The Semiotics of Olyssippo

Before coming to Lisboa (formerly Olyssippo, derived from Ulysses, possibly, who transiently settled it on his way home after the Trojan War) I spent the weekend in New Orleans with many colleagues and students from medical schools from around the USA and even some students from Holland, Australia and India.

Our reason for being in New Orleans was not the usual, i.e., great food, music and ambience -in a complicated city that remains superficially simple to most tourists.-

We were there to participate in the KTGF Annual Medical Student Conference hosted by Tulane this year, which, noblesse oblige, also offered great food, music and ambience but with generous servings of connectivity to: our profession (current for the faculty, possible for our students), ourselves and each other.

Tulane Child Psychiatry is known among other things for the body of work built by Charles Zeanah and his team. I've read the seminal papers produced by that group and yet, I had never heard Charles talk before this Saturday.

So here I was about to embark on my first visit to one lusophonic country and listening to Dr. Zeanah... I was vividly reminded of my fist visit to another lusophonic country, Brazil a few decades ago.

You see, Dr. Zeanah has studied outcomes in orphans exposed to different environmental deprivations or conditions more than anyone in the world of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. So he is, in our field, the biggest champion of at least 8 million children in the world who live in orphanages and  the staggering estimated 153 million of children who are orphans in the world today.. Foster care has its many challenges and improvement "opportunities". However,  its outcomes are on average much better than orphanage rearing.  Foster Care is also cheaper.

Those are many of the reasons for which Charles Zeanah and his team are now engaged in a new effort to help a whole district in Brazil to usher in Foster Care; usher in good quality Foster Care additionally for the enormous number of kids living in orphanages in Brazil.

You see ( sorry, I repeat myself) I know (some of) those Brazilian orphans. At least I know them across time and space. When I was nine years old I went to Brazil for the first of two times in my life and fell in love with Samba, Feijoada, the larger than life plants and the beautiful language and people.  I also saw Favelas and rows of children with Bakers' hats sleeping outside in the street of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.  

I was heart broken they were: already working at my age, 
not going to school and had no homes.  

I was at a good age for having imaginary friends. 

So I brought the orphans I had seen back to France. 
For one year, until puberty started more or less, 

I shared my house with my 20 or so imaginary friends.  
Funnily, this contributed to my Portuguese 

(seeded that first summer month in Brazil) 
not entirely vanishing. 
I was nine. I was fairly concrete.

 I spoke Portuguese to my Brazilian friends.

Anne et François Glowinski, Lisbon, Jan 20

As Dr. Zeanah was delivering his keynote address 
this Saturday, I realized that those orphans 

had never left me. 
They have continued to inspire 
and guide my work always. 

Another story not for today and probably not for ever
 is that I tried to explain that

to Charles Zeanah after he finished talking
 and burst into tears embarrassingly: 

we are colleagues but not close friends....
He was very kind but I felt sorry that 
I had inundated him. 

Moving on from that chapter.

In any case, on Monday I arrived 
(with my internal orphans) in Lisbon. 

Travel has always been one of my greatest teacher:

it exposes and sometimes remedies 
enormous blind spots and misconceptions 

I have and don't even know 

I have (the nature of the beast.)

 Like anyone with a human mind, I go around

classifying the world with the meager knowledge 
I have, especially for things far and never experienced. 

 I might even be a little worse

than others as an immersive learner: 
I need to swim in things for learning to be catalyzed. 

What I am learning now: many of the things I adored 
about Brazil, which I had attributed to the warm 

climate (again, nine years old can be smart but usually

lack perspective) originate at least partially here 
in Portugal: the Azules and patterns, the love of music, 

the expressiveness.  

Also Lisboa has a the sibling bridge 
to the Golden Gate in San Francisco. 

And the Jose Saramago Foundation which like
 the KTGF Foundation is dedicated essentially 

to the betterment of humanity if 

through different routes, 
that Foundation is a step from my hotel, 

to the right. 

So you could say my internal orphans and I 
are happy to be home.

Love,

Anne