Quirkyalone

A malandro doing his thing in front of the Arches in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro

The first time that “Malandro” came up I was waiting in a bookstore in Leblon, the most chi-chi part of Rio, with a new friend I had just met. We were waiting for someone I had made plans with and he texted me to say he was almost there, “one minute.” I explained this to the first guy and he reacted with some doubt and asked if I knew the word “Malandro.” No, I said. He told me “Malandro” means a guy who has more than one woman but doesn’t let any of them know, a slippery kind of person. Oh. That night I was looking at Lonely Planet Brazil and noticed the use of “Malandro” in a box of text describing Lapa, the historic center of samba in Rio. A “malandro,” according to Lonely Planet, was a “con artist.”

The next day, a young Lithuanian guy who has lived in Brazil five years and who works at the guesthouse where I am staying asked me if I knew what a “Malandro” is. Amazed, I told him the word had already come up twice in 24 hours. He proceeded to tell me that a “malandro” is like an urban surfer, a guy who doesn’t work but manages to get by somehow and that everyone wants to be a malandro. He’s the cool guy every other guy would like to be. Can a woman be a “malandra”? Oh, definitely not, according to Tita.

That night I asked a few more people about “Malandro.” My friend Roberto told me that a “malandro” was a historical character of Lapa that can now only be found in escolas de samba, samba schools–dapper men who dress all in white. My friend Marcello described a “malandro” as a clever, fast-thinking person who can talk his way out of any situation. He thought “malandras” exist, they’re just fewer in number. Josemando thought a “malandro” is someone that takes advantage of others.

No one seems to really self-identify as a “malandro.” Tita, the outsider, is the only one who really glorified them. Roberto and I joked about going malandro-spotting in a samba school–it would be fun to find some malandros and take pictures.

The word begins with “mal” so I assume that a “malandro” is a shady character but most people say that they’re more complicated than “bad.” That’s one thing I am noticing about Rio. Everything has two sides, everything has a double meaning. At times I wonder if I should be leaving and spending time in another country in order to learn more, be exposed to another culture. But spending more time in one place means that I get to learn more deeply about cultural intricacies like these. And I am still waiting to meet an official “malandro.” Stay tuned for a picture if I ever find one.

This post originally appeared on my travel blog My Unplanned Adventure.

After two weeks in Cali, my Belgian friend Griet and I, wandering our somewhat bohemian neighborhood San Antonio, found a gym an astonishing two blocks away. The gym offered a dance workout—rumba aerobics—Saturday mornings at 10. What a find! Although Cali is a very late-night party city, we decided to call it a relatively early Friday night at 1 at La Matraca, a gorgeously nostalgic tango club, so we could get up early to work out! Yes, we were committed to our health!

The gym’s rumba class combined a series of dance moves: salsa, bachata, and African dance moves. Bachata is a slow sensual hip-rotating rhythym gaining in popularity worldwide that I first encountered here in Cali. The teacher and the class were high-energy. I even got to work on my Caleno-style salsa footwork.

I felt such a high from the class that I couldn’t help but think of the Saturday morning, 10 am class that I took for two years in San Francisco. It was a combination of world dances that had all the potential in the world to be great, but after a month the teacher really started to wear on my nerves. He wasn’t a comedian, but he seemed to think he was one. He used the class as his stage. I persisted in going for over a year even though I gritted my teeth through his jokes.

Why did I keep going to a class I didn’t love for two years? You could argue that I could have adapted to like him more. I think I’ve always had this idea that the more spiritual approach in life is to be zen and learn to be neutral–not actively disliking–things I don’t like. As if I should accept everything and enjoy all the ups and downs of life. But why? He got on my sister’s nerves too. Why continue to do anything that I don’t love, if it is in my power to change it and find something better? With regard to that particular dance class, I could have easily driven or biked bussed to half a dozen other classes and found an experience that I truly loved. The class was convenient. It was a three minute walk from my apartment.

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Colombia is an amazing country, full of mountains as stunning as the Swiss Alps and people as sweet and welcoming as the people I met in the Northeast of Brazil. It’s also full of strange and hilarious bathrooms. Well, two anyway, that I have spotted in three weeks of travel. Bathrooms are not exactly my first point of anthropological interest as a traveler-observer. But the bathrooms in Colombia have been impossible to ignore.

