Ah!

"Ah! when one with such love of study's haunted,
And scarcely sees the world on holidays,
And takes a spy-glass, as it were, to read it,
How can one by persuasion hope to lead it?"

Goethe, Faust I

Páginas amarelas

"Ó minha mãezinha querida! Sofri muito hoje! Ai meu Deus, por minha honra que é verdade!"
Tudo por causa das Páginas Amarelas.
Precisava de fazer uma lista de contactos a telefonar. Felizmente há o "My PAi" onde no computador se pode registar os contactos todos etc e tal. Surpresa a minha quando finalmente tinha os contactos todos e aparecia tudo, tudinho no My PAi, excepto os números de telefone. Estava tudo ultra-modernizado e podia-se ligar directamente pelo Skype, "à distância de um click". Mas eu precisava dos números de telefone e não de ligar já pelo Skype que não está carregado se quer. Então fiz uma série de experências do tipo "copy paste" e "propriedades", a ver se conseguia ver os números de telefone de toda a minha lista de contactos em vez de abrir um a um no Skype e passar... Entretanto a minha lista perdeu-se inúmeras vezes. Entretanto o site encravou. E...finalmente descobri uma maneira de exportar tudo para Excell; mas nunca mais de 20 contactos de uma vez, senão Meu PAizinho querido não aguenta.

Why does nobody tell us?

This is quite a metaphysical question. Why do we sometimes have to struggle so much in the dark when there are people around who could easily tell us how to proceed? Many times, with trials and errors, things are done by muddling through and at a later stage I see: "Oh, it would have been so easy if I had only known XY!". Why does nobody tell us?!

Mixed thoughts around Azêvo

Today I went to Azêvo in Pinhel. As I'm such an unskilled driver it was a matter of life and death; but I survived. Pinhel is far, far, far away and Azêvo is even farther away. The road is full of holes and when 2 cars come in different directions, one of them has to jump into the shrubs to let the other pass.

I came across another almost abandoned village called "Aldeia" (i.e. "village"). I was told that only "one young man" (58 years old) still lives there; he was born there and is...well, let's call it the polite British way; "he has mental health issues". Imagine that. A village with no one, you think, and then someone strange lurks around the corner. The man is called Isidoro and some days, when he feels awful, he closes himself in his hut. Then, when he is on his heights, he takes out his accordion and plays in the village streets. In Aldeia there is also a "french man" (an emigrant) who sometimes comes over on holidays.

Aldeia, an almost abandoned village, on top of the hill.

In Azêvo everyone farms for subsistence needs, and all wait that one day someone will pass by the village and offer to buy the excess production for a good price. They wait in vain.

This is sometimes a bit irritating for me, how the people expect that someone ought to come and solve their problems, but they do not make any move. Maybe they did many moves and it did never work out and that's why they stopped struggling. Still, I think if they would pull efforts together and work as a group they could be far better off. But, of course, we are humans, and we can't or won't work in groups, right?

On my walk around Azêvo I realized that donkeys are still very much in use here.

The donkey equipped with the self-made transportation device.

Around Azêvo the white broom is in flower. As it is in flower it's distribution becomes very clear: it is maybe the dominant species in all the abandoned and burned lands with granitic soils. It is everywhere! From Santa Comba Dão to Vilar Formoso - the "interior" starts right 50m after the sea (Litoral)...

White heather

The woman sitting next to me

I had to wait a while in the Health centre for my turn. Since I'm on fieldwork I use every opportunity to know the opinion of people and can't leave the "ethnographic approach" behind in any circumstance. My basically misanthropic outlook is being transmuted into the ethnographic mode. Summing up: I found out a lot regarding the worldview of the woman sitting next to me while we were waiting for our turn.

She said "I know the numbers", but she doesn't like to travel with the lift because then she gets really confused and doesn't know which button to press. With other words: she isn't confident enough with her capacity of reading and understanding numbers for being able to travel with the lift. I had never thought about this before: as an analphabet everything is so difficult!...

Some English people were sitting in the room as well and talking English. The woman turned to me to say "When these people talk it sounds like barking dogs". What should I say to this sympathic point?! "But you are a foreigner as well, right?" she proceeded. "...Well yes." (It's really comforting to be called foreigner in the country where you've been growing up!). Then she wanted to know where I came from and when she knew, she very produly said 2 German words which I barely recognized. But I made a huge effort to recognize them and tell her the meaning in Portuguese. She was so proud when I asked her if she had been to Germany... But no. She has no intentions to go abroad, she has no interest at all in other countries or other towns because the only good place to be is her hometown anyways.

Suddenly she turned to me and asked me whether I had a Portuguese passport. I don't; I have the allowance of residence and since we are in the EU I wouldn't need it anyways. But she knew better: "they will jail you" she said. "They will jail you!" she said with a triumphant smile ...and I turned my face and continued reading.

My happiness at stake

I phoned a farmer to ask if she could take part in my study, answering to my interview. She replied: "...well, if it contributes to your happiness if I answer, why not?"
No illusions that research could be of any good.
However, I wish to think she is wrong; that would contribute to my happiness.