The Definition of Hardship

Yesterday my office hosted three women from Washington, D.C. in Brazil to assess the hardship differential and cost of living allowance I receive in my paycheck for living and working in Brazil as opposed to the United States.

I had no interest in attending a meeting I knew would devolve into a gripe session. Elise and I like Brazil. We’re happy here. We don’t feel put upon or that we are suffering any undue hardship. We quickly discovered many things, including: that hardship means different things to different people, that there is a line between a situation that is placed upon you by undue hardship and a situation that is placed upon you by your own personal choice and that, even in 2011, some people haven’t heard of ordering stuff cheaper on the Internet and having it shipped to you for free.

I’m not trying to lose money. If these three women in coming to visit Brasilia deem that we are living in circumstances of extreme hardship and want to compensate me monetarily for it, who am I to say no? The way I figure it, we just pulled a fast one on them.

Everyone in the room got a turn to say how living in Brazil has caused them some form of hardship. Many were legitimate. A few were not. Some were comical. A single guy raised his hand and stated that it was a hardship that there was nothing to do in Brasilia and that when he went out to a club he had to wait in line and pay a 40 reais cover charge. Hardship or personal choice? Maybe get a hobby? I don’t know. Rent some movies on Netflix? Elise’s mom used to tell her, “Only boring people get bored.” She now uses the same line on Sam.

Is it expensive to live in Brazil? Without a doubt. According to The Economist magazine’s Big Mac Index, Brazil has the world’s 4th most expensive Big Mac, the equivalent of $9.50. A large plain cheese pizza at Pizza Hut is $35. I couldn’t tell you what it is in the States. But we can also walk out into the median of the road in front of our house and knock mangos from the mango trees there. Those are free. Even though it entails throwing rocks back and forth in the median of a busy commuter thoroughfare.

But we don’t have to have a maid, a gardener, go to Pilates, eat Big Macs or buy $500Nikes on the local economy. Those are all personal choices. Not hardships.

The meeting did help me to understand a facet of the hardship differential that I hadn’t thought much about. Brasilia can be isolating. I had always thought of this in the most literal way, physical and geographical isolation. Though it is a large city, it sits more or less out in the middle of nowhere. Imagine if in 1950, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that he was moving the capital of the United States from Washington, D.C. to Lincoln, Nebraska. Elise has called it Nebrasilia. You get the picture.

But much more so than physical or geographic isolation, one experiences social isolation. I never experienced this, because I work, come home, play with my kids and spend time with my wife. That is pretty much the extent of my social sphere. But it can be crippling for someone who doesn’t have a car or speak Portuguese. To not be able to leave the house or not have the ability to communicate with anyone is a hardship. I still haven’t figured out how to order coffee here. Every time I do, whether I ask for cappuccino, espresson, café culado, café italiano, it comes differently. It’s like roulette or the lottery, a complete game of chance. Elise and I are Starbucks fans. There are no Starbucks in Brasilia. Now, THAT’S hardship.