Hearts in Love With Curitiba
By Joan Horn
My love affair with Brazil began in 1986 with a phone call from a colleague asking if I’d like to go to Paraná under the auspices of Partners of the Americas. The purpose was to set up an environmental camp that would be a pilot project for the whole of the country. It took all of ten seconds to say yes. In thirty days I was flying south, armed with plans to duplicate the ecological camp I had been running in Ohio for seven years.
Joan Horn
My introduction to your country came in a two-week stay at the Colégio Madalena Sofia, where in the evenings I watched two presidential candidates verbally spar on TV and listened to what the teaching nuns there thought of them: Collor and Lula. It has been fascinating to see how things have played out politically since then. Certainly better than in our country of late!
Since then I have returned nine times, most recently in February 2008 to visit an environmental center, Volta Velha in Itapoa, SC, patterned after the camp I had been directing. It is a stunning success story, after only a year or two in operation. With each trip, I have come to Curitiba for at least a little while. I simply cannot stay away. Good friends are there who seem like family to me. The samba music has energized me, and the araucaria trees have provided a unique backdrop for many of my travels in the state. I have wood carvings and paintings of those trees gracing my home in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
It has been a great joy to learn Portuguese and be able to be understood, though still it is a relief to have a translator standing near when I get into a deep discussion with someone, wanting to express myself exactly, and understand them. The articulated buses that Jaime Lerner created and installed in Curitiba are a wonder in moving people quickly from one place to another. Wish that we had them available in some of our large cities where traffic congestion slows commuters markedly at rush hour each day. Even going to a dentist for an emergency once was a surprising pleasure. He used American supplies and had been trained in methods that even my own dentist back home did not yet employ.
Favorite things would fill a book. Brigaderos to satisfy my sweet tooth. The Guaira Theater and Villa-Lobos to satisfy my love of good music. Chico Mendes’ memorial park, with its waterfall cascading over his engraved poignant last letter to friends, and the free water flowing from taps for the public to bottle and take home. The Universidade do Meio Ambiente has to rank up there with spectacular educational venues. I’ve had the privilege of teaching a course there one week, and still love to visit and watch the swans glide serenely over the pond surface while classical music is piped out over loudspeakers for limited times each day. And how could I leave guarana till this late in the article? It is the single drink I love the most, and sadly cannot easily get in the States. It would rival Coke or Pepsi if Americans could only take a sip, I think.
Inflation has been a roller coaster for some of my trips. One time years ago it was so bad an employee would have to take his or her paycheck the same day it was received and go to a store to buy something, since the next day the currency would be so devalued as to be almost worthless. Tough times that my Brazilian friends managed to survive. Your stability today is a tribute to whatever the government has managed to do to shore up your economy. And the recent announcement that Brazil has finally achieved energy independence has been a marvelous breakthrough that I can only hope the United States may someday emulate.
Looking back over twenty-one years, with side trips to the Pantanal, Iguaçu, Guaraquecaba, Londrina, Maringa, and more, and on the Amazon for a week, my memories are rich and so varied that I cannot begin to capture the high points of them all. One time, though, I thought I would be coming home in a box, with multiples of scary, life-threatening happenings that shook me to the core during a three-month stay. Through it all, my friends I’ve known from the start have been wonderful. They have given me an insider’s glimpse into the soul of Brazilians. Your lovely country has become a second home to me. Saudades wash over me at unexpected moments, but I have only to think of my next trip south and feel everything will be all right as soon as I glimpse the Serra do Mar out the plane window, and smell the eucalyptus trees along the roadways.
Joan Hergesheimer Horn has worked as Director for 18 1/2 years at the Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
