These excerpts are from letters to friends in Canada during our trip to Brazil in April and May 2012
April 15
For the past few days I have felt the urge to tell some stories but have not known where to start, and certainly not how they will end!
But the uncertainty is part of my story and my path right now, and actually adds a rather delicious tension to the quality of my inner life… and hopefully you will enjoy the questions too.
Before leaving Canada, Andrew and I talked about housing for the three young women we had planned to adopt back in 1995. We intuitively knew that housing was a theme for us and would arise on this trip… partly because of our work to establish an earthbag house this summer as an alternative housing option, and partly because we both feel strongly that housing lends a stability from which people can blossom.
Houses don’t create the blossoming, but people who struggle to know where to sleep safely really have extra challenges in being able to relax into the blooming.
I also need to share the context of my own growing right now, the theme for my year being “radical trust”… which is mostly about honouring the dozens of ways that I notice my own distrust during the day, and gently invite the fear to subside into a deeper awareness of connection and letting go of my need to “steer the ship.”
And part of the reason I need to share this element of my story is because some of the happenings of the past week seem so serendipitous that it might seem as though we are just big egos strutting around trying to make things happen… but the quality of this experience is the opposite in fact, a series of movements of the heart in opening to our own pain and desire for change, and a willingness to step backwards from “solving” in order to see what happens next.
(Of course, with a large dash of ego and solving and reacting mixed in to each day too, like any family…)
I think the only way to tell these stories is to introduce the cast.
Jussara is 29, a gorgeous young woman with a 3 year old son Guilherme. She is smart and feisty and slim-tiny and gets attention when she walks down the street. She is divorced after 10 years and was part of a employee lawsuit for unpaid wages that was successfully won, so between divorcing and the settlement she had about $5,000 and was able to buy squatters rights to a little plot of land (not legal but common) and a wooden house 10 x 16 with a bathroom attached. She has a tiny kitchen (no table) and a bedroom plus the bathroom. She generously invited us to lunch but did not have plates enough, so bought bread and ham. Since she has no chairs we sat on her lawn on a blanket (no rain that day so we had a lovely picnic). Her yard is well cared for but the neighbourhood is a slum – she lives in the backyard of another house, and the entry house is truly a dump with piles of garbage everywhere. Jussara finished high school, has various kinds of work experience, a keen desire to study and work. At present she is unemployed because of child care and distance – her neighbourhood has just a half-day daycare and she is a half-hour bus ride from most work opportunities.
Liane is 25 or so, short and lovely and tough as nails. She has a reputation for having a short fuse and is also very fun, likes to joke and play and is full of emotional energy. She is mother to Mateus, a 7 year old little boy who has had a tough life and is also ready to fight at a moment’s notice but has the softest, sweetest energy and is totally alert and ready to learn or play at any moment. Can you tell I am smitten?? He would fit in my backpack but customs would have problems… and of course he needs to be with his mom who loves him like crazy. But she also is going through her own struggles – her ex-husband is “complicated,” which means he is good-hearted but recently released from jail on drug charges. And she is working now – and thrilled to be working – a 9 hour shift in a restaurant that makes it literally impossible for her to take Mateus to school and back, which means he is spending lots of time loose on the street in a very dangerous neighbourhood. And she is also finding solace in a very charismatic and demanding church… which means even less time mothering Mateus. Her sisters are very judgemental about her choices and we are trying to just listen and be supportive without judging. Certainly the structure of a charismatic church has provided a pathway out of chaos for many young people, and hopefully she will move through her own journey with grace and balance in the end. She is living in a slum in the house that belongs to her ex-husband, who has moved back in with his mother. She has no legal right to the house since there is no paperwork on it, and fights for her unofficial right to stay there with Mateus. We have not been allowed to see it. We have been told by her and her sisters that it is smaller than Jussara’s, that there are holes in the roof, walls and flooring, and that there is no bathroom. For the past three months, this tiny shack has been shared by Liane, Suzana (the third sister), Mateus and Gabriel (Suzana’s son). Liane and Mateus in the bedroom (the size of a foam mattress) and Suzana and Gabriel in the kitchen (same size). For the week before we arrived, it was also shared by Leandro (Suzana’s husband). Gabriel told me yesterday that is aunt’s house is a disaster – there are large rats, and when his dad sat on the floor with his back to the wall, his shirt got covered in dust from the bricks which are falling apart. Apparently crack dealers and other violent elements are a very close and immediate part of the scenery.
