Essay contest: Celebrating Brazilian culture

Students awarded prizes by ambassador.

ISLAMABAD:

Izzah Shahid, a senior year student at the Fatima Jinnah Women University, had little exposure to the Brazilian culture before she participated in an essay-writing contest on “Brazil: land of diversity”.

She was one of the top three winners of the contest, who were shortlisted from over 30 contestants and awarded cash prizes at a ceremony hosted by the Brazilian embassy on Thursday.

Titled, “Colours of Brazil,” her essay won her the first prize at the contest. “I knew a little about Brazil since watching the movie Rio and from other popular cultural references. But researching and writing about it was an eye-opener for me,” said Shahid, adding that previously she had not known that like Pakistan, Brazil was also a melting pot of various civilisations and housed diverse communities such as Afro-Brazilians, Europeans and Asians.

Shahid, who is pursuing language and literature at the varsity, said she enjoyed reading the history and culture of Brazil. “There is so much colour and festivity in Brazil. I covered various aspects of their culture including dance, music, literature, history, architecture and art and presented them in a combination,” she added.

Ambassador of Brazil Alfredo Leoni awarded the cash prizes. He said Shahid’s essay, titled “Colours of Brazil” was a demonstration of how well Pakistanis can understand the culture of his country.

“This also shows the importance of reaching out to students and the young generation in order to bring our countries closer together,” he added.

Aimen Wajid, who bagged the second prize, is a student of pharmacy at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU). “It was an amazing experience I must say. I’m very grateful to the embassy for giving us this opportunity. I must say that such initiatives will help bridge the gaps between the two countries since a lot of Pakistanis don’t know about the Brazilian culture so this might also bring these two cultures together,” she said.

Wajid dubbed essay writing a storytelling experience. She said that her father was sent to Germany on deputation where she met a Brazilian couple and she got to know Brazil through their eyes and was inspired by their experiences. “My essay revolved around samba and its transformation to what it is now in the modern day. So basically, my goal was to highlight samba as one of the diversified cultural aspects of Brazil which is kind of like unity in diversity itself,” she said.

Rashid Hussain, a student of MBA at QAU, said, “I didn’t know anything about Brazil and the research helped me understand how the Brazilians coexist as one community. They work on promoting their language so tourists can better understand their culture and identify with it in some way.” He particularly liked the carnivals and how Brazilians celebrate various festivals.

An initiative of the embassy, the essay-writing contest coincided with the opening of the Brazilian Corner at the library of QAU. According to the embassy, the initiative was aimed at stimulating academic research about Brazil in Pakistani universities in the context of growing efforts by the South American country on educational cooperation with Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2014.