Why should America spend money to improve health and save lives in remote corners of the world?

Trump 2.0 and Elon Musk are laying waste to American government. Elon boasted recently of putting USAID (US Agency for International Development) into the wood chipper. And a lot of Americans think that’s fine, because why should we spend our money around the globe when people need help here at home? It’s widely believed the US spends a big portion of its budget on USAID, but it’s actually less than one percent. And the hard truth is that the mulch coming out of the wood chipper won’t be transformed into help for the poor and struggling in the US—that will be managed with the chainsaw coming for health care access and Social Security.

One of the largest and most successful projects of US international development is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR was established by President George W. Bush in 2003 to fight the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and has saved more than 25 million lives since its inception. The program has accomplished this by providing medication to treat the disease and prevent transmission, especially for pregnant women whose babies would otherwise be born infected. An important part of the mission is training health professionals to manage the disease and its prevention.

In this post, dear reader, I will share my experience as lead technical advisor and sub-contractor to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and PEPFAR for a brief glimpse into the world of international aid and the usefulness of soft power. I also include, as is my wont, stories of my adventures along the way.

My journey began serendipitously. My dear friend, the late, legendary, global phenomenon Ruth Ballweg, was head of the PA (Physician Assistant/Associate) Program at the University of Washington. The university’s center for global public health, I-TECH, was located on the same floor as Ruth’s administrative office. One day in 2007 a member of I-TECH staff knocked on Ruth’s door and asked her for any suggestions about a consultant for their HIV program in Mozambique. “Our ideal candidate would be someone who is a PA (physician associate), a medical educator, who practices clinically in primary care, has a degree in public health, and is fluent in Portuguese. We understand all those traits won’t exist in one person, but if you think of anyone who ticks some of those boxes, please let us know.” Ruth laughed and said, “You just described one of my best friends.” (For those who are interested, here are my academic bona fides.)

And so it was that I found myself on a series of flights to Mozambique in August 2007, to serve as a faculty development consultant for teachers of técnicos de medicina, the clinicians who delivered health care in Mozambique after the country became independent from Portugal in 1975. I’ll digress first with a brief history of Mozambique (Moçambique in Portuguese) and then the story of the técnicos.

Portugal colonized Mozambique in the 16^th century, and it was one source of enslaved people sent to their other colony of Brazil, as well as a trading center on the eastern sea routes. In the early 20^th century, Portugal collaborated with Britain to consolidate trade with the British Crown’s colonies Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa.

Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar came to power in 1933, and he took greater control of the colonies such as Mozambique and Angola as a tool to stoke nationalist sentiment and solidify his power as a dictator. When the dictatorial regime fell in 1974, Portugal abruptly withdrew from its colonies. Newly independent Mozambique didn’t just have to confront rebuilding their infrastructure and educating their people to various professions, something they had been denied during Portuguese rule. Mozambique’s government was Marxist (FRELIMO), and South Africa and Rhodesia funded rebels against them (RENAMO), resulting in a bloody civil war from 1977 to 1992—for a riveting snapshot from the late 1980s, see A Complicated War. It’s important to note that Zimbabwe is land-locked (see map above), and the shortest overland route from the ocean was via the Mozambique port of Beira, a route called the highway of death during the civil war. Mozambique has been a republic since 1993, although episodic turmoil and bloodshed have persisted.

The Mozambican resistance fought against the Portuguese from 1964 to 1974, and the Portuguese sabotaged infrastructure and took all the doctors with them when they left. The first minister of health after independence had been a medical student when he left school to fight in the resistance and was pressed into service to do battlefield surgery. He understood, like Eugene Stead did at Duke University when he established the first PA program, that most medical tasks can be taught in a compressed period of time. He set up the técnicos de medicina profession which became the backbone of Mozambique’s health care delivery system for many years.

These professionals, who were recruited with just a high school education, rose to the challenge of delivering care during the civil war, and subsequently faced the challenges of the AIDS epidemic. Trained in a three year program, they provided care in far-flung areas, “the last mile.” Some returned to training to learn to perform major surgical procedures, and a 20-year study in 2007, among others, found surgical técnicos’ outcomes with procedures such as C-sections and appendectomies equivalent to those of physicians.

I-TECH had funding through CDC and PEPFAR to improve teaching strategies for the técnicos, and I was first recruited to facilitate seminars in the northern Mozambique province of Nampula. Now, when you become a US government contractor, your travel arrangements are made by them in the most economical way possible. First lesson, working in international development ain’t no luxury cruise.

And so it was that my itinerary from Durham, North Carolina to Maputo, Mozambique began with a flight backwards to Memphis. Being a newbie, I asked why that was, and the answer was, “it’s the cheapest route.” Okay. The second leg out of Memphis was to Amsterdam, and I entered a parallel universe. The flight was heavily populated by Dutch Elvis impersonators and their Priscillas, some of whom smoked in the lavatories and engaged in fisticuffs in the aisles in the wee hours of the morning.

Then Amsterdam to Johannesburg, with an overnight at the Joburg airport hotel. Bleary-eyed the next morning, I went down to the lobby to meet my I-TECH colleagues who had also just arrived from the US. As I exited the elevator, staff were leaving the reception desk and cleaning personnel put their brooms and mops to the side and they all gathered in the lobby of the hotel to sing in some of the most beautiful a cappella choral harmonies I have ever heard. I was in tears from the unexpected beauty of it.

Our team hopped the quick flight from Joburg to Maputo (the capital of Mozambique) and thus began a flurry of activity to get our shit together to fly up to Nampula and facilitate a three-day session on teaching strategies. We worked closely and seamlessly with Mozambican partners on all aspects of the project. Participants in the seminar included técnicos, Cuban primary care doctors and Mozambican surgeons and specialists, all dedicated to improving education for the técnicos.

My encounter with non-Brazilian Portuguese was challenging at times. I easily understood average people and the técnicos, but the higher level doctors spoke a very heavily European version of the language. At one point I was in front of the group facilitating a discussion and a specialist physician became angry with me when I didn’t understand what he was saying. I was mortified, of course. “You are fluent in this language! Why do you pretend you don’t understand what I’m saying?” That part I got, and I just slobbered and humbled myself and said so sorry (I was!) but “I speak Brazilian and I need to improve my language skills.” He was mollified and turned out to be a very nice person who subsequently took pains to look after me, such as checking my mineral water bottle to make sure its health certification was not expired (it was, and he got me a fresh one).

The permanent American staff on the project were talented, dedicated people who took great risks for not such great money to contribute to the development project. They understood the risks I wasn’t attuned to, such as jumping to close windows on the 9^th floor at dusk for fear of mosquitos carrying malaria (justified, not paranoid). And they understood the culture and averted potential faux pas, saving my bacon in some cases. At the end of our seminar sessions, the head of the health professions training agency was scheduled to present the certificates of completion of the course to our participants. One of our team arrived just before the scheduled event and was aghast to see nothing set up at the front of the meeting room. He ran around the hotel grabbing a small table, a cloth, a vase and some plastic flowers, and set them up at the front of the room. Our dignitary would have been offended had he not done that, and I would have had no idea. Second lesson, cultural humility is a key skill for this work.

Two years later, the Minister of Health and the heads of the técnico training programs resolved that a complete revision of the curriculum was needed, and I was appointed the lead technical advisor for the project. This involved several more trips to Mozambique, as well as meetings at the University of Washington and my institution, Duke University. The project is described in a publication.

I have watched in horror as Trump and DOGE (or the Muskrats, as I hear they are called by federal employees) dismantle the international development mechanisms of the US government. And it has caused me to think a lot about my time in Mozambique, and the value of this kind of work. At some level, every location and country in the globe is strategic, and having friends is better than having enemies. And our adversaries—well, America used to have no doubt about who our adversaries were, but that has changed—are poised to swoop in and fill any vacuum created by the US’s precipitous withdrawal.

During my time in Nampula, the northern province, there were Chinese workers and construction projects everywhere. I remember my initial reaction was surprise. I learned that this was happening all over the world, where major infrastructure construction will have many lower-income countries beholden to the Chinese regime.

I was invited one afternoon to visit with some Cuban doctors who were setting up health professions training programs, including a new medical school. These are laudable efforts, and Cuban doctors follow a unique community-based health model and provide services all over the world. But the Cuban government doesn’t have the money to fund all these international projects—it’s Russia that foots the bill.

I’m sure the Muskrats look at what is called capacity building, training and enhancing the skills of health care providers, and see it as wasteful. I’ve heard comments like, “we’re going to eliminate PEPFAR funding that isn’t directly life saving.” As in, keep sending the medications, but cut all the other stuff. Who prescribes the medications? Who educates the patients? Who tracks the outcomes? And the administration says no one will die, just a little adjustment here and there, lifesaving things will be restarted if they were cut in error. But people will die. More people will be infected, and babies will be born HIV-positive and die as a result of having no access to medications.

What is soft power? Foreign policy consists of defense, diplomacy and development. Programs like PEPFAR are critical tools in securing and maintaining US power and relevance in the world. It’s not all about conquest and lethality. Saving lives and promoting health are worthwhile—and the right thing to do. As Americans, we used to understand that. Third lesson: the worth of soft power is incalculable.

“. . . soft power is a reflection of our values, what we stand for—our strong belief in freedom, self-determination, and advancement of people’s economies, bringing more stability and peace to the world. That is the fundamental nature of soft power: that we are not—what Trump is currently trying to create—a world of simply ‘Might makes right, and you do what we tell you,’ because that does not create stability. It creates chaos and destruction.”

Atul Gawande, interview in The New Yorker, March 15, 2025

Postscript: A study in The Lancet projected that elimination of USAID funding would result in more than 14 million more deaths, including 4.5 million children, by 2030. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million lives have likely already been lost, according to the Center for Global Development.

Social media photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usaidmozambique/sets/72157635406681018 2013 photo of children beneficiaries of PEPFAR health funding.

This is an expanded version of my gardening column this month in Portugal’s weekly newspaper in English, The Resident.

The weather has become a bit cooler this week—and we’ve had cloud cover for the first time in months. It’s a refreshing change, and a harbinger of autumn in the Algarve. The fall is called a “second spring” in mediterranean climates, and it is the beginning of the gardening season, unlike the first spring. Tender plants will scorch and die off in the blistering summer, so I’ve learned to wait until autumn to put in new plants. The soil is still warm, and rains usually arrive in late September or October. The perfect time for things to set down roots and get established.

Gardening is good for the soul, and it’s good for the body. There’s actual science behind gardening’s positive effects on both mental and physical health. Let’s look at the strong evidence that’s out there.

Physical activity

Gardening is a low-intensity activity that takes us through the full range of motion: digging, bending and carrying. Movement is good for the body and mind—but it’s hard to get out there to exercise some days. Having growing things that need our attention pulls us outside when we might default to sitting in a chair.

Dan Buettner is a longevity researcher and author who studies people in Blue Zones: geographic regions across the globe where people live exceptionally long, healthy lives. Gardening is a habit of everyone in the Blue Zones. As Buettner says:

I need to add a caveat here, which resulted from a conversation with my physical therapist (we have long chats on a wide variety of topics during my visits). She observes that Portuguese people in a terceira idade (the third age), as older age is often called here, have pretty much gardened all their lives. Until the end of the Salazar dictatorship in 1974, survival often required a garden patch for sustenance, especially in rural areas. When these clients come to her for musculoskeletal problems, they cite gardening as the reason they don’t need to do any other exercise. Gardening, for them, has become a repetitive stress injury. So, let me be clear that I’m not saying “gardening is the answer to all exercise.” Gardening is an important and fun part of being physically active. I garden, but I also work out with a personal trainer twice a week, swim, and walk.

What’s in the dirt?

Grounding, also called earthing, refers to direct skin contact with the surface of the earth with bare hands or feet. Some researchers believe that this absorbs free electrons (like grounding an electrical appliance) to reduce inflammation, improve sleep and modulate stress. They’ve also documented improved wound healing (without getting dirt in the wound, obviously!).

But there are also powerful forces working in ways the eye can’t see: soil microbes are well documented to have positive impacts on health. There are billions of friendly bacteria in soil, including Mycobacterium vaccae and Streptomyces rimosus. These enter our systems by touch and are inhaled through normal breathing.

Soil microbes change our microbiome, the bacteria in our gut, to make it more diverse. This has been shown to have antidepressant-like effects by triggering the brain to produce more serotonin and dopamine. Contact with soil also increases immune response and decreases inflammatory markers in the blood, probably through the same microbiological pathways.

Why gardening in the sunlight?

Sunlight naturally triggers the body to produce Vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is linked to premature death, bone loss, cardiovascular risk and cognitive decline. Exposure to sunlight has to be balanced, of course, against the risk of skin cancer (and wrinkles!), so moderation, SPF creams and common sense are necessary.

Morning sun is known to set our circadian clocks, helping us feel sleepy at the right time at night and promoting better rest. An ideal time to get out in the garden is first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee or tea. We breathe in the cool air with its scent of the earth and fragrant plants in bloom, and feel at one with the world. Walking around surveying things, watering plants that are thirsty, deadheading flowers and making note of tasks that need doing is a good start to any day.

Ikigai: a purpose in life

The Japanese have a word that means having a purpose in life: ikigai. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning and provides deep satisfaction and a sense of well-being.

Having living things that depend on us for survival, whether they be warm-blooded pets or plants, gives meaning and depth to existence. Having something that won’t survive without you gives a profound sense of purpose. A garden is something that needs you tomorrow, every single day.

What does the research show?

Searching the medical literature took me back to my previous career in medical education. I was surprised to find that within this system, there is a MeSH term (a medical subject heading) called: gardening! The literature on why gardening has such positive impact on health is so extensive that it’s included as a topic for research, just like cancer or high blood pressure. And the breadth of positive results is impressive.

Researchers followed a group of adults for decades. One group gardened, and one group didn’t. Gardeners had a 36 percent lower risk of dementia. A 12 year study of over 4,000 people in Sweden found that gardening reduced the risk of stroke by 27 percent and death from any cause by 30 percent. Among adults 65 years and older, gardening was associated with better cardiovascular health and lower odds of diabetes.

Kids and gardening

Gardening is good for kids, too, enhancing motor skills, encouraging healthy eating, reducing stress, and enhancing psychological well-being. My friend and colleague Jugta Kahai, MD is a pediatrician who practiced for many years in rural, coastal North Carolina in the US. Her practice disproportionately cared for the poorest children in the area. She planted a large garden outside her clinic, a small house she had converted to an office. Every child was invited to visit the garden, and depending on the season they could take home a plant or harvest a vegetable.

In my clinical primary care practice, I didn’t have a garden outside, but I printed out coloring pages for kids at their well child visits, featuring vegetables. Parents told me later their kids asked for the veggies after coloring the pictures.

Our son was four years old when we moved to North Carolina. He had watched me tend a small vegetable garden in Austin, Texas where he was born. When we moved into our new house, I went out to the backyard with him to begin the process of renovating the flower garden. I turned over a shovel-full of soil and observed: “Jackson, I don’t see any worms. What do you think that means?” He replied with great conviction: “Soil is no good!” Of course I set to work amending the soil over the years, adding compost and mulching around the plants. When we left 20 years later the soil was spectacular. A couple with a young family now own our house and they have a beautiful garden; my reward for paying it forward.

Soil contact promotes health

When your hands are in the dirt, your immune system is being trained to fight invaders, and your gut biome becomes more diverse in ways that improve your mood. Chronic inflammation is considered by medical researchers to be the root cause of all the maladies of aging: dementia, heart disease and cancer. Soil contact has been shown to reduce the risk of all these.

How to get started gardening?

Start small. You don’t have to plan and plant a gigantic landscape. Even a few potted plants on a small patio or balcony is gardening, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you have more land around your house, spend time through the seasons of the first year learning where the sun hits, and whether the soil is clay or sand. Start with a corner you can tend to without being stressed about it.

Another benefit of gardening is: other gardeners! They are some of the kindest and most generous souls you will ever meet. Join a garden club and make friends with other gardeners. I have learned so much from more experienced gardeners, and so many of my plantings came from their cuttings and pieces, along with their advice as to how to grow them.

Here in the Portugal’s Algarve and Alentejo there are several active gardening groups, among them the Mediterranean Gardening Association of Portugal (MGAP), which will be holding a plant fair and educational sessions October 17 and 18 in Lagoa, Algarve. In the Baixo Alentejo, there is the Campo Branco Gardening Club. Check social media for options near you in Portugal (or wherever you may be!).

Gardening friends are the best. Half of my Algarve garden is from cuttings and gifts. I’m not exaggerating. When I lived in North Carolina, my gardening friends would lead me around their gardens and point at a plant, say a black-eyed Susan. “Do you have some of this?” If I said no? “You need some of this! Hand me that pot!”

One of my favorite books when I was gardening in the southern United States was Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. Passalong plants are “plants that have survived in gardens for decades by being handed from one person to another.” The authors are so damn funny, too, though you have to know The South to fully appreciate their humor. And they share superstitions. Once I learned these I found them hard to ignore. A favorite: in the South: you don’t thank someone for giving you a plant, because if you do, it won’t grow. The solution? Say: “My mama said to say thank you for the pots and the dirt.”

My mom always told me she didn’t have a green thumb, so she couldn’t be a gardener. Then one time when I moved to Brazil, I left her a Boston fern that was on its last legs. She reluctantly agreed—and when I returned to the US the thing was so huge and spectacular that I didn’t recognize it. That gave her the courage to begin a garden outside my parents’ little cabin in the mountains of Colorado. This became her passion, and her garden ended up on the local garden club tour every summer.

Gardening is one of the great joys in life. Not only that, it’s good for your health! Please drop any questions or observations in the comments, dear reader!

For decades, I’ve been fluent in Portuguese. Let me be clear: Brazilian Portuguese. Your first clue that things are different in Europe is to open DeepL translation on your browser. It offers two options: Portuguese, or Brazilian Portuguese. Some linguists consider them two different languages, not dialects. Leaving that question aside, though, it’s true that in either version, I’m constantly learning and refining. Which hopefully is good for my brain.

