(Joseph Capp is a long time Pacific Beach resident who has lived part-time in Rio de Janeiro for the last five years. He will be sharing news and updates from Rio with sdnews.com readers through the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Have a question? Write him at [email protected]. He will be happy to reply.) “Grande” means big in both Spanish and Portuguese. In Portuguese, if you add “ão” to the end, it makes the word larger. Hence, “Grandão” is the “larger” version of big. Grandão means huge. And, throughout Brazil, Jerome Meyinsse is known as Grandão.
Meyinsse is an American-born basketball player in the Novo Basquete Brasil (NBB), Brazil’s premier professional men’s basketball league. He is the starting center for the storied franchise, Flamengo, a club that has a long history of winning. Its soccer team, year in and year out, is one of the best in the country. Its basketball team, led by Meyinsse the last two seasons, is looking to win its fourth straight championship this year.
Last Saturday, Meyinsse ventured out to Complexo Do Alemão, one of the worst and most dangerous favelas in Rio de Janiero. Both drug traffickers and shady cops control the streets. Local residents, living in unpermitted, makeshift homes, with no windows and many with dirt floors, bad plumbing and faulty utilities, understand that the rules to living there are different. Stray too far one way or the other and face retribution. Outsiders are cautioned to avoid the area because, well, outsiders are not welcome. The average person on the street in Complexo Do Alemão can be robbed, beaten and/or killed by doing virtually nothing to provoke the local hoodlums. Nonetheless, with little regard for his safety, Meyinsse had volunteered to bring some Christmas joy to the children of this favela. To give happiness to the child who has little reason to smile. He spent the afternoon playing Santa (or Santão) with the several hundred children who came out with their mothers or older siblings to eat a good meal and have their photos taken with the biggest Santa around!
One item worth noting: the fathers of these children were conspicuously absent, something extremely common in all the favelas of Rio. When one young child was asked, “where is your father?” She pointed over to her mom and said, “There is my mother, there is my father and there is my world.” It was as sad as it was beautiful.
The children were bundles of energy. They were playing, running and all smiles, but most of all they were impatient. The all wanted to sit with Santão. One by one, they would get to meet him and have their photo taken and receive their gift. After which, they would all run over, eager to see the photos that we just had taken. As the day wore on, Meyinsse never lost his look. There he was, Grandão, behind a Santa costume three sizes too small, full of contentment, full of inner peace and happiness that only comes when one does something simply to help others.
Meyinsse, who turned 27 on Dec. 18, played basketball at McKinley High in Baton Rouge, La., after which he went on to play at the University of Virginia for four years. He just entered his third year in Rio, where he is the biggest and most popular star of the Flamengo franchise. Starting in January 2016, I will be back with a series of stories and photos leading up to and including the 2016 Olympic Games. Have a question? Send me a message, I will be happy to reply! [email protected]
