Skipping mealtime was like skipping a carefully planned party made in your honor, or rejecting a gift. The importance placed on the midday meal sparked me to place an equal importance on meals here in the U.S. Now with our culture and my lifestyle I will still have most of my meals alone, but I will cook and invite people over more often than I did before living in Maceió.

In the Divinity School, there are some who talk about and live out intentional communities, a group of people who choose to live together to be more sustainable and learn and live a life together. The point of the communities is to learn how not to be wasteful, how to live with just enough and encouraging others to do so, and learn how to share space. Upon learning about these communities, I was immediately against them, because I value my own space. I prefer to be able to be left alone as I wish. But after living in the cafofo, it struck me that what happens organically in Northeast Brazil, some communities in the United States have to create. This may be a mark of our individualistic culture, in order to find community, we must create it, but in Brazil community is essential to their lives and culture. Needless to say, in spite of my rejection of this community, I grew accustomed to being in the presence of others constantly, and found that I really enjoy it.

My experience helped me to rethink my way of life in the U.S. As my space is valued highly in the United States, it became a magnifed issued in Brazil. There was someone always in my space in Brazil. People walked in and out of the bedroom while I relaxed, people sat right next to me on the couch, and even in church people refused to move over a little so I can have breathing space. While I felt this, I had to continuously remind myself that I was not at home, the bedroom you are sleeping in actually belongs to the family, the couch is not yours, this church is not yours. I had no monopoly on the space, because I was in a land that was not my own. But who is to say that the space I valued at home was my own? Am I entitled to my own room, my own seating area, and my own 3 feet of personal space that was so often violated in Brazil? Who am I to claim a space as my own and then disallow people to enter it? As a result, I recognize how isolated we make ourselves by designating certain spaces as our own and discouraging others from sharing it.

And, I learned Portuguese! Bilingualism is always a plus.