Almost fifteen years ago in Lisbon, Portugal, a seven year-old child sat in front of the television set. He was watching “The Lion King”, a Disney movie, for hours. It was the seventh time he rewound the tape of his new Blaupunkt VCR.
“Diogo, where are you?” his mother shouted from another room.
“I’m here,” he said.
“It’s time to go to sleep. It’s almost 8.00 pm.”
“Please, let me finish the movie. This is the first time I’ve seen it.”
“Ok, I’ll give you half an hour more. That’s it.”
It was Monday, the only day off Diogo’s mother had, and a day that she devoted to bringing her son to the movie theater. And like every Monday, upon their return, Diogo would tell his mother his impressions about the movie they just had seen. He talked about what he liked most and how the story should have ended. He visualized the entire plot in his head. He wanted to be part of it.
Today, 20-year-old Diogo Martins, is living in the United States as an international student at Stony Brook University, New York, where he has been attending classes since August 2008. He is one of the 2,600 F-1 students on campus. One of the many who struggle every day trying to live in a place where so much is different.
Diogo, who a five-day growth of beard, thick lips and brown hair, takes a Coronita and sips slowly. With his three-day long beard and his thick lips, Diogo takes a Coronita and sips slowly. The music playing in the background is “Fado” – typical Portuguese music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics. While waiting for a friend in his apartment, he passionately sings the lyrics of a Fado song. He seems as if he is going to burst into tears. He feels the music in his heart and conveys his homesickness through it. Portugal, my dear Portugal, he sings.
In Portugal he had his family and his car. He used to get together after dinner every night with his friends. He had his own life and total control of his stuff. “I feel like a prisoner here,” Diogo said.
The first two months at Stony Brook were awful, Diogo said. He would spend two hours of the day in his room without doing anything. He would just laying on his bed thinking. He felt he wasn’t being himself. The worst moment took place on September,17, 2008. It was his little sister’s birthday. She was turning 6 years old. His family called him up to sing happy birthday to his sister and he realized he was so far from his family. “I know that if I would have called my mother to come back, she would have welcomed me back,” he said.
The experience of studying abroad is like taking students out of their support system at home and putting them in a totally new experience where they have no support, according to Erin Keffeler, an international students and scholars advisor at Stony Brook. “Sometimes students fall into depression and no one tells us. We don’t know about it and the student fails out of school.”
Diogo feels like most of the American people are superficial, distant and committed to keeping up appearances. In the United States, people are always reminding him that he is not from America. Everything seems temporary. His first days in America, he thought that people were like shadows. “Everyone seemed to have a façade or that they weren’t real.” He was used to human contact all the time. “Here people pass around you and don’t say anything.”
Keffeler says Americans have a different way of relating to people from other cultures. “You say hello to someone or you have a conversation with someone and you think you are great friends but really there is like levels of friendship. Americans think about the personal space. It’s only after you are kind of proving yourself to be a genuine friend, then that personal space becomes smaller.”
Diogo is currently majoring in Cinema Studies with a minor in Theater Arts. When Diogo was little, his mom left the house early and arrived late. He spent time in the school and watched movies such as, Indiana Jones, Dumbo, Bambi and James Bond.
In high school, he had a Portuguese teacher who liked the way Diogo used to read poetry written by Portuguese dramatists. When he was 13 years old, he started a theater group with this teacher. He kept performing until he moved to America. It was then that he understood how much he loved cinema and theater. The movie directors who most inspired him are François Truffaut and Ingmar Bergman. His favorite movies are “Jules and Jim”, “Citizen Kane”, “The Godfather” and “The Seventh Seal.”
Diogo was 12 or 13 when he performed in his first play, “Gulliver’s travels.” He was Gulliver. The play was in a very big hall. It was the 35th anniversary of the”Campo de Flores” School in Lisbon. One hour before the play he thought that he was going to give up because he was very nervous. His teacher taught him an exercise for relaxing. She told Diogo to visualize his place on the world. The exercise made him realize how small he was on the planet and how insignificant the play was. “It’s a weird feeling because you feel really insecure but at the same time very powerful,” Diogo said. “It’s like an addiction. After you do it and enjoy it, you keep wanting that rush again and again.”
Jeet Singh, a 28- year-old Pakistani student and one of Diogo’s best friends at Stony Brook, remembered the first days of their coexistence. “Whenever I would be having meals, he was there and I would offer him Pakistani food. He introduced me to Portugal, to the language and to the cuisine and even to the different types of wines.” Portugal is one of the many places that have very high quality grapes.
“Diogo is proud of being Portuguese, not like many students on campus that don’t even want to speak in their mother language,” Singh said. “I think is sexy to know more than one language. I was born here, but most of my friends at school are international. We are like a family because we all are in the same situation.”
When Diogo told his family that he wanted to go to America, his parents’ reactions were better than he expected, he said. They supported him because they knew that theater was what he liked. It was his mother who instilled in him the passion about movies and theater. When she was young she took part in a few plays with her friends. ”My father never let me study theater because it is not like any other profession. You have to work really hard to be successful,” his mother Paula said.
Nowadays, Diogo is going to rehearsal every week. He is part of “Figaro, Figaro,” a play being held at Stony Brook. “His character on the stage is kind of sexy and romantic and he tries to seduce Susanna, Figaro’s wife, and it works,” said Robert Shilling, a Stony Brook student and the play’s co-star. “His accent is there but it works very well for the character.”
According to Deborah Mayo, the director of “Figaro, Figaro” and an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies of Theater Arts department, Diogo displayed a great deal of talent in her acting class last semester and she encouraged him to come to the auditions because she thought he may read well for this role. This is the first time Diogo has acted in English. “I cannot imagine acting in a foreign language myself,” she said. “It’s hard enough to do it in your own language.”
