Tales of Inequality

We seat around the table. We are upper class in Brasil. Claudia, the maid, serves us. My grandmother is 87 and seats next to me. My aunt and cousin seat across the table. It is a huge apartment. There is one dinning room which is used only for meals. When lunch is served we are invited to come in. My aunt, when she is in town, wakes up very early. She listens to all of the stories Claudia has to tell. Claudia came from the northeast of Brasil as I have once explained. She always smiles. Sometimes she has tears in her eyes but she still smiles. Her life should be written down by a real writer. I am no writer, so I write about lunch.

We seat. She serves us. Her phone rings. It sometimes scares her as it vibrates loudly inside of her pocket. She has two children she has finally managed to bring from the northeast to live with her in Sao Paulo. She lives in my grandmother's house. They lived till last week somewhere else in a poor and far away neighbourhood of Sao Paulo. Jessica, the 17 year old daughter has a boyfriend who also lives with her and her 12 year old brother Jemerson. Sometimes the police comes to the house because neighbours think Jessica is being abused by her boyfriend. It turns out that she hits him. Jessica calls daily to ask Claudia for money. Now they had a fight. The phonecalls scare Claudia because they are usually violent calls. Violent in that they are always related to some aporetic situation.

Claudia tells me Jessica had been very offensive and that Claudia had hit her. I am shocked. I attempt something simultaneously silly and fundamental. It is something I really believe but saying it out loud while I am being served simply feels completely wrong. I explain disturbed that violence breeds more violence. I say it wondering what on earth I even mean by that. I say that under no circumstance a person should hit another. Claudia explains me she had lost her temper. I say it and I believe it though while I am being served, while posing the silver knife in some artifact also made of silver which is called in Portuguese "a rester" it feels idiotic. A silver knife rest in a silver "rester', I seat being served in a dinning room while Claudia, a poor lady, who like many other northeasterners who had left it all for a dream of a better life serves me and my family. What do I even mean by violence? She explains that Jessica had now abandoned the brother and left with the boyfriend taking with her all the furniture her mother had bought for this far away shack they were living in. So now the brother, Jemerson, lives in the centre of Sao Paulo, in some equally crappy place with an uncle that he barely knows and he visits Claudia in the afternoons. My grandmother suggests that he should come visiting during lunch time, so that he could eat. Claudia with so little is moved.

Jemerson also gets into to troubles in school all of the time. He beats his younger classmates because they make fun of him because he is older.

Claudia works like crazy. Every night she parties. And she studies to become a hairdresser. And she dates complicated guys that come from economically underdeveloped countries in Latin America and in Africa. Men who came to Brazil also looking for a better life. She never really knows which language they speak. They never really call her back.

I ask her how many siblings she had? It is complicated. Her mother had so many children she once explained. For every new partner her mother had she named the children of that man with the same first letter so she would remember who the father was. Sandro, Sueli, Sonia etc. My aunt knows many names. Many died. My aunt knows most of these stories as they are told to her during breakfast. I am never awake that early and I never really know how to react to them. In fact none of us do. We just hear.

Claudia tells the story of her sister Monica who died because of the flood.

They were all sleeping in a room and the flood came. The mother was sleeping and the young Monica could not wake her up in time so she was taken away by the flood. Claudia has tears in her eyes. Then she says.

"My mother is crazy. She had sooooo many children. Once we killed one."

We don't say anything. I am first appalled. I dont even know what this could possibly mean. She says something else. Then I ask details. I am speechless. the story is so unclear. It is also told in a mixture of incoherence and different words we from upper class sao paulo dont know.

"She left us taking care. We were little too. We gave her baby food. She had "ventre caido" (fallen womb)."

It is not the first time the ladies from the northeast of Brasil who work in my grandmothers house refer to that. I never understood what on earth it meant. It seemed to change meanings depending on the story. It seems to be used for something that kills and cant really be explained.

I ask what does it mean in this context.

"we gave her to much baby food?

My aunt asks whether the baby had chocked and she says that yes.

