Virgínia Ginja Campo
(This is Virgínia’s own translation into English of her original Portuguese version)
She ran free along the fields, barefoot…
Beautiful!
Her name was Branca! (White)
No, she was not the Snow White!… mainly because she didn’t have the seven dwarves… mainly because she didn´t live among the forest…mainly because she was not afraid of the bad witch…
But she was Branca of her grace!
Her parents did baptize her like that! Like that, the friends treated her!
And Branca was happy and free!
Free because she didn´t know limits to her own happyness, to her freedom!
I din´t know if we can say that she was really free…or that we are free! But Branca believed so and lieved always laughing, playing and running with the animals that she found through the fields and that knew her so well.
She lived by herself, isolated, in one house, in one farm.
She didn´t went to school.
She didn´t know by heart the limits imposed by Society to all children. Acculturation was not imposed on her.
Till one day!…
When she was seen in her plays, by a group of young people that was passing by…
At that moment a young boy fel in love with Branca and wanted to take her away back home with him to Civilization…
Branca also fel in love with that boy, that I will cal “Luís” and she had no doubts that nothing wrong could come from him…
Branca have stopped running free and alone…
She has started to walk hand-in-hand with “Luis” every day…that already called her “mine”.
Branca’s freedom has desappeared… Love overlap.
Branca! Branca! What are you doing my beautyful forest fade?
Let yourself stay in your life, in your home!
Don´t look for the unknown!
Don’t let yourself be fooled be preety words!
Run free and happy as always!
Let the Destiny set you free!
Cause any boy, Luís or other
Think he can awake you up!
And Branca, listened, thaught, smiled
And kept on running
Free and happy along the fields
In the middle of the animals and plants
Without knowing the sadness of the limits and the social impositions!
Do you think is possible?
Well!
Let’s try to find more Brancas in the world…
Let us free them from the ties that bind them…
Virgínia Ginja Campos, Martim Longo, 20 de Agosto de 2025