Half a Year in Gra-Bretanha

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Half a Year in Grã-Bretanha
A Brazilian story by Emily Dicks

January
‘Why does it always rain here?’ Natalia asked her mother.

Natalia’s mother looked up from her newspaper in surprise. ‘It rains in

Brazil too,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember? It’s summer there now but it will
rain in the winter.’

Natalia shivered and looked out of the window at the rainy streets of
England. She could no more imagine going outside in a swimming costume
right now than going to the moon. She looked back at the computer on the
little desk in the library. The screen was showing half a dozen photos of her
friend Rita on the beach. Rita looked tanned and happy and Natalia felt a
pang of jealousy.

‘It’s nearly time to go,’ said Mamãe. ‘The library is closing. Finish your email
and then let’s get home.’
Natalia took her seat at the computer and finished off the email to her friend
Rita:

I miss everyone in Rio, especially you! It’s cold and rainy here. Your photos
are cool.
Love Natalia xxx
February
February soon followed January, and it wasn’t long before Natalia received
news from her friend Rita once more…

Hi Natalia,
It’s so hot here! We are all getting ready for Carnival. I am getting my
costume ready and uncle Rufino is playing tambourim in the Samba School
again. It’s getting so close! Wish you were here.
Rita xx
‘Carnival,’ Natalia sighed to herself. It was the best time of year in Rio de
Janeiro. ‘I wish I was back in Brazil now,’ she thought as she typed away at
the computer in the library…

Hi Rita,
Thanks for your photos! Tomorrow I’m going to my friend Emma’s house to
make pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. We’ll have sugar and lemon on them
but it won’t be the same as Carnival. It is still cold here and it seems to rain
all the time!
Natalia xxxxx
As Natalia and Mamãe walked home through the dark and rainy streets,
the young girl listened to the rain splashing from the car tyres travelling up
and down the road beside her. She imitated the sound of the rain to cheer
herself up… ‘Schwoosh, schwoosh, schwoosh, schwoosh!’ Then she
began stamping her foot on the wet pavement… Splat, splat, splat,
splat. And over the top of the schwooshing and splatting noises, Natalia
imagined she could hear the distinctive samba rhythm that she
remembered hearing everywhere in Rio, played on caxixi shakers and
other beautiful instruments. Chuki-chuk, paf! chuki-chuki, paf! chuki-chuki,
paf! chuki-chuki, paf!
And so Natalia cheered herself up in the rain by schwooshing and splatting
and chuki-chuki paffing all the way home.
March
Hi Natalia!
How is England? Today we went to the beach and we were one short for
volleyball. You are the best of our cousins at volleyball and so we all
missed you very much!
It’s really hot here still. I am drinking a lot of coconut water to keep cool! I
took a photo for you so you won’t forget!
Love Rita xxxx
Hi Rita,
I miss coconut water! And açai juice with granola. But most of all I miss
cupuaçu juice! I wish we had cupuaçu here. We have peaches and melon
but nothing tastes as good as back home.
Natalia xxxxx
April
Spring was beginning to break in England as Natalia sat with her friend
Emma at the computer screen during after school club.

‘Look at this, Emma!’ Natalia exclaimed in excitement. ‘Rita has sent me

some photos of Botafogo playing against Fluminese.’

Emma moved closer to the screen so that she could get a better look at the
pictures of men running about in their colourful sports clothes. ‘Who are
they?’ she asked.

‘They are Rio football teams,’ Natalia replied, unable to disguise the
excitement in her voice. ‘Football in Brazil is so good! I wish I could take
you to a match so that you could see for yourself. They have samba bands
playing in the terraces, and whenever there is a goal scored the crowd
goes crazy! The bands play so loudly and everyone chants and sings. It’s
like a big party. Look, I’ll show you!’

Natalia searched on the internet and found a video of a Brazilian football

match so that she could show Emma. It was very loud and full of colour
with the big surdo drum beating out a rhythm loudest of all… Ba-boom,
boom, boom! Ba-boom, boom, boom! Ba-boom, boom, boom!
The two girls searched for more videos of football games in Rio. They
watched the city come to life through the screen: the sounds flowed out into
the darkening classroom while the colours flickered and danced on the
walls. Natalia tried to imagine that she was back home in Aunt Susana and
Uncle Feliciano’s apartment on the hill, in the room she shared with Rita
and her other cousins Alicia and Marina. The room was always warm and
the girls always had fun looking out over the city at night. Suddenly Natalia
felt very far away from home and this made her quite sad.

June
The seasons had changed from spring to early summer, and a milky pale
sunshine often woke Natalia by shining through the curtains of her
bedroom window in the early morning. Unlike Rio, it was a gentle heat that
made everything shimmer. The flowerbeds in the park near the school
buzzed with insects, bees went about collecting nectar to make honey, and
Natalia noticed how everybody seemed to be smiling more now that the
sun was out.

