I took a trip to Brazil and this scene has been on my mind ever since then. I can't explain why.
My girlfriend and I were staying with her cousins, people who definitely inhabited the upper half of that famously abrupt divide between the rich and the poor in Brazil. We had been staying in their daughters playroom--a little space about as large as a walk-in closet, but every conceivable surface covered in dolls and toys. When we laid down on the inflatable mattress that we nestled in between the overstuffed bookshelves (stuffed mostly with toys, no books) we would look up towards the ceiling the three tiers of shelving bolted to the wall, so full of dolls that they leaned precariously outward, looking down at us with their shiny fake eyes. The father of this toy-laden child told us that it was impossible to reduce the number of dolls that she had; that if one were to go missing she would know instantly. I doubted it, being that at least half of the dolls were obstructed from view by more dolls and that this child of six years old would need to stand on her own shoulders to even reach the bottom-most shelf. Then one day, we returned from the beach and Sofia, the name of the girl, had climbed the low-lying pink bookshelves via a toy chest and a chair and had created a landslide off of the high shelves in search of one particular doll. If later events in our trip are any indication, I think she was looking for a doll whose main feature was that you could give it water from a bottle and it would wet its diaper.
One day, the mother took us to accompany her and Sofia to the mall as an excursion. I had politely declined the same offer when it had arisen in the first discussions of what we could do while we were in Rio. I had made it to Rio de Janeiro! In no way did I want to spend that time in invented consumer paradise. But, our hosts and their family repeatedly insisted that this was a good entertainment option. Despite my mindset that a traveler should do what the locals--and particularly his hosts--do, I was still greatly opposed. Then, as I heard conversations about bulletproof cars, the hidden armed guard in the street, and saw a man in very expensive sunglasses hot-footing it across the scorching pavement explaining "they stole my sandals" as he rushed by, I came to understand a little better my hosts point of view. They lived their lives to not get robbed, as many do in Rio. The mall, then, with the subtle exclusion characteristic of the Latin American take on the the middle American institution, was one of the only places that Sofia could run around.
After treating us lunch in the food court, (considered to be lightly luxurious in Argentina, at least) we walked to a toy store where Sofia, for having finally cleaned her plate, was allowed to have one toy in the store. This required 30 minutes of painful deliberation on Sofia's part. And after that, our extremely generous host insisted on buying all of us some ice cream on stick.
Sofia ate two child-sized bites of hers before announcing that she didn't like it. In my upbringing, this would have brought recriminations raining down upon my by mother, something about starving children in Africa, but our hostess merely told Sofia to return to her the treat. We stepped outside and while Sofia's mother continued chatting politely with us, she seemed distracted as if she was looking for something in immediate area. As we headed towards the parking garage, I heard her cry out "Moço! O Moço!" I knew this word only as the word you used to summon a waiter although the dictionary tells me it can simply mean young man.
She had singled out one of the many tanned, shirtless, sandal-wearing men that walk around in the beachy streets of Rio de Janeiro who I could never quite decide were beach bums or just bums. I knew which when I heard her say "Moço, would you like this ice cream? I bought it for my daughter but she doesn't want it anymore, she hardly ate any" Lightening ran up my spine and my gut tensed in that sensation you get when you see someone brazenly do something that somewhere, somehow you know you aren't supposed to do.
Far from be offended, which I suppose is what my my expectation was, the man stopped walking and put his feet together, and placed one hand on his bare chest and accepted the ice cream giving his thanks in the most dignified manner I have ever seen. And that's where I don't know what to make of it, where to separate my feelings from my cultural from that present moment from everything else. As I saw it then, seeping past my tensed abdomen and creeping up my anglo, electrified spine and was the idea that I was seeing modern feudalism play out--that the correct thing to do was force the child to eat it or to eat it ourselves or throw it in the trash with a feeling of waste and disgust, not give it some stranger in the street. And if this unacceptable situation has indeed come to pass, then the man should have kept walking or expressed an insult to his dignity. To accept it, and (to accept it like he did!) was all wrong. He might not have even been a bum! She could have offered her alms to someone who was just walking back from the beach! Then what?
And then, I also think, and then what? So she would have offered her slightly used ice cream to a stranger who could of bought his own. Maybe he would have been hungry, maybe he wouldn't even have said "Oh, you've got the wrong man, I'm not even poor." Maybe he would have just eaten it. Maybe the real waste is to have forced it on someone who didn't want it, like me or Sofia, when there were people in need right around us. Maybe throwing it in the trash in front of someone in that street who really wanted it--never mind what I think is "dignity,"--is what really should have tensed my gut and stiffened my neck. Maybe my reaction to gift-giving is what's wrong. Maybe that word charity and the hidden directive to reject it is what's bizarre.
And what about the feudalism I saw play out? The modern lady bequeathing a pittance to a shirtless peasant. Isn't that all wrong? But what was she supposed to do, throw the ice cream in a trash in the name of dignity and avoiding these feudal comparisons as can as someone hungry looked on?
It's hard to say that discomfort should preclude generosity when you you don't know if "discomfort" will make a better society.
