The dark side of the countryside

Here is a collection of little stories that show that romanticising the Portuguese countryside is slightly inadequate...


The grumbling shepherd:

There was a shepherd who used to bring his herd to the meadows on my parents farm. The shepherd seemed to have a special language that only he could speak and only his sheep could understand. He was constantly grumbling something and seemingly communicating with his sheep. My sister and I were very impressed by this sort of communication. We believed the intimate contact between the shepherd and his sheep had made them develop a beautiful language of their own. As my sister wanted to become a shepherd by that time, we both gave much attention to the behaviour of the shepherd and his flock, in order to learn for our professional future. My sister and I decided to loiter around the shrubs, to be closer to the shepherd to try to learn about his special language. After a while we were astonished! We managed to understand what the shepherd was saying! What he was continuously telling his sheep, and to what the sheep tended to obey. It was not a special language. It was ordinary words. And how vulgar they were!...


Mr B. and his lovely grandson

I don’t dare to say his name; he might want to shoot me. Yes, he is an important knot in the web of illegal weapon dealers in the Beira alta. And he was also our neighbour. He spent one year in prison for shooting a man who was not willing to lend him money. The man died of the consequences of the shooting. And still, Mr B. spent only one year in prison, where his business might have gained more ground. Because, when he came back to the village, he started to rebuild his house, and instead of the little village house, soon there was a little robber palace.

His grandson was an especially lovely child: as large as tall. My mother once wanted to kindle his head to show her sympathy to his mother. And the little 3 years old, hung up on the arm of my mother and started to hit her with his little feet with all his might. My mother had to struggle to get rid of him. He also believed that my bike would one day be his, because my mother had offered an old bike we didn’t need anymore to his cousin. So my actual bike was seen by his whole family as his future bike. Each time I passed on my way to school, the little boy pointed at my bike and shout out “There’s my bike! Look, that’s my bike!” and his mother asked impatiently when we would finally give that bike to her son.


Fire starters

The 15th of August is a day to fear in my home village. It’s the village festival and all people are in the village celebrating and no one is in the fields and woods. Temperatures sore up to 40ºC, and the landscape is yellow and dry as it hasn’t been raining for months. The hot remains of a cigarette are enough to start a fire now, or any glass reflecting the burning sun. Still, these rather accidental conditions which might start a fire are enormously aided by the always willing pyromaniacs loitering around and expecting the 15th of August with excitement. Any other day does as well, but mid summer, the hottest days…no one in the fields…

In 1987 we were coming from Lisbon when we saw the fire circumventing our farm. Still, our farm escaped.
In 1996 we were coming from a friend’s house, this time our wood, around 10 ha, burned completely. This fire was started very ingeniously under a young oak tree, using green Portuguese cabbage stems, in order to keep the fire evolving slowly at the start, so to allow the fire starter to be far away before the fire was noticed. After some very superficial examinations by the police my father was made to sign a paper saying that there was no reason to believe that the fire was started for purpose and further investigations were unnecessary. Although, I’m sure I know who it was that started that fire.

In 2002: a fire again. This time only the houses escaped from the flames. “What was left to burn from the 1996 fire?” you may ask. Well, some shrubs and leafy trees had regenerated pretty well and were now reduced to ashes again. Also the orchard had not been affected by the fire of the 15th August 1996. This time even the Hedera that was climbing on our house burned.

Once Farinheiro, the intellectually-humoured fool, started a fire to clean his wood on the southbound of our farm, burning the remains of the shrubs underneath the trees. The fire passed on to our farm, but it was very small and easily controlled. Another day Farinheiro started another fire at the northernmost part of our land, again to burn the remains of the shrubs. Now it was July, and even so he was at and about to go home when my brother in law interposed his way and asked him to first stop the fire before going for lunch. He said, there was no problem and he would stop the flames before going. Of course he didn’t, and my brother in law had to fight the flames before they would get bigger.

One day I looked out of the window and thought “oh, the sunset is very nice today” when I suddenly got on my heels: sunset: in the north facing window? Ok, a fire again! Quick we called the fire brigade and were there to help combat on the frontier lines.

One of the most intriguing fires occurred in February on the marsh close to the river. Phragmites, Juncus and colleagues were grey and dry from the winter, although they were standing in the water. We fought the flames by simply stemming the burning leafy stuff in the water near our feet.

