Favellas, Catholic Church, Afro-Brasilian Mysticism, Etc.

When I leave my bedroom in the mornings I open my door to find a diminuitive woman in her late sixties. Sometimes she's watching TV. She watches 30 minutes of church every morning. Sometimes she's walking around talking to someone that no one else can see. Other times she's laughing along with children's cartoons or waving her hands in the air as she dances alone in the quiet of her living room. Today, when I opened my door, prior to being electrocuted (not death penalty style, but with a sudden jolt of energy as I tried to turn off the shower), I saw her being laid hands upon by a woman who practices some sort of energy moving/healing technique. The music in the background was akin to the sounds of Enya. I live in a Catholic household, but Catholicisim in Brazil has some very close ties with Afro-Brasilian mysticisim.

Carlos, the adult son (he's 40ish) of my new host parents (o pai rises early, retires early, and spends his in between time cooking in the kitchen and chatting with people in the street), is a simple man with a lot of love in his heart. On Saturday he took me to meet some people that he thought might be good connections for me, and who are also his friends. We went to Ilha da Pintada, to attend a women's ministry group which feautred a panel concerning domestic violence. The discussion was an active attempt to inform abused people about their rights outlined in the Maria da Penha law. The chapel is located in a favella (a community of homes built out of whatever people can find--discarded doors, rope, laundry lines, scrap wood and scrap metal--and peopled by folks whos main source of income is gained by collecting the trash from around the city: cans, cardboard and plastic.) just at the edge of the lake, and is mostly windows. The favella is just opposite a very wealthy neighborhood that you can see in pictures like the one to the right (which incidentally, I did not take because my camera is broke-ass). We were lucky, that some of the lake water had receeded since last weeks rain. The group of women (and Carlos) ranged in age from 2-70, and thing that was most touching about the whole event is that at the beginning of the service each person had to get up to hand a "peace candle" to the person at his or her right.

After the service Matilda, an organizer for Movimento Sem-Terra, asked if I would be interested in working on a program to teach English to the youth in the favella starting with 3 young people that she knows. I could stay for any where between 3 more months to a year. So I'm thinking about it. Before I left, I was told that poverty here is like nothing I'd ever seen before, and it's true. Favellas are the biggest open secret in Brazil. But despite the rampant drug and sex trafficing problems, the majority of the people living in poverty are honest hard working, family oriented folks who simply do not have access to education or a social system designed to serve them. So should I stay here and align myself with education and workers rights movements, or should I go home and do the same type of work? My method of fighting the good fight wouldn't change--I'd still be working in the field of literacy, but I'd be doing in a developing country, along with my own foreigness. Thoughts? I'd be glad to discuss. Especially if anyone has something to say about Paulo Friere--I was bound to get around to reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed sometime, right?

While I'm still in the shadow of decision: first stop, organic farm, next stop the beach, then World Social Forum and then The Future. I wish it would stop doing all of this looming.

I will assume that I am now writing to the ghosts of people who used to read this blog. Big love, ya'll.