The Lost Land of Sugarcane

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.

First Four Weeks in Brazil

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

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

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)

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

35 Days in Monkey Point

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)