"I'm ashamed to admit that, without realising it, the centre of my universe was pinned to the rolling green hills of England, London's South Bank and Broadway Market. Until I met my girlfriend. Now it hovers somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between the UK and Brazil. My world is expanding. With red-stained fingers, I place a little black fruit into Jamille's mouth. "This is a blackberry," I tell her. "Taste it.""
"We spend our first summer together in the Cornish landscape I grew up in, and I list the species as we explore - the ragged hazel leaves, gnarled oak branches, swollen sloes and pink lady apples from my mum's orchard. Jamille sucks the blackberry with the open-eyed excitement of a child trying something for the first time. I cannot help but feel charmed that something so familiar to me feels so exciting to her;"
"When I first arrive in Belém, I find baskets of psychedelic-purple berries from the açaí palm being unloaded from river boats at dusk at Ver-o-Peso port and market, harvested by riverine communities from plantations on nearby Ilha do Combu. These berries are transformed into a yoghurt-like consistency, eaten in bowls (cuias) with crunchy tapioca pieces and a teaspoon of sugar. I lick creamy cupuaçu-fruit ice cream from the iconic local parlour Cairu at Belém's riverside docks."
An English woman expands her world through a relationship with a Brazilian partner, moving emotional center between the UK and Brazil. Summers in Cornwall introduce shared foraging and orchard fruits; trips to Belém expose her to açaí, cupuaçu ice cream and jambu, a numbing yellow herb used in tacacá. Ver-o-Peso port and Ilha do Combu markets brim with riverboat trade and local produce transformed into bowls and snacks. Everyday exchanges with family and market vendors foreground sensory surprises and mutual teaching about familiar and unfamiliar foods. The relationship becomes a bridge across landscapes, tastes and cultures.
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