Suzana is 27 or so, and also gorgeous in a more voluptuous,quiet way. She is married to Leandro, a soft-spoken farm worker from a more northern state. They have a bright but hyperactive child in Gabriel (almost 9), who does lots of stunts to get attention, both kind and malicious actions. Gabriel has been driving my boys crazy… they are angry at his lack of moral compass… we have been talking with them about various kinds of developmental disorders and they have been really trying hard to be patient and tolerant. He talks incessantly to them, most of which they can’t understand, but is quick in learning new English words that he repeats to them (also incessantly) – I have been spending time alone with Gabriel in order to save my own children. One-on-one he is more calm, and he does have a deep desire to find acceptance which is fueling a lot of the nutty behaviour. Suzana and Leandro were having some relationship struggles but seem pretty united now. They have been working in various jobs over the years, moving from place to place with the job opportunities and housing that arise. Suzana came to Pelotas hoping to find a more stable work environment closer to her sisters, but the stress of being in Liane’s little hut means they are trying to figure out their next steps. They have a house rented in their home state of Santa Catarina until the end of April but no work there right now (although the job market there is better than in Pelotas).
We had talked to the young women before leaving Canada about our willingness to try and help improve their housing situations. So part of our visit here has been to investigate possibilities here with them. For a week we have been enjoying life in two cabanas on the beach here, and spending some time with real estate agents and under our own steam (by bus) looking for options. By pure chance, I was walking downtown with Jussara and Suzana when a man called my name. I recognized him vaguely but he looked shocked to see me. His name is Darlam, and he worked with us for a while at the orphanage 16 years ago. Jussara began talking with him about our real estate search. He said he would do some thinking and get back to us.
The next day he showed up at our cabana with his 15 year old son Davi. While the boys played in the international language of kids with a ball, he talked to us about how Andrew had changed the shape of his life. Andrew had noticed him painting plaster figurines with some girls at church, noticed how patiently and well he worked with kids, and invited him to his workshop at the boys’ home. Darlam then worked with Andrew in the workshop, then later set up his own project in his neighbourhood, working with local kids out of his garage and accompanying their journeys out of drugs and into better lifestyles. Andrew had given him a book on making educational toys out of wood, which he used as the basis for his own business and providing for his family. They would build a stock of these toys and go to 5 regional craft fairs to sell them. He worked with a number of the boys we had been supporting at our time in the orphanage.
The day I ran into Darlam, he had been feeling very depressed because for several months he has been unemployed. The government developed new safety laws for children’s toys, and he has submitted his toys to become registered/analyzed/licensed but it is a long process and he needs work in the meantime. He is hopeful that once he gets through this process he will actually have a larger market, but the day he saw me he was feeling very depressed. However, his contact with us felt like a signal to keep moving forward, and he arrived at our cabana with a spring in his step. He offered to help with our housing search in whatever way he can, and since we had not rented a car we hired him to help the following day. He drove Andrew, Leandro, Jussara and Suzana to his neighbourhood, a simple/poorer area but with cheaper land outside of city limits (and good bus service, school, daycare etc). I got to test my skills with 5 boys on a rainy day in a cabana in two languages!!
As part of our reconnecting with Darlam, he mentioned that he had been working with Vinicius, one of the boys we befriended years ago. Vinicius was a gentle, fun kid with a very ready, vibrant smile and an innate capacity for artwork and woodworking, displaying huge creativity and initiative. He and Andrew had a friendship full of teasing and lighthearted practical jokes.
Vinicius lives near Darlam and has a wife and 4 children, one of whom has a mental disability. He was working with wood until about 6 months ago when he left to become a security guard in a local firm. Andrew and Darlam thought they would surprise him, have Andrew show up at his door to ask directions. However, the trick didn’t quite work, as Vinicius was very disoriented when he answered the door (pleased, but unwell). Darlam and Andrew spoke with his family for quite a while and discovered that he has been sick for several months, has limited access to health care, has not been able to pay rent or feed his family adequately. Darlam had no idea about the situation. Together they worked with his wife to make a plan for some more food and health care this week.
So… on this Sunday morning we have a number of questions that will grow into answers at some point.
How will we be able to help the girls with their housing issues? in what order and in what time frame? how long do we offer this cabana reality to Suzana and Leandro? Jussara and Liane are going back to real life tonight. How long do we stay in this area ourselves? when do we head off to other parts of Brazil? what happens next for Vinicius and his family?
