Brazilian Consulate, Argentina
06/03/10
In Juan´s Toyota truck, we passed a line-up a couple blocks long that ended across the street from Teresa´s home where the poor gathered to collect welfare cheques. Scanning the poor people, it was a mixed crowd with many young people, to my surprise, including young women with small children. Teresa later explained that 200 Pesos were given per month, per child. In these few minutes driving passed, I came to feel that someone in the crowd was watching me, though I never made eye contact with anyone.
Watching the locals, I glanced quickly through the line-up, but saw no faces. Perhaps, I reasoned, what I felt was people waiting for me: friends, to show me a good time with possibly too much alcohol; family, to welcome me home; teammates and gym partners, to make fun of me and whip me back into shape; Canada, the true North strong and free. I realized how close we were to home. I felt the presence of all I´ve known tingle at the back of my neck.
“What is it?” Boxie-boo asked.
“I cannot believe I´m here,” I replied, something I have said numerous times on this trip.
Fiercely, I hurled myself at the familiar: mental writing and editing, remembering to remember this moment - all these sights and feelings I wished to portray to my readers, and I suppose, to myself. A writer does not write, as people believe, to be remembered, but to be understood beyond words.
This constant routine, rigidly constructed to give purpose to my backpacking life, no longer seemed to serve me. The rhythm of the pen in my blood, sending sentences down my super highway of veins, felt unconnected to some deeper pattern that ran beneath the surface. I felt off-kilter. I felt like someone straining to see enemies in darkness - the more I tried, the more I failed and the more I felt them moving closer towards me. This enemy was inside me.
I worried my writing might fail to illuminate its goal of describing what it was like to travel around the world. Sometimes on this trip I felt a resemblance in people, a sameness we all share the world over in our longing for love, to connect with one another, while we thrist individually for our dreams. Other times, I felt lost and confused, an unwelcomed foreigner who should have never left home. I heard my tension in Juan´s voice.
Emotions ran between us like a wire. Juan´s nerve ends caught the passion of our questions; his advice smooth as a vapor in the slipstream of the truck. He warned us not to speak as our accents and English would make us criminal targets. He told us to walk to the bus confident and straight, something that has become habitual to me on this trip, to always look unafraid. We blend in, he explained, in our silence. This made sense to me as many people have confused me being of Spanish background in other countries due to my beard, hat and matador-scented belly button.
I took note of his advice, leaving my nationality and camera hidden in my locked backpack until we arrived an-hour bus ride later to Downtown Buenos Aires (below), a route passed suburban homes and massive slums. Our silence was easy, as no one spoke on the bus.
One of the most annoying things on this trip was trying to receive our Brazilian Visas. The consulate office in Canada could not help us as the Visas would have expired before we reached Brazil. Instead, I made arrangements on arrival Tanzania through email before we even boarded our first plane. After dropping off our passports in Dar es Salaam´s Brazilian Consulate, we returned about a week later, at which point we were told they have no Visa services.
After multiple emails that only recieved “Auto-Response” from the Brazilian Consulate in Argentina, I was finally replied to come to their office before 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, with the needed documentation.
We arrived at the Brazilian Consulate in Buenos Aires at 2:30 p.m. We were then told that Visa Services closed at 2 p.m., which meant we´d have to start this all over again the next day. Had the employee been male, I would have been tempted to sew her nose to his nuts, make him allergic to Canadians, so every time he saw me he would sneeze and sack himself. Damn you, Brazil.
On the way back to Teresa´s home, our 129 bus stopped somewhere halfway that looked about as familiar to me as breasts would on my kneecaps. It turns out there were many different 129 bus routes. Lost and confused, but somehow still smelling terrific, we had no choice but to take an expensive taxi back, as Juan warned, we should not walk around Teresa´s neighbourhood at night. The cab drive echoed Juan´s concerns, reaching back to make sure our doors were locked as we neared Teresa´s home.
That´s all for now.
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