Today I am going back to the slum. I have been postponing
writing properly about the organization where I spent one week because I want
to be the most accurate on the information as possible. As time goes by however,
I loose the accuracy of feelings. But this
weekend as I spent the days in a mountainous region around Sao Paulo, with
people who rock climb I was given back both the feeling of encountering within,
and new possibilities of movements in my foot.
I stood there night and day far from the constructions of
the city watching the sun set with even more colours then in the Mekong. What
is about the sunset and me? When it starts, and I feel a relief for the day
being swallowed by the night I always become static. It is not any sunset that
does this to me. It happens only with the ones that take time, the ones where the
disappearance of the sun is in fact but the beginning of it. The festival of
colours then seems to never stop. It is never just a fast transition between
night and day. It is a whole journey that seems to pass through infinity of
colours that never repeat.
I sat there watching the night little by little swallow the
day. Watching every single star show up for work. The moon smiled gently there
in the horizon just a bit above the mountains. And as I looked at the moon I
remembered the joy I felt in this institution in the slums of Sao Paulo.
I left you last time in the buses. And so it is that as I
walked out from the last bus, I had to walk up a street to find the Associacao
Jardim Horizonte Azul. It was not too hard to find it I had to just follow the
sounds of happiness. The gate opened into a large green area with little houses
built simply but full of colours. Inside, and I could see from outside children
laughed and ran and played.
As I went in everyone in my path greeted me. “ Are you a
foreigner?”. Or are you here with the school? Probably both, probably none I
thought to myself. “I am looking for Joana.” “Oh, you are looking for the
teacher? She is always everywhere.”
Joana is my aunt, and what an exceptional woman she is! I
always knew that but spending this week with her and her 12th grade
class there made me realize it even more strongly. She takes her year 12th
of middle upper class students to spend a week volunteering in this association.
She is not only a teacher. She is their council, and friend, and idol. It is
not because she is perfect. Not at all, it is simply because she has taught
them as she has always taught me that we must embrace our vulnerability. Accept
the possibilities of our behavior and never compare ourselves to others,
neither to feel better, nor worse.
A week in an Association in a very poor area of our city
trashes all of our conceptions. It is hard for me who have been working on it
for years for those 17 years old full of doubts, and dreams it is mindboggling.
Why should I be talking about them and not the association
is the question in my mind. Well, it is because it was through them that I
discover the work of the Association. This 17-year-old boys and girls worked
everyday from 7 to 4 in a range of activities. We painted houses to make them
more colorful for all of us, we worked in the vegetable garden to have real
food, organically grown for the children, we worked in the kitchen making
breakfast and lunch that would pass any considerations of Jamie Oliver. We
helped the workers in the nurseries, and in the classes from babies to 17 year
old. We worked on crafting and of course through all this work we met the
community and each other.
Every night my aunt made the class seat in the room we all
slept to tell their day. It was a written journal. It was moving beyond belief
to hear these sheltered kids tell of the tiredness, joy, and difficulties
during the day. It was wonderful to be able to share with them what happened
and together discover parts of the place we could not have seen on our own.
I spent lots of time in the kitchen. Anyone who knows me well
knows how truly remarkable that is. I don’t really cook. I like kitchen tales
though. And Silvana the lady who lives there in the community and works in this
kitchen for years feeds not only people’s body but also their souls. She was
patient to have us there I d imagine probably making it all slower. She always
smiled saying we were helping. And as we cooked, and cut and talked the
children from the Association would stop in front of us on the open kitchen window
to talk to the ladies and men who worked there. From little children to 17 year
old they all came after having left their school.
These are the lucky ones, who have gotten a place in the
Associaiton. It takes about 2 years for them to be able to get in. Not enough
place, nor money for everything. They never want to leave there. It is
incredible. I feel like it does not matter how much I write I will not be able
to convey the importance of this work. When these 17 years old are there
learning music, planting, playing, wood work they are not in the streets
falling prey to drugs. When these children come it might be the first time they
ever have fruit in their lives. When their mothers start to participate in the
project they learn how to keep breastfeeding longer, how to raise their
children in a healthier way.
This became clear to me when I visited the UBS ( Basic Unit
of Health) in the area. This organization is so respected that the government
of Sao Paulo put them in charge of taking care of 14 UBS. I went for a visit
and by chance arrived on a day where mothers with babies of the slums, and neighborhood
around where there for a talk. I was quite moved to see how clean and spotless
was the place. There was even a garden built with money of the workers to make
the place nicer. I sat in the meeting and saw the lady of the Institution I was
coming from invite these mothers to join them in the Institute for a weekly
conversation on motherhood.
“All of us have something to learn”
She put it nicely.
In the group were two ladies who had been part of the
program (which for lack of money is now closed) “Dear Mom”. The program took 40
pregnant women and taught them about being mothers. It paid them about 150
dollars a month in order to keep them from working for 6 months so they could
stay home and breastfeed, and take care of their babies. In this meeting there
were two ladies who had been part of the group before. They immediately said
they would come for the weekly meetings, and praised how much that project had
made the development of their children better.
Later on, I sat with the nurse watching the procedure with
babies of the community. Apparently, mothers should bring their babies every
month to check if all is ok. I watched lots of mother come in. The nurse always
asked them what they were feeding the babies, and about their general
development. I could see empirically how the program “Dear Mom” worked. All
other mothers except from the ones who had taken part on the program had babies
that were less developed. The mothers who had been to the program not only were
more articulated, but fed their children fruits, and vegetables, had breastfed
them for a longer time, and did not use walkers, nor baby bottles, nor
pacifiers. They also had adopted Steiner philosophy for toys, preferring wood
and invented ones, to plastic ones bought in a store.
I was moved beyond belief. So much of my own (hidden)
prejudices being trashed there. The idea that nothing works in Brasil, the idea
that poor people don’t care, don’t know, the idea that little interventions in
a sea of disparity does not make a difference. There I watched people from the
community working hard as hell in maintaining something they could see (just as
I could) made their lives better.
How many times did I hear from the workers that if the money
was to finish they would have to work somewhere else but would come to
volunteer there. It is not an aseptic place. It is full of emotions. Sometimes 17-year-old
stop in front of the kitchen to tell something awful they did in the school.
The ladies in the kitchen give advice. Sometimes 7 years old stop in front of
the main office. The coordinator asks “ Do you need something”. The child says
no. “Oh. I know what it is. Do you want a hug? I want a hug!” And so defying
all laws in the developing world these workers hug and children and adults feel
happier and continue their day.
That is what it is. This association is a place that not
only brings food, medical care, and activities for these communities. But it
actually turns them into a community where people realize how important they
are for each other’s lives. It is a
place of tolerance to diversity, of craving for knowledge, of the possibility
of art and holistic approach to living. But above all, it is a place that
teaches what my aunt has taught her students and me. We
must embrace our vulnerability. Accept the possibilities of our behavior and
never compare us to others, neither to feel better, nor worse. Only in the
limits of our development can we truly encounter others. We have to be honest
about that. In doing so we transpose our own limitations. This would become
even more clearer later on the night of poetry, and on the farewell day where
12th graders from upper class Sao Paulo where put to exchange openly
with the 15-17 year old kids from the area their perceptions of each other. There
all of our limitations and prejudices would be spoken out loud. I felt like in
an encounter of Israeli and Palestinian. I was somehow shocked to notice how
deluded we are in Brasil to ignore the fact that this is just as much an
apartheid state. But I guess I will have to write about this later.