who's doing this? who's killing us? ...robbing us of light and life*

dear mariana and susellen... two of the girls i'm closest to! they are lovely lovely.

i leave for the US on wednesday for 4 weeks of hugging nieces and nephews and wrangling the brazilian embassy into giving me a new visa.

so today i made a farewell [for now] trek to the girls of lua nova out in araçoiabinha. i actually stayed only half an hour. only a handful of girls were there as it was the middle of the day and most were working elsewhere, and when i got there i was confronted once more with a big tragedy of abuse that had happened recently at the shelter.

oh sigh. in many ways i suppose it was the perfect send-off: this bittersweet vacillation of the work here between true joy at the friendships i've made with the girls, with some of their progress, and utter devestation with incidents like this happen. [i don't want to go into the details because it's really just too awful and i'm still shaken up by everything.]

when i walked out of the shelter, there in the middle of the glowing green gorgeous countryside, my thoughts were racing, emotions flaring, and i couldn't muster the 1 1/2 hour wait for the next bus to araçoiaba. so i just trudged on through the countryside, walked the 10 kilometers under the blaring sun. you get to a point where you are so hot and sweaty and dusty and dirty that you really can't get MORE so. so you might as well just go for it.

and i do mean it when i say the countryside is gorgeous and literally GLOWS greenery. i passed all the mango trees and brightly painted cinderblock homes - purples and blues and greens and yellows... passed by the fancier large farmhouses, and ended up in the center of araçoiaba's sweet little village, by the big LDS church and reservoir, just in time to catch the bus to take me the last 15 kilometers back to sorocaba.

when i got back to the city i stopped in and got a fresh laranja-acerola juice for 50 centavos and drank in the bounty of this fantastically beautiful country. i will for sure miss the fresh fruits oh so much in the next four weeks!

and so here, back in this house which i will be moving out of in january when i come back [to another locale close-by, and thankfully, i must admit], i reflect on the last three months and this huge play of contrasts i've been a part of. how i know you're not supposed to get emotionally involved in this kind of work - you're supposed to not let these horrific circumstances get to you. but then again, aren't we supposed to mourn with those that mourn?

and then to reflect on the beauty i've also seen, and the laughter and joy that of course accompanies all of this tragedy - that of course araçoiabinha is home to happy, functioning families just as it is to the girls at lua nova trying to carve out new lives for themselves, stumbling so painfully along the way.

i'll take all of this home with me, where no doubt i will reflect some more as all of this will no doubt feel lightyears away....

oh, sorocaba, oh lua nova! adieu for now.

até janeiro,
joojie.


*just realized that's my second post in a row with a title straight from "the thin red line." so yes it's my favorite movie, i can't help it.

rosy-fingered dawn

i am somewhat bursting with goodness tonight. i must say the last two days have been perhaps the best so far of my 3-month sojourn in brazil, and in the spirit of bringing thanksgiving south of the equator, today i am incredibly grateful that...

i can now truly understand portuguese. and sort of somewhat speak back too. the conversations i've had with the girls this week have been the best so far. and it warms my soul to know that we've really turned a corner in our relationships and the level of trust and confidence we now have. oh! nothing is better than that.

i happened upon an impromptu outdoor dance/capoeira/music fest whilst walking through sorocaba today! brasil!!!

despite only arriving 20 minutes before it began, i beat out the hoards of people and secured a ticket to the subtitled screening of harry potter 7. [thankfully everyone wanted to see the dubbed version!] [for those who've seen it: intense, right?!]

i won the battle with the killer ants who were trying to invade my room, after nearly defeating us in the kitchen. seriously, huzzah.

as of yesterday evening, everything is [finally] finished for my phd application to oxford next year. all the grant applications are in, all the reference letters secured, all fees paid and forms submitted. now i just have to wait and see. (eeeek!)

did i mention work went really well?

thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and this isn't the first time i've missed it because i'm abroad. but i feel so lucky to be here in brazil. [seriously, despite the ridiculous amount of complaining. sorry ya'all!] i am so lucky to be able to learn firsthand another culture, language, country, but most of all i'm so grateful that i'm here working with these girls. i learn so much from them, and it only gets better as the barriers between us [99% of which are linguistic] continue to break down.

HAPPY!

beijinhos to you all,
joojie.

wondrous news, or how i've been crying for joy/emotional too-much-ness part II

my dear dear friend brittany gave birth to a precious and healthy baby girl around 4am this morning! oh what joy! i heard a running account of the 30+ hour birth from my friend sara, who acted as her doula, and melanie, special best friend support.

can i just pause to say once more how miraculous birth is? and how happy i am brittany and baby are healthy and happy? labors extending past 30 hours are what lead to fistula for literally millions of women in niger and countless other countries. i just reminisced a bit and looked up my posts and pictures from when i was working with the fistula patients at the hospital in niamey... oh! it's simply unfair that they have to needlessly suffer this debilitating injury when it 100% preventable.