The story is so surreal. We seat being served in some fancy building in Sao Paulo listening to that. This story different than so many others does not bring tears to Claudia s eyes. It leaves me and my aunt so speechless that it takes us hours and in fact even days to talk about what it really meant.

And what it really means, is that incredibly painful fact that we often try to hide. That inequality whatever form it is, leads us all to accept that some lives are worth more than others.

But it is lunch time. And we don't touch this. We drink our coffee which Claudia says laughing that it tastes like medicine. It was gift from a friend to me. It is expensive coffee with cardamon. I drink it and I try to push the whole thought aside of my mind as I have done it in so many other places of the world.

The Diary of The Unsaid

I should have flown to India. Instead I bought a diary. I called it the Diary of the Unsaid. I now seat in  a recently discovered cafe in Sao Paulo. It is now my favourite place here. I discovered it because of the Diary of The Unsaid.

I seat alone with a crazy idea on my mind, confronted with all its implications.

What is the Idea? It is a modern version of a message inside of the bottle that crossed the world to enlighten someone. The modern version, my modern version, is a Diary. I call it the Diary of the Unsaid. The objective (the initial one at least) is to have a secret message arrive in a secret destination, to a secret receiver. The message is something I had left unsaid. Instead of letting it float I decided to trust the people I connect the most to: travellers!

Would it be possible to have a diary passing hand in hand all the way across the world? I chose for a Diary because I wanted that the travellers who would volunteer to carry it around the world could also be able to write themselves a message they had left unsaid to someone important to them.

I then created a blog   http://thediaryoftheunsaid.wordpress.com/

and asked in the diary for people to send me an e-mail with the story of how it was that the Diary came to them. They should write their unsaid message on the diary and they could also write their unsaid message to me if they wanted me to post a letter to the person.

And now it is all ready. In about three days I wrote it all. I got lots of friends excited about the idea. And now, I seat again on the newly discovered cafe waiting for the first carrier to arrive. I wait for him knowing fully well it is him. What a great feeling that is!

Life is quite ironic. Once I told my friends about it I had very mixed responses. Ivana who is a psychologist said " Julieta but do you understand you have only the power to choose the first person? Once it leaves your hand you have to trust others. I know you are a control freak so that is going to be very good for you".

I barely slept that night thinking about this. It is true, I realized, I have but the power to choose the first person. And then when I had finally come into terms with that I decided it was time for me to find the right person. I knew it had to be a traveler. I am a traveler, I recognise them, but not here in my own town. Here I had no idea where to find them.

So I let destiny take me. I drove my car aimlessly and stopped in a trendy street. I entered a hostel and looked at total strangers realizing it immediately that it could not be them. I felt totally powerless. How could I find the right person?

And then I found this beautiful cafe. “La da Venda” it is called. It means from the store. It is a lovely cafe/old store themed place. I sat and told the story to the lady who worked there. She sympathized with the idea and said that maybe I could find someone here.

I turned on my Ipad to write and suddenly an Israeli friend of mine came online to tell me I was going about it totally the wrong way. I could not search for the right person. He asked me why did I not go there and deliver the message myself, why did I not say it to the person? And I explained to him what I had realised while writing the Diary. I did not simply want my message to be delivered. I wanted to connect to a sense of serendipity, a sense of fate. I wanted for the message to arrive through the blessings of the people I connect most to: travellers. And so he completed, “then you must wait for the traveler to find you!”

It was a poignant moment to be seating in the most bucolic place ever and to realise the irony. I did not even have the power to choose the first carrier. My power relied on recognizing the carrier for its specialness. Retrospectively, I knew exactly who they could have been in the past. It could have been Michal, Sara, Vesna, Francis, Caue, Fred, Nick. It could have been so many people I encountered. I would have recognized them.

What my friend statement seemed to imply was that not only I could not control things, but that I needed to do what I am the most disastrous at doing: I needed to be patient! 

