Brazil A-Term - Day #3: A Special English Lesson Followed by Machetes followed by a Change of Plans by Fabricio P Guerra
I bet that someone reading this blog right now has experienced the situation when you set a couple alarms in anticipation of waking up at an earlier time but then they just snooze through all of them and end up waking up much later than normal? That's exactly how my day started. What we had planned for this day was to translate a fundraising presentation in the morning, have an English class at 3:00pm, and then a literacy class for adults at 7:00pm. Since the translation of the presentation was going to be done on our own time, I knew I had to own up to my normal habits and wake up early and start the day right. I set alarms for 6:55am and 7:00am, and went to bed. The following morning, I woke up and look at my phone to see that I've awoken at a very disappointing 8:15am with absolutely no sign of my alarms. They were turned on, so I must've been so tired that I turned them off whilst sleeping. This was... pretty frustrating to say the least, but I wasn't going to let it ruin my day. Despite the mental setback, I ate breakfast, sat down on the table with Bernie, and we got to work trying to translate this presentation into English. Here's a little something special about the Portuguese language: you and I both know that yes, the words are different and there are some different letters like "ç", but what most people don't know is that the way the language is written. I don't mean just grammar (that's also a given), I mean in the way ideas are communicated through text. There are so many expressions and ideas that, in my opinion, are untranslatable. So, not only did we have to translate this presentation, but we also had to adapt it so it made more sense in English.
I won't lie, we overestimated our capabilities. This was HARD, a lot harder than we anticipated. It was taking us forever, so when we hit a slide that had a lot of information, we decided to reach a stopping point. Throughout the entire time we were translating, the outside world was beckoning me. Although it was 30ºC (86ºF), there was a fantastic breeze and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. After working for so long, the experience of going outside and lying half in the sun half in the shade whilst that incredible breeze cooled me off can only be described in one word: divine. It was a much needed break, but of course you can't have an A-Term with too many breaks, so after I had a decent amount of time outside, I went back inside to journal about the previous day.
Before the English class began, we headed over to the HQ and started getting ready, but the lesson turned out to be a lot different than what we had thought it would be. We thought it was going to be similar to the Spanish lesson, where everyone sits at the table and learns from the teacher who writes stuff on the chalkboard. However, this was not the case. In fact, it was a lot more immersive than the traditional education style. What happened is a baker came with the English teacher, and the lesson was going to be baking themed. The kids recited all the ingredients and materials in English as we went along, and this seemed to me like a stroke of brilliance. I felt like the previous day the Spanish lesson's effectiveness was limited, kids were hesitant and sometimes they got distracted, but in this English language everyone was having an awesome time. Although this time, most of students were older, and this probably facilitated things.
After everyone left, Thiago had to go run a quick errand for an hour and he gave us a task to do. Remember that fantastic breeze I had mentioned earlier? As the day had progressed, it turned into a strong gust. This wasn't a problem for me I didn't mind at all, but on the HQ property there are a lot of banana trees. Banana trees have a lot of big long leaves that catch the wind, and since the wind had gotten so strong it had actually knocked over two of those trees. Thiago wanted us to get some machetes and go cut them down, chop them into smaller pieces, and then dump it all in the garden compost. Since we never have access to any machetes, it was going to be an exciting hour for us. So then we went at it, chopping away at the leaves and stem until they became compost-sized pieces. When all the big pieces had been taken care of there were a TON of little pieces left over that I had to sweep into the compost, and the whole time the wind kept blowing the other way it was very frustrating but hey, I got to chop stuff with a machete so you win some you lose some.
After Thiago came back he made some scrambled eggs for dinner and we got ready for the literacy class. The teacher came and we started to wait, but about 10 minutes past the scheduled start time, no one showed up. At first I didn't know what was going to happen, I wasn't supposed to be picked up for another hour, but then the teacher came up with an idea. Since no one showed up, she decided it would be best for us to make advertisements for the literacy lessons on posterboards and then hang them on a nearby store (it's only now that I realize if someone were illiterate, they would not be able to read the signs we made, but nevertheless it was a good effort). We ended up making two poster boards, one for the literacy classes and one for the digitalization classes, and then we went to a nearby store to hang them up.
The store was even deeper into the favela, and I had never been to this place before. I'll be honest, I had always been a little afraid of going this far into the favela. It was that little heartache that you'd get when passing through a bad part of town or something, and it always comes from the horror stories and prejudices you hear from people who most of time have never experienced actual poverty before, but everytime I go to those places and see that it isn't nothing what they make it out to be, then I feel like I've been deceived this entire time. Maybe if those people saw these places for what they really were, then there would be less hate in the world, just a thought. The store was owned by a woman named Dona Sylvinha (can be translated literally Mrs. Little Sylvia, but don't take "Little Sylvia" so literally, the suffix "-inho/a" isn't always used in a literal fashion) and her store was full of spices, nuts, and medicines. Before we left, Thiago bought one of her medicines called Xarope Da Vovó (Grandma's Syrup) which was a mighty concoction of herbs, fruits, and different medicinal liquids. It was pitch black but smelled like every flower shop in the world crammed into one bottle.
At the end of this blog all I can say is that I've learned a lot in this day and in this whole A-Term so far, and it's only been three days! There have been a lot of eye opening experiences that the average wealthy person is not able to experience in their entire lives. I used to have this predetermined notion that poverty was riddled with crime, violence, sadness, and grayness. In all fairness, it does include those things (all aspects of life do) but they aren't absolute characteristics. In poverty today I saw the brightness of children and the unity of a community, the devotion to betterness and the unending gratitude to those who truly cared. It makes you think, it really, really does.
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