Lynn Adventuring Abroad

Caipigringa Does Carnival in Pernambuco

2010-03-05T05:48:00.000-08:00

My first Brazilian Carnival by far exceeded all my expectations. What can I say? It was...well... To give you some idea of what it was like, imagine the best Halloween party you've ever been to, combined with the best music festival, where everyone is happy and hyper and all about making merry, set in a beautiful colonial city on Brazil's Northeast coast for four days straight. Take what you just imagined and multiply it by 10, because this is something that you really can't imagine unless you've been here. Its that amazing. Brazilians of all ages appear to have endless amounts of energy and love to party like no other people I've ever met in my life. Really, its the people that make Carnival. The openness and gregariousness of Brazilians means that you make hundreds of new friends during this time. Meeting up with old Brazilian friends on the street, you find that Carnival brings out a whole new side to them as you dance down the cobblestone streets together with the thousands of other revelers, singing along with the frevo band you're following behind, howling in joy as you're pelted by water guns or rain, and just totally loving life. Of course the incomparable talent and creativity of Brazilian music and dance is also what makes Carnival so special and unique, along with the incredibly creative costumes and famous giant dolls that parade throughout town.

Particularly here in Pernambuco, where Carnival is much more traditional than the other famous Carnivals such as Rio's and Salvador's. The people of the twin cities of Olinda and Recife like to say that they have not only the best and most traditional (almost all music here is live folkloric music played without any sort of electrification/amplification), but also the most democratic and participatory Carnival. This is because here you are not charged entry fees to see the best shows or blocos; it is rare (only in some places in Recife) to see anyone standing in some roped off area or sitting in bleachers that they paid for to be out of the crowd. Here, if you want to go to Carnival, you better be prepared to be fully in it with everyone else. You can try to find a shady place to stand on the sidewalk and watch the action go by, but you'll spend a lot of your time joining the throngs of thousands of people following a bloco through the streets of Olinda. In Recife, whose main Carnival events are at night, once Olinda's have ended, there are multiple stages set up with big shows, in addition to the parades of blocos. All of these are free of course. On any one night in downtown Recife and Recife Antigo during Carnival there is likely at least one million people out in the streets. During Carnival there is so much going on in the culturally rich twin cities of Olinda and Recife, not to mention the smaller towns in rural areas with their own traditional Carnival, that it is difficult to decide how to spend your time during these four days in order to see and experience the most. You can forget anything resembling sleep and rest, at least beyond the absolutely necessary amounts. And eating? Well unless Pitú has recently been declared a member of one of the food groups (its made from sugarcane, does that count for something?), than the ingestion of food during this wild week is limited to things like deep-fried pastries that you can find on the street. So as you can imagine, Carnival is hard on the body.

Yet during these four days I seemed to somehow have boundless energy and rarely felt hunger or fatigue. No, I was not using drugs, and my alcohol consumption was moderate compared to many a Carnival reveler. It was the manic energy out there in the streets. It got into me. I loved it and felt more alive than ever, grinning from ear to ear as I danced along with the other costumed and ridiculously happy and excited merrymakers. One night when I had decided to try and get a good night's sleep, I wasn't even able to due to my addiction to the energy and rhythm of Carnival. I woke up in the middle of the night literally singing the most famous and oft played frevo song, and I got up and started trying out my newly acquired frevo dancesteps (taught to me early that evening by an indefatigable 9 year-old frevo champ named Jessica) in the kitchen as I made myself a pre-sunset breakfast. I just couldn't wait for the day's revelry to start up again!

So what all did I do during those four days of Carnival, you ask? I'll lay it out for you here, as this is my chance to describe some of the beauty that is the Pernambucan Carnival. I just hope I can do it justice.

Because I live in Olinda, Carnival actually began for me long before the official starting date in mid-February. My Recifense friends Mariana and Diego took me to my first Carnival preview back in November. I sambaed the night away with members and supporters of Olinda's "Eu acho é pouco" bloco. That night I learned that this Carnival thing was something I was going to love... When I moved to Olinda shortly thereafter I learned that every Sunday from December until February would be a Carnival preview in the streets of the historic center. On my afternoon jaunts through town on these days I would catch some maracatu groups warming up in the park, and occasionally follow along behind a frevo group for a while up or down one of Olinda's steep hills. By 6 pm thousands of people would have flocked into Olinda's historic center for the Carnival preview, and together we would march and dance behind the bands and blocos, warming ourselves up for the events to come in February. By the beginning of February, two weeks before Carnival, it might as well have already been Carnival. The energy in the streets, and not just the historic center, had definitely changed. You could feel, and most definitely hear, the excitement and anticipation in the air. I partook in my fair share of pre-Carnival activities in Olinda and Recife, and found myself having to spend a couple of days resting up before the actual week of Carnival.

On the Friday before Carnival I received five guests in my apartment, all of whom would spend the week there with me. These folks hailed from France, Israel, Canada, and Alaska. An international bunch, all Carnival virgins, all ready to make the most of this experience. That night a few of us went to a concert in Recife where we saw some of the state's best maracatu groups perform, and where I, while wearing an afro wig with a yellow feather in it, met up with some of my Brazilian colleagues, including a 60-something priest whose enthusiasm for this region's culture was unparalleled, and who expertly and calmly navigated the crowds.

On Saturday I woke up by 8 ready to hit the streets of Olinda. The Carnival festivities here begin early in the day and mostly end by around 7 pm. If you want to keep going into the night, you have to either go to the concert held nightly two blocks from my apartment (you could see the stage from my bedroom window) or head to Recife, where the shows would go until the wee hours of the morning. So upon waking up and hearing the sound of drums in the distance, I made breakfast, which included a round of caipirinhas, and hit the streets with my glittery feather headdress. I watched the blocos go by with these ladies for a while:

As I wandered around Olinda, checking various maracatu and frevo groups out, and eying all of the awesome costumes, I made some new friends, which included Batman and Robin.

And even DuffMan.

Once my Israeli friend Dana and I met up with this group of ladies weilding a water gun, our Carnival fate was sealed. We would spend the rest of the week in water fights day and night, and this turned out to be one of the most fun parts of Carnival. With a water gun you manage to make all kinds of new friends- as if that wasn't already easy enough at Carnival in Olinda!

Later on Saturday I met up with my Recifense friends Mariana and Diego who have been talking non-stop about how excited they are for Carnival since the day I arrived in Pernambuco back in October. They are experts when it comes to Carnival in Olinda. They took me around town, found us a great shady spot to hang out at and watch the craziness go by (while shooting some crazies with water guns of course), and then took me to see the "Eu acho é pouco" bloco with their wild dragon and throngs of thousands of wild people dancing in the street behind them. It was a great time!

I ended that night dancing at the concert near my house, and turned in somewhat early. Before the concert that night the vision of caipigringa was dreamt up by a fellow caipirinha lover and me while I prepared a round of what I boldly called Olinda's best caipirinha.

By Sunday morning I was more than ready for another big day in Olinda. I was desperate for a costume, so I cut up my white New Year's Eve dress, pinned some flowers to it and to my hair, and bought a set of fairy wings, with wand and headband included. So I spent Sunday as a fairy, or fadinha in Portuguese.

Some people thought I was a butterfly (maybe because I had butterflies on my headband?), and from one old man I got a "A butterfly like that deserves a nice garden!" I received quite a few comments as a matter of fact, but that one was by far the sweetest, without nearly as dirty of undertones as some of the others (yes Carnival is famous for being quite sexual, although its not at all sleazy). After purchasing my fairy accessories we made our way up through the crowded streets to the Alto da Sé, which is the highest point of the historic center, and where one of Olinda's famous blocos would be meeting up and leaving from. This bloco "Enquanto, na Sala de Justiça" is apparently based on some cartoon that I have no recollection of ever watching, where all the cartoon superheroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, etc.) would meet up and work together to fight crime. Needless to say, there were a lot of superhero costumes at this bloco. And they were great! My favorites included Penguin and Catwoman, the Ninja Turtles, the Borats (okay, maybe Borat can't be classified as a superhero, but this was a really popular costume), and this French guy dressed up as some kind of Super Cheese man (hilarious and oh so French, in a good way!).

Later that day we found ourselves in many more water fights, dancing lots of frevo and some maracatu, and somehow inside Alceu Valença's house. Alceu is a quite famous singer from Pernambuco who happens to own two beautiful homes in Olinda. His dog jumped out of a window and into my friend's arms, and before we knew it Alceu's caretaker was inviting us in for the grand tour. He gave us beers and showed us the place, including Alceu's bedroom, his closet (full of crazy costumes), and his lovely outdoor bathroom that I was quite jealous of. We even got a screening of a movie that Alceu directed and the caretaker played a role in. The movie is not yet out, but it sure looked good. We ended up visiting both of Alceu's houses, and in the second one we watched the Carnival procession on the street below from a second story balcony. While it was fun to watch from above, after only a few minutes I was dying to be back down there in the lively crowds again. Once things had died down in the historic center, my group and I headed to the nightly concert, where I received my frevo dance lesson from Jessica, my 9 year-old idol. My legs were so sore afterward (frevo dance has its roots in capoeira, so the moves are quite gymnastic) that I barely made it up the stairs to my apartment (to my credit its an intense staircase!) and I was feeling it for the rest of Carnival.

Frevo dancers (too bad there's not more action in this shot to show you just how crazy dancing frevo is)

On Monday morning I had barely slept after waking up in the middle of the night craving frevo. Nonetheless, I fought fatigue and headed out with my housemates on a long hot walk to the bus stop. We were determined to make it to Nazaré da Mata, a small town in Pernambuco's forest region, for an encounter of rural maracatu groups. This was something that I was particularly interested in due to my research in the region. Rural maracatu is rooted in sugarcane plantation culture- the very culture that I am here studying. So I had to spend at least one day of Carnival there. Getting there was quite the journey, but I'm glad we made it. We spent the day in Nazaré watching dozens of highly talented, often hilarious, and beautifully costumed maracatu groups parade through the streets with a procession of African kings and queens, caboclinhos de lança, clown-type characters threatening to hit observers with blown up cow bladders, and characters on paper maché horses cracking their whips as they played the role of the slave driver. Pernambuco's rural maracatu was developed by slaves on the region's sugarcane plantations centuries ago, and the influences from Africa, Brazil's indigenous groups, and slave and plantation culture are all obvious. While the aggressiveness of the whip-cracking slave driver character seemed quite harsh, I realized that this is one way of reconciling with a difficult past that is in fact not so far in the past. The maracatu mestres stood on stage improvising lyrics to their songs while the caboclinhos danced in their hand-stitched sequined ponchos and giant brightly colored streamer wigs.

A caboclinho de lança acting out resistance to the slave owners in Nazaré da Mata

Once night fell in Nazaré we decided to head back to the city. We arrived in downtown Recife just in time to catch the much acclaimed "Noite dos Tambores Silenciosos" (night of the silent drums), which is an impressive show of traditional afro-Brazilian music and dance, complete with parading African kings and queens.

Tuesday, the last day of revelry before we would all have to repent for our sins, finally arrived. It was bittersweet, really. The energy had only continued to build over the past few days, so I was more excited than ever to join in the merrymaking again, but already sad that it would soon be over. I woke up on Tuesday morning with these thoughts, and trying to figure out how to make the most of this final day of Carnival. The most important thing for me was to have a good and creative costume. Caipigringa came to me quickly, and it was a natural. I had plenty of limes around, and I just so happened to possess a lime green tank top and some cachaça (sugarcane liquor- key ingredient in the caipirinha), so all I had to do was figure out how to pull off putting these things together and turning myself into a caipirinha. With the help of some safety pins it was in the bag. I made a round of caipirinhas for the house and soon we were off.

Caipigringa is born, and Dana borrows the fairy costume (might as well get some use out of it!

Caipigringa received quite a bit of attention, and it was hilarious to watch people look from my lime-covered head to the Pitú label on my shirt, to the bag of sugar on my shorts until they finally figured it out. I got a lot of laughter, and of course a lot of people volunteering to help me out with the bottle of cachaça I was carrying around.

As a huge fan of costume parties, this is a strong statement, but I'm going to make it anyway: Caipigringa was one of my top 3 favorite costumes ever, due to the appropriateness of it for the event, the amount of positive attention and laughter it brought out in people (I took lots of photos with strangers, at their request), and just how damn fun it was to dress up as my favorite mixed drink. This was such a great day! I was in the Carnival spirit more than ever. One of my favorite moments of this day, and of all of Carnival, was when I was walking/dancing down the street in a group of hundreds of other people following a frevo bloco, and it started to pour. As the rain hit the crowd started to howl and jump with joy. It was exciting, fun, and a welcome relief from the heat of the mid-day sun and all those bodies pressed together. The energy of Olinda's Carnival seemed to manifest itself more than ever in that moment as people howled, danced, jumped, and sang. I didn't want this day to end, but alas, it did...

My Carnival crew, in which the water gun played an important role.

To see a photo album with more highlights from my Carnival experience, check out: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/Carnaval#

Sugarcane, Bees, and Agrarian Reform

2010-01-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

What do sugarcane,bees,and agrarian reform have in common you ask? Well that is what I set out to discover on my recent week in the field. For my research on the impacts of sugarcane ethanol production on rural livelihoods in Northeast Brazil, I have decided to conduct a case study of one municipality in the sugarcane-producing Northern Forest Region of Pernambuco. In this rural municipality, Tracunhaém, the majority of the land is dedicated to producing sugarcane on large-scale plantations; the sugarcane is turned into sugar and ethanol in factories located on the plantations themselves. Such large-scale sugarcane production has persisted in the region since the sixteenth century, when colonial Brazil became an important producer and exporter of sugar for Europe. For over three hundred years the production was driven by brutal slave labor, and while in the century and a half since abolition the system of labor on the plantations has changed significantly, slavery and quasi-slavery still exists, and even where it doesn't, the sugarcane-producing regions are some of the most impoverished in this highly unequal country.

Brazil, a nation with the world's tenth largest GDP, one of the world's highest levels of concentration of land and wealth, and therefore one of the most highly unequal societies. Here, I can dine on excellent sushi in an air-conditioned restaurant with my friends who own nice cars and live in luxurious condos, and the next day help another friend tend to her two goats (i.e. her bank account on hoof) after a lunch of homegrown cassava and beans in her 12" x 12" adobe hut. And this is precisely how I live here, between the two worlds that coexist in this corner of Brazil.

