Here comes the rain again

We are once again entering into the rainy season as it is cloudy and/or raining most of the time. Today was a delightful exception. The conflict of man vs. nature is much stronger here in Brazil as huge holes can open up in the roads, walls collapse and other construction disasters occur when we experience heavy rains, as we did last Thursday. It's hard to dress for this weather because if the sun is out, it's pretty hot, and if it's raining hard, it can be quite chilly.

Friday, we had another joint capacity-building/planning meeting for the staff at both projects where I work. These meetings really make me feel like I'm from outer space. First of all, the cultural style of meetings is different here, and then when we have group exercises, my thoughts and opinions are always way out in left field compared to those of my colleagues. I've always prided myself in being an independent thinker, but this is quite extreme. For example, one exercise was to meet in progressively larger groups and decide what things were essential for your survival. Me, being trained as a scientist, said "food, clothing, shelter" and then I threw in "faith, love and music" for good measure. By the time we got to groups of 4 or more, my colleagues were discussing things such as respect, work, friendship, family, understanding, peace, wisdom, etc. Perhaps I'm just too much of a literalist...

An interesting thing about working with people in the "lower class" here is that the majority of them have been downtrodden for so long, they have a defeatist attitude--but not 100%. It's hard to accurately explain. They expect things to go wrong and aren't particularly active about trying to resolve some things. They constantly experience a sense of powerlessness and passivity, but whenever they have an opportunity to speak with somebody who seems to be higher up in the chain than themselves, they grasp at the chance. It's for this reason that my coordinators are usually inundated with people trying to talk to them whenever they are at the projects. Even if people have problems that they know my coordinators can't solve, they still want to talk to them about it. It reminds me of how busy Moses was in the Old Testament before they appointed the judges over smaller groups of people.

Something I found very strange on the news here was that they sometimes make suspects re-enact their crimes for the police, and the news crews film and broadcast the process.

Friday night, I went by myself to try to meet up with other English-speaking foreigners at a cafe downtown. We'd advertised the new gathering on several websites for foreigners in Brazil. None of the English-speaking acquaintances I've already met here in Belo Horizonte could go, so I could only bring a little sign to put on my table. I also spoke to the manager and my waitress asking if there were any groups already there speaking English or if any foreigners were sitting by themselves because we were trying to start a new group but nobody would recognize each other. At least during my 90 minutes of waiting, they had a nice jazz guitarist and it wasn't raining too hard on the outdoor tables. I never did encounter other foreigners there--I'll have to bring a helium balloon next time and someone with whom to speak English so people can find us. I might also try posting a notice in the American school here as well as the British and Canadian consulates here.

At all of the Shade and Fresh Water projects in the area, we're preparing for a massive joint Christmas celebration December 15th. We're talking 600 kids in one location--pray for us! Part of the preparation is to make a shiny star glued to a popsicle stick for each child that will participate and to make enough extra shiny stars to decorate two Christmas trees. Most of the teachers and some of the other staff have been staying late each day to make these stars, and we even worked on Saturday. I went for a few hours on Saturday before going to check out a new neighborhood that has furnished rooms for rent.

After perusing the neighborhood, I took another bus downtown to the Central Methodist Church to help with the performance of the kids from the Liberdade project during the Christmas/anniversary celebration of this region of the Brazilian Methodist Church. The kids were having a hard time sitting still waiting for their time to perform. A particularly respected retired minister was giving a retrospective of his entire pastoral career, starting in the 1960s, I think. He finally worked his way up to the 1980s and then said something about "Thank goodness for that day in 1940" (I think in reference to his conversion) and the kids were all saying “Hey, he just went BACKWARDS to the 1940s?”. They were finally able to play their recorders and leave to go home. The service had already lasted 2 hours and was still going...

Today I went by myself back to visit a project in the PTO slum to take pictures and get an update to send to their sponsoring church in the U.S. I'd visited the same project last year with a colleague, and, frankly, was a little nervous about returning alone, but it worked out just fine. That slum has no ventilation because the buildings are built so close together, and the rooms where they hold the project are about 10-15 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. Despite the heat, the kids were very friendly, and many of them remembered me from last year.

Last week I was pretty down-in-the-dumps, so I took some pictures of beautiful things in my neighborhood to remind me of the beauty all around me. I had to do a little bit of research to positively identify these trees.

Sibipiruna tree











Flamboyant tree









Chuva-de-ouro or Golden Rain Tree











Signing out until next week...