Aprendendo

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I had the opportunity today to visit some of the neighborhoods where the "projects" are located. These two sites are administered by the people I'm staying with - one site is a previous "favela" (brazilian slum), the other is a neighborhood of originally 10 houses constructed through Habitat for Humanity which has now grown into a full size working class neighborhood.

Brazil appears to have two seperate worlds, a middle class and a working class. Most of the area within the centers of the city are apartments of middle class people; the surrounding area are neighborhoods of the working class. These neighborhoods on first sight are probably what most people abroad would consider slums from the patchwork appearance (they aren't, the real slums of Brazil are squatters homes pieced together from scrap wood and metal and plastic, and whatever else can be acquired). But the level of poverty in these areas, even the working class areas, is astounding compared to anything in the United States. The minimum wage here is around $100 Reals a month - to give an idea, an expensive dinner would cost around $20 Reals a person and the price of a pair of new shoes is around $300 Reals.

The first site I visited today sat on the hillside off of a busy highway of sorts (speed limit of around 60mph). The school sits on one side of the
road, the neighborhood extends to the other side of the street. There is no way to cross the street, save running across it and trying not to get hit. Three children from the neighborhood have been killed already, and more injured. The people in the neighborhood recently blockaded the road, burning tires to protest the government to build a pedestrian overpass, but this is a poor neighborhood, and it probably wont be built.

The project site itself exists to provide after school activities for the children (public schools in Brazil are only 4 hours a day). I met a lot of children there who were all interested in speaking with me, and it's helping me learn Portuguese quickly. One of the kids I was talking with was an 18 year old girl, and later I heard how she was homeless and her mother had recently broken her arm for not doing the laundry. The social net just does not exist down here. In response to said event, some people talked to the mother and told her not to do that again. That's it. The public schools are horrible from lack of funding and the class sizes can reach 50. Listen up America, because it's exactly where you're headed.

Anyways, horrible stories notwithstanding, the kids are really cool, and they may have been in some bad situations (to say the least), but thanks to the community support most all of them will survive. I'll definitely be heading back here, as they're teaching me how to play futbol and Portuguese, and I'm teaching some English...

falou!

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Comments

[edgar]

re: aprendendo
"Listen up America, because it's exactly where you're headed." It might take a while for the US to wake up, but it's not hard to see the signs. Sometimes the clearest view is from the outside looking in. When I went back home to the Philippines, I saw people who were hopeful of seeing industrialist style progress - golf courses, modern malls, airports, tourist hotels, things that "civilized", "first (class) world" elites bestow among the "culture deprived" masses. It's not hard to see where the masses fit in the vision of the expert leaders - as future wage-slaves catering to the whims of the moneyed people. Am I training my daughters to grow up like that, spending 16 of their best years to learn the tricks of the trade, of how to become entitled so they don't have to work and make others work for them? Unfortunately, I have to unlearn so much myself; I'm probably not even qualified to complain about something that I'm struggling mightily not to support. And it should not be about fear or escaping, either, or believing some expert spouting numbers and statistics. The people driving in the fast lanes might have a hard time recognizing the worn out street signs, or perhaps just not care enough to pay attention; but for those people on the margins, on the wrong side of the road, it's simple and clear enough: it's a matter of life and death. When they look at me and what I'm doing, do they see life, or do they feel death?