It is very different for me to be asking these questions with my heart rather than my head… adds a very different quality to my days, more peaceful but less certain. A kind of humility that comes from knowing that we can’t solve, fix or change anyone’s life, and yet clearly we can also plant seeds or offer soil in which new growth can happen.
April 27
My last note was full of questions, and by staying with the uncertainty we made the most of some very intriguing days together.
Vinicius and his family will be continuing to face challenges ahead. He shared with us that his “pneumonia” is really a symptom of the AIDS virus, and on one level there is unlikely to be a happy ending to this story. On another level, our visit has given him some breathing room – we helped with some of the immediate debts, and Darlam is providing much needed moral support and is available to help with advocacy in the health care system. He no longer feels as isolated, and in a curious turn of events, his previous employer showed up this week to heal some old wounds and offer him work once he recovers from this round of illness. We feel honoured to have been part of this reconnecting phase for him, and hope to keep in touch through Darlam over the year ahead.
Liane has made some decisions too – she talked with her boss, who has quite cheerfully agreed to help her move Mateus to a school near the restaurant, and he will go there after school until she is finished her shift. We are also helping her with rent this year – she will pay half, and we will pay half, on a simple (rustic) house in a quieter neighbourhood than where she is living now. She too has lots of challenges ahead but we are hoping that the new environment will allow her some breathing space in which to consider what she needs and wants in future.
Jussara has decided to stay where she is for now – she is appreciating the childcare help she gets from her ex-mother-in-law, and while she wants to get more education and better work, she feels her priority is 3 year old Guilherme right now. We took her shopping for a tiny kitchen table (it is about 30cm x 45cm folded, 30 x 90 when both leaves are in use) and 4 tiny stools that will fit in her house and give them a place to eat meals together. We’ve indicated that we are willing to help her more in future when she has a clearer vision of what makes sense.
We also met up with Vanderlei and his family on Sunday. Vando was one of Andrew’s closest students in the workshop 17 years ago, very hardworking and serious-looking, although lots of fun and teasing went on between them. He was blinded in one eye during our stay – a freak accident in the workshop – and we had not seen him since our quick return visit 15 years ago. We found out from Vinicius that he was married with two kids (14 and 12) and approximate directions to his house in a Pelotas slum. On Saturday we found his wife Rita, but he was working until late. We arranged a “surprise” lunch for the following day, and it was great to receive them in our little beach cabana. They have been working hard, doing their best to raise two very polite kids in a terribly risky neighbourhood. They own their home, a one-bedroom brick home with tiny kitchen and bathroom. They would love to move out of the area, since Vando was shot there 4 years ago, caught as a passerby in a turf war. He spent 40 days in hospital and one of the 3 bullets slipped “the right way” – a millimetre the other way and he would have been in a wheelchair for life, but it slipped when he turned his head and they could remove it through surgery. These kinds of stories followed us through our time in Pelotas.
We also visited our friends Eli and Joao in Cangucu where we lived for 3 years. Eli and her daughter are presently unemployed (recently) and Eli is crocheting various lovely things for sale. I bought one (she just had one finished) but Darlam works with an artesan cooperative and encouraged her to join them (hopefully she will). My parents and sisters will remember Joao as a very rough-and-tumble peasant, which he still is… but this was one of the biggest surprises so far… he now has a laptop and cell phone and spends hours of his free time surfing the net!! Could have knocked me over with a feather when he wanted our email address and demanded to know why I don’t use MSN to chat….
Suzana and Leandro now own a house and property in Turvo, Santa Catarina. After several days of looking at possibilities in Pelotas, I noticed that when they talked about the possibilities they were optimistic, but when they talked about Santa Catarina (where they have been working), they glowed. We asked them about this and they said that they really loved it there. We told them to go home! And they caught a bus the next day. Three days later they called to say they had found a property with a very simple house (no bathroom yet) but that the owner was in need of a quick sale, and had agreed to accept their car (on which they are still making payments) as part of the sale. We agreed to contribute the rest and then began a complex game of trying to get the money to ourselves from Canada (thanks much, Robyn…). We got to Turvo after a series of bus rides on Tuesday, saw their place in the morning, read over their contract, and handed them a huge wad of local currency, took them out for a celebratory lunch and got on another long bus ride to Florianopolis (the slow route that goes through many small towns along the way.)