or the girls i'm working with now. who receive no support whatsoever in their journey to being a mother. and thus are so mentally crippled in terms of their capacity to deal with pregnancy, the delivery, and then the aftermath of caring for a baby. it's simply a mental illness the way fistula is physical. and both could be prevented. both stem from poverty, from broken systems, whether they be corruption in a nation's infrastructure or the destruction of an individual home.

oh! sorry when i'm embroiled in this environment i cannot help but remark on the contrasts... the unjustness of it all, no?

but truly, so happy for brittany, and for this new - yet-to-be-named - addition to our extended family! brittany was born to be a mother, her strength is remarkable, and she is one of the most capable and beautiful and caring women i know. the last hours i have been moved to tears of joy for her and her new little family again and again. yay yay yay for safe birth! :)


photo of brittany by melanie, photo/designer extraordinaire!

the center cannot hold.

i found out today that one of the girls who is living at lua nova has snuck out at night to work as a prostitute again.

when i heard this my heart broke. literally just fell to pieces. i was at lua nova's administrative office in sorocaba for a meeting, listening as my colleague mariana recounted the utterly bleak image of lua nova right now.

in addition to this first tragedy, a few other girls have also snuck out and began using crack again.... and the new coordinator i was so excited and even blogged about 2 weeks ago? he left. quit. as did the other coordinator. as did 3 other educators. burdened down by the work, by the enormity of it all.

this happens again and again. this constant rotation of staff. as dealing with these girls day in day out is difficult beyond measure. erasing their previous lives and making them truly start anew. i was already in low spirits this morning anyway: ashoka sent me a 3-month evaluation of my experience here and asked "what has been your greatest impact? list 2-3 accomplishments."

i've made no impact thus far, and that is the truth. it's too little time. even at the end of 9 months i probably will have done very very little. it's not solely up to me, and as much as ashoka and all other development organizations love to broadcast these humanitarian success stories where tragedy commences at point a and ends at point b after a swift, feel-good solution, that is simply not how it works. these girls have layers. and layers beyond those layers. and then some more on top of that. me being here for 10 weeks equates to a pin-drop in that entanglement of experience and lessons previously learned.

lessons like you are worthless and so prostitution is a viable option. crack will give you the happiness you're looking for.

oh heavens these girls! hundreds of millions of teenage girls are currently working in prostitution. in every country in the world. but this is a group of girls that i now know so personally. they are my friends. we play volleyball together and laugh as we try to remember the lyrics to old mariah carey songs. i play tag with their kids. and to think of what they have gone through... and the decisions they are still making, oh! oh oh oh! what more can i say?

it's rare that i post something just absurdly happy, i.e. the first time i cried for joy!

i'm being serious - i've never cried because of extreme happiness until today! have you!? when? oh what a delicious feeling!

at approximately 3:58 pm i was graciously already home and heard the magical shout of "correio!" at our gate. i sprinted outside to be greeted by our postman and a little package from toni. the minute i ripped off the wrapper (an issue of die ziet, love.it.), the tears just flowed. and flowed some more as i slowly opened each gift inside.

oh! let it be known that toni is indeed the best, most thoughtful, and creative birthday gift giver of all time. this is my 4th birthday with him in my life [the third spent on separate continents :( ].... it all began with a post-paul-collier-lecture-hot-cocoa in oxford on november 5th, 2007, and holy heavens he just makes me more and more smitten everyday. i can't tell you how wonderful he is and how much he means to me.... oh sigh, gush gush gush love love love!

.... hope this didn't embarrass you too much, toni? um beijo :)

"human beings are sacrificed to abstractions: a holocaust of individuals is offered up to ‘the people.'"

ok so this quote was made by benjamin constant in 1813 in relation to the french revolution, but i think about that idea all the time... albeit in a less guillotined manner...

like today at work, when i was on the 20 minute walk down the red dirt road between the lua nova shelter and the bus stop, chatting with one of the residents. it was such a good way to end my day. i simply love the conversations i have with the girls here. as i am basically acting as their therapist, my days are almost entirely spent in long talk sessions with each of them. it's wonderful how much i learn, and makes all the frustrations of brazilian bureaucracy and disorganization so worth it.

so today this girl was telling me about her former crack addiction, how she used to neglect her baby daughter for days at a time when she was on a high, and how lua nova completely changed her life. how now she not only loves her daughter now but realizes she can make a new life for the two of them and give her daughter new opportunities she never had...

i ask you, what better way to end poverty and drug abuse than giving drug users and those human beings trapped in poverty a reason to live? and the means to create a new life?

but having worked and studied international development these last years in oh-so-many facets it's so obvious how removed this simple truth is from policy. i blogged about this lots from my gray desk in UNICEF's headquarters earlier this year. ah, i shudder to think of it! i was trying to write new policy papers and toolkits for donors to stop just throwing aid money at government ministers and instead focus on people themselves in the form of civil society organizations. i can't say how unpopular this is, or how if anything it's simply a token consideration never taken seriously.

