Everything
was ready in Campinas, São Paulo for
a great meeting of fraternity and great happiness.
Over three hundred inscriptions had already
arrived from all over Brazil and curiously enough,
from Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Colombia.
Just from Bahia state alone, came over forty,
mainly from the capital city Salvador. From
Montes claros, almost Bahia, only half a dozen.
For the first time in history, the Montes Claros
Esperanto-Klubo came to a Brazilian Esperanto
Congress, even though the last one had also
happened in our state of Minas Gerais, in the
historical city of Ouro Preto. Too many people,
principally for a cold morning in July, when
more than one hundred and fifty speakers of
this international language filled in the last
inscriptions: teachers, students, writers, artists,
young and old, conventionally prohibited to
speak in any other language besides the one
created by the genius of Zamenhof.
I
didn’t yet know the professor Elvira Fontes,
general secretary of the convention. I had only
spoken to her by telephone a few times and,
as strange as it seems, a greater admiration
and friendship could not be found in face of
the simpatia and goodness that she always let
bloom. Senior school master, writer, dictionary
composer, Madame Elvira Fontes has the charisma
of the teacher Marina Lorenzo Fernandez, with
the same physical size and spiritual richness.
What an enchanting woman! On the male side,
the professor Walter Francini, also from Sao
Paulo, this looking very much like our “Ducho”,
person and voice, calm and good. He is such
a good companion it is as if we were in constant
companionship, selling magazines, newspapers
and books in the bookshop Thais. Both of them,
Madame Elvira and Francini of coursee, gave
that important meeting an refreshing atmosphere
of our old Montes Claros, Robust heart of the
hinterland of Francisco Sa!
On
the way to Campinas, also in Sao Paulo, taking
advantage of the new bus we had taken, a Gontijo,
the teacher Antonio Felix, Cynthia, Juliano
and I, of course, has already made our first
investidas, trying to anticipate these four
wonderful days in the world of Esperanto. Felix
and I, more experienced, almost veterans, already
knew what was going to happen. Carlos Jose,
and the others whom had traveled separately,
would by only beginners, with the anticipated
natural curiosity, proper to new beginners.
Fear of not understanding? Fear of being put
to the test? Completely normal…
It
was with tremendous satisfaction that I reencountered
my old friend Saraiva, Adolf Miranda, the master
Nelson Perreira, Dorini, Xaxa Arruda, Paiva,
the Columbian Aragon, Eleusa Varanda,Nina and
Dayse, marvelous people that live distant from
each other but getting together at least once
a year, when the comprisso yearly congress date
comes near. How gratifying it was to be side
by side witht the important doktoro Victor Sadler,
the director of the Universala Asocio, who was
touring Brazil at the Esperanto village Bona
Espero, in the state of Goias. Sadler, one of
the most notable professors that I had ever
known, had lived and breather Esperanto for
twenty years, day and night, thoughts and dreams
in the neutral universal language. It was as
if Esperanto was his mother tongue, naturally
native. In England, in Holland, in New York,
in Beijing or Brasilia, Sadler is the eternal
esperantalist.
The
wole convention went quite smoothly, pleasant
and invigorating, the most live example of fraternity
and linguistic simplicity. We were all one family,
united in Esperanto, level of culture or age
completely unimportant. Next year, in Belo Horizonte,
Minas Gerais, we will be reunited once more
for four more wonderful days of Esperanto, the
language of the future. For four sublime days
our state capital will be la urbo de la espero,
the city of hope.
