With love from Brazil
2011-07-21
SIX months ago, two families on either side of the Atlantic Ocean where torn apart when their children left home to brave a foreign country. Now six months have already passed, and Babette Beyers from Paarl has settled in very well in her new home in São Paulo, Brazil. Her counterpart, Guilherme Arantes, has also made a new home for himself in Paarl. Both Babette and Guilherme have swopped countries as Rotary Youth Exchange students and will only be returning to their native countries in January 2012. For Babette, who matriculated at Paarl Girls’ High School last year, it has truly been a roller-coaster ride. “The first thing that people ask me is why I chose Brazil. “I wanted something different, big, exciting, challenging and just beautiful. And I have found exactly that. “Brazil has made me look at things in a whole new way and I love it. It’s a country filled with culture and amazing, warm people. Everything about it is so different from what I know at home.” But it has not been all sunshine and roses. When Babette arrived in São Paulo, she could not speak a word of Brazilian Portuguese and neither could her host family speak any English. “It was a battle and when I started school, very few people could communicate with me. After my first month I became very homesick and decided not to communicate with anyone in South Africa, so that my homesickness could pass. “But now I have started speaking the language and I understand it very well. I have made wonderful friends and of course, my host family is wonderful. “Chica, Guilherme’s mother, is my second mother, but we are also very good friends. “I have always lived in smaller towns and now I am living in a suburb in the seventh largest city in the world. My days of just quickly running down to the shop or walking to a friend’s house are long gone. “But at least Brazil has a public transport system that really works. I go to school on a bus, to the mall and to friends.” Babette says that she loves the food, but found it quite an adjustment to be eating rice with every meal. Apart from attending school in São Paulo, Babette does volunteer work amongst autistic children. For Guilherme South Africa has also been very different. He is spending the year at Paarl Boys’ High and before his arrival in South Africa he had never before warn a tie. “It was very strange having to wear a uniform to school. I was very nervous and the schooling here is very different than in Brazil. There everything is much more relaxed.” But soon Guilherme had settled into Boys’ High, attending sports matches and making good friends. He joined a soccer club in Bellville, as this sport is his true passion. “I am loving South Africa. Many things are different to Brazil, but I have adjusted to my circumstances. “I am used to living in a very big city, and Paarl is very small. One problem is that of transport. In São Paulo I can just get onto a bus and go anywhere. Here I have to rely on lifts. It is strange for me.” The boy from Brazil has seen a large part of the Western Cape already and he recently travelled to Namibia with a hunting party. Currently he is on safari in Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. “It was difficult leaving my family and coming to a strange country, but I cannot believe that six months have passed already. I will be sad to leave my new families and friends when I return in January.” Rotary Youth Exchange provides thousands of young people with the opportunity to meet people from other countries and to experience their cultures. For more information about Youth Exchange, contact Maya Friederich at friederm@kwv.co.za.
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