However, the focus of my research is not inequality or the contrasts between the up-and-coming urban middle class and the rural poor, although it is of course highly related to my research, as it is related to virtually all phenomena in Brazil. The ethanol that fueled my friend's car to take me out to sushi could easily have been produced by the sugar-ethanol factory whose plantation butts up against my friend with the goats' family farm. Just last week I saw the damage done to nearly a third of their small farm when the fire set to the sugarcane plantation got out of control and went onto my friend's land, burning a number of fruit trees and a large pineapple crop. As a rural peasant who fought against that sugarcane baron for six years for her right to own land to farm, she knows very well just how powerful he is and that filing any sort of complaint about the damage will get her at best nowhere, and at worst hurt or in trouble. That's Brazil, folks. And this is the "green" fuel that is lauded the world over.

My friend Ena and her mother on their farm (the part where fruit trees are still standing, untouched by the fire)

Ena with her bank account

So back to the story of sugarcane, bees, and agrarian reform, and my week doing fieldwork in the rural municipality of Tracunhaém. I chose this municipality as my case study in part because I had already begun to develop relationships with people there, and also because I think that as one slice of pie out of the whole sugarcane-producing Forest Region, Tracunhaém seems to encompass many of the typical ways of life and relationships that exist there. In other words, I hope that by studying this municipality I can to some extent speak to the conditions throughout the region, thereby providing a useful portrait of how rural livelihoods in the sugarcane-producing region are affected by sugar-ethanol production, and how an increased demand for ethanol in Brazil and internationally might affect their lives and those of future generations, as well as people who are currently landless and seeking to realize their right to own and farm land via agrarian reform. Where do the bees come in? Keep reading. You may even get to see yours truly in a bee keeper's suit.

For my week in the field I headed to an agrarian reform settlement where I had stayed on previous shorter trips. An agrarian reform settlement is a rural community of previously landless people who occupied land that was privately owned by a large landowner (in this region that means sugarcane plantation owners), and after years of struggle, camping out in tent cities, facing violent evictions and intimidation, the land was eventually expropriated and divided up amongst the settlers so that each would have around 23 acres of land upon which to farm, have a home, and make a living off the land. The land is only expropriated if it meets the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform's (INCRA) qualifications for being considered "unproductive" and/or not meeting social and environmental regulations of land use. Of course meeting those qualifications does not mean that it is automatically expropriated. It takes years of the landless occupiers and the NGOs and social movements that support them lobbying INCRA. It usually takes 5-8 years for the land to be expropriated to the landless, thereby realizing their right to land and ensuring that Brazilian land is productive and fulfilling its social function.

The community I stayed in, we'll call it NC, is one of these settlements. Its residents are mostly people who previously lived on the impoverished outskirts of small poor cities throughout the region, renting small homes, selling their labor on the sugarcane plantations, and barely scraping by. Most of them had lived on sugarcane plantations during the period when the plantation owners housed their workers on-site, or they lived on small farms near the plantations. But with the value of sugarcane increasing, and plantation owners only wanting to intensify and increase their production, most small farms in the area have been bought out and plantation owners have evicted their residents/workers. This has of course caused cities throughout the region to swell with people from the countryside. This phenomenon occurs throughout Brazil, which explains the millions of people in favelas and the millions that have joined the landless movement in search of a dignified life in the countryside, where they can make a living as a small farmer.

I had already made numerous contacts in NC through the Brazilian NGO that I am collaborating with. I was welcomed there by my new friends, who have also become invaluable informants, contributing their wealth of knowledge about life in rural Pernambuco, both on and off the sugarcane plantations. During my week in NC I stayed in families' homes, ate with them, chatted with them, went to their farms with them, watched novelas with them, and asked lots and lots of questions about their lives. I conducted informal interviews with nine community members, filmed, and took hundreds of pictures. I also went to a nearby community, BO, which is not an agrarian reform settlement. BO is another alternative for those people who left the land in past decades but didn't want to live on the outskirts of cities. BO is a small rural town where a plot for a tiny house can be bought cheaply. Located in the middle of a sea of sugarcane plantations, in BO around 90% of men work either cutting cane or performing some other service on the plantations. No one in BO owns enough land to even plant a garden in. They go to the city on the weekends to buy all of their food. When the sugarcane harvest ends (it only lasts 6 months, meaning most families only have steady income 6 months of the year), BO residents enter the hungry season. The government provides assistance with buying basic food stuffs and cooking gas. Only those households with a family member who has employment outside of the sugarcane plantation escapes the hardship of those 6 months. I conducted interviews with 8 community members in BO to learn more about their lives, which are in many ways drastically different from those on the agrarian reform settlements. One thing I learned is that the conversion of the old sugarcane plantations that had become unproductive into agrarian reform settlements has actually helped the residents of BO. While sitting fallow, those plantations provided no employment and produced no food for local communities like BO. Now that that the agrarian reform settlers have converted the plantations into small diverse farms, many BO residents work for part of the year on the farms in exchange for money and/or food that they help to plant and harvest.

One of my informants from NC, Espedito, is an enthusiastic farmer and artisinal beekeeper and honey producer. While many of my new friends here are extremely passionate about their work and lives as small farmers (not to mention as revolutionaries, which is what they truly are and what many of them consider themselves to be after occupying and fighting for land for 6 years), Espedito's passion is above and beyond most others. He is currently conducting numerous "experiments" on his farm, seeking ways to make it more productive, while maintaining its diversity and adhering to the "agroecological" methods of farming promoted by the landless movement. Yes, as it turns out, the landless movement is pro environmental conservation and sustainable agriculture as well. Its opposition to large-scale agricultural is not only framed in terms of social justice; it is also about living sustainably off the land, living well, and reducing dependency on agribusiness. What's all this about the rural poor being one of the main drivers of environmental destruction? Come visit my friends in Pernambuco and they'll show how their takeover of the land from sugarcane barons has led to diverse, carbon-rich farms combining standard small-scale agriculture with agro-forestry, reforestation of the almost totally devastated Atlantic Forest on parts of their settlement, and preservation of ground and surface water sources. They take pride in being the only farmers at their local market to sell organic fruits and vegetables.

Espedito, working hard

On Espedito's farm, numerous acres are dedicated to an agro-forestry experiment, where he is letting native vegetation grow in amongst his fruit trees (papaya, banana, passionfruit, guava, jackfruit, and many more), and has planted several native species throughout. He also has an organic vegetable garden and medicinal plants garden for his family's use, all fertilized with his experimental home-made organic fertilizer, the secrets of which cannot be revealed here. ;) His latest experiment is his fish ponds, where he is attempting to raise tilapia and one native Brazilian species. He took an interest in raising fish in part because it has less of an impact on the land than raising livestock. Under the hot sun Espedito excitedly gave me a tour of the farm, and sent me off with a bag full of fresh fruit and an invitation to harvest honey with him the next day.

That's me, suited up and ready to harvest some honey.

Of course I took him up on the honey offer! The next day Ena, Espedito, Espedito's nephew Charles, and I all got suited up and headed out to harvest honey at his 15 bee boxes spread across the 23 acre farm. When I had initially accepted the offer I hadn't really been thinking about what it would feel like to be covered with bees. We've all seen video footage of those guys in bee suits covered in hundreds of bees, and most of us (however not scared of bees we may claim to be) have probably thought that we would never be caught dead doing that, right? Yes, I was one of those who never liked the idea of being covered in bees, protective suit or not. Once I got into the astronaut-like suit in the middle of the afternoon, however, I found myself suddenly more concerned with the heat than the bees. Maybe it was the adrenaline that kept me from collapsing from heat stroke. Or the fact that I felt like above all I needed to keep up with this crew of hard-core farmers that I had gotten myself into this adventure with. In order to be able to film and photograph part of the experience, Charles gave me a pair of yellow rubber dish-washing gloves (as opposed to the thick canvas gloves usually worn), saying that he could not guarantee their integrity. Nice. So of all the times that my heart really got beating, it was mostly when dozens of bees started to land on my hands, and at one point one tried to sting the fuzzy velcro of my video camera strap (they're always looking for hair or skin to try to sting, I guess this felt more like part of my body than the rubber gloves). Throughout the long afternoon of honey harvesting, I found myself mostly either holding a camera, with both my hands and the camera covered in bees; carrying boxes of fresh honeycomb, with hundreds of bees following me and trying to eat the honey as I took it away; or at other times in charge of smoking out the bees (see picture at top of post- Ena on left is holding the smoke-maker), and covering others in smoke to try to get the bees away from them. One time I had to do an emergency squirt of smoke into the hole in Charles' pants, which the bees had found and mercilessly attacked. It ended up being more fun than scary, once I got used to the bees. Turns out I love bees! And I love harvesting honey!

Once we got back to the house and unsuited, far away from the bees that had followed us and were still trying to eat their honey, I had the opportunity to chat with Espedito about his new career as a beekeeper. He told me that his beekeeping and honey-making is merely "artisinal" and that he plans to keep it that way. He has a niche market; people even pulled up to his house while I was there asking to buy a liter of his honey (for those who know about it this stuff is in high demand). He enjoys raising the bees and selling their honey, and it provides a welcome boost to the rest of his farm income. However, he's not trying to get rich off the honey, that's for sure. He hopes that his entire farm will eventually become more productive, and thereby more lucrative, but he very much considers himself a small-scale agroecological farmer, and for this reason will not compromise his values to make a profit off the farm. For example, he plans to make his agroforestry system more productive, and to be able to market his organic fruits at a higher price, rather than clearing the native forest and planting a monoculture of bananas. And, to be blunt, he has no illusions of getting rich. I am not trying to romanticize the lives of these people, but am merely being honest when I say that almost all of the agrarian reform farmers that I have met have told me that they are content with the simple life and relatively low income of a small-farmer. It is worlds better than the life of the landless urban poor that they held before, and they aspire mainly to enjoy being able to grow their own food and live off the land. They have a passion for this life. They hope their children will get an education and get good jobs, but they also hope that the farm will stay in the family, and that at least some of their children will be able to know the joy of living off the land.

Small-scale beekeeping and agroforestry are two ways in which the farmers on the agrarian reform settlements are opposing the dominant model of large-scale agriculture. By owning land, and partaking in these sorts of agricultural activities, residents of NC and similar communities have, from what I can tell, managed to make a living that is often more lucrative and, perhaps most importantly, more rewarding than the living made from cutting sugarcane for six months of the year, and spending the other six months unemployed. Sugarcane plantations are the predominant source of employment for this region, and as long as they continue to expand and limit the expansion of the agrarian reform, it is difficult to imagine the human development index (or any other indicator of human well-being) of the Forest Region improving. And forget about reforestation or reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Sugar and ethanol both may just be products that the world's population needs (?), but how can we find ways to produce them while ensuring more sustainable rural livelihoods, more rural happiness, and less environmental degradation?

Delicious fresh honey from Espedito's farm

Link to my Picasa album with more photos from my week of fieldwork in Tracunhaém: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/FieldworkTracunhaem#

David’s Eventful Holiday in Brazil: A Mugging, a Trek, an Engagement, and Much More…

2010-01-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

David visited me in Brazil for two weeks over the holidays, and we enjoyed 14 days full of Brazilian adventure of all kinds. And, most importantly, we got engaged! That's right, David and I are going to tie the knot! We have virtually no plans as of yet, but are thinking that we'll hold some kind of ceremony somewhere in the Pacific Northwest in either late 2010 or 2011. The story of the engagement and our other Brazilian adventures follow below:

I picked up David at the airport in Salvador, the Afro-Brazilian coastal city where I spent my first few weeks in Brazil, and where we would together launch our holiday extraordinaire. We spent a couple of days there staying at a cute little hotel on the beach, and enjoying the city's cultural, gastronomic, and natural wonders.

On our first day we stuffed ourselves with crab and moqueca at a beach side restaurant and lounged and swam the afternoon away at my favorite beach in Salvador- Praia do Farol. That night, celebrating being in Brazil and being together for the first time in over three months, we headed to Pelourinho for dinner, drinks, and dancing. Pelourinho is a fun and beautiful neighborhood in Salvador's historic district; it is also famous for pickpockets, muggers, and the like. It was a wonderful setting for a romantic dinner of bobó de camarão and caipirinhas outside on the cobblestone street. We were so content after dinner that as we began to walk down the street we didn't even notice the two boys coming up behind us. A couple of teenagers pretending they had guns by putting their hands in their shirts in a gun shape mugged us right there in the street, with plenty of people around. We quickly realized that they were not actually armed, and luckily only lost a cell phone. No one was hurt. Not too bad, considering. We were still startled and bummed in a big way, and for some reason I thought it seemed like a good idea to file a report at the police station two blocks from the mugging. The officers lounging around the station acted annoyed that we were interrupting their novela and late night snack. Why bother reporting a stolen cell phone when these things happen every day and there will be no investigation? Besides, we are just a couple of gringos that will be gone tomorrow. Who cares? So maybe we wasted our time with the police, who are notorious in Brazil for being corrupt and linked to local crime gangs. And anyway, we were lucky that this was a non-violent mugging where no one was hurt. In a way I even felt relieved (not that night, but a couple of days later) that I had been mugged and it had been mostly painless. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Brazil is bound to get mugged at some point, right? And I was really just waiting in dread for the day it would happen to me. Whew! It's finally over with.

That night, despite being a bit shook up, we decided to continue our night out and make it one to remember for something more than a mugging. So we headed to a bar with an outdoor stage and a live samba band. We enjoyed some draft cerveja Skoll and sambaed it up. I looooovvveee samba!!! I think David started to love it too. ;) Most of all we enjoyed watching the locals dance up a storm. Samba is such a joyous, high energy dance. When dancing samba people move their feet and hips at lightning speed, all the while maintaining a huge grin on their face. It's fantastic to watch and partake in. The energy that Brazilians bring to the dance floor, and to life in general, is just so impressive! Once that bar closed we headed to the streets, which were filled with hundreds of locals out looking for more samba. We joined a street party taking place outside another samba club until we were too pooped to samba and deal with the pressing crowds anymore. We headed back to the hotel to hit the hay. And that was just David's first day in Brazil.

