Let's go fly a kite
I don't really watch the news (I didn't in the U.S. either), but it seems as though a general announcement must have gone out this weekend that it was time to break out the kites. I was walking on Saturday and saw quite a few kites soaring in the sky in the unlikeliest of places (crowded neighborhoods full of trees and powerlines, for example). A cold front came in, so maybe that's the signal for kite-flying weather. When I actually got to see some kites up close today, I realized that they are mostly made out of plastic grocery bags, sticks and other recycled materials. People are very inventive here.
I got up early this morning to tape the news because my roommate was being interviewed on regional television about a new law requiring public hospitals to allow a relative/friend to accompany pregnant mothers in the delivery room. Apparently, the private hospitals previously allowed a family member or friend, but those who couldn't afford the privilege of a private hospital were required to give birth without a familiar face in the room.
I knew from my previous experience outside the U.S. and from my international friends who live(d) in the U.S. that our country tends to be extremely introspective as far as news, curiosity and knowledge go. I started calling it the "big island syndrome" because the U.S. is so vast with oceans on two sides that it seems kind of like a big island where most of the citizens don't have any contact with the neighboring countries or countries outside North America. It's completely different from smaller countries that are in close contact with many other countries and may even speak more than one language. I have seen many times that people in countries other than the U.S. tend to know much more about the world outside their own borders. Brazil is also a huge country (almost the size of the U.S.) with a lot of coastline, but people here tend to be a little more extrospective. I can think of two recent examples to illustrate my point. First, today seems to be World Environment Day, and I was surprised to learn of it from several different venues, although clean air, recycling and the like are not very prominent here in Belo Horizonte. I don't know that I'd ever heard of World Environment Day before, although it's a United Nations event. The second example is the gospel song "O Happy Day." A lot of the people I've met here are familiar with that song even though gospel music is not popular here and that song is from the U.S. and in English.
I was reading some postings on my pastor's new blog (http://christianconversations.blogspot.com) about illegal immigrants, and one thing that people neglect to realize is how much propaganda the U.S. sends out worldwide, touting ourselves as the economic paradise and spewing our (mostly horrible) films and music in such quantity to overshadow the local cultures. You would not believe the junk imported from the U.S. that they show on regular and cable TV here, not to mention all of the less-than-stellar American pop music.
Finally, I'm still finding it difficult to be between the two Brazils, the Brazil of the privileged minority that I first knew, and the Brazil of the underpriviliged majority that I have come to know since October. There really is such a huge gap between people who have two or more residences, who can frequently eat at restaurants, who can afford decent medical care, who can pay for the private classes necessary to get into college, who can pay for a college education, who can travel abroad, who can afford to hire people to cook and clean in their homes and who can live in a manner similar to middle- and upper-class Europeans and Americans, and those who don't/can't. It is very strange to live in one Brazil and work in the other, but I am the first to admit I prefer to live in the middle-/upper-class Brazil. But I guess it's all relative. The young woman in the apartment below us went on a missionary trip to Indonesia with her church (before the earthquake), and her mother shared some of the photos and stories with me, dwelling on the poverty there. I guess it's like my mother has always said--you can always find somebody better off but also worse off than yourself. You could also turn it around and ask me why I went to volunteer in Brazil when we have some pretty serious poverty within the U.S., and the answer is that I didn't come here based so much on a logical choice but based on an intangible "pulling."
I got up early this morning to tape the news because my roommate was being interviewed on regional television about a new law requiring public hospitals to allow a relative/friend to accompany pregnant mothers in the delivery room. Apparently, the private hospitals previously allowed a family member or friend, but those who couldn't afford the privilege of a private hospital were required to give birth without a familiar face in the room.
I knew from my previous experience outside the U.S. and from my international friends who live(d) in the U.S. that our country tends to be extremely introspective as far as news, curiosity and knowledge go. I started calling it the "big island syndrome" because the U.S. is so vast with oceans on two sides that it seems kind of like a big island where most of the citizens don't have any contact with the neighboring countries or countries outside North America. It's completely different from smaller countries that are in close contact with many other countries and may even speak more than one language. I have seen many times that people in countries other than the U.S. tend to know much more about the world outside their own borders. Brazil is also a huge country (almost the size of the U.S.) with a lot of coastline, but people here tend to be a little more extrospective. I can think of two recent examples to illustrate my point. First, today seems to be World Environment Day, and I was surprised to learn of it from several different venues, although clean air, recycling and the like are not very prominent here in Belo Horizonte. I don't know that I'd ever heard of World Environment Day before, although it's a United Nations event. The second example is the gospel song "O Happy Day." A lot of the people I've met here are familiar with that song even though gospel music is not popular here and that song is from the U.S. and in English.
I was reading some postings on my pastor's new blog (http://christianconversations.blogspot.com) about illegal immigrants, and one thing that people neglect to realize is how much propaganda the U.S. sends out worldwide, touting ourselves as the economic paradise and spewing our (mostly horrible) films and music in such quantity to overshadow the local cultures. You would not believe the junk imported from the U.S. that they show on regular and cable TV here, not to mention all of the less-than-stellar American pop music.
Finally, I'm still finding it difficult to be between the two Brazils, the Brazil of the privileged minority that I first knew, and the Brazil of the underpriviliged majority that I have come to know since October. There really is such a huge gap between people who have two or more residences, who can frequently eat at restaurants, who can afford decent medical care, who can pay for the private classes necessary to get into college, who can pay for a college education, who can travel abroad, who can afford to hire people to cook and clean in their homes and who can live in a manner similar to middle- and upper-class Europeans and Americans, and those who don't/can't. It is very strange to live in one Brazil and work in the other, but I am the first to admit I prefer to live in the middle-/upper-class Brazil. But I guess it's all relative. The young woman in the apartment below us went on a missionary trip to Indonesia with her church (before the earthquake), and her mother shared some of the photos and stories with me, dwelling on the poverty there. I guess it's like my mother has always said--you can always find somebody better off but also worse off than yourself. You could also turn it around and ask me why I went to volunteer in Brazil when we have some pretty serious poverty within the U.S., and the answer is that I didn't come here based so much on a logical choice but based on an intangible "pulling."
posted by Christine Piggee at
5:35 PM
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