I drank my last sip of coffee, looked around at the white wall, which is filled with green vases; I looked up at the blue sky, down to the pebbled ground. I looked at all the colours in the little cafe and felt if nothing else the diary had already given me a lot. It had given me a place in Sao Paulo!

I then drove home knowing it would probably take time till I would encounter the right person.

The irony of life never seizes to amaze me..... As I reached home I got a message from Ilan. 

When I lived in Nong Khai I became close friends with a Brazilian couple who were finishing a one year trip around the world. It was somehow rare to find Brazilians in the hidden places I go to. They came and I just wanted them never to stay forever.They had to leave, and were going to meet Ilan in Laos. They told me then that I should meet him since he was such a great guy.

I broke my foot in Thailand and came back to Brazil. One day out of the blue Ilan sent me a message saying that considering we had so many friends in common and that we had lived and had travelled so many similar places he thought we should meet. I replied jokingly that I d become friends with any Brazilian who knew that Laos existed.

And so when he randomly wrote me just as I had stopped searching for the right carrier I knew in my whole body it was him. I asked him if he wanted to be the carrier, and even before I explained anything he said yes!

And then, he had a million ideas. He was excited. He called it “our” diary.  He said it was “A treasure”. He wanted to write a book about. All that dismay feeling I had disappeared. What an illusion power and control are. The greatest gift that this diary has already shown me is that if we let it go a bit we can be witness of the mystery of the universe.

I seat here under a blue sky. I am back at La da Venda. Where else could I pass on my diary? Where else could the diary seize to be mine to be freed to do whatever is intended for?

In the mood of recognizing synchronicity everywhere I received an e-mail from the great jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai. We had spoken of this feeling of connection. We spoke of music. Now as I am about to let my words fly out there, I feel like a musician whose music transforms, and is transformed in the path. I remember again that cry of the of Rajasthan, I remember the klezmer. I remember that nothing is ours, but temporarily in our company. I am about to let go of the Diary of the Unsaid and I feel great joy.

6 hours later. We drank teas and coffees, we travelled through distant lands. We recognized a million synchronicities. The weather changed. And I let the Diary go… I feel a bit of hesitancy, a bit of fear, but yes, I feel great joy.

A Wondering Soul

I have not been writing that much. It always happens when I am quite uncertain. Which is often :) I am about to start a road trip with my brother in Brazil. My brother and I, even though we come from the same family, are incredibly different. He works crazy hours for the financial market, I travel. We have not lived in the same country for almost 15 years. We were always somehow in different places. It only happens for us to spend time together ( lately ) when he changes jobs. Last time he came to Europe, and I felt I was actually meeting him for the first time.



I shamefully confess, I knew little of what my brother thought, and never did I imagine in my wildest dreams he was so intelligent. Capable of always pining down a flaw in an argument in a second even if he had never heard  any of that stuff before. I took him everywhere I thought was interesting. And he tried his hardest to hear the stories of anthropologist, philosophers, scientists, and artist, but as he left me he confessed, though it had been an incredible experience, and though he thought the people he met worked incredibly hard to live what he considered  “ economically difficult lives”, he could not wait to go back to work, and to go back  to his comfortable life. I understood it. It was a nice time, but it had to end.



Now, he has changed jobs again to do something more important in some new important place in his world. And he has one week to travel. In his life, that is a lot. And so we decided on the spur of the moment to go somewhere together on a road trip. Could we even manage to accommodate both of our personalities in a road trip? Who knows, but I am looking incredibly forward to it as I wait for him to appear here in a second having signed up all papers he had to do before we go.



It is a road trip. And that is already me...It is in a fancy car, in Hotels and that is him :)



I spent this weekend listening to music. Music that spoke directly to my soul. In Sao Paulo some years ago started something called the “Virada Cultural”. It is 24 hours of music and art, and cultural events all over the city. For twenty-four hours people gather all over the city to do different things. It is an 18 million people place, a violent city, In that one night people go by tube (which works that day 24 hours )to places they usually don’t. Economically underprivileged citizens can afford to go to the expensive theatres they usually cant, rich kids go downtown to spend the night in the middle of all they usually don’t see.



