Gilberto Gil, I love you

Dear Gilberto Gil,

I'd like to tell you about last Thursday, if you don't mind.

It was one of the last days of my internships. I say "one" because the last "last" day keeps being postponed. And now Monday, the day before I fly back home to Texas, will be my last day. I'll be hanging up kid's photographs in Santander Cultural, giving a presentation to a juvenile court judge about my impressions of the juvenile justice system here in Porto Alegre (!) and then hightailing it back to the Módulo Partenon for one last goodbye to the Pro Jovem Adolescente youth group.

Anyway.

G., one of the "social educators" at the Módulo Partenon, had asked me, "So you're leaving, Libélua Azul? Tell me, did you get to spend much time in the communities?" And by "communities," he meant vilas, aka the neighborhoods that people are afraid of entering if they do not live in them.

And I said, "No, unfortunately. I visited one vila briefly, but I haven't really been inside them."

"You have to," he said, "You can't leave here without doing this."

And so we made plans for him to take me on a quick "tour" on Thursday morning of the vila Conceição where many of the center's clients reside. Of course Thursday morning was also officially my last morning with my supervisor, M. I was supposed to be with her during interviews with kids in conflict with the law complying with their juvenile probation. But, I thought it would be ok. I could give her my gift. We could chat. I could say goodbye to the kids I knew. And somewhere in there I could carve out a little time to go to the vila.

Only that this Thursday morning was absolutely jam-packed with kids waiting to see M. Too many for her to be able to see them all. So, she asked me to meet separately with some of them.

I met with a few kids.

And there was one that I had never met before until now. I started asking him some basic questions about his life, who he lived with, what he liked to do, what he wanted to do in the future. These questions were really hard for him to answer. He squirmed even about what he liked to do. He stopped going to school years ago. He didn't work. At one point I asked him, if he'd ever tried drugs. He said yes, but just pot. How much did he smoke, I asked. Was it a lot? Like every day? He laughed. "So," I said, "You get up in the morning? Do you smoke then?" Yup. "And in the afternoon?" Yup. "And at night?" Yup.

I've never thought about marijuana as a very serious drug, but I gotta tell you when you meet kids who smoke it 24/7 and can't tell you what they like to do and can't tell you what they'd like to learn how to do, you start to wonder. Obviously, there's other things playing into this too, but marijuana is seriously helping them self-medicate and almost numb themselves to everything else. It's a survival mechanism I imagine, a way to continue existing through all the hard stuff that just doesn't go away. And it breaks my heart to see a youth without passion for life coursing through his/her veins.

He admitted to me that he didn't like talking, he didn't like conversing. I thanked him for putting this much effort into speaking with me, given that it wasn't easy for him. I asked him what he did to calm himself down, or what he did when he was feeling angry or upset? Did he have people to talk to? Nah, he said, what he did was smoke pot. His friends were okay, but then again, sometimes it sucked to be around them.

And I told him that in his next meetings with M. that she wouldn't be forcing him to talk. But, that perhaps he should start thinking about things that he likes to do, things that he might like to do, maybe even going back to school. Because these would be things that she'd bring up. These would be things that she could help him with. He nodded.

He left. I watched him walk away in his brand-name powder blue sweatshirt.

And in the end, there was a sliver of time for a "tour" of a vila Conceição with G.

G. had grown up in this vila and knew everyone there. He walked us around introducing us to everyone, to the cooks in the community kitchen, to the group of woman sharing chimarrão on the sidewalk, to the drug dealers counting big wads of cash on street corners. By drug dealers, I mean young men, probably all under the age of 20. The views that this vila had of the rest of the city were incredible. The colors of their houses were bright and cheerful. Dogs roamed the streets. Streets that were tight, but could sometimes fit a car.

Children played on their father's parked motorcycle making vroom-vroom sounds and giggling.

Laundry hung out in the sun.

A man in a wheelchair sat in the middle of a stone road.

A child dashed by.

G. pointed out a day-care center.

We came across a second group of drug dealers counting cash openly in a corner. The scent of marijuana wafting through the air.

Different dealers for different drugs.

G. introduced myself and E., the manager of the social service centers where I've been interning. And I saw the blue sweatshirt of the kid I'd been meeting with scarcely an hour earlier. He looked me in the eyes with a slightly startled, slightly bemused, yet subtle expression.

"Oi," I said to all of them.

G. said that in the late afternoons, traffic picked up. There were lines of people waiting for drugs.

So, really that kid did work. Just not the kind of work that he wanted to tell me about. 