Darlam worked with us tirelessly for two weeks of “adventures,” including various forms of househunting and much wonderful philosophizing and agonizing and analyzing. He was very frank with us about how running into us put him back “on the right track” (his words) – that he had lost hope in his deeper calling and was just looking for a job, but that now he wants to continue his commitment to helping some of his neighbours and the young people we used to work with, especially interested in housing and woodworking. He got a job offer last week but turned it down, convinced that his creative and helping work will be more rewarding even though it offers less certainty.
May 9
We are enjoying some blissful days in Bombinhas, SC. We have returned to this beach town after a week with our friends in Matinhos. Our week there was, once again, full of significant moments and fun times.
Our friends have been through a very difficult decade, including separation (from each other), new relationships (one which resulted in a baby but no relationship), serious depression and cancer. Life in mid-forties can be like a train wreck! But it was a deep privilege to also see what they have salvaged from these trials, including expanded compassion, new commitment to their work as professors for young social activists, and a very clear view of the importance of community, and solidarity with marginalized people.
They are working with a group of 70 families who were displaced after a mudslide catastrophe in March 2011, accompanying their journey by making themselves available without solutions, and offering some new partnerships including with the students they teach. Some of the fruits of their labours include new learning about woodcarving and support for other artesans, and advocacy support around many of the injustices that occurred after the mudslide (truckloads of trees sold to multinational companies, various corrupt kinds of decision-making around homebuilding after the slide, etc.)
We didn’t get to meet the actual mudslide survivors, since the day we went to visit some of them at a farmer’s market, they and we got washed out by a major rain. Before the rain started we toured the area where the mountain had fallen into the valley and the boys got a sense of the scale of the disaster.
Our time in Matinhos was a way of celebrating some of the ways our past journeys are feeding this current journey in our lives. Because Edina and Cesar knew us (and supported us) when we worked with the orphanages, and knew our struggles to adopt the three girls, we were able to share stories of that time with them. They were also very keen to hear more about the carving program and our way of working with young artists, since there are several projects underway in their circle that overlap with this cultural work. They are part of a university with a commitment to community learning, and every Wednesday night each program has a workshop lead by a student that invites people in to learn and share. We were privileged to share a bit of our story and learn from others at a Wednesday night campfire at the university.
And the next piece of the puzzle had to do with Andrew’s passion for earthbag and other alternative housing. We have been carrying around his well-thumbed earthbag book as well as a notebook full of ideas on this trip, with a plan to return home and start learning from the author with a team of folks in Whitehorse. But out of the blue we got two emails that made it clear our construction plan is on hold for this summer. We were reeling a bit from this, disappointed and unclear about why it had seemed so “right” to put energy this way. But it became clear that Edina and her circle had housing on their minds – the need for housing for the mudslide survivors, as well as several students without housing, and even their own housing situations after changing the shape of their families. Andrew shared his ideas and disappointment with them one afternoon, and they got very inspired. Within two days they had pored over the book in detail, spoken with several colleagues and started envisioning a cooperative for housing alternatives.
We met with a man who is making eco-friendly no-bake bricks, a young man who has built housing from bamboo and mud, and heard lots about the possibilities for working with the Sem Terra movement (a national “landless farmers” movement we had some connections with 20 years ago that has become a significant cooperative/solidarity cooperative throughout the country). They are hoping to use the hearts and strong backs of hundreds of students to help build a model earthbag home for one of their teachers, and another for one of the mudslide survivors who is linked with the Sem Terra movement.
Whether or not they pull these dreams off, they have rekindled our faith in the way that seeds are planted, and our belief that some bear fruit. They have also, with the eloquence that only Brazilians can express, reminded us that we are all part of a very special and global network of humans who care.
Mid-May
On May 7, Liane emailed to say that her landlord had not returned her calls, and she was still desperately looking for a place to rent, asking if we had any ideas. I tried to call her but did not get through. On the 9th she called again and sounded excited about her house… but I didn’t understand what she was talking about. On the 10th she sent me an email to explain. She had previously told me that she was enrolled in a public housing lottery that allows candidates to pay a subsidized mortgage at 5% interest over a long time (about $40 per month). This program has huge waiting lists and she had been on the list only 3 months, while some people have been waiting for years. But on May 9 her name was drawn, and she was given the keys to a newly constructed, small 2 bedroom house near her current neighbourhood. I have no neat theory to explain why, but am feeling very grateful.