(Opinion) As a gringo, happily resident in Brazil for a couple of decades, I’m often asked: what is it about Brazil that I like, and what keeps me here?
My answer is simple. It’s the people.
It may be obvious to Brazilians. But there is a special quality, warmth, and generosity which I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced, defining my life here.
‘Friendship’ I have found means more than the casual relationships I’ve experienced elsewhere. ‘Friends’ matter, and when I am addressed as ‘my friend’, it comes without reservation.
I’ve thought a lot about that lately, most recently at the wonderful wedding of my good friend, Marcos. It was the kind of wedding party I couldn’t imagine taking place anywhere else.
Marcos was a former dog walker whom I had met at a little café de rua where he and I often stopped for our morning cafezinho, he with the three or four dogs he was exercising and me with Jordan, my adored golden retriever.
With a little English, he was eager to improve; we became friends as we sipped our coffee and swapped stories. I wanted to know more about him and his family.
I wanted to know what it was like for a poor black kid growing up in a mixed neighborhood and how he started walking dogs to earn money.
I wanted to know about his ambitions and why he was studying engineering when a business career was what he really wanted.
Perhaps our love of dogs bridged the big differences between our ages, backgrounds, educations, and economic status.
Marcos related how, as a carefree fourteen-year-old, more than anything, he wanted a dog of his own but was too poor to have one.
He told me how one day while wandering around the neighborhood; he had “noticed somebody staring at me.
Suddenly, my gaze met hers. It would have been impossible not to have fallen in love with those beautiful brown eyes.
There was Nina, a golden Labrador, sitting on a wall looking around the street as if she wanted the gate to spring open so she could go for a walk with me.”
“I approached and risked putting my hand on her head because she seemed to be very docile, and indeed, she was.”
“I spent about a week going every day to the green gate of Nina’s to pet her. She certainly seemed to look forward to that. And I thought: how wonderful it would be if I could walk her. But I would have to ask her ‘owner’ permission first.”
Marcos was smitten but also sensitive to the concept of ‘owner’ and the idea that “when we own something, we can do whatever we want with it; after all, it is our property.”
How, he wondered, could you ‘own’ a companion that could become your best friend.
Every day he would walk past Nina’s home, stop, pet, and talk to his new companion. It took him more than a week to build up the courage, but he finally went to the front door, rang the bell, and told the woman who answered the door that he loved dogs and asked if he could walk Nina.
The woman asked: “How much do you charge?” That question, Marcos told me, “Changed my life”.
“To be paid for doing something I would happily have done for nothing was so unexpected. I felt very important because, for the first time, I would have the opportunity to work and earn on my own.”
“I had never heard of a job like this. I could save and buy sneakers or give a part of the money to my mother. That made me extremely proud. Most importantly, the commitment to walk Nina gave me a friendship that cannot be valued in price.”
Over the years, while following his studies, walking dogs became his joy and occupation.
One day Marcos asked me how much I would charge to mentor him, help improve his English and guide him toward the kind of regular executive job that was his ambition.
Of course, I was delighted. I told him I would charge him nothing, and we started to have weekly sessions.
They ranged widely, and there seemed nothing he wasn’t interested in. I helped him write an article published in HuffPost, and he helped me in numerous ways.
He introduced me to his lovely blond girlfriend, Daniela, a fledgling lawyer who helped me draft a Will.
One day Marcos told me that his bike had been stolen from in front of my building. He did not go to the police because he had been taught they didn’t help black people.
I helped him overcome that instinctive fear, enlisted their help, and amazingly, got the bike back. And we celebrated together when he landed a good executive trainee job from which he has already been promoted.
I was surprised and honored when after a few years of mentoring, he asked me to be the best man at his wedding. He and Daniela were planning a very special event and saving up to pay for it.
Last week the wedding day finally arrived, and the celebration had a wonderfully formal informality about it.
The families and guests were that exceptional cross-sections of Brazilians you find here, a comfortable and easy mix of races, colors, and backgrounds. When the bride and groom walked under an array of sparklers, raised like swords at a military wedding, I felt part of something very special.
It was that unique Brazilian quality of friendship.