Entry nº3: On Misplacement
Disclaimer
The fonts to this are: the voices from my head and the copious amount of coffee I’ve had this morning
Being Brazilian means you are the human equivalent to an “everything and nothing shop”, because no one quite knows how to define you, there is enough variety in you to make people a little bit lost, and you have something useful for every occasion, a little bit of many places, but struggle to see yourself as a whole person when outside walls of your homeland. Two months in Trondheim, and I was already called Mexican, Norwegian, Arabic (as broad as that is), Palestinian, Spanish, and probably will continue being misplaced throughout this experience. Don’t get me wrong, I feel honored to be mistook as native from any of those regions by my looks— so many beautiful women there —, but the downside from a country with a culturally/biologically diverse background shows in a lack of national identity, both out and inwards.
Brazil had many immigration waves through it’s history and the genetic pool of an average person could be big enough for half of the world to swim in. Hell, my cousin took one of those genetic tests and found out she has roots everywhere except Asia (she’s very into South Korean culture though, so maybe her kids will win the Bingo?), and mine should be going along the same lines. Our situation is similar to most people’s: both parents are born in Brasil and the immigrants in our family date to more than a century ago, and due to some good reasons, like love, or many bad reasons, like hygienist policies, there was A LOT of mixing, which leads to the thing I repeat so much that should be tattooed in my forehead: there is not one way to “look Brazilian; and I usually have to say that after the classic “But you don’t look Brazilian!”
As I said: no one knows quite where to place you, and that can be funny for a while, until it’s not anymore. When you’re out of your country for sometime, and missing home a little bit, the last thing you want is to hear that infamous phrase. Questions arise: “Am I not enough?”, “Am I not displaying my culture right?”, “Should I walk with a two-fucking-meter Brasil flag?!”, “Do I belong anywhere?”, and it seems very melodramatic to read those questions now, in the quiet of my home, but they are there hovering over my head when people look confused at me. Also, I’m a Latina, born and raised to be a drama queen.
All this thought process was spiked by a series of disappointments. As I’ve said, I’m on exchange (more on that another time), and no one from my country came with me, as opposed to my two colleagues, who came from the same place, speak the same language (that I don’t understand at all), like the same artists and knew each other from before. Great for them, less than ideal for me. They were put in contact with others from their country. Also great for them, also less than ideal for me. My coordinators were sweet enough to find me a Facebook group called “Brasileiros em Trondheim”, and even if I was skeptical, it felt like it was worth the try. But you see, Brazilians are not necessarily social in the sense of “wow, we’re compatriots, let’s talk and share and be a community”, and that group was, well… what I wish it wasn’t. Just a selling place. I feel like some of “my people” repel each other, too desperate to belong anywhere else but Brasil as a part of the whole Underdog Syndrome I mentioned previously (it is in PTBR, though). I wish it wasn’t like that. I said before that so many things in Norway resonate with me and, being honest, I don’t want to go back home just yet, but I miss the feeling of being where I was born and raised, to speak in a more mellifluous language than english, to say “carinho”, “cafuné”, “saudade” and “eu te amo” and be fully understood. I long for that feeling put so beautifully in Hozier’s “Butchered Tongue”, and with that quote I sign off for today.
So far from home, to have a stranger call you “Darling”, and have your guarded heart be lifted like a child up by the hand, in some town that just means home to them, with no translator left to sound…
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