a favela de Camaçeri
About a week ago I went with my volunteer group to another favela on the outskirts of Salvador known as Camaçeri, where the agency I'm working for runs a school foor poor kids which doubles as an adult education and community center.
I left with Ivanildo and young woman named Marcia who has been working there for about 5 months. I think Ivanildo takes one or more of the women who work at the main office with him each time, since they sit on the phones all day and don't otherwise get much of an opportunity to meet the people they help. I insisted that she sit in the front on the way there - every time (there's been like 3) that I've traveled with Ivanildo and a woman, I've done this, and the women sometimes look at me like I'm being weird. Brazil is known for its "machismo" culture, so maybe I'm breaking some sort of rule by letting them sit in the front but I'm past caring at this point - I'm sure I've committed enough fauxes pas since I've been here that adding a couple more onto the pile won't make much of a difference. I just hope Ivanildo doesn't think I'm trying to avoid conversation with him. He probably does. Oh well.
I don't know if I've said so before but people drive crazy in Salvador, way crazier than in New York. I'll elaborate on it in a later post. We started navigating the maze out of the center of Salvador to get to Camaçeri. Marcia spoke way too fast for me to understand, to Ivanildo, but I could tell from her tone and the fact that she kept saying the Portuguese word for boyfriend and girlfriend that she was talking about her friends and/or coworkers and their romantic lives. At one point she yelled something in my direction which I didn’t quite understand, and Ivanildo pointed his thumb back towards me and told her, effectively, that “You have to speak slowly when you talk to him or he won’t understand”, which sort of reinforced my self-perception as being mentally challenged from the standpoint of the Brazilians, but whatever. He’s right – I don’t understand a word they say when they talk fast.
I could tell we were getting closer to the school when the frequency of “donkey eating trash and / or grazing on grass while tethered to a rope leash” sightings began to increase exponentially. The buildings became much less sparse, more run down, and lower to the ground, and the roads had more dirt than asphalt. It was on one of these roads that we were going along on at a pretty good clip when we *nailed* a dog. There was a tractor trailer coming in the opposite direction, and I was staring out the windows at the donkey when all of a sudden I heard the truck honk loudly and then there was the force and sound of a great big BUMP in the front of Ivanildo’s car, and I turned around to see the medium-sized, white dog just go limp on its side behind us. It all happened very quickly – I didn’t actually see it happen because it was so fast. Later Ivanildo showed me that a corner of his bumper had come loose from the front because of the force of the blow. I guess it all could have been a bad omen but things turned out fine.
The school was in a neighborhood where all of the houses were relatively run-down, seemingly deserted and single-story only, so that everything seemed very low to the ground and you could see relatively far in any direction. The place seemed kind of dead but I think that was because it was mid-day and people were either at work or hiding from the blazing sun. We went first into the school, which was separated into at least 3 different classes: the first was maybe ages 7-10, the second 3-6, and the other was probably like 10-14. Each class had between 10 and 20 kids and they were all overjoyed to have visitors. Ivanildo told me later that they think foreigners are very interesting and for this reason drop everything when one or more come to visit. I took pictures of them with my digital camera and then showed them what they looked like, and they were all thrilled by this.
The kids were very, very friendly, and very happy, I’m guessing just to get a diversion from the normal routine. I wonder sometimes if they know or care that they are poor. They seem OK now but I’m guessing later on the lack of educational facilities starts to effect them pretty severely when they try to find jobs or when drugs and other teenager challenges hit them. I don’t think drugs are as bad a problem in Camaçeri as elsewhere, but my guess is that unemployment is pretty high. I think most or all of the parents of the kids in this particular program are unemployed and at or below the poverty level.
The school had only very rudimentary furniture and other resources (books, paints, etc.) which is what the organization is trying to change. After visiting the school we walked up the street a block or so to where they were renovating a building that would become the new school, with better all-around facilities and with more space. I think that most or all of the women who were working there (about 5-6) were teachers, and the rest were men who I’m not sure if they were volunteers or what, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.
One of the teachers who was doing the painting, the one who seemed to be in charge, asked Ivanildo to help her out to resolve some accounting problem with some materials they had bought and/or returned from the local building supply place, which was right down the block. We went there and got a drink of water while he worked it out with the woman who was working there. Marcia and I were kind of just standing around, and she asked me if I liked kids and I said yes. Again there was another instance where I really wished I could have spoken Portuguese better, because most of my small talk was limited to short, choppy sentences. On the bright side, though, my few words don’t seem to have bothered her much. Every time she sees me now she makes a point to say hi and do the cheek-kiss thing, which most men/women friends do here but for me as a repressed American is still a little weird, in a good way :).