By now you can imagine that on summer days you can always spot the smoke spiral of a fire ascending to the sky. Sometimes you can see fumes in every direction: North, South, East, West… Once a fire in Travanca was so big that the whole sun was covered with smoke and it became really dark at 5pm (when it should become dark at 10pm). Ashes flying around and this grey, hot, smoky air…


Emigration when you don't know how to read...

There was this fine lady, the face shining and painted, loads of golden accessories... She heard that I was German and started to talk to me. She had been emigrated to Germany for 30 years she told me. There she worked in a factory with other Portuguese people. She started proudly that she had managed to learn some German words, but when I tried to talk with her in German it proved to be impossible. She was very kind, although the way she talked, very insecure and simple, did not combine at all with her "noble" appearance. I started to ask her about her life in Germany and found out that she was analphabetic and therefore never managed to learn German by her own and tried to pass unnoticed everywhere she went throughout her life, not to be immediately stamped with prejudice as “analphabetic!.”

It is very common to hear villagers talking about emigration. Someone went "abroad", para o estrangeiro, to a place where people speak estrangeiro (foreign). Maybe it is France. What city? You may ask. The annoyed answer is: "France! I told you!". In their imagination, it seems, abroad is homogeneous, everything the same: not home.


Village clans

In every village I know a little bit in detail, there is at least one numerous poor family with distinctive characteristics. Everywhere you go you find someone who belongs to that particular family, you can tell the family of belonging by looking at the face and at the behaviour. These families form outright clans.

In our village I can recall the existence of at least two clans. They were both newcomer families who initally moved to social housing. Expulsed from there, for their anti-social behaviour, they moved to a rented house (one of the families) and the other family occupied a granit ruined house in the southbounds of the village. The family in the rented village house had 5 boy childs, all of them resembled their father in different stages of development. The smallest very cute and shiny, the second smallest a bit more serious, the following serious and sad, the next a teenage gangster, the oldest: almost as horrible as the father!... Yes, as horrible as the father, whom I saw sometimes running with his belt behind his little sons to hit them. To see him drunk was just normal. Their mother once told me very proudly that, despite of having so many sons, she had managed to find a beautiful and distinctive name for each of them. The names were more or less as follows: António José, José Martinho, Martinho Tiago, Tiago Fransisco and José António!

The other clan had a fat, drunken mother. The father was almost never seen, for his drunkeness must have kept him in the house where they lived. The children were numerous, very small and thin and pale and the hair never combed. They looked fearful and full of mistrust into the world... Somehow similar, somehow different from the Grimilde clan. The Grimilde clan from the neighobouring village was a long established well respected family and even if the children were recognizable by their mistrusting eyes and the one thick eyebrow hiding them, they had their internal social bonds that provided them with a sort of security that the pale children from our village did not have. The youngest son of the Grimilde clan...

O Zé da Grimilde… That’s a hero to follow! He spent his youth in primary school. He was in school until he was 14. Almost a well educated villager you could think. But in fact, he was in my class and in the class of my sisters. And he left school without having completed successfully 4 years of schooling. But, he was the youngest son of a woman with many, many children and she was very proud of him. Especially when he entered the fire brigade. And it must be said that he was a very good and hard worker.

What will happen to the children of those clans? Will they be able to escape the circle of violence, drunkeness, ignorance and msitrust? What will happen to their own children? Will they be hit with their parents belts as well?...


The lady of Gondramaz

Once I went for a little walk to the mountain village of Gondramaz. It is a traditional “aldeia de xisto” of the Lousa mountain range. Very nice indeed, with a beautiful patch of sweet chestnut forest around it. When I was walking around the village I saw that many houses are being rebuild (with EU funds) and are becoming very pretty again. But I was shocked when I saw that backyard garden filled with plastic bags and garbage! My view of the village idyll was under threat. Later, when I came back, close to that yard, I saw an old lady who was carrying a plastic bag on her head. She had 2 sticks to help her walking. Her legs were swollen, she had difficulties in moving. I pitied the lady and was at and about helping her, carrying that bag, which I imagined to be vegetables she had collected from her garden to prepare lunch. But, oh, what a strange and sad thing to see. The woman came close to that particular yard full of garbage, moved her head and let the plastic bag fall into the backyard! And moved on!...