Initiative and will, as simple as that....

The last months have been hectic! With police strike and carnival substituting each other -visits from far away, robbery and much more on the personal frontier happening - February went so quick I barely noticed it. At least, due to the leap year, I’ll get an extra day tomorrow before March comes tumbling in.

I have done three interviews with people involved in the politics, implementation and management of Environmental Education in this city. And I have visited one of my cases; a school situated in the outskirts of the city, up on a hug hill with a fantastic view out over the Bahia de todos os Santos which is the name of the bay that characterizes the capital of Bahia.

The school will be a perfect example of an institution that started implementing EA on a wing, a project initiated by some enthusiastic teachers trying to make a difference. They have done what they had the possibility to do, nothing more and nothing less and they succeeded to turn a school which was near closedown in 2007 to turn around and gain support from the surrounding community and parents again.

The difficulties and challenges that this school deals with every day are breath taking.  The school may be situated on a nice spot and the sounding houses may be fancy but 98 % of the students comes from neighborhoods further away, living in poverty, in large families dependent upon governmental cash transfer program such as Bolsa Familia, with parents with no- or only a little education. It is a rough reality, which takes hold of them early, causing a high mortality rate, especially among young boys. Girls goes through sufferings and difficulties related to physical and fiscal, some times sexual abuse at home and is often forced to work, basically as slaves, with household shores from a young age. It is not hard to imagine how difficult it must be to administer a schools where almost every child have been physically stressed by it sounding since birth.

The initiative to implement Environmental Education transversally in the schools every day functioning have made the school a safe house. A beautiful school garden where the children, while learning math, got to mark out circles and triangles in order to create the flowerbeds an where the crops are used in the school lunches served. The school works a lot with communication in order for the children to reproduce what has been learnt, both for their own learning as well as for the solidarity in sharing knowledge and experiences with others. The school has been host for large encounters with other schools wanting to learn how to integrate EA in teaching and held in 2011 a large conference where many schools from the interior of Bahia participated with the purpose to strengthen the basis of education for sustainability and quality of life.

I’m looking forward to initiate my interviews with teachers and students and learn their experiences upon interaction, collaboration and relations with the community outside the schools walls!

Not even in my childhood anyone has ever pointed a gun at me

When I was a kid I went several years to a horse stable once a week to attend a horse riding class. I enjoyed riding, I loved the horses and I considered myself competent at what I was doing in the stalls. There was just one problem - I never fell of. It was commonly known among the girls in the stalls that not until you had fallen of a horse more than 100 times you knew well how to ride. I figured never knew well how to ride.

Just until yesterday I was happily aware of that I still had not experienced every aspect of the Brazilian society. The situation is somewhat similar to the horse riding - if you have ever read a Brazilian guidebook you know what I mean. According to most narratives of the Brazilian reality it is almost impossible to stay in Brazil without being robbed. Since I have made six longer trips to Brazil, lived in more or less problematic areas, traveled to the north and to the south, and still never felt threatened or insecure I was staring to believe that the guidebooks where wrong - until yesterday - when I “fell of the horse” for the first time.

I had made all the classical mistakes. Guiding my parents, my brother and my sister (who has been visiting during Carnival) around Salvador for some days, I had grown unwary and I took steps away from my normally rigorous safety precisions. We had been riding bicycles in the Pituacu Park and eaten a good lunch before we decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. It was the last day of my family’s round trip and we were just going down to the beach we always goo to. My husband had gone home to fetch his surfboard. The sun stood high on the blue sky and the area was well transited and suddenly I had a gun under my nose.

Two boys in their late teens pointed nervously with the old revolver at my family and me and demanded our bags and belongings. The guidebook lines I read before my first trip to Brazil in 2006 stood clear in front of me in this situation. “If threatened with a gun – don’t doo anything hasty. Hand over whatever the robbers would want – the risk of getting shot in this situation is grate since many of these guys rob for drugs and can’t think strait.” I didn’t have time to register the faces of the two; my gaze was on the gun. I told my family that they should hand over whatever they wanted, and in a blink the two was on their bikes, pedaling away with our things.

Oh what a rage! So stupid, so unnecessary, so foolish of me to take that way, so many things that I could have done or said differently! We did not just loos material things but photos and videos that only we can cherish, not to speak of the perfect feeling of being safe. No one has ever before pointed a gun at me, not even a fake one when I was a child!

