Category > Americas

Feb 9, 2019
Brazil
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In the pantheon of cities like Paris, New York, and London, Rio needs no introduction. I’ll give one anyway — it’s not the capital of Brazil. (That’s Brasília. Rio used to be, and even briefly served as the capital of Portugal for a time, the only time in history a colony held the seat of power of an empire.) It sure feels like the cultural capital though.

Songs, books, movies… So much popular culture has been inspired by the city. What can I say that hasn’t already been said?

The name exudes glamour. There’s the world’s most famous beaches, Copacabana and Ipanema, photogenic and full of photogenic people, lined with barracas selling caipirinhas. Football-crazy folks invented futevôlei (volleyball, but played with a soccer ball and no hands) just so they could play something resembling football on the beach. Then there’s the iconic mountains: Corcovado, with the giant Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer, built in 1931) perched atop, visible from virtually every point of the city, a simultaneous symbol of triumph and of a seemingly watchful eye over a still-heavily Catholic country. Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain), perched right over the water, provides a dramatic view both from the ground and from the top. The Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers) overlook Ipanema. These aren’t just symbols of Rio, they’ve become symbols of Brazil.
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Feb 5, 2019
Brazil
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Resistance

Salvador, Brazil

Can you imagine a Brazil without capoeira or samba, or even its famed Carnaval celebrations? So tied are these things to Brazilian culture and identity, but they come from one community in particular: Afro-Brazilians, those of the former slave trade and now their descendants. The epicentre of Afro-Brazilian culture is Bahia, in particular its capital, Salvador.

Situated on a hill separating it from the rest of the city, the Pelourinho charms immediately with its cobblestone streets, photogenic colonial buildings, beautiful views over the Bay of All Saints, and multitudes of grand churches. It’s the touristic centre of Salvador, but regular life continues for its residents sandwiched between the restaurants, shops, and hotels.
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Feb 1, 2019
Brazil
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Postcards

Boipeba and Lençóis, Brazil

The site of the first landing of the Portuguese in what is now Brazil, the state of Bahia is historically and culturally significant.

But I’m not ready for that yet: time for a break from all the educational travel! Bahia’s also blessed with stunning nature, from the palm-fringed coast (which includes the namesake Baía de Todos os Santos, Bay of All Saints) to the lush, mountainous interior.
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Jan 26, 2019
Brazil
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Disparate

Oiapoque to Macapá, Brazil

You know that picture in your head when you imagine Brazil, if you’re not a Brazilian? It’s all probably Rio. Crowded beaches, scantily clad people, caipirinhas, parties, soccer fanatics, samba, all that. Rio isn’t just that, and Brazil is not just Rio. But anyways, we’re not there yet.

So here’s my first impression of Brazil, before I’ve gotten to where I’m going.

I’ve just entered on a boat (ignoring the bridge, finished in 2011 yet still not fully open in 2019 since Brazil hasn’t bothered to add a border post on it) from one scruffy-looking small town in French Guiana (St-Georges) to another scruffy-looking small town (Oiapoque). Swap the French language for Portuguese. I’m now in the Brazilian state of Amapá, the former Portuguese Guiana.
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Jan 24, 2019
France, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname
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Diasporas, pt. 5

圭亞那、蘇利南、法屬圭亞那

“Hey, I got Chinese takeout! Have some!”
–“Thanks! Where’s it from?”
“Just around the corner from here.”

The next day, I walk around the bend. The restaurant’s name? Fortune House, the same name (in English, but not in Chinese) as my dad’s former restaurant. It may have only been day one of my trip, but it made me immediately homesick.

It’s been absolutely mind-boggling to see the constant presence of Chinese people in the three Guianas. We’re members of the same diaspora, but we just ended up on opposite sides of the globe. Our daily language, the ones we live in, are completely different, mutually unintelligible, and yet the immediate knowing glances when I walk into the door of a Chinese business immediately leads to a conversation in the one thing we share.
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Jan 23, 2019
France, French Guiana
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Diasporas, pt. 4

Carnaval de Guyane
Kourou and Cayenne, French Guiana

Another day, another aquatic border crossing. Just taking one of those small rickety pirogues to the other side, that’s all — that’s a little step down from the ferry between Guyana and Suriname. Wait, why is everybody speaking French now? Why is my phone welcoming me to… Martinique? And now my phone’s stuck in the wrong time zone, one hour behind the local time.

This town looks a little run down. The road out to Kourou seems quite empty, and huh… hello corrugated steel shacks. Haven’t really seen them that much this trip until now.