Recently it occurred to me that one of the reasons I was able to learn conversational Portuguese in six months was because I had to do it without books. And because I first encountered the language during the Jurassic period, there were no smart phones, apps or AI-magical real time translation. Landing in Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon basin with only a backpack, fluency in French and naive hope in my heart, I had to hustle to survive linguistically. Which is key to overall survival when you’re a twenty-something gal with a monolingual traveling companion—she relied on me for everything and barely learned to say “thank you.”

My first words in Portuguese were spoken based on what I heard, and in most cases people let me make errors without correcting me. Which is very Brazilian; no one wants to hurt your feelings (though they may laugh at you behind your back). For example, the word for coconut palm tree is coqueiro, co-KAY-roo, but I pronounced it co-KAY-loo for months. Until someone commented how cute it was the way I said it, and I learned the correct version.

A couple of years after returning to the US, I went back to school to get pre-med required courses to apply to graduate school, and needing easy classes in the heavy science mix I took every Portuguese course they offered at University of Florida. Reading literature, listening to lectures, speaking, writing essay exams in Portuguese.

But of course, my Portuguese is still not perfect. My mother-in-law has a great expression about learning. She worked as a sous chef for the Army generals in Brazil during the dictatorship. She was constantly improving her culinary skills (she’s a fabulous cook) and she always says:

This is also true of any language, not just a second or third. It’s a constant learning process, continuous improvement, expansion of vocabulary and refinement of expression.

Here are some tips that I’ve found helpful.

Listen to ads

There are some great podcasts from the US that I listen to regularly, though I’m not a paid subscriber. That means I have to listen to ads. Often these are in Portuguese. European Portuguese, of course. Which despite my years of fluency in brasileiro falado still can sound a bit opaque to me, with the heavy accents and rapid fire speech. And of course, they play the same ads over and over! Listen to them. I guarantee you will completely understand an ad the zillionth time you hear it.

Post-it Notes

If you’re having trouble learning a new word, put it on a Post-it note or invest in a small blackboard. Place it somewhere you’ll see it all the time, and repeat the word each time you see it. It will cross the blood-brain barrier and settle in those little gray cracks in your cerebrum. Sooner or later!

Mnemonics for difficult words

Mnemonics are memory tricks. The first trick is to remember how to spell the damn word itself! There are always new words that just refuse to stay in my mind, and require more than a Post-it note.

Here’s a naughty example. My Brazilian family were talking about a male relative who got a young, vapid girlfriend at an advanced age (no further details to protect the guilty). They tried to shut up when I asked about a word they said, a sure sign it was a word I needed to learn. They were using the word piriguete. Which the dictionary says is translated as slut in English. But I just couldn’t remember it! And every time I asked Jasiel he acted like he didn’t remember the word himself (typical Brazilian, trying to protect me from embarrassing myself).

I’ll teach you the word, but you have to promise not to say it in polite company, okay?

Piriguete. Pronounced peery-GET-chee. By Brazilians that is; here in Portugal they don’t use the word much and the ending won’t be so cute. The end of the words are uh or swallowed in Portugal, not “chee.”

So my mnemonic was piri, as in the spicy pepper piri-piri, and get, as in getting something. Get a hot one. Voilà! Now I remember it. Though I still can’t say it very often, too offensive.

Another word I could never remember how to say was bocejar, to yawn. So I started saying “bOH” when I had to yawn, and then I added “say jar.” Boh-say-JAR! There ya go.

Label household items

I learned this one from my daughter-in-law. She wants to learn Portuguese, because our son is dual American/Brazilian and speaks the language. So a couple years ago when I was staying with them for a visit, every cupboard I opened was labeled with the items in Portuguese. What can I say, she’s very clever!

Native Portuguese speakers’ errors in English

You can learn so much from the funny way non-native speakers express themselves in English! And by extension, the same goes for us speaking their language, of course.

For example, Jasiel says he “dreamed with” or com someone or something, not about. And of course I initially would say in Portuguese “dreamed about,” which is not correct. As Jasiel says, the prepositions are killers.

Pay close attention to the way Portuguese native speakers phrase things in English—it will teach you the correct way to phrase things in Portuguese.

Chat with kids

I’ve learned so much Portuguese from friends’ children. When I was living in Brazil in the 1980s I spent most weekends at some friends’ house up in the mountains outside of Rio. They had four very precocious kids who thought hanging out with me was better than TV—plus they didn’t have a TV, because their parents were hippies and TV was against their religion.

Children with educated parents speak their birth language properly. When it came to these kids, the subjunctive tense just rolled off their little toddler tongues. Of course! But still, when you’re struggling to speak the language correctly, a proper subjunctive is an amazing thing.

I’m always reminded of the story about the Brazilian soccer player who was asked by a reporter what he thought about the US when he returned from his first trip there. In true Yogi Berra type fashion, he said:

And little kids will correct you, because they haven’t developed all the adult filters yet. I still remember telling seven year old Camila that I had walked down to the town square on foot. I said “Fui até a praça de pé.”

And you know what? I never forgot that. I never again said “de pé.”

Watch the news on TV

For many of the news stories, you already have an idea what’s going on. Learn the phrases the reporters use. In Brazil they always begin with “thank you to everyone for watching us.” Kind of like saying good morning when you walk into a shop, which we don’t do in the US. And reporters don’t thank us for watching them before reporting, either.

Reporters speak a clear, neutral version of the language and enunciate their words properly. Don’t worry if you don’t get much of it at first, just let it roll over your head and past your ears. Things will start to jump out at you. Before you know it, you’ll be getting the gist, if not every detail.

Watch soap operas

Telenovelas are formulaic, with relatively predictable plot lines. Especially in Spanish, actors are coached to speak a neutral, universal version of the language so the series can be sold in markets from Miami to Montevideo.

Just beware if you’re trying to learn European Portuguese that many soap operas on TV here are in fact Brazilian. But there are some great ones in European Portuguese! The biggest series ever produced in Portugal is epic historical fiction, Equador. It was filmed in Portugal, India, São Tomé and Principe, and Brazil. It’s absolutely stunning, I just loved it! From the costumes to the music to the scenery, it’s irresistible. See the trailer here.

Watch a series with subtitles in English, if available, then watch it again without them. Honestly, I learned a ton of Portuguese living in Brazil and watching novelas every night!

Memorize a phrase for when people speak English with you

For many people, it will be “I’m learning Portuguese,” so one suggestion:

My phrase, said with a smile is:

And I’ve written my phrase as I say it, which omits de before falar, and I use the formal you for precisar, to need. I hardly ever use the familiar tu form because it doesn’t come naturally to me. Brazilians almost always say você, and it would be like asking me to say “bloke” instead of “guy” when I moved to London. I have a hopelessly Brazilian accent and I’ve given up trying to lose it—again, just like I didn’t start talking like a Brit when I landed in the UK. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Read signs aloud to yourself

Signs in the supermarket, on the street, everywhere. People will think you are crazy and try to get some distance between you and them, but who cares?

One time when Jasiel was first in the US and just starting to learn English, he went shopping for shoes by himself. He had memorized some phrase like, “Could I try these on? I wear a size X.” He was standing outside the shoe store in the mall looking at the shoes in the display window, repeating the phrase to himself and trying to get up the courage to go in and speak to the salesperson. A little girl moved closer to her mom and mumbled something, and the mom led the girl away while looking at Jasiel like he was crazy. Like I said, who cares?

Learn phrases that make you sound like speak Portuguese

My personal favorite?

When the person asks you if you speak Portuguese: “Fala português?”

Don’t say “yes,” say falo. I speak.

Of course, this may get you in trouble when the person starts talking and they’re off to the races, but what the heck, why not?

Sometimes it’s a good thing to jump off the deep end. It’s only Portuguese, so there’s no physical danger. And little by little, you’ll find that you’re starting to understand more and that it’s a little easier to chat with people. Come on in, the water’s fine!

I hope some of my tips will be helpful to you! Leave your own tips in the comments, dear reader!

When I got home, my arms were itching, and I realized I had picked a lot of unripe fruit. I had a lot to learn, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity. In this post I’ll share the history of figs, the surprising three different types of pollination, cautions and tips on picking and handling, and a few recipes!

Figs: an ancient food

Archaeological evidence indicates figs were the first food cultivated by humans. Subfossil figs dating to 9000 BCE were found in the Jordan Valley north of Jericho, which predates domestication of wheat, barley and beans by 1,000 years. Figs were widespread in ancient Greece and Rome, and later were grown from Afghanistan to Portugal and in India. Beginning in the 15th century figs were brought to northern Europe and the New World.

Some believe Adam’s downfall in Eden was due to figs, not apples. And of course, fig leaves have been used by artists to protect prudes from the sight of sensitive anatomic regions, as they were used biblically when the couple realized they were naked.

Figs are inside-out flowers

Figs are actually inside-out flowers! The fruit begins as a hollow, globular structure called a syconium lined with 50 to 7,000 male or female flowers depending on the species. These tiny flowers produce edible seeds that are the crunch when you bite into the fruit—and that get stuck between your teeth! This inside-out flowering is why you never see blossoms on a fig tree.

Types of Figs

There are three types of edible figs:

Persistent, or common figs. They contain all female flowers and don’t require pollination to become fruit. This is the typical kind of fig grown in the United States. Popular varieties for home cultivation include Brown Turkey (North Carolina) and the variety brought by Franciscan monks in 1768 to California—known as Black Mission.

Caducous, also known as Smyrna figs. This fig requires cross-pollination by a very special fig wasp that carries pollen from another tree, the capri fig, which does not produce fruit. Areas with this type of fig have both trees—including in Portugal’s Algarve. Strict vegans and those of India’s Jain religion won’t eat this fig because the fruit contains remnants of the wasp.

Intermediate, or San Pedro figs. These set a first breba crop that is unpollinated but the later, main crop requires wasp pollination. The breba crop grows on last year’s wood. A common variety in the Algarve is Lampeira Preta, another is Tibério. Locals call the first breba crop figo lampo.

Figo lampo: the first breba crop

These figs are highly prized, and fig lovers here in the Algarve anxiously await this first crop. When I first heard the term figo lampo I asked people why it was called that. Maybe because they are shaped like a lamp? No one seemed to know, even my lovely neighbor who gives me free range of her fig orchard. But I now realize it’s probably because the variety is called Lampeira. My neighbor has three intermediate trees, and she came by in June when the lampos started to come in.

“You like figs, right? The good ones are here now, you better get some!”

“Thank you so much! I’ve already been in your orchard stealing them!”

I work out at a fitness studio a couple of times a week, and my trainer and her colleagues are crazy for figs. I learned they started calling me “the fig-mobile” because during fig season I always pop over to my neighbor’s orchard to pick some for the personal trainers before I drive down the hill to work out.

One thing I’ve learned about this breba crop: the fruit is too watery to make my usual recipes—it’s best eaten out of hand. I’ve had failed recipes for my sorbet and fig-olive tapenade using figo lampos.

Fig cautions

It’s best to wear long sleeves when picking figs—I confess it’s so hot that I usually don’t, but as soon as I get back to my outdoor kitchen I thoroughly wash my arms and hands (as well as my snippers). Fig stems, leaves and unripe fruit ooze a white, latex-like substance that isn’t poisonous, but it is irritating to the skin. If this is left on your skin and you expose that skin to sunlight, it causes a phytophotodermatitis. Phyto is plant, photo is sun, and dermatitis is skin inflammation. There are many other interesting forms of phytophotodermatitis, especially in the tropics—and I plan a post about these tropical tribulations at some point in the future.

It’s said that fig latex is a good treatment for warts—and as a clinician I suppose it makes sense, because our standard medical remedies generally consist of painting something irritating on the wart so the body gets mad and makes it go away. On the other hand, in my experience grandmas in the Southern US had just as much success rubbing a child’s warts with a handkerchief while saying an incantation, then having the child bury the cloth in the woods without telling anyone where.

How to know if a fig is ripe for picking

A first clue that a fig isn’t ripe is when it oozes the white, sticky latex. That first day I picked figs, I got home with half the basket oozing the stuff. That, and the itching in my arms, told me I needed to reevaluate. That’s when I learned to look for drooping of the fruit. If it sticks out from the branch by the stem, it’s not ripe.

What to do with your perfectly ripe figs?

The possibilities are endless! When in the Algarve, go to any traditional pastelaria and you will find many wonderful examples. A favorite: Tres Delícias do Algarve, a dense cake made with fig, almond and carob.

Here are three of my go-to recipes using figs. I don’t have a test kitchen, and I’m not a professional recipe author. I’ve done my best with these, but caveat coquus: cook beware.

Fig appetizers

I’ll start with the appetizer category:

Fig Olive Tapenade: for this one, I’m just linking to the Delish recipe, because I haven’t found a need to improve on it. The only shift is using fresh figs, pick the ones off the tree that are so ripe they are starting to dry on the branch.

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Fig dessert

This post has been adapted from the original which appeared on my nascent Substack, then inventively called “Justine’s Substack,” on February 2, 2025. It was my fourth post ever . . .

Seasons in the Algarve are punctuated by the annual cycle of its iconic trees. The year begins with pink and white almond blossoms, and in spring the olive trees are bursting with tightly packed blooms. Different fig varieties ripen throughout the summer. Autumn is the time to gather carob pods and take them to the cooperative to sell, and to harvest olives for pressing into oil. These four trees collectively make up the pomar de sequeiro, the dryland orchard.

In March 2024 I went to a presentation in Faro by the Algarve Coordination and Development Commission, celebrating the release of their book Pomar de Sequeiro. This publication is a detailed consideration of one aspect of the mediterranean diet, which was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO ten years prior. The application for cultural heritage status was a collaborative project of seven countries: Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Portugal.

First, let’s get one definitional issue out of the way. Portugal is bordered by the Atlantic, so how can it be mediterranean? Ah, but there is the capital M Mediterranean, the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, and small m mediterranean, the climate that circles the globe. Mediterranean climate zones include Atlantic portions of the Iberian Peninsula (nearly all of Portugal, and parts of Spain), Southwest and South Australia, Cape Town in South Africa, Chile and California. California! No wonder I immediately felt at home here as a native of the Golden State.

My eyes have been opened to the depth and breadth of what mediterranean diet means. It is not just a dietary regimen but agriculture, landscape, culture, cuisine and societal customs. And these are remarkably similar in diverse areas that enjoy the arid climate with months of dry summer weather and winter rains. Watch a ten-minute video showcasing the UNESCO cultural heritage announcement here.

In future posts I will take an in depth look at each of these trees, their histories and uses—to include some of my recipes. For now, here are brief discussions of each.

Almond

Almond trees were probably introduced to Portugal around 1000 BCE by the Phoenicians. Somewhere, in ancient times, humans figured out that most wild almonds are poisonous, containing amygdalin, which turns into cyanide in the body. People used processes like sequential washing to remove the toxin and then selected and hybridized for trees that bore sweet, rather than bitter almonds, and these are edible. Portugal has unique varieties of almonds that thrive in poor, dry soil, but these can’t be industrialized. California exploded with almond farming using heavy irrigation in the 1960s through 1980s, eclipsing Portugal’s production. Portugal became an almond importer as a result.

Carob

Alfarroba, or carob, is another ancient crop. This dryland tree can live for centuries with little care, and its pods are harvested for the little black beans, or seeds, inside. In ancient times the seeds were used as a unit of weight, especially for gemstones, as evidenced in the word carat. In the 1970s carob was promoted to health food junkies as a substitute for chocolate—back in those days I thought it tasted like brown dust. Real carob has a delicious taste all its own. A carob sponge cake roll with lemon cream filling is wonderful, for example. Carob is high in protein and used as a thickener in food processing and animal food. Portugal is the world’s largest producer of alfarroba.

Figs

The Phoenicians, Romans and Moors cultivated figs, and dried figs were the chief export of the Algarve in the 16^th century. Our neighbor has a huge fig orchard with about two dozen trees, and she gives me free range to pick as much as I can use. I love them fresh, but I also make fig preserves such as chutney and jam. Other favorites include fig-olive tapenade and fig sorbet. I also bought a dehydrator and dry figs.

Olives

One way to define the mediterranean climate: do olives grow there? Olive trees prove a locale is mediterranean. Portugal is the ninth-largest producer of olive oil in the world and is projected to be in third place by 2030.

I gained the last name de Oliveira, meaning of the olive tree, by marrying Jasiel, who was born in Brazil. People used to say to me in the US, “what an unusual name!” But it is actually very common. Jasiel’s grandfather was Portuguese, and Jasiel would be a citizen of Portugal already if he could document that lineage. But just like at Ellis Island in New York, many people changed their names when they immigrated. It’s also said that a last name signifying a tree means the family was Jewish and changed their name during The Inquisition.

We have five oliveiras on our property. It is a laborious process to harvest the olives and take the buckets of olives to the lagar (olive oil mill) to be pressed. Olive crops tend to be good one year, and almost none the next, and we had to prune our trees hard last year. In 2023 we harvested one tree which yielded 32 kilos, and we got 3.5 liters of olive oil for our efforts. As the price of olive oil goes ever upward, the “juice to squeeze ratio” is more favorable. And it feels good to be part of the land, and part of the ancient traditions that make Portugal so rich.

Next week: an in-depth look at figs.

Caipirinha is the essence of Brazil: samba, sea breezes and scents of the tropics in a cocktail glass. The recipe seems simple, with only four ingredients: lime, sugar, ice, and cachaça. But ordering a caipirinha anywhere outside Brazil often results in disappointment, because the process of making the drink is the secret to success.

Cachaça, the key ingredient in the caipirinha, begins with sugar. Production of cachaça began in the 1500s in Brazil, when plantation owners began to plant sugar cane. The Portuguese first grew sugar cane on Madeira, but the steep volcanic hillsides of this island off the coast of Africa meant limited arable land was available for the crop.

