Announcement: I have indented the paragraphs I found most interesting since I’m sure no one is actually going to read this whole email. Pity, too.

Well well well. It’s been a while since my last mass email. I guess it’s been a while since my last life changing experience. As most of you know, I decided to spend the summer in Brazil as a supervisor with AMIGOS das Americas, the organization that I work with last summer in Mexico. Remember all those crazy stories then, well I was just getting started. My job description is even wackier and the country crazier (at least when it comes to dancing and partying). I had three weeks to ease my way into Brazilian life as I traveled to Rio de Janeiro and through the region of Bahia with my boyfriend, Arnaud. After deciding to accompany me to Brazil in April when I found out I would be going, he miraculously learned to speak Portuguese in a month. I don’t know how people do that. Anyway, we had a great time. I don’t have any absurd airport stories like last time but there were plenty of interesting moments. I learned just how effective the friend of a friend of a friend network is as my mother put me in contact with a friend who knows people all over the world. She sent out an SOS to everyone she knew and someone responded with a list of people in Bahia. I ended up hanging out with all of them, both Brazilian and Americans who were able to show me a less touristy side of Bahia. So I spent this time practicing Portuguese, eating good seafood, lounging on the beach (when it finally decided to stop raining), and learning as much about the culture here as possible. Bahia has the largest black population of all of Brasil as it was the point of entry for the slave ships. This heritage survives in many ways, most notably through religion. If anyone is interested in learning about Candomble, a religion that combines African gods with Catholic saints, I suggest doing a good ol google search. I went to one of the ceremonies and was quite intrigued by the different customs. However, I won’t go into detail now because I have a feeling this will be a very long email.

So I have just come back from my most ambitious job ever. The way AMIGOS works is they give the supervisor a list of towns to visit. While at these towns all by our lonesomes, we have to find people to house and feed the volunteers. We also have to talk to directors of hospitals, call town meetings to brainstorm secondary projects, make sure conditions are safe for these 16-22 yr olds that will be living, many of them out of the country for the first time, alone in a strange land with little language skills. While overwhelming, the experience was like a giant scavenger hunt. The first day, after being instructed to go to the Grande Hotel where there should be a “Toyota” headed for my first town, I got into this hard to explain vehicle. It’s as if an SUV was gutted, stuffed with seats that are more like benches, and then stuffed with people. It sort of reminds me of that dish, the details are hazy but I think it consists of a chicken stuffed inside a turkey stuffed inside a goose. A bench that would normally fit 3 people can often hold 5 or 6 normal sized adults, and if need be, people can sit on the roof. I don’t think I will be doing that. So after a couple of hours of being apart of this automotive delicacy, I reached my first county and then had to find the labor union so that a representative could take me to the tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There I basically had to go up to random people and convince them to take some teenage American, not forgetting that I also have to make sure that I’m fed and given a place to sleep. I had three nights of this, but I returned to Caruaru (where I live on weekends) in one piece and with 6 host families in place for my volunteers.

The next week was when the vols arrived. Not much to say other than we gave them a crash course in cistern building, water education, history and politics of the NE, NE linguistic variations (you can guess what I was in charge of), religion, and Portuguese classes among many other things. The most difficult moment was deciding which vols would go with which supervisor. It was a relatively painless process being that I’ve heard past projects have nearly adverted disaster as sups fought over whom they wanted to work with. That Friday, we dropped them off at their towns and then spent the weekend recovering.

Sometime later…

I have survived my first week of route, that’s when I visit all my volunteers in their towns, bring them materials, check on their health, help them with ideas, and smooth over any misunderstandings that might have cropped up between the community and these silly Americans. What should take a couple hours of transportation, often takes upwards of 6 hours, because transportation is never guaranteed. Some days I have to wake up at 5:30 to catch the 6 am ‘Toyota’ out of town (the only manner of escape until midday). I get to the larger town and have to wait an hour or two for my inter-county transportation. Once I get to my next town, I then wait another couple of hours until, as I mentioned earliery, the president of the local labor union can take me from the main town to the small mountain town of 3 of my volunteers (vols). 45 minutes of bouncing up and down in a 4 x 4 and swerving around winding roads that hug the side of the mountain, leading to the town nestled in the valley leaves me breathless, both because I’ve been suppressing extreme motion sickness and because this is some of the most beautiful land I have ever seen. This town is next two the second largest peak in the state of Pernambuco and I’m hoping that I can plan a camping trip at some point.

