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Sources

A Silent Tale Of Love And Learning From Brazil

Eliene and Israel
Eliene and Israel
Juliana Coissi

SÃO PAULO — Israel Afonso Lima, a janitor in this Brazilian city, suffers from Down syndrome. But that didn't stop him, at the age of 36, from deciding to go back to school to learn Brazilian sign language. And it's for a very good reason: to be able to communicate with his wife, 37-year-old Eliene de Brito, who is deaf and mute.

The couple has been together for six years. And despite their disabilities, they went through all the typical stages of flirtation and romance, until the day he finally asked her to marry him. And always in silence. "He used to gesture, but I could see that sometimes she just couldn't understand him," says Israel's mother.

Eliene has always been good at lip-reading and she could understand her husband most of the time when she really focused on his gesturing. But the only reply she could ever give to him was silence. Israel wanted that to change, so he found for a course in the Brazilian sign language, also called "Libras."

"It was the first time in my career as an interpreter and Libras teacher that I saw a husband wanting to learn sign language, especially one in such a special situation," explains Maria Sirlene Ribeiro Cavalcanti, Israel's teacher.

He only started the basic course in April, but he's already being praised by his wife for his improvement. "She corrects me and also teaches me some things," he says. "She's always saying that I've learned so much."

Israel and Eliene met through family members. They have a two-year-old daughter, Isabella. Men with Down syndrome are normally sterile, but there are extremely rare exceptions.

Israel's mother, Miriam, had never heard about Down syndrome until her son's birth. While he was growing up, the family desperately tried all they could so Israel could adapt to his surroundings and fit in, until they finally found a special school for him. He finished secondary school and now works as a cleaning person in a building for the National Institute of Social Security.

On weekends, Israel plays the clarinet in the Evangelist church he goes to with his wife. It's where Eliene feels the most at ease, also because there are plenty of Libras interpreters in the church who've been helping her pray and follow the mass.

Israel now continues to study on his own, with the help of his wife and smartphone apps.

But Israel is already dreaming of a new challenge: He now wants to learn pedagogics and become a Libras teacher. "I've learned," he says. "Now I want to teach other people." Together with Eliene, their most important new student is little Isabella.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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