MORO! NUM PAIS TROPICAL
When I was a kid in the 70s, my father, who frequently traveled to Brazil for 
business, told me of a famous local saying that went something like this:
“Brazilians will start working only when the Jesus statue on top of the Corcovado rock will clap his hands”. Looking at Rio’s bright white landmark, the answer was obvious – never!
But, as I later found out for myself, they were wrong. Here’s why:
At the Copa
Warm Ocean, golden beach, a gentle breeze, and a ball. Football, of course. This is no Miami Beach, nor Cancun or the Tel Aviv Promenade. This is Rio’s Copacabana, and the picture you see is taken 18 floors above it. This could be a picture that captures the essence of being a Brazilian. A patriarch and his son play football on a bright, sandy beach. Not a care in sight. Nearby kiosks are selling local beer and snacks for peanuts. Street hawkers offer counterfeit Havaianas flip-flops to unsuspecting tourists. Others are busy just robbing them outright. Police officers stand not far away too busy exchanging latest gossip.
This is Brazil. This is Rio. This is the Copacabana. And it seems everyone’s just ok with it (except those specific tourists that do get mugged, of course). But this picture is misleading.
Because there’s something Brazilian will work their **s off for.
It’s not the football, dummy
OK, football is essential to Brazilians, but with the exception of some very few professionals, this is more of a national pastime than a real job.
Carnival, however, is a different opera (sorry for the pun)!
Carnival season (which in 2019 falls between March 2ndand March 9th) is a country-wide business. And by business, I mean REAL business, employing hundreds of thousands of people, all aimed at delivering few days of bonanza celebration like nothing in the world. You may say that blowing so many resources on a few days of partying is sheer craziness, but to Brazilian, this is one big motivation for which they are willing to work – and work hard – for. Needless-to-say nowhere is this more apparent than in Rio.
We meet up underground with our Samba-school tour guide name Elkana. Growing up in a religious Jewish family in southern Israel, Elkana made what can only be described as a major lifestyle change and moved to Brazil to work as part of the Samba industry.
The Carnival is eight weeks away when we walk together into a giant industrial hall in the center of town that houses one of the leading Samba schools, but preparation is already in full frenzy mode. A giant digital clock counts the weeks, days, hours and minutes (minutes! Someone is counting minutes in Brazil) left to the big show. Everywhere around us are posted “laundry lists” with elaborate “to-do” items. One can almost mistake it to a North American Yankee operation.
Looking for an easy-going workplace? Look elsewhere
Carnival is a big business. That is obvious. More than 5 million people participate in Rio carnival alone, half a million of them tourists, explains Elkana. What surprised me was what Elkana told me next: “the preparation for the event takes almost 11 months, so the Carnival industry is – in fact – a year-round perpetual business in which the end of one Carnival merely symbolizes the start of another”.
What is more astonishing is the degree of fierceness, seriousness, and order in which all parties involved work together on the set, costumes, design, engineering, and choreography. There where no idling artisans, no milling around in the coffee corner, and not much talk and laughter. Everyone in the massive complex was alarmingly focused as if time is not enough.
My God! This is Brazil, not Berlin!
Shock aside, this was just one hanger, of one Samba school, in one city. Who said Brazilians can’t work? I thought to myself as I adorned a flamboyant feather cap in one of the dressing rooms. Not only they, do, but they also do it with style.