Speaking of camping, I first learned to pee in the woods when camping. Now I get to pee in the woods on a regular basis since most of the houses where I have placed volunteers don’t have any sort of bathrooms. One of my vol groups have decided to submit a grant proposal to build dry latrines, a concept that is foreign to NE Brazil. While I think this is an excellent idea because it is an important component of sanitation and health education and it accompanies our primary project of cistern construction, I must say that I find a certain solemnity in peeing amongst the cacti. I was worried about having to pee at night and accidentally running into a cactus, but my worries were soon assuaged when I was presented with my first pee bucket. I guess bedpans is the proper term but pee bucket has such a nice ring to it. So, this week I can proudly say that I peed in my first bucket (to my knowledge). The subsequent throwing the contents out the window was also a first. Of course, the life of a supervisor is fast paced and I somehow forgot to clean it in the morning. I didn’t realize that minor detail until later on while I was stuck in the second stalled vehicle of the day. I had to inform my volunteer about the nice present I left behind. She graciously offered to wash it out. It’s so nice being, for once, in a position of authority.

I mentioned stalled cars. Wednesday was the day for them. All we were trying to do was get to a town that had a T.V. to watch the Brasil/Ghana WorldCup soccer match. (I was decked out in Brasil garb but secretly rooting for Ghana as it was the first time for an African Nation to reach the second round and Ghana’s first World Cup). I can’t decide which is worse for the project: Brasil winning and there being a national month of celebrations or Brasil losing and there being unified mourning followed by coma. Either way, the truth is that we’ve hardly gotten anything done this month between World Cup play and the June Sao Joao festivals. That will be a topic of discussion later. Back to the stalled Toyota…We got this passing truck to try to tow us, but towing a Toyota uphill on a dirt road with a rope that might have been an inch in diameter was futile. Besides, the vehicle wasn’t blessed. It was just a hypothesis that would be confirmed later on but riding in vehicles lacking the appropriate “hail our lord and savior” stickers is risky business. All cars have some sort of reference to Jesus or God or the Virgin Mary plastered all over the windshield and bumper. This guy had cutesy sayings about secular phenomena. Bad idea. And about 4 hours later, as I was missing the Spain France match because the huge cement truck that me and my 3 vols were squished in as we headed to one of the cistern construction sites became stuck in a giant anthill, one of my vols astutely pointed out the lack of Jesus stickers. To give credit to the driver, there was a rosary…but I don’t think that cuts it. Somehow, the Jesus fervor is lacking in a simple rosary.

When we got to the site, we met the “pedreiro,” which the dictionary says is a stonemason but who I just know as the cistern guy. He was covered in cement. Before he could explain exactly what was happening in the hole, one of my vols has jumped in and asked for a bucket of cement. I don’t think the pedreiro had ever seen a girl so gung-ho about filling a frame with cement. He just laughed, showed her the proper way, and let her at it. I got in the hole as well. Even with my arms straight up, I couldn’t reach the rim of the hole. It was interesting to see the construction process, a nice compliment to the course we all had received on cistern building, maintenance, and usage.

That night was reserved for Cuadrilha, the Brasilian answer to square dancing. However, each song lasts for about 45 minutes (you think I exaggerate?). 4 hours later my vols and I were invited to the school to meet the director, eat food (it was my 6^th meal of the day), and play with some of the town’s kids. I was enjoying myself until I noticed one of my vols looking extremely angry. The way the town is set up is there is a town center that has pavement and running water, surrounded by extreme rural areas with very little resources. It is in these rural areas that we build the cisterns. The rural area is notably poorer, so much poorer that one of my vols doesn’t even have electricity (although the present government is working on a project called “luz para tudos” which aims to hook every family up with electricity…this is the same platform that provides the funding for our cisterns). It’s actually quite amazing the difference in living situations between the North and South of Brasil, as well as between the rural and slightly less rural areas of the Northeast, where I am. Anyway, two of my vols live in the rural region and one lives in the slightly less rural area marked by pavement. When one of my vol invited her host family into the school, her mother refused. After pleading with her to come join them, she realized her mother’s hesitance. The mayor basically denied her family entrance and later locked the door. It’s amazing however people who have very little by our standards would deny those who are even less fortunate to be around them. To make matters worse, the mayor was related to this family. This isn’t the first time similar things have happened. My vol was furious. I unfortunately recognized the reality of the situation. However, in my position, I have my ways to protest. I told my vols to shift their focus on secondary projects that would more greatly benefit the rural area than to continue finding projects in the town center. While this will have little effect on this type of mentality, at least we can say that we didn’t support it.

However, for the most part, my experience here has been positive and the people I have met have been incredibly accommodating, giving us what little they can. I think the biggest thing they give me however is humor. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much, usually over cultural misunderstandings. I remember being on survey and talking with some people around my age. We were doing a language exchange which got on the topic of songs in English. They started asking me if I knew the song about the shipwreck, you know, Chichaneekee. I had no idea what they were talking about. All of a sudden the guy busts out with the theme song from Titanic. I still didn’t get the relation between Titanic and Chichaneekee until I remembered that “T” is often pronounced “ch”, “i” are pronounced “ee” and loan words that end in a consonant get an “ee” added to it. After a minute of the highest confusion, it all made sense. However, 5 minutes of having them say “titanic” proved useless. I’ve now adopted the Brasilian pronunciation.

