Learning Through Local Contact

Learning and gaining knowledge from contacts with a local community seemed to be a highly appreciated element for my informants. A learning outcome in this regard focused on the ability for individuals to see ones own life in a new light when faced with how other people lived. The expected experience was viewed as something different than travelling on a regular holiday as the typical tourist. Lise described a wish she had had for her son to experience something out of the ordinary that could contribute an element of learning for him, through direct contact with other ways of life. To be able to see how the locals live, she pointed to the importance of not staying within the four walls of the apartment complex, where it was simply the well-known Norwegian lifestyle that was observable. She wanted her son, Kristian, to

experience the culture of Brazil that was not possible to experience when staying inside the condominium. When I asked her about why this was so important to her, she explained it in the following manner:

Because it is something with the fact that Brazil is a poor country, and we want to experience some of the Brazilian. We’re not here just to sit with Norwegians [...] it is important that Kristian get to experience the Brazilian people [...] gain a knowledge of how people are doing down here. ‘Cause he won’t hurt by knowing and seeing that there are a lot of poor kids here [...]

and I think it is important that he grows upon that and gain an understanding for how some people are doing.^c

Since it was important for Lise that her son Kristian experience the local culture, activities were intentionally built in order for him to gain certain knowledge of another way of life. She wanted to provide him with a cultural education by letting him experience something besides the ordinary tourist context. In that way, she believed that he would be able to grow on that knowledge as a human being. Meeting kids of the same age, without the opportunities that he had been given, would hopefully make him appreciate things more in his everyday life. Using that as a source of education, Lise believed that she could provide him with a comprehension and sympathy for other ways of life. This was all a part of many of the owners I talked with called “gaining perspective” or “changing perspective”.

Being able to see how a Brazilian community lived without a lot of the basic elements that we as Norwegians depend upon, was an important element of change for Fredrik, a man I interviewed during the pre-study. It had made him change his outlook on life when returning from his apartment in Brazil. To gain a different perspective of life, he said, was one of the things that they had talked a lot about when in Brazil. To him, the apartment he had purchased in Brazil was originally intended as an economic investment, but that changed once he encountered the local community in Sagi. He explained how his experience with life in Brazil had provoked something resembling a shock when he realized that he had to adjust his high level of activity and change his behaviour in order to approach the society in Sagi. Described by some of his

friends as a man who placed material objects fairly high²⁴, he had undergone a change of perspective in Brazil. He became aware of this when he opened the door to his new, highly equipped and furnished home in Norway and realized that he had to think through his priorities in life and ask if they were primarily materially based. Thus, he came to see his life in Norway in a new light. As Silje described:

[W]e could perhaps learn even more from them in appreciating life. [...] It’s so good for us. Seeing how other people are doing. [...] I don’t know if I do any less of the things I did before, it’s just that you get another mode of thinking perhaps and that’s good. That you actually don’t ignore it. But you have to take some of the reflections back home.^d

Silje was under the impression that purchasing vacation property in Brazil could make a difference in the everyday lives of the second home owners. To appreciate and learn from other ways of life in this manner may provide the individual with a change of perspective that could further influence their everyday life in Norway. For Silje, Lise and Fredrik, and many of the other second home owners, it was as a learning process that was believed to spur a change, if not by particular actions then at least in their mindsets.

As a motivation for second home ownership in a country so far away, the idea that it is possible to learn from other ways of life has contributed to

establishing Brazil as a special location for a second home. Fredrik pointed to an important lesson to learn, but nonetheless postulated that it did not come with a wish to permanently reside in Sagi. His change in experiencing everyday life there was something that provided a new perspective for him, and which he saw to be of relevance when brought home to Norway. That was also what separated the ownership in Brazil from those in e.g. European

countries. Being able to gain a certain outcome by purchasing and,

furthermore, visiting the second home was therefore not only about escaping

24 I talked to two of his friends before and after his interview, both of whom commented on his change of mind after the Brazil visit, having both described him as a materialistic person.

everyday life and the typical tourism of “Syden”. It was also about the benefits a vacation property might have when it contributes to change; change in own mindset and in the arrangements of their everyday life.

2.1.5 Long-Term Perspectives and The Elusive Category of