not everything can be funny, unfortunately
Every few weeks, a different woman comes into the front office where I work, which is also the waiting area, and asks to speak to the boss. The only thing these women have in common is that they look tired and are very quiet and shy. They come to ask for help, and Ivanildo tends to be a little standoffish with them, I think because he has to be prepared to say no, and also because they very often cry and that’s difficult for any man to take, especially when the crying is for a really good reason. Sometimes he’s able to say yes and sometimes he has to say no, because in order to receive assistance (usually in the form of food and/or school supplies) the family being given assistance has to have both parents unemployed, with children.
Today a woman came into the office and was let in by Alessandra, who comes in in the morning and leaves in the afternoon to work another job. She’s very thin, with long brown hair, about 25-30, and wears the kind of clothing that an American teenage girl would, which is pretty common for women her age here in Salvador. She also does the bulk of the administrative work in Castelo Branco and maybe one or two other schools. The woman who came in was dressed like any mother you’d see on the street coming home from the supermarket, but from what little I could gather I guessed that she had come to ask for food. I think she had applied already and was following up, because Alessandra then sat down with her and went over some form that had already been partially filled out. The waiting area is across from my desk (which is “mine” in the sense that I sat down there one day without asking anybody and have remained parked there ever since) and so they were sitting probably 3 feet away from me. I could hear what they were saying but couldn’t really understand what it was – no surprise there. I’m at the point where I can now almost always figure out where a word starts and where it ends, but as far as what they mean I’m still for the large part quite lost. After they’d gone over the forms the woman showed Alessandra something she had hand-knitted in white, which held together a few 2” steel rings. It was very pretty but still not finished – it looked like it might be a placemat for a dinner centerpiece or something like that.
Soon afterwards, however, the woman started to cry, very quietly. For a moment I couldn’t tell for sure if she was really crying, and I sort of held on to the hope that she was trying to sneeze, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case. It was the kind of crying that she was clearly embarrassed about and was trying unsuccessfully to hide, and because of that sounded much more sincere than anyone who is simply looking for sympathy. Alessandra got up to get her a glass of water, and for a moment she was sitting across from me crying while I was typing at my computer. I felt pretty useless, and cold, because I didn’t look up. I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her and I didn’t know what to do. I also didn’t want her to think I didn’t care but I think I probably came off that way. Europeans and Americans have a reputation here for being cold, and I’m sure that’s exactly what she was thinking. It’s mildly comforting knowing that she was likely to have blamed it on my culture rather than the fact that I’m just an unfeeling bastard.
While Alessandra was out getting the water another woman knocked on the door. Her I recognized – she works for another non-profit organization along the same lines as ours, and this was the third time she’d been here, I think to ask Ivanildo for financial assistance. The past two times he told her he couldn’t help her (he struggles just to pay their own bills) but apparently she’s very persistent. She sat down next to the crying woman and said some things to try to comfort her. She spoke as if she knew the woman from before – maybe she did, and was here to help her get assistance. The second woman had a constantly agitated, can’t-stop-moving and won’t quit insisting on getting money sort of disposition, which made me a little annoyed at her presence. It sounded like (again, I couldn’t understand all) she was saying something like “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine” to try to get the woman to stop crying, but to no avail. The woman stopped crying once Alessandra arrived with the water, but after another half hour or so she resumed. She stayed only for another 10 minutes after that, and then both women left.
I try to make things sound funny here because I want the (few) people that look at this blog to come back, but obviously it’s not always right to be looking on, say, the bright side of people’s suffering. The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering, much of it needless, that goes on where I am now and in the world. Bahia is the poorest state in Brazil, with an estimated 80% of its residents classified as poor. Minimum wage is something like $300 a month, and there’s many people who would do just about anything to get their hands on that kind of money. I know that when I get back to the States there will be many things that I no longer complain about, and probably more things that I will be angry about – i.e., other people complaining about stuff that’s just silly when you compare it to what millions of people have to do here just to scrape by a living.
Today a woman came into the office and was let in by Alessandra, who comes in in the morning and leaves in the afternoon to work another job. She’s very thin, with long brown hair, about 25-30, and wears the kind of clothing that an American teenage girl would, which is pretty common for women her age here in Salvador. She also does the bulk of the administrative work in Castelo Branco and maybe one or two other schools. The woman who came in was dressed like any mother you’d see on the street coming home from the supermarket, but from what little I could gather I guessed that she had come to ask for food. I think she had applied already and was following up, because Alessandra then sat down with her and went over some form that had already been partially filled out. The waiting area is across from my desk (which is “mine” in the sense that I sat down there one day without asking anybody and have remained parked there ever since) and so they were sitting probably 3 feet away from me. I could hear what they were saying but couldn’t really understand what it was – no surprise there. I’m at the point where I can now almost always figure out where a word starts and where it ends, but as far as what they mean I’m still for the large part quite lost. After they’d gone over the forms the woman showed Alessandra something she had hand-knitted in white, which held together a few 2” steel rings. It was very pretty but still not finished – it looked like it might be a placemat for a dinner centerpiece or something like that.
Soon afterwards, however, the woman started to cry, very quietly. For a moment I couldn’t tell for sure if she was really crying, and I sort of held on to the hope that she was trying to sneeze, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case. It was the kind of crying that she was clearly embarrassed about and was trying unsuccessfully to hide, and because of that sounded much more sincere than anyone who is simply looking for sympathy. Alessandra got up to get her a glass of water, and for a moment she was sitting across from me crying while I was typing at my computer. I felt pretty useless, and cold, because I didn’t look up. I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her and I didn’t know what to do. I also didn’t want her to think I didn’t care but I think I probably came off that way. Europeans and Americans have a reputation here for being cold, and I’m sure that’s exactly what she was thinking. It’s mildly comforting knowing that she was likely to have blamed it on my culture rather than the fact that I’m just an unfeeling bastard.
While Alessandra was out getting the water another woman knocked on the door. Her I recognized – she works for another non-profit organization along the same lines as ours, and this was the third time she’d been here, I think to ask Ivanildo for financial assistance. The past two times he told her he couldn’t help her (he struggles just to pay their own bills) but apparently she’s very persistent. She sat down next to the crying woman and said some things to try to comfort her. She spoke as if she knew the woman from before – maybe she did, and was here to help her get assistance. The second woman had a constantly agitated, can’t-stop-moving and won’t quit insisting on getting money sort of disposition, which made me a little annoyed at her presence. It sounded like (again, I couldn’t understand all) she was saying something like “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine” to try to get the woman to stop crying, but to no avail. The woman stopped crying once Alessandra arrived with the water, but after another half hour or so she resumed. She stayed only for another 10 minutes after that, and then both women left.
I try to make things sound funny here because I want the (few) people that look at this blog to come back, but obviously it’s not always right to be looking on, say, the bright side of people’s suffering. The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering, much of it needless, that goes on where I am now and in the world. Bahia is the poorest state in Brazil, with an estimated 80% of its residents classified as poor. Minimum wage is something like $300 a month, and there’s many people who would do just about anything to get their hands on that kind of money. I know that when I get back to the States there will be many things that I no longer complain about, and probably more things that I will be angry about – i.e., other people complaining about stuff that’s just silly when you compare it to what millions of people have to do here just to scrape by a living.
posted by n10471 at 7:11 AM
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