Luis
Rio de Janeiro — Berlin
It’s hard to imagine a perfect world but I’m sure we all know something worth changing! It’s simply impossible to ignore all the indifferences of this world. For me, Europe was an escape. Back in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was getting ready for the World Cup and the Olympic games and the poor and the low middle class were being violently pushed away from the city. The rich and poor of Rio have always lived in close connection and the segmenting of the city created a lot of conflicts. Life was already uncertain and stressful to begin with — I was working 44 hours a week just to survive. In 10 years I had just two months of holidays! Crisis would come and go and I was jumping around accordingly. I just couldn’t deal with it all anymore.
After taking part in demonstrations, I received personal warnings and finally a political ban. For me it was clear I would not stop doing political work but breaking the ban would have landed me in jail. Seeing bad things happen in your community and not being able to act against them created a lot of frustration. So I made a departure decision — quit my job, bought my first ever flight ticket and gave rest of my earnings to my parents to help them. Just one month later, I arrived to Amsterdam. After being almost everywhere in Europe I’m now settled in Berlin.
It’s much easier to live peacefully in a place like Germany but that doesn’t mean there isn’t political work to be done. Thankfully Berlin’s political scene is incredibly active. I’m currently involved in supporting the refugees. The German society is not that integrated. There are a lot of foreigners here but they are all mostly living in their own separate communities. We should all be more open, create space for different people to come together and break the cultural borders dividing people. I’m much more privileged than many arriving here but through my experience as a foreigner in Germany I can understand some of the struggles of the newcomers.
We might not reach a revolution in our lifetime but you can really change someone’s life at the critical point of starting a new life by offering them a meal, a shelter, a rent, a community, a new language or an useful advice. For all newcomers I want to say — your first year will most probably be a nightmare but believe me, life gets sunnier! Once you start understanding how things work and learn to interact with your new surroundings, you are much closer to happiness.
