That's Unconditional

"I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don’t care."

from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Knowing Where You Are!?

"When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered a few feet off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore."

from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Guinea, abo I kin?

Guinea, abo I kin? (creole: Guinea, who are you?)

The Ol´Grande Hotel downtown Bissau still standing. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Colonized by the Portuguese as the Portuguese Guinea.

The apparatus for the #warga tea in the streets of #Bissau#.
PRIVATE PICTURE.

Got Independent in 1973 and is called Guinea-Bissau since then to avoid confusion with Guinea, previously French Guinea. Bissau is actually the name of its capital.

Sunday afternoon mood in Bissau. PICTURE PRIVATE.

The largest part of the population speaks Crioulo, a language derived from Portuguese. A smaller percentage speaks the colonial Portuguese. Many ethnical languages like Balanta, Mandinga, Fula are still strongly represented.

A proper place for a cold beer in #Bissau. PRIVATE PICTURES.

"Kuma ku bo manzi?" means "How did you get up today?" in Crioulo and is a common way of greeting.

Immortalizing the #Bissau harbor in B&W. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Population of approximately 1.700.000 inhabitants.

Reminiscence of the luso presence in #Bissau. PICTURE PRIVATE.

Guinea-Bissau has an area larger than Belgium and smaller than the Netherlands.

Old #Bissau still reflects the signs of its golden age.
PRIVATE PICTURE.

Guinea-Bissau was one of the main spots in the African continent for the ¨exportation¨ of slaves to the western countries.

Bissau harbor. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Guinea-Bissau´s GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world as well as its Human Development Index.

At the gate to the Atlantic in the Bissau harbor. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Bissau downtown mood. PRIVATE PICTURE.

The country is divided in eight regions: Bafata, Biombo, Bissau (the capital), Bolama, Cacheu, Gabu, Oio, Quinara e Tombali.

Bissau harbor inspires melancholy. PRIVATE PICTURE.

In 2010 almost half of the Guinean population was under 15 years of age [source].

Downtown mood in Bissau. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Getting started in Guinea-Bissau

Two weeks have passed since I arrived in Guinea Bissau and teamed up with my new colleagues in the capital, Bissau. It's very calm and convenient town by the Atlantic Ocean. The sad thing: all around is mangrove and no beach in less than a two hours drive from Bissau.

Bissau downtown life. PRIVATE PICTURE

I'm living in a house with two other "Brazilians". Really cool cookies! They are "Brazilians" the same way I am. One a Brazilian-Spaniard, the other one Brazilian-Irish, and me, a Brazilian-Something. Maybe this is the reason why we get along so well with each other.

Roofs of Bissau. PRIVATE PICTURE.

The work has been very busy and exciting so far. We got a great team of international and local logistic people with a great task: renovate the pediatric station in an public hospital. We are pushing on with all the energy and seeing things getting done very fast.

Bissau downtown life. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Sometimes I get confronted, like many times before during my time in Kenya, with the reality of one of the poorest countries in the world. The events happening in the pediatric station of a hospital in such a country touches one's heart deeply and, every now and then, we have to get back to each other and look for comfort in the fact, that the work were doing is changing this scenario.

In a hidden yard downtown in Bissau. PICTURE PRIVATE.

Culturally, I getting to experience the local music, tasting loads of seafood and enjoying the good mood of the Guineans.

The very same hidden yard. PRIVATE PICTURE.

It's such a great surprise to get to know that the Creole, the most frequently spoken local "language", actually is a funny distorted way to speak the colonial Portuguese. The Guinean did so with the language so the colonial lords couldn't understand them.

It's feels great be back in the real world. To do something one loves. Share life with likeminded. To travel and seek for awe.
Cheers mates!

Again in the arms of Africa

"Once you stepped the African ground you will shake it's dust off of you feet" told me once my dear friend Erna Weimar.

El Prat airport of Barcelona. PICTURE PRIVATE.

So, there is me heading back to a new challenge and new discoveries in the arm of Mama Africa.

I'm with the red ones. PICTURE PRIVATE.

A great mission with "Medecins Sans Frontieres" is waiting for me.

