One of the first things we learned in Brazil was that the word "friend" has a different meaning in various cultures. In Trancoso everybody was our friend as long as we still had some lolly. After we ran out of it, we soon found out who our real friends were: Not many, but very special and precious people all. Here's a few of those.
		Dora in front of her pousada
		Dora grew up near Salvador, the capital of Bahia, so her cultural background differs greatly from that of the locals. She used to run a small pousada, nowadays she owns a rather chic restaurant.
		We both had our third child at the same hospital in Salvador, with only 3 days in between.
		with Zilda and her son Quíto
		Zilda was my neighbor and still is a good friend. She's a cheerful person who helped me whenever I needed some assistance, and a gifted tailor to boot. Zilda is a real native of Trancoso, and related to at least half of the original inhabitants. As a mother of eight, her life was not always easy. Nowadays she is a multiple grandmother, and from what my daughter tells me, she managed to get a bit of a business running, so it seems that through persistence and hard work, she was able to improve her lot and the living standard of her big family.
		I felt touched and honored when Fatima told me that Zilda had one of her grandchildren named after me.
		Ricardo
		Ricardo is a very special friend of mine, and a great expert on all kind of plants. He taught me a lot. This is a very old pic of him, chosen because it characterizes him perfectly.
		Sylvia
		Sylvia worked at the restaurant in its first year.
		She's a very special person, a beautiful, independent and strong woman. An orphan, she was brought up by nuns somewhere in the South; a traumatic time for her freedom-loving spirit. We never heard of her again after she and her little boy left Trancoso for some place where, if I remember correctly, she wanted to grow sesame plants. Wherever she is now, my best wishes are with her!
		One of the most remarkable people we met in Bahia was a Brazilian Japanese called Pedro. The owner of two restaurants and a store near Porto Seguro was an incredibly generous and cheerful person and a workaholic if ever I knew one. I don't think he rested any more then 4 hours a night. He'd close his place past midnight and get up at dawn to do some fishing. His catch he would present us, on an enormous, beautifully decorated platter, raw as sashimi an hour later on seeing us descending from the bus on our way to town. Or he'd appear in Trancoso with a huge bucket filled with giant fresh shrimp, a present for family and staff to be prepared and devoured on the spot. Often he sent by bus a crate full of fresh fruit from the south for my kids.
		Sadly, Pedro, father of a teenage boy and a sweet little daughter, died around 1990. Rest in peace, my friend. Unfortunately, I don't even have a photo of him.
		chatting with João
		João was another good friend who isn't among us anymore. He chose to live life on the fast and dangerous lane. May he rest in peace too.
		Vegetal and João dos Côcos
		One of the few "friends" who didn't drop us when we had no money left was a long haired freak of German descent, called Vegetal by the locals for his vegetarian habit. Vegetal owned a house, a few horses that lived more or less on the village green and some property. He often invited us to share the meals of rice, beans and vegetables he and his friends prepared. We became friends, and he not only presented Rashid with a rooster and a hen, but ourselves with a big piece of land out in the bush. The other guy in the pic is João dos Côcos, deriving his nick, his appelido, from his artistic abilities of producing ornamental items like earrings or pendants out of coconut shells.
		Donato with his wife
		Donato was our mason, and accompanied the construction and maintenance of the Pousada both as a friend and an employee for many years. Another faithful worker and friend was Dado, unfortunately, I don't have any photo of him.
		Quite another story is that of a little artisan from the South, (to protect his identity I'll call him Curtinho here), who did the carvings on the wooden pillars of our quarters and on the the sign out front. Curtinho turned out to be a veritable Brazilian version of the famous Count of Munchhausen. He told us that his mother came from Thailand, where his father had met her while posted there as an engineer. He claimed to know to write some Thai characters and used to bake a special Thai bread, the way his mother had taught him.
		One day he announced that his father was coming for a visit. Well, I thought, the man, having lived in Thailand for many years, would sure be pleased to eat some Asian fare. At lunch, he somewhat surprised me by preferring a fork in lieu of the supplied chopsticks. Curtinho's father was a nice man, but didn't add up to what I had expected at all for several other reasons as well.
		Seu Frederico with his family
		One of our employees, a clever and experienced fellow by the name of Seu Frederico who took care of the garden and did some odd jobs, had a conversation with our friend's father later in the afternoon. What he told us afterwards was truly astonishing.
		Never in his life had Curtinho's father been abroad. He was a baker by profession, and he and his wife, a mother of twenty children, had fled, like thousands of other unfortunates, from the poverty of the Northeast to the promising fleshpots of Rio de Janeiro. Most of those hopeful immigrants usually end up worse off than before: landless, jobless, their home a cardboard and plywood shack in the favélas. To get back to Curtinho's family, there was no Thai connection whatsoever, the whole story had been a product of Curtinho's imagination.
		Poor Curtinho had to suffer our jokes and the ridicule of half the village. But he wasn't easily deterred. Hardly a month after his fabrications got exposed, I heard from some Germans he'd shown around the place what a pleasant and interesting fellow this little guy with his Thai parentage was.
		with old Irenio
		Seu Irenio was said to be the oldest inhabitant of Trancoso. Living in a small house near the quadrado, he loved to stop by at his friends' places, ours included, for a free pinga and a few words. After half an hour or so, the frail old timer would move on, his shaky pace a bit more unstable after every stop. Around the middle of last century, Seu Irenio had come to Bahia by ship as a sailor, liked the place and settled down.
		After his sons had sold his house and forced him to move to quarters some distance away from the village and his buddies, "velho Irenio", as he was called, didn't live for much longer. It was kind of revolting to see how those same sons threw themselves wailing upon his coffin at the funeral.
		Trancoso being such a spot of scenic beauty, it got frequented by quite a few Brazilian singers and actors. Music legend Gilberto Gil turned up a few times; I had a chat with him and even was invited to his birthday bash in Porto.
		Yet another singer enchanted with Trancoso was Marisa Monte, who owned a house down at the beach. She used to befriend one of Zilda's daughters and Fatima's best friend.
		Sonja Braga, a Brazilian actress known world-wide for her leading part in "The kiss of the spider woman" also used to visit Trancoso. Without make-up she was a rather plain looking, long-haired small woman who for a time had a liaison with one of the rich southern dropouts living in the village. One night at her boyfriend's house, the couple became victims of an assault by a gang of five criminals. The house owner knew to defend his property though, and the raid ended deadly for two of the bandits who got shot. The rest just about managed to escape.
		As an aside, I've never met a people who can talk about sex in such an open, lighthearted and unembarrassed way as Brazilians do. What to a great part of humankind means hushed confidences accompanied by shameful glances and some blushing thrown in for good measure, to many Brazilians is a topic hardly different from the weather or what they had eaten for lunch. It seems not to make a difference at all to them to talk about their knees, their head or their reproductive organs. Takes a bit of getting used to, but being an outspoken person myself, I rather enjoyed that openness.