What about Calabar

Calabar is one of Salvadors oldest Favelas (Chanty Towns), created by Quilombos – fugitive slaves more than hundred years ago. In the 1960 the neighborhood started to grow significantly due to the industrialization. Today Calabar is home to more than twenty thousand people. Half a year ago Calabar had the reputation of being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Salvador, with high levels of homicide and a sophisticated drug mafia controlling the area. A teacher I talked to the other week told me that before the program Pacto pela Vida she entered and left the school where she work each day with fear of being shot by a stray bullet

They call it “occupation” – the installation of the new Community Police Base in the center of Calabar. The police went in, with loaded arms while the population had been told to stay inside. Not long after the installation of the base the coordination invited the civil society to a public hearing. Residents of Calabar had for long been without proper access to healthcare, public services, adequate education, basic infrastructure, sanitary solutions etc. All information about basic needs and wishes where gathered at the hearing and reported to the secretaries. During the half a year that has passed since the opening of the base many things has changed and many of the demands from the community have been met.

The homicide rate has gone down to zero and almost hundred percent of the houses now has basic sanitation, water and electricity. Security has been restored; people can feel safe on the streets. Still, drug trafficking has not been totally distinguished but operates instead much more incognito than before. Education has been reinforced, but there still exists problems in funding, infrastructure and materials. Many houses are built in slopes in Calabar and for each rain season the fear increases of having a massive slippage in the area, as have been experienced in so many other areas in Brazil during the last couple of years. Residents still awaits reinforcement of the slopes as well as a comprehensive solution to the question of what to do with the garbage. Garbage in large quantities by the road is a common view and a real problem in this city – I had actually planned to write something separately on that later on.

However, this is Calabar, a neighborhood that I am getting to know, little by little. Hopefully I can update on our activities there soon. 

So what do I get to do all day?

It is hard to get the time to update this blog. The internship is in on its second month and I have found some thing’s to do, even tough I sometimes get frustrated by the fact that I’m not fully a member of the workforce in the sense that I can contribute all the way.

However, I am currently involved in two interrelated projects. I’m accompanying and helping out, in any way I can, my two colleagues Zanna and Silvani. The department of Environmental Education works to reinforce and implement Environmental Education in the society, especially towards public administration, private and public organizations and in every day life. Right now, one of the things I am helping out with is to implement EE in a state led community project in the center of Salvador in the neighborhood Calabar. The project is called Pacto pela Vida (Pact For Life) and it extends over several social issues, mostly security, health and basic infrastructure, but also education and culture. With time it will expand to other areas of the city as well. We are, according to the Brazilian Agenda 21, trying to elaborate a continuing project of EE in collaboration with the civil community. In the same time we are preparing for the department, and the state environmental secretary as a whole, to take over the responsibility from the federal ministry, of what is called the Salas Verdes (Green Rooms) that exists in Bahia. The green rooms are pedagogical projects administered by NGOs, municipality or other institutions. They can be described as mini libraries on environmental and sustainability issues, open for the public. The idea is to create places fore discussion and information that can serve as educative instruments and contribute to lifelong learning with sustainable development in focus.

These days I have been helping out by e-mailing invitations and making calls of confirmation to all kinds of institutions. It works out well, but sometimes it is hard… and I diffidently can’t fool anyone. Quite often I get the question – You’re not form here, are you? – just before I’m to end a call with someone. In comparison to Sweden, there are few foreigners/immigrants in this country, so may not be so strange that people react. 


I will have to get used to it!

Rain turns this place around

It does'nt  stop raining! Incredible and annoying. Yes, I like rain but not every day and especially not in the morning when you have to go to work. It is almost impossible to go out in this weather. The rain turns the read dirt road out side to a clay river... In the news it says that it will rain, today, the amount of ten days (!) it is also reported that several houses built in slopes already has been destroyed because of the heavy rain causing slippage.