On our second day in Salvador we hit up the beaches again, which this time of year fill up with thousand of beer-guzzling, cheese and shrimp-munching beach-goers. It is a fun beach atmosphere, but by no means a relaxing one.

Praia do Farol

By that afternoon we were out of the city and on a bus headed into the interior of the state, toward Chapada Diamantina National Park. After a 7 hour or so bus ride into the night we arrived at our destination - a beautiful lodge in the picturesque community of Vale do Capão, on the north-western edge of the park. We did a day hike to the famous Fumaça waterfall on our first day, and spent a good deal of the day trying to call Copa Airlines from our guide's brother's house (thank God for the generosity and hospitality of Brazilians!) in what increasingly seemed like a futile attempt to track down David's lost bag. Copa left it behind in Panama City on David's layover there, and as far as we knew at this point the bag hadn't even made it into Brazil. So frustrating! In both Salvador and Vale do Capão we called all kinds of phone numbers for Copa in Panama, the US, and Brazil from any phone we could scrounge up trying to tack down that bag and have them send it to us. We do not recommend flying Copa Airlines! When we finally got a hold of someone who knew where the bag was, we asked them to send it to the Salvador airport. We had little hope, however, of any of the items of value being in the bag after its extended stays in airports in Panama City, Rio, and Recife. Oh the travails of international travel!

Looking over the edge of Fumaça waterfall

The next day we put our worries about the bag (and about anything else for that matter) behind us and hit the trail to Vale do Pati with our guide, Adelson. This was a three night four day trek through what is said to be one of the most beautiful parts of one of Brazil's most acclaimed parks. When the park was created the government paid people who lived inside the area to relocate, but several families who had lived there for generations, mostly as small farmers, remained. Those families now host backpackers and have small farms, but their main income is from the backpacker tourism. Our three nights in the park were spent in the homes of these friendly local families, eating their delicious dinners of rice, beans, pumpkin, and savory veggies, and enjoying huge breakfasts with spreads of four or five different dishes at least. Despite the miles we put in on this trip, I think I may have actually consumed more calories than I burned! The homemade food was so yummy and so plentiful, how could I not? It's always the food that makes a trip. ;)

One of the homes we stayed at in Vale do Pati

On day two of the trek, December 23, after climbing up the mountain known as Castle Rock and enjoying a SPECTACULAR view of the valley, David, Adleson, and I headed to a waterfall for an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing. On the trip we visited at least one waterfall each day, almost all of them great for swimming and some good for climbing and jumping. This waterfall was stunning, and the pool below ideal for diving and swimming. While sitting on a rock ledge in the water near the fall, David wiggled a ring out of his shorts pocket (thank God he managed to hold onto it!) and proposed to me. And of course I said yes. Thanks to David's scheming we even got pictures of the proposal. Adelson was in on it and took pictures of the whole thing from the rocks.

The proposal

We were engaged in paradise, and spent our first few days as fiances in a honeymoon-like state, trekking through this paradise full of rainforest, waterfalls, orchids, swimming holes, and lush green canyons with steep rock faces. What a place to be in love!

Enjoying being in love in the Vale do Pati

After our week in Chapada Diamantina David and I returned to Salvador by bus, spent the afternoon on another packed beach, and then boarded a plane to Recife. At the airport in Salvador we picked up the lost bag, only later to discover that it was missing nearly $200 in gifts that David had brought down to Brazil. Some airport employee had a great Christmas. I repeat: We do not recommend flying Copa Airlines! Flying into Recife at night we saw hundreds of fires in the sugarcane fields East of the city, and David got a bit of an introduction to what the state of Pernambuco, and my research here, is all about. During the sugarcane harvest the fields are burnt at night, and laborers trucked in in in the early morning to cut in the burnt fields, where only the cane itself remains standing on the scorched ground. David didn't get to visit any of the sugarcane plantations or communities that I'm doing research in on this trip, but at least he got to see some of it from the air.

That night we arrived at my apartment in Olinda, and being a Sunday night in December, we had to take to the streets to enjoy the festivities at least for a while, even though we were exhausted from traveling. From December until Carnival in mid-February, on Sunday afternoons and evenings the streets in the historic center of Olinda fill up with Carnival performers rehearsing, and literally thousands of revelers following them, dancing, drinking, and enjoying the festivities. Basically, each Sunday is a mini-Carnival. This particular Sunday was the most crowded and lively I'd seen yet. A friend from my neighborhood adopted us for the night and guided us through the maze-like streets and throngs of people. Unfortunately we arrived too late to see any of the live performances, but at least we got to experience the atmosphere. David and I ended the night with tapioca, a fried manioc flour crepe that is a common street food here. Delicious! During our next few days in Olinda we hit up the beaches (those deemed safe from killer bull sharks), sampled Olinda's best restaurants and beach-front bars, and wandered the beautiful streets of the historic center. David fell under Olinda's spell, just as I have. It is an amazing place.

David in Olinda

David also got to meet some of my colleagues and friends in Recife, including the family that I stayed with prior to moving to Olinda. It was fun for me to have them all finally meet. My friends Mariana and Diego even gave us a grand tour of the best sights in Recife- Boa Viagem beach and Recife Angtigo- followed by a dinner out at my new favorite restaurant, the all-you-can eat sushi place. We stuffed ourselves and enjoyed a fun bilingual dinner conversation.

On the porch of my apartment

For New Year’s Eve David and I dressed in white (local tradition- David didn’t love it) and met up with Mariana, Diego, and other friends at the beach in Olinda. There were thousands of people out celebrating in the streets and on the beaches. Families had brought tables down onto the sand and covered them with feasts. There were bands playing frevo (a traditional music that Olinda’s Carnival is famous for) in the street, and at midnight there was a truly impressive fireworks show. It was slightly scary when the stand that the fireworks were being lit off of caught on fire, but the show went on, apparently without any unexpected explosions. After the show Mariana and I waded into the water and jumped over seven little waves, another local New Year’s tradition that is meant to bring good luck for the coming year. After our beach time we headed into town and to a house party. The highlight of the night was when we left the party around 3:30 am, apparently at just the right moment, because we were met by a frevo band marching through the street and dozens of people following and dancing behind. It was 3:30 in the morning and there were people of all ages having the time of their lives, with huge smiles and amazing dancing skills. The energy in that group was amazing. I think it was a highlight for David’s trip.

David and me in our white on New Year's Eve

Sadly, David had to leave. L We spent New Year’s day on the beach, and that evening enjoying seafood and beers at various beach side restaurants and bars. It was a fun farewell. David had to leave at 3 in the morning for the airport to head back to cold Washington, D.C. I miss him like crazy. He may be able to visit again, maybe even stay for a few weeks, later this spring. However, there is a good chance we won’t see each other at all until I return to D.C. in April. Seems really far away… I am so grateful that he was able to visit for two weeks and that we had such an amazing trip, during which David was able to get to know the Brazil that I have come to love.

I will provide updates on the engagement and wedding plans as they come into being!

Looking out my window in Olinda

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of David's two weeks in Brazil: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/ChapadaDimantinaHighlights#

Goiâs and Brasilia

2009-12-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

I recently spent about a week and a half in Goiâs and Brasilia, in Brazil's Midwest. While in Goiâs I had the opportunity to travel to some rural areas and talk with people who have immigrated from northeastern Brazil, the region where I am conducting my research, to work cutting sugarcane or laboring in other types of agriculture. I learned that since the US-Brazil Biofuels Agreement in 2007, ethanol producing companies have begun to lease land from small farmers in midwestern states such as Goiâs in droves. The landscape, local economy, and culture are changing rapidly as more diversified small-scale farms are converted to large-scale sugarcane monoculture. This phenomenon is also inspiring increased immigration from the Northeast, the country's poorest region, to these rural areas where thousands of people can work in the sugarcane plantations making minimum wages.

Up until this trip I had not realized just how much the sugarcane industry and other forms of large-scale agriculture throughout the Midwest, South, and Southeast (Brazil's more prosperous regions) depend on migrant labor from the Northeast. Apparently the majority of the unskilled labor on the monoculture plantations in fact comes from the Northeast. This would include laborers working as registered workers as well as clandestine and even slave labor, which is in fact increasing in southern Brazil. People migrate from the Northeast because in that region there is simply little work, and laborers tend to be paid less and have fewer rights. In fact, on several occasions in Pernambuco I have heard sugarcane cutters talking about wanting to head to other states where they can make more money, be treated better by employers, and in general have greater security. That is, of course, as long as they are not duped into slave-like or clandestine working conditions.

While in Goiâs I visited neighborhoods which are almost entirely occupied by people from the Northeast who have come to search for work. It was an excellent opportunity to see the impacts of Brazil's expanding ethanol industry on livelihoods in the Northeast from this perspective- migration in search of a better life. They are still cutting cane, as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents probably did, but in a different part of the country where they feel there is more potential for a future. While doing my research in the Northeast I have met countless people who have tried living in other states, or whose family members have migrated to other states to try to find a better and easier life. On this trip I got to see how those people actually live once they make it down here. The people that I talked with all work long hours in hard labor, but expressed that they are happy to have made the move to Goiâs. This is because cutting cane pays better here, and workers receive far more benefits. In addition, there are other types of agriculture which employ the migrant laborers once the sugarcane harvest ends. This means that here in Goiâs there is no hungry season such as that experienced by sugarcane-dependent communities in the Northeast. All of the people I spoke with said that they feel they have a better chance at a future in Goiâs than in the Northeast, even if they continue only to work in agriculture there.

Here are some pictures of the communities of migrant laborers and the great people I met there:

After leaving Goiâs I hopped on a bus to nearby Brasilia, Brazil's capital since 1960. It is quite unfortunate that this entirely planned city was planned during an era when suburbia-style car dependence was all the rage. Trying to walk around this city is hell. I managed to do a bit of walking though, in addition to taking crowded buses and expensive cabs. I didn't get to see too much of the city while I was there. I had a good time, but have no huge desire to go back. The purpose of this trip was to interview the Ministries of Mines and Energy and Agriculture on Brazil's ethanol program. The interviews went fairly smoothly, and they while they did their best to blow me away with the success of Brazil's "green" ethanol industry, I did my best to get them to talk about things like the impact of the expanding ethanol industry on food security and agrarian reform, so desperately needed by millions of landless people in Brazil. They didn't blow me away, but merely told me what I expected to hear. They didn't do much as far as answering my questions either. The meetings were still worthwhile though. Brasilia was an interesting experience.

In addition to my experience with the Ministries, I met some great folks working in agrarian reform and the landless movement while in Brasilia. These folks are always great to spend time with and learn from. They are passionate and driven, fighting relentlessly for social justice. Even if it is just from an office in Brasilia. Someone's gotta do it. They made for wonderful hosts during my time in the capital.

Brasilia's cathedral- interesting, huh?

Brasilia's version of the National Mall

Olinda!

2009-12-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

I have moved into my very own little apartment in the BEAUTIFUL town of Olinda. I live about three blocks from the beach (where I unfortunately can't swim because all of the urban beaches here are polluted and shark-infested) and a ten minute walk from the historic center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Here is a picture of the view from my living room window:

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of Olinda: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/OlindaBrazil#

Inspiration for the Weary Traveler

2009-12-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

Today, while attempting to read about methods for doing research on sustainable rural livelihoods, I found myself on an amazing website called Matador Network (http://matadornetwork.com/), an online community of travelers, adventurers and such. My kind of people. I managed to spend a good hour or two procrastinating by reading several interesting posts from other travelers. One of these was the humbly titled, "The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes of all Time." It is always fun to read travel quotes that discuss the experience, the purpose, and the effects of a traveling/wandering/adventuring lifestyle. Especially when you're in a mid-trip mini existential crisis like I am (why I am here again? what am I doing? what about this research I have supposedly committed to doing?). So I picked out a few that really spoke to me and what I'm feeling on this trip, as well as what I've felt during and after other extended stints abroad. If you're traveling, you'll love them, and if you're stuck at home right now they might just induce some travel fever. I know its not just me that's addicted to the rawness of life abroad.

From: http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/07/50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

Thanksgiving in Goiânia...Alone

2009-11-29T09:50:00.000-08:00

Written while drinking one large bottle of cerveja Skoll and eating a cheese "worm" pastry at a snackshop in downtown Goiânia in Brazil's mid-west, alone on Thanksgiving evening.

It's official: I'm addicted to being a gringa in Latin America. This life, as a traveler, as a foreigner, as someone who is more than a tourist but still always an outsider, has become my addiction. It is at times painful and humiliating, at other times liberating and exciting, and it always (as long as my eyes, mind, and heart are open to it) inspires personal growth, reflection, and- I like to think- wisdom. My world is turned upside down on a regular basis. I can be and do anything I want. I can go far beyond the boundaries of life, society, and self created by my culture.

I am an American girl, yes. Always will be. Many aspects of my culture are deeply ingrained in me (that's how culture works, after all), and I even have pride in certain aspects of my culture, despite the awkwardness and sometimes even shame that comes with having to explain that yes I am an American but don't eat hamburgers every day or any day at all, I didn't vote for Bush, I don't support the war, and the list goes on... Among the more radical of my new colleagues and friends in Brazil it has actually been extremely uncomfortable having to say where I'm from and answer questions about my culture and government. Usually when they talk to me for a while they say that I don't seem American. My accent sounds Spanish, I have a Brazilian face, and I don't eat hamburgers for crying out loud. But I am an American girl, and I am more acutely aware of it than usual today.

Here I am on Thanksgiving evening by myself, in a town where I have developed superficial relationships with a handful of friendly and generous people, drinking beer and eating a bad cheese pastry all by myself. And it's okay. I miss my family and all of my loved ones. I admit that I miss my culture and our celebration of this confused holiday that celebrates genocide, pretending (most of us very genuinely and with the best of intentions) that instead we are celebrating a sharing of cultures and the beginning of a peaceful alliance. All I can smell is the churrasco (barbecued meat) on the grill outside, and oh how I wish that I were instead smelling a pumpkin pie baking in the oven, and cranberries with a cinnamon and orange twist boiling on the stove top. My mouth is watering at the thought, and this cheese pastry just isn't cutting it. At least I have the beer to help numb the senses. It's not yet working though, and so I find myself longing for a house warm from the heat of bodies and the oven and stove going throughout the day.

