Brazil: A Nation of Yogis

An expat must expect the unexpected.

If you think your downward-facing dog is in good shape, try making it your ordinary comportment. Brazilians are everyday yogis.

I was in a supermarket one afternoon when a torrential downpour erupted. Rain is commonplace in Curitiba, a large city in southern Brazil that gets more rain than Seattle, but this deluge was impressive for its suddenness. Additionally, the supermarket had a tin roof, providing the barrage with an overpowering voice. I needed to shout to talk to my wife.

A few minutes later the power went out, eliciting a mass exclamation from the store’s patrons. Luckily the front of the supermarket was framed in large glass windows and it was the middle of the day, so we weren’t thrust into cavernous darkness. Nevertheless, I froze. My hands creased with sweat clenching the shopping cart, imagining mayhem. My wife stands less than five feet tall; she could be hurt in the chaos of shopping carts full of epicurean delights rushing for the free exit.

With one arm I encircled her, assuming the silence following the initial exclaims was the calm before the storm. I waited. Nothing. Instead of pandemonium, people continued shopping.

Brazilians don’t panic. They expect unexpected turns in the road. Their definition of an emergency is different from yours and mine. They don’t raise their voices in public. Kids dash around restaurants without parental admonishment as waiters carrying trays of food deftly navigate around them.

People are more patient here, enduring a lifetime of delays and waiting in lines. It’s not yoga for health but species continuity. Darwin smiles down on Brazil. Survival favors the flexible. Fortitude is essential in a developing country. It’s a trait so ingrained it’s probably genetic by now.

Brazilians aren’t taken aback when on Monday morning, driving to work, they discover their normal route is impassable because over the weekend the city has changed a street from two-way to one-way.

Yielding, like a tree in a storm, is a survival technique. Brazilians have low expectations. They count on little from social services or infrastructure, thanks to the endemic corruption that leaves the government perpetually broke. In other words, people expect less from their government and they get it.

There is no cross-country highway system. All elementary and secondary schools operate on a split-session schedule to double the capacity of the buildings. There are no passenger trains; even India has a train system. Planes don’t depart from the gate listed on the boarding pass. Concerts don’t start on time nor do TV shows.

Lax timing and weak infrastructure aren’t the only obstacles requiring elasticity. The population endured two decades of military dictatorship, which was followed by hyperinflation that hit 3,000 percent annually and continued for a decade. During that time, the government introduced seven currency changes.

As the expat community in Curitiba is minute, I’m not exaggerating to suggest I was the only foreigner in the supermarket that day, which means I was probably the only person who had never experienced a supermarket blackout. I didn’t know the protocol. I took cues from my Brazilian wife who showed no panic and felt my arm squeezed around her as nothing more than the open affection typical here.

Watching Brazilians go about their food shopping without electricity, I thought of Americans coping with the name of dollars being changed to something else, or 100 percent inflation a month; or supermarket shelves without peanut butter.

It’s inevitable to feel powerless in a country crippled by bureaucratic nonsense, but Brazilians have mastered the art of perseverance. They’re so good at tolerating confusion and finding an alternative route that there’s a term for it, the jeitinho brasileiro (Brazilian way). Perhaps that explains how contentment has become inbred.

Brazilians endure and maintain their composure in a way that is impossible for Americans to imagine. To suggest to an American that he is not in control of his life is terrifying, it’s Kafkaesque.

In my sanguine moments, I imagine Brazilians’ excessive satisfaction linked to affection. There’s a lot of hugging and kissing going on. Mothers breastfeeding in public is commonplace. Is there anything more comforting? If tree huggers can save forests, what can people huggers save?

As my wife and I finished our darkened shopping trip, we gingerly approached the check-out lane expecting a long wait. Instead, modern technology had triumphed, and the digital cash registers were operating off a backup generator, which was also keeping the freezers viable.

The teenage girl at the cash register nonchalantly negotiated our purchases. As a second girl bagged the groceries and placed them into our shopping cart, she warned us the elevators to the underground parking garage weren’t working. She then pushed our cart out of the store all the way to the side entrance ramp to the garage. As we followed her, we passed the frozen elevators, and I saw a clerk handing a cup of water to an outstretched arm coming from the elevator. A middle-aged woman stuck inside alone wasn’t in a panic, she was thirsty.

B. Michael Rubin is an American living in Brazil. This piece is an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir of expat life.