I had never been in Brasil for a Virada Cultural. And I absolutely loved it. Though I confess I ended up joining before the virada ( which is only Saturday to Sunday) on Thursday to take part on a program called “music connections” organised by the Pianist Benjamin Taubkin. The project brought together Israeli and Brazilian musicians. For 5 days I spent time with these people which led me to feel again that I have such a strange connection to music, the middle east, and a wondering soul.


As I sat on the first night in the theatre inside of the cultural Jewish Centre I started my internal travel. It actually started when I entered the building and had to scan my things in a metal detector. It felt like I was in Israel. But back to the Music. I sat. And suddenly came together on stage Brazilian- out -of –this- world percussionists who played from traditional percussion instruments to pans and plates, with Israeli Talmudi brothers (Accordion, Sax and Clarinet) and Brazlian Tuba, Trumpet and trombone players. As I sat there and the Clarinet screamed I could see in my mind the Rajasthani musician singing the Kabelya gipsy cry. The joy and the wondering pain that comes with a wondering soul was there. I traveled in my mind from India all the way to Brazil. I saw Kashmir, Rajasthan, Mc Leod, Israel, Palestine, passing thought the Balkans, Turkey to arrive in northeast Brazil. What is it about music?



The following nights of jam sessions and concerts were stronger and stronger. Seeing the musicians who come from different worlds getting so excited, so moved recognising rhythms and melodies in music that apparently comes from another world was breathtaking. It becomes so evident this humanity that connects us all.



I sat there feeling home. In that essence. In that music. I was so moved that I wondered whether I was a Gipsy, or a Diaspora lost Jewish woman. I felt so at ease again in just being. I felt so thankful for these musicians. I then joined the Virada cultural in an unexpected concert at 6 am. In the centre with people of different social classes, listening to Beatles in the rhythm of Samba!



It ended last night for me in Jazz. I was back to New York for a while. The jazz pianist Yonathan Avishai played with a Joata, a Northeastern Trumpet player from Brazil.  And then in the end back were the Talmudi brothers to end it all up in a celebration of diversity and similarity.



Yonathan told me he was moved. He had not been used to exchanging so much. Usually he just goes for a while to play but spending so many days exchanging had been amazing. I knew all too well what he meant.



Reacquiring my gypsy soul I made peace with myself. It is time to go. I am going on a road trip with my brother, and then I ll follow the cry from Rajasthan, the trumpet from Klezmer. Yes, I guess I have not written before because I was postponing confessing I am going back to the Road. And I am not sure where it will take me.

Brasilia

I am in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, which was built from nothing in the end of the 50's and "opened" in the 60's. I had never been here before. Gabi, my friend who studied with me at the Lse, seats next to me, she is writing a report. People around us study to pass the exams to get a governmental career. It is one that pays well, and is stable. it is one that non public workers usually condemn.

Brasilia is a strange place. Wide open, full of concrete, green, disconnected. It feels to me to reside stereotypically in the Autism spectrum. It is mechanic, functional, and deprived of "theory of mind". People are not seen walking in streets and to go anywhere it seems to take ages inside of a car in endless roads. There seems to be not that many corners, to change sides I feel we are always taking rounds and crossing under roads. It is like people don't cross each other, they go round.

I am no specialist in architecture and I am not a visual person so all I feel here is the absence of emotion in the streets. It looks soviet. I wonder what would my dear friend Michele say seeing all of this. I actually wonder whether he has ever been here when in Brasil. When I was in Rome he had the brilliancy of inventing a way to tell me about architecture. He told me (invented) stories of the people behind the buildings he showed me. He realised within minutes I would never be able to focus that much in architecture alone, so he adapted and brought people into it, he brought stories. And in Rome architecture is so full of life that it was probably not a difficult task. Mic what would you say here? I keep wondering...