As deeply as I am now craving that idealized Thanksgiving scene, I have desperately craved alone time for the past several weeks. Since arriving in Brazil two months ago most of my alone time has been while sleeping. Brazilians are such wonderful hosts, and due to this aspect of their culture and the fact that they hate being alone and therefore assume that all other sane people do too, I have been constantly surrounded by good intentioned Brazilian friends and colleagues since I arrived. Particularly since I arrived and started working on my research in Recife, where I have been extremely well received. The last time I had any alone time was on my weekend trip to Maceió five weeks ago. When I told my new friends in Recife about this trip, they were shocked to hear that I had gone to the beach town by myself. I think they pitied me more than anything. While in Maceió for a day and a half I received pitying looks from others as I ate lunch by myself, and more than once was invited to share a table, and even to share in food and beer. Brazilians never fail to impress me with their sense of community. They are so welcoming and so generous. Everywhere I have traveled, whether it has been for a few hours, days or weeks, they have taken me under their wings. This treatment has done wonders for my Portuguese and has truly enriched my Brazilian experience. At least 80% of the time I am ecstatic about how I have been received and treated in Brazil since arriving. There are other times that I feel stifled. When with Brazlians constantly, I must behave as a Brazilian. Or at least try. It is exhausting.

Today, however, I am free. It is Thanksgiving, and I have been left alone to wander the streets of Goiânia and wallow in my homesickness, enjoying every bit of it as only someone addicted to being an outsider can.

Camping in the backlands, researching in the sugarcane plantations, sambaing in Recife, loving the rain in Goiânia...

2009-11-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

I awoke this morning to grey skies and pouring rain, and I felt at home in a borrowed bed in the city of Goiânia in Brazil's Mid-West. Such a relief from the past few weeks of scorching sun in Pernambuco, where I have spent the hot days traveling to the forest region, the backlands, and the highlands for various activities, some directly related to my research and others more with the goal of expanding my understanding of the realities of rural northeastern Brazil in general- the sugarcane plantations and beyond.

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend at a camp-out for rural youth in the sertão (translates to backlands, or hinterlands) of Pernambuco. Around 80 youth from landless settlements, rural communities, and small family farms gathered for this event which was meant to increase solidarity amongst youth in the region and provide a sort of political training. A number of NGOs and individuals that work in rural development, sustainable agriculture and forestry, and the promotion of the agrarian reform gave workshops and talks on everything from agroforestry, bee-keeping and youth-managed tree nurseries to the role of youth in the agrarian reform and the impacts of genetically modified seeds on food sovereignty.

Youth teaching youth about sustainable forestry in the semi-arid caatinga forests

Yes, food sovereignty. I rarely hear the term food security employed here, especially amongst the political groups that naturally opt for a more politicized and direct term. After all, wasn't one of the main lessons of my food security course that access to locally produced food constitutes the most important component of food security? From that perspective the term food sovereignty seems to make more sense.

The team of oxen that brought water to our camp every morning

The 80 or so youth, their organizers, and I all slept under lona preta for the weekend. Lona preta is the name of the black tarps used to construct camps during the years that landless people squat on unproductive land and battle with the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform to have that land ceded from its wealthy owner so that rural families can live and produce food on it. The term lona preta often refers to the camps themselves. Camping under lona preta at this event was therefore symbolic, representing our support for the landless movement and the people that suffer and yes, even die, for the cause. I could go on about the many martyrs of the landless movement, but I think I'll save that for another entry. Some of the youth at the camp-out had spent a part of their childhood in landless camps, or their parents or other relatives had. Sleeping on the ground, unprepared for the cold of the dry highlands of the sertão, I got a mini taste of the lona preta lifestyle.

The kids in group discussion; lona preta behind

At the event I attended and participated in the workshops and talks, I sang revolutionary and religious songs (most were a combination of the two- thank you liberation theology!), I answered a million questions about life in the States, including numerous questions about Michael Jackson and his oh so mysterious and tragic death (a few kids asked if I had attended his funeral or if I had ever been to his Never Never Land), and I had long conversations with both youth and adults about the culture and lifestyle of the sertão and the experience of the agrarian reform there.

Time to sing!

I even managed to do some informal interviews with small farmers who produce mamona, an oil seed used for biodiesel. These experiences all helped me to understand the bigger picture beyond the sugarcane plantations in the forest region that I have spent most of my time in since arriving in Pernambuco. I learned that while land is highly concentrated everywhere in the state, numerous family farms have managed to survive in the backlands, independent from agribusiness, scraping by and sometimes thriving in spite of difficult conditions including drought, flooding, and a lack of financial resources and infrastructure. Until now, those conditions have largely prevented agribusiness from moving into the sertão and expelling rural families from the land in order to develop large-scale agriculture, such as is the reality of the cane-producing forest region. Still, as in most everywhere in Brazil, available land is hard to come by and costly to either purchase or win through the agrarian reform.

One of our cooks for the weekend preparing a big ol' pot of beans

On Saturday night the camp-out held a cultural night. A generator was brought in along with a band which played forró until 2 am. My new friends taught me the steps and together we danced under stars peeping through the branches of the caatinga forest to the tune of the accordion, triangle, and drum.

Me and the crew enjoying the noite cultural

Upon returning to Recife from the camp-out, I showered, rested, and headed out the next day with my digital voice recorder and lots of sunscreen to the southern forest region. The purpose of this two day trip was to visit numerous sugarcane plantations, accompanied by the local union representative, to conduct interviews with laborers. Needless to say, this experience was intense. On day one I met people living on a plantation in the tiny decrepit row houses built for plantation laborers.

Children living in the middle of a sugarcane plantation, as children have done for over 500 years in Pernambuco

During the centuries of slavery in Brazil, the slaves lived inside the plantations in similar houses. The concentration of land and exploitation of slave labor turned Brazil into the world's largest sugar producer. Today slavery is prohibited, but slave-like conditions on plantations are all too frequent. In 2008, 44% of the thousands of slave laborers freed were working on sugarcane plantations, planting and cutting the sugarcane that would later be turned into sugar and ethanol. The plantation I visited this week was one of those cases in which slave-like labor conditions had existed until only four years ago. In 2005 an NGO promoting and defending rural peoples' rights discovered that dozens of families (men, women, and children) worked clandestinely cutting cane for the plantation owner, from whom they received no pay other than slips of paper that they had no value outside the plantation store. The store sold basic food items at inflated prices. The plantation owner did not allow the people to plant any crops for their subsistence. Armed guards stood at the entrance to the plantation, monitoring who went in and out. When someone suggested that these people go and report their situation to the authorities, they had no money for bus fare to Recife to do any such thing. Due to demands from the NGO, the Public Ministry of Labor eventually put enough pressure on the plantation owner that these practices were ended over 6 months after their discovery. The plantation owner faced no criminal charges.

Homes in the middle of the plantation

The plantation has since ceased to function, but the people still live in the middle of the plantation and are now part of the landless movement. They aim to have some of the plantation's now unproductive land ceded to them so that they might each have a parcel of around 30-40 acres upon which to plant crops to sell and consume. For now they sell their labor clandestinely to other plantation owners. As unregistered workers they have no rights and work long hours, without proper equipment, for well below minimum wage. They live in fear of violent eviction from the military police and armed plantation security. They fear planting so much as a few cassava plants, that the plantation owner will send someone to destroy it.

On the next plantation I visited I interviewed three cane cutters who worked clandestinely. Some of their co-workers had no shoes, much less gloves, protective glasses, or any of the other safety equipment that plantation owners are legally required to provide their workers with. They worked around 10 hours per day, 6-7 days a week, for less than minimum wage. This situation has since been reported to the Public Ministry, who will likely come to investigate 6 months from now when the sugarcane harvest is over and no laborers are to be found. Thus the cycle of abuse continues...

Clandestine workers on the sugarcane plantation

That afternoon we drove on through the seemingly endless sea of sugarcane plantations to a landless settlement inside which we found Dom Pedro's farm. This jolly seventy-something man has established a true oasis inside the monocrop desert. With some technical assistance and financial support from a local NGO, Dom Pedro turned the 12 acre plot of land he received through the agrarian reform into an agroforestry system. When we stepped onto his property the temperature literally dropped by a few degrees and we felt an energy so different from that on those scorching and brutal plantations.

Fish pond and forest on Dom Pedro's farm

Dom Pedro gave us a tour of his diverse farm, where he grows dozens of varieties of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and flowers in and under the forest canopy, and also raises fish in shaded ponds. For the first time ANYWHERE in the forest region, I saw butterflies. Dozens of them. I also saw birds and bees. While I ate coconut and cashew fruit, mosquitoes feasted on me. I couldn't bring myself to complain because I was too grateful and joy-filled over the sight of LIFE. Simply recalling the scene now is filling me with a touch of that same energy.

I have met many rural workers and small farmers in Pernambuco's forest region, but Dom Pedro has made by far the greatest positive impact on me as of yet. On this visit to his cool green farm, so full of life, I learned what is possible. In the middle of a monocrop desert here is this oasis with this joy-filled man who loves his life and work. Pedro spoke with such pride and happiness about his farm and about his work. He told me that before joining the landless movement and fighting for this small piece of land, he worked in an illegal sawmill, cutting up trees from the remnants of the Atlantic Forest. Pedro said that before winning this land, he worked in death. Now he works in life, and it is so much better. Those were literally his words. He reminded me somwhat of a born-again Christian; I guess I could call him a born again agro-forestry farmer, going from a life of unhappiness, destruction, and humiliation to one in which he works with nature, is independent of agribusiness, and lives with dignity, pride, and happiness. This was the way he described the change in his life. All with a big old smile on his face. What an amazing man! So it is possible to reverse the homogenizing and degrading trends of agribusiness...

Dom Pedro, smiling as always, on his farm The edge of Pedro's farm, with sugarcane behind it

The next day I woke up at 3 am and headed to the streets of the sugarcane-dependent town of Agua Preta. Accompanied by a union representative and some of my colleagues, I sat at a bus stop with sugarcane cutters who were waiting for the sugar-ethanol factories' buses to pick them up and take them to the plantations for the day's work.

After numerous interviews with them, we headed to some plantations to see the work of registered laborers. While watching the men- and some women- cut through the burnt cane on steep hills, it started to rain, and then the sun came out, and then the most beautiful rainbow appeared. It proceeded to turn into a double rainbow. And that lovely arco iris arched over the burnt hills of sugarcane. The color, the beauty, provided such a contrast to the monotonous burnt landscape and the toil of the laborers.

Husband and wife having breakfast together before starting in on the day's work; these two work together and she cuts just as much cane as he does.

A few lucky workers who are employed year-round by one of the ethanol-sugar distilleries. These guys are decked out in all of the protective gear that the law requires workers to be provided with.

On Friday evening I arrived back in Recife just in time to shower and head out with my host sister Mariana to a Carnaval preview. The pre-Carnaval festivities have officially begun in Pernambuco. On Friday one of Olinda’s best blocos (groups that parade through the streets with music and dancing) was doing a fundraising performance. Three different samba bands played throughout the night and early morning. We danced samba for a good five hours. It was soooo much fun! I love samba! It is my new favorite music and dance EVER! All I want to do is dance samba and listen to samba. I love it even more than forró, partly because it’s so fast and lively, but mostly because it does not require a partner. This means that I can spend the entire night just enjoying dancing with friends without constantly being approached by men. It's wonderful.

Mariana and I took our tired feet home at 4:30 in the morning and had some breakfast. I went to bed around 5:30, and then got up at 9 to pack my bags and have breakfast number two. Ugh… Two hours later I was on a flight to Brasilia, and a few hours later on a bus to Goiânia. Once again, I was received by wonderful Brazilian hosts. They manage to make me feel so at home anywhere in Brazil. The grey skies and ongoing drizzle help. There is just something so comforting about this Pacific Northwest-like weather. Now I am off to a four day conference with the theme of redefining Brazil’s agrarian reform.

Jogging the Fetid Canals of Recife

2009-11-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

A ritual in my new life here in Recife is an evening jog along the canal path just two blocks from my apartment building. This particular canal is one of a complex system of dozens of canals, rivers, and estuaries that cut through what was once a large mangrove forest and is now a paved urban ecosystem housing nearly two million people. This sprawling city full of islands, bridges, and waterways could theoretically be dubbed the Venice of Brazil. And Recife, which means reef, has the potential to be a beautiful gem of a city. All of the rivers flow into the Atlantic Ocean, whose white sand beaches and clear turquoise waters are stunning. Too bad the construction of a large port sealed off two significant estuaries, driving the local population of bull sharks to feed on surfers and swimmers at Recife’s beaches. After this alteration to the food chain, Recife’s beautiful- albeit somewhat crowded and garbage strewn- beaches must be enjoyed from the shore or by merely wading into the sea. With surfing and swimming prohibited, only the occasional drunk swims out beyond the reef after too many cervejas on a Sunday afternoon, tempting fate and the appetite of the bull sharks. The folks back on the beach must all be wondering, “Will he be the 48^th victim?”

Luckily, while all of the smaller rivers and canals that I have seen here are nearly unmoving, algae-covered, and well, fetid, they are home to no dangerous predators that I know of. Whew! Don’t get me wrong though. This canal path jog is no walk in the woods. The obstacles I encounter on my thirty minute run are enough to keep me on my toes, running at a good clip, and constantly observing my surroundings. On the cracked and hole-filled sidewalk looping around the canal I often have to dodge the scrawny horses tied up to trees, always taking care to run beyond a horse leg’s distance away in order to avoid the kick that might result from startling the beast. The land mines the horses leave beyond are just as dangerous and require careful attention to evade. And then there are the stray dogs. Scraggly mutts of all sorts wander through the streets, expertly dodging traffic and finding their way to the canal where they might mark some trees or chase after a bitch in heat. So far I have seen none foaming at the mouth, but these dogs are not animals that I would want to stop and pet, or even brush up against accidentally.