#Blessings

Leaving Berlin again!!

There we go!
After five months I'm leaving Berlin again without knowing when I'll step it's ground next time.
Next stop will be Barcelona for a few days training and then a six months stay in Bissau, capital of Guinea-Bissau, In West Africa, for my first mission with MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres - Doctors Without Borthers).

Zoo Garden Station. PICTURE PRIVATE.

I'll miss ya ol'fella

Spontaneously Brazil!

After a lot of pondering and waiting I spontaneously decided to book the ticket to Brazil and got everything organized within the last three days. After almost three years without the Brazilian sun and mama's food it was time to head down south.
Totally three weeks, one week in Rio de Janeiro with friends and beach and two weeks with the family, are waiting for me.
Oh! And the greatest thing! I'll be celebrating my birthday with all the clan after many many years.

At Berlin Tegel TXL airport. PRIVATE PICTURE.

BAAAAM! Waiting for boarding. First stop Paris.
#livepost

#TravelInAWeeVideo #2: Have you heard a "click language" before?

Have you ever heard the sound of a click language?
Yeah! Click language!? Nope!?

A bit of linguistics: the so-called "click languages" are actually the Khoisan languages predominantly spoken in the subsaharan part of Africa, mainly in the countries Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The interesting thing about those languages is that some consonants sound, literally, like "clicks", and the number of "clicks" can vary from one Language to the other.

Now to the little story.
When in Windhoek, Namibia, a while ago, I engaged in an conversation with Cathrin, the receptionist of the backpackers I was camping in. I got the creeps as a friend of her, also a worker in the backpackers, approached  with some inquiries. I never heard anything similar! Kind alien language in science fiction movies!? Cathrin kindly agreed in recording a short sequence introducing herself and welcoming everyone in Namibia after my request. You gotta hear this!

Later on, Cathrin explained me she belongs to the Damara tribe and speaks the language with the same name. It has four different "clicks."

Got the creeps as well? Cool!

Inspirational Nomad

I've mentioned before how people I met during my travels keep coming back to me, interested to know about my travels, my experiences, stories and learnings, and to express how they feel inspired by all that. It feels wonderful to be a positive reference and to inspire people.

Today I got a surprising message of this two Canadian ladies that I met in Kenya a few months ago. In this message they referred to me as an "inspirational nomad", a description that made me really think about the impact one can have in someone else's life.

By the time we met, I was living in this Maasai camp and assisting the community leader on a health related project when these ladies came to stay in the camp for a few days. There were always some tourists coming and staying in the camp for the experience of being with the Maasai and catching a glimpse in their life style. I remember this evening during their visit, we were still sitting at the table after supper and talking, as the visitors usually do. The two Canadian ladies, another lady from New Zealand and I. I was telling them about what I was doing there, how I decided to move to Kenya and do voluntary work in the countryside. At a certain point the older Canadian lady, which happened to be a experienced nurse, asked me a question. She said: "Considering all your what you've done so far, what would you say it was you biggest teacher?" That caught me by surprise!

I stopped for a second and repeated the question to myself and immediately the answer was there, just like hit by a lightening. For a fraction of a second I still pondered if I would give her the proper answer since it was somehow very personal and sometimes people are not prepared for such discussion. Anyway, the way I am, I just let it out. I replied: "My depression!" And the funny thing was I put this possessive pronoun "My" in front of it. Well, it was my learning process, it redefined "Me" and changed "My" life. So, it was "My depression."

I told her and the others at the table about the difficult time a had before deciding to change my life and the lessons I've learned from that painful period and to justify why "My depression" has been my greatest teacher I went through some points I've been concentrating on since then. It first, I told them about the one lesson I refused to learned, which was "being selfish is alright!" I've never been selfish, I didn't like selfish people and refused at any cost to become one. It that moment I mentioned what my therapist told me once. She said: "Mr. Cavalcante, you're the kind of person that will never eat the last piece of the cake." She was totally right with that metaphor. She meant actually that I had to think more of myself and put me as priority before think of others. I've been putting myself aside to prioritize other people for so long and that led me to invest a lot of energy in events and people which would culminate in deepest disappointment. So, I was meant to come first and had to change that in me. It took time, it's not easy for someone to reset this kind of thing but I had to do it, and at a certain point, I started making the first moves to change it.

