Happy Birthday Parties in Bahia

It sounds a bit pathetic, but ninety percent of my social life consists of attending birthday parties. In fact, in the last two weeks I have gone to two. And both of the people whose birthday was being celebrated will have absolutely no recollection of these events because they are one and two respectively. This does not seem to bother most Brazilians, who go to great expense to give a party that really is just a pretext for getting family and friends together.

The difference in the way birthdays are perceived here as opposed to the English speaking world is straight away obvious from the songs.

Let’s face it, ‘Happy Birthday to you’ is hardly the most inspiring song around, though apparently the most played. What a lame song that is.

The Brazilian equivalent is a veritable poem, accompanied by clapping and impassioned exhortation.

Congratulations to you, on this special date
Much happiness, many years of life.

It starts off with a bang, to be alive is a great joy, reaching milestones something to celebrate. Then the Brazilian one outdistances the others for length.

It’s now the time to blow out the candles, let’s sing that little song
Congratulations to You, congratulations to you on this your birthday
That God gives you much health and peace, and the angels say amen
Congratulations to You, congratulations to you on this your birthday.
Boom, boom vatiboom ( a word nobody seems to know what it means).

The party last week was at a close friend of Claudia who she grew up with and whose family she knows well. We have been to many of their parties and are pretty typical of what goes on elsewhere.

The first essential component for my possible enjoyment of such a gathering is beer. If there is beer, then everything is much easier. There are parties, however, where there is beer but the waiters have been instructed to serve as little of it as possible.

This is the result of two reasons: either the guy is too poor to buy enough beer to satisfy everyone but doesn’t want to lose face; Or the guy giving the birthday party is cheap and controlling, two things which tend to go hand in hand.

The only people who give evening birthday parties without beer are evangelists and I don’t ever seem to be invited to their parties, thank God.

This party was none of that, given by a doctor married to Claudia’s beautiful friend. Someone analyzing this couple would immediately notice the great discrepancy in looks since many positive things the husband undoubtedly is, but calling him anything approaching physically attractive in any way would be a stretch. My father, a wise man, once said to me, “you can be bald or fat, but not bald and fat for women to still look at you. Or of course, you can be rich, then it doesn’t matter how you look.” This may have been an illustrative case. I knew from experience the beer would be plentiful, a great relief.

It was in what they call the ‘playground’ pronounced ‘plegrownji’ as the mezzanine levels of apartment buildings are known here which are equipped with areas to give parties. What was immediately noticeable was the incredible amount of balloons, all in shapes of princesses and other Disney figures.

“Eight thousand,’ my host told me after I’d commented on the brightness of the place.

The little girl for whom all the hoopla was being laid on ran around full of coca cola and sugar, being obliged to greet guests who kissed her and said how lovely she was before depositing their gifts in a massive box off to the corner. They’ll have to dig new landfills for the amount of presents she received.

There were tables full of finger food and others full of sweets and chocolates. Waiters paraded with trays of soft drinks, beer and whiskey and not just any whiskey, but Ballantines. Whiskey has real symbolic value here and being able to lavish it on many guests is proof of your prosperity.

But our host was not happy. The electrical system had collapsed under the weight of all that was being demanded of it which included sky lights, an air slide, a sound system, a film projector. It’s when things like this happen that you wonder why the hell you would ever want to give a party.

We sat down and savored the many snacks and liquids that passed our way through waiters whose efficiency on a scale of one to ten was five, which is good in Bahia. The idea of swift service seems alien to some people here, unfortunate especially when they work in the service industry. What’s the big deal if something comes two minutes later? They have a point.

The sound system spring to life and we were blessed with the kind of children’s music whose dreadfulness diplomats might kindly call grating. Untrained choirs of children’s voices should be banned, they are so painfully cheesy, in appalling bad taste and any other adjective or phrase to describe something that causes embarrassment and discomfort. We got the extra treat of having a DJ introduce each song and encourage us to dance. Pedro showed no desire at all to do that, we thanked Christ.

People like to get dressed up and were fastidious. I talked to a nephew of Claudia’s friend who had just returned from Winnipeg and a six month exchange program. It had got to minus forty degrees, the kind of temperature where your snot freezes and the outdoors hostile and dangerous. The balmy weather of Bahia must have seemed like another planet from there.

His sister, who just turned 19, had recently decided to have liposuction. I thought, unfairly perhaps, as I watched her down three glasses of coca cola and eat things that immediately make your stomach bloat, “maybe if you get off your fat ass, do some exercise and eat properly, you wouldn’t need to go through a surgical procedure.”

Rather than externalizing these snide contemplations, I kissed her on the cheek and shook hands with her boyfriend who looked like he’d much rather be somewhere else. He looked like he’d made a deal. ‘I’ll go to your family party, you put out later.’ Men are bad, and twenty year old men, in sexual terms, are one small step up from dogs.

My wife’s friend has a stream of relatives who all seem to show up at these family events. Warts are not a particularly attractive feature on any part of the body, and on the face, with a little hair sticking out from them, do not enhance the person’s appearance. In addition, all of the aunts had massive cheeks which spilled over into other areas of their face where they didn’t fit, invading, for instance, an area rightly belonging to the chin. This seemed to be a family trait among our friend’s aunts, who are a little scary to kiss on the cheek given what you have to avoid.

Meanwhile, our host was frantic. As we walked in there was a slide show being projected onto a big screen, mostly of the birthday girl with various relatives. There was background music to this moving photo display, the kind of music that Michael Jackson might sing to the kids who slept in his bed; or some Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that for some unfathomable reason attracts hordes of people who have made him a very wealthy and even more obnoxious man. This slide show had suddenly failed to work, a great deprivation for us, and our host was none too pleased.

“I’m going home to get the other copy of the presentation,” he declared to his wife, he thought it a poor idea. “I spent hours compiling this thing so I’m bloody well going to show it!”

You had to admire his tenacity if dread having to put through more photos displays which describing with the word ‘corny’ is far too mild given its cringe-making nature. So off he went to speed half way around the city to fetch the other copy. He finally returned and we were treated to more moving pictures of his daughter. It was a fine way to end the evening.

The only remarkable thing about the other birthday party, equally ornate and with beer flowing, was the complete racial diversity of the guests. The little girl is lily white with blond locks; this despite having a grandfather who is black. This is considered a success story in a Brazil that claims racism is minimal but which nonetheless from its very inception sought to ‘whitify’ the race. Our friends have done a great job, and if this girl ends up marrying a pure bred European, then all vestiges of the African continent in her off-spring will be wiped out. Congratulations, indeed.