The unidentifiable beauty of living in a Portuguese hamlet.

Sometimes I get a response on my writings like; “you are mixing up too many subjects, it is confusing”. I must admit that I probably need a few words more than others to express my thoughts and mostly that is because I don’t like “twitter-like” statements without describing its context and historic background. Keeping concentrated while reading a few thousand words, understanding metaphors and recognizing irony are among the abilities that slowly get lost in this modern world of fast news, social media and small screens. It is proven that most people are losing interest fast if they have to scroll down more than just a few times on their device of choice. I know a paperless way of communicating is good for the environment, but it certainly has its limitations. After one year of living in Portugal – 2007 – I shared my experiences by using paper and restricting myself to a maximum of 2 pages per anecdote. Maybe it sounds “cocky” but I’m proud to say the book sold well.

Now, at the risk of mixing up too many subjects again, the subsection above is crucial for the rest of this “column”, “essay”, “Social Media Post” or whatever you might call it, although this is mainly about Portuguese neighbours and long friendships. I have the possibility to look back at what I wrote about my first year in this small hamlet close to Tomar, and compare it with the current situation. A lot of things changed. Most of my neighbours died, which is just nature taking its cause, the average age in my street was around 80. Sadly the empty houses became just holiday destinations for their children or grandchildren. The other side of the coin shows “younger” people coming back to live with their parents because city-life just became too expensive. The youngest person is the 20-year-old son of our direct neighbour, who came back from a “boarding school” two years ago. His mom is getting by because she is the spill in our little community; taking care of all the holiday houses, looking after some of the elderly and even keeping an eye on me while my wife is away for 4 months to work (at the age of 65, but that’s another story) in The Netherlands.

An example of how great it is to live in such a cohesive community is, that a few days ago, our neighbour, together with her son and another neighbour from our street, first just looked, then quietly called and finally knocked on my door. When I opened she looked relieved and I asked why. It turned out that she noticed my keys on the outside of the door in the morning and when she passed by, later on in the evening, they were still there. (I just forgot them) She was so worried something was wrong that she asked another neighbour to come with her to have a look. Unlike the examples in my home country, there’s absolutely no chance they will find you dead on the floor after a few weeks (or even months). As a matter of fact, because I’m on my own for a few months, they make sure I’m eating enough vegetables and fruit! And they won’t take No for an answer!

She, our neighbour, is also the only one who has some influence on “Martin” ( I am reluctant to write his real name here), a young man with down-syndrome, living with his elderly parents. She spends a lot of time helping them with transport (they don’t have a car, never did), cleaning and looking after Martin whenever his parents need to do something they can’t do with him around.

I met Martin on the first day we looked at our “cottage”, his father arranged the sale of the house for someone who lived outside Portugal. At that time Martin was still going to school a few days a week and because we both didn’t speak Portuguese we could actually communicate rather well. In my little book, I wrote a chapter about Martin and the way he is just a member of the community as anybody else. A completely different approach to overcome “difficulties” than I was used to in The Netherlands. His father worked as a baker in Canada for a few years but never got to learn English while he was there. Because of the nightly ours at the bakery, there was little room for social life and all communication in family matters rested on his wife’s shoulders. We soon found out that, despite the language barrier, they were very happy that we bought the little cottage but only after explaining that we were actually going to live in it. In fact, our neighbours negotiated a much lower price for us, as they thought the seller tried to take advantage of our nationality. In return, we took on the communications with the Canadian authorities regarding their pension application. After reading all the information we found out that the Portuguese solicitor, who filled in the forms, deprived them of a significant amount per month by just not taking the time to do it properly. It turned out that, because of their task to take care of Martin, the monthly pension was quite a bit higher than they expected. It made the quality of life substantially better for Martin because they were able to send him to some special “youth camps” during the summer at places he otherwise would have never seen.

Twelve years later, Martin is still the same. He’s working alongside his father in the grapevine, likes to transport everything with his wheelbarrow and although he isn’t able to speak, still manage to greet people when he’s passing by. Of course, there are “funny” things that “outsiders” don’t understand like the fact that he will wait behind a car when it’s parked on the street. He wants to walk in a straight line with his wheelbarrow, so you are expected to move the car away so he can pass. He’s very polite, listens to his parents and I’d rather have a restaurant dinner with him than some 12-year-old” smart-ass kid” because he knows how to behave very well.

Reading back in that little book, that’s hardly sold anymore, the world has changed a lot in 12 years. A bottle of butane became twice as expensive, future perspectives were watered down, populism became a religion and in a lot of places social-democracy became a dirty word. Personally, our lifetime pension payments vaporized, interest on savings went to a negative, pension age was raised by 5 years. Luckily the price of hair-dye went down. The village changed. Well, at least, the “Rua de Vibration” was renewed so our village is now reachable without ruining your car. What didn’t change is Martin’s place in the community or the support the elderly get from their neighbours. What didn’t change is the compassion and the way people help each other in this hamlet full of ruins and empty houses. Sometimes visitors say; “It looks like the world stood still here”, when they see an 85-year-old woman walking by who carries a bunch of firewood on her head. Not to forget the remarks on a failed system when they see one of our oldest neighbours walking down the street in her pyjamas or a “non-supervised” young man with down-syndrome pushing his wheelbarrow. It’s quite difficult to explain to people coming from an individualized society that this whole hamlet is their home, not just a place where their house is situated. They are right though; Time stood still here, at the right moment in history.