I Met Brook Silva-Braga!
Last week I got a message on CouchSurfing from a person named Brook Silva. Because I had already agreed to host another surfer, I arranged to meet for drinks. When I arrived at the hostel he was staying at I confirmed my suspicion. This man is indeed Brook Silva-Braga. Creator of one of my new favorite movies, A Map for Saturday. His movie–actually, it’s a documentary–is the story of him quitting his job and backpacking around the world for a year.
In case you haven’t noticed yet I have a huge passion for travel. Unsurprisingly, I immediately fell in love with his work and I can’t say enough good things about it. I think my colleagues here might be getting sick of hearing about it from me all the time. As you can probably imagine I was really excited to meet him (OK, I admit it, I was a little star-struck) and I had a great time sharing beers with him and his girlfriend, Jill, as I got the opportunity to ask him about all of his adventures. In particular, we talked about his latest documentary, One Day in Africa. For five months Brook traveled around Africa filming his latest work. While there he found six different people, from all different walks of life, whom he followed around for one day. I am really looking forward to checking it out.
I think my favorite quote of the night was from Brook: “I hate it when people think that Africa is where the black people are.” Of course, I’m more or less paraphrasing here as we did have a long, hard night of drinking. My memory may be (read: definitely) a bit hazy. At the very least I missed my Chinese lessons the next day; I’m sure you can imagine why. Oh well. I think a chance to meet the director of one of my favorite films is well worth the loss.
I highly recommend checking out both A Map for Saturday and One Day in Africa if you get the chance. Also, here is a great review of A Map for Saturday, the very one that lead me to watch the movie in the first place.
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That’s super-cool. I’ve been meaning to get into the couch-surfing thing. Let this be a reminder.
Sometimes it’s just amazing what social networking sites, like CouchSurfing, can bring about. Sign up already! It’s free for heaven’s sake. And you don’t have to host anyone, you can just agree to meet for coffee. The no frills, no obligation aspect of CouchSurfing is what really makes it work, in my opinion
That’s awesome Graham!! I hope the evening was inspirational!
I love these couchsurfing stories of yours, Graham! What a great way to meet other people who share your passion for traveling!
@Linz: Brook and everyone else that has the courage and motivation to get out there and really travel the world is an inspiration to me. So yes, it was very inspiring for me to meet someone as well traveled as him
@Carrie: I’m glad you enjoy them! You’ll have to keep showing these stories to your husband. Maybe someday he will become a convert and join the CouchSurfing movement. And yes, if you have a passion for traveling, there is no better way to meet those who share your passion than through CouchSurfing.
Damn, Brook is like the Lebron James of traveling….very cool!
Yeah, Brook really does get around. He told me that he has been to over 40 countries so far. And counting! Quite an accomplishment, I can only hope to get somewhere near that number in the future.