CHAPTER 10
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
(Portuguese, Cabo Verdiano and Braziliano, as well as the usual rag-tag of Brits, Canadians and Americans.)
If the Portuguese didn't have such strong family and friends ties, the country would cease to exist.
It is the glue that keeps the place going.
As I mentioned, when I was working at McNaff's, the adverse conditions under which we all had to work made us stick together very tightly. It was a big family, with, unfortunately a very ugly father.
If you are going to date a Portuguese/a expect to come second in the relationship to their family.
Sunday is family lunch day, you may even expect to be dropped on Sunday, in the early part of your relationship, but once you seem to be a factor in their lives and future you may be expected to give up whatever you have planned and attend the Sunday lunch.
The same goes for any family matter. If anyone in the family gets pregnant, married, sick, dies - there will be the obligatory family get-together and support.
Actually I think it is terrific.
My family was never like that.
And family in Portugal means the whole family - grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, kids, dogs, snakes, the lot.
Any event can be held up for family reasons. Folk take days off work because their auntie was sick.
Funerals are obligatory. (Especially if for the deceased.)
Appointments at work, the bank, lawyers, in the municipality, anywhere, can be broken, because of family reasons.
In a way it is a pity the Monarchy no longer exists, because I am sure the whole country would be bonded together even tighter. (There is some support for the present pretender to the throne - the Duque de Bragança [a very nice man] and you can often see this monarchist support on car bumper-stickers.)
My intro to the whole family thing was through my cousin.
When I first arrived in Portugal I stayed at her apartment for two weeks and her Portuguese husband was very kind and treated me immediately like family. From then on I regularly received invites to attend family parties and lunches (but thankfully not funerals - I am not good at funerals, although when my neighbour of six years died I was there to support her daughter and grand-daughter) and I thank him for that.
Once I started going out with Isabel and was accepted into her family, that was it. I was automatically invited along to get-togethers at her parents, three aunts and even remote uncles and cousins.
I once sat down to a Christmas dinner with sixteen of them. I once sat down to her Uncle’s 80th birthday with nearly a hundred of them.
And, as I have said before they exist for the children. You can go to any family get-together and there are loads of kids. If it is an outdoor event the kids are specifically catered for. If you go to a restaurant with kids, the waiters nearly always make a point of treating them well.
I think if Britain had a better family/ relatives/ kids culture there would be less yobs on the street getting out of their heads and nicking cars for joyrides.
This mixing of the groups and the sexes extends to the schools - there are very few segregated schools (a complete contrast to the English public school, shirt-lifter system), so kids are all brought up together. They learn to deal with each other as male to male, female to female and male to female peers.
This is much healthier than the stiff, awkward Brit way of creating barriers between parents and their offspring.
The Portuguese even extended this principal of mixing to their 'Discoveries' back in the sixteenth century, when they were out exploring the little known worlds of South America, Africa, India and China. It was a matter of principle that they were to mix and inter-marry the locals....
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
(Portuguese, Cabo Verdiano and Braziliano, as well as the usual rag-tag of Brits, Canadians and Americans.)
If the Portuguese didn't have such strong family and friends ties, the country would cease to exist.
It is the glue that keeps the place going.
As I mentioned, when I was working at McNaff's, the adverse conditions under which we all had to work made us stick together very tightly. It was a big family, with, unfortunately a very ugly father.
If you are going to date a Portuguese/a expect to come second in the relationship to their family.
Sunday is family lunch day, you may even expect to be dropped on Sunday, in the early part of your relationship, but once you seem to be a factor in their lives and future you may be expected to give up whatever you have planned and attend the Sunday lunch.
The same goes for any family matter. If anyone in the family gets pregnant, married, sick, dies - there will be the obligatory family get-together and support.
Actually I think it is terrific.
My family was never like that.
And family in Portugal means the whole family - grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, kids, dogs, snakes, the lot.
Any event can be held up for family reasons. Folk take days off work because their auntie was sick.
Funerals are obligatory. (Especially if for the deceased.)
Appointments at work, the bank, lawyers, in the municipality, anywhere, can be broken, because of family reasons.
In a way it is a pity the Monarchy no longer exists, because I am sure the whole country would be bonded together even tighter. (There is some support for the present pretender to the throne - the Duque de Bragança [a very nice man] and you can often see this monarchist support on car bumper-stickers.)
My intro to the whole family thing was through my cousin.
When I first arrived in Portugal I stayed at her apartment for two weeks and her Portuguese husband was very kind and treated me immediately like family. From then on I regularly received invites to attend family parties and lunches (but thankfully not funerals - I am not good at funerals, although when my neighbour of six years died I was there to support her daughter and grand-daughter) and I thank him for that.
Once I started going out with Isabel and was accepted into her family, that was it. I was automatically invited along to get-togethers at her parents, three aunts and even remote uncles and cousins.
I once sat down to a Christmas dinner with sixteen of them. I once sat down to her Uncle’s 80th birthday with nearly a hundred of them.
And, as I have said before they exist for the children. You can go to any family get-together and there are loads of kids. If it is an outdoor event the kids are specifically catered for. If you go to a restaurant with kids, the waiters nearly always make a point of treating them well.
I think if Britain had a better family/ relatives/ kids culture there would be less yobs on the street getting out of their heads and nicking cars for joyrides.
This mixing of the groups and the sexes extends to the schools - there are very few segregated schools (a complete contrast to the English public school, shirt-lifter system), so kids are all brought up together. They learn to deal with each other as male to male, female to female and male to female peers.
This is much healthier than the stiff, awkward Brit way of creating barriers between parents and their offspring.
The Portuguese even extended this principal of mixing to their 'Discoveries' back in the sixteenth century, when they were out exploring the little known worlds of South America, Africa, India and China. It was a matter of principle that they were to mix and inter-marry the locals....
posted by face to face at 18:16
0 comments