Vast amounts of land in Portugal’s colony of Brazil, and the enslavement of staggering numbers of human beings kidnapped from Africa and forced to work the plantations, made massive production of sugar possible in Brazil. In the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, more than four million enslaved people disembarked in ports in Brazil (560,000 in the United States).

The origin of the liquor is lost to history, but it is speculated that enslaved people invented cachaça. Perhaps originally created for medicinal purposes, cachaça begins with the juice of sugar cane, called caldo de cana, which is today sold at roadside booths throughout the Northeast of Brazil. The chilled liquid is sweetness on steroids—I tried it once and it made my teeth hurt, and not because it was cold.

To make cachaça, sugar cane juice is fermented and then distilled. This differs from rum, which is distilled from molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining. The fermented cane juice is usually distilled in copper vessels, and can be bottled directly, which is called white cachaça. Artisanal cachaça is aged in wooden barrels, called “silver” or “gold” depending on the amount of time aging. Plain old pinga, a slang word for cachaça best translated as “drop” (the noun, as in in rain drop) is usually used to make caipirinha, while the more expensive aged cachaça is best served neat to appreciate its unique flavor. Brazilians may keep a bottle of cachaça in the freezer to serve chilled in a shot glass. Due to its alcohol content—38 to 40% by volume—the liquor doesn’t freeze.

The next ingredient is sugar itself, and only pure cane sugar should be used. In the US, be sure to check the label on the sugar package, as up to sixty percent of sugar in the United States is made from sugar beets, not sugar cane. Using beet sugar to make a caipirinha would be sacrilege.

And finally, limes. These are not green lemons, as some otherwise reliable web sources suggest. The confusion probably comes from the terms in Portuguese, which differ between Brazil and Portugal. In Brazil the word limão means lime, the green citrus used in the caipirinha. In Portugal limão means lemon. Lemon is Brazil is called limão Siciliano, referring to the yellow citrus as Sicilian lime. In Portugal a lime is lima. Confused yet? This sort of thing was constant when I began to speak European Portuguese after decades of brasileiro falado.

With background on the ingredients clarified, we’re ready to go shopping. First, let’s buy a mid-grade cachaça like Velho Barreiro, the one with the red cap in the photo above. Let’s not skimp on the liquor if we’re taking the time to make a really good caipirinha. Cheaper cachaça can taste a bit like turpentine, and impurities can leave you with a wicked headache. Too many caipirinhas will do the same thing, of course. Velho Barreiro is double distilled and 39% alcohol by volume.

The Velho Barreiro company was started in the 1960s by the Höffer family (yes, there are many people of German descent in Brazil, as well as Italian, and more Japanese than anywhere else in the world except Japan!), in the town of Itapetininga in the interior of São Paulo state. For many years I didn’t look at the name Velho Barreiro carefully and somehow thought it meant old barrel. But barreiro means a type of clay often found on a riverbank (I learned this again writing my post about pottery a couple weeks ago). The name actually comes from a type of bird that builds a nest out of mud, joão-de-barro. An ancestor of the Höffers had this kind of bird in his yard, which he named “velho barreiro.” So, his descendants used this name for the cachaça. In 1973 they were bought out by another company.

Sales of Velho Barreiro account for more than half the cachaça market in Brazil, and they take their heritage and market share seriously. Here is the somewhat flowery prose from the bottle’s back label:

Here is my translation:

Then, after making sure we are buying pure cane sugar, we need to choose our limes. My mother-in-law taught me to choose citrus fruit by feeling its heft in your hand, because the heavier the fruit the more juice it has. You also want to look for a thin rind. As to color, you almost never see yellow limes in supermarkets in the US or Portugal, but fully ripe limes can be pale yellow. We planted a lime tree at our house here in Portugal, which began producing limes last year.

Now it’s time to make our caipirinha! This is where Jasiel, my caipirinha-master husband takes over the process. First, slice one lime into wedges. And the glass is super important: Jasiel only uses jars from the French jelly Bonne Maman, the ones with the cute red gingham lids. They are the perfect size, and the lid makes shaking the cocktail easy. Plus, it’s fun to serve right in the jar, kind of like iced tea (or moonshine, I suppose!) in a Mason jar in the southern US.

Add a soup spoon of sugar (about a tablespoon). You can add more to taste if you prefer, but an overly sweet caipirinha is not as deliciously refreshing. And this is often what’s wrong with the cocktail sold in American bars. Too sweet, and usually bottom shelf cachaça.

Now, muddle the limes. Which means to bruise the limes and the sugar to release the flavor. There are of course fancy stainless-steel muddlers with a rough surface like a meat mallet on the business end. But Jasiel prefers his wooden muddler, which has a story that makes it a keepsake as well as a required tool.

Several years ago, we had driven a thousand miles from Brasília to the Northeast state of Ceará, which Brazilian friends said was “courageous,”which translates to “you’re out of your minds.” The open road in Brazil can indeed be dangerous, but that is a story for another day. I was using the Quatro Rodas guidebook while Jasiel drove, and I had picked out a hotel on a small beach quite a few miles south of the oceanside capital city, Fortaleza. It was getting dark quickly and the dirt road was pot-holed and barely passable. We slowly drove on and on as it got later and later. “Justine, are you sure there’s a hotel out here? We’re in the middle of nowhere.” I insisted there was. We finally saw a light in the distance, and it was the small hotel at Praia das Fontes, a beautiful beach reached from the hotel by wooden steps built over falésias, sand cliffs in eerie shapes and colors.

The beach also has water dripping down from natural springs, or fontes, for which it is named. Once we got set up in our room we went down to the bar for dinner. The bartender made Jasiel a caipirinha using a wooden muddler. He asked the bartender where he had gotten the muddler, and the bartender said it was made by a friend of his. So, the next day we went to see the guy and Jasiel ordered his own. The muddler was custom-made from wood of the aroeira tree which is native throughout Brazil and Argentina and known for its dense and indestructible timber. So, every time Jasiel muddles limes, it brings back memories of that beach.

Here, Jasiel muddles the lime wedges in the jelly jar:

Now add crushed (not cube) ice, and a generous pour of cachaça:

Now put on the lid of the jelly jar and shake! Jasiel taught some of our British friends how to make the cocktail, and they report that doing a little samba while you shake the Bonne Maman jar improves the final product.

And now, the proof is in the sipping.

I have to confess that cachaça doesn’t agree with me, as I prefer a nice white Portuguese wine instead. But whenever Jasiel makes a caipirinha, our ritual is that he gives me a smell before he sips. That lime, the cachaça—it’s the scent of summer, the fragrance of Brazil.

Living with palm trees often requires a frost-free climatic zone, and those zones come with or without humidity. Florida has lots of palm trees, but after a couple of years in Miami and Gainesville I was happy to leave the swamp. The furthest northern zone of palms and palmettos on the US east coast is South Carolina—they even have their native palmetto on the flag. The Carolinas are humid. For more than two decades in Durham, North Carolina we lived with steamy summers.

Avoiding humidity but keeping palm trees then leaves the areas of the globe with mediterranean (small m) climate, which feature hot, dry summers. In addition to the land around the Mediterranean Sea (capital M), there are zones in a circle around the globe. California, Chile, South Africa, Australia. And Iberia. Portugal has plenty of palmeiras.

We lived in London for two years before moving to Portugal, and I was happy to discover the maritime currents keep temperatures moderate despite its northern location. And there are palm trees! This funky pub was near our flat in Mile End, East London.

To be completely accurate, I note that there are cold-hardy palm varieties. But a palm tree dusted with snow just seems wrong!

There are more than 2,600 different species of palm trees, all within the plant family Arecaceae. There are four distinct groups: feather, fan, clustering and solitary.

Palm trees provide food: coconuts, dates and the ever-present acaí. Hearts of palm are harvested from the inner core of the coconut palm; oil products include coconut and palm oil.

The Canary Island palm with its stout trunk is a feather palm, with its massive arching fronds. I have always loved these, and it’s been so sad to see them decimated by a beetle across the Algarve. Maintaining them these days is an uphill battle that involves professional application of pesticide.

Fan palms include the Washingtonia robusta, those towering skinny palm trees you see in any series about Los Angeles. They are also called Mexican fan palm. And we have three of them on our property! I was thrilled to purchase a home with an established landscape—and it included bougainvillea. Heaven! We also have one native palm, which I will talk about below.

My Washingtonias are relatively carefree, though obviously I’m not going to climb a palm tree to prune it. We use a wonderful tree service—they do a superb job and leave zero mess. The first time the owner came by to look at the job, he said: “Don’t get any more palm trees.” And for these towering, fast growers three is definitely enough. We have the service come by every couple of years.

Some people eschew pruning their palms—they claim the “skirts” provide a home for birds and should be left alone. To me it just looks grungy, and our palms thrive after cleaning. When our palm on the east side of the house was cleaned this week, a pomba (Eurasian collared dove) nest was revealed. She hasn’t seemed disturbed about her nest being exposed, and yesterday we saw baby pombas had happily popped out.

Our largest palm on the west side of the house is almost the size of those iconic LA palms you see in movie scenes in Beverly Hills. She’s so tall we can see her driving up from town, though the details of our house aren’t visible.

Our palm on the east side of the house has doubled in size in six years—it grew to obscure our view of the hills, but cleaning this week opened up the view once again.

One thing that amazed me: I didn’t know palm trees bloomed! Our Washingtonia bursts out in these massive, drooping branches of creamy flower clusters. The bees are absolutely insane for them. When I lie in the hammock on the lower deck during blooming season the buzzing is deafening. And of course it makes a mess as the blossoms drop.

The quiet star of our palm tree collection is our European fan palm, the only native species in Europe and the northernmost naturally occurring palm in the world, Chamaerops humilis. When we moved into our home ours was about four feet tall and covered with fan leaves from top to bottom—it had never been cleaned. Our gardener pruned it, and all of a sudden it looked like a palm tree!

The Chamaerops humilis is the source of raw material for the Algarvian art of empreita, where ribbons of the fronds are woven into baskets, hats and decorative items. I was inspired by our palm activities this week to visit the studio of Maria João Gomes, an artisan who works in a space at the Museu (Museum) do Traje in São Brás de Alportel. She creates amazing art! When I visited she was working on a commissioned lustre (chandelier).

Look for an in-depth piece on Maria João’s work in the fall—in the meantime follow her on Instagram @palmasdouradas. And a plea from Maria João: if you prune your Chamaerops humilis, don’t throw out the fronds! Get in touch with her at palmasdouradas@gmail.com to arrange for her to get them. And plan ahead—the cut fronds dry out quickly and need to be tended to with care.

Aside from cleaning them up once in a while, palm trees don’t need a lot of fuss. They are sturdy and resilient—their wide web of roots allows them to bend with the wind without toppling over. We’ve all seen video of palm trees in hurricanes (and one in Florida is called a hurricane palm, appropriately).

They’re all beautiful to me—and the sound of palm fronds rustling in the breeze is music to my ears.

Molded, stamped or thrown by hand on a potter’s wheel, for centuries Portugal’s rich terracotta clay deposits provided the raw material for day-to-day objects both useful and beautiful. Craftsmanship was handed down from the Romans, with glazing and painting techniques brought to Iberia by the Moors. Pottery is part of Portugal’s vibrant national identity, with uniquely characteristic features of its varied regions from the north to the south of the country.

These clay-shaping, glazing and painting techniques were passed down through families, from one generation to the next. Whole villages became known for their unique products and styles.

I had the privilege of learning more about the history and craft of creating pottery works of art from a Portuguese friend, Pedro Jorge das Neves Piedade. Pedro is a second-generation potter in Loulé, and his studio includes the third generation: his daughter Inês does the painting of fired and bisque (unglazed, once-fired) pieces.

Visiting Pedro’s studio, he first explained to me the history of pottery in Loulé. Up until the 1970s there were hundreds of pottery producers in the municipality. They made utilitarian objects like chimneys, lanterns and the water jugs carried in twos by yoke over a burro’s back.

Loulé was most famous for its production of the alcatruz, a gracefully shaped pot used in octopus fishing. The alcatruz has a hole in the bottom large enough to drain water when lifted, and the top is open. This alcatruz exploits the behavior of the octopus, which likes to crawl into tight areas. The pots were tied together in sequence by rope and lowered into the water. The animal creeps into the pot where it lies on the seabed, and the pots are pulled up later for the catch. The alcatruz is a shelter-trap.

Further east in the Algarve, the municipality of Tavira includes Santa Luzia, which was (and perhaps still is) the capital of octopus.

Nowadays octopi are caught using covos, metal and net cages based on the same principle, but with one important difference: octopi could leave the clay alcatruz as its top was open, but once they enter the covo they are trapped and cannot escape. So I think we can say that the older practice was more humane.

Back in the day, Loulé produced alcatruzes for all of southern Iberia. Sadly, this history seems to be largely forgotten among Louletanos, as my attempts to research the topic at the municipal museum largely came up dry. The fototeca (biblioteca is a library for books, fototeca is for photos) did find me three images of the historical guild.

Historically, potters collected clay from areas they called barreiras, or banks. They were named white or red barreiras, based on the type of clay, but there were other colors including yellow, lilac, and black. This solved a linguistic mystery for me, because when we first moved to Portugal we lived in Almancil in an area called Barreiras Vermelhas, red banks. I wanted to know what those banks were, but no one locally could explain it to me.

Pedro told me white clay is stronger and was often mixed with red. He remembers one particular clay bank in the Troto neighborhood of Almancil. In the time before clay was treated and supplied by the pallet, potters would collect the clay and painstakingly remove the small stones and other imperfections. This particular Troto white clay was treated to reduce out a liquid which had a vitrifying quality and was used to line the inside of vessels.

Pedro Piedade began as an oleiro (potter) apprentice to his father, who worked alongside other family members including his brother. Pedro started out doing labor around the studio, then painting, then producing the objects themselves.

Before an electric kiln was used, the ovens were driven by wood fired up to 1200 degrees Celsius. Clay objects were fired for 15 hours, and for the final phase almond husks were burned because they maintained a lower but consistent temperature.

Let’s go back to the present day. Pedro showed me just part of his studio production process. Look for a deeper dive in a future post after the summer selling season is over and Pedro has more time to show me production of other artisanal types.

On the day I visited, Pedro was busy producing oval serving bowls and square plates.

Clay delivered by pallet is put into a machine that compresses it and removes the air, extruding it in manageable cylinders. A chunk is placed in a mold and pressed into a form, in this case, an oval serving bowl.

After the bowl or plate comes out of the press, it is left to dry.

Then the pieces are fired with a special coating that will receive the brightly colored paint. The painting is done by Pedro’s daughter Inês. She first scores the surface to be painted with the design, a technique that is typical of the Alentejo.

After scoring the design, Inês paints.

The paint colors appear dull when applied, but after firing they become rich and vibrant. In the next image, the large bowl has not yet been fired, while the small one has.

The wide variety of pieces produced by Pedro Piedade’s studio are on offer at markets throughout the Algarve. Follow Olaria Artesanato Algarve on Instagram here.

This post has only scratched the surface of the pottery styles of Pedro Piedade’s studio. In a future post I’ll explore more about the various techniques and products. The art and tradition of pottery is quintessentially Portuguese. Support your local olaria, and enjoy using these beautiful pieces every day in your home.

Note: this is an adapted repost from one year ago.

In a parallel universe, Linda Desirée Strand is enjoying a fête in Paris with her international circle of friends and colleagues to celebrate her 71st birthday. In the limited dimension we inhabit, she died April 30, 2009 after decades of ever-worsening multiple sclerosis (MS), blessed with dementia that made her unaware of the ravages of the disease.

This post is a remembrance of my amazing (an overused word, but it applies here) sister Linda Desirée Strand. I hope you will indulge me in this, dear reader. And in return I promise you an interesting ride, including an abduction by aliens, the fight to keep US spacecraft from contaminating other planets with terrestrial microbes, and hope for a new golden age of medicine where intractable diseases finally succumb to science.

My little sister was born on July 8, 1955 at China Lake, California. We lived a protected life on a Navy base in the middle of the Mojave Desert (our dad was a scientist with the missile program), and Linda was free to wander around and pick up quirky objects she found in the alleys, which she added to her weird little collection. My mom, two sisters Barbara and Linda and I read books, played board and card games (my parents refused to have a TV in the house) and regularly laughed so hard we cried. We had plenty of actual weeping and gnashing of teeth, of course. Like when Barbara got mad and nearly destroyed Linda’s Raggedy Ann doll and mom had to perform surgery, which was successful. And many higher level family conflicts, just like everyone in America.

Our family moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1961 and Linda pursued her interests largely outside the school system, where she got good grades although she never studied. She played piano beautifully despite refusing to practice. She picked up my guitar for the first time one afternoon and was playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy by the time I got home. She taught herself French by reading Victor Hugo. Her approach to only occasionally attending school and leaving home for weeks at a time led to punishing encounters with The System, and she began experiencing odd interactions with what I can only call The Beyond. From my retrospectoscope as a clinician of four decades, I don’t see her as having a thought disorder like schizophrenia. I can’t really explain it—she was just wired differently somehow. Or maybe she was having early symptoms of MS. We used to think it only hit in adulthood, but our perspective has changed in recent years.

It's no exaggeration to say she was gorgeous. Tall and lithe, she had beautiful long strawberry blonde hair, caramel brown eyes and a funny crooked smile. Her laugh was infectious, and she radiated charisma that drew people to her.

Linda studied at American University in Paris for a year when she was 18. She called me one night. Dear reader, let me remind you this was the early 1970s. Nobody called the US from Paris on a whim. It was difficult and expensive. My phone rang at home in the middle of the night, and it was Linda. She was distraught and said she needed my help because she had gone out to a bar with friends, and someone had put something in her drink and tried to kidnap her. She said she only escaped because she spoke some Arabic (this was news to me) and understood they were going to take her into slavery. She managed to get away and jumped into a taxi, hid on the floor and persuaded the cabbie to take her home. She needed money for, I don’t recall what. I said yeah, right, and hung up. Linda was always so dramatic. I went to work in the morning and the family doctor I worked for (as a medical assistant, this was long before I was a PA) said, yes, human trafficking is a real thing. I don’t recall how, but I helped Linda. Years pass, memories fade . . .