G. took us to a memorial for a woman who had been murdered in a situation of domestic abuse. A spot with a plaque where people left offerings. A spot intended to speak out again the victimization of women. A spot overlooking the corrugated rooftops of the vila houses and the tall buildings of the city in the distance. 

And so we left. I think E. was crying.

"You don't have to be worried about danger when you're with me," said G.

"I could tell," I said, "I wasn't worried."

But that wasn't entirely true. There was this strange shiver that went through me, walking through that group of kids dealing drugs, our backs to them as we walked down a tight road. But feeling their strong presence behind us.

What I think what it was though was this feeling of wow, this is all so big. How do you begin? Here I am leaving. Here I am done with my internship. And everything I have seen is nothing. How do you work within a community for change? You can't just be on the outskirts. You have to be inside. But, how. And what do you do when dealing drugs is a more viable, lucrative alternative then going to school and getting stuck with a minimum wage job which pays you a barely livable salary that will get you nothing and nowhere. How do you work with this? How do I work with this back in Texas?

Scratching the surface, really. So many little steps to get anywhere. A moment of feeling utterly overwhelmed.

And in the late afternoon I was at a court proceeding. For a kid utterly enmeshed in the juvenile justice system for years now. A kid who keeps getting last chances. A kid who just got another last chance. And the question is, what will he do with it? Can he manage it? Or will he end up in kiddie prison for another year of his life? Sweet kid. I'd met him a few times when he'd been locked up. We hugged and kissed each other on the cheek, because that's what you do here. [Sidenote: I really appreciate the politics of touch here. They're so much more humane, so much more sensitive.] "This is the last time I'll see you," I said, "But, when I talk to my supervisor, V., I want to hear from her that everything is going great with you." He winked at me and nodded, "Ok," he said.

"Tudo de bom," I said wishing him everything good in life.

And then I left. I ran out of the court house because I wanted to be done. Done for a little while. Waiting at the bus stop. Just being. Riding on a crowded bus. Just there. Not thinking. Because this is my life. This will be my life. No matter what, no matter who I'm working with. My life involves fervently believing that all of us have the right to discover our true potential and trying to build and be part of the community of people necessary to help individuals and communities find their true potential. And it involves strongly hoping that people can grab onto those little chances that life gives them and start finding that true potential. Some people unfortunately only get a few chances, unlike someone like me who practically gets served these chances on a silver platter...And it involves seeing all the times when this doesn't happen, when the chances don't come, or when, for whatever reason, people don't grab onto them. When life is unfair. Because life is most definitely unfair. And it involves continuing to hope and believe and struggle for something better.
...

So, Gilberto Gil, you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with you. It does, I promise.

You see on Thursday evening, my colleague and artist friend T. invited me to go see you perform at the Brasil Rural Contemporâneo event going on downtown. Of course I accepted.

I was wearing painful shoes, but I hardly noticed. You were amazing. Simply amazing. I understand now why you are an icon. Your presence alone is fantastic.

And your music frees the soul just a little bit. I felt in love. I felt transported. And it was evident that the rest of the crowd felt the same way, as we swayed and danced and smiled and grinned and cheered and clapped and sang. I have no idea how the security guards, who had to stand with their backs to you, their eyes on the crowd, could do it. 

Thank you Gilberto Gil, for the reminder that life is full of contradictions, at once searingly painful and unjust and at once painfully beautiful and full of so much goodness and love.

Obrigada,

Libélula Azul

Morning Greetings

Rainbow Portrait of My Umbrella
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

This morning I didn't yet know it was going to rain all day long. I was walking to the bus to head out to Lomba do Pinheiro for the last time...the last time this trip anyway.

The ground was wet from the rain the night before.

I saw a man on the ground in the shadow of the hospital, covered by many blankets. And I wondered, if he'd slept this way, wet and damp, throughout the downpour. Had he been up all night moving until the rain ended? How did he bear the cold? And I saw he was cuddling with a sweet puppy.

He saw me looking at him and he looked me in the eye and said, "Good morning." I felt touched. I didn't know if he was calling me out for staring at him or if he'd seen the smile on my face, but I appreciated his words all the same.

"Good morning," I said back to him, thinking about all the people who affect us positively and don't even know how much their kindness matters.

The Youth of Pro Jovem Adolescente Exhibit Their Photography

On Friday, the youth program located in the Partenon neighborhood of Porto Alegre, celebrated their one year anniversary. We invited their family and our colleagues to an afternoon of good food, good music.

Everyone gathered around to give their attention as each youth talked about their wonderful artwork such as the beautiful mural they created together a few months ago.

