A rare man

Dori, my dearest friend

Tangará Farm

Technical Agricultural High school

My time in Brazil was spent in many ways. I visited friends and family, I went to all restaurants and pastry shops that I missed, I played a lot with my nephew and my niece, I went out almost everyday with my sister-in-law, I danced a lot… anyway, I had fun!

However, one of my best nights there was when I met Dorival Otoni, a very dear friend that I didn’t see for a long time. We were always together at our university’s meetings, student’s assemblies, political conferences and also at parties, travels and bars having fun and discussing about local and national politics issues. We had and have sharing the most personals and socials dreams and we had spent a valuable quality time together during that moment of our lives, building our souls and our goals.
We always shared the same dream, the dream of a better world and better life, a world where nobody is hungry for food and for equal opportunities, a world where the difference should be always something to celebrate and not to refute, deny or be shamed of it or a motivation for wars.

We took different roads in life even though we didn’t get far away from our dreams. But I need to honor my friend Dori with this post. I love you and I'm very proud of you, dear friend!

Well, after long time without seeing him, he found me at Orkut. I got so happy when I saw him there. He is more handsome than ever, something in his eyes is different and I could feel it just seeing his pictures. He is living again in Uberlândia, the same city as my family and where we went to college in Brazil. So, we managed to meet each other and we did. Unfortunately, just twice!

Dori is one of those extremely courageous and rare men that decide to follow their souls, their truly essences. He is a very sensitive guy, a very present father and a bonsai love. Dori is working as physical and math’s teacher in an technical agricultural school, which belongs to one of several agrarian reform landless workers movements. Being Brazil so huge country, is usual and natural to find different reform landless movement to attend all the social, political and economic expectations of the Brazilian landless people.

I will try describe this particular school, so you can have a picture why I'm so prouf of him! It is located in an area, which before January 2006 was an encampment for 250 families that fighting for theirs deserved piece of land. They were fighting for this land since 2000, and since 2004 they occupied this latifundium, (a large and unproductive land) of 5.000 hectares.
From this 250 families, 113 are politically directed by MTL- Movimento Terra, Trabalho e Liberdade - Movement for Land, Work, and Freedom and the other 137 are directed by other organization called AMFT- Associação dos Moradores da Fazenda Tangará, Association of the Inhabitants of the Tangará Farm.

Dori, my dear friend, told me about this school and I went there to meet him and also to visit it. This school is about 40 km from Uberlândia. It’s a high school and it has in a total 34 students right now: 1st year-25 students 2nd year-9!
It’s a school with a normal high school curriculum grade, but also it’s turned to a campesino education. The students are not necessarily from the families that lived in this land. In fact, this group came from many different regions. The students live at the school, going home just on vacation.

I had a wonderful time there with my dear friend Dori, his students and with the inhabitants/proprietors of this land. I also met Gloria, who is the leader and the cooker of Tangara. By the way, every day she cooks more than 5 Kg of rice for lunch and diner. It’s so hard working, trust me! Anyway...They showed me around and explained everything to me, as you can see in my pictures!

I got so emotional to see a group of people that got organized, fought for their dreams and didn’t ever give up!

I started this post talking about one of my best nights in my hometown. So, after visiting the school and talked to Dori, we changed telephone’s numbers and we met again as it couldn’t be different.
I went to his house to pick him up and we went to a special restaurant where just serves “caldo”. I think I can define caldo as a dense soup. It can be make with beans, fish, poultry, pork, meat, vegetables… you named it. After our diner, I asked for a coffee, but the restaurant was almost closing and they didn’t have any. It was almost 2 am and I asked Dori where we could find a good Brazilian coffee, not espresso, at 1 AM. He looked at me and said: “bus station! The only place where we will find coffee as you want at 2 am is at the bus station”. I looked at him with a huge smile in my face and I said: “Let’s go, dear! The bus station waits for us!”

One of my best nights ever, was spent at bus station with a wonderful friend just talking, laughing and drinking café and/or pingado (coffee with milk) all night long. The talk flowed so smoothly that when we realized the sun was almost up. We left almost 7 AM.
Nothing, absolutely nothing is better in life than simple things like that. It is what makes my life so colorful, so enjoyable and so pleasant! (Yeah right, of course I got many blues! Think, I live in Switzerland, the sunless land! That means that I do have the right to get as many blues as this land offers me!)

By the way, bus station in Brazil is a sociology-anthropology treaty; never closes and you can find a very good coffee anytime!

Concluding, Dorival Otoni is more than an amazing friend to me. He is the link to a very best time of my life and he represents that utopian socialism that we will not abandon!
I’m a very privileged woman because I have you Dori as my friend!
Eu te adoro demais!