I always knew that it was all bullshit that I needed to fall of the horse in order to ride well. Instead I was always sure to ride safely and to keep my balance in order not to get hurt. Only a stupid mistake could have made me fall off a horse.

This time although I made a stupid mistake and we had to experience something you shouldn’t have to experience coming to Brazil. I need to apologize deeply for putting my family in this situation!

Carnival – the biggest party of them all

Carnival in Salvador Bahia has been called the biggest street party in the whole world. The arrangers count in that about 3 000 000 people will join the party during the 6 day period that the carnival lasts. The city turns upside down; every one goes on holiday, all the biggest shopping malls closes and the traffic situation becomes if possible even worse than normal.

Carnival in Salvador is nothing like Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. More than being an orgy in dance, music and costume performance, carnival in Salvador is an orgy in partying. Every one can attend in one way or another. The popular music is constant and loud, and the mountains of beer stock that lines the parade roads grows smaller for each day as the piles of garbage and waste grows bigger.

People from Salvador love Carnival. Every one has memories from their teenage years when they danced in the ocean of people to their favorite music, kissed 10 different guys in one night, got brushed of by the merciless police or punched in the face by someone’s jealous boyfriend.

Carnival means summer in Brazil and as in Sweden during Midsummer or when the firs warmth comes to town - every one gets something dreamy in their yes during Carnival. It means free time, friends, family and relaxation above all.

Personally I have a hard time coping with all the people, noise and garbage. In order to enjoy myself I really have work my self up and be in a good healthy state so that I don’t get too tired – because if I stop to take a rest I fall down.

These days, I think it is around the 25 of Feruary there will be a Carnival in Stockholm at Mynchenbryggeriet. The party is more in Rio-style but absolutely worth a visit If you want to get some Brazilian vibes!

Police strike and corruption in Salvador

It has been a strange week – the strangest I have ever experienced in Salvador. It is not uncommon that different workers go out on strike here in Brazil, some times it is the teachers, other times it is the public servants, the nurses or the factory workers. This year I have also learnt that the police force several years in a row have gone out on strike just some weeks before Carnival. This year was no exception.

It is against the Brazilian law for Polices to go on strike and an order to arrest about 10 of the strike leaders was soon issued. About 2000 men in the Bahian Police force joined the strike, and they didn’t just leave the streets disserted, smaller groups of policemen in civil clothing also agitated the population and stopped busses on the street and demanded people to walk. In the journals there was pictures of men dancing in the streets, pointing guns in the air.

At the same time many areas in the city suffered from armed robberies and plundering of stores and houses. As a result – two days on to the strike the streets lay disserted and people stopped going to work with fear to be assaulted on their way there. I never experienced such a strange feeling on the streets of Salvador where the roads are normally crowded and noisy. The Governor of Bahia did not see any other way out than to call for the help of President Dilma who sent the national military guard to protect the population of Bahia and to arrest the strike leaders.

The strike leaders occupied a state building at CAB – The Administrative Center of Bahia (where I have been doing my Internship during the last few months and were I still doo some work) and the military surrounded the area. Soon the whole administrative center was cut off for ordinary people and no one could go to work. I got a feeling of a city on the verge of war. Men clad in green and armed up to their teeth suddenly patrolled the streets.

In Boca do Rio we where horrified to hear that five homeless people had been killed, or more precisely executed, by policemen during one of the first nights of the strike. We got even more horrified when we realized that one of the people killed was an old friend of my boyfriend – Alan do Rap, a person widely known in the area as a true rap talent – once he sang with Blondie in front of 30 000 cheering spectators.

Now the policemen has left the occupied building and most of the strike leader have been captured. Today we read in the newspapers that five policemen that for several years executed several people in different areas of Salvador in exchange for money have been identified and arrested – acused of the murders here in Boca do Rio during the first days of the strike.

Hopefully at least some parts of the corrupt and lawless sections of the Bahian police force are already behind bars by now.

For the new year to come...

Im working on a draft of the first 4 chapters of my Thesis. This video stirs in me, both satisfaction of being in Bahia and frustration of having to spend so much time in front of the computer...

Happy New Year!

The Brazilian forest code

It is not over yet, the brazilian forest laws is still to pass or not to pass. It is said to be the most rigorous forest law in the world that is now changing, but how much and towards what end is the question still.