Most people would conclude from these lines that I am therefore not liking Brasilia. That is actually not really accurate at all! I probably would have not liked had I not known Gabi... but Gabi took me to Beto, and he played the bass, and Beto took me to Oswaldo, and then they took me to a house party. Oh, yes apparently people are bored here with their bars and so they have house parties where everybody knows everybody.

Brasilienses are a new people. They are the children of people who came from everywhere in Brasil to live in a constructed city in the middle of nowhere.

I look around and I see people who study. They want stability. As Gabi puts it "they want no challenges after the exam". But Gabi is not like that, nor is Felipe, nor is Beto. I guess here in Brasilia inbetweeners and rooted are more seeable than most people in other places. The stability that seems to have been so inorganically built attracts some. It also drives others out. others that come back and no not how to adapt.

And Brasilia is surrounded by a world of esotericism I am yet to discover. So many cults, and groups and villages. It seems truly like polar manifestations. Brasilia feels concrete, these villages sound non material. In the houses of the people I met here I feel warmth. The time, thanks goodness, passes slower than in Sao Paulo.

Jardim Horizonte Azul

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 12^th grade class there made me realize it even more strongly. She takes her year 12^th 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 12^th 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.

The Slums, and the border of within

People were always intrigued that I was never afraid of crossing borders to arrive in places that most people do not go to. It is true that when I crossed the wall to stay in the houses of strangers in Palestine I was slightly scared, or that when I visited Bolivia on my own I was at first apprehensive, or that when I decided to celebrate Ramadan in Kashmir (against all advices) I had a small hesitation. But never did I actually believe it was difficult to get to those places. I took all forms of transportation to arrive in the last village in Nubra Valley and climbed a rocky mountain, which was a few km from Pakistan without thinking it was far. I always ignored these voices of hesitation because I wanted to meet the other. As I have often put it: I wanted to hear those who have no voice.

So when my aunt, who teaches in a Waldorf school, invited me to spend one week volunteering in an association in one of Sao Paulo’s slums I was quite intrigued to realised I thought it was so difficult to get there. I did not really research the association I just asked her where it was. And my first thought was that it was too hard to get there, too far, too dangerous. I did not voice the thought, out of shame, but the truth is that my first impulse was of ‘impossibility”.  It is just out of the question to go there, I thought. This thought brought me immediately the question: How could it be that I who cross all kinds of borders. I who fly for days, and take several times buses for dozen of hours, and ricksaws, and tuk tuks, and boats, and shikaras in countries I often know no one nor speak the language found it sooo hard to take 3 buses to get to a slum in my own city of Sao Paulo?

It is because going to the slum in Sao Paulo involves crossing the borders of within. And those are way harder to cross. The return to my own country allows me to finally hear all of those who have no voice next to me.

It is also not without reason that I was apprehensive. As I talked to my Israeli friend who was talking on the Gaza situation I decided to research the statistics of homicides in the area of the association I was going to go to. In one of the neighbourhoods I was passing by only in one year (a bad one) 1777 people were killed. We are talking of one neighbourhood that houses 300 thousand people!

But so it is that puzzled by my own prejudices I decided to put my back on my back, retrieve my adventurer soul, a bit left aside since I arrived here, to cross all the borders of my own prejudices.

I took the first bus seeing things that were at first familiar. I drove it till the last point by that time not recognizing anything else anymore. On this bus alone it took me 1,5 hours. As I took this bus I kept thinking of the thousand (or maybe millions) of workers who take this journey (that only one part took me over one hour) every single day.  The second bus in another hour was going to take me to Jardim Angela the neighbourhood, which was considered in 2001 by Unesco as one of the most violent places in the world. It was truly like being in a different country for me. I knew nothing around and when I finally took the third bus with my backpack on my back intrigued to see how green this area was I was asked whether I was a foreigner.