They had a first showing of their photography and their interpretation of the "Drugs: Impact on Our Lives" theme that they had chosen. Each youth was chose their top three favorite photographs and wrote about them. They'll also be writing biographies. They're still coming up with "artistic names" so for the moment I'll have to use just initials.

These are A.'s photos.  

 

I took this photo because I saw a lot of tagging and I saw the nature. There are a lot of trees, the building there on top, a lot of plants. It's just the entrance to go down stairs.

I took this photo because it is interesting. There are a lot of robberies and assaults here. It is violent day and night. Pass through in the morning and one can be assaulted. The photo is important because of Cachorro Sentado, a vila. I don't live in the vila. I just took a photo. 

I thought the shadows that I saw while walking were interesting. I took the photo on the street. I was with people. It is an art. 

These are B.'s photos.

This one has a story but I prefer not to tell it. This photo signifies cruelty that today isn't so common, stepparents are raping innocent children that don't even know the word "sex," children die almost every day as victims of rapes, if people were smart enough they would know who to leave their children with and that's all I wanted to say.

I chose this photo because I thought it was interesting to speak about it. Trash is something that we all produce, but there are people that think the place for trash is on the ground, and it isn't, the place for trash is in the trashcan, because trash outside of the trashcan brings many awful things and some of those are rats and cockroaches, that are very disgusting and sometimes they end up even bringing sicknesses that are not cool.

Graffiti is a divine thing, and there are people that think that graffiti is a crime, because it is very similar to tagging. Graffiti is a cool thing to do because sometimes it is a portrait of some sad realities and other times it is a portrait of cool things like cartoons and other things.

These are E.'s photos.

The graffiti that we in Pro Jovem did, this graffiti is more or less the same, in the letters and in the wild-style.

It was fun to be able to play football and have various friends and be remembering the playing that we did.

I did this design based on a sunset. It is a beautiful flower. It is pretty sunset and a work of art.

A. N. & R. shared a poster board for their photographs.

 

A.N.'s photos.

In this photo, marijuana is being prepared for smoking.

Shocking moment he is smoking a pitico. What is a pitico: (marijuana, crack and tobacco). Don't follow this example. 

In this photo marijuana is being rolled.

R.'s Photos.

This beautiful landscape is giving a beautiful look at a world without violence totally clean.

With inspiration I was able to take but one that called my attention a lot was the graffiti in the light of the sun.

With music we totally forget our problems. Music brings a lot of happiness and joy. 

"Ka$h" hadn't turned in her camera yet to be developed, so she wrote her biography instead:

My name is Ka$h, I live in Morro da Cruz with my mother, stepfather and three brothers. I am 16 years old, I go out, study and do Pro Jovem. My oldest brother is in jail. I like to go out on Fridays after school to converse with my friends. I smoke cigarettes and I drink on the weekends. I live with a drug user but I don't use drugs. Where I live there are drugs all over the place and if I wanted it would be easy to just use them, but I am the fight against "crack."

I love my life and I am never going to use "CRACK."

These kids are awesome and I feel so privileged to have been able to meet them, get to know them and see their wonderfully creativity.

Next up: their photography exhibit at Santander Cultural!

I didn't bring my camera this time

There was a moment on Sunday evening when I couldn't take it any longer. I'd been sitting in front of my laptop, typing away for the entire day, trying my damnedest to finish one paper so I could start another.

And words started spinning in my brain and I thought I might explode. Yes, yes, had I begun writing this thing months ago, it wouldn't have been this unpleasant. Beginning early would have been an excellent idea. But I used my time on other things. And besides, time sensitive deadlines can provide necessary motivation to get 'er done. Right? Or so I have rationalized.

I think it was around 6 PM. The sky was getting darker. It was almost dusk, but not quite. I threw on my flip flops, stuffed my house keys in my pocket and said to A., "I have to go out."

"Yes, yes you do," she agreed as Cipote laid on her lap and looked at me as he always does when he's next to A. It's sort of a "Don't you come any closer. She's mine!" kind of look. And he will follow it up with a bark or a growl if need be. Of course, if A.'s not there to give affection, he will come looking for me with his adorable I-need-some-love eyes.

Out I went, just trying to get the mess of thoughts in my head to slow down a little. I walked a block and crossed through the bus lane to the street adjacent to the park. It's always full of vendors on the weekend selling organic produce on Saturday and arts & crafts all the rest of the time. They were all closing up their stalls, getting ready to leave for the day.