Dear Rita,
Today Emma and I played tennis at school. It’s really fun! It’s Wimbledon
here so lots of people are excited about the tennis. We got to watch it at
school and had strawberries and cream. It was really fun. It is finally sunny
here and really quite beautiful!
Xxx
Hi Natalia,
We have tennis here too, remember? But I don’t like playing when it’s too
hot. Sounds like you are having fun in England but here it is even more fun!
Here are some photos of João and me when we went on a school trip to
the Botanical Gardens.
Xxxx
When Natalia read this latest email she could not help being annoyed with
her friend Rita. It seemed that Rita was always saying how much better
things were in Brazil, even though she must know that Natalia missed her
home very much. In the end, the two friends ended up arguing and decided
not to write to each other for a while. Natalia realised then more than ever
how difficult it was being away from home and adjusting to a new country,
and she was disappointed that her friend Rita was so unsympathetic.

July
It was a hot summer, school was over and Natalia found herself all alone.
Emma had gone to visit her grandma in Scotland and Mamãe was at work
all the time. Natalia was bored and missed home very much. She was tired
of watching the same shows on television: the ones with stupid people
dressed up as furry monsters always singing silly songs. She was even
bored of drawing. All she could ever think to draw was the beach in Rio
with people sitting under parasols drinking coconut water, or playing
volleyball, or surfing in the warm sea. It made her sad.

Mamãe had shown Natalia how to lock the front door so that she could
walk herself to the library when she wanted to. This made Natalia feel very
grownup, but each time she walked to the library and logged on to the
computer, she was always disappointed to find that she had no emails from
her friend Rita. Natalia was very upset that they had argued and she
missed hearing news from home.

But one day there was an email, not from Rita but from Natalia’s English
friend Emma….

Hi Natalia,
How are you? My mum asked me if you might want to come and stay with
my grandma and me next month? My grandma is very old but very nice,
and Scotland is fun.
Love Emma xxx
Natalia could not believe her luck! She ran home and waited for her mother
to return from work so that she could ask to go to Scotland.

August
Scotland was so different from London! Emma’s grandma lived by the sea
in a tiny village. In the evenings it stayed light for a long time and they went
down to the beach. There were raspberries growing in the hedgerows so
that you could pick them and eat them any time you wanted to. Natalia had
never seen them growing wild before and was amazed when Emma picked
them straight from the bushes for the first time.

And on the first day Natalia saw something even more exciting than wild
raspberries… The sea!

‘The sea, the sea!’ she exclaimed. ‘Let’s put our toes in the water!’ And
before Emma could stop her, Natalia threw off her shoes and ran towards
the waves. But when the clear blue water swirled around her ankles,
Natalia shrieked in surprise.

‘It’s so cold!’ she cried out to Emma.

‘I tried to tell you!’ Emma laughed, ‘but you ran in too quickly! It’s not like
Rio. The water is very cold here in Scotland.’

They skipped in and out of the surf and watched the waves crashing
against the rocks until their toes were numb with cold. Natalia felt happy for
the first time in ages and she remembered playing on the beach with Rita
and João and the other cousins back home. She saw a tiny boat tied to a
little wooden jetty further along the beach and the young girl thought to
herself: ‘We could sail all the way round the coast of Scotland and across
the Atlantic Ocean in that little boat. We would pass America and Mexico,
and then the water would begin to get warmer and warmer until eventually
we would wash up on the shore in Rio!’

Natalia imagined how everyone would be so pleased to see them and they
would have cupuaçu and açai juice and eat feijoada and moqueca. There
would be a band playing to welcome them just like the celebrations when a
goal is scored on the pitch for Botafogo… Schwoosh, schwoosh, splat
splat, chuki-chuki-paf, chuki-chuki-paf!
Natalia and Emma played all day long until the sun began to fade. They
talked about the differences between England and Scotland and Rio. They
explored and walked, and they chased each other up and down the beach
until they were exhausted. Then, when evening had set in and there was a
cold chill in the air, the two friends headed home for dinner.

That night, curled up in bed in Emma’s grandma’s little cottage on the

coast, Natalia thought how lucky she was to be able to experience other
cultures and to make new friends so far away from home. ‘England may be
wet,’ she thought, ‘and the sea in Scotland in very cold, but there is always
something to appreciate in a new culture, always something to admire and
something to learn.’

Before she went to sleep that night, Natalia promised herself that she
would write to Rita and say sorry for their silly argument and tell her all
about Scotland and the little cottage on the coast, and how she was even
hoping that it might snow in England that winter. That is something Natalia
had never seen in Rio de Janeiro!