I was puzzled. Has the time I have spent abroad changed me so much? And pondering about it I remembered that when I visited the neighbourhood where many illegal African immigrants live in Tel Aviv (which is so feared and avoided by my Israeli friends) people often started conversations immediately in English. I am usually taken for being Israeli in Israel and all over the world, but in that neighbourhood they never thought I was. It puzzled me then, like it puzzled me here. But I came to realise that that assumption had to do more with my attitude then with my looks. The truth is that the only volunteers, or people who were not from this poor neighbourhoods that went there were foreigners. This conclusion brought me another insight. Maybe it is because for all of us it is easier to help where we “know” of the less the context. It is probably easier to be empirical where our societies have not tainted us by prejudice of so called “factual information.

People looking like me in the slum are foreigners. They, probably like me, are not capable to cross the borders of within in their own countries so they take buses and planes and do it somewhere else. And quite honestly it does not matter to me where we help and encounter the other. It is the fact that we do that matters. It is in going to those places that we might start to learn to challenge our own prejudices which are always there does not matter what we do or where we come from.

And so it is that I arrived. I arrived in the Jardim Horizonte Azul. I arrived in an association that did far more than my wildest dreams. An association created by a German woman in the end of the 70’s. The work of this lady has transformed the lives of babies, children, adults, and the physical structure of three very poor areas in Sao Paulo. I in crossing the borders of within have been able to finally see what I always knew from the world. It does not matter where we are, we are always so alike.

It was an intense week. And I want to write properly about it. I want to write about the different experiences I had. But I will do it in parts. So first I will start here. Where it started for me. It started on the simple but incredibly hard first step. It commenced on the internal one, on the decision to go where you learned never to go to, nor to see.

On the way there, on the first bus, I stood next to an old lady. She had a perfect posture that was not destroyed by the years, nor the hard work I could see marked by the lines in her face. I hesitated on whether to tell her about it or not. She did not look particularly happy, nor did she look sad… It was just a resignation of someone who takes probably many buses to go to work everyday. I thought she looked so beautiful, in her flawless posture, in her austere presence. And I wanted to tell her about it.

So I did. She was touched. And decided to tell me her life. She told me she was 78. And then she told she came from the slums from a very poor family and that she had been the first black woman in one of Sao Paulo’s prestigious Universities. She had studied pedagogy. She had worked very hard in being the best student there. She told me she had studied to prove the world, and herself that the colour  of a person skin does not matter. I heard her quite moved.  And pondered about our country that prides itself of having no racism. I heard the woman in a mixture of admiration and sadness. I admired her austerity and strength but was sad that somehow she had needed to fight so hard against racism. I also felt uncomfortable that she searched in me some sort of validation. Then I realised I also searched in her, and in our conversation a validation. I expected in our brief encounter to erase the centuries of separations between classes, which in Brasil is highly correlated with colour. I was also searching for some kind of redemption.

I had no idea on that bus how much I would understand that better on the days to follow. How much I would understand how the capital culture, as Bourdieu puts, it is used to reinforce social distinctions. I never imagined how much of our relationships would be coloured by these distinctions. I never knew on that moment how much of my prejudices I believed not to have would be massacred listening to the poetry night in the slums. So I can’t let you know in one go. It takes time to discover the association, their work, the people, the art, the boundaries, the social and physical structure of the poor suburbs of Sao Paulo.

On that bus I carried my backpack as a foreigner. Because yes, that is what I am. A stranger. A stranger who is always searching for connection. We all are. On that bus I started to cross the frontiers of within. And I invite you all to do it. To help, to see those we have heard are so different than us. If you still can’t do it next door go far away. But go because we cannot afford to just stay still watching TV and reconfirming our untested judgments. I invite you to learn more about this world I have discovered this week. A world that was always there, next to me, a world which inhabitants work on our houses in the centre, our bars and restaurants, beauty parlours, stores, buses, subways, constructions, supermarkets etc. I invite you to learn about what happens to their children when they take every single day this journey, I thought it was impossible, to come here and work on this side.

