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Hey everyone, I finish working at Casa
around my birthday and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the
tunnel. My time here has been quite strange and often difficult, I have
learnt a lot about people and friendship.
Enemies
1. Dogs
There
are two different routes we can choose to go from the town to the orphanage,
the caminho longo and caminho corto (long and short way) - the problem with the
short way is that it involves going up a massive hill and the narrow road is
full of crater-esque holes. If your bike doesn't have good breaks, you
have to be really careful otherwise you might die. The problem with the
caminho longo is that it is a good 7kms longer and the horrible shitty dogs.
Xerem is full of street dogs,
but in town they tend to behave OK (although the other day on my friend's
motorbike we almost collided with a scared horse that was being chased by a
stupid dog). On the caminho longo, in the middle of the bush, the dogs
aren't very nice. A little over a month ago I was riding along at sunset,
taking in the rolling hills and green pastures, enjoying the different shades
of blue, orange and purple across the sky, thinking about how lucky I was to
experience such a beautiful view. It’s
so hard to capture these moments with a camera.
Suddenly
an angry dog came out of the fields and started barking, chasing me and jumping
and snapping its jaws in the air. It was only about the size of a border
collie but it was still scary. I wanted to ride faster but this only
makes them chase you more. The dog would
come really close to me and I would yell at it and it would back off for a
second before coming back again. After a while it seemed to give up, but
when I went around the next corner 5 dogs were waiting for me, it was a bloody
ambush! Most of them were small but the biggest and angriest one was the
height of a labrador. This time I got off my bike and walked very slowly,
again they were snarling and snapping their jaws at me and the dog from before
must have heard the party and decided to come check it out. It was really
scary because they had me surrounded, I tried to keep the bike between me and
the dogs. I really wanted to kick them in the face but I was worried
about pissing them off even more and getting bitten. There was nobody around,
and I really didn't want to risk getting rabies. Luckily a car came past
and for whatever reason it distracted them enough for me to get out of
there. I no longer take the caminho longo.
2. Children (when
I'm trying to teach them English)
We
started an English course for kids about a month ago for children from the
community, it isn't free but it's very cheap. Normally hanging out with
children that aren't from the orphanage is kind of refreshing, they are much
more polite and generally seem like angels in comparison. However, my first
class with the kids was a nightmare, one of them just slept on the
floor (turns out he was actually chewing the mat) and another kept trying
to correct me.
ALL of them ate my props (they were pieces of fruit I used
for vocab and doing numbers). I have since passed the class on to a girl
who sings and dances with them, I think all parties are much happier, although
the kids might miss the food.
3. Poo
Whilst
I highly enjoy making jokes and talking about poo, its presence in Xerem is
hardly a laughing matter. Poo is everywhere and it takes various forms. It
can be found in the toilets that always run out of water or blocked, or in the
street. Dogs not only crap everywhere
they also rummage through the abundant rubbish bags left on the street, which
often contain used toilet paper (toilets in Latin America don't have the
pressure to flush it down). I once saw two dogs fighting over a plastic
bag filled with used toilet paper (my enemies are strange).
4.
Time
Time
has to be the most frustrating thing in life. It disappears when you're
not even paying attention and never comes back. I don't think I have ever
been so busy in my life, nor have I ever had a to-do list which I knowingly cannot
complete in the forseeable future. When I used to work as an English
teacher in Australia, I would simply arrive, prepare my lessons, teach and
leave. Any minor problems, beit a dirty floor/bathroom, maintenance
problems, another worker not showing up etc etc, were none of my concern.
Someone else would take care of it.
At
the Centro Cultural, everything is our responsibility. If
something doesn't work - fix it, if it's dirty - clean it, if it needs doing -
do it! Sometimes I will come to work to prepare lessons and spend the
whole time trying to fix a toilet (our water system is terrible, we have to
turn on the pump every morning but people often forget) or cleaning the
kitchen, entrance or classrooms because they are simply not taken care
of. Instead of merely teaching my courses, I also needed to develop them
and organise resources, promote the Centro Cultural on the radio, in schools,
at the local market etc etc. And of course, I had to work in
administration and reception, trying to figure out payments and enrollments,
calling students etc etc. Unfortunately, most other workers did not take
their responsibilities very seriously and I was generally working alone.
For the majority of my time here I also did one shift
as a carer the orphanage. My week would start
at 6:30 on Monday morning, riding up to the orphanage for the carer’s meeting. The rest of the day would involve serving
meals, general cleaning, making sure the children scrubbed their teeth,
showered, got ready for school, didn't kill each other etc etc. A lot of
the work involves defusing situations (the kids fight a lot), but there are
some beautiful moments too, reading with them, playing games, singing before
dinner etc etc. Despite a general lack of discipline and respect the kids
are both adorable and hilariously amusing! I often slept in the boys room. It was almost always hard to sleep, I think
it was just the presence of so many people in one space. Sometimes the kids would wake up crying or
shaking, and one particular enemy would wake up to pee and instead of going to
the toilet, would simply stand in the doorway of the bathroom and let loose!