Another important lesson I gotta learn was "what to do to be happy." Most of us wrongly expect to find our happiness in someone else, "the love of our lives", or in something material, or professional. We all project our idea of happiness in something that should be acquired, achieved, made or bought. When it comes to the core of the question, happiness actually becomes a decision and not an empty blank that hast to be filled. One has to decide to be happy, that was the lesson. To get myself out of the said place I was in, I had to decide to be happy. I had a place to live, friends, a good job, I was healthy. So, why the heck I was so sad? Yeah! I stopped letting external variables dictate how I was supposed to feel and took the decision to be happy. On hard times one has to stop, go through the sad feelings, process them and grow out of them, not forgetting that they are not those who determine about you being happy or not. You do it!

After I finished with the defense of my thesis on "how my depression became my biggest teacher" I realized that the Canadian lady was crying. I even apologized for, eventually, shocking her with my sudden talk about depression but she was really fine. She was just a kind of sensitive person, as she told herself and wasn't expecting such an "intense" reply to her inquire.

Next day, I was approached by the second Canadian lady during a walk in the camp. She came to express her gratitude for me being so open about myself and helping her in dealing with her own issues. She opened herself briefly and explained she had been facing similar emotional problems and, with my talk the previous day, I made she feel better and encouraged her. I told her again that, as difficult as it seems, we first have to take a decision. A decision to feel good.

Life is really a roller coaster. In one moment you find yourself in the darkest place you've ever been, dying on self pity and afraid of facing the day, in the next moment, you are living from one moment of awe to the other and inspiring people to change their lives. I feel blessed for being able to find a way to deal with all my emotional difficulties and, above all, I'm glad that now I can help other people on easing their pain and finding their own. It's everything about finding it. The way.

The inspirational nomad.

#TravelInAWeeVideo #1: Maasai singing on the road

Almost everywhere I go I used to record some small videos showing some real action where I am in that moment. Recently I decided put those video fragments together and editing into small sequences. Since by now I have a little collection of them, I just decided to make something out of it. It doesn't make much sense just keep them. So, I'm creating the section labeled #TravelInAWeeVideo to publish them on "WAYFARER and AWESEEKER."

So, to start the section I've chosen a great video I've recorded while living with the Maasai in Kenya. This is a great one! After a few beer on the way from the nearest city to the Maasai village, where I lived, my local fiends just engaged on some Maasai singing in the car.

100% badass stuff! Huge fun! And an unique experience in life. I felt so privileged!

Miss my Maji Moto family!
Awe for the seeker!

Back in Berlin

Three months have passed since I am back in Berlin. Yeah! I had no plans to be back to Europa at all, imagine to Berlin, but just the way life is, full of surprises and coincidences, I find myself back in this city. Back in Berlin.

My story with Berlin is an old and very, very special one. To be precise, it is an eighteen years old story. A story of challenges, learning and transformation. A milestone was set when I first came here and I use to see my life in two different phases: before and after Berlin.

Siegesäule in middle of the Tiergarten. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Everything started with an scholarship from the German-Brazilian government back in 1997. With a certain level of reluctance but pushed by a good friend I decided to apply for it since I fulfilled all the requirements. I was granted it! One and a half month passed between the moment I got to know I was selected and landing in Germany. There was so much to prepare and to do and so little time for it: finish the semester at the university, submit project reports, get a bunch of papers and documents sorted out, see the family, which lived far away, get a passport, do shopping, farewell to friends, etc. Then I departed for a year in Germany. First time abroad. First time flying. First time in Berlin.

Zoologischer Garten, the heart of Berlin. PRIVATE PICTURE..

