The day he was elected...

“Never have we sunk so low, never have we been so repulsive to the world,”

- Comment from a leftist journalist the morning of Monday, October 28th.

You think you live through Tuesday November 8th once. You think you will only have to go through that feeling of horror, deep guttural pain, and sobs with nightmares once. Then it happens again. But this time there is no university campus with counselors to turn to, or classes with students equally as devastated as you, or the weight of grief hanging over an entire city, and holding you in your grief. Instead, there are trucker’s horns and fireworks, and people making happy FaceTime calls to other happy people making Facetime calls. With each happy Facetime call you sink deeper and deeper into "holy $hit, what just happened". That was Sunday, October 27th. Homeless, now car-less, and powerless over the inability to fully wrap my head around the horrific statements the new President of Brazil has made about women, black people, gay people, indigenous people, and why he is being cheered on.

So here goes. As baffled as I am I’d like to share some of the conversations we’ve had with people on the road leading up to last week with you. And what is was like to lose our car, and hope in one full swing, being left stranded on a Brazilian highway. As much as I heard people bashing Trump then, and now, I needed to listen to people who love Trump too. I need to listen to understand, and as much as I am in pain right now, punctuated by being stranded in a Brazilian truck stop with men, no working women’s bathroom shower, and an unknown future… I will pause, and listen to understand. Pause to regain breath.

In the pause, I remember this summer reading Brene Brown’s “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone” in which she dissects the epidemic of loneliness. She offers many eloquent examples but one that I took as a gutter punch was a challenge to each of us, that when we bash anyone, be it an elected official or an ex, we are bashing humanity. That energy that can be re-directed towards understanding, however different or angry. Easier said than done.

When I met Rafael my traveling partner in Campinas at the onset of our adventure, he was on fire lighting up an online political commentary storm using Facebook and WhatsApp. I knew he was involved in this way and it gave me hope that there was discourse, and that he was standing up for what we thought was “right”. We left Campinas and headed East to Ubatuba a beautiful beach city. No political banter there, just people in awe of our tiny car and tiny trailer home.

As we headed South there were less “Ele Nao” stickers meaning “Not Him” in Portuguese. The climate shifted, the people were blonde and blue-eyed and the cities were cleaner and more European. The news broke while we were on the road that Steve Bannon, the right-wing conservative behind Facebook’s algorithm manipulation to push Trump forward, was also behind WhatsApp posts from Bolsonaro’s party. We thought this news might make a dent in people’s perception of Bolsonaro, but it didn’t. Just as Trump’s involvement didn’t, so many parallels in these two stories folks. We began to see more Brazilian flags everywhere which made me happy, but then it was explained to me how Bolsonaro said that the Brazilian flag isn’t Red, as in the color of the other party. He said that using any other color other than the colors of the flag were unpatriotic. So Brazilian flags were everywhere, and each time I saw one, I would examine it to see if it was new, as in newly wanting to show support.

“We are all Bolsonaro,” said the waif of a dark-skinned man watching our parked car in Floripa. It’s typical to pay someone to watch your car when you park it in Brazil. There will be men or corners, in parking lots, in alleys, and that’s their hustle. You give them a couple bucks, they make sure your car windows stay intact. Rafael wasn’t expecting that statement from this man, black, poor. All of the implications of Bolsonaro being elected, he would feel them the most.

“No I am not Bolsonaro, I would never support him, will never support him,” Rafael responded not missing a beat.

The man looked just as stunned that we were responding like this, as we were that he was in support of Bolsonaro. We had blatantly judged each other.

“But you both are well off, what do you have to lose?” He responded

“Well off? Dude, we are living on the road out of a car, but besides we would never support him.”

And then Rafael couldn’t help himself and dove a little deeper into just how upset he was at the far-right candidate. I stared at the man's eyes, they were searching for some part of Rafael’s face to try and come to terms with what was coming out of his mouth. That is when I started to realize that just as I thought people were crazy for voting for Bolsonaro, there were so many people who thought we were absolutely nuts not to support him. These moments in the past would freak me out. Moments of encountering someone with far different perspectives, judging them, and then being stuck in a conversation with them. Oh the horror. I am now beginning to try and lean into them more. Not out of proving my point, but out of trying to be a better listener. #hardestthingever

“But he’s going to be better,” the man said. “In 2002 I was washing cars making good money, I had enough money to buy my own car. Now I am doing this and don’t have anything. This is where the worker party left me. This is where Lula’s corruption left me.”

There would be variations on this conversation as we would travel south. Conversations centered on the Brazil of 2002 compared to now, Brazil from 5 years ago compared to now. The crashing economy being at the top, the rise in crime and violence follows. But most conversations centered around Brazil’s Real losing value, the current recession, and anger at the corruption from the previous political party. When asked as an American how the current state of Trump-America is, any answer I provided would be followed with, “but the economy is doing great!”. Sigh.

When our car’s engine died last Sunday afternoon, it was as if the energy around us, and between us, built up to a level of needing to relieve itself. It was almost obvious. A fast putter, and then completely dead. The grave and intense look on Rafael’s face was the image of the moment: pained, defeated, and horrified. It was the day of the election, it was three days after we had driven past yet another surf spot and didn’t stop, it was another day where I wasn’t biking and feeling crappy about it. It was another day where our communication was off and our tension palpable. The car couldn’t handle us, as much as we apparently needed to be out of the car.

That afternoon we would be towed back to the truck stop where we would spend the next week. That evening we would wait for the election results, in the vast truck stop dining room, eating overpriced pastries, and sharing a can of coke. That night we would squeeze past the two security guards leaning against their car parked right next to our trailer, to enter our tiny home. We would hold each other in awkward but genuine solace as fireworks went off to mark the success of Bolsonaro. We would exchange words of shared pain and disgust as the truckers laid into their horns filling the sprawling parking lot with celebratory noise and laughter.

Little did I know that like most things, light is seen most clearly in the dark. A light was about to emerge from the most unlikely of places.