In 1979 I was in my first year at the Duke Physician Assistant Program, and I came back to Colorado for the Christmas holidays. An old friend picked me up at the airport and on the drive to my parents’ home she asked me what I thought about Linda having been abducted by aliens (the extraterrestrial kind). I laughed uproariously, thinking my friend was pulling my leg. But no, it turned out Linda had been interviewed on a Denver TV news program, and everyone was talking about it, although mom and dad had somehow avoided mentioning it to me. I never talked much about it with Linda, though of course I now wish I had. The incident occurred in the mountains near Estes Park, Colorado, in an area known as a hot spot for such phenomena. Linda reported she had been lifted up into a spacecraft and that something had been done to her body which permanently changed it. Whether capital T true or not, it was a watershed event that changed her life.

Linda had moved back to Boulder from Paris, and she was enrolled at the University of Colorado in independent studies. She pursued exobiology—the study of life on other planets, which became her lifelong passion. She worked tirelessly on organizing conferences, and became a science writer.

I graduated from Duke in 1981 and moved back to Colorado. Linda had been telling me she was really sick—she thought she had MS like our aunt (also a redhead) but the doctors thought she was dissembling. I didn’t want to believe it, and once again, I thought she was being overly dramatic (I had also been well acculturated with medical skepticism). I went to her apartment in Boulder one afternoon in July and found her lying on the floor vomiting in the heat. She had rotatory nystagmus in one eye (the eyeball jumps around in a circular fashion) and spontaneous ankle clonus, where the foot bobs jerkily up and down. In that moment I knew she had MS, and cobbled together money to buy her an air conditioner. Heat is notorious for triggering or worsening MS symptoms. Her neurologist put her on high doses of steroids, the only treatment available at the time. She enjoyed long periods without symptoms, and all we could do was to hope for the best.

Linda had a special gift for writing about science and space in a way that made concepts accessible to the average reader. Astronomer Robert Jastrow, a professor at Dartmouth and founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote her an unsolicited letter in 1983.

“I would like to compliment you on your very clear, interesting and well written article on Mars in the December issue of ASTRONOMY. I was very impressed by your ability to pick out, from the welter of confusing VIKING results, a few salient points that conveyed the significant information. It is always a pleasure to come across a person who writes about science as well as you do, and I would be delighted to hear from you and to learn about your other writing projects and professional interests. I have also taken the liberty of calling your fine article to the attention of Scott DeGarmo, the editor of SCIENCE DIGEST.”

The article Jastrow liked was titled: The Search for Life on Mars: Shots in the Dark. Linda came down on the side of life on the red planet, though that was a minority opinion. She believed water would be found on Mars.

“Although the existence of water in liquid form on the martian surface is highly improbable at present, that does not exclude the possibility that it may exist either as ice or water vapor.”

While spectroscopic water signatures had been detected via telescope in 1963, Linda believed in 1983 that large amounts of ice or water would be found with more advanced technologies. The Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover found ice in soil samples in 2008 and 2013. Liquid water in the form of glacial lakes was suggested by radar in 2018, and seismometer data in 2024 supported the presence of a vast amount of liquid water below the planetary surface.

One of her projects at the University of Colorado involved a substance called tholin, a complex organic solid formed when a mix of methane, ammonia and water vapor is subjected to electric sparks. Astronomer Carl Sagan’s lab had provided the tholins and a glass jar that created a controlled environment. She published an article about the experiment in the June, 1984 issue of Astronomy, titled The Star Tar in the Jupiter Jars.

“The tholin is the product of experiments . . . simulating the chemical processes that might take place in the atmosphere of Jupiter—which, interestingly, is similar in many of its components to that postulated to have existed on the primitive Earth at the time of the origin of life.”

Linda’s conclusion in this article was that the Galileo Jupiter probe, which was not going to be sterilized by NASA, ran a very real risk of contaminating the planet. She called this “an uncontrolled experiment with Jupiter.” She said that the Jupiter Jar model:

“ . . . could quite possibly become a benchmark for critical studies into exobiology and the origin of life—provided we heed its more subtle implications and preserve the solar system now against the time when we can ask those questions in a way that will not forever destroy the answers.”

Among her papers is a letter sent to her from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory dated October 10, 1983, written by a scientist with NASA’s planetary protection program. JPL built the Galileo spacecraft and managed the project. The scientist said Galileo complied with all rules and policies, and “respectfully disagreed” that contamination was a likely event.

Her second article on the subject, The Dirty Jupiter Probe, appeared in the August, 1984 issue of Science Digest and was even more provocative in challenging the NASA establishment about their failure to sterilize Galileo.

“ . . . the Galileo probe is, deep in its heart, a garbage can. Beneath its sparkling exterior are billions and billions of bacteria. And in 1988 their biological ingenuity will be put to the ultimate test as they dive with the probe headlong into the Jovian atmosphere.”

In 2003 NASA crash-landed the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter to avoid the risk of contaminating Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa with earthly microbes.

By 1986 Linda’s MS was frequently relapsing, and she had increasing difficulty with mobility. She told the Social Services vocational rehabilitation department that she was a free-lance science writer and asked for funding for a word processor, an extremely modern technology at the time. They were roll-their-eyes skeptical but said, maybe, can you get some supporting letters? She said absolutely, let me ask my friends. She returned a few weeks later with letters from Carl Sagan, Robert Jastrow, Science Digest editor Scott DeGarmo and Jacques Vallee. Social Services funded the equipment and treated her very differently after that.

Linda became friends through her writing with Jacques Vallee, who was fictionalized as the scientist Lacombe portrayed by François Truffaut in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Vallee is a computer scientist, ufologist and astronomer. His published works in the popular genre include Passport to Magonia and Messengers of Deception. I was at a party in Austin, Texas in 1987 where I met the editor of the then-obscure Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Journal. When he told me about his work, I laughed and said, “Well, you really need to meet my sister.” We chatted for quite a while, and when I told him Linda was friends with Jacques Vallee he asked if she could possibly get Vallee to agree to an interview, something Dr. Vallee famously refused. Linda did indeed do an interview which was published in May 1988. Vallee liked it so much he republished it in the paperback version of his book Dimensions: a casebook of alien contact.

Linda’s health deteriorated precipitously, and she lost most of her cognitive abilities due to MS. She had to move into a nursing home when home health was not enough support; she had almost set fire to her apartment while cooking on more than one occasion.

Linda asked to change her name to Desirée as MS began to destroy her mental functioning, perhaps memorializing the shift from the person she was.

Jasiel and I persuaded my parents to move from Colorado to nearby us in North Carolina in the mid 2000s, and I arranged to move Linda Desirée to a nursing home in Durham. Finding a nursing home that would take her was challenging because she only had Medicaid, as she hadn’t worked long enough in her life to earn Social Security and Medicare. A day long journey from Denver involved two flights, wrangling Linda’s wheelchair and trying to keep her calm throughout. I referred to it at the time as the invasion of Normandy.

In the early years of her cognitive and physical decline, Linda was enraged at her illness and would frequently scream “I wish I were dead!” When the nursing home called to report this alarming behavior, my thought was, why is that wrong? I would wish I were dead too. And I told them I understood why they needed to medicate her. As the dementia progressed, she became calm and docile. One of her favorite people was a Duke pre-med student who visited Linda Desirée every week, brought her croissants and coffee and spoke French with her. That student is now a neurologist.

An important focus of Linda’s life was Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, a religion also practiced by the late Tina Turner. Linda practiced from her teen years until MS made her unable to recall how to chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.

I often reflect on how different Linda’s life would have been had she been born in 2005 instead of 1955. For years the only treatment for MS was high-dose corticosteroids (prednisone), and the prevailing wisdom was to withhold treatment until the disease got really bad, because of the serious side effects of chronic steroid use. Now there are an array of disease-modifying treatments, and a year ago this arrived in my inbox:

Experimental MS Drug Nearly Eliminates Disease Activity

PHOENIX — Frexalimab, a second-generation anti-CD40 ligand monoclonal antibody provides extended tight control of multiple sclerosis (MS) whether measured by relapse or brain imaging at 2-year follow-up, results of an open-label extension (OLE) of a phase 2 trial showed.

Medscape, 6/6/2025

Nowadays the approach is to treat the disease early to prevent progression. Unfortunately, delay to diagnosis is still a factor. When I teach the neurologic physical exam to medical students at the University of Algarve, one pearl of wisdom I impart: if a patient’s neurologic complaints and physical exam don’t make any sense, always think of MS.

We are, or I should say we were, on the verge of a new golden age of medicine, with hope for reversing or eliminating diseases that have been scourges for time immemorial, like MS. Basic science yields findings that drive treatment discoveries, and breakthroughs have been coming across all fields of medicine. How sad that moronic maniacs are dismantling our research infrastructure and slashing funding. Researchers are moving to other countries where their work will be valued. We are being dragged back to medievality.

Quick cut back to Durham, North Carolina in 2009. The nursing home called me and said Linda seemed to be failing somehow. I cancelled my meetings at Duke (I was a professor in medical education) and went to see her. I knew she was dying. I didn’t know why, and it didn’t matter.

I quickly arranged for hospice, and a hospital bed was delivered to our home. They transported Linda that afternoon. I sat with her for 48 hours, holding her hand, and played Edith Piaf’s Je ne regrette rien, which she loved, on loop. As her breathing told me her departure was near, I told her our mom would be waiting for her, and would hold out her hand to take her to the other side. She said: “But I won’t be able to walk.” I said, “Yes, you will.” Among her last words were “MS is not me.”

Dear reader, if you have made it all the way here in this TL;DR, you have my deep gratitude. Because no one dies if they are remembered. Pass it on.

I have hope because I have seen America through the eyes of immigrants, their joy and awe at a vision of endless opportunities. Never believing that anything would be given to them, but that if they worked hard they could achieve the American dream.

In my clinical practice, my patients from Mexico and Central America showed me what it means to believe in the United States. It was never easy for them. I felt the joy and sorrow of their struggles, their defeats and victories.

Paul Simon’s American Tune has been playing in my head this week. Listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing at Central Park here.

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees

American Tune, Paul Simon

American culture says to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What are we but a nation of immigrants who did just that, against all odds?

In 1985 I met and then married Jasiel. A Brazilian, the oldest of ten kids in a hard-working family who fought and scrapped for everything they had. His father, and then his mom, moved from the Northeast of Brazil in 1958 to build the new capital Brasília, a miraculous, modern city that arose out of the scrub of the savanna in just three years.

Jasiel and I had been together a few months one Sunday morning when we were having coffee and reading the newspaper (as one did in those days of yore). Jasiel was reading the want ads, the printed precursor to Craig’s List and everything that came after.

“Justine! Here’s a Cessna 150, only $30,000! (he had a pilot’s license in Brazil and had worked air traffic control)

Jasiel! We have one car, and hardly any money. Why on earth would you be thinking about buying an airplane?

Because, Justine, in this country you can get anything you want if you just work hard enough.”

I’ve been thinking these past few days about America’s Bicentennial in 1976, which I remember with nostalgia and pride. I was 25 years old and I had just moved to Miami from Colorado. I spent July 4^th with new friends boating around Key Biscayne, picnicking on beaches. A motley crew of American-born, South American, Cuban, and beyond. Afterward we gathered at someone’s place and watched the tall ships entering the harbor of New York on a tiny black and white television. The pride and inspiration of that moment was so much greater than the teeny image on the TV.

And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

This is a perilous time. I won’t list the many ways the United States is being bought and sold down the river, the rank corruption and cruelty on display every day.

Our nation and our democracy are at risk. We have been dragged into a kleptocracy run at the whims of a moronic authoritarian.

In 1787, someone asked Benjamin Franklin whether the Constitutional Convention had created a monarchy or a republic. He famously said:

The fight won’t be easy. But despite all the hideous injustices of the current regime, I have hope.

But it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

The science of addiction is instructive. And what was this last decade but an addiction to negative, hate-filled rhetoric and policies. The current regime created a permission structure for hatred, and in so doing distracted their followers into voting against their own interests.

It’s well established that addictions shift over time. Downers give way to uppers, and vice versa. Heroin is the drug of choice, but that gives way to stimulants. People lose their Jones for downers and switch to uppers. I think this applies to the prevailing cultural mood as well.

There are clear signs that Americans are tired of the trash and the negatives. They’re hungry for positives. The current zeitgeist is seeing politicians who engage in positive rhetoric rewarded with the currency of our time: people’s attention.

John Ossoff is running for reelection as senator in Georgia. He is young, earnest and focused on rooting out corruption at all levels of government. His oratory is inspiring; he’s serious but positive. Ossoff represents a new generation of American leaders. There’s buzz about the possibility of him running for president in 2028, which he says he is not going to do.

Raphael Warnock, another senator from Georgia, is not up for reelection until 2028. His soaring oratory reflects his role as senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. He does not say he is an optimist, he calls himself “a person of hope.”

Mary Peltola is a candidate for the senate in Alaska, and she’s led the polls since the beginning of the year. A member of the Yup’ik tribe, her campaign slogan is “Fish, Family and Freedom.” Her rhetoric is positive and her approach is collaborative.

James Talarico is the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, running against the famously corrupt and nasty Ken Paxton. Talarico is a progressive Christian who also campaigns on an anti-corruption platform. The latest New York Times poll had him even with Paxton—almost unheard of in Texas in recent decades. There is buzz about him as a presidential candidate as well.

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly

Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for the governor of Iowa, begins his political rallies by asking everyone to sing America the Beautiful together. And by joining in song, he asks them to affirm they want something better than the way things are now, regardless of their political affiliation, or lack of one.

Yes, please crown our good with brotherhood. Make us complete by filling us with unity and compassion for one another. Let us experience the joy of caring for our neighbors, and the fulfillment of living in community. Let us once again be a beacon for the world. Let the light of the Statue of Liberty once again welcome the hard working, the hopeful, the generous souls, like those who built this nation. And deliver us from evil.

Brazilian Portuguese is not just influenced by African and indigenous languages like Tupi-Guarani. There are also large cultural differences that create contrasts. Brazilians are always joking around. Total strangers tease each other and make fun of themselves in public, in ways that are lost in translation when attempted here in the language’s country of origin.

Brazilian humor

Jasiel is really funny. Even after all the years, he makes me laugh every day. He can’t help joking around with people, it’s in his Brazilian DNA. Which the Portuguese in some cases find puzzling rather than amusing. Here’s one vignette from an encounter in the supermarket. Jasiel had bought me a deodorant, but found it at another store the next day for half the price. He took the first one (unused!) back.

Jasiel walks up to customer service and places the deodorant and the receipt on the counter. He says with a smile: “I’d like to return this.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“Yes, the price.”

“The price?”

“Yes, I found it at Pingo Doce for half the price.”

“And you want to return it?”

“Yes, please. I’d rather walk around stinking than pay that much for deodorant.”

Rather than being amused, she stepped back a bit from the counter, as if it to avoid the crazy customer. Jasiel’s delivery of the zinger was done in a joking manner, but it just did not compute.

Contrast this with my experience trying to open a bank account in Brasília. I was getting the run-around, and was finally told I had to go to another branch closest to my mailing address (my mother-in-law’s house). There were several people waiting to talk with someone, and one older gentleman was quite intrigued with what was going on with me, since I was obviously some kind of foreigner.

“Oh my dear, I am so sorry. It’s just terrible that you have to go all the way north to Sobradinho to get your business taken care of.”

“Oh well, what can you do?” I shrugged my shoulders.

“I know, but the bureaucracy is ridiculous.”

“Well, I’m used to bureaucracy. I live in Portugal, and sometimes it’s worse there.”

“Well of course it is! Where do you think this shit came from in the first place?'“

The whole crowd laughed uproariously.

Brazilians even have a special way of writing out cackling laughter for the purpose of texting:

kkkkkkkkkkk

“Powdered Latin”

One of my favorite books about Brazilian Portuguese is Latim em Pó by linguist Caetano W. Galindo. My best attempt to translate the title would be: powdered Latin. It’s a fun, engaging book that follows the development of the Portuguese language over the centuries, and takes a deep dive into what makes brasileiro falado so unique. Some of Galindo’s evocative descriptions:

“Um português bem temperado.” A well-seasoned (as in salt and spices) Portuguese.

“Calmamente transformado pelos ventos e pela umidade dos trópicos.” Portuguese was “gently transformed by the winds and humidity of the tropics” to become brasileiro falado.

“Nosso português mais fino é pouco mais que um latim atrapalhado.” Our most refined Portuguese is little more than clumsy Latin.

The linguist’s phrases themselves say multitudes about why Brazil’s version of the language is the way it is.

Brazilian quips

Here are some of my favorite Brazilian sayings:

Soando igual tirador de espírito. “Sweating like an exorcist.” I’m told the Portuguese say sweating like a horse, like we Americans do in English.

Minha boca tem gosto de cabo de guarda-chuva. Like when you take a nap in the afternoon, and you wake up with a dry, bad taste in your mouth. "My mouth tastes like an umbrella handle.”

Tem vida que nem gato de hotel. When someone really has it made, has the good life? They’re “living the life of a hotel cat.”

Televisão de cachorro. Dog television—a chicken rotisserie in a shop window.

Pão duro. Precise meaning is hard bread, but it indicates someone who doesn’t part easily with their money. This is a dangerous one due to pronunciation. The “ão” sound is quite nasal, but for English speakers new to Portuguese it can sound like “ow,” which leads to a possible misstatement if one says:

Pau duro. Hard wood. This is slang for the erect male member. Saying this when one means to say tight-fisted leads to widespread hilarity among Brazilians, and another aspect of the culture is that they are usually too polite and won’t correct you, not wanting to hurt your feelings.

