Mação has gone under my skin

For some time now I have been planning to write. But I am in a kind of stupor. I have been in Mação for over two months now. The schedule has become tight. The subjects taught range from geomorphology to palaeo-ecology. Portuguese remains almost as incomprehensible as it always was… There is never enough time for anything. Even so, deep down I feel lethargy setting in…

Mação is constant. You can come back here after two years and find everything as you left it. (It's like going to Ganga Dhaaba and finding Rona Wilson there!) A fifteen minutes walk in any direction takes you out of the town. The number of abandoned houses increase as one moves out of the town-center. In the middle of the abandonment sometimes newly painted red roofs appear like surprises. Its like a game where some one sets out little playhouses here and there for no specific reason.

My friend Daniela thinks that our course co-ordinator, Luis Oosterbeek has built this town and has let us all in here. He presses his remote control button and the weather goes chilly or warm, the wind sets in, the dogs bark, old ladies walk the streets, some with suspicious stares, some with friendly smiles. It is not too hard to believe, if you walk the streets of Mação after ten in the night. By that time all that Oosterbeek had set out on the streets in the morning, would have retreated inside.

This town of 2000 people has eight parishes. The community is very Catholic in its ethics and views outsiders with suspicion. I am not saying that they are unfriendly. On the contrary, they are often very friendly. Our landlady and her mother, one day, took me and Daniela to a nearby little town Torres Noves (New Towers) and bought us cakes (it means a lot when the options to get out of Mação are little). But one can never be too aware of the old lady’s eyes falling critically on our careless hairdos and casual dressing.

The town is like a reality show. You cannot get out of it and you are always being watched. And in these two months, I could feel tensions building up among the people who came here without a care in the world. It’s a curious mixture of etiquette and hierarchy and power politics all played out among a little group of individuals. Dimensions are too small here. It’s laughable and silly if you look from outside. But the problem is I am inside and sometimes it can be depressing!

Mação has gone under my skin and it itches!