One specific moment I remember well, later on, as I was changing planes in Lisbon. I finally had time to come to myself after the stress of the last few weeks. As I stepped out of the plane, for one second I felt my legs trembling. It was dark, rainy and cold. +17C "cold." I realized that I was far away, going to a place I couldn't even speak the language and, on the top of it, I was alone. I put both hands on my head like trying not to lose it and thought: "What the hell am I doing here? Of course, I knew what was expecting me in Germany and I even had a detailed plan of it in my luggage but I just couldn't suppress the overwhelming dimension of that moment. Well, happily all that insecurity vanished as suddenly as it appeared, I got back to myself and a couple of hours later I was landing in Berlin. 

Party complex at the Warschauer Straße. #streetart. PICTURE PRIVATE.

Once in Berlin, we, the other Brazilian students taking part in the same program and I, where place in Charlottenburg, in a complex of student dormitories with a lot of green area close by. Charlottenburg is a nice, quiet and pretty central part of the city. At first we engaged intensively in learning the language. It should happen as fast as possible. Besides, there was a lot of traveling, cultural activities, exchange with other international students, getting used to the German way of life and, obviously, a lot of party. Concerning the academic part of the program, what we actually came here for, there were courses at the university to attend, projects to work on and an internship to be done in a German company. It was an intense year with a lot of hard work as one can imagine.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Berlin main train station). PRIVATE PICTURE.

We all went trough a lot of changes and learning during that year. I saw a world of possibilities and challenges in front of me. Nothing I had experienced before in life. The systematic of the everyday life in a totally different country, the language, the academic life, the weather, all those different views of the world and life I was confronted with. I used to have a very strong introspection side of my personality what gave me a hard time till I found a way to starting opening myself and being able to interact easier with people.

Berlin worked on me like a transformation machine. I went through an deep and intense process of destruction and reconstruction of who I was, bringing down old walls and setting the foundation for new ones. Many years later it would reach its climax with me resetting my entire life, quitting my job, leaving my friends, change the continent and starting over. But this is stuff for a future post.

Somewhere at Schönhauser Alle, ancient East
Berlin. PRIVATE PICTURE.

This is what Berlin means to me: change, growth and learning. Berlin like infected me with an unique disease. A disease, which symptoms consist essentially of restlessness, cravings for detachment and constant search for transformation.

Departing from Berlin after that year was a hard moment. For the first time in life I got a precise picture of what the expression "broken heart" means. That blunt pain in the chest, the difficulty to breath, the crying sighingly. It was incredible the way each of us felt connected to this city and the burden it was to leave it.

Bibliothek der Humboldt Universität at the surrounding of the Friedrichstraße.
PRIVATE PICTURE. 

I pondered many times on staying for good in Berlin but wasn't sure if that was what I really wanted and if I could manage it all on my own. Anyways, It didn't take long for me to know what I had to do and as soon as I stepped on Brazilian ground things cleared up in my mind. Being back felt like I was losing everything I've gained while abroad and becoming the same person I was one year before. Everything was there in the same place where I left, everyone was doing the same things, the same way. Nothing had changed and I was a completely different person. I just didn't fit in anymore. I left Berlin in that occasion, but it never left me.

 The holocaust memorial. PRIVATE PICTURE.  

Today, eighteen years later I find myself roaming around in Berlins streets recollecting memories. It's really a funny, and it the same time, overwhelming feeling. Maybe I was just supposed to be here to close another circle in my life curing that disease, completing a long transformation process and creating space for new ones to come.

Berlin Mitte at the Spree river. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Quoting "Soulbound"

Form the movie "Soulbound" by Caio Sóh.

"Others, they come and go in our lives
Like the waves come and go back to the this ocean.
They come and vanish like people do.
They just disappear from our lives.
But the ocean, it's there
The deeper you go the lonelier, quieter and more silent it is.
One has to be immense to know how to be alone."

Rio de Janeiro. PRIVATE PICTURE.

Quoting Hesse

"The only reality is the one we have inside us. What makes most people’s lives so artificial and unworthy is that they falsely regard outside images as reality and they never allow their own inner world to speak."

Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Of how I decided to LEAVE!

It's absolutely amazing when you realize the way of life you have chosen for yourself motivates other people.

