A Sack of Beans

After twenty-nine years of pretending to be a Republic, in 1989 Brazil democratically elected their first president, Fernando Collor de Mello. The people went out on the street asking to vote for their own president instead of simply accepting what the military wanted. That year, the country went through a serious economic crisis with hyperinflation around 84% per month. Every day, you needed to bring an extra-money to go shopping because the prices of products had increased. Collor took a drastic measure to reduce that huge inflation by making an economic plan. It meant all accounts over $1000.00 were ‘frozen’ at the bank for eighteen months. Stores, industries, medical clinics, and each person who had money to manage his own economy during the year could not use his capital to survive. As a result, several places had their doors closed, and the company where my father worked failed. My father lost his job, and it brought several consequences to my family.

At that time, my father was forty-two years old, which meant that he was too old to start a new career again, and he probably would not find a new job. He sent his résumé all over the country. However, there was a huge number of people looking for jobs, even young people with more skills than my father. He heard about industries in Australia that were taking men under the age forty-five years old, and it seemed like his big opportunity. On the contrary, my mother didn’t agree with him because she wouldn’t like to leave all her family in Brazil to risk a new life on the other side of the world. The last possibility for my father was to open a car repair shop to survive and to support our family. He was a mechanic, but he didn’t have money to afford his own business. The problem was no one had money to lend him. He had to borrow small amounts of money from each person he knew, and my house became his garage until he could get a small place to work.

It was a time that we had money for nothing. My father bought a two hundred pound sack of beans to be sure we would have something to eat in the next months, and meat became a specialty food reserved for Sundays. For my part, I started applying for math competitions to win scholarships, which gave me the possibility of having a good education. In addition, I stopped going to birthday parties because I couldn’t afford to buy gifts for my friends. My parents were afraid for my future thinking that they couldn’t pay for my college. Therefore, years later when I was fourteen years old, I left high school, got a job during the day, and moved to a technical course with evening classes. All these things happened because our president didn’t evaluate what having a jobless parent meant.

Moving to a technical school compelled me to grow fast. At my new school, almost all my classmates were older than me, and they could do things that I still didn’t have permission to do. However, as a normal teenager, I couldn’t avoid participating in what was happening around me. As a result, I had to convince my father that I was big enough to hang out with friends, to drink, and to have a boyfriend. I left behind good values and good friends to look like an adult that I was not. Having evening classes let me get a job during the day, so I could to give my contribution to my family’s economy. I had been swimming since I was five years old, so I was able to get a position as an assistant coach at the park near my house. My father stayed at home, and I went to work.

After two years of drastic changes and several corruption accusations, Fernando Collor de Mello was forced to leave the presidency. The National Union of Students mobilized students from all over the country to have a big demonstration on the streets asking for the president’s impeachment, and the National Court took away Collor’s political rights for eight years. Nevertheless, Brazilian people seem to have a very short memory because fourteen years later they elected Collor as senator of Alagoas state. Even if the country had gone through serious economic problems, my father was able to pay his taxes during that period. Besides, he got his retirement working all those years in his tiny garage. Also, I worked hard to get my diploma as a pharmacist, getting numerous scholarships and spending many nights awake. The economic readjustment in my country also changed my personal life. However, the difficulties that we passed through in those years helped us to be stronger and more united as a family, and I understood that our love is more important than having extra money in our "frozen" account.