The most dangerous of the beasts that I encounter on my canal jog is, of course, the Brazilian driver. There is no escaping traffic in this crowded crush of a city. Cars, motorcycles, and bicycles all swarm the roads and appear to have some set of rules all their own, impossible for a foreigner to decipher. Most pertinent to a pedestrian is the fact that a red light does not necessarily mean stop and wait for green. It usually serves more as a stop sign. Drivers slow down, hurriedly glance both ways for traffic, and if they decide there is enough of a break to make it through the intersection they speed across while giving the horn a honk-honk-honkity-honk. If they intend to make a turn there is no signal, just a honk that may be coded but to me sounds like every other honk from every other vehicle honking out a Morse code message of its intended path through the streets. Just imagine what this traffic is like for an urban jogger from a foreign land. When I come to either of the two intersections along my canal path I take the opportunity to intensify my work-out by breaking out into a full-out sprint to the other side once I see a slight break in traffic and work up the courage. Mine is a similar approach to that of the drivers at red lights.

Despite the stench of the canal and the above mentioned obstacles to be found in the one mile or so loop of the canal path, I am joined by dozens of other joggers and walkers every evening, looping around and around until it is so dark that that cracks in the unlit sidewalk pose a much more serious danger. From my experience in three Brazilian cities, urbanites love their exercise. Salvador, Maceió, and Recife all have numerous “urban gyms” or areas with a jogging path, bike path, exercise bars, and the like. Brazilians, mostly appearing to be a of a certain social class and age, love to take to these urban gyms with their friends and spend the few slightly cooler hours of the day getting fit. On my canal path, just before sunset (5:30), I am accompanied on my jog by just enough other walkers and runners to not feel either isolated or overcrowded.

The path is also used as a pedestrian thoroughfare through the neighborhood, meaning that every evening there might also be mothers with several children hanging onto her skirt, and grocery bags in her arms. Older folks from the neighborhood set up plastic chairs in the grass between the canal and sidewalk to enjoy the cool evening breeze. Barefooted and bare-chested boys race and ride their bikes along the bike path. All sorts of people seem to come out of the word-work during my evening jogs, showing me just what an interesting and diverse neighborhood I live in. It appears to be somewhat of a transitional neighborhood. The new eight-story apartment building that I live in is one of the only tall and recently built buildings in the area. It is mostly surrounded by smallish houses, stores, and warehouses. The street I live on, Shrimp Avenue (it probably got this name because it was once a mangrove forest with a shrimp farm), is paved in the section closest to the main road, but covered in sand in the section closest to the canal. I enjoy living in this interesting neighborhood, even if I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Is this an example of Brazilian gentrification? I would ask my host family about it, but they tend to give me short answers to such questions, either assuming that I wouldn’t understand, or that as a privileged foreigner I don’t really want to know (or can’t handle?) the truth.

The mysteries of my neighborhood, my neighbors, and the sand-covered road all make my jog that much more enjoyable. As I run my mind flows between meditation and reflection on everything that I’m seeing, learning, and experiencing here; the harsh realities; the beauty and inspiration; the day’s new Portuguese vocabulary; and wondering what this canal was like when it was not a fetid canal but part of a healthy mangrove ecosystem. Thirty years ago? Fifty? One hundred? Who knows.

Big bad Recife

Recife and its bridges

Disclaimer: Photos poached from Wikipedia

Two Days with the Women of the Landless Movement

2009-11-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

November 2 -3, Rural Women's Movement (MMC) meeting for women in the settlements Nova Canaã and Chico Mendes

Renata and I made the trek (four buses plus a mile or so on foot) from Recife to Nova Canaã this morning, arriving at the Encontro de Mulheres just after lunch. We were both tired from the trip into the heart of the sugarcane covered Northern Forest Region of Pernambuco, but excited to participate in this event with the women in these settlements who had won the right to this land for their families after a six year struggle. After lunch in the community kitchen which women use to bake sweets to take to market or meals for events such as this, we joined in the meeting in the Association building next door. Renata and I were asked to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there. I was asked to give a special introduction, explaining my research project, my impressions so far of women in the settlements, and the women’s movement in the US. Whew!

After an introduction, I discussed my research project and how I hoped to speak with some of the women there about their lives as sugarcane cutters or with husbands, fathers, mothers, and siblings that were or are sugarcane cutters, in addition to their impressions of the sugarcane industry in their region in general. I said that I’d been impressed so far by all of the women I’d met in this and other settlements. Impressed by the fact that they’d lived through all those years of lona preta, that they’d struggled and fought for their cause, and that they now worked hard raising their families and working on their farms. It’s true. I find their stories impressive and inspiring. I cannot imagine how I would hold up under such hardship. Are these women so strong because they have no better option than to live in camps and face violence, threats, hunger, and possible eviction, torture, and arrest? Did they join the landless movement because they thought it a better option than living in squalor in the favela and selling their labor in the city? Or are they simply committed to the cause? I know it would take several years of research to really understand their motivations, but I hope to at least better understand them before I leave.

I went on to talk about the situation of women in the US. I assured them that many of the issues facing women in rural Brazil are not so different from those facing women in my country and around the world. I should have thought to prepare something before going to this meeting, but on the spot I discussed what came to my head. I said that I thought two of the biggest issues that the US women’s movement is confronting are violence against women and salary disparity. I explained these issues, and hopefully did them justice in Portuguese. I was somewhat embarrassed about discussing salary disparity in front of these women, realizing that it is a very urban and middle to upper class issue, mostly relating to white collar workers. Maybe that’s not entirely true though. I don’t really know enough about it. At this point in the meeting I was feeling ashamed for not knowing more about, much less not even being involved in, the women’s movement in my own country. Sure, it’s something that I have always supported, talked about, read about, and sent generic emails to my senators and representatives about. But I cannot say that I have ever sat in on a meeting for a women’s movement or marched with one. Sitting here with these women who face violence and discrimination every day, who are potentially putting themselves at risk of being resented, insulted, or physically hurt by their husbands simply for being there, I felt ashamed.

Some of the women, but mostly the meeting organizer, asked questions about the organization of the US women’s movement. I admitted to not knowing much. I said that I thought that the women’s movement had historically been more urban than rural, which I believe to be true, and which I believe to be the case for most countries. When they described police repression against protests by women’s groups, I said that I thought similar things, albeit less extreme, happened in my country. I tried to explain the Patriot Act and the turning political tide after 9/11, which had put radical groups and social movements, including some radical women’s groups, onto terrorist lists. Of course I found this quite difficult to explain in Portuguese, considering I don’t even fully understand it or know how to explain it well in English, but I think they got the idea. I at least succeeded in having them realize that while repression of the movement in Brazil is excessive and unjust, women around the world- yes, even in the United States, which they believe to be a just country simply because it is wealthy and powerful- face varying levels of institutional violence that perpetuates the structural violence holding us in an inferior position to the other half of the human race.

Other questions for me included inquiries about the options facing an American woman who is beaten by her husband, and if laws regarding violence against women in my country are effectively enforced. I answered these as best I could, and all of the women present listened attentively. I think many were surprised and maybe comforted (not sure if that’s the right word here…) to find out that women in my country also face violence, discrimination, and repression. That discussion established something of a bond between us, and even though my experience as a woman is so different from theirs, they at least knew that I had some inkling of an understanding of what they face in their daily lives.

Following this long introduction, the meeting continued on and we broke out into small groups to discuss different types of violence against women. In my group of about seven women we were assigned to discuss sexual violence and financial/economic violence (such as men stealing or demanding that their wives turn over any money they make to them, fathers not paying child support, etc.). It took a solid five minutes at least for anyone to start talking about examples of these types of violence in theirs of other rural communities. Once the ball got rolling, however, the stories flowed. Most of the women talked in terms of situations that their friends or distant family members had been in. Without going into detail, I will let it be known that marital rape and incest appear to be rather common, as well as all types of economic and financial abuse, particularly in the form of absent fathers failing to support their children. Back in the large group we all shared some of the stories and experiences related to the various types of violence. The idea behind this exercise was not just to have everyone talk about the difficult reality of women, but to show them that the abuses that they face are actually forms of violence, be it psychological, institutional, sexual, economic, or physical.

The meeting ended with dancing and singing while we held hands in a circle. Women and teenagers with their small children and babies together sang regional songs about the harvest, in addition to more militant songs of the landless movement praising the struggle and its martyrs. Hot and sticky from hours spent in wooden chairs in a small stuffy building, Renata and I joined three other girls on a walk to a spring. There we bathed under a flow of water that had been directed into a pipe so that it spilled down from about 10 feet up on a rock face. We bathed, laughed, played. The local girls found it hilarious that I, the internacional, had known what a bica (tap or spring) was while my urban Brazilian counterpart, Renata, had had no idea. That evening, under the light of a full moon, happy to have exchanged the aggravating racket of Recife’s streets for the chirps of crickets, I chatted with the girls about other local phenomenon such as tapioca, bola de rolo, and Pitú, in addition to a number of intimate female topics. Finding myself able to really contribute to the conversation, and even inspire laughter not just because of my lack of understanding or mispronunciation, I began to feel more comfortable in Portuguese than I had so far in my nearly five weeks in Brazil. Part of being comfortable in a language is being comfortable enough in the situation and with the people you are opening up to, so that the words flow without self-consciousness holding them back. Of course, beer can make this happen too.

Day two of the Encontro de Mulheres opened with skits representing the various forms of violence that we had discussed the day before. A skit involving a drunk father hitting and insulting his wife and daughter was so well acted out and dramatized that I found myself laughing out loud with the rest of the group while simultaneously fighting to hold back tears. The words the father used, the facial expressions, the body language, the submission, were all obviously very familiar to the actors and audience. I couldn’t help but think that they were just too good at that scene.

The skits were followed by a review of the Maria da Penha law, which criminalized violence against women and classified it as a human rights abuse in Brazil in 2002. We learned together the types of punishment that men theoretically receive for committing violence against women, and ways in which to report violence and navigate the legal system. Spreading this knowledge is of course a necessary component of educating and empowering women, but the stories they told later of women who had been repeatedly abused and had reported these abuses to police and lawyers with no repercussions, made the effort seem somewhat futile. Currently, this law exists on paper, but women die at the hands of their husbands every day in this country, like most places (every place?) in the world. Brazil’s fluffy discourse of human rights and social inclusion effectively excludes these women who, by fighting for the de-concentration of land under the Agrarian Reform, are seemingly doing more to work towards the democratization of their country than most others.

This final day ended with a long and lively discussion of recourses for women facing violence in isolated communities, and ways in which we as individual women, as an organized group of women, and as a society, can confront violence against women. We talked about things like the need to educate and concentizar men about women’s rights, and of course to continue educating women and girls. We discussed the need to connect with other women’s groups regionally, nationally, and even internationally to share resources and build strength. After a final round of singing while holding hands, we all went to lunch where we feasted on locally grown cassava and fruits in addition to rice, beans, and vegetables. I was stuffed before lunch was even served though, considering we had already had two snacks for the day and I had alone eaten the equivalent of half a pineapple, half a papaya, and at least three bananas. We feasted together, we hugged, and I was so happy to have been a part of this experience. Of course I was an outsider throughout the entire two days, but as a foreign woman amongst that group of women who were farmers, mothers, and warriors, I felt I could be more accepted and treated as one of them than among a group of men from the same community.

Two families invited me to return and spend a few days or more with them on the next visit. I plan to go back to Nova Canaã on Saturday and stay four to five days to continue getting to know that community, their twelve year struggle to win the right to their land and then build what they have there now, and to speak with them about their experiences cutting sugarcane, trying to make a living off of sugarcane, being kicked off of their land previously by the plantation owners, and struggling against the industry and its proponents to win the right to land upon which to grow food and live in the middle of that vast sugarcane desert.

Websites of interest (in Portuguese):

The Landless Worker's Movement (MST): http://www.mst.org.br/

The Rural Women's Movment (MMC): http://www.mmcbrasil.com.br/

The Lost Land of Sugarcane

2009-11-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

Today I am preparing to head into my third week in Pernambuco, or what I have dubbed the lost land of sugarcane in Northeast Brazil. Ask most biofuels experts (or even Brazil experts in general for that matter) where Brazil's sugarcane ethanol comes from, and most will say São Paulo, the large agricultural state in the south. However, much of the sugar and ethanol produced in Brazil also comes from the small state of Pernambuco, where large wealthy landowners have been converting the Atlantic Forest to sugarcane plantations for 500 years. In the hot and humid Forest Region of Pernambuco, there is less forest and fewer small farmers and fishermen every year due to the expansion of sugarcane plantations.

Over the past two weeks I have taken a number of trips out to the sugarcane producing region to witness how sugarcane is being produced. Below I have included some pictures from those trips with captions describing the reality of the production of sugarcane that is turned into sugar and ethanol for consumption within Brazil and for export to the world which has deemed Brazil's ethanol industry as "sustainable", carbon neutral, and good for the local economy. During these two weeks I have seen and heard enough already to fill several more pages of this blog with a strong argument against anyone who would make such claims about Brazil's ethanol production. I'll keep it simple for now and let these pictures and brief captions do the talking.

Stillage, a toxic liquid waste produced when sugarcane is

turned into sugar or ethanol, being dumped into a ditch in

the middle of a plantation. Some of this stillage will be dilluted

with water and then sprayed onto the fields as fertilizer (as

seen in the picture below), and some of it will end up in

local waterways. How stillage is disposed of has huge consequences

for local ecosystems and the people who depend on them for

water and food. In some local rivers and estuaries fish

are found poisoned and floating dead on the surface every day.

A sugarcane field after being burnt and harvested. In the

background, a field being sprayed with stillage as fertilizer,

and a mangrove forest. What you can't see in the picture is

that there is a man made ditch between the mangrove and

the sugarcane field, interrupting the flow of water into the

mangrove, drying it out, and preparing it to be cut down

and converted to a sugarcane field. This is part of a process of

converting forests to agricultural land that has been going

on here for centuries.