Carnival and the Ephemeral Identity

It is incredibly hard to decide what to write about from Rio. The days have been blue, the sun has never left the sky, and carnival has been carnival. I have reencountered friends I met when studying in Brasil 12 years ago, in NY 11 years ago, in England a few years ago, and even travellers I crossed Kashmir with last year. I have made a great new friend. A gorgeous Iraqi English woman. Of the strange things that happen to me. In one day I am partying with a broken foot in the street carnival with a Bahraini girl, and of the other I meet an Iraqi in Brazil.

There is something that makes me feel at ease with these gorgeous and complex women of the Orient. They have identities that are so complex. I myself feel a little bit divided in this mosaic of identities. So I lay in Bikini in Ipanema, admiring the gorgeous people around but hoping for Sara to arrive since I know she will understand this multiplicity I have inside.

We will inevitably talk about the world. About emotions. About our experiences in Israel and Palestine. We will laugh and be intrigued by it all. Like foreigners who have crossed too many borders we will feel no belonging to a specific identity, while at the same time feeling a bit of them all. We will feel just like human beings, we will find familiar and strange things here together. Oh yes, it is true, I forgot, but this my country, I should somehow be an expert on it. I am not. In fact, I am not at all.

I walk around the Carnival in the street with my broken foot. The street is packed. There is music, there is joy. I have no phone. I search the purple hat of yet another friend. People are surprised I am alone. Boys and men offer kisses, marriage proposals, unforgettable nights, smiles, and when I explain I have just come back from another world that I do not want to waste their time of Carnival to my surprise they offer help.

The thing is that Carnival is a time, an ephemeral possibility of it all. It is a time in Brasil where people party in spite of it all. And in Brasil partying is incredibly related to sexuality. The Bahraini girl is shocked and marvelled by some gorgeous Carioca ( native of Rio) who just out of the blue kisses her. I am Brazilian and I am shocked too. So I explain as I walk around to these beautiful guys that they should not waste their breath on me, I am here on a mission, I am searching for a friend.

To my surprise my apparent lack of desire to engage sexually, but still engage humanly puzzles these boys. They then want to know where I come from, who am I, about Buddhism, and the East, do I need help? It is almost like once I just talk plain normally they feel they must take care of me in a non sexual way. It is funny. I have many conversations which are not typical at all. It somehow feels like anywhere else in the world.

There is one part of me that loves this joy, this easiness of it all. People look at my broken foot and congratulate me on not letting it stop me from partying. I love the fact that everybody talks to everybody. Another part of me feels incredibly lonely. I have yet another conversation with yet another stranger and he tells me of a poetry book called " distracted we will win". I who always feel we can either in life use things to distract ourselves from ourselves, or encounter ourselves and the others feel very puzzled.

I just can't, and do not know how to do it. I love the joy. But if I am distracted I am not fully present I therefore cannot feel it. The stranger then explains to me that he sees "distraction" as a way of stopping the mind. A way of just being in the body. I am completely puzzled. That sounds Buddhist to me. Stop the mind, being present. But how can he call this being distracted? I walk a bit more till some other stranger seats next to me. 

I am tired I seat on the stairs. I need a rest and I decide to just look at the parade in front of me. This new stranger has melancholic eyes. She offers me a smile, candy, and many words. 

I seat observing this human manifestation. I feel happy. I feel puzzled. I feel intrigued by how much Brazilians touch each other. Sara is Iraqi and having spent one carnival night  in rio while the rest in Bahia feels this carnival is quite moderate. Almost European.

As she says that I laugh. I remember meeting in Rome my Italian friend who lives in Palestine and who in Rome was now shocked at the clothes of Italian girls. 

This multiplicity of identities is woven in such an intricate way that I need as much touch as a Brazilian when I am in Europe, I need to feel it viscerally like they feel in the middle east when I am in South East Asia, and I need to be present in a Buddhist way in the Middle East. In Brasil now, I feel I need space like they have in Thailand. I suddenly realise that the fabric of a traveller's identity is not only complex but it is circumstantial. I am suddenly in Brasil and I feel home with a Middle Eastern. But certainly in the Middle East I would be listening to samba.