Oh look, there’s a freakin’ space rocket.
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Jan 19, 2019
Suriname
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Diasporas, pt. 3

Jaw Jaw, Suriname

Aside from the languages, there’s one other thing that inspired me to visit Suriname: the connection to West Africa. Suriname has a large Maroon population — that is, escaped slaves who fled further inland into the forest on foot, establishing their own communities with their own customs, using what they remembered of their home traditions. The largest of the Maroon groups is the Saramacca (Saamaka), and I wanted to take the time to visit at least one community. Having spent a memorable month in West Africa a few years ago, seeing everything from the big city to more rural areas, I felt a strong pull to compare the lives of those on both sides of the Atlantic. Same ancestors, different geography, hundreds of years of separation.

Past the end of the road, the Saramacca have established their villages along the shores of the Upper Suriname River (Dutch: Boven Suriname). Some of these villages are visited by group tours passing through and staying at isolated resorts, but I chose to visit Jaw Jaw (pronounced “yao-yao”), where returned former expat Bele has started a guesthouse in the centre of his village. Eschewing over 20 years of the hectic rat-race life in the UK and the Netherlands for a return to something simpler, he’s grown proud of his roots and was eager to share.
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Jan 16, 2019
Suriname
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Diasporas, pt. 2

Paramaribo, Suriname

Paramaribo has always been a place I’ve aspired to visit ever since I became interested in languages. It’s the only city and general population centre of sparsely-populated Suriname (pop. 550000), the only official Dutch-speaking independent nation in the Americas, but one that speaks a bunch of everything else.

With a population even more mixed up than Guyana, while all signage is in Dutch, Sranan Tongo (Surinamese) is the general lingua franca of the country, their confounding creole of English, Portuguese, Dutch, and various West African languages. It’s so weird to see Chinese people speaking amongst themselves in Sranan! Speaking of which, other languages I’ve heard commonly are Cantonese, Mandarin, Javanese, Hindi, Portuguese, and of course English, passably spoken by most of the population. Add in the beautiful Caribbean Dutch architecture, and my heart’s already stolen. This place is almost criminally underlooked — the only other tourists I see are all Dutch, and there are few English resources about places to visit in the country!

But speaking of criminal… There’s some sort of nefarious current here. You don’t need to know any of these myriad languages to feel it, but it sure makes it more obvious.
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Jan 14, 2019
Guyana
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Diasporas, pt. 1

Georgetown, Guyana

“Where?”

Prior to arriving in Guyana, that’s the most common response I’ve gotten when asked about this trip. The Ecuadorians sitting next to me on one of my flights had never even heard of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, let alone known that they exist on their continent, just a hop and skip away. (“It’s next to Venezuela.” “Colombia?” “Other side.” “Brazil?” “No, east.” “…Brazil?”) My mom thought I was going to Peru. My Couchsurfing host, Gordon, mentions people mistaking Guyana for Ghana. No one at the airports, not even me until I asked my host for once and for all, seems to know how to pronounce it right. Ghee-ana? Gooey-ana? Guay-ana? I heard all three. (It’s guy-ana, the “guy” as in “you guys”. I only heard that for the first time in Guyana.)

To make matters worse, Guyana doesn’t really have a reputation of its own internationally. It certainly has a reputation though, just not of its own making. Take Jonestown, the incident that literally invented the phrase “drinking the Kool-aid”, after an American cult leader brought his followers to establish their own “utopia” in the Guyanese hinterlands, then ordered them to all commit suicide by kool-aid after he went crazy. Or take the mini refugee crisis, or the territorial dispute extending to half of Guyana, or the recent offshore oil dispute, all courtesy of neighbouring Venezuela.

So arriving in Guyana, having no mental picture of what the place looked like, what have I found?
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Jun 17, 2018
Canada
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Endless

Iqaluit, Nunavut

Nunavut is the size of Western Europe or all of Mexico, comprising 20% of Canada’s landmass. A statistic like this would typically suggest millions of people, heavy attention on the world stage, and significant development.

But we’re not talking typical here. There are no roads into Nunavut, nor are there roads between any of the 25 communities that make up its town-like population of 35,000 (<0.1% of Canada). Majority Inuit, proudly part of Canada yet largely disconnected from the national conversation, it feels like a different country. Maybe even a different planet: the landscape looks like Mars. No amount of Canadian flags, Tim Hortons, or TVs playing “southern” content can change that. Up here, people pay attention to what’s going on down south, but I can’t say that many of us down south do the same for the north. I found myself needing constant reminders that I hadn’t left the country, even with the words “us foreigners” once slipping out of my mouth. It’s hard to absorb how drastically different Canada can be from coast to coast to coast.
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