Encher saco. To fill a bag—to be annoying. In the American South they would say “you are getting on my last nerve.” It’s also said as an admonition: Não enche saco. Don’t be so annoying!

Rei na barriga. A personal favorite. Literal meaning is “a king in the stomach.” Refers to petty functionaries or lower-level staff people in government or business who lord it over you and make your life difficult, often by rigidly enforcing rules or inventing new ones to torment you, seemingly for their own enjoyment. Found the world over, this expression perfectly fits so many situations!

Tomara-que-caia. “I hope it falls down!” What Brazilians call a strapless dress.

Melhor sozinha que mal acompanhada. Better alone than in the wrong company. So true!

Trucker philosophy

Sayings painted on the back bumpers of semi tractor-trailers exemplify the Brazilian culture’s humorous underpinnings. The practice is uniquely Brazilian; there are no witticisms found on the back of trucks in Portugal. Over the years I collected these aphorisms, making long road trips a bit more fun. When driving across long stretches of two-lane highway in the interior of the country Jasiel and I often find ourselves stuck behind a convoy of slow-moving trucks transporting goods. These clever and amusing adages help pass the time. The sayings are humorous, inspirational, religious.

Better to arrive late in this world than early in the next.

Happiness is not destiny, but a way of life.

Things can get worse; you just have no imagination.

I’m not in a hurry, I’m just homesick.

Danger is not a horse in the road, it’s a jackass at the wheel.

Everything you use was once in a truck. Very true, all transport of goods within Brazil is by truck.

If there were no airplanes and politicians traveled by truck, the roads would be in better shape.

Don’t honk at me, wake up earlier.

Love is a dream, and marriage is the wake-up call.

The less men think, the more they talk.

My headlights illuminate the road, but God lights my way.

Faith in God and your foot on the accelerator.

Driven by me, guided by God.

Always fight, sometimes win, never give up.

Dear readers, what are your favorite Brazilian phrases? Are some of the ones I’ve listed used in Portugal—or variations thereof? Let us know in the comments!

It’s that time of year again! This is a repost from June 22, 2025.

Separated by the Atlantic Ocean but joined together by Portugal’s deep cultural roots, June festivals of “popular saints” are second only to Carnaval in the celebratory calendars of Brazil and Portugal. It’s a monthlong series of parades, block parties, food and traditions unique to each country. It’s summer in Portugal but winter in the southern hemisphere. This post looks at the month of June in both locations.

The origin story

The origin of the June festas began back in the mists of time, when before the Catholic church became the dominant religious force, pagan people in the Iberian Peninsula celebrated the summer solstice. June 21^st is the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, and ancient cultures recognized it as a marker of midsummer, after which the days begin to shorten. The astronomical watershed was a time for food, drink, singing and dancing. Gods of nature and fertility were recognized in the lightest and longest day of the year.

The Catholic church incorporated pagan elements such as bonfires and nature in the form of flowers and plants in June celebrations of the life of important saints. Portugal is a largely secular society, but has many bank holidays on days important in the church. Corpus Christi holiday is 60 days after Easter, and this year was celebrated on June 19^th.

Popular Saints

The Santos Populares, or popular saints, are Saint Anthony, Saint John and Saint Peter. The Saint Anthony days in Lisbon are June 12^th and 13^th, and this celebration is more important than Carnaval in the city. Saint Anthony was born in Lisbon, and is the city’s patron saint. This saint is associated with love and matchmaking, and every year there are multiple weddings in one night in Lisbon. It is an auspicious time to be married, with the blessing of Saint Anthony.

Saint John is linked with the city of Porto, and these festas occur on June 23^rd and 24^th.

Saint Peter’s celebration occurs on June 29^th, and is especially important in areas by the sea, as Peter was a fisherman, as well as a fisher of men.

Popular Saints events are not just found in these cities, they happen across the country throughout the month of June.

In Portugal, the culinary traditions of the month include grilled sardines and caldo verde, a soup made with Galician kale, similar to what we call collard greens in the American south (and often erroneously translated as cabbage in English) and potatoes. These are served with broa de milho, a dense but soft corn bread. Also featured are the grilled sausages called chouriço and bifanas, sliced pork served as a sandwiches on rustic rolls. Beverages are wine, beer and sour cherry liqueur called ginjinha.

Traditions

I asked a Portuguese neighbor to tell me about Santos Populares traditions. I first asked her to help me understand the difference between a desfile (parade) and the marchas of June. Because in doing research about them, it wasn’t clear to me why it wasn’t just a parade. She explained that groups of people work all year to make costumes and practice music and choreography for marchas, more like Brazil’s Carnaval tradition than simply parades. These groups often travel throughout the month to perform at various towns throughout the country. Here is a video showing marchas in Lisbon. It is a joyous time that everyone looks forward to all year.

My neighbor is originally from a rural area nearby, and she told me about several traditions she grew up with. I asked her about the bonfires, because I kept reading about “jumping the bonfire.” My experience in Brazil was of gigantic bonfires that would be impossible to jump, and I’ll talk more about this below in the section about Brazil. It turns out that people here collect alecrim, rosemary, to dry it to use for fires. No wood is used. Dried rosemary is gathered and lit on fire, and people jump over it nine times and each time they jump they say, “Viva Santo António!” This brings good luck for the year to come.

Another tradition is for unmarried girls to take three fava beans (broad beans to the British), and prepare them in the following fashion: one is unpeeled, one is half peeled, and one has no peel, it is shriveled and dried. The girl holds the three beans in her hand and circles her hand over the rosemary fire nine times. At bedtime she puts the favas in her pillowcase, pulling just one out in the morning. An unpeeled fava means she will marry a rich man, half peeled is middle class, and the shriveled one signifies marriage to a poor man.

In another practice, a bucket is filled with water and used to wash the face. If one’s reflection is seen afterward in the water, good health and prosperity can be expected in the coming year. If not, well . . .

Cultural symbols

I asked my neighbor the significance of the symbols: rosemary, and the number nine. She says it’s just that these have spiritual power and meaning. I really feel how it all connects to ancient times.

Another typical element is the manjerico, a variety of basil plant with tiny leaves associated with Saint Anthony, love and marriage. Small pots of manjerico are sold with little flags stuck in them, on which are written four line poems expressing love.

Brazil: Festa Junina

In Brazil, the month of June is devoted to Festa Junina. It is often called the Festa de Sâo João, or Saint John. Other saints don’t seem to figure as prominently in Brazil. Events occur throughout June, but concentrate around St. John’s Day at the end of the month. The Portuguese brought their traditions when they established Brazil, which then mixed with indigenous and African cultures, just as the language, brasileiro falado, is very different from European Portuguese.

It is winter in the southern hemisphere, and it can be chilly outside the more tropical northeastern states. Town squares are decorated with suspended garlands of colorful flags or other bunting and balloons.

Warm drinks like quentão or chá de amendoim feature prominently on the beverage menu. Quentão is a hot drink (quente means hot, quentão means big hot) made with the sugar cane spirit cachaça, ginger, sugar and a touch of lime and cinnamon. Chá de amendoim is creamy and hot, made with ground up peanuts and milk, and is offered to children or whoever prefers a non-alcoholic warm up. Mulled red wine is also served, usually made of what Brazilians call sangue de boi, originally a sweet red wine brand meaning “ox blood,” but now referring to any bottom-shelf red wine.

The foods served are largely based on corn, which is a New World crop that originated in Mexico. These dishes include canjica, pamonha and curau, all versions of corn pudding. Bolo de fubá, a cake made with finely ground corn flour, is another favorite. The Brazilian version of the hot dog is always served in a hot dog bun with catsup and mustard, stewed green peppers and onions, and topped with shoestring potatoes, those little sticks we buy in a can in the US.

The overarching theme of Festa Junina in Brazil is caipira, which is best translated for American ears as redneck or hillbilly. Remember the drink, caipirinha? That then means little country bumpkin. To me, it all points back to Brazilians’ ability to poke fun at themselves.

The dress code for Festa Junina, then, is to dress up like country bumpkins, boys and men wearing straw hats and plaid or gingham shirts, often with fake patches as though they are old, torn and mended. Boys often have mustaches penciled on. Girls wear gingham or other colorful dresses, usually flouncy and tiered and embellished with ribbons and rickrack. Girls may have freckles penciled on their faces. You can see the typical outfits in the children’s dance video below.

Huge bonfires are built in town squares, often two stories high. There are smaller side fires lit, and people line up to jump over them—though just once per turn, not nine times. I realize I didn’t remember the fire-jumping in Brazil because in recent years I’ve only been to commercial events in Brasilia where you pay an admission fee, and everything is held inside a big warehouse or other large space. You have to get out a bit more, ideally in a northeastern state like Pernambuco, to see the full version.

There are also fireworks!

Games include “fishing” for trinkets with a fishing pole, sack races and pau-de-sebo, which involves climbing a greased pole to get the prize on top. Correio elegante (elegant mail) hearkens back to the romance and love associated with Saint Anthony. Festa goers fill out message of love and flirtation on small pieces of paper, which are put into a receptacle. The master of the game delivers the messages to the intended recipients.

Music and dancing

Quadrilhas are the traditional line dances where couples march in, then dance back and forth in lines divided by gender. This can be readily seen as descended from historical European salon dances such as the minuet. Here are videos of children and adults dancing the quadrilha.

Another typical dance, most associated with the northeast of Brazil, is forró. It is an energetic, kinetic couples dance with twirky overtones. I was taught that the origin of the dance’s name is for all, based on dances held for workers by English-speaking engineers building projects in the Northeast. More likely it comes from forrobodó, a Galician-Portuguese corruption of the French faux-bourdon, meaning buzzing or droning like a bee, based on the monotonous rhythmic patterns. I’m not sure either of these really makes sense but I’m including these theories here for completeness!

Here is a video of Jasiel’s niece Wanessa and a partner doing a forró demonstration. To be fair, she is a national champion who teaches this dance when not at her day job!

Music is caipira, Brazil’s version of country. Accordion, brought over from Portugal, is prominent. The zabumba drum booms out a strong, monotonous beat, and the triangle adds a tinkling sound. Here is a clip I recorded in Brazil a couple of years ago:

June is a month of celebratory traditions in both Portugal and Brazil, a joyous time that brings families and communities together. To paraphrase what is famously said about the US and the United Kingdom, these are “two countries separated by a common culture.” Like European Portuguese and brasileiro falado, they are based on the same history and traditions but have delightful differences.

I’ve been trying to plan future posts, looking forward to vacation travel in late summer. Scheduling things ahead, thinking about what will be of interest, what I can repost. I haven’t missed a weekly Substack since I started The Spirit Moves in January 2025, back when it was unimaginatively called Justine’s Substack (at least my name is somewhat unusual). I spend a lot of time researching for most of my posts, and I get constant inspiration from things that I come across or stumble over here in Portugal, and in Brazil. Health care and politics (totally entwined) in the US. Food and culture. History.

But it hit me as I went through my usual Saturday, that while I have routines, there are little moments that intrigue and delight me every day. And that what has become routine to me might be of interest.

Today dawned cooler than I expected, and the winds overnight had settled into a nice breeze. A perfect Saturday market day. I parked closer to the Avenida than usual, since the first stop on my walk through town needed to be the Multibanco, the ATM. I needed cash for the market.

Rounding the corner from the Avenida, I saw three women and their kids at the Multibanco (ATM). One woman was doing a number of transactions, because the ATM in Portugal is multi-functional. Transfer money, pay utility bills and taxes, top up pre-paid mobile phones, buy tickets to events. As I got closer, I stood the requisite distance away (something I’ve learned from silent signaling) and waited. Seven years ago I would have been exasperated, now the wait is part of the Zen of Portugal. The ladies were talking about Dona Fulana, Mrs. So-and-So and what she had said and done and what they thought about it. They noticed me and stepped to the side. “Go ahead, sorry!” “Obrigada,” I smiled.

Cash in wallet, I crossed the street to the Mercado Municipal, and did my usual circuit before stopping at my favorite vendor’s stand. I like to look at what’s available before I commit to a certain fruit or vegetable! The lady who owns my favorite stand is someone I’m on friendly hello terms with, because she takes a water aerobics class at the municipal pool and I’m often there at the same time doing lap swims during the colder months.

Her stand was busy, with several people stacking up their produce and waiting for it to be weighed so they could pay. Looking up I saw dear friends who also love her stand. They are a multinational married couple Jasiel and I met on a hiking trail during the pandemic. We have similar interests, and enjoy delightful lunches or evenings when we get together. He began chatting with another multinational friend who passed by; she and I caught up while picking out our purchases and joking around with the stand owner’s son as he weighed things out. All this interaction was a mix of Portuguese and English, spiced up by other languages as appropriate.

***

After the mercado, I went across the street to the pharmacy. I had been there yesterday, Friday, but the pharmacist told me “we can’t fill prescriptions today, try back later.” I asked what was going on, and she told me the electronic prescription system was down nationwide, “hospitals, clinics, pharmacies.” As a retired clinician, I shuddered at what they must have been going through. Work-arounds when the system is down, ugh, thank goodness I’m retired.

The prescription system is nationwide because Portugal has a national health system. As an American deeply familiar with our totally dysfunctional “system,” I am in awe every time I fill a prescription. I send an email to the health center in my town and say I need a new prescription. They send me a new one by email, but I also get it by text that I can fill electronically. The cost is less when the prescriber is from the health center. The prescription says the usual: drug, strength, dosing—but next to that it says “you should not pay more than XX for this.” The receipt from the pharmacy says “you paid X, the state paid Y.” Like everywhere in the world, even full cost is multiples less than one would pay in the US. This is not because things in Europe are “cheap,” but because things in the US are exploitatively expensive.

Because the system was down Friday, I went back to the pharmacy on the worst day of the week: Saturday, market day. There were about 20 people ahead of me, no one impatient. There was a seat available so I sat next to a lady and chatted with her for a bit. When my number was called I picked up my basket of produce and went to the counter. I said “bom dia” to the same pharmacist I’d spoken with on Friday, and handed her two printed prescriptions, and a post-it note with three over-the-counter meds I needed. The top of the post-it note said “farmâcia,” and I spoke with her in Portuguese. She looked at me and said in English, “these are what you need?” I nodded and smiled, bemused at how often people ignore my Portuguese. I code American, I get it. “Falo português.” She smiled and switched to Portuguese.

This brought up a memory that made me think more charitably about why people might speak English to me. Maybe, like me, they don’t know which language is coming out of their mouths half the time. Especially on a busy day like market day at the farmâcia.

In the early 1980s, when I was a recent graduate of the Duke Physician Assistant (PA) Program, I practiced in an extremely busy migrant and community health center in Greeley, Colorado. I saw an average of 30 patients a day, moving from one exam room to the next, switching from Spanish to English and back all day long. It was always my habit to give patients hand written notes with instructions and reminders.

Our community health center got a huge influx of new patients six months after the Monfort Meat packing plant closed. People who had lived in the town all their lives and had good-paying jobs with benefits like health insurance were suddenly unemployed and uninsured. Now they had to literally cross the railroad tracks to the wrong side of town and go to the same federally funded clinic as “those Mexicans.” To add insult to injury, sometimes they had to see a PA like me, someone who “wasn’t even a real doctor.”

One day while talking with a patient, a lady who had previously worked at Monfort, I wrote notes for her. At the end of the visit I handed her the notes. Her face got bright red and she sputtered at me: “I suppose you think this is really funny!” I was shocked, I had no idea what had made her so angry. Then she stuck the note in my face: I had written in Spanish while speaking with her in English. Of course she didn’t believe I hadn’t done it on purpose. And I was stunned that I had done it myself.

Thanking the pharmacist, I took my purchases, walked back to my car by the Avenida, and drove back home.

***

Figs were one of the stars of the show at today’s market. Everyone is excited when the first figs appear, the so-called figo lampo. The true season for figs is August and September, but some uniquely Portuguese fig trees have an early crop that is highly prized. Figo lampo are big, juicy and delicious, but also very tender and easily bruised, and their availability is fleeting. I adore figs, and our neighbor Margarida (I make up names for people) has an orchard with 18 fig trees, and she gives me free rein to pick as many figs as I like. After living next door for six years all 18 trees are like old friends. I know which are early, which late, which are purple and which golden, which have the first figo lampo crop.

A couple of days ago I was blowing fallen leaves and blossoms off the stones underneath our white oleander tree. This oleander has become huge in the six years we’ve had our home, and I’ve learned to blow the detritus on a regular basis, otherwise it sticks and makes a mess. Oleanders are also poisonous, and growing up in Southern California my mom made me terrified of them because for some reason she thought I would eat the flowers. I was so scared of the oleanders I gave them wide berth. But oleander and I have come to a respectful understanding.

I was blowing the oleander mess when I heard a voice at the gate. I turned off the blower and saw it was my next door neighbor Margarida. We had a conversation about this and that, and she asked if I like figs.

“Do I like figs? I’m crazy about them!”

“Ah, that’s what I thought. I just wanted to make sure you know the first lampo ones are coming in now. They don’t last long, so make sure you get some.”

“I’ve been in your orchard already, robbing you of the Princesa golden ones!”

“Good, good! But you know the roxas are getting to be ready now and they’re mais saborosos. Get them before they’re gone!” (The purple ones are more delicious).

As I went back to blowing the oleander, I marveled at how wonderful this life is. Our neighbors surprise us with gifts when their garden or fruit trees are giving more than they can consume. Huge sacks of tangerines. Kilos of tomatoes and peppers in mid-summer. Fava beans in early spring.

