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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.
