ROMEGUÊS

>>> Jan/Mar 2018, Bio Magazine

In 1990, there was a Luso-Brazilian Symposium on Sanitary Engineering (Silubesa) in Braga. Several colleagues from Brazil went and, upon arriving there, we discovered that there was a valid attempt to expand the event into, let us say, a Lusophone Symposium on Sanitary Engineering (Silues?), because a banner at the entrance welcomed colleagues from Brazil but also “colleagues” from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea, São Tomé, East Timor and, surprise!, Galicia and Romania (or Rumania). Galicia could still be explained by proximity and a mix of vocabulary, but Romania?

Well, there was not much time to investigate and, before we knew it, we were already at the opening ceremony, in an amphitheater, and the president of the congress said a few words of welcome to everyone, gave the floor to a first person and then to a lady who, when she began to speak, led us to conclude that she must be from Romania, because nothing could be understood, although one word or another sounded intelligible, confirming the correctness of including Romanian sanitary engineers, men and women, among us.

After the 20 minutes that the “Romanian woman’s” presentation must have lasted, the president of the congress, a Lisbon man with Atlantic diction, to almost everyone’s surprise, thanked the participation of colleague Maria Almeida Salazar, from Trás-os- Montes, who, to our disappointment, was not from Romania.

The welcome and the food served in Braga were formidable in any language, accent or dialect. And that is what remains. The rest are jokes.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written in Jan/Mar 2018, 1,350 characters.