I have become a fig aficionada. I’ve always been crazy about figs, and when we first moved to Portugal in 2019 and rented a house down in Almancil I saw a fig tree by the road with ripe figs in September, and I about went crazy. I grabbed a basket and told Jasiel I had to go get some figs before they were all gone! When I got back to the abandoned lot with my basket, there were a couple of Roma ladies picking figs. We all went silently about our task, filling baskets. I went home and ate a bunch, then I made fig jam. My fig repertoire has since expanded to fig chutney, fig sorbet, fig appetizers with toasted almonds and goat cheese, dried figs using my food dehydrator. I’ll be posting a deep dive about figs in August.

When I got back from the market today, Jasiel was absorbed in the task of priming and painting the metal posts for our new fence that will shield our property from prying eyes driving by on the road. Hallelujah!

My haul from the market included gorgeous dark lettuce, which I soaked and spun and stored away in the frig. I bought a bouquet of pretty little white flowers with yellow centers from a stand. I asked the lady, “is this chamomile?” She said she didn’t know, but I wanted the flowers not the tea, so I grabbed one. I cleaned and trimmed the stems and put them in a vase. Google confirmed it was indeed chamomile.

Late spring’s bounty includes pretty little plums called Santa Rosinha, associated with a popular saint in June when they become ripe, my vendor friend told me, but I forget which saint. Look for a repost about the saints of June celebrations next week.

Cherries were so beautiful today they practically sent me into orbit. The vendor had dark ones and medium ones, but at the last minute he grabbed a crate with what I would have called Rainier cherries growing up in California. I swooned. Ooh, I have to have some of those, I told my friend.

After tending to and storing all my fruit and veg from the market, hanging laundry on the line and ironing a few items (I have a new love of laundry and ironing in retirement, something I despised and shoved off on Jasiel whenever possible when I was a professor at Duke), I sat down and did some writing on my latest short story, to send to my writing group for our meeting in a couple of weeks. My desk in my study looks out on the Serra. It surprises me that it doesn’t distract; it inspires and calms me when I stop and look.

Then it was time to take the dogs for a walk. Our Aussie Winston is moody in his old age (we don’t know how old he is, we adopted him in 2014 in North Carolina when he was at least two years old) and lately he’s been turning up his nose at the idea of a walk some days. But Cléo, our little Brittany/chihuahua/Podengo mix we adopted in Sesimbra in 2021, was ready for an outing. I put on her little pink halter and off we went.

Stepping outside our front gate, you can go left or right and have a choice of hiking trails. I let her lead me to the left, up a little hill on a lane I hadn’t ventured on for quite some time. Up at the top of the first hill is a place they kept a pony in past years. This time, no pony, but a pen with a ewe and a lamb. Cléo found the scent divine but I did not. On we went.

Over the top of the hill and down, a house that has been unoccupied and overgrown for years suddenly was showing signs of life. A crew was strimming the weeds and cutting back branches with chainsaws. I said hello to the man in charge, who is a trusted contractor we have hired to do excellent work for us around our property.

As I walk the roads near our home, I realize I know who lives in many of the houses, and some of their stories. Our electrician is from the neighborhood, and several of his family members have houses nearby, for example.

Cléo and I went down the lane and on the main road briefly, then turned left to a small alleyway. There’s a pen of rabbits (they’re future dinner, not pets) across from one house. Cléo loved the smell; the rabbits didn’t love hers. On we went, but when I tried to get her to turn around and go back home she got all saucy with me and refused. After a negotiation Cléo decided that smelling the smells on the return loop might be fun after all.

Back home, Jasiel and I pulled together a light supper and ate outside on the kitchen terrace. Every single day I am gob smacked that we live where we live. That somehow fate decided we should own this house, with its panoramic view of the Serra. Sitting at the table, looking out at the shadows lengthening on the hills, the sky accented by wisps of pink clouds as the sun bends to the west, I thank my lucky stars that this is where we live. Where we are home.

Jasiel says I’m superstitious. I say I came by it honestly, since my first career was in theater. Theater people are famous for their quirky beliefs and steadfast efforts to avoid a bad night. The one that everyone knows is “break a leg,” because you don’t wish someone good luck on a performance—it has the opposite effect. You never refer to Shakespeare’s MacBeth, it’s always called “The Scottish Play.” Whistling is verboten. Bad dress rehearsal equals great opening night. Mirrors on stage bring disaster. Give flowers after the show, never before.

In my years as a clinician half my patients were from Latin America, and I learned a whole new health belief system. Cold and hot as causes of illness, for example. When I gained a new Brazilian family through marriage, I quickly adapted to admonitions because of my clinical experience. I learned to never go barefoot in my mother in law’s house, because it upset her so much; she was worried I would get sick.

Pé descalço neste chão frio!

Bare feet on this cold floor! Got it, don’t show up for breakfast without the havaianas. And by the way, hygiene was never an issue—you could literally eat off my mother in law’s floors.

Mainstream medicine scoffs at these “folk beliefs,” but my attitude was always, hey, maybe they’re right and we just haven’t discovered the science yet!

Part of the reason this all appeals to me is, I think, is because I am just a little bit OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). I always say I only have one copy of the gene; I’m a carrier, not the full blown condition. And I always said OCD was not a bad trait in your health care provider, writing the prescription and checking it twice (I always wrote a child’s weight on the prescription so the pharmacist would check me on dosing, for example). I have to laugh when I hear the phrase “on the spectrum.” We’re all on some kind of spectrum! I’m on the OCD spectrum. Now excuse me for a moment while I go check to see if I turned off the stove . . .

I tell you this, dear reader, to emphasize I’m not poking fun at the Portuguese (and Brazilians) for their superstitions. Incantations, charms and amulets are attempts to control fate. And I’m all for that.

First, the caveats: this is a mixture of beliefs and superstitions I’ve learned about in both Brazil and Portugal—though there is remarkable concordance in many instances. And of course, not everyone believes these things, even if they know about them. Nevertheless, the threads are woven into the culture even if they’re not beliefs. As a sociologist colleague at Duke used to say, everyone in the US Southern state of North Carolina is a cultural Baptist, regardless of their religion. These things make up the water we swim in.

Here are some of my favorites.

Espantar bruxas: Clothes inside out: scare away witches (or cats, if you’re from Brazil).

This was the whole thing that got me started on this post. I have a grey sweatshirt that has a permanent white spot, probably due to a splash of bleach. So my solution to the problem is to wear it inside out and pretend it’s fashion. I wore the sweatshirt to my personal training studio last week, and one of the trainers said, “your top is inside out.” I replied:

Como se dizem no Brasil, você está querendo espantar gatos?

As they say in Brazil, are you wanting to scare away cats?

This started a whole conversation. A Portuguese client chimed in from the treadmill “hey, we say the same thing, only it’s to scare away bruxas (witches).” She said some older ladies she knows in the Alentejo, where she’s from, still make a habit of wearing their underwear inside out.

Women, never put your purse (handbag) on the floor. Your money will go away, poof!

I didn’t know this one when I moved to Brazil for work in the early 1980s. When I went to Rio to take care of business things (I lived south of the city on the coast), I loved to have lunch at the Salão Assyrius in the Theatro Municipal. It no longer has a restaurant, but at the time it was upscale and breathtaking, with its Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian mosaics. I routinely put my purse on the floor underneath the table when dining out, because I was paranoid about being robbed. The waiters, however, were more concerned with me losing my money through azar (bad luck). They would pull out a chair and gesture for me to put my purse. I didn’t get it. They got upset. After I learned this one, I put my purse on a chair next to me forever after. Because hey, you never know!

Pé direito. Start out with the right foot.

Whether entering a new home, or starting the new year, put your right foot first. It ensures good luck will follow.

Varrer os pés de alguém traz azar.

Sweeping someone’s feet with a broom means they will never get married, or they will suffer economic misfortune. A potential remedy is to spit on the broom after touching someone’s foot with it.

I just learned this one from Portuguese friends, once I told everyone I was collecting superstitions. Brushing someone’s feet with a broom when sweeping is very bad business.

Don’t clip your nails on Friday.

Why? My Portuguese friend wasn’t sure, just bad luck, and it upset her mom to no end if she did it.

13 people at a table is bad luck.

This is likely tied to the Last Supper, which can be seen in the painting of Jesus and his 12 disciples.

Bater na madeira. Knock wood.

This one seems universal. In Portugal it may be related to maritime history, where sailors would knock three times on the wooden deck to ensure safe passage. I now have to adapt my wood knocking to do it three times, once is apparently not enough!

Stepping on dog shit in the street means you’ll be coming into money.

This was a new one on me—and may offer comfort to those who live in cities. Maybe people don’t clean up after their pets because they have altruistic motives? Not that desperate for money, sorry!

In Brazil, dreaming about shit means you’ll be getting money soon. I like this version better.

A spider in the home is good luck.

Don’t get that broom to sweep off a cobweb! A spider brings wealth and prosperity.

Don’t make a toast with water.

‘nuff said. Bad juju. The Irish say this too.

Blue trim on white houses: ward off the mau-olhado.

Mau-olhado is the evil eye, and it too is universal across many cultures. It’s the root of a lot of superstitions. It’s believed to be caused by a malevolent gaze motivated by envy. I learned one manifestation of this when I practiced in family medicine and took care of babies, in a migrant and community health center in Colorado. I did a postpartum exam on mom and then a checkup on baby. You can’t say “what a sweet baby” or “cute baby” without touching the baby, or you will worry mom about mal de ojo.

When I lived in Brazil the first time, in the 1970s, I spent a week in Lençois in the interior of Bahia state. I was invited by a young lady I met in Salvador whose family home was in the historic diamond-mining town. Lençois was not a destination in those days—now it is a hugely popular for its beautiful Chapada Diamantina and well-preserved historic buildings. The family mansion was very grand but crumbling into ruin and overgrown with vegetation. We were well cared for by the only person who lived there full time, the family’s empregada, or live-in domestic worker, which until recently was common practice for every family in Brazil. Dona M. was a practitioner of candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion, and she was very concerned for me, as she saw in my aura (or something like it) that someone had given me the evil eye. She asked to do a ceremony, which I accepted, that involved shaking a branch of some sort (or maybe it was a bundle of herbs) all around me and doing an incantation. On my return to the big city I felt different, but probably not because of her treatment—it was like emerging from 100 Years of Solitude, a place where time passes but stays the same. An unforgettable experience.

But back to the present and the subject at hand, one more superstition:

Step on a crack . . .

That one doesn’t work in Portugal! My Portuguese friend and I laughed at how impossible that would be to avoid on the calçada portuguesa!

Dear readers, please share your additions, subtractions, amplifications and corrections!

The cultivation of cacau was moved to the state of Bahia in 1746, where it was a minor crop compared to the vast plantings of sugar cane. The story of cacau cannot be disentangled from the bitter history of slavery, and neither sugar nor cacau production would have been possible without vast numbers of enslaved people forced to labor and enrich their enslavers. From the 15th to the 19th century more than 4 million people from different parts of the African continent involuntarily disembarked on Brazilian soil. Compare this with the 550,000 people captured and sold into slavery in the United States. It is a shameful history in both the northern and southern hemispheres, but the enormity in Brazil is hard to imagine, where slavery was not outlawed until 1888.

Bahia became the world’s leading producer of cacau and flourished into the 1980s, when the major cacau area of Brazil was the southern part of Bahia state, in the hills outside of Ilhéus. The huge plantations made their owners rich and politically powerful.

In 1989 a disease called vassoura-de-bruxa, or witch’s broom, spread like wildfire. This fungus, Moniliophthora perniciosa, devastated cacau plantations, destroying 75% of the trees and turning Brazil from the world’s third largest exporter of cacau to an importer. Police investigation found that the fungus was deliberately set in the large plantations by persons hoping to reduce the power of the plantation owners, but it spread beyond the large farms to smaller holdings and all species of wild cacau.

Cacau farming near Ilhéus, in the state of Bahia, has made a comeback since the 1990s due to dedicated new owners and rising demand for artisanal chocolate, called the “bean to bar” or “tree to bar” movement. Management of the forests is more ecological by necessity, as this keeps the fungus under control. Cacau is planted beneath a canopy of larger trees, a practice called cabruca, and regularly pruned. Leaves are mulched beneath the trees, breaking down into organic nutrients. This new approach also helps preserve part of the green corridor than runs the length of Brazil’s coast, the Mata-Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest, a threatened biodiversity treasure.

I was in Ilhéus for a beach vacation with friends in 2022, and we visited the Fazenda Capela Velha and saw the process of cacau farming and chocolate production firsthand. Do click on the link for the gorgeous photos and an informative video in Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles. To arrive at the farm we headed north up the coast from my friends’ family home near the beach and took a left turn on BA 262, the Estrada do Chocolate, the chocolate road. The farm is between Ilhéus and Uruçuca, a lovely drive amid the Mata-Atlântica, towering trees with bromeliads in the crooks of their trunks, their branches festooned with hanging Spanish moss (or at least that’s what it’s called in the Southern US).

The tour was very comprehensive and our guide, part of the team, was entertaining and knowledgeable. The fazenda’s motto is “nada se perde, nada se transforma.” Nothing is lost, nothing is changed.

The gorgeous cacau trees were studded with blossoms spiking directly off the trunks like little pink stars.

Of course we start with the trees, amid the protective canopy that provides shade and just the right humidity: the cabruca.

Tall trees provide shade and humidity.

The seeds are removed from the husk and fermented. This farm uses a completely anaerobic process for fermentation. The owner, Carlos Tomich, explained that the raw seeds are removed, but the beans are encapsulated in a slippery husk—and it is beans that are needed to move from the raw cacau toward cocoa, in order to produce chocolate.

Here is a a traditional fermenting table, with a sliding roof to adapt heat and humidity. Modern practices use barrels made of inert material with strict control of conditions, but they’re not as picturesque.

Next is the barcaça, a traditional cacau drying shed. The farm uses carefully controlled mechanical drying.

The seeds are then roasted, crushed and refined, and made into chocolate.

The product is packaged and shipped—a delicious artisanal chocolate bar. And I learned something important: white chocolate is real chocolate.

Here is the language of the law; my policy analyst background still comes in handy once in a while.

Language, culture and history are separate but related, and worthy of future posts.

Thinking about this new test makes me remember when Jasiel became a US citizen, and the challenge of the American test. I think most birth citizens would find some of the questions tough.

How many amendments does the Constitution have?

The House of Representatives has how many voting members?

The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.

What is the “rule of law”? (The current president could not answer this one)

This is my way of saying that of course those of us who aspire to be Portuguese citizens should have knowledge of language, culture, history and national symbols.

National symbols of Portugal

A bandeira nacional: the flag

Let us engage in a bit of vexillology—I just learned this word, I confess. It sounds like the study of why people get vexed, but it is the study of flags!

The flag of Portugal is known as the Bandeira das Quinas, the quinas are the five blue escutcheons, or shields. It is also called the Bandeira Verde-Rubra, the red-green flag. Green represents hope for the future, while the red symbolizes the blood of patriots who died defending the nation.

The white shield is bordered in red charged with seven gold castles. The five quinas represent the five Moorish kings defeated by Afonso Henriques in the Battle of Ourique. The gold castles symbolize the fortified towns the Kingdom of Portugal took from the Moors.

Behind the shield is an armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument showing earth and the heavens, which represents Portugal’s Age of Discoveries.

The armillary sphere

The armillary sphere was originally the personal badge of Manuel I, before he became king of Portugal, ruling from 1495 to 1521. During his reign the Portuguese discovered a sea route to India, and Brazil. The Manueline style of architecture was developed and named after him. If they ask you for Manueline examples, point them to Jerónimos Monastery and the Torre de Belém in Lisbon.

The cross of the order of Christ

The Cruz da Ordem de Cristo, cross of the order of Christ, is a quintessential symbol of the Portuguese Empire, emblazoned on the sails of the caravelas, associated with figures like Prince Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama.

The national anthem: A Portuguesa

A Portuguesa is the national anthem of Portugal. It is a rousing patriotic march, composed in 1890 as a protest against the British ultimatum that Portugal give up its claims to territory in Africa. Alfredo Keil wrote the music, with lyrics by Henrique Lopes de Mendonça. It was adopted officially in 1910 when the monarchy was ousted and Portugal became a republic.

We should know just a few words: to arms, to arms!

Às armas, às armas!
Sobre a terra, sobre o mar,
Às armas, às armas!
Pela Pátria lutar,
Contra os canhões marchar, marchar!

To arms, to arms!
Over land, over sea,
To arms, to arms!
For the Fatherland fight,
Against the cannons march, march!

Listen to an orchestral version with choir here.

Luís Vaz de Camões

Luís de Camões (~1524-1580) is considered Portugal’s greatest poet. You could think of him as Portugal’s Shakespeare. His iconic work is Os Lusíadas, published in 1572. It is translated as The Lusiads, referring to the Portuguese people. For extra credit, he lost one eye in either war or . . . the history is uncertain. This epic poem is often compared to Virgil’s Aeneid. Portugal Day is coming up soon: June 10th. Officially it’s called Dia de Portugal, de Camões e das Comunidades Portuguesas: Portugal, de Camões and Portuguese Communities Day. It commemorates the day of his death in 1580.

Fado

This uniquely Portuguese musical genre was born in the working class areas of Lisbon around the turn of the 20th century. The mournful songs are about longing, love, fate and the sea. For extra credit, the Queen of Fado is Amália Rodrigues. Visit her experiential museum in Lisbon, or read my post here.

Calçadas: a carpet of stone

Deeply connected to Portugal’s seafaring past, stones that served as ship’s ballast were put to good use as pavers for roads and mosaic walkways. Read the fun history in my post here.

Cork oak: Quercus suber

More than half of the world’s cork supply comes from Portugal. It’s not just for wine stoppers—and you won’t find screwcaps on Portuguese wine bottles! The bark of the cork oak is carefully hand harvested by cutting it from the trunk and major limbs every nine years. Cork trees are strictly protected by law: it is illegal to cut down a cork oak without official, written authorization from the government, and it’s only allowed if the tree is dead, diseased, or poses a significant safety hazard. Cork is a renewable resource with a myriad of uses because it is lightweight, elastic and an excellent insulator.

