When we stepped off the plane in Florianópolis, we were not greeted by a wall of hot, humid air like you might expect. It was more of a cool breeze, a sign of strangeness, a sign that yes, this might work out after all, a sign that nothing is a foregone conclusion, including all those fears you wrap yourself in as a protective blanket against dark surprises. Moving to Brazil was not my choice, though it was a decision made with my consent. I spent my teenage years dreaming of living in England, and when I finally got there, the Englishman I fell in love with happened to be half-Brazilian and wanted to live anywhere but the U.K. So there we were, for the third time in three years, hauling our things off the plane, stepping into a cool breeze under an overcast sky, and wondering where the hell we were going to find SIM cards.
The cellphone kiosk at the airport didn’t have them. “You’ll have to get them in town,” the clerk said, his fingertips touching, forming a perfect “v” of pensive regret. He had tattoos peeking out from under a polo shirt and seemed to be about 15 years old. “Thank you,” we said, and had a brief discussion about how we were going to summon an Uber when the wifi wouldn’t reach the curb. Maybe we should just get a piece of cake at the bakery first.
In the afternoon, after making our way to our new home in a rattling Uber, we took a bus into town to the place we’d gotten SIM cards on our last two trips. It’s a cellphone store on the corner near the bus station with a huge Apple logo on the door. Last year, we’d stood at the counter for over half an hour while the attendant juggled helping us install the chips with playing a game on his phone. This time, we were less fortunate. The woman at the counter looked like a cliché of Ireland – deep red hair, pale skin, and a scattering of freckles.
“A chip?” she asked, looking mildly surprised. “No, no. We don’t have them anymore.”
“Do you know where we can find them?” Michael asked.
“The pharmacy,” she said.
I am in the early stages of learning Portuguese, but I was pretty sure what “farmacia” meant. Michael and I looked at each other blankly, thanked the woman, and walked across the street, past a shop where an elderly woman sat over a sewing machine, hemmed in behind stacks and stacks of fabric, a dummy with a lacy thong bearing it all in the window.
A woman was mopping the floor of the pharmacy when we arrived, making the white surface so shiny you could see your reflection in it. Michael and I wiped our feet on the plastic “Bem-vindo” mat and made tentative steps inside.
“We’ve just run out,” the man at the cash register said, spreading his hands in helplessness and maybe a hint of drama. “You’ll need to go to the supermarket.”
The cool breeze of the morning had finally settled into a thick, stagnant humidity. We sweated our way across the street, now carrying bags of shampoo, some nail polish (it had taken all of three hours for me to realize that having unpolished toenails was no longer an option), and some clothes hangers. When Michael asked for cellphone chips, the woman at the grocery store looked puzzled. “We don’t have them,” she said, as if we’d just asked for a gym membership. “You get them from the gas station.”
“Are you sure?” Michael asked.
“Yes, yes,” she said, waving us away. “The gas station is where you’ll find them.”
Unwilling to leave empty-handed, we wandered the aisles, gathering the essentials. At the cash register, Michael dashed back into the dairy section to look for milk and I stared at my unpainted toenails, hoping the cashier wouldn’t have any questions for me that went beyond my minimal language skills.
“Do you want a bag?” She asked.
“It is not necessary,” I replied.
“Credit or debit?” She asked.
“Credit,” I said.
“Ha!” she said, “Does this bag of oats belong to you or is it someone else’s?”
“Thank you,” I said.
—
Now weighed down with a papaya, a bunch of bananas, some milk, the troublesome bag of oats, and a bottle of laundry detergent in the scent “Salmon Soft,” we wove our way through motorbikes and car exhaust to the gas station, where a man with a nametag bearing his first and last name looked at us with concern. He must have been in his forties, a man who looked more like a doctor or a therapist than a gas station attendant. He looked like the kind of person who could reassure you with a simple pat on the shoulder and a good long silence, or maybe that’s just what I was craving at the time.
“We’re looking for cellphone chips,” Michael said, “And the supermarket told us to come here.”
“No,” the man said, shaking his head and looking even more concerned than the situation now warranted. “You need to go to Abracadabra.”
Now, if I’d gotten a fraction less sleep on the 10-hour flight (I got about 10 hours), I might’ve thought this was some kind of code or maybe even an actual spell. As it happened, however, I was relatively well-rested and knew exactly what he was on about. Abracadabra is a store opposite the gas station. It sells shawls with Bob Marley’s face on them, Che Guevara prayer candles, and tarot cards with sensual pictures of the Zodiac signs.
Michael and I looked at each other, eyebrows just barely raised.
“Thank you,” I intoned, emboldened to use one of my few snatches of vocabulary given the circumstances.
We emerged into the blazing sun, giggling. We’d been in Madrid less than 24 hours before, on multiple trains, two airplanes, and a sandy Uber. Why not chuckle our afternoon away? This was Brazil. We’d made it. It took us years to make the move, and one silly cellphone chip saga wasn’t going to get us down. In fact, we’d play along.
To Abracadabra we went.
The woman standing on the wooden deck outside the shop was wearing a long, olive green skirt and a crop top made from an old t-shirt. She had a riot of curly hair and a deep, hard-won tan. She looked as if she might have been standing on that deck, leaning against a wooden beam with her arms crossed for years, a wry smile deflecting unserious shoppers and insufficiently dedicated spiritualists day in, and day out. The store was dark, more like a windowless wooden kiosk than a themed souvenir shop. I cast a nervous glance over the rows and rows of incense, the miniature sound bowls, and the dusty shelves of crystals. Recognizing that we were there with a purpose, the woman strode to the counter, giving us a smile that was more confidence than warmth.
“Do you have SIM cards?” Michael asked weakly.
“Which carrier would you like?” the woman asked, reaching behind her and grabbing three small plastic packages. “Do you want to pay as you go or buy a pre-paid plan?”
—
Later that evening, as we sat in our favorite pizza restaurant, batting away mosquitos in the faint hope that we might fend off dengue for at least our first week, we realized that we couldn’t activate the SIM cards on our own. You had to do it with a qualified attendant at a participating store.
“We’ll have to go back to the supermarket,” Michael said. “Or maybe the gas station.”
A fabulous first "dispatch" from your new home. Can't wait for the next installment!