Did you go Miami or Chicago?

When I emerged from the stall I read her sign more closely so I could figure out what I owed. A Miami cost 500 pesos (about 30 cents) and a Chicago cost 1000 (60 cents). So had I done a Miami or a Chicago? “Chicago” she pantomimed for me with a giggle was a “shit.” Why she had chosen “Miami” to represent number one remained completely mysterious.

Why Miami and why Chicago? The question gnawed at me for two full weeks until I remembered I could ask real, live Colombians. I was couchsurfing with some young fashion students in Medellin. I showed them the photo and they died laughing. The verb for pee in Colombia is “miar.” The verb to shit is “cagar.” They marveled at this woman’s creativity in adapting these Spanish verbs into American cities.

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The dreamy streets of Barichara

On my final afternoon in Barichara, a tiny, beautiful, impossibly tranquil Colombian mountain town I have now decided is heaven, I dropped in to a sweet bakery and coffee shop for a rainy-day cappuccino. A Colombian woman, around 50, asked if she could park her bags and herself at my table. Of course. For me, meeting locals is really the whole point of traveling.

My new friend Shoya is a painter and also rents rooms to tourists. She would like to organize artistic tours of Barichara to show visitors the artistic side of the city: sculptors’ studios and the beautiful interiors of Barichara homes. My Brazilian friends Roma and Iracema and I stayed in a couple’s home, sort of an informal bed and breakfast worthy of being written up in Conde Nast Traveler, that only cost $17 a night. The interiors are indeed stunning. The ceilings are about twenty feet high and have exposed driftwood beams, the floors are large cobblestones, and every windowsill and bookshelf was adorned with a piece of unexpected art. My shower consisted of water that shoots over a piece of rock, creating the sensation of taking a shower out in nature.

A hammock in my home away from home in Barichara

Somehow conversation turned to San Francisco’s cable cars and the enjoyment of life. She asked me about the cable cars, and I said, yes, they are great but they are for tourists. Why, she said. I explained they don’t help me get where I need to go. And that in twelve years of living in San Francisco I never even took a cable car.

In my thirteenth year, I decided that I wanted to take a cable car. I wanted to enjoy life and somehow taking a cable car–doing a touristy thing in my own town–became symbolic of enjoying life. I told her I wanted to “disfrutar la vida,.” I finally took a cable car ride with my best friends Jenny, Liz, Sonya, and Adam, and Jenny and Adam’s son Kai as part of a scavenger hunt we organized for Jenny’s birthday. None of us had ever gone on a cable car before. The ride was magic.

My new Colombian sculptor friend immediately latched on to this phrase, “disfrutar la vida,” and become quite animated.

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the view from gorgeous Barichara, Colombia

I noticed a lot of military in the streets, but I never felt fear of violence. Colombia felt a lot safer than Brazil. Colombians whom I would meet on buses and would help me through my various travails (like being sick on a bus, or without a place to stay for the night) would tell me there are buenos and malos (good people and bad people) in their country, but there are far more buenos than malos. I hadn’t met any malos so I didn’t really know what they were talking about. In fact, for me, the country seemed overwhelmingly full of buenos, people who are sweet and eager to help.

The distinguishing characteristic of Colombians, for me, have been super amable (nice) people. When they say goodbye, they say, “Que le vaya bien” (“that you go well”) and “cuidate” (take care of yourself). Colombians always say hello and how are you. It is common to be affectionate with strangers, and call them “mi amor” (my love) or “mami” (honey). People are exceedingly generous. (Though they can be savage in line at the corner store, not waiting their turn! There is a disorder in Colombian culture that can be infuriating. The concept of a line sometimes does not seem to exist.)

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Early days of tango lessons, my first teacher Mauricio helps me find the position in his garage studio

In my pre-tango life (funny how I could already say that, the pre-tango life. . . ) I felt a certain kind of despair. I would look at other people who have passions like ceramics or watching football (soccer). They know that they are going to enjoy a day if they spend it doing ceramics or watching the World Cup. I just couldn’t think of any one passion in my life where I would fairly reliably find joy.

