BRAZIL – African Drops

“Every one of us has at least a drop of African blood in our veins”, confided an academic friend of mine when I arrived in Brazil. And it seems that Brazil is probably the most mixed-blood country in the world, living it up happily. I experienced Brazilians as a smiling, polite, fashionable and generous bunch. We travelled somewhat through the center of the country - and it is a huge country – thanks to what we eventually called “the academic bio-circus”. One Brazilian colleague career researcher selected us and organized a seminar tour labeled “Microbes and Metals”. Dr. Stoyan Groudev - a Bulgarian expert, Dr. Lynn Macaskie – an outstanding British microbiologist, and myself – a bio-engineer. And we went explaining what microbes can do with metals – quite a bit, actually. We teased enthusiastic Stoyan with his own closing phrase “Biosorption is not only technologically feasible but also economically attractive” – it became proverbial.

Our Brazilian scientific audiences were invariably very enthusiastic and we forged  many connections, even friendships.  As a result of this first extensive tour I ended up later teaching a course in Belo Horizonte (state Minas Gerais - with hearty food !) and I also toured (again) up the warm and breathtakingly scenic Brazilian coast in search of our key research material, biomass of seaweed Sargassum. That taught me another little lesson – to not believe local oceanographers. Wherever they pointed out the possible presence of Sargassum, there was none – and it was somewhere else. Flying, I hopped along the warm Atlantic coast of Brazil, searching all the way from the level of Sao Paulo, through Rio de Janeiro, to Salvador, Aracaju, Maceio, Recife, Joao Pessoa, to Natal – there is the point of the South American sub-continent that is closest to Africa. The waves rolling onto Brazilian beaches across the Atlantic come unimpeded all the way from Africa.

With a dune buggy we bumped along stretches of some of those beautiful beaches, mostly empty, some with beautiful huge dunes. Where the ancient Portuguese and Spaniards looked for gold, we searched for Sargassum. The European invaders actually did find their treasures but further inland, at places like Ouro Preto - the whole state there is named Minas Gerais because of the mining activities.

Ouro Preto is a wonderful small mountain town, a UN historic site, populated to a good degree by the Federal University. On an inland tour we even got to see an actual large-scale operation of a gold mine – with a toxic cyanide waste lagoon and all. Pollution aspects get out of hand in uncontrollable Amazonian jungles where river-   and other gold deposits are being (illegally) extracted with mercury. The creeping toxicity of mercury spreads from there to almost around the globe. Expansive Brazil is hard to get to know throughout, let alone controlling it throughout its faraway places and wilderness.

It is a vast country that stretches from the steaming hot Amazon Basin in the north to vineyards and massive Iguaçu Falls in the south. Rio de Janeiro, symbolized by its 38m Christ the Redeemer statue atop Mt. Corcovado, is famed for its busy Copacabana and Ipanema beaches as well as its enormous, raucous Carnival festival, featuring parade floats, flamboyant costumes and samba. Despite of the peaceful nature of Brazilians who did not conduct a war for some 200 years, the crime in most brazilian cities has become vicious and it is spreading. Brazilian middle class is bucking the world trend as it is abandoning family house dwelling in favor of fortress-like gated communities or high-rise condos that conspicuously pierce the city skyline all over. While the bottom of the society scrapes living in the impossible lawless favelas :

It will be interesting how Rio de Janeiro will control its infamous crime and favelas during the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic games.

Brazilian music rhythms are rich and probably the most sophisticated in the world. It seems that simplistic booom-booom of the western contemporary music can only play a ‘second fiddle’ to that of Brazil.
 
What helped me to understand the soul of Brazil were novels of Jorge Amado (e.g. Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon ) – I recommend that you read some.

And I have not seen the mighty Iguazu Falls in the South of Brazil – yet :

 

Rio de Janeiro is probably the most beautiful city in the world. One cannot see Brazil without seeing Rio :

Brazilian eating is as varied as Brazilian scenery - but one should NOT miss Brazilian "churasco" - meat. And yes, you can replicate it even at home - look here :