So, how do you like living in Portugal?

When people ask, "So, how do you like living in Portugal?" I don't know what to say. Are they asking themselves if they could make such a big change? Are they curious about the specifics of life here?  Are they inquiring about our particular challenges, struggles, and well-being. How much detail would they want, anyway?

These inquiries prompt me to reflect on our life as “foreigners” in all three communities where Tim and I lived in the States. We brought some learnings with us to Portugal from those experiences.

Tim and I met on the Navajo Nation teaching in an isolated elementary school in a pine forest at 6000 feet in elevation. The school had no playground, few teaching supplies, and no phone. Tim and I had no car, no furniture, no phone, and often no heat. The nearest store was 30 miles away.  Life was not comfortable, but living among very traditional Native Americans gave us many enduring gifts.

The slow pace of life brought us a simple peace. The Buddhist adage to “chop wood, carry water” was the day-to-day reality of our Navajo neighbors. Like them, we hauled water and cleaned the floor with a broom. We cut firewood with a hand-pulled bow saw. Every cut took a long time.

We found joy and contentment in simplicity and direct contact with nature. Although we don’t chop firewood these days, our daily lives are simple here in Portugal, and that brings us a similar kind of peace.  

Teaching in all-Navajo classrooms, we began to see behaviors though a new eyes. Common educational practices in “white” schools, such as motivation through competition, rewards, praise and grades, simply did not work. Collaboration and cooperation were the norm. The more adept students helped the others, writing out their worksheets for them and giving other students the answers to questions.  In our former life, this helpfulness would have been labeled as “cheating.”  We celebrating their helpfulness.

We saw how Native families bonded in one-room hogans. At school, siblings and cousins were loyal and affectionate, looking out for one another. Cooperation and collaboration had been sustaining Native peoples forever, and cooperation for the good of others became one of our own guiding principles.

Living in two worlds

With three more years teaching on the Hualapai Reservation, we continued to develop an understanding of the pressures that Native Americans experience living in two worlds.  Their earth-honoring traditional culture just does not fit well in the white colonizer world of acquisition and dominance. We had to revise our inherited assumptions and to respect how humans have built diverse cultures and communities, each with value and purpose. Our European-American heritage is not better, just different.

Living Weird

When we moved to Utah in 1980, we camped on our land for over a year while building the basic structure of our adobe house. We were "weird."

Our two little kids toddled in the sage brush and quickly learned to avoid the prickly pear cactus and rattlesnakes. We learned to recognize that our Mormon neighbors, “the peculiar people,” (not pejorative) also had culture with strengths worthy of our respect and appreciation.

We enjoyed four decades living in the dramatic Utah geography among treasured friends. Our hearts are full of treasured memories of hikes, river trips, gatherings, and quiet conversations with wonderful people.

In 2022 we leapt off another cliff. After 46 years together, we yearned to return to our early simple roots. We gave away almost all our possessions and sold our hand-built home. We left our familiar world behind and moved to Portugal. We were probably over-confident that we could apply our former experiences as “foreigners” to adapt to the challenges and surprises of our new situation. It has not been easy.

Next week I will write about some of the struggles of such a huge change and how we are moving forward. 

Meanwhile, what are your questions for us?  Please write your questions in the comments section.  Or write privately to either of us by email.

“We all are just walking each other home.”

-- Ram Dass