On Tuesday I would get up at 6.00 and try to wake the
kids up too. For the next two hours we do chores. Working in the
laundry, washing clothes and wet sheets, raking leaves, sweeping up, cleaning
the bathroom etc etc. The kids also have to do chores and generally we
have to help/monitor them.
At
9.30am: I would return to Xerem to work,
hopefully avoiding any confrontations with the dogs.
Working at the orphanage was by far the most enjoyable
aspect of my work. The Centro Cultural
was often lifeless and stressful. There
were a lot of arguments, selfishness and general bad vibes. I often worked 10-12 hour days and had many
six day weeks. I had never worked so
hard in my life, I realized that working too much not only means not having the
time for other activities (i.e. gym, socializing) one also ends up falling into
a vacuum where the only thing that exists is work. I didn’t have time for myself, to read, to
lie in bed thinking, to sleep properly.
The months of June-August are a big blur for me.
Friends
1.
Co-workers
Despite
not having much time for socializing I have made some really great friends
through work. Many interesting and talented people come to work at Casa
do Caminho and volunteers are generally awesome. My best friend is an
English volunteer called Sophie, we have been the only two peace-keepers in the
Centro Cultural team. Seeing as we all work and live together it can be a
little bit like Big Brother and people don't always get on. Conflict resolution
is a constant and tiresome task and some people are just so selfish or immature
they are incapable of seeing things from another point of view (or simply
shutting the hell up!).In late August some of the bad eggs were kicked out and
this has made things a lot more chilled.
2. Students
It
took a while but now I have some students who are good mates who come to most
of the Centro Cultural's events and invite me to parties.
There
is a wider group of people who are sympathetic to our cause, such as the radio
station where we have a weekly spot to talk about our courses. It's nice
to feel that we are part of a team and all working towards the same goal.
3.
The Children
My
relationship with the kids is nothing like it was last time I was here.
Before I would arrive at the orphanage and they would come running and fight
over my attention. I also lived there full time and all my work (when I
wasn't bludging) was focused on them. At that time there hadn't been very
many volunteers at the organisation and we were still a huge novelty, now the
kids are much more closed and indifferent towards us. On top of this, I
am only there once a week. I try to spend most of my free time there and
I have a nice friendship with some of the kids. Rodrigo, who I had to
chase after and lock in a room when he first arrived (see earlier posts ^^), is
now really cool and chilled with me, whenever he starts getting angry I ask him
for a hug and he generally chills out again. http://journals.worldnomads.com/tcrisante/photo/29501/798034/Brazil I
really like this photo of him.
I
also have a good friendship with some of the teenagers, it's funny how some of
them become adults and others remain children. One of them will be going
to Europe because some donors sponsored him and I have been teaching him
English.
Frenemies
1. Co-workers
Unfortunately
Frenemies are what I have the most of, and it really sucks, I would love to
tell all these people to go shove it and declare them proper enemies, but that
would make my life and work much more difficult!
Technically,
I wasn't supposed to be the only English Teacher at the Culture Centre.
Daniel, from the Central Coast, was also part of the team and we have similar
experience teaching back home. However, Daniel decided early on that he
hates the Culture Centre and treated everything and everyone with general
disdain. You could always trust on him to be against any idea or
proposition, and I preferred to work alone than to have to deal with his
shit. I also hoped that I could serve as an example but that didn't work
either. Other than teaching 6 hours a week and doing reception, he did
nothing to help me or anyone else. It
required a lot of patience to deal with this and I’m not sure if it would have
been better to simply tell him to shove it a long time ago. I’ve had to swallow a lot of anger in my time
here and I’m not sure it’s healthy!
2. Churches
Xerem has the highest concentration of evangelical
churches of any city in Brazil. Evangelicals wage an eternal war against sin,
which also coincides with a war on peace, common sense and free time.
They have replaced some old bald man in a robe calmly reading a bible (i.e. a
normal nice quiet priest) with some angry guy armed with a microphone and
enough speakers for a rock concert. They yell and berate and carry on
like a bunch of Nazis, there is even one church that has a picture of a crowd
doing the Heil Hitler to a flock of sheep.
The
thing that pisses me off the most (other than the noise) is that it is such a
huge waste of time. I have had so many students who can only study one
night a week because the others are dedicated to yelling at God. On top
of this, I don't see why the Churches can't get together and actually do something
about the situation in Xerem - i.e. clean up the filthy streets, take care of
the dogs, reduce illiteracy, volunteer at the Centro Cultural etc etc.
A
friend attended a session and apparently they were all praying for people not
to go to Rock in Rio, because rock concerts are "the devil's
playground". This is in a region where people die from malnutrition
and a lack of basic medical services. On top of this a significant
numbers of young people are dying as a result of the drug-war - Xerem is quite chilled
but the surrounding cities are amongst the most dangerous in Brazil. In
other words, stop praying/yelling about irrelevant issues and start doing
something!
I
have put the churches in the "frenemies" section purely because of
political and practical realities preventing me from declaring war.
Everyone here is "religious". Even (or maybe especially) people
who don't go to church, do drugs, cheat on their wives etc etc. Despite
the fact that there are obviously a lot of people who are not big fans,
criticism is not accepted. I hate it
when people ask me if I'm religious.
