jagozes abroad 11/10/2013

Paulo Pereira Canudo

Text: Hugo Rocha Pereira | Photo: Archive/Paulo Pereira Canudo | Translator: João Diogo Rocha Pereira

Paulo Pereira Canudo aka “PPD”

I was born in Ericeira – at a time when you were born at your house – at 6 Rua de Baixo. I lived in Ericeira until I was six, when due to my father’s job we were obliged to move to Ajuda and then to Linda-a-Velha, but I always kept a connection to Ericeira through weekends and holidays.

The first time that I left Portugal to work I ended up in Australia alone. I had never travelled by plane and it was quite the adventure. I had just finished my army service, I was twenty-one. I left for the adventure and for the desire to get to know the world. I got a job working in a cruise ship named “Pacific Princess”, known at the time as the love boat as some parts of that TV series were filmed aboard. I worked for this company for eight years, I would go on holidays for two or three months in Ericeira and then I would return there. I made a lot of money there, but I also spent it all. I got to know almost every part of the world. I didn’t miss any chance, when we had some breaks, to travel inside the countries, as I did in China in the 80’s, still during the Maoist regime. I recall being in Tiananmen Square, in the centre of Beijing, with lots of bull carts and thousands of bikes leaning against each other. It was quite confusing how they were able to tell their bicycles apart from all the others.

After I left the cruise ships, I took a job in Turkmenistan, at a Portuguese company named Catermar, where one of its directors was a fellow “Ericeirense” [António Mano Silva, current president of Grupo Desportivo União Ericeirense, Ericeira’s football club] who invited me to work with them as a field supervisor in catering. I was in charge of controlling all of the supplies of a hotel that the company ran in Ashkabad, the capital city, and of three natural gas fields scattered across the desert and the Caspian Sea, as well as recruiting local people to work in the kitchens and the cleaning of the fields. This company no longer exists, but at the time was one of the world’s largest in oil platforms’ catering. Through this company I also worked in Aberdeen, Scotland, in Douala, Cameroon, and in Siberia.

I came to the United Kingdom five years ago with two suitcases in hand and looking for a job, as my life was turned upside down due to personal misjudgements and also to the adverse conjecture in Portugal and Ericeira’s unfavourable tourism outlook. I lived for about a year in the Brighton area in rented rooms and I worked for around a year and a half at an Italian restaurants company. I was a waiter for two months and then I became the manager of one of the restaurants for a further year and then I decided to move to London, where an opportunity emerged to work as a waiter in on of London’s most renowned restaurants – Chelsea’s La Famiglia – where I still work today. What I enjoy the most in England is the absence of the corruption we have in Portugal. The downside is the winter’s cold weather, which is too long here. I will never get used to this because of the cold.

I still return to Ericeira on a regular basis and the last time I was there took place this March. I always take spaced holidays, every six months, and every year I go once to Ericeira and once to Rio de Janeiro. The first thing I do when I return to Ericeira is to visit the little family I have left – my daughter and my cousins – and then I try to eat a lot of fresh fish, which you can’t find much here in the UK, and to have a cultural provision for the upcoming year: buying books, going to the theatre, and so on.

I miss the physical contact with the closest friends, but I don’t miss many more things for being far away from Ericeira. Now with technology the whole world is much closer. I live abroad but I still live in Portugal. I have Portuguese cable TV and before a workday I drink decaf coffee and eat a “pastel de nata”, right next to my workplace. I am basically in Portugal. Oh! I was forgetting…I truly miss the contact with the sea…Ericeira’s sea breeze smell is unique!!! Honestly, there isn’t much will to return to Portugal and I don’t consider returning in coming times due to the country’s outlook and the way society works there. But I would like to come back, and die in my homeland next to my people.

The “Figuras Castiças da Ericeira” [rough translation: Ericeira’s Remarkable Jolly People] Facebook group I created could have been made in any part of the world by anyone like myself, who lived and listened to many of the picturesque stories that took place there by iconic and sui generis figures of a community with its very own culture. With Ericeira having so many migratory waves of people coming from other places to live in it, the village’s charisma is slowly fading away, and its youth is losing it as well. I created the page with the goal of ‘passing the torch’ of that experience and history to the young generations. If we don’t tell the kids who “Papum” was and what he did, who Raúl Duarte Gomes was, how you lived back then, who will? All of that is important and we risk losing those memories in two decades.

Do you wish to leave any message for your Ericeira cousins? 
Wait for me as I’ll be back!