Sugarcane cutters in the field. These men and women work

long hours cutting cane and are paid by the ton of cane they cut

rather than an hourly wage. In Pernambuco's Forest Region

cutting sugarcane is the principal economic activity for most

rural families. The concentration of land in the hands of

the sugarcane plantation owners has left little land for small

farmers to work in non-sugar agriculture or any other industry. Fishing

communities are also suffering as mangroves are destroyed and rivers

and estuaries are polluted.

Children and women bathing and washing clothes in a small river

on the edge of a sugarcane plantation. The fields are covered with

dilluted stillage and less than 500 feet from this spot there was an

overflowing tank of pure stillage. You can only imagine what the water

quality here must be like. For the people living on the edge of the

plantation- they were most likely driven there at some point in the past-

this is an important source of water. Hopefully it's just for bathing

and washing and not for drinking.

A man selling fruit on market day in Sirinhaém. He is

someone who has been lucky enough to be able to hold onto

his land and family farm despite pressure from the constantly

expanding sugarcane plantations in the region. Families with small

farms that produce food for their own consumption and to take

to market tend to have a much higher quality of life than those who

rely solely on income from cutting sugarcane.

A sugarcane field with a remnant of Atlantic Forest behind it.

In what is still called the "Forest Region" of Pernambuco,

most of the remaining forest is in small pockets of 1 square

kilometer or less. These are essentially islands of forest in

a sea of sugarcane destined to become sugar and ethanol.

A sugarcane field burning in the middle of the day. The fields are burnt

just before harvest, supposedly to get rid of some of the excess fibers

on the cane, and to kill off any snakes or other dangerous critters lurking

in the fields. Workersgo out into the fields soon after the burning, sometimes

while the ground is still smoldering, to begin cutting cane. On any afternoon

the Forest Region you can see numerous fields burning on the horizon. At night it

appears that the whole region is on fire, as the planters take advantage of cool

evenings to burn their fieldsand reduce the risk of fires getting out of control.

Needless to say, during the harvest season air quality here is extremely poor.

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of my fieldwork in Pernambuco:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/FieldVisitsFirst2WeeksInPernambuco#

First Four Weeks in Brazil

2009-10-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

A trip to Brazil as a Boren Fellow had been in the works for over a year and half, and after a summer spent collecting data in urban forests, camping, climbing, canyoneering, visiting family and friends, and all around enjoying life with those I love in places that I love, I rushed to get a visa (first unsuccessfully and then successfully- long story), said my goodbyes, and then found myself hot and sticky in the airport in Salvador, Brazil three and a half weeks ago today. I chose Salvador as my first stop in this enormous and almost overwhelmingly diverse country in part because it has a couple of seemingly decent language schools, but mainly because I wanted to spend time just hanging out in this Afro-Brazilian coastal city, the site of Brazil´s original capital.

Salvador
Salvador is the home of capoeira and many of Brazil´s now most famous music and dance styles, all the result of an African population brought into the region against their will over the course of three centuries. They brought with them their rich culture and arts, which flourished in spite of oppression, as in every part of the world which has been touched by the African diaspora. Today, Salvador is a dynamic multicultural and multiracial city of more than four million inhabitants. The traffic and the crowds on the beaches and at concerts are often anxiety-inducing, but with the natural beauty of the location of the city on the Bay of All Saints, the 16th century forts and 18th century Pelourinho (a UNESCO World Heritage site), the divine cuisine, the live forró (a regional music played with accordions, drums, and triangles), and best of all the vivacious and gregarious people, it was hard for me to find Salvador anything less than exciting, stimulating, and just plain fun.

Cidade Baixa & Cidade Alta, Salvador da Bahia

Enjoying the tunes of my favorite forró band in the plaza in Rio Vermelho, Salvador on the night of my despedida

During my 3 weeks in Salvador I attended Portuguese classes for four hours each morning at IDIOMA Language School. I must admit that I spent nearly as many hours every afternoon on the beach. What a life, huh? At least all that time on the beach often allowed my to practice my Portuguese by turning down smoked cheese, shrimp, and necklace vendors, or on occassion accepting a cold beer or coconut. In the evening I would walk up hill from the beach to my host family´s house, where I would spend time chatting with them over coffee and cake, and cracking up over the jokes of my hilarious host father. Tânia and Nivaldo made for wonderful host parents.

My Brazilian host family and me

Itsy Bitsy Brazilian Bikinis
After two weeks on the beach in my American bikini, which I had never previously considered to be particularly modest, I grew tired of feeling that all eyes were on me and my fabric covered bottom obviously belonging to a foreigner whenever I walked to the water. There is a myth in my country that all Brazilian women have gorgeous bodies, and that that explains why they wear scandalously skimpy bikinis. Well I am here to say that Brazilian women have bodies just like the rest of us. They come in all shapes and sizes, and all are barely covered by a few strings and strips of fabric when they hit the beach. So I decided to go native and purchase a somewhat less modest bikini, not quite as teeny tiny as most Brazilians use, but something less American looking. I chose a Barbie pink model, something I never would have worn at home, which made it feel right. I immediately began to feel less conspicuous on the beaches of Salvador, especially after I got some sun on body parts that had never before seen the light of day, and had the even tan of a brasileira. Sure, it might sound silly and vain, yet this was part of my adjustment to Brazlian culture. And, to be perfectly honest, I considered my 3 weeks in Salvador to be a time to soak up language, culture, and sun, without doing much of anything else.

Jumping for joy at Praia do Farol in my big old American bikini

Recife
It worked. I arrived in Recife, my field site and the city in which I´ll be located until April, with a nice tan, an advanced level of Portuguese, and a feeling of relative comfort with Brazilian culture. Of course here in Recife I´ll spend most of my time in front of a computer or out in the sugar cane fields for my research, and much of the culture and language differs from what I became familiar with in Salvador. I´m already beginning to adapt my accent to that of this far northeastern region. In some ways is easier because the sounds are closer to Spanish. I will miss the soft d and the ch sound of t that I learned in Salvador, but in Recife I am far too busy straining to understand the local accent and vocabulary to have any saudade for those sounds.

Here in Recife, a city famous for its crime and shark attacks, I am staying with the family of Renata, who works as a journalist for the NGO I´ll be working with/collaborating with on my research. Renata lives with her parents and two sisters in a beautiful apartment on the 8th floor of a tall modern building, located on Shrimp Avenue, in the Lamb neighborhood. Yum. Renata and her sisters are all in their 20s and extremely friendly and open. After just three days there I´m already feeling like another sister. Their parents are also as sweet as can be, and have invited me into their home with truly open arms, converting their office into my bedroom, making sure I´m comfortable at all times, and working to fatten me up by feeding me delicious home cooked vegetarian meals. I can´t believe my luck to have ended up with two wonderful host families. From what I know of Brazilians so far, most are open, friendly, and generous, but I can´t help but feel that these two families are exceptional.

Jumping into my Research
On day two in Recife I woke up at 5 am to go with Renata to the forest region of Pernambuco (Pernambuco is that state that Recife is located in, and the forest region is the area near the coast that was once covered by Atlantic forest but has been cleared since the 16th century to plant sugarcane for sugar and now for ethanol production ) to visit a settlement of squatters from the MST, Brazil´s famed landless movement. I have started a separate blog in which I am going to discuss my experiences and reflections on the visit to this settlement and others. That blog will be used as a forum for explaining the experiences of rural workers in Pernambuco´s forest region. As a brief explanation of the reality here, today rural people in this region have three options: 1) Work cutting cane, which is extremely strenous labor for which they are at best paid enough to not starve to death. 2) Abandon the rural life and move to the favelas in Recife, which are miserable overcrowded shantytowns built on hillsides or alongside the numerous rivers that run through the city. 3) Join the MST in the hope of eventually being granted the right to a piece of land upon which to make a decent and respectable living. This is the reality that I will be studying during the next 6 months, as this is the reality of a region dominated by the sugarcane industry and fueled by the global "green" fuels movement. If you are interested in reading more about the lives of the people here, and about the Brazilian ethanol industry from the perspective of the rural workers whom I will be visiting with and learning from, than please follow my other blog: http://ethanolproductioninnortheastbrazil.blogspot.com/

My first day in the field in Pernambuco, at a small river within an MST settlement. Looks like I need some sunglasses.

This blog will be dedicated to telling the lighter side of my life in Recife, less related to my research. I hope to do weekly posts on both blogs, so please follow and make comments. Pictures will also be coming soon!

Abraços!

La Carpio

2008-10-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

While I currently am on somewhat of a vacation, as I have no class until November 5 when Conservation and Development begins, I have been keeping plenty busy with D.C. job and internship searches for the spring, and more than anything with advancing on the projects that I am coordinating in La Carpio with my UPEACE classmates.

I've been involved in La Carpio (a poor marginalized community outside San Jose, at the site of the national dump) since visiting it the first time with my Food Security class in January. A group of us from the class decided that we should follow up with the community after conducting interviews with a number of families who left quite an impression on us, due to their determination, spirit, and willingness to share their sometimes heart-breaking and often inspiring stories, and also for the extremely challenging conditions in which many of them lived, dealing with extreme poverty, lack of services, issues with migrant status, and the environmental hazards of being surrounded by two flood-prone rivers and a dump that receives over 700 tons of garbage a day. Since March we have been holding meetings with CODECA, La Carpio's community development council, with the goal of collaboratively developing a number of initiatives aimed at addressing some of the community's key issues, such as environment and health, stigmatization by the national media, and food security.

As the only student from that group remaining at UPEACE this semester, I have been working on getting together a group of motivated new students who want to commit to working in La Carpio throughout the academic year, and to advancing with the food and environmental security initiatives which are the projects that I am heading up. Having recently contacted an environmental consulting company that is very interesting in lending their services to our projects, and having finished writing a proposal for a grant that would fund much of our work over the next year, things are really starting to move along. Yet there is much work ahead...

In addition, I recently published an article on La Carpio as a paradigmatic case of the structural and cultural violence that exists in Costa Rica in UPEACE's Peace and Conflit Monitor.

Please check it out:

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=547

Anniversary in Granada, Nicaragua

2008-09-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

When David and I left Bluefields we headed immediately to the gorgeous colonial city of Granada to spend our one year anniversary together. I'd heard so much about Granada- one of Nicaragua's hottest tourist destinations due to the well-maintained colonial architecture and relative prosperity of the city, in addition to the nearby lakes and volcanoes- and desperately wanted to visit it before leaving the country because it is so different in just about every way from Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, and I was admittedly ready for a change. Costa Rica has no comparable cities either, so Granada was a must-see.

When we arrived in Granada ready for a relaxing couple of days of wandering around the area before heading south to Costa Rica, we found ourselves in the midst of a wild and crazy party (I believe it was the city's Fiestas Patronales) that included a parade with lots of horses, floats, blaring music, and scantily clad bleach bottle blond Nica women, in addition to thousands of people decked out in cowboy gear with Cerveza Tona in hand. We spent one rather overwhelming day watching the parade and drinking beers in the central park, but decided to take off the next day for an adventure outside of town and away from the chaos and crowds. We rented a pair of bikes and made our way down a rough dirt road to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crystal clear lake in the crater of a volcano, surrounded by jungle. It was amazing! The water was so warm, so clear, and the sounds and colors of the jungle so vibrant and beautiful. Having gone on bikes rather than taxi, we ended up on a side of the lake that we had completely to ourselves. We spent hours soaking in the lake and did some hiking around in search of monkeys, toucans and the like, which I heard but never spotted. However, on our bike ride back into town, we did see a group of at least two dozen large green parrots fly over us squawking their heads off.
When we arrived back at our hotel in Granada we both had sore butts and sunburns, but felt great- exhilarated and happy. Being our anniversary and all, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out on the town. We were sure we'd picked out one of the nicest restaurants in Granda, but were pretty disappointed (thanks a lot Moon Handbooks!). The whole experience was at least entertaining. We had typical Nicaraguan food masquerading as Spanish cuisine, while serenaded by a band that included one extremely out of tune guitar and a lead singer with a penchant for cheesy renditions of Latin pop songs. After a bottle of wine we could do nothing but laugh at the situation. Ahhh...Nicaragua. Such a special place. You really never know what to expect.

Final Days in Monkey Point (back in August)

2008-09-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

David with the 2nd-6th graders up at the wind turbine for a class on renewable energy.

Teaching a class on renewable energy to the first graders.

Teaching with bE's model wind turbine.

Some of the girls and me after a great class on sustainable development.

David showing off the lovely stone path that he made to our house (those damn cows and the rain made the walk home quite interesting)

So I thought I'd go back and start filling in this blog, which unfortunately hasn't been updated in over two months. David and I kept pretty busy during our final days in Nicaragua with blueEnergy, what with writing reports, discussing strategy for getting batteries into Monkey Point, defining future community relations strategy, and saying our goodbyes. On August 16 we took off for a few days in Granada and then home to Costa Rica. Since then we've been in classes and have been keeping busy. But now that we are approaching October, I decided it was time to update this thing! So here goes...

Our final days in Monkey Point were pretty awesome, despite the usual turmoil in the community, a few rare sicknesses, jealous monkeys, a dead guy washing up down the beach, a drug chase nearby, a couple of drunken community members, big wig politics coming in to talk about the construction of a mega-port, highway, oil pipeline, and dry canal in Monkey Point, the theft of cookies, oatmeal, and a hammock from our house....and well, why go on? Monkey Point is a crazy place, yes. Daily life and work there was often extremely challenging, sometimes depressing, sometimes scary, often inspiring. Above all, great people, great food, great beaches, and such an amazing yearning for education and progress amongst most community members. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, in so many ways. I miss it!
Despite spending the last couple of weeks there with painful oozing skin ulcers and a few days with strep throat, while trying to keep up with our work, I was so sad to leave. During those final weeks we continued with all of our classes (literacy, English, environmental and energy education) and work with the Energy Commission. Our classes with the kids on renewable energy were particularly fun. It was frustrating to have to leave knowing that with maybe 2 more months in the community the efforts toward literacy and increasing the community's understanding (and sense of ownership) of the renewable energy project could have been so much more effective. Our time there was too short. However, I do think we had an impact.
David and I spent our last week with blueEnergy in Bluefields writing reports and guidelines for future energy volunteers, trying to strengthen bE's community relations in general and ensure that our work in Monkey Point would set a precedent. No other volunteer had ever spent such an extended amount of time in a community or done such significant work (most volunteers going to communities do mainly technical work, often the community relations work has lacked in organization), and we wanted to encourage bE to build on our experience with volunteers working on the social aspects of their projects in the future. We also wanted to ensure that all of our work (and the work of the Energy Commission) on getting batteries into homes in Monkey Point wasn't in vain. We're still in touch with bE on this subject, and it sounds like the battery project is coming along. 10 households will be eligible for a micro-credit loan from ADEPHCA for a subsidized home battery package that will enable them to light their homes and run a black and white TV, as long as they make a small monthly payment each month in order to charge the battery with the community's wind and solar power at the charging station. David and I are both helping bE with this project remotely from Costa Rica. As happy as I am to be back in classes and at our beautiful home in El Rodeo, a part of me wishes that I were able to spend more time in Bluefields and Monkey Point in order to see this project through.