How many Saturday afternoons did I spend shopping with a friend? Buying a new shirt might be sort of fun but it’s an expensive (and also cheap) form of joy. I’m not sure finding a great dress on sale qualifies as joy, more a thrill. Yoga, not really. I enjoy it for its emotional and physical benefits. Tennis is occasionally fun, but I can’t say that I care enough to work on my serve. Writing is a need and it makes my life, mind and spirit infinitely richer. But I can’t say that writing consistently brings me joy. It also has brought me angst. So where is the joy in my life? That zone in my life where I lose track of time and become one with whatever I am doing, that gives me energy and uplift?

Traveling during a career break is the ideal time to hunt for new passions. While I’ve traveled in Brazil and Colombia this year, I haven’t tried to be too desperate about it, but I was on the search for something that might give me joy at home too. Traveling, I would say, is a joy. I get to be the amateur (for the love of it) sociologist that I naturally am, observing other cultures. But for most of this year, I felt like I was trying out a lot of things that I didn’t love enough to commit to, like scuba diving and surfing. I did a week of surfing lessons in Jericoacoara, Brazil. I enjoyed understanding the velocity of a wave and how one might try to ride it, but I wasn’t a natural and I thought, I just don’t care enough to spend a month of my life battling waves. I enjoyed watching surfers, especially the women, but just couldn’t imagine getting there myself. Ditto with capoeira: I like it, but would I ever get that good at it? I wondered, when am I ever going to find anything that I love enough to commit to it? We usually enjoy things that we are good at, and yet, it takes time and effort to become proficient at something new. If I only pursue things that I am good at from the beginning, my activities will be rather limited.

Patience. I think I finally found a passion that suits me. There were times when I really thought I was going to quit tango and give up, because the basics of the dance like the walk and the posture weren’t coming to me. But I stuck with it and found the right teachers and over time I gradually improved. There were also “big bang” improvements when suddenly the dance clicked. I am at the beginning of a lifelong learning curve, but over time I am loving tango more and more and now I am eager to visit the homeland, Buenos Aires.

Now that I have finally found something that I actually love enough to commit to, I can see that it makes a big different to find the right fit. Maybe this is how people feel when they finally meet a lifelong mate. They realize that they were just trying too hard with all those people who weren’t the right fit. Now I can see that tango is a fit for me in a way that a lot of other sports, dances, hobbies—most things, in fact—are just not.

For example, kitesurfing. While I was traveling I met tons of women who brimmed with energy and enthusiasm when they talked about kitesurfing, They talked about the adrenaline and I love adrenaline rushes, so I thought, I’m going to try this! Well, I did. I just couldn’t quite see it. It’s possible that I quit my lessons after one day because the water was way too cold at Lago Calima near Cali. But I kept thinking, for the cost of one hour of kitesurfing lessons I could do four hours of tango lessons!

Tango is a way better fit for me than kitessurfing. Tango is about connection and I enjoy feeling connection with others because I am such an interior person. Kitesurfing is totally solo and feels a little lonely to me. I am already lost in my own thoughts. Tango is a language, a communication between two people, and I enjoy languages. Tango has an endless depth to it in terms of styles and moves, and the depth of emotion expressed, both light and dark, and I like depth. Kitesurfing must have a lot of depth too but I just don’t care to learn it. Kitesurfing involves a lot of equipment and I hate dealing with equipment, it would be a chore to me to set up and take apart the kite every time. All you need for tango are proper dancing shoes and music. I love that.

It brings me a feeling of peace to realize that there is at least one thing out there that I love enough to really commit to and learn deeply. In some way, understanding the qualities that bring my joy in tango helps me to understand how to bring more joy into my life with other things too. I’ve realized that my joy really comes through collective forms of music and dance–singing and dancing with other people. I am very much at the beginning with tango. It’s even possible this will be a passing fancy, though I hope not. Tango can be a lifelong love, and people usually get better as they get older. That is an exciting thought.

Here is a show that I did as my finale in Cali, after two months of taking tango classes. Oscar, my partner, was my dance teacher for the last two weeks. We got so excited about our classes we decided to do a “presentation” of at La Matraca in Cali to show off everything I had learned. Both dances were improvised. The second one is “tango nuevo” and very much so (improvised). What a moment in time!

This essay was originally posted on my travel blog My Unplanned Adventure.