Meanwhile, I had a scare when I asked what I was eating and they responded by simply saying “gato,” which is cat. I had asked in the first place because it was unlike anything I had ever tasted. The answer was not what I expected, especially since I had always heard that cat tasted like chicken. Luckily, when eating lunch with a different family, I dared to ask again what the strange meat was, all the while trying to figure out how I could subtly avoid eating it, and to my delight I learned that I had heard wrong. It’s “gado,” which is some type of cow meat.

*Nothing, though, tops the story of the week. My fellow supervisor, Sara, went to visit one of her towns who had a sick vol. I had warned all my vols never to get sick. They thought I was kidding until I told them about the medical treatment available here. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. You never know what they are injecting you with (apparently someone one year was almost given viagra to cure a stomach bug) or what remedy they will concoct for all sorts of illnesses. Sara’s vol had been suffering an earache. So the mother decided to take care of it. She ordered the guy to lie down, let in some random woman who approached the vol, unbuttoned her blouse, whipped out a breast and began to squeeze breast milk into his ear. (no- I don’t lie when I write travel emails). According to him, he was cured. I think it helps that the woman was hot, in his opinion. When telling my parents about this, my dad asked if this was an urban legend. Hmm, sounds like it but it happened 2 days ago in front of my partner. Urban legends usually take a little longer to form. But hey, at least he didn’t have to go to the doctor.

A lot of my time here consists of calling town meetings. Most of you know that I don’t like public speaking, and public speaking in Portuguese is about as hard as it comes, definitely when you have old ladies in the audience shooting everything down. What should take an hour of bouncing off ideas about secondary projects and explaining what AMIGOS is, usually takes upwards of 3 hours of everyone speaking at once, people rambling on about the ineptitude of their local government, and as I mentioned earlier, the old women of the group being sourpusses. At least my last meeting was capped with a dance, 3 hours of forro. For those of you who do not know what forro is, it’s like this strange mix of polka, merengue, and country western. No forro band would be complete without an accordion.

Caruaru is the forro capital of the world and the festival of Sao Joao that I mentioned earlier basically comprises of 30 days of nonstop forro. There had to be about 100,000 people at the outside dance hall last Saturday for the main night. This past Thursday we were forced to dance on stage with this group that performed for us and taught are volunteers at briefing last week. We were then interviewed by local radio stations. But I prefer the more low key shindigs like at one of my towns the other night. Everyone dances, from little kids to old old…old people. This old lady kept asking me to dance. She was at least 70 and tired way after I did. Altho, when I look back on that night, I wonder if she was hitting on me. She did give me 5 ears of corn to thank me for all that I had done for the community so far and kept finding me for every other song. Interesting.

When people are not dancing…or eating (I eat an average of 5 meals a day) they are watching the novelas- nighttime soap operas. And since most people only get 2 channels, the whole country watches in unison. The current most popular one is called Sinha Moca and takes place in colonial Brazil. But the superficial treatment of the epoch and the seeming detached acceptation of slavery and the surrounding economic structure while weaving obnoxious love stories throughout is more than I can normally bear. However, I must say it’s interesting to see how Brazil deals with its past when compared to the US. I wouldn’t expect that a national nighttime tv show about the times of slavery would really create any interest in the US as the relationship between race and history is much more taboo in the states than in Brasil. My main point, however, is that there really is nothing else to watch (yes, Brasil just lost to France in the world cup and my guaranteed sports watching has ended)…If you haven’t noticed, this email has taken me several weeks to write. (I haven’t been outside since the loss to see just how depressed Brasil is)

So, I will end this first installment on the subject of rain. While my project is here to help try to alleviate the effects of little rain, I am present for the wet season. So most of my experience here has been with me being soaking wet and covered in mud. I just have to keep reminding myself that this rain is a good thing because once rainy season is over, it might not rain one day for 6 months straight. I should also mention as I’m signing off, that this trip so far has been a tremendous experience and I hope I’ve been able to teach you something about life in the Northeast. Hopefully soon, I’ll be able to start doing some academic research as well, since I’m armed with my new digital recorder and have to prove to Berkeley that I have been working on PhD stuff the whole summer.

I hope everyone is doing great. Write me if you have a chance. I can’t guarantee that I’ll have time to write back but I would love to have news from everyone.

Sincerely,

Maia (the Brazilians have decided to change the spelling of my name)