Snapshots of Life in Monkey Point

2008-07-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

35 Days in Monkey Point

2008-07-16T11:06:00.001-07:00

David and I returned to Bluefields on Friday in a dugout canoe with a 15 horsepower motor, which meant 6 hours of queasiness traveling up the coast from Monkey Point. It was definitely strange to arrive back in the city and find our senses overloaded by the amount of cars, people, garbage, noise, and stuff after 35 days in the bush plus 6 hours on the sea. And while there are some perks involved in being back at Bluefields (comfy bed, fans, cold beer, ice cream, delicious dinner and dessert parties with the other volunteers), I'm missing Monkey Point and am anxious to get back. However, we're making the most of this week by not only catching up on email and blogging, but also meeting with blueEnergy staff, figuring out what our strategy is for introducing batteries into the community for home electrification, meeting with the micro-credit organization who will be helping people to purchase the batteries, meeting with the Rama and Creole Territorial Government, working on reports, giving presentations, buying supplies for the next three weeks in Monkey Point, etc.

So what did we do in Monkey Point for 35 days? Sure, there was plenty of coconut eating and beach time as one might expect, but our first month in the community was actually quite busy with classes 7 days a week on literacy, English, the environment, and energy, plus our work with the Energy Commission in advancing with the energy project and ensuring that the energy system is benefiting the community in an equitable way. There have been frustrations, challenges, big laughs and huge rewards. I think that my happiest moments have been in the literacy classes, in which I have seen many students make huge leaps forward. The thirst that people (both children and adults) have for learning is amazing! Until the 80s (post-revolution) secondary education was illegal on the coast, and even today very few people have studied at all, many kids spend years in first grade (the education being so poor and the classes so few and far between that they never learn enough to pass), and it is rare that a teacher spends much time at all in isolated communities like Monkey Point. So having classes 7 days a week, rain or shine, is something new in Monkey Point and something people love! It's also an excellent way to be taking advantage of the power from the blueEnergy system- holding night classes everyday, in which at least a couple people from every single family are present. The benefits for the community are huge, and we're all enjoying ourselves. Of course it's frustrating to know that once we leave for good (August 7 or so), the community teacher will promise to take over our night literacy classes and continue teaching environmental education, but will probably not end up following through. He's overloaded, has health problems, and likely doesn't want to take on more work on a volunteer basis when he already makes a tiny salary. However, even if our classes aren't continued past August, I have seen enough progress in the first month that I feel confident in saying that we've made an impact. Lilian, a 28 year-old mother of 4 who never studied a day in her life until recently, has told me that she can feel her mind opening up more and more every day. When I arrive at her home in the mornings for private classes (in addition to the night classes that she attends), she is always out on her porch early with her books, studying on her own and eagerly awaiting our class. Every student in my class can now write his or her first name (up from less than half when we began classes) and many are writing their full names. Even if there are a couple who still don't know the vowels, I'm happy to know that when I leave, everyone in my class will be able to sign his or her own name.

The challenges of living in a poor rural community full of ethnic/racial tensions have of course been plentiful. The Father's Day party which David and I helped to decorate and prepare for with the children (this was one of my favorite afternoons!) ended up with two drunk men getting in a machete fight. While we have been safe and healthy, 3 of our chickens disappeared within the first two weeks, likely stolen. Luckily one hen who lays a blue egg every morning remains. Thank you to the thieves for leaving the only egg-layer of the 4 behind!

Perhaps the biggest frustration for us has been the difficulty of holding meetings with the Energy Commission. While they all arrived fairly punctually (within an hour of the starting time, which is normal) for our first weekly meeting, and expressed to us how eager they were to move ahead with the project and begin home electrification via batteries, only the two members of the Commission who currently have direct benefit from the system in the form of light in their homes have bothered to attend our other meetings. Of course I have begun to understand why for some, a sunny Saturday afternoon is better spent planting quiquisque than meeting with a couple of gringos who may or may not follow through with their promises to help provide energy to homes. We are lucky to have two committed members of the Commission at this point, and it seems likely that once there are other beneficiaries in the community (people who have light in their homes from the blueEnergy system), there will be more people truly interested in working with the Energy Commission.

There is so much more to say, so many stories to tell. It's been quite the adventure so far. In order to keep things short, I have decided to sum up a few other aspects of my time in Monkey Point in simple numbers:

Number of days in Monkey Point: 35
Average hours of classes given daily: 3
Number of pictures taken: 881
Number of times I have been spied on by a monkey while in the outhouse: about 30
Number of sea turtles seen bludgeoned to death: 1
Number of lunches in which sea turtle was served: 1
Time which must pass after the scheduled starting time for a class or meeting before people begin to arrive: 30-60 minutes
Number of days in a row without sun: 4
Number of mice who invade our house at night: sounds like at least 10
Feet scaled by yours truly on a coconut tree: just 5 or 6
Feet scaled by the average child on a coconut tree: 30-40
Average amount of hours spent in a hammock per day: 2
Average number of times that David and I go swimming in the ocean per day: 1.5
Number of households interested in purchasing batteries to electrify their homes: 20
Average number of Energy Commission members (out of 6) who attend our weekly meetings: 2
Number of times I was in contact with the world outside Monkey Point: 1 (via radio)

Goodbye Bluefields!

2008-06-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

It's finally that time- we're leaving Bluefields for Monkey Point tomorrow! The past 48 hours have been totally hectic with last-minute meetings, shopping trips, and packing. In spite of the exhaustion I'm very excited for the trip. We have so many plans for the stay in Monkey Point- teaching, organizing, empowering, and just living with people, learning from them, and giving back what we can. It's going to be awesome!
I'll miss the yummy meals at the blueEnergy house, the air-conditioned office, the cold beer, the camaraderie of the fellow volunteers, and the Bluefields culture that I'm coming to love more and more. Yes, this city is an interesting, lively place. But what can compare to living in Monkey Point? Beans and rice fried in coconut milk, fresh fish, johnny cake, swimming, beach soccer, mangoes, not to mention the work we'll be doing with the Energy Commission and in the school. We're going to be busy! But it's going to be a good, fun busy. I can't wait!

So goodbye to Bluefields, the blueEnergy office, workshop, and volunteers. Goodbye to cars, loud music, cold beer, ice cream, pavement...the good and the bad... See you in a few weeks when we're back for a quick break.

Rondon!!!

2008-06-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

I had some serious cabin fever until the miracle of rondon at Eloise's house occurred on Sunday. The blueEnergy house/office in which I generally spend 20-24 hours a day was just getting a bit old. I was going stir crazy! I can't spend that much time in front of a computer, sitting in a plastic chair, or in my bunkbed with the fan blowing on me, even if I am reading the final Harry Potter without going crazy! David and I have been going on the occasional run recently, which has helped. But its quite hard to motivate to run when its 80-90 degrees out from 8 am - 8 pm, or pouring down rain and the teensiest bit cooler. And of course the Palo de Mayo festivities have shaken things up a bit in the city. Its been fun attending the parades and concerts, seeing a bit of true Bluefields culture. But the festivities also meant that the streets have been even more packed than usual, with more drunk men and even louder music than usual! Of course that's Bluefields and I appreciate it for what it is. However, I was getting grumpy and needed a change of pace, and Sunday's lunch at a beautiful and quiet home on the lagoon cured me!

Julie (a fellow community relations volunteer here at bE) and a Spanish friend Monica went early to Eloise's house with red snapper, prawns, coconut, and lots of breadkind (plantain, yucca, quiquisque, and other starchy vegetables) to begin the long process of preparing rondon, a traditional coconut milk-based stew that is now my favorite thing about Bluefields! David, Seb, Charles, and I arrived later in the afternoon to find them still working hard- grating the coconut, preparing the fish, peeling shrimp and breadkind. Its a long and arduous process! But before long Eloise had everything stewing in a pot over some charcoal and we all retreated to the porch overlooking the lagoon with Toña and Flor de Caña. We lounged, chatted in Spanish, English, Creole, and French, drank in the view of the lagoon and jungley cays, and enjoyed the breeze coming off the water. I hadn't felt this good since we got back from Monkey Point!

When the rondon was ready Eloise served us each up a heaping bowl and we dug in. This has got to be the best meal I've had in Central America so far! The rich but not too rich coconut milk broth, the surprisingly flavorful and firm breadkind, the red snapper and prawns, and the smoked meat which Seb had brought along and added a wonderful flavor, was altogether amazing! It was so nice to be with friends on the water, eating good food. Its something I've missed. Sort of brought me back to my days in Peru, where Sundays were all about sharing huge plates of ceviche and beer with friends on the waterfront. I love food culture! Particularly coastal food culture... Its the most delicious!

So I've now fallen back in love with Blufields and am feeling better than ever! Getting away for the day and spending it in such a lovely way was more refreshing than I could've imagined. Just one more week here at the office and I'm now really trying to make the most of my time. Preparing materials for classes on energy and water and sanitation, shopping for supplies to last us 2 months in isolated Monkey Point, getting trained in the Yo, Si Puedo literacy system which David and I are going to be teaching, finishing up a report on the water situation in Monkey Point, figuring out a million little details (logistical and other), and of course taking the time to be in touch with friends and family who I'll be unable to contact throughout the remainder of the summer.

Hopefully we'll be leaving for Monkey Point on Monday, June 9th. I can't wait! Give me the beach, the jungle, mango trees, and fresh air!

Back from Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila

2008-05-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Bonboy lowering the turbine

The Aguirre family

David, Julie, and Lillian, one of Monkey Point's
community operators

Lillian's family

Rama boy in the Punta de Aguila school- these kids were awesome!

Got back on Tuesday morning from our first trip to Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila. Naturally, I've got lots of bug bites and some minor stomach issues, but overall am feeling great and anxious to get back to the communities. Bluefields is an interesting city and its a good time to be here considering the month of May is when they celebrate the May Pole festivities, said to be the best parties all year. However, its still a city, and while here I'm usually spending most of the day sitting in the blueEnergy office in front of a computer. Not my favorite thing to do. Getting up at dawn in Monkey Point, eating fresh tortillas and gallo pinto made with coconut milk, swimming in the Caribbean Sea, hauling buckets of water from the spring and wells, playing with kids and puppies, chatting with locals about their lives, the war, their families, their interest or lack thereof in blueEnergy's projects, playing soccer on the beach, attending crazy town meetings in which communal decisions are made on pigs, drugs, and who can live in the community and who can't, is all just so much more fun and interesting. I'm definitely missing life in Monkey Point, and am disappointed that we won't be going back for at least two weeks. However, we have a lot to do here as far as preparing ourselves and materials to take back to the communities to teach about energy, get the energy commission organized, hold meetings to find out what the community actually wants from the next step of the blueEnergy project (batteries, minigrids?), teach on water, health, and sanitation, as well as English. Ambitious, yes, and that's just the beginning. Next week we'll be going through training with the Ministry of Education's Yo Si Puedo system, an adult literacy education program that originated in Cuba. The program is already being implemented in Monkey Point at night in the blueEnergy-powered school with adults, but we're hoping to get more community members involved (very few are literate or have above a 3rd grade education if any), maybe teach a second class each night, and give private lessons to one of our community operators who is smart, motivated, trustworthy, and very capable of becoming a leader in the community and specifically with the energy project, but lacks the reading and writing skills to be given the responsibilities that we'd like to give her. So we're going to have a very busy two weeks preparing here in Bluefields, as there is a lot we'll be doing during our two months in Monkey Point. And that's not even taking into consideration Punta de Aguila.
I'm hoping to make the trek down the beach and through the bush to the Rama community of Punta de Aguila once a week or so while we're living in MP in order to begin the process of getting blueEnergy's project back up and running there. Communication has been a huge problem with this community where bE actually installed their first turbine, as it is an indigenous community that is accustomed to missionaries coming and going, but doesn't have a lot of experience with development projects that are ongoing. While its a settled community, people are constantly coming and going between the community and Bluefields or the community and the bush, so you never know when you arrive who you will find there, and if you plan to hold a meeting with the leaders as we did, you can't necessarily expect them to show up because our notion of making a plan is much different than theirs. I don't think blueEnergy has extremely high hopes of what can get down in Punta de Aguila over the next few months, but it would be helpful if David and I could make attempts to show up in the community and meet with leaders, help the energy commission to get reorganized, and just get people talking again about the energy project, find out who's interested, what next steps should be taken (if any), etc. Also, this week I attended a couple workshops on the Rama Language Project, and told the Punta de Aguila schoolteacher that I am interested in helping him to teach Rama in the school. Actually, it was more like once I expressed interest in the language a few weeks ago during the community operator training, he has been pushing me to attend these workshops, start learning the language (which I have been doing!), and to help him teach. During the bE community operator training, he said that one of the main things that PA wants to use the energy for is to have light in the school at night to teach Rama. Of course I find this fascinating and exciting, and extremely reminiscent of my time in the Moseten village of Inicua in Bolivia back in 2002 when I was working to get the community motivated to begin teaching their language again, to take pride in it, to not lose it. Well Colette, the mother of the bE directors Mathias and Guillaume, has been working on this project for over 20 years and now has materials that can be used to teach the Rama language. She too has been encouraging me to get involved in teaching the language, helping to build the Rama dictionary, and doing what I can to contribute to the language revitalization movement during my short time here. So while I don't expect to have much free time while I'm living in Monkey Point in June and July, I'm hoping to spend a couple of days every week or so in Punta de Aguila helping to support both the energy commission and the revitalization of the Rama language through teaching in the school to both children and adults, and collecting words, pictures, and ethnographic notes to add to the dictionary. Those two projects can and should go hand in hand.
I know I can't get too high of hopes for what can be done in just June and July, because really that's no time at all, but there is so much that I can do and that I want to do. Of course one important part of being in the communities is going to be just being. Sitting and talking with people, or just sitting and listening. Going fishing, going into the bush, cooking, playing with children. I can't get any "work" done without integrating into the community and participating in all those kinds of activities first, and throughout the entire time that I'm there.
For now, time to try and enjoy Bluefields. On Tuesday night David and I went out to what is probably the nicest restaurant in town where we ate lobster and prawns and drank Flor de Cana (tastiest rum in the world). It was quite the treat after Monkey Point, where hadn't even had the luxury of sitting down to eat together at a table. Not that I really minded that, but it was definitely fun to treat ourselves and really splurge. Although the food and drinks only cost around $30, that was definitely a huge splurge for Bluefields. It was worth it.
On Thursday we had our first night out, although David and I didn't last past 12:30 at the club. It was fun, but we've become so used to going to bed early and getting up early since living in Costa Rica, and are so content with that lifestyle, that its just hard to stay out late. My stomach issues don't make it any easier. The hour or so we spent at the club was definitely worth it though. The place, Four Brothers, is basically just a tin shack with a bar and a DJ blasting reggae and all kinds of Caribbean jams through very poor quality speakers. The place wasn't too full as it was still early and only Thursday, but the locals there seemed to be having a blast. All of the dancing was everything I'd heard I should expect in Bluefields- simulated sex. And this wasn't the kind of fast hip-gyrating sort of dancing that I've seen in other places. This was even more erotic because it was so slow. No wonder there are so many teenage mothers, even the kids do this kind of dancing! I'm looking forward to attending some of the May Pole festivities during the next couple of weeks and seeing how all of that goes down. Supposedly the parties are going to get better and better and then climax with the best one on the 30th. We'll see if David and I can stay out past 1 am for some of these. I think we'd better try.

