Brazilian Domestication (Updated with photos!)

I already consider myself something of a domestic god. Laundry, dishwashing, cleaning, baking are all in my repertoire. My cooking skills could use a little honing, but even apart from those I feel I’ve reached godlike status in home economics. Now, after just a little over a week in Brazil, I may just have surpassed divine status. And with 40 or so more weeks to go, I may indeed come home a cross between the best of Bob Vila, Rachel Rae, and my grandma Helen.


Since the day after arriving here, I’ve been living in an apartment a couple blocks away from university with a 50-something year old woman named Piedade (for those of you who know my extended family, imagine a female version of my grandpa Bob: hardworking, strong-willed, with very large, thick-fingered hands). On my third day living here, I came home after an exhausting day exploring my relatively nice neighboring and went to the sink to get a glass of water. I filled my glass, then turned the faucet back to off, only to feel the internal plastic piece responsible for controlling the whole “water-turning-on-and-off” mechanism crack in half. Water started leaking everywhere. While I started freaking out, Piedade found the situation funny (I half expected her to be furious), and told me that all we had to do for the time being was shut off the flow of water in the bathroom bordering the kitchen (which incidentally meant I had to shower for a day in the phone booth-sized service bathroom), and plug up the pipe coming out of the wall leading to the sink. (I’m sure there are more technical terms for all the mechanics I’m describing here, though I don’t know their names in either English or Portuguese). Two days later I found myself on a bus to downtown, where with some luck I managed to find the store that Piedade informed me would have the proper replacement part. Upon returning, I fixed the faucet. I’m now a certified plumber.


That was my foreign domestic moment number one. The second came just yesterday when I became confronted with a literally mounting problem that I had ignored since arriving: I needed to do laundry. My new roommate, Ricardo, a tall, skinny, fun-loving 18-year-old “freshman” (calouro in Portuguese) at PUC (I’ll tell his story in a future post), said he had found a woman working at a nearby bakery who advertised that she could do laundry, though this involved presenting her with your dirty clothes on a Friday only, which she would henceforth return the very next Monday. With no clean underwear and only one clean pair of any kind of pants left, this was an unfeasible option if there ever was one. My next best bet was to go to a nearby “Laundromat” (though, as you’ll see, this translation is a generous one) with my suitcase-full of fetid garments to finally tackle the issue. Instead of finding a large hall full of self-serve washers and dryers, I found what looked like a small dry-cleaning service operated by a pale, lifeless young woman. Apparently, she or someone else in back did the washing and drying, while all I had to do was pay and wait. “How much to wash these clothes?” I asked her, showing her the suitcase. As if reading a standard response-in-a-can from a card, she droned, “You can only drop off your clothes here on Tuesdays, and they’ll be done by the following Monday.” “Six days?!” I asked with incredulous, wide eyes. “Yes,” she nodded, her head looking like a limp rag on a clothesline. I gave her a half-hearted thanks and left to face my last remaining option: I’d have to wash all my dirty clothes from the last 9 days by hand. I went to the grocery store—conveniently right next to the “Laundromat” on the way back home—and picked up some detergent, some gloves, a brush, and some clothespins. Two hours later, about a third of my soiled wardrobe, the amount that could fit on Piedade’s drying racks, had been cleaned and hung to dry. Today I’ll take on the next third. Tomorrow the last. And from each day-or-two forward, I’ll be washing a day-or-two’s worth of clothes Little House on the Prairie style so as not to make such an event out of this simple household task.


Finally, a happier bit of domestication and a reviving of the most basic of my barista skills: coffee making. Brazilian coffee is bought in packages of very fine grounds of deep, robust roasts. Electric coffeemakers do exist here, but the traditional way to brew here—the way even many “middle to upper class” brew it—is to pour boiling water through a filter of grounds into a thermos, yadda yadda yadda. Child’s play! Altogether this method makes a nice, black, almost chewable cup of coffee that fills you with the will to confront any domestic task, expected or not, that may come your way.

Until next post, be well all!