Of Cell Phones and Other things

This is Maria Cristina. She lives in a neighorhood of Rio de Janeiro called Jardim de América, which is about a one-hour bus ride from the city center. She made the dress that she is wearing for a woman in her 50s to wear to a special event. Maria Cristina has been teaching sewing to women living in the favela near her since 1999. Some of the women who have participated in her classes have even had their clothes shown in the annual "Fashion Rio" event. Sewing is not the only skill that she shares with her community. In addition to this project, she teaches people how to use materials like old circulars, plastic bottles and flour sacks to make party decorations, hand bags, and other items. Having taken a class on nutrition, she also shares ways of using things that are often considered garbage, such as banana skins, to make healthy food. This is one way that she shows the women in the favela that they have resources around them, and it helps the women to feed their families.

For some time, there was a person who gave Maria Cristina 1,000 Reais each month to pay the rent on a space where she taught these courses. About a year ago, though, the donations stopped and Maria Cristina was forced to re-locate everything to her home. This has not prevented her from moving forward, however. 

Mercado livre is a web site that commercializes some of the products that Maria Cristina and her friends make. Distribution is actually the biggest challenge facing these ladies. Since they have limited resources, to sell their products they must approach stores directly or pay fees to have stands at the local artisans' markets. 

On my way back from this visit, which was really fabulous, I lost my cell phone. This is the second one that I have lost in a month, and I had only bought it last week. It should come as no surprise, then, that I won't be running out to buy another one. I'll just rely on e-mail. 

Rio is a beautiful city. I probably said that in my last blog entry, but, y'know, certain things can be repeated. I love the downtown area with its 18th century Portuguese architecture. There is also just a fabulous flow of people there. One section of it, Uruguiana, reminds me of Canal Street and Chinatown, although there aren't really any Chinese here. But it's the knock-off and cheap merchandise center of Rio, and that's what brings me to Canal Street.

Needless to say, Rio is also chaotic. Monday morning I tried to go for a walk along the beach in the Botafogo neighborhood where I am staying. To get to the promenade, I had to cross, literally, 12 lanes of traffic. And it was morning rush hour. After making it across 9 lanes, I got stuck on a median strip. Fortunately, an understanding Brazilian man with a potbelly helped me time the crossing right, and we both dashed across to an underpass.

It looks like I'll be here in Rio until mid-April, when I'll start wandering Northeast again. In the meantime, I've made a resolution to get out and explore the downtown more.

 

In Rio

My Mom went back to the US on Sunday, and I stayed in Rio. I´ve started working with an organization called Catalytic Communities, which is actually going through a transition of its own. Cat Comm has done a tremendous amount of work with local communities here in Rio, and now it is moving to a virtual format. It will have a web site that houses a database of projects all over the world. The database will describe what issues the projects address, how they work, and what they need. My role here is to help produce a promotional video. Really, I´m more comfortable as a photographer, but I´m going to give this a shot, and we´ll see what comes out of it.
Today I went with Rose, Cat Comm´s project coordinator, to a favela called Acarí. We met with some local leaders who will hopefully be featured in the video. Among the people we met were some men who are involved with the local Escola (school) do Samba. These are the organizations in Rio that put together the big groups that parade through the "sambodromo" at carnaval, competing for the best costumes, music, dances, etc.
The school built an auditorium for screening videos and films, since there is another group in the community that is teaching these production skills. The escola also opened up a game room with fussball, pool, and other games. The local police, however, broke the games, ripping the felt on the pool table, and forced the escola to close the auditorium down. Some of the people with me and Rose hypothesized that the police were acting in conjunction with other community leaders who saw these facilities as a threat to their power base.
Something that I found interesting in this regard was a newspaper dedicated to the issues of the favelas that featured a front-page photo of a protest of Israel´s attacks on Gaza. One placard in the photo compared the tanks in Gaza to police armored vehicles in Rio.
There is clearly an opportunity for me to work with CatComm for as long as my visa is good here in Brazil. However, I think that when the video project is done, hopefully in a few weeks, I´m going to go back to Salvador. And maybe I´ll see about working as a crew member on a sailboat so that I can learn how to sail....

On the Road

I left Florianopolis heading towards Salvador by bus two weeks ago. The distance is roughly equivalent to following the coast from New York to New Orleans, so I stopped in several places along the way to keep from going stir crazy on the bus.
After a night in Rio de Janeiro, I headed out to Vitoria, in the state of Espiritu Santu. At the bus station, I got into a conversation with a retired Afro-Brazilian guy, Diogo, who had played professional soccer in the US and had raised his children in Indiana. We took the same bus, and I ended up staying ith him and his wife in the city of Vila Velha, just across the river from Vitoria.
When Diogo and his wife came back to Brazil in 2002, Diogo started a soccer league for children from about 7 to 17 years old. The league operated successfully for a few years until a local politician who owned the field where they practiced told Diogo that they couldn't use it any more. The politician felt threatened by Diogo's connection to the community. Diogo, on the other hand, is confident that he will find a way to start again.

Vitoria is becoming an oil boomtown, sort of like Houston in the 1980s. Oil and natural gas have recently been discovered off the Brazilian coast, and you can even see an oil rig in Rio de Janeiro's harbor. Vitoria is the epicenter of the exploration and operations related to all of this, and I counted at least 9 different skyscrapers going up in the city when I was there. Diogo and his wife said that one of the unfortunate aspects of this boom is that the population of Espiritu Santu doesn't have the kind of educational preparation to take advantage of all of the jobs that are being created. As a result, the buildings that are going up will house people from other countries and other parts of Brazil, instead of providing new jobs for the local people.
As Ligia prepared lunch, I read part of a magazine commemorating Barack Obama's election. Some of his speeches were printed there, and as I read what Obama had to say about race, I cried and asked myself what I was doing in Brazil when I could be working on Mark Winston Griffith's city council campaign or doing something in New Orleans. Still, for now I am where I am, and there is value in this, too. In fact, an acquaintance of mine in Rio, who started an organization called Catalytic Communities, offered me the possibility of doing some video and photography work in exchange for room and board in a hostel, so I'm going to do that.
From Vitoria, I traveled to a small town on the coast called Itacare'. Sometime during the trip, I got super sick, and I spent the 13-hour ride throwing up in the bus' bathroom. No fun. It took some time to recover, but I did, and then moved on to Salvador, finally. The three days that I spent there didn't feel like enough, so I may just have to go back at some point.
On Thursday, a Frenchwoman, Lena, and I spent the day together. Most of it on the beach. At sunset, I was swimming, and there was a burst of applause and cheers from the shore. The people were cheering for the sunset, as Salvador is perhaps the only place in Brazil where it looks like the sun sets over the ocean.
My Mom has arrived from the US for 10 days, so after she goes back, I'll start working with Cat Comm.