I left with Ivanildo and young woman named Marcia who has been working there for about 5 months. I think Ivanildo takes one or more of the women who work at the main office with him each time, since they sit on the phones all day and don't otherwise get much of an opportunity to meet the people they help. I insisted that she sit in the front on the way there - every time (there's been like 3) that I've traveled with Ivanildo and a woman, I've done this, and the women sometimes look at me like I'm being weird. Brazil is known for its "machismo" culture, so maybe I'm breaking some sort of rule by letting them sit in the front but I'm past caring at this point - I'm sure I've committed enough fauxes pas since I've been here that adding a couple more onto the pile won't make much of a difference. I just hope Ivanildo doesn't think I'm trying to avoid conversation with him. He probably does. Oh well.
I don't know if I've said so before but people drive crazy in Salvador, way crazier than in New York. I'll elaborate on it in a later post. We started navigating the maze out of the center of Salvador to get to Camaçeri. Marcia spoke way too fast for me to understand, to Ivanildo, but I could tell from her tone and the fact that she kept saying the Portuguese word for boyfriend and girlfriend that she was talking about her friends and/or coworkers and their romantic lives. At one point she yelled something in my direction which I didn’t quite understand, and Ivanildo pointed his thumb back towards me and told her, effectively, that “You have to speak slowly when you talk to him or he won’t understand”, which sort of reinforced my self-perception as being mentally challenged from the standpoint of the Brazilians, but whatever. He’s right – I don’t understand a word they say when they talk fast.
I could tell we were getting closer to the school when the frequency of “donkey eating trash and / or grazing on grass while tethered to a rope leash” sightings began to increase exponentially. The buildings became much less sparse, more run down, and lower to the ground, and the roads had more dirt than asphalt. It was on one of these roads that we were going along on at a pretty good clip when we *nailed* a dog. There was a tractor trailer coming in the opposite direction, and I was staring out the windows at the donkey when all of a sudden I heard the truck honk loudly and then there was the force and sound of a great big BUMP in the front of Ivanildo’s car, and I turned around to see the medium-sized, white dog just go limp on its side behind us. It all happened very quickly – I didn’t actually see it happen because it was so fast. Later Ivanildo showed me that a corner of his bumper had come loose from the front because of the force of the blow. I guess it all could have been a bad omen but things turned out fine.
The school was in a neighborhood where all of the houses were relatively run-down, seemingly deserted and single-story only, so that everything seemed very low to the ground and you could see relatively far in any direction. The place seemed kind of dead but I think that was because it was mid-day and people were either at work or hiding from the blazing sun. We went first into the school, which was separated into at least 3 different classes: the first was maybe ages 7-10, the second 3-6, and the other was probably like 10-14. Each class had between 10 and 20 kids and they were all overjoyed to have visitors. Ivanildo told me later that they think foreigners are very interesting and for this reason drop everything when one or more come to visit. I took pictures of them with my digital camera and then showed them what they looked like, and they were all thrilled by this.
The kids were very, very friendly, and very happy, I’m guessing just to get a diversion from the normal routine. I wonder sometimes if they know or care that they are poor. They seem OK now but I’m guessing later on the lack of educational facilities starts to effect them pretty severely when they try to find jobs or when drugs and other teenager challenges hit them. I don’t think drugs are as bad a problem in Camaçeri as elsewhere, but my guess is that unemployment is pretty high. I think most or all of the parents of the kids in this particular program are unemployed and at or below the poverty level.
The school had only very rudimentary furniture and other resources (books, paints, etc.) which is what the organization is trying to change. After visiting the school we walked up the street a block or so to where they were renovating a building that would become the new school, with better all-around facilities and with more space. I think that most or all of the women who were working there (about 5-6) were teachers, and the rest were men who I’m not sure if they were volunteers or what, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.
One of the teachers who was doing the painting, the one who seemed to be in charge, asked Ivanildo to help her out to resolve some accounting problem with some materials they had bought and/or returned from the local building supply place, which was right down the block. We went there and got a drink of water while he worked it out with the woman who was working there. Marcia and I were kind of just standing around, and she asked me if I liked kids and I said yes. Again there was another instance where I really wished I could have spoken Portuguese better, because most of my small talk was limited to short, choppy sentences. On the bright side, though, my few words don’t seem to have bothered her much. Every time she sees me now she makes a point to say hi and do the cheek-kiss thing, which most men/women friends do here but for me as a repressed American is still a little weird, in a good way :).
posted by n10471 at 6:09 AM
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