O galo de Barcelos: the rooster of Barcelos

This is not an official symbol, but I feel it must be included. A medieval legend has it that an innocent man was saved from the gallows by the cock’s crow. The galo is usually a ceramic figure painted black, with floral and geometric embellishment. Associated with the north of the country, it became widely recognized because it was used as propaganda during the Estado Novo dictatorship.

Efígie da República (not a common or official symbol, I just like her)

The concept of a an Emblem of the Republic, a female personification symbolizing national sovereignty, is not uniquely Portuguese, but this version is. Her red phrygian cap (itself an allegorical symbol of freedom and liberty) and red and green clothing wrap her in the flag. She was adopted after the monarchy was ousted in 1910. There is a similar figure in Brazil, and of course the American Statue of Liberty is herself an efígie, even though we never call her that.

Zé Povinho

Zé Povinho is a Portuguese everyman, created by the artist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro in 1875. He is hardworking, resigned to injustice, but always endowed with good humor and the ability to laugh. Watch a video from RTP (in Portuguese) about Zé here. And by the way, Zé is a nickname, a shortened form of José. Povo is people, with -inho making it diminutive. José Little-people.

Summing up . . .

This is my first pass on guessing which national symbols will be required knowledge on the new citizenship test. Please add more suggestions (or corrections, if I got anything wrong!) in the comments. I guess I’ll find out in 90 days how close I came to being right!

The out-of-pocket cost of these labs (I’ve posted the list below in the notes) would be $600 to $1,000.

Sadly, the OP is a member of my profession, physician associate (previously assistant).

I replied:

As a fellow PA and former head of the Duke PA Program, I’m disappointed to see you promoting a broad sweep of expensive labs for every patient. This is a poor approach to practice and a waste of resources. We should be approaching the people we serve with the idea that we’ll do “everything they need, and nothing they don’t need” after careful listening and targeted physical examination.

The resulting tempest in this particular Substack teacup is a microcosm of issues with health care in America—problems we must address if we are ever going to succeed with true reform. Poor communication, distrust, hatred for expertise, and the poisonous effect of the for-profit medical system will doom any effort to achieve health care as a human right in the US. I’ll review each of these in more detail, and consider the reasons a huge laundry list of labs for everyone is such a bad idea. And I’ll wrap up with an ancient fable about the practice of medicine: time and pomegranates.

There’s no denying it: health care communication is piss poor in the US. It was already sub-optimal, but a couple of decades ago we moved to the computerized medical record with software primarily designed for billing, and certainly not for primary care. That sat the already poor communicators behind computers and glued their eyes on the screen instead of the human being seeking help. The old approach of history (conversation) then physical diagnosis (touching people) morphed to rapid-fire questions to fill in the computerized laundry list, then an assessment with a treatment, usually a prescription sent electronically to the pharmacy. The most common comment I saw in patient satisfaction surveys over the years:

“They never laid a hand on me.”

It pains me to have to say it, but if I had a nickel for every time I was seen as a patient and later read the clinician’s chart entry that documented an extensive physical examination that was never done—I’d probably have a dollar.

This poor communication rolled out on a massive scale during the Covid-19 pandemic. The head of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) at the time, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, was a superbly trained infectious disease specialist who absolutely sucked at communicating. I wanted to throw bricks at my TV as I watched her namby-pamby delivery of facts, her eyes scanning left to right as she read prepared remarks. In both my Master of Public Health and Doctor of Public Health programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we had crisis communication drilled into us as a fundamental skill. And that ain’t how it’s done.

All this poor communication leads to distrust. Who communicates well? Charlatans. Communication is their stock in trade, as they convince you that the “medical authorities” are wrong and trying to harm you. Once they earn your trust, they can sell you bogus treatments at a costly price, one you will be absolutely convinced is worth it. It’s why Americans spend $60 billion on supplements each year. Now, I’m not against supplements, and I take a couple myself. My attitude as a practicing PA was that if I didn’t have evidence against something, and there was no evidence of harm at standard dosages, go right ahead—it may have a side effect on your wallet, but that is each person’s choice.

Nearly half of American adults, especially people under 50, get their medical advice from influencers, not health care professionals. There is increasing distrust of people who have the training and earned the degrees to back up their recommendations. Beyond that, actual experts have now become the elite, snobby people who think they are better than everyone else. Over the years, I became more careful about telling people what I did when they asked me that standard first, small talk question. “I’m a professor at Duke” earned me a cold shoulder as often as a smile. Tom Nichols captured this in his book, The Death of Expertise. The blurb for his book puts it very aptly:

“Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.”

Unfortunately, disbelievers often have the attitude “don’t confuse me with the facts.” I’ve given up talking with some of my extended family members about conspiracies against their health. They quote to me a discredited scientist who’s made a killing promoting nonsense: Dr. Judy Mikovits says mouse viruses contaminated Covid vaccines and cause autism and cancer. She has been accused of serious scientific misconduct such as faking data. But heaven forbid I suggest that she’s not a reliable information source. I just say, “That’s not the science as I understand it.”

Predictably, the negative respondents to my comment talked about terrible doctors, nurse practitioners and PAs (never mind the OP is a PA). They say, what’s the big deal? Why deny me tests that could identify a problem, something I don’t know about and the doctor can’t detect? Isn’t it a good thing to have a baseline, in case something goes wrong later? These tests could be lifesaving and we’re denied them because insurance won’t pay and doctors just want to make money. That nobody listens to them because they are on Medicaid.

The profit motive is a real concern, I agree with respondents on that. The US health care system is a for-profit model designed to maximize shareholder return on investment. Insurance does often deny payment for needed things for no good reason. Or they create so much bureaucratic sludge that people give up trying. And absolutely everything in US medical care is more expensive that it is in every other country in the world. We have some of the worst health outcomes despite paying a whole lot more than everyone else on the globe. And yes, poor and marginalized people are often treated worse than others.

Why isn’t $1,000 worth of all different kinds of laboratory analyses a good idea for everyone (aside from the cost)? Let’s talk about that.

As clinicians we ask ourselves a few questions to decide whether to do a test or not:

• How accurate is it for detecting a problem if a person has it? This is positive predictive value.

• How accurate is it for not showing a problem if a person is doesn’t have it? This is negative predictive value.

• How sensitive is the test? If a person has a problem, will the test find it? If the test misses the problem this is a false negative.

• How specific is the test? If a person doesn’t have a problem, what is the chance the test will say they do? These are false positives.

We should consider these questions for all the tests on that list (scroll down to the end to see it). Sometimes there are guidelines for when to do screening tests such as cholesterol—evidence-based, regularly updated, developed by expert panels. And of course, there can be well thought out exceptions.

It makes a difference who is having the test. Is the person from a community or a demographic (like age) where the condition is more likely? What about their family history? Doing all these tests on a young, healthy person with no risk factors is a different story. That’s why the “let’s just get a baseline, what can it hurt?” can be problematic—again, depending on the test.

We potentially get into trouble by doing a big raft of tests without a specific clinical suspicion or reason for doing them. If we get a false negative, of course we don’t know it, and people are falsely reassured. If we get a false positive, we can end up going down an expensive rabbit hole that leads to a bunch more testing, which adds to the expense, yes, but also can be dangerous. This is called the medical cascade. In a 2019 survey, 90% of doctors had seen clinically significant medical cascades resulting from incidental findings.

The typical story of the medical cascade involves a heart tracing, an X-ray or a scan that leads down a path to a surgical procedure that wouldn’t have been thought necessary if the first test hadn’t been done, and in the worst case the surgery goes haywire and the patient ends up in the ICU or dies. There is less risk of this with laboratory tests, but the fundamental issue remains, “what do these randomly requested results mean?”

If we do tests without any specific reason for doing them, and without having taken a thorough medical history and physical examination based on that history, what do we do when we get abnormal results? Counseling on lifestyle? Why didn’t we already do that, and why did we need a blood test?

I can talk until I’m blue in the face about all this, but it won’t convince people who hate the system and distrust any advice from mainstream clinicians. We have to establish trust, one person at a time. If clinicians weren’t having to do a lot of things that aren’t really necessary in order to bill for services and get paid by the for-profit system, we could sit down and talk with people. Learn about their lives and try to really understand their concerns and health challenges. Of course, we have to redesign the system from the ground up to make this possible. And we need to optimize the selection process for all health care professions schools, particularly MD, to focus on communication and motivation just as much or more than grades in undergraduate.

Here are four questions we can ask that help us understand people’s health needs and concerns:

1. What do you think you have?

2. What do you think caused it?

3. What do you think will fix it?

4. What about it worries you the most?

My goal as a practicing PA was always to have a patient leave the clinic feeling positive about their experience, even if I didn’t do the thing they thought was necessary when they walked in. Not by firing off a list of questions, but by saying “tell me about your headache.” You learn so much more that way. And oddly enough, it often takes less time than the other way.

If a patient came in asking for this list of 30 tests, I admit that for a moment my heart would sink. Uh oh, this won’t be easy. Based on the commenters to my comment, it may be accompanied by a chip on the shoulder. But I always took that as a challenge to find common ground. I would probably say, “This is a very extensive list, and I see some tests here that are really important and we should do right now. Shall we start there (like the cholesterol panel)? You have to negotiate to take things step wise. Start with the things we agree on, come back to discuss the results, then look at the others. Most of the time, that is accepted. As I taught my students, if you have a good heart, people tend to cut you some slack.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that most people promoting nonsense like a $1,000 panel of untargeted tests are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They tend to be selling expensive supplements, say, or unproven treatments like intravenous ozone or food-grade nebulized hydrogen peroxide—potentially risky, and definitely an out-of-pocket experience, as insurance won’t cover many of these without a clear-cut clinical rationale. When you see someone promoting procedures that sound crazy and overhyped, look them up at their certifying and licensing agencies. You may find that they have been reprimanded or had their license suspended. Kooky, non-reimbursable treatments that cost a lot are often a marker of unprofessional behavior.

Coming back to health care reform, there will be an urgent need for excellent communicators to make the case to the public. Politicians, health care leaders and clinicians on the front lines need to explain things clearly. And we need to tell the truth. That not everything will be covered, but you won’t go bankrupt if you get cancer. That you may have to wait for elective surgery, but your primary care provider will be readily accessible to you. The goal: improve everyone’s health, and remove the worry of not being able to get care when you need it.

I’ll close with one of my favorite fables about interacting with patients, a Sufi teaching story.

TIME AND POMEGRANATES

As told by Idries Shah

A disciple went to the house of a Sufi physician and asked to become an apprentice in the art of medicine.

‘You are impatient,’ said the doctor, ‘and so you will fail to observe things which you will need to learn.’

But the young man pleaded, and the Sufi agreed to accept him.

After some years, the youth felt that he could exercise some of the skills which he had learnt. One day, a man was walking towards the house and the doctor – looking at him from a distance – said:

‘That man is ill. He needs pomegranates.’

‘You have made the diagnosis – let me prescribe for him, and I will have done half the work,’ said the student.

‘Very well,’ said the teacher, ‘providing that you remember that action should also be looked at as illustration.’

As soon as the patient arrived at the doorstep, the student brought him in and said: ‘You are ill. Take pomegranates.’

‘Pomegranates!’ shouted the patient, ‘pomegranates to you – nonsense!’ And he went away.

The young man asked his master what the meaning of the interchange had been.

‘I will illustrate it the next time we get a similar case,’ said the Sufi.

Shortly afterwards, the two were sitting outside the house when the master looked up briefly and saw a man approaching.

‘Here is an illustration for you – a man who needs pomegranates,’ he said.

The patient was brought in, and the doctor said to him:

‘You are a difficult and intricate case, I can see that. Let me see... yes, you need a special diet. This must be composed of something round, with small sacs inside it, naturally occurring. An orange... that would be of the wrong colour... lemons are too acid... I have it: pomegranates!’

The patient went away, delighted and grateful.

‘But Master,’ said the student, ‘why did you not say “pomegranates” straight away?’

‘Because,’ said the Sufi, ‘he needed time as well as pomegranates.’

Lab list:

1. HgbA1c

2. Glucose

3. IGF-1

4. TSH

5. Free T4

6. Free T3

7. Reverse T3

8. TPO and TG antibodies

9. hs-CRP

10. erythrocyte sedimentation rate

11. homocysteine

12. triglyceride/HDL ratio

13. ApoB/ApoA-1 ratio

14. Lipoprotein(a)

15. HDL

16. Triglycerides

17. Vitamin D3

18. Ferritin

19. Vitamin B12

20. Folate

21. RBC Magnesium

22. Zinc

23. Copper

24. Gamma GT

25. Uric acid

26. Estradiol

27. Progesterone

28. Free and total testosterone

29. DHEA-S

30. Morning cortisol

Think again.

You moved here when the time period to apply for citizenship was five years. And it was measured from the day you applied for residency.

Now it’s ten years, and it’s measured from the day your residency card was issued. Because the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly in Portugal, your residency may take up to three years to be approved. So it’s not just ten years—it’s 13.

But wait! Once you apply for citizenship, the process is glacially slow. Add another two to three years. So it’s not just 13 years, it’s around 15.

Another delay that most people don’t think about is the wait for a slot on the Portuguese language exam schedule. In my case, the delay was more than a year—I should have known the exam opportunities were limited and filled up months in advance, I suppose. As soon as I was able, I registered for the only exam available to me, which required travel to Lisbon. Read about my CIPLE exam experience here.

The new nationality law takes effect the day it is published in the official record (which will likely happen next week). President Seguro (elected February 2026) said as he signed the law on May 3, 2026 that those in process should not be affected and that no one should be harmed by the slowness of the bureaucracy. This doesn’t have the force of law, but they say it will influence how the law is implemented. It is said. But it is not law. We will have to wait the 90 days for the regulatory decree that follows the enactment of the statute to see if it complies with President Seguro’s cautionary requests.

You people who moved here and bought houses and embraced Portuguese culture and clawed your way up the learning curve of the Portuguese language, taking classes and daring to try and speak it, facing the bureaucratic delays of just about everything with patience and good humor—tough luck. You might have been tantalizingly close to a touchdown, but Portugal just moved the goalposts. By more than the length of another American football field.

Now, at this point I need to be clear about something. I recognize my legal presence here in Portugal is a privilege, not a right. And that Portugal is a sovereign country and I have no business telling the government what it should do. I have no influence whatsoever. Oh wait—that’s what voting is for! But to vote, you must be a citizen.

Jasiel and I love Portugal. We love living here, and we are grateful to have the privilege. We are hopeful about being given the gift of Portuguese citizenship as our applications have been in process for a year.

We do our best to be good citizens. We didn’t move here to get a new passport, but it was a logical extension of our experience and made us feel welcome and wanted. We are both fluent in the language. We are friends with our Portuguese neighbors. We support our local businesses, who recognize us as regulars after seven years. I write a monthly gardening column for The Portugal Resident, a weekly newspaper in English. I have a faculty appointment as an invited professor at the University of Algarve where I contribute as often as they call on me, teaching the neurologic exam to medical students and writing exam questions (in Portuguese). My rate of pay? Zero percent. I made this commitment when we first moved here, long before the winds shifted and there was any hint that the red carpet they had rolled out for immigrants would shift to a rug pull.

I think our new president, José António Seguro, had no option other than signing the law. Do you see that? I consider him my president, our president. Seguro’s discourse is that of someone who recognizes the value of immigrants and diversity. As he promulgated the law he observed with concern that it was passed without broad consensus: those voting in favor were the center-right and extreme right parties PSD, Chega, IL and CDS-PP; all the parties on the left voted against it. And as noted above, President Seguro appended notes to his signature requesting those in process be excepted, and that bureaucratic slowness not add to the delays.

More than just the impact of the rug pull on so many, the new nationality law reflects a shift in the mood of the country and a growing antipathy towards immigrants. There are other potential policies that could improve the lot of Portuguese citizens without this screeching turn to the right. Policies that might improve access and affordability of housing, as the problems are not just due to immigrants buying up available inventory. Laws governing zoning, construction, taxation and inheritance could be changed to positive effect. Charge a significant fee for residents to access the national health system, like the UK does. Increase the residency application fee. Of course, these things are harder to explain to the electorate, and they don’t give the dopamine rush of outrage clicks on social media.

But the goal of many politicians driving these changes is not improvement, it is power. Portuguese are unhappy with the current state of affairs so it is expedient to find an “other” to blame for all the problems. The exemplar of this is André Ventura, head of the far right party Chega. He has found great success in targeting Roma (gypsy) people and immigrants. After the nationality law passed and President Seguro said those in the process of applying for nationality shouldn’t be included, Ventura said yes, of course they should, “it’s administrative.” Ventura has now moved on to fan the next flames of the culture wars, promoting chemical castration for sex offenders. This is controversial as to efficacy and medical ethics, and will have no impact whatsoever on affordability and quality of life for the Portuguese.

Chega became the main opposition party as a result of the last parliamentary election in 2024, and the prime minister’s PSD party seems happy to go along with Chega as it lurches the country to the extreme right. All of this sits within the context of international shifts in the Overton Window, the range of policies or ideas acceptable to the mainstream population at any given time. Anti-immigration sentiment was a key ingredient in the rout of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in last week’s local elections, and in part drove the success of Nigel Farage’s “Reform” (excuse the quotes) Party. Trump’s reelection to a second term was fueled by a desire among some of the populace to close the US borders.

Unfortunately, none of the policies that heavily restrict immigration recognize the economic value immigrants bring. Regardless of the measure, immigrants are a net positive if flows are managed appropriately.

“Data provided by the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security in Portugal show that foreign workers’ contributions to Portugal’s social security system are already sufficient to fund 17% of national pensions and retirements.

In 2023 the Portuguese social security system disbursed 15.8 billion euros in benefits, with immigrants to the country injecting 2.7 billion euros into that system.”