Rama Cay

2008-05-13T12:51:00.001-07:00

On Sunday David and I went along with Colette, the linguist and mother of blueEnergy who has been working with the Rama people on documenting and revitalizing their language since the 1980s, to Rama Cay.

The island is a fascinating place. There are over 1200 people on this tiny island, which was once actually two very tiny islands that were eventually connected as people dumped oyster shells between them over many years during the times of the British colonization. There are not many Rama speakers left on the island at all, despite the dense population of Rama people. Colette is hoping to get a new generation of teachers on the island interested in teaching the Rama language to the school children.

We watched Colette's slideshow homage to Miss Nora, a Rama woman who was one of the main speakers that worked with her in the 80s, played with the children, enjoyed the breeze on the north side of the island, and watched a bit of softball on the most beautiful softball field I've ever seen! I also learned quite a bit about the tragedy of the Rama, so similar to what has been happening to indigenous people all over the planet for centuries. Like every rainforest and every culture, the Rama territory has been plundered since colonization, and is now threatened by corporations involved in timber extraction, agribusiness, oil pipelines and dry canals. Yes, dry canals! There is currently a lot of talk about a huge project to build a dry canal from Monkey Point (where I'll be living, located in Rama territory), with railroad tracks, a highway, and an oil pipeline connecting it to the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Crazy, huh? The Rama and Creole populations of the Rama territory are currently working on an extremely important demarcation project where they are going to be making an official map of their territory which will give them greater leverage against the government, corporations, and development projects that are funding things like the dry canal. Its an interesting time to be here, to say the least. I'll be learning a lot more while I'm in Monkey Point and Punta de Aguila.

Bluefields, Nicaragua

2008-05-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

David and I arrived in Bluefields, Nicaragua Monday morning last week after a long haul from San Jose on buses and boats. I've been sweating ever since.

This city built on a lagoon connected to the Caribbean Sea is a fascinating mix of cultures and languages, influenced by both the Spanish and British in the colonial days, hugely impacted by the war in the 1980s, with a large indigenous population remaining and a predominant Creole (afro-descendant) culture as well. Here at the blueEnergy office we are a team of about 11 volunteers from France and the US, with Nicaraguan staff, both Creole and Mestizo. So it is a crazy mix of French, English, Creole, and Spanish being spoken. My new favorite French word (one of about 4 that I know!) is pomme du terre (not sure on spelling) which is the fancy word for potato (yes there is a fancy word and a colloquial word) and actually translates to apple of the earth. I love it! It reminds me of Pablo Neruda's poem, Ode to the Potato, and I think its beautiful!
So David and I arrived just in time for a week of operator training, which was basically capacity building for the community operators of blueEnergy's wind/solar systems in the four communities where they're currently working. We were there to learn along with them and start getting to know the blueEnergy people, workshop, and systems. It was a great opportunity to meet and get to know people from the communities where I'll be spending most of the summer, and to learn about how the systems actually work. One week ago I knew literally nothing about electricity, how a wind turbine creates it, how to do maintenance on batteries, or anything of the sort. After 5 days in the classroom and workshop I am no pro, but I am much more confident in my understanding of how electricity and particularly how renewable energy systems (wind and solar) work. And the people from the communities are awesome! I spent the week speaking Spanish, learning how to speak and understand Creole (English with some Spanish words mixed in spoken with a crazy accent and very different grammatical rules than the ones we know), and learning some words in Rama and Moskito, two of the local indigenous languages.
We're currently preparing for the first trip to Monkey Point, the community where David and I will spend most of the summer. This trip is just 10 days, which we'll spend helping conduct a survey on community organization and women's participation, and just getting to know the community. Then we'll come back to Bluefields for a week or 2 to prepare for a 2 month stay in Monkey Point (and to enjoy the May Pole festivities- crazy booty shaking, loud music, and fun increasing until the end of the month). Monkey Point is a few hours south on the coast, in Rama territory. Basically I'm going to be very out of touch throughout most of the summer. While in Monkey Point David and I will be helping to organize the energy commission, teaching adult literacy in the blueEnergy-powered school at night, teaching school kids about how the wind turbines work and the basics of energy and electricity, observing and documenting the community's use of the energy systems, helping with basic maintenance and operation, and brainstorming with the community on the potential future uses of the energy once families are able to purchase their own batteries with the help of a local micro-credit organization.
I'm also hoping to spend at least a few weeks in the nearby community of Punta de Aguila, which is a small Rama community that is hoping to use the electricity to teach the Rama language in the schools. The mother of the two directors of blueEnergy is a French linguist who has been working with the Rama to preserve and revitalize their language since the 1980s. She's going to be providing me with some materials to take to Punta de Aguila. I'm hoping to work with the local teacher to start teaching basic Rama to adults and children, and I'd also like to work on a dictionary that Colette (the linguist) has started, adding more words as well as ethnographic information. It's going to be exciting!

Boren Fellowship: I'm going to Brazil!

2008-05-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

I found out last week that I have been awarded a Boren Fellowship, which will pay for me to study Portuguese when I return to DC next year and then spend 9 months in Brazil studying the sugarcane ethanol industry and its social and environmental impacts. I will be mainly in Brasilia and Recife, as well as some of the rural sugarcane-growing regions around Recife in the northeast. I'm a bit surprised and of course overwhelmingly excited about getting to travel to Brazil- and have it paid for!!! This will mean that I won't actually graduate with my MA until spring 2010, as I have to be a graduate student during the entire time of the fellowship. It will definitely be worth it.

Monteverde with Mom

2008-05-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

My mom came out for a week spent bird-watching and relaxing. First at my house in the foothills outside San Jose, where we saw oropendulas, blue-crowned mot mots, a toucan, and at least a dozen other species of birds in just two days! Then to the cloud forest of Monteverde, where we had several quetzal sightings! We had an amazing time hiking on our own in the Santa Elena Reserve (where we didn't see too much because we don't exactly have trained eyes, but did enjoy hanging out with the mostly domesticated peccary), going for a night hike in the Eternal Children's Forest (we saw sleeping birds- who's ever seen a bird sleeping??- tarantulas, frogs, and lots of interesting bugs), and then going on an excellent guided hike through the Monteverde Reserve where we spotted quetzals and many other beautiful birds, howler monkeys, a tarantula, a snake, and others. Overall it was a great trip. We were lucky to have a beautiful house to ourselves in Monteverde in which David, Mom, and I cooked delicious dinners, played hearts, sipped on wine, and observed the local birds and bugs. Unfortunately the end of the trip was quite rushed as David and I were taking off for Nicaragua the same day my mom was leaving for the US. We all made it to our destinations safely, and are now all very busy. The week relaxing and hiking around El Rodeo and Monteverde was an excellent vacation for us all.

Black background- saving energy!

2008-04-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

Note the switch to the black background today. Not only does it look cool, but it actually saves energy. Something for everyone to consider when designing web pages and blogs in the future, especially for those of you whose energy comes from coal...
Here in Costa Rica my computer is powered by hydroelectric dams, which have quite a large ecological footprint in terms of habitat destruction, rerouting of bodies of water, and endangering most of the local fish species, but once they're built they have virtually no emissions. Similar dilemmas to those we face in the Pacific Northwest. Cheap, clean energy...kind of.

Anyway, in light of my current course (last class this semester!) on human vulnerability and climate change, and my upcoming internship working on renewable energy, I thought that I might as well change my blog background to an energy-saving color. Enjoy!

blueEnergy

2008-04-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's official, I'm leaving for Bluefields, Nicaragua on May 5th to begin my 3 1/2 month internship with blueEnergy. I'll be working in rural Afro-Caribbean and indigenous communities on the Atlantic coast where blueEnergy has been working to install hybrid wind and solar energy systems in order to supply the people with electricity for community centers, schools, and their homes. My position is going to be a sort of community liaison, where I'll actually be based out of one of the small communities, doing evaluation and assessment of the project, teaching in the school on energy and energy use, and learning and teaching about the operation of the wind and solar systems.

Below is information on the organization and their work in Nicaragua from their website (http://www.blueenergygroup.org/):

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blueEnergy is a nonprofit organization that provides a low-cost, sustainable solution to the energy needs of marginalized communities through the construction, installation, and maintenance of hybrid wind and solar electric systems. blueEnergy manufactures wind turbines that are specially designed for simple manufacturing, robustness and efficiency in low wind speeds. blueEnergy manufactures the systems locally, near their point of usage, to keep energy costs low, improve equipment serviceability, and create employment where it is desperately needed.

In Nicaragua, blueEnergy’s initial project country, half of the roughly 5 million inhabitants do not have access to electricity; the situation is particularly grim in the Caribbean Coast region of the country where nearly 80% of the inhabitants go without. In part because of this, and in part the cause of this, the region is the poorest in Nicaragua, itself the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.
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Check out this awesome video on the installation of an electric system in Monkey Point in 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK-7-ZSvTyA

I won't be one of the people actually building or installing the systems, but am hoping to learn something about that as well.

Gardening continued...

2008-04-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

It's official- we have a garden! And even a few spinach, radish, and mustard plants beginning to sprout! We're leaving in a few weeks for Nicaragua, but hopefully we'll be able to munch on some of the garden goodies before then. As for the rest of the summer, our sub-letters and neighbors have offered to care for and enjoy the garden.
Check out the pictures below. This was quite the process, but things are looking good.

Gardening Costa Rica style: Machetes, Bamboo, Bee Stings, and Broken Pipes

2008-04-11T17:22:00.001-07:00

So I'd been telling David for weeks now that I thought we should get a machete for the house, if not for whacking away at the out of control bamboo "hedges" in our yard, then just for fun or maybe for killing snakes. He was doubtful about our need for a machete, but since picking one up at the hardware store in town this week we've both developed blisters on our hands from going at the invasive bamboo that had begun to take over our yard and back porch. A machete may not be the most efficient gardening tool, but it sure is fun. And that is how Ticos (and most people in Latin America as well as other parts of the world) do their yard work.
After hacking away at the bamboo off and on over a few days, we discovered a sort of hidden garden next to the house. Earlier in the semester I'd discovered a giant oregano plant in that area and had wondered what else might be lying back there, hidden by the out of control bamboo. Indeed, we found a couple of spearmint plants, several aloe plants, and other unrecognizables. We got carried away today and spent hours clearing out the garden, enduring blisters, blood, two bee stings, and then breaking a water pipe. Yes, it was quite the adventure, a la Lynn. We were lucky enough to be able to get ahold of a local guy pretty quickly who came over and fixed the damaged pipe (after a bit of panicking over what to do of course). After that fiasco, I dragged myself down to campus to visit the UPeace nurse who gave me two shots- one in each butt cheek- for the bee stings that had together swollen up to the size of a watermelon, hot and throbbing, on my thigh. It was a productive and exciting day, although a bit painful. Definitely worth it!

Pictures of the garden will be coming soon!

Adventures in Blogging, Day 1

2008-04-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

So I decided it was time to jump on the blogging bandwagon since I have so many pictures and so many stories to tell these days, and so many people who I want to know what is going on in my life. This is my first time blogging, we'll see how it goes.

As most of you who are checking this out already know, I'm currently studying for an MA in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development at the United Nations-chartered University for Peace in Costa Rica, as part of a dual-degree program with American University in D.C. After 2 solid years of school, I'll be graduating in the summer of '09 with the MA from UPeace as well as an MA in International Affairs from AU. Hopefully that will leave me set up for an awesome job, preferably somewhere in Latin America or on the West Coast of the good ol' U.S., working in the field of environment and international development.

I've been here in Costa Rica since December and have had many adventures already, from surfing the Pacific and Caribbean coasts to volunteering on a permaculture farm on the Island of Omotepe in Nicaragua (and many many things in between, including of course classes). I will soon be off on the next big adventure, which is a 3 1/2 month internship where I will be in Nicargua, El Salvador or Guatemala. Hopefully I'll be figuring this out soon, as I'm supposedly leaving in about 3 weeks. It's alright though, I'm on Tico (aka Costa Rican) time.

Now I'm going to attempt to post some pictures and other fun things here. Enjoy!