The street was blocked off to traffic and teeming with people. I made my way to the park entrance. Parents and children and strollers. Popcorn vendors. Men with poles of cotton candy. Chimarrão all around. Teens. Cyclists. Dogs of all shapes and sizes. Elderly couples walking arm in arm. Young couples making out as if their lives depended on kissing. People sitting on the grass, on park benches, strolling, laughing, talking, smiling, running, moving, just being there.

And I was so gratified by how easy it was to just meld into this huge sea of humanity enjoying the park on a Sunday evening. With the sun far behind the trees, the sky almost dark but still light enough so that you could see everything.

I came upon a group practicing capoeira near a fountain and stopped to watch getting lost in the fluidity and grace of the movement of all the participants of all ages and sizes. Their bodies flowed in and out of a dance of complex movements, actions, reactions as if it was that easy to defy gravity. It was amazing. I watched in awe.

This may have been the best "break" from academic work that I have ever managed to take. Of course it choked me up a little too because it just felt so beautiful, because I kept thinking -- as one always does when an 'end' is rapidly approaching -- that I hadn't taken advantage of this nearly enough. But there I was, at least then, on that evening, in my t-shirt that was too thin for the weather, with 5 centavos in my pocket and a sky getting darker and darker with every minute.

Photos, Funny Accents & Pine Trees

Today the first group of teenagers got to see their photos and some of the writing began. Writing about their favorite photos. Writing biographies for the exposition.  Fun and challenging and all that good stuff. I love learning from and getting to hang out with these guys and girls (we're up to 2 girls in this particular group now!).

Here's a photo of Negão (the "artist name" that one of the kids chose for himself) comparing one of his photographs with its subject:

We had a number of new adolescents entering the workshops today and luckily enough leftover cameras so that they could participate in the project too. One of them did not know what to make of my accent. I can hardly imagine how I sound to a Brazilian ear especially as I mangle pronunciation of words and verb conjugations. I was working with the kids individually on their writing and talking about their photos so I wasn't aware of this particular kid's fascination and bemusement, but apparently he kept repeating quietly to one of the coordinators, "She talks so strange! She talks so funny!" Then he sat next to me just so he could listen to me speak. Ha. 

In the meantime I am feeling utterly swamped and in the mood to sleep for a week straight, but I have a mountain of work to get done before that can happen. (And since I've got so little time left I can't imagine I'll be letting myself sleep in too late even if I technically can). So this is my quick post while I'm boiling pinhões (singular form = pinhão) which taste kind of like chestnuts but come from a pine tree for (part of) dinner. They taste good but I have to say that the leftover shell ends up looking slightly like squished cockroaches, a thought I have to banish from my head when eating.

Then I've got to work, work, work on a paper...at least until my televnovela starts that is. I've been watching it almost religiously (or actually much more than religiously since I've never attended a place of worship between 3-6 times a week) and it's ending this week! Gotta have priorities, right? ;-)

Blind Assumptions

I watched The Blind Side here in Brazil where it's titled O Sonho Possível (The Possible Dream). I get that it was based on a true story about football star Michael Oher, an African American who grew up in multiple situations of risk and vulnerability and was adopted in his late teens by an Anglo couple. However, there were a number choices made in the presentation and filming of this movie that made me disappointed, sad and angry.

One of the things that got to me was its depiction of neighborhoods. There was the rich neighborhood that the protagonists lived in - with its beautiful trees, enormous houses, white people and children who did all their homework. Then there were the housing projects on the other side of the tracks where the black people lived and where it appeared that no one ever laughed or was nice to each other.  Just guns and drugs and violence and bad memories. So, uh, why did the director (and everyone else on board) chose to make these neighborhood realities so...black and white? Wasn't there some awareness of how awful and racist this comes across? Is this movie really saying that every single aspect of this young man's life was hellish before he came to live on the good side of town? That there was no good or beauty or love in his world?

And since I'm looking at strength-based and resiliency theories right now for a "Social Work Inventory" that I need to write for my last class of master's education, it's got me back thinking about this movie and how frustrating this all is. First off, I just find it hard to believe that this young man could have made it to his late teens and be the wonderful young man that he was if there hadn't been some special, nurturing people there at least at some points during his life. And some of those people likely would have lived in that housing project...and if that's the case, then there was some good and beauty there that the film doesn't show us.

The other aspect of this presentation of dichotomies (good/bad, safe/unsafe, etc.) when it comes to these two neighborhoods is that it doesn't create a space for the people who live in the unsafe neighborhoods to thrive and succeed. And then it blames them for the choices they are making without looking at potential root causes for those choices.