I don't know.
My girlfriend and I were staying with her cousins, people who definitely inhabited the upper half of that famously abrupt divide between the rich and the poor in Brazil. We had been staying in their daughters playroom--a little space about as large as a walk-in closet, but every conceivable surface covered in dolls and toys. When we laid down on the inflatable mattress that we nestled in between the overstuffed bookshelves (stuffed mostly with toys, no books) we would look up towards the ceiling the three tiers of shelving bolted to the wall, so full of dolls that they leaned precariously outward, looking down at us with their shiny fake eyes. The father of this toy-laden child told us that it was impossible to reduce the number of dolls that she had; that if one were to go missing she would know instantly. I doubted it, being that at least half of the dolls were obstructed from view by more dolls and that this child of six years old would need to stand on her own shoulders to even reach the bottom-most shelf. Then one day, we returned from the beach and Sofia, the name of the girl, had climbed the low-lying pink bookshelves via a toy chest and a chair and had created a landslide off of the high shelves in search of one particular doll. If later events in our trip are any indication, I think she was looking for a doll whose main feature was that you could give it water from a bottle and it would wet its diaper.
One day, the mother took us to accompany her and Sofia to the mall as an excursion. I had politely declined the same offer when it had arisen in the first discussions of what we could do while we were in Rio. I had made it to Rio de Janeiro! In no way did I want to spend that time in invented consumer paradise. But, our hosts and their family repeatedly insisted that this was a good entertainment option. Despite my mindset that a traveler should do what the locals--and particularly his hosts--do, I was still greatly opposed. Then, as I heard conversations about bulletproof cars, the hidden armed guard in the street, and saw a man in very expensive sunglasses hot-footing it across the scorching pavement explaining "they stole my sandals" as he rushed by, I came to understand a little better my hosts point of view. They lived their lives to not get robbed, as many do in Rio. The mall, then, with the subtle exclusion characteristic of the Latin American take on the the middle American institution, was one of the only places that Sofia could run around.
After treating us lunch in the food court, (considered to be lightly luxurious in Argentina, at least) we walked to a toy store where Sofia, for having finally cleaned her plate, was allowed to have one toy in the store. This required 30 minutes of painful deliberation on Sofia's part. And after that, our extremely generous host insisted on buying all of us some ice cream on stick.
Sofia ate two child-sized bites of hers before announcing that she didn't like it. In my upbringing, this would have brought recriminations raining down upon my by mother, something about starving children in Africa, but our hostess merely told Sofia to return to her the treat. We stepped outside and while Sofia's mother continued chatting politely with us, she seemed distracted as if she was looking for something in immediate area. As we headed towards the parking garage, I heard her cry out "Moço! O Moço!" I knew this word only as the word you used to summon a waiter although the dictionary tells me it can simply mean young man.
She had singled out one of the many tanned, shirtless, sandal-wearing men that walk around in the beachy streets of Rio de Janeiro who I could never quite decide were beach bums or just bums. I knew which when I heard her say "Moço, would you like this ice cream? I bought it for my daughter but she doesn't want it anymore, she hardly ate any" Lightening ran up my spine and my gut tensed in that sensation you get when you see someone brazenly do something that somewhere, somehow you know you aren't supposed to do.
Far from be offended, which I suppose is what my my expectation was, the man stopped walking and put his feet together, and placed one hand on his bare chest and accepted the ice cream giving his thanks in the most dignified manner I have ever seen. And that's where I don't know what to make of it, where to separate my feelings from my cultural from that present moment from everything else. As I saw it then, seeping past my tensed abdomen and creeping up my anglo, electrified spine and was the idea that I was seeing modern feudalism play out--that the correct thing to do was force the child to eat it or to eat it ourselves or throw it in the trash with a feeling of waste and disgust, not give it some stranger in the street. And if this unacceptable situation has indeed come to pass, then the man should have kept walking or expressed an insult to his dignity. To accept it, and (to accept it like he did!) was all wrong. He might not have even been a bum! She could have offered her alms to someone who was just walking back from the beach! Then what?
And then, I also think, and then what? So she would have offered her slightly used ice cream to a stranger who could of bought his own. Maybe he would have been hungry, maybe he wouldn't even have said "Oh, you've got the wrong man, I'm not even poor." Maybe he would have just eaten it. Maybe the real waste is to have forced it on someone who didn't want it, like me or Sofia, when there were people in need right around us. Maybe throwing it in the trash in front of someone in that street who really wanted it--never mind what I think is "dignity,"--is what really should have tensed my gut and stiffened my neck. Maybe my reaction to gift-giving is what's wrong. Maybe that word charity and the hidden directive to reject it is what's bizarre.
And what about the feudalism I saw play out? The modern lady bequeathing a pittance to a shirtless peasant. Isn't that all wrong? But what was she supposed to do, throw the ice cream in a trash in the name of dignity and avoiding these feudal comparisons as can as someone hungry looked on?
It's hard to say that discomfort should preclude generosity when you you don't know if "discomfort" will make a better society.
I don't know.
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