when you arrive in Brazil ask for a guarana, it is a really nice cooldrink!

This is my first posting of A View from Brazil. I am just sitting here in my room on the business oriented Blue Tree Towers Premium Hotel. Wow! what a place and where else I could find such good writing material, the time I spent in the lobby listening to other people conversation gave me material to write many books of humour and also about inflated egos. Well, this will be story for another time, now let me get back to my fist post. 

Almost seven weeks past since my arrival in Brazil; my daughters and my wife are here and so are my dogs, the Bullmastiff and X-Labrador. The family is happy even if we are living separated in the same city; my daughter and the dogs are staying with friends and I am still battling to rent a house with a foreign payslip. The cost of living is much more expensive than South Africa and quality is not always there, but the country is moving forward and the poor people finally have some disposable income to buy a home, a new car and even to go on holiday.

We are discovering a new and fascinating world.  A world of noise and music, of sheer ugliness of the graffiti on the walls and the empty and decayed buildings to the simple beauty of a lonely orchid lost in the middle of the concrete jungle.  We are finding the friendliness of the poor and sometimes having close encounters with the impoliteness of the rich and the wannabe. We already discovered some nice places to eat and barzinhos, the local pubs, where we can enjoy the vibrant Brazilian life style. We encountered the famous Brazilian red tape and the staunchness of the local bureaucracy and are still battling to get our documentation in order. Having a Brazilian passport does not make it much easier for me, I am updating almost 20 years of no-history. Well this is a new life in another country, even if the country is the place where I was born and I hope that Africa did prepare us well to the many challenges ahead.

I will try to record my family’s daily life in this big concrete jungle and give the world A View from Brazil and hopefully help other people to settle in this fascinating country.

Charles Freimund