The final vote in the Chamber of Deputies has been postponed until March 2012, closer to the World Summit in Rio in June and more time for spreading the word...

So for those new to the problem:

Brazilian Senate and Chamber of Deputies (looks like a majority still) wants to drive through a revised forest law that would:

• Provide amnesty for areas illegally deforested before July 2008, including riversides and springs, and reduce the obligation to reforest.
• Alter the definition of a hilltop, making many areas more vulnerable.
• Make it possible to obtain amnesty and exemption from reforestation simply through a declaration that the deforestation took place before 2008, with no requirement for objective proofs like satellite monitoring.
• Make it possible, in cases where some form of restoration is still required, to use non-native species for 50% of the area, which could fuel the planting of oil palm or eucalyptus monocultures and negatively impact biodiversity.
• Allow illegal deforestation to be compensated for through restoration in places other than where the deforestation took place, condemning whole regions to become 'monoculture deserts' especially in the Brazilian south and south-east.
• Allow highly polluting activities like shrimp farming in coastal areas that are fundamental to mangrove swamp ecology. 

Although President Dilma promised in here election campaign that she would not allow any new waves of deforestation in the Amazon the process of making changes to the forest law has been accelerating during the last year and the changes passed through the senate just some weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the vote in the Chamber of Deputies was postponed not because of the fact that those in have need to gain ground, on the contrary. Some green amendments were added to the new code but not even the slightest changes in favor of nature was accepted by the powerful interests with their roots in cattle and agriculture that make up a majority of the members of the Chamber.

Without Dilma keeping her promise, using her Veto, and without massive campaigning against the changes in the new Forest Code until March, we will probably soon be seeing new and encreased waves of deforestation in the Amazon...

Two workshops completed and some victories to be celebrated

Finally we got to do the first workshop with the community leaders and organizations present in Calabar. As usual when organizing an event it is the preparations that take you out, and we really worked hard in order to mobilize participants, have the right equipment and methodology. We arrived early, ate lunch, rigged our equipment and organized the placement of chairs… Fifteen minutes to start, we could only wait for the participants to arrive. State officials arrived, technicians from the communication boards came ready to take pictures and slowly the chairs became occupied – although not by the public we had hoped for. The community of Calabar, all the people we had invited, talked to both personally and on the phone did not show up in time. When half an hour had already passed, only three representatives from the community had arrived and we (maybe only me) started to get a bit anxious!

However, when the workshop finally started a man called Paulo that we had invited cited two poems, perfectly setting the mood for the tasks waiting. Our Director, Luiz Ferraro, held an initial speech and then we opened up for presentations. In the end about seven or eight different institutions/organizations where represented (The basket ball teem, the women association, the community library, the food cooperative, a theater organization etc).

Our objective for the day where to plant in the people participating a seed of inspiration towards different ways to bring the community together in educative, cultural and recreational activities and how this can be done in a collective and participatory manner. We brought to them some examples from other communities in Salvador where written material had been use to collect and share experiences as well as a video that was made to tell the history and heritage of the inhabitants in Bairro da Paz (The Peace Neighborhood). We asked them to reflect over the challenges and potentials inherited in the way the neighborhood works and what differences and similarities they felt existed between Calabar and Bairro da Paz. This way a discussion concerning issues such as stigmatization, history and culture as well as ideas on what kind of activities would suit the neighborhood of Calabar, the re-opening of a community newspaper etc. started.

Another one of our goals for the day was to initiate a mapping of local socioeconomic experiences, which is to be continued in the following meetings. We invited all participants to give us the answers to the following questions and put them up on the wall together as they gave us a more detailed presentation. This exercise was a important for us, the mapping process as for the organizations that participated because it generated that a lot of interesting connections where made between the participants when they realized how much they had in common and how they could collaborate in order to gain capacity in their community activities.

Finally, we invited the participants to continue the work by forming a group with the aim of promoting Environmental Education and social activities in in order to evolve the potentials existent in the community. They gave themselves the name Vozes do Calabar, (The Voices of Calabar) and when leaving the workshop we had already set a new date for the next meeting.

We left with the feeling of having helped to form a small, but strong group of community members with the potential of creating a continuing work with environmental education in the neighborhood. It will be very interesting to continue working with them!