RESCUE MISSION IN PARADISE

 

Chapter 1 :  The Mission

By: L. Michael Black, Los Angeles, California, 2007

My best friend is in jail! Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a rat's ass. He's been in jail before and so have I. Just about everybody I know has been in jail for something, or for nothing. It's not about guilt or innocence. What mattered are who you are, where you live, how fast you're moving and the time of day or night the cops roll by and spot you. That's life in D.C., for a young brother. 

This time though, things were very different for my homeboy. He was locked up in Brazil and I felt partly responsible for his plight. Guilt was keeping me awake at night. I wasn't worried about them coming to get me. I was cool and kickin' back on the home front. But the truth of the matter is that I was into the shit as deeply as he, if not deeper. Somehow, our interests in other cultures evolved into appreciation for art and artifacts. We learned quickly that we were not alone. What started for us as the pursuit of love and learning quickly developed into a strategy to support our habit. Our "Paradise" was South America, particularly Mexico and Brazil. We spoke the languages and had made many friends through families in the states, and tourist excursions. Things quickly got very serious and deep, I mean deep! We easily found ready markets on both sides of the border. And we played those markets in true capitalist style, buy cheap, sell high. Messing with drugs and stealing were never part of the equation! There were times that by transporting family heirlooms to their rightful owners we made more than enough money to stay in Argentina, or Brazil, or Peru for a month. Our numerous contacts included airline personnel, museum officials, merchants, and even people working in embassies. What more could restless dreamers like us ask for? One thing more, of course, to not get caught! We had time and opportunity. Right, we knew it was not exactly legal to not declare, but what the heck, we were young and hungry to see the world.

Like I said earlier, we both love to travel. It didn't matter how. We'd go by land, by sea, by air, by thumb, stowaway, however, we didn't care! Just get us out of Dodge and take our butts somewhere. Homeboy and I traveled together. We watched each other's back no matter where we went. We were like Siamese twins that required serious surgery to separate. As far as the ladies were concerned, when we were on the road, hey, we still watched each other's back. That's rule number one, survival first! Momma didn't raise no fools. Homeboy and I share an overactive imagination coupled with restless, roving minds that somehow made us determine to see as much of the world as we could for ourselves. We shared an almost insatiable hunger to explore the sights and sounds, the cultures and aromas, architecture and buildings, the foods and drinks of the rest of the world, to savor it all, drink it in like an elixir to nourish our souls.

Our neighborhood, for all of the challenges presented just to survive from day to day, was a beautiful, wonderful melting pot of humanity. Going out to play for us would be to find a foreign country to visit, explore and learn. The languages of the people, mostly the young people that we met on our adventures got to be among our most fascinating experiences. We became aware early on that once you open your mind, dispel your resistance and fiercely desire to learn, mastering other languages is easy. We respected the people, their cultures and their languages, and they, in turn, respected us. They wanted to help us and they did. We were welcomed into their homes. We ate their food, spent hours looking at their memories, listening to their stories and learning from each other. We were kids in love with life and the people encountered along its highways. With not planning it, Homeboy and I became novice linguists. Since we shared a burning desire to see the world, our favorite game was to pretend we were already there. What better way than to convert the sights and sounds of our ‘hood' using the language of the day. We learned Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese, the Brazilian variety, not the book kind learned in school. It wasn't hard for us to become almost totally submerged in a different culture every day. Most importantly, we learned that there are great similarities among people no matter where they come from. All of us, regardless of country of origin, want the same things, mainly to be happy and at ease!

The honest to goodness truth is that it was not always a piece of cake to associate freely with every culture we encountered and explored. People frequently learn from their own cultural mores and bring with them suspicions, fears and doubts developed over centuries of exposure to brainwashing and bad press. We would learn that the greatest obstacles to acceptance and understanding reside in the minds of men, which surfaced dramatically when I made up my mind to go to Brazil to rescue Homeboy. After several failed attempts I finally arrived in Rio, the City of Lights. My mission was straight out the pages of "Mission Impossible" lacking the support of the MI Force. I felt very alone in this strange land thousands of miles from home.

 

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