EU Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, 16 January 2025

What happens next? We will wait for the regulatory decree in 90 days to see how the new law will be implemented. Will those in process be “grandfathered in?” When will the citizenship eligibility clock begin? What will the new culture, civics and language requirements look like and how will they be assessed?

Meanwhile, the mood is shifting among some immigrants I interact with, the kind often called “expats” to distinguish them from those with less financial means. Feelings range from a resigned shrug of the shoulders to outrage and disgust. I know of some who are planning a move to France, which they now regard as more friendly. The word on the street in the US about these changes may begin to impact the decisions of those considering a move to Portugal. Certainly a passport alone is no reason to uproot your life and move across an ocean. But it is a symbol of how one can expect to be regarded, whether as an interloper or a compatriot.

The golden visa holders are another story, and lawsuits are already being filed. In many cases they were sold a bill of goods that specifically included an EU passport in five years. Some of these individuals got the visa by investing in funds they cannot access until they pass the citizenship bar, apparently. These people are using words like “betrayal.”

Nothing in life is guaranteed, and when we made our decision to immigrate to Portugal I knew things could change at any time. I was on the tube in London when I looked up and saw the tantalizing ad promoting immigration to Portugal. I’ve had a background worry about shifting tides from that moment, and yes, citizenship would remove that particular anxiety. For the foreseeable future, though, our love of Portugal and our happiness with life here in the hills of the Algarve overshadows any of that. I love Portugal. I just wish Portugal would love me back.

I’ve written this piece from the point of view of Americans and others similarly situated, as the waiting times are somewhat less for EU member citizens and those from Portuguese speaking (CPLP) countries. Other issues relate to when a baby born in Portugal is eligible to be a citizen, and when citizenship can be revoked after conviction for serious crimes.

Addendum: as one commenter noted, the nationality law revision does not change eligibility for permanent residence after five years.

Beautiful day for flying, chatted the two agents as I dropped my two bags at the United check-in counter in Charlotte, North Carolina. Abundant sunshine and a light breeze, absolutely, I agreed. I said I was optimistic about the journey, but laughed that these days, if nothing goes horribly wrong that equals a fabulous outcome. Maybe saying that is what jinxed me.

The trip to Newark was perfect, and I burned a free United lounge pass to while away the three hour layover before the flight to Lisbon (TSA madness and past experience with IAD led me to eschew the Dulles option of one hour). I had scheduled a train from Lisbon to my home in the Algarve for less than two hours after touchdown at 08:20—risky business given the recent insane delays at LIS passport control. But whatever. If I couldn’t make the 10:02 train I’d use the app to reschedule or switch to the autocarro (funny word for bus, or maybe it’s just that I’ve been saying the brasileiro word ônibus for so many years).

The tailwind and everything else lined up perfectly en route to Lisbon, and we arrived a few minutes before 08:00. I wound my way around the Lisbon airport blindly trusting that I was headed to passport control, as there are no signs to guide you. Memo to VINCI, the airport manager: “Exit” and “baggage claim” are not the same as “passport control.” The debacle with the biometric machines and their on again/off again status is compounded by the fact that they keep moving things around the airport.

When I finally rounded the last corner there they were, electronic kiosks glowing menacingly with a line of people gripping non-EU passports snaking their way around a roped enclosure. An airport worker in a hot pink vest brusquely pointed to the line. Portugal has had my fingerprints and facial image since 2019, why do they need them now, I thought? My gaze then drifted to the sign on the wall that said, “residents excepted.” I smiled at the hot-pink-vest-guy and said, “I’m a resident.” He unhooked the enclosure and pointed me around another corner. A small miracle: passport control agents in their little glass-walled enclosures with zero lines.

After a hike to baggage claim I waited longer than usual for my luggage, but still had plenty of time. My new strategy is two small carry-on size bags instead of a big one, because I just can’t wrangle a big bag no more. I simplify and reduce as much as possible, but one small bag isn’t enough for a month trip. And most of the time I can check both bags for free because planes are packed and they offer that at virtual check-in.

Schlepping even two small bags on the metro is more than my exhausted self can handle after a night with no sleep, so this is the rare time I get a taxi. Friday was Dia do Trabalhador, Worker’s Day. The name carries a distinct difference from America’s Labor Day, doesn’t it? Although this year Portugal’s holiday hits amid a protracted fight between the labor movement and the now right-leaning government about changes to labor laws.

The taxi driver was not pleased at the relatively small fare to Gare Oriente, the main train and bus station.

Once he confirmed I spoke Portuguese he harrumphed, “I’m not saying it’s right, but some guys will refuse to take you for a short ride. You should get the metro to Oriente, not a taxi.”

“I agree! I usually take the metro everywhere. It’s just that after 24 hours of travel and no sleep, I can’t handle the bags and the hassle.”

Second, more friendly harrumph: “I believe it.”

Then ensued a conversation about foreigners speaking the language. It was established that I was American, but he asked, as people do, about my “little bit of a Brazilian accent.”

Then on to the economy.

“Tell your president to cut the crap with Iran.”

“He’s not my president!”

“When I fill up my taxi with gas, it’s enough money to pay for a five star meal at a fancy restaurant. But I leave still hungry!”

“It’s terrible.”

“It’s hard to be a Portuguese in Portugal.”

“I believe it.”

After we discussed other topics he said:

“I like your attitude. You live here trying to be part of things, speaking the language, that’s good.”

I paid him double in cash for the short fare, in honor of Worker’s Day. “Foi um prazer,” he said.

The Oriente train station is beautiful from a distance, but up close and personal it’s a dark, multi-story concrete space with many non-functioning elevators. I rolled up to the ground floor elevator by the taxi stand, and several Canadian ladies d’un certain âge (like me) were sputtering about where to go and how to get there, since the elevator wasn’t working. How did I know they were Canadian? They were all wearing Canadian flag pins and had flag tags on their bags. This would turn out to be a continuing theme.

I engaged the ladies in conversation, and suggested we try the elevator on the other side of the station. It turned out to be working, and I helped them figure out which platform they would need for their train going north. They were on a pricey tour which had bought their tickets but left them on their own to find their way. What kind of tour is that? I told them I have lived here for seven years and speak the language, but still find it confusing. “That makes us feel better” they said in unison.

The next task, of course, was for me to find my own way. Easy, right? Not so fast. There was no notice of my train to Loulé, the last stop before the final destination of Faro. It was a half hour before the 10:02 departure time, so this was the first inkling I might have a problem. Up on the usual platform, the electronic message board said “Next service two PM.”

I sat down on a bench in the sun, wrapping my trusty old silk scarf around my head like a 50s movie star as solar protection. The two Canadians sitting next to me (I knew they were Canadian because they were wearing pins and had flag tags) said hello and asked me if I had any idea about the train to Lagos. This was the same train as mine to Faro, but there is no direct train to Lagos, so I explained they would have to change trains at Tunes, about two hours into the journey. They looked at each other in recognition they might not have ended up in Lagos and thanked me profusely.

A young woman on the other side of the bench asked if we were Americans. She was Portuguese and spoke perfect English with an American accent. The Canadians quickly explained they were not Americans. I said I had to admit I was. “Oh wow, cool!” she said. Actually, it’s not very cool right now, I said. The Canadians agreed, and said they had been advised to signal their Canadianness while traveling, to avoid mistaken identities.

The young Portuguese woman proceeded to flawlessly apply makeup using the selfie side of her phone as we continued our conversation. We whiled away the time on topics ranging from US and Portugal politics, to movies, to how much things cost in various locales. A few minutes before ten AM the display sprang to life, “new time 10:57.” Grumbling all around. An older train model pulled in and stopped, empty and with the doors closed.

A Portuguese gentleman asked a passing train conductor which train it was. I didn’t hear the answer so I asked the gentleman, who said it was the train to Évora in the Alentejo. At some point another train pulled in behind. The doors to the purported Évora train opened and a few people boarded. The painted number on the carriage was peeling off, but it looked like my number eleven. I got on and asked someone where the train was headed. “Faro. I think.”

Whew! A flurry of activity as everyone got on the car and found their seats. This was a very funky train; the usual 10 AM to Faro is a gleaming new model that stops en route from Porto. Strange. Something was amiss, could it be due to the holiday? I would never know, as it turned out.

The train pulled out nearly an hour late, and I found myself sitting next to the Canadian platform couple and a full squad of other Canadians. After a lot of fun chit chat I slipped into a coma, only awakened by the conductor checking my ticket. I stumbled to the snack bar car, chugged an espresso and took a sparkling water back to my seat. I happily remembered a Costco protein bar I had stashed away and attacked it with gusto.

The conductor was announcing next stops as the train pulled into each station, via an announcement system as funky as the train itself. Mumble muffle, mumble muffle name of town. Screech!

The conductor came through about a half hour before we were to hit Tunes, and I asked him if he could give a bit more notice so my new-found friends could gather their stuff and disembark in time. He said of course. At this point we were two hours behind schedule, as the train lumbered along at less than the usual pace.

When we pulled into Tunes the platform was teeming with people, something I had never seen before. It’s not yet full tourist season, so this was puzzling. When the train stopped a massive crowd of people got on. Two Americans boarded our train and asked two nearby Canadians why they were sitting in their seats. The Canadians said they’d be getting off at Albufeira, the next stop. The Americans said, “you’re in our seats, this train is going to Lisbon.” Pandemonium all around, as people reached for their bags and started getting off and crossing the platform to the shiny new train on the other side.

At this point I was beyond dazed and confused, but I gathered my stuff and got off the train. The conductor was standing there and I said “I have to get this other train? Why was there no announcement?” Yes there was an announcement, minha senhora, he said. Just then the doors closed on the other train and he grabbed my bags, punching the button to open the door and lift them into the car for me.

“I’m sorry, I’m just so tired after 24 hours of travel from the US.”

“I believe it.”

“Thank you for your help.”

And with a whoosh, the train was off, and Canadians happily settled in their seats waved at me, all smiles.

I sat across the aisle from a young Portuguese man and woman.

I said to them, “Man, I don’t get all this bagunça. I didn’t hear an announcement, and I almost ended up going back to Lisbon!”

They laughed. “The only reason we knew to switch trains was because a worker told us.”

Three ladies in cleaning crew garb were sitting behind us, and one lady said, “It’s crazy, and there’s no excuse for it. But it’s all gonna be okay now.”

Just two stops later at Loulé Jasiel was there to pick me up, shaking his head at my arrival nearly three hours late. As my adrenaline surge ebbed, I thought about all the fun conversations I’d had with people because of the train debacle. And this morning (well okay, it was noon on Saturday, since I’d slept more than 12 hours) the New York Times daily newsletter theme was the benefits of talking with strangers.

I think that’s right. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

The signal that the revolution was at hand came through a song on the radio. First you hear the sound of marching feet, then the song begins. The key lyric is “o povo é que mais ordene”—the people are in charge (listen to a video of the song with English subtitles here. This is to me, dear reader, a haunting parallel to Corey Booker’s record-breaking resistance speech in the US Senate March 31 to April 1, 2025, where he proclaimed, “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”

Like most authoritarian regimes, António Salazar’s control of Portugal began quietly, and people didn’t realize they had lost all their freedoms until it was too late to stop it. And like most dictatorships, this one had several key ingredients, and I will review each of them:

· Creation of an “other” from which the people need protection

· Limiting educational attainment

· Keeping women subservient

· Censorship

· Deportation of citizens to foreign gulags

· Conquest and broadening the country’s territorial footprint

· Limiting the ability to vote

· Engendering widespread fear of the regime

· Creation of a parallel religion or cult that negates individual rights

António Salazar was an intellectual from humble origins who attained a professorship in economics before he was 30 years old, and rose politically to become prime minister in 1936, a position he held until 1968. He created what he called the Estado Novo, the New State, which followed the previous entity, the National Dictatorship (no really, that’s what it was called). He was in many ways an unlikely dictator: quiet, charming and unfailingly polite. He earned no riches from his role, being motivated by ideology and power. When he suffered a fall that caused an apparent (my clinical viewpoint) subdural hematoma and brain bleed in 1968 that left him disabled, he was replaced by Marcelo Caetano who was toppled in 1974.

Salazar was ardently anti-communist and positioned himself as such on the world stage. Portugal was a founding member of NATO, although in later years Salazar became less enthusiastic as other European countries and the US urged him to end Portuguese colonialism. But Angola, Mozambique and other colonies of Portugal were too important to its fervent nationalism. The dangers of communism were cited at every turn to justify repression and abuses of power.

Illiteracy was rampant, with the majority of the population unable to read and write. As Paulo Freire asserts in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, learning to read is an act of resistance; people who become literate are then able to participate in their own governance. Education is not about learning facts—it enables people to think critically, and critical thinking is anathema to rulers who require docile followers.

Women were bearers of children and keepers of the hearth. In the current parlance: tradwives. They were not allowed to vote. The husband was the king of his domain, and if “provoked to violence by a woman,” he was not held to account by the justice system. Women were generally not allowed to work, except in limited domains such as cooperative sewing groups. One of the only professions open to women was nursing, but nurses were prohibited by law from marrying.

Only newspapers sanctioned by the state were allowed to publish. Communication about the regime and, in later years about the ongoing wars in Angola and Mozambique were tightly controlled by the dictatorship. Members of the resistance showed remarkable ingenuity in publishing broadsides that provided an unvarnished view of events. Salazar’s administration carefully monitored purchases of paper and ink to ferret out insurgent journalists. Resistance workers learned to typeset, and wooden cases were built to muffle the clacking sounds of keys on a typewriter. People found to be publishing against the regime were arrested, tortured and imprisoned by PIDE, the Portuguese political police.

The Salazar dictatorship engaged in systemic torture and imprisonment of its enemies. Those accused of crimes against the state were submitted to sham trials, then sentenced to confinement in one of several prisons. My research for this piece was greatly enhanced by a visit to Museu do Aljube, a museum about the dictatorship located in a prison building dating back to the Moors. Another prison was in the ancient fortress at Peniche, north of Lisbon. Caxias was a separate prison for women.

When prison capacity in mainland Portugal proved inadequate, and the regime wished to perform acts of torture and murder with impunity, they began deporting their own citizens to overseas locations, including prisons in Mozambique and Angola. The most notorious facility was a concentration camp in Cape Verde named Tarrafal. Over the years, the PIDE refined and improved their methods. In 1957, a contingent of PIDE went to Virginia in the US to learn more effective torture techniques such as sensory deprivation from trainers with KUBARK—a code name for the CIA.

Before the 1974 Carnation Revolution, elections were limited to very few people, and only one group ruled. Salazar did not believe in political parties, and all members of the legislature were loyal to him. Women were not allowed to vote, even if there had been elections. Women achieved the right to vote in 1976.

A key method of maintaining control of the populace is engendering widespread fear. Anyone caught or even suspected of prohibited activities was subject to arrest, torture and removal. Neighbors fear each other when a spat can result in a retaliatory accusation to the political police. Censorship doesn’t have to be widely enforced when people self-censor because they are afraid for themselves and their families.

The Salazar regime promoted the motto: “God, Patriotism and Family.” The Catholic faith was important, but adherence to a belief in the state was the most important aspect of a proper way of life, where people held to the old ways, especially in the interior rural areas. Pride in Portugal and the Ultramar, overseas territories, was necessary and key to being a good citizen. Salazar wished to protect the humble people in rural areas from the scourge of modernity. Despite this, clandestine rural cooperatives formed important pockets of resistance.

Portugal’s colonial footprint was important to its nationalist ideology and rhetoric, and its territories in the early 20^th century included Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, East Timor and Goa in Southern India (Brazil became independent in 1822). The colonies were an extension of the state and had no self-determination. Portugal called itself a pluricontinental nation and promoted the idea that it was “not a small country” through the use of propaganda such as the map below, that was displayed in schools and other public spaces. Maintaining the colonies was so important that Portugal spent thirty percent of its budget on wars against colonial resisters from 1961 to 1974. All men of target age were eligible to serve and conscripted, resulting in nearly 9,000 deaths and 15,000 men with permanent injuries. Desertion was a problem for the regime as it tried to put down rebels in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Salazar’s successor Marcelo Caetano led Portugal “down an alley of no return” of unrepentant efforts to maintain the colonies, and unable to sustain his rule, he was brought down in 1974.

Members of the military who opposed the dictatorship organized and set a timetable for a bloodless coup on April 25, 1974. There were four deaths due to skirmishes, but they largely achieved their goal of non-violence. On the night of April 24^th they took over the state radio station and played the song, E Depois do Adeus (“and after goodbye”) to alert their coconspirators that the clock was ticking toward a takeover. Just after midnight they played Grândola, Vila Morena by José Afonso (also known as Zeca Afonso), which had been banned during the Salazar regime (see link to a recording above). This was the sign that the revolution was truly going forward. In the early morning hours, resistance soldiers took their places throughout Lisbon and notified Caetano that he needed to step down, which he did several hours later.

Celeste Caeiro worked in a restaurant that was celebrating its first anniversary on April 25^th, and the owners had bought a lot of red carnations to put on the tables. When she was sent home due to the military coup, she thought it was a shame to let all those carnations go to waste. So she took armloads of them and set out to walk home. Civilians had been told to stay inside but they couldn’t resist the excitement and poured into the streets. When Celeste Caeiro passed a group of soldiers, she handed each of them a carnation, which they put in the barrels of their guns. And so it was that Portugal’s anti-fascist coup of 1974 became known as the Carnation Revolution.

Portugal is now a peaceful parliamentary republic, and despite the many challenges it has faced in the 50 years since the Carnation Revolution, the people’s pride in their freedoms and belief in a collective destiny shine forth. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, ABC News came to Portugal to cover its record level of vaccination and adherence to mask use among the population. They interviewed an infectious disease scientist, and asked her about this achievement. The reporter observed that many Americans found vaccination requirements dictatorial. The scientist smiled and said quietly, “Here in Portugal we know what a real dictatorship looks like, because we lived under one not very long ago.”