Doce

I live in a small village and I have to admit that, when I first started to study in Oporto, I faced a lot of people who were really different from the kind of people I was used to. I thought to myself I had finally learnt what variety actually means.

And then one day I went to Lisbon and I was once again forced to admit I didn’t really know what variety meant – there were much more people and so different among themselves. I like that. I would like to visit some other place with even more variety. I like to think of those places as somewhere people have to get along and realize it is possible to be different and be a person too, that other traditions are possible and that the world doesn’t revolve around us. The contact with variety – and the consequent realization of the similarities – seems to me, if employed since a very young age – as one of the best ways to fight this local way of thinking.

Village people should have this experience more often. It would be good for them to understand their little land does not match the center of the map and that the people who look like them aren’t the only worthy ones.