Saturday, 30/6

Our group spent most of Saturday morning and afternoon painting pictures on the outside walls of several homes in the becos in the neighborhood of Peixinhos. Remember that on Tuesday we painted the walls inside CCJ? Well, we put what we learned into practice.

CCJ is well-known in the community we worked in yesterday. They received permission from several people to paint their homes. We started off painting the walls a single color and then drew a design using both latex paint as well as spray cans. While we were painting the house pictured above, several people walking by admired our work and asked us if we would paint their homes as well. People were curious as to what a bunch of Americans were doing in their neighborhood and it was fun interacting with people. People actually stopped to talk to us and ask us questions, which I don`t know many would do in the United States where we tend to keep to ourselves. While we were working we were also able to see how the lower class in Recife lived. The people here don`t have running water and have to carry buckets to their water tanks in order to cook and clean. Since they live on the edge of a river, they put their fridges on blocks to keep their appliances from getting ruined when their homes flooded. The area was crowded and dirty, but most people were friendly and happy we were helping brighten up their neighborhood a little bit.

Friday, 29/6

On a less heavy note, differing from the last couple of posts, on Friday we spent the morning at the beach in Boa Viagem. This picture was actually taken in Olinda, but if you look in the background of the picture you can see the arrecifes (reefs) which Recife was named after. At low tide, there are usually people on the reefs either fishing or hunting for oysters. The reefs also help the sharks from coming in at low tide.

The praias (beaches) in Recife are very pretty with light brown sand and emerald green water. However, the ocean is eroding away the beaches and at high tide you cannot see the sand. Some mornings there are crews that transport sand to the beaches in order to create longer praias. The city of Recife is actually below sea level, which puts it at a greater risk for flooding. When rainstorms blow through town, they leave many streets flooded, with people putting wooden boards across their doorways in an attempt to keep the water out. However, nothing is better than walking along the beira mar smelling the ocean breeze.

Thursday, 28/6

On Thursday, we were invited to a Festa Junina at CCJ where kids from the local community danced quadrilha (squaredance) and played games with us. While I was there, I talked to some of the girls at the party, who all wanted to hear their names in English and to know what life was like in São Paulo (since we clearly weren't from Recife, we had to be from there). As I talked to the girls about their lives, I saw one of the few aspects of Brazilian culture I do not agree with at all: the exploitation of adolescent girls. The girls pictured above range in age from 12 to 14 years old and they were telling me about their boyfriends, all of whom are grown men in their twenties and thirties. This scenario is unfortunately very common in Brazil, especially in the poorest regions where older men take advantage of the girls by buying them clothes and jewelry and often food for their families. Most mothers don't see anything wrong with it, since they dated much older men when they were the same age. Recently, the Department of Human Rights has begun a program to denounce child and adolescent exploitation, but any real change has to start with the mothers and fathers in these poor communities recognizing that it isn't okay or normal for their young teenage daughters to be used by these old men. It's a sad, vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

Wednesday, 27/6

There was a bus strike in Recife today, which made getting to school difficult, and getting to CCJ pretty much impossible. Although strikes are technically illegal in Brazil, they happen anyway because of former President Lula's past organizing union strikes when he was a metalworker. The most common strikes that I've experienced in Brazil are bus, post office, and schoolteacher strikes.  In Bahia, even the police went on strike. While I understand that workers deserve a fair wage and decent benefits, most of the time these strikes just end up hurting the working class. Take the bus strike for example. The drivers and the fare collectors asked for a salary increase of 27%. They shut down the bus system for 24 hours as a notice. The bus companies offered a wage increase of 2%. But with these strikes, the ones who suffer are Brazilians from the lower classes who depend on the buses to get to work. With the strike, the low class makes less money to support their families as they miss work. The lady who cleans the house where I'm staying lives over an hour away by bus. She can't walk to work, she can't afford a car, and she can't afford to take a taxi to work either. So she didn't make it to work, losing her day's wages. She complains about the strike, but there isn't really much she can do. So, the people whom the strikes affect the most, are those with the least amount of power to make changes. The upper class Brazilians all drive to work, so the bus strikes don't affect them at all. If bus drivers really wanted to strike effectively, they would use their buses to block off the entrances to rich neighborhoods so that the people who lived there couldn't get in or out. I guarantee that the people from those areas would be much faster in complaining to the bus companies and that resolutions between the companies and the unions would occur much faster. The way the system is now, bus drivers are basically shooting themselves in the foot by negatively impacting the people from their own social class. 

Tuesday, 26/6

So, I apologize for not keeping up with my blog at all this week, but there were quite a few very cool things that happened. On Tuesday, in class, we learned about the sertanejo, basically, the people from the rural areas of the northeastern region. We started watching a Brazilian film:

This film tells the story of two families feuding over land in the sertão. The story is told from the point of view of a young boy who is given the name Pacu. His older brother, Tônio, is forced to avenge the death of their eldest brother, Inácio. The film portrays the harshness of life in the sertão and of people stuck in traditions that are pointless and brutal. I believe that Euclydes da Cunha, a Brazilian writer, said that a sertanejo is above everything else, a strong person. The film demonstrates that sertanejos are physically tough and hard laborers, but that they are emotionally tough as well, some to the point of being stubborn and hardheaded, others, in that they do what they know is right, even if it goes against tradition. Above all, they do not give up, but continue their lives the best they can .

Later, we went to CCJ, where we learned how to spray paint. Below is our group's handiwork.