Here in Porto Alegre, it's true that there are a lot of neighborhoods that if people don't live in them, they are fearful of entering them. I can't imagine how on earth The Blind Side would choose to depict them, but it wouldn't be pretty. But real people live in them. And many of those people are the youth that I work with in my internship, youth that are in conflict with the law, for a variety of reasons. When I talk to these kids and ask them about the spaces where they feel safe, accepted and included they often mention their homes and their neighborhoods. The very spaces that so many people living outside of these neighborhoods think about in terms of fear.

The other day when we gave youth group #2 their cameras for the photo project, we all took a walk together through part of the area where they live. Of course this area is a mixture of the very rich and the very poor, almost side by side. And there were these beautiful praças [plaza/square/parks] shaded by trees that everyone uses. We were there playing and taking pictures. The more intrepid among us were also walking off the beaten paths into the woods where homeless encampments were located. Trash littered some areas showing signs of recent drug use. There was a beautiful field for soccer playing. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. The foliage was dense and green. I got to play the part of tourist and the kids showed me some of the beauty in where they lived. I took pictures but so did they and those are the pictures that will likely have much more to say.

And then they took their cameras back home for more picture-taking of their worlds through their eyes.

I know that I'm on my high horse here, full of indignation about a movie, comparing it to real life, which of course it is supposed to be based on. And I know that I'm coming from the space of a white girl who has lived a very sheltered, privileged life. I've had my white guilt phase and know that it's a place of paralyzed inaction. Looking at the world's issues and thinking "My God this is too much. It's too overwhelming. There's no way I can make a positive impact. I'm sorry!" Sometimes I still feel guilty, like when I pass the one-armed beggar on the street corner outside the pet store and he looks me in the eye and I don't want to give him money and I hate that I want to do something but don't know what. And I still perhaps try to take the easy way out. Even the easy way when it comes to discussing this movie. Normally I hold back my rants when I hear people gushing about it.

But, I have social work school to thank for the fact that I can no longer watch a movie in peace and blindly enjoy it. As well as for the knowledge that if I've got this privilege, then I better try damn hard to do something good with it. More than try, I better act.

Life is just never as simple and clear-cut as The Blind Side made it out to be. It frustrates me that the makers of that movie didn't think about representing any nuance or showing how much gray area there is in everything. But that of course begs the questions, who are the people who are telling the story and whose story are they actually telling?

Starting to Say Goodbye

Funny how you can get nostalgic about a place before you've even left. With less than three weeks before I fly home, I've already entered into that territory. In no time I'll have graduated and I'll be looking for a fulfilling, challenging and inspiring job (if anyone has any leads, by all means let me know!). I'll have adapted back to the rhythm and flux of Austin, to daily life with my boyfriend, to breakfast tacos and Barton Springs and delicious potlucks with my friends, to driving a car again. And my time here will start to feel like something that happened in a sepia-tinted dream.

Soon I'll be that girl. The one who instead of saying, "This one time at band camp..." will be saying, "This one time in Porto Alegre..." to anyone who will listen. Of course, I've still got a lot between me and my 6 PM flight on May 18. A LOT. Some of which I should be attending to this very moment instead of writing a blog entry. But hey, this is how I always operate, putting off the important stuff. I'm in this time period that my mother described as, "...such a whirlwind and a wanting to stay longer, yet feeling the rich fullness of the time." It's this moment where I want to grab onto everything and make it last, but where I'm also ready for home.

I've been talking to some of the coordinators of the youth groups I've been working with, saying that I hope, hope, hope to find a job working with adolescents back in Texas (fingers crossed!). And then if that's the case, oh the possibilities. With a glint in our eyes we imagine embarking on projects of cross cultural exchange where the kids here can learn about the kids there and vice versa...like wouldn't it be so cool for kids to share pictures with each other about their lives, lived 5,000 miles away from each other?

The connections I've made won't be cut just because I leave the country...it's just the nostalgia I have for the little moments, all the walking around this city, all the waiting at bus stops, all the cafezinhos, daily greetings with doormen, finally knowing exactly where the coconut juice is located in the supermarket, always feeling pressured by the huge clock in front of the hospital, that time a little old lady asked me to help her across the street, how soft the skin of her hand felt against mine. It's a nostalgia for a place and time that can't be revisited because each time I return (and I do want to come back) will be a different experience. The deep colors of the graffiti that I took pictures of will have faded. Likely there will be new graffiti in its place.

And so it goes. 
[Thank you Kurt Vonnegut for that oft-repeated phrase in Slaughterhouse Five which struck me as profound when I first read it at age 13 and has stuck with me ever since].