this girl today was telling me that there are so many others like her, who just simply lack the opportunity to change. no one gives them any credit at all. the norm for girls like her is to take their children away and put them in a penitentiary facility (a lot of them have engaged in heavily illegal activities at the age of 12, 13.. so hard to think of...). but instead lua nova - and raquel, it's founder, who really is so visionary - is saying: we trust you, you are capable, and furthermore you can create a new generation of change with your own family.

so back to constant's quote: the aid community would sacrifice all these capable individuals to the abstract notions of PRSPs and SAPs and other absurd grand schemes that do little more than result in shiny reports and ministerial mercedes. yes working on an individual level is tough beyond words (see: all the posts below), but if the individual does not change, what is some PRSP going to do?

and in other instances of human beings sacrificed to abstractions, on the other side of the world refugees by the thousands are streaming into thailand from burma in the wake of election violence... see this video below... and read more here and here. also read my friend thelms blog - she is currently working on the thai/burma border and is pretty much amazing.

fyi, today was 100% better

today happens to be a brazilian holiday, and it's only 85 (YAY) so i was able to take a nice leisurely stroll through what ended up being an uber-charming neighborhood pertiiiinho daqui...

...and whilst strolling along, inspired by my dear friend brittany's perfect comment on my previous post invoking a phrase we coined and frequently used while working in mozambique (MAWA = MOZAMBIQUE WINS AGAIN), i reminded myself that while engaging in social work/international development/whatever term you want to call it, you are just going to feel ineffective about 99% of the time. literally. you try and try and try some more, but when you're dealing with such huge problems, it's just the way it is.

[if my oven had more than one heat setting i would start baking again to feel like i'm doing something productive: start, middle, end. VOILA.] [reminds me of what mom always used to say about dad: how she would leave the kitchen floor unswept so he could do that every night after work and feel like he did something real. tangible. IT'S SO TRUE.]

and speaking of mom... did i mention she's coming back in march? [!!!!!]

and that i also may potentially have actually finally secured a place for toni to live when he gets here in january? [i tell you it has not been easy!]

yes. all these things help immensely. and so do all your kind words. you are all much too good to me!

beijinhos,
joojie.


p.s. i took this picture a few mornings ago when i left my house only to find a pack of horses on my street. hahahahaha perfect metaphor for the completely haphazard, disorganized, and unexpected nature of my day to day here in ole' sorocaba.

sometimes nothing works, and happy november

i live nearly 30 kms from where i work. for the first weeks i would get to work with lua nova's driver, i.e. a very old VW van that goes back and forth between the 5 different lua nova locations nearly 457 times per day. in other words the driver is incredibly busy, would often forget to pick me up, and if he did remember, i would often be out at the shelter for 13 or so hours, which was super un-productive and beyond draining.

so i got lua nova to give me a bus pass [otherwise they're very very expensive], which means i now go to and from work at my own leisure, and it has truly transformed the job: i'm there more often, my time there is more useful, and overall i get more sleep. so huzzah!

but.

somedays everything just seems to go wrong, no? today was such a day, and considering it's the first day of november and the first day of (yet another) new work schedule/plan for us at lua nova, i feel so discouraged, realizing that things will probably just continue to go on in the haphazard and disorganized fashion of the last two months. (nooooooo!!!)

so! i picked up my first bus here in the city just fine. because of conflicting schedules, i arrive at the village bus station 45 minutes before my second bus leaves to drop me closer to lua nova's shelter. i don't mind the waiting. i read and the bus station, though outside, has a big shaded area with chairs. so huzzah.

but today! aaaah today. the second bus didn't come inside the bus station as usual. it stopped (for about 2 seconds) on the street to the side of the station, and left before me and a few other people in the station could even realize it had arrived. so! i would have to wait one more full hour for the next bus, bringing my total commute time to 3 1/2 hours. one way.

by this time my sweat [even in the shade] had completely soaked my clothes and i knew i wouldn't have enough time to go to the shelter, do my class with the girls, and make it back to the city for an afternoon meeting. so instead i decided to just walk the 15 minutes to the stop where the direct-to-sorocaba bus would come within the next half hour and thus at least make my [somewhat important] meeting.

oh but wait! i missed that bus too! i waved it down per usual and IT KEPT DRIVING. by this point, i was so hot, sweaty, and upset at the complete uselessness of the day that i just marched on up the highway to the next bus stop to wait another 45 minutes for the next bus. (at least i was walking - doing something! - besides waiting)

the good news is i eventually made it back to sorocaba, approximately 4 1/2 hours after i left my house, having not even seen the girls at the shelter or accomplished anything whatsoever besides turn my dress a darker shade of purple and nearly finishing leaves of grass. (ok that admittedly is something.)

oh sigh. i hope this is not an omen for the next month? i had such high hopes! alas! brazil!!! how you thwart me at every turn!!!

ps. so sorry for the debbie downer post again :( i have no one to vent to here - ya'all are such a nice release if you don't mind! :)