It's been a while already since friends and also newly acquainted people started coming to me, calling or sending messages willing to hear my stories, my thoughts. Some are looking for hope and comfort, some feel inspired, some just excited.
They want to know about my motivation for leading a life without possessions and using what I've learned to support  other people. A life in search for freedom and detachment, for learning and understanding aiming at any cost to keep being a human being.

Well, there is a saying in the German language (I believe there must be something equivalent in almost every language) that can be translated like "one can not taste the sweet if he doesn't know how the bitter tastes." So, yeah! I've been there. I've tasted a lot of the bitter. I've been tasting it for many many years. There was so much bitterness at a certain point that I couldn't handle it anymore. It was the time when my mind and my body collapsed and I found myself looking for a reason to keep going, for something to hold on to, desperately. "How can I get out this?" This question used to hit my head uncountable time. As I woke up, at the work, when I was laying awake in the dark. It took me a while till I could find an answer to that question. Actually, if I'm pretty honest, the answer found me. 

I remember that night, another night, laying awake in bed, no sleep at all, in the dark, and then...boom! "I'm leaving!" That sentence was there all of a sudden hitting my head with such a power, repeatedly. "I'm leaving! I'm leaving! I'm leaving!" It sounded scary and at the same time filled me with a wave of hope putting a smile on my face. There I was sitting on my bed in the dark and smiling. I knew what to do and there was no way back. On the next morning, I still remember very well, I was entering every room in my flat, looking at the bunch of crap I've accumulated through all those years and thinking of how to get rid of all that. Because "I'm leaving!" Yes! "I'm leaving!"

From that moment on I couldn't imagine myself without the idea that "I was leaving!" It was everything that I had and the only thing I worked for since that night. I gave away part of my stuff, sold and donated other amount, kept a part of it at a friend's attic, finished the rental contract of my flat and quit my job. Less than a year later I was sitting on a plane with a one way ticket to Kenya.

I was starting over!

Waves Of Transformation...I'm back!

Just love this passage of the book "Eat, pray, love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.

It teaches me that life can changes its courses in the blink of an eye and this is the most spectacular thing about it. One must get adapted and ride life's waves. This is the magic of being alive!

Marsyas under Appolo's punishment. Museum for Plaster Cast in Munich.
PRIVATE PICTURE.

"On my way back home I take a little detour and stop at the address in Rome I find most strangely affecting—the Augusteum. This big, round, ruined pile of brick started life as a glori- ous mausoleum, built by Octavian Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his fam- ily for all of eternity. It must have been impossible for the emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus-worshipping empire. How could he possibly have foreseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aque- ducts destroyed by barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would empty of citizens, and it would take almost twenty centuries before Rome ever recovered the population she had boasted during her height of glory?

Augustus’s mausoleum fell to ruins and thieves during the Dark Ages. Somebody stole the emperor’s ashes—no telling who. By the twelfth century, though, the monument had been renovated into a fortress for the powerful Colonna family, to protect them from assaults by various warring princes. Then the Augusteum was transformed somehow into a vineyard, then a Renaissance garden, then a bullring (we’re in the eighteenth century now), then a fire- works depository, then a concert hall. In the 1930s, Mussolini seized the property and re- stored it down to its classical foundations, so that it could someday be the final resting place for his remains. (Again, it must have been impossible back then to imagine that Rome could ever be anything but a Mussolini-worshipping empire.) Of course, Mussolini’s fascist dream did not last, nor did he get the imperial burial he’d anticipated.
Today the Augusteum is one of the quietest and loneliest places in Rome, buried deep in the ground. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. (One inch a year is the gener- al rule of thumb for the accumulation of time’s debris.) Traffic above the monument spins in a hectic circle, and nobody ever goes down there—from what I can tell—except to use the place as a public bathroom. But the building still exists, holding its Roman ground with dignity, waiting for its next incarnation.
I find the endurance of the Augusteum so reassuring, that this structure has had such an erratic career, yet always adjusted to the particular wildness of the times. To me, the Au- gusteum is like a person who’s led a totally crazy life—who maybe started out as a housewife, then unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national polit- ics—yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval.
I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough—but to- morrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation."