PNewL PNewS Volume 20 No 2

PNewL PNewS

Volume 20 No. 2                  “All the pnews that phits.”                  Aimed at July, hit Early August 2012

Traveling to Not THAT Brazil

     I so want to tell wonderful thought-provoking emotional stories about my recent trip to Brazil. It was a wonderful thought-provoking trip, filled with visits and experiences that hover in my brain throughout my day. When I start talking about it to friends, I feel tongue-tied and can’t find the perfect sound bite that will capture the experience. Explanations and background go on too long and faces start to glaze over. A few suggested that times are tough all over the world—a comment I don’t find helpful, productive or much else but which may be representative of people’s ability to focus on a small state in Brazil that they haven’t been to and the small number of people who are living there whose lives are tough who they will never meet. We all have our causes and interests. I would like to tell you a little about mine.

     We went to Pernambuco state in NE Brazil—kinda where the country pokes out into the Atlantic. It’s a jagged horizontal rectangular shaped area about the size of Massachusetts that is dwarfed by the rest of the country. I felt like we had seen a fair amount of countryside until I looked at Pernambuco in relation to the country. A little peanut of a place. It is pretty rural, except for the parts that aren’t—Recife has over 4 million people. Who knew? At one point, we were staying in an inn along a dusty road in what felt like something out of the Old West or maybe the Australian Outback. I said out loud, as there was no one around to hear: Where the hell are we?

     I was there with Grassroots International which is a non-profit that “works around the world to help small farmers and other small producers, indigenous peoples and women win resource rights: the human rights to land, water and food.” [Words in quotes in this come from the GI website…why reinvent the wheel?] They obviously do it well as we were treated at every stop as honored guests. And they attract good supporters—it was a congenial group.

     We visited many members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in various locations and living in various states of establishment of their communities. “Under the Brazilian Constitution, landless families have the right to occupy arable land that is not being used to grow food to feed themselves.” The transition from unused arable land to occupied is often bumpy with lots of time in courts and often violence. I never felt in danger but we heard many stories of violent actions against folks who are simply trying to grow food to feed their families. It was a profound experience. I have often, well, joked that when the revolution comes, I am hosed. These folks won’t be. I was inspired by their resilience—their stick-to-it-ness, and their humor and laughter in the face of challenging life threatening daily experiences that last for years. They sang to us, danced for us, fed us well, gifted us.

     At one stop—I only mention it because it is a feeling I will never forget and which still stirs deep emotions when I think about it—we were visiting an encampment that had recently moved inside the boundaries of a landholder because they were being violently harassed by the owner of the land they were occupying. The landowner had hired guns who stay in a blind across the field, shooting sometimes into the air, sometimes at people. The MST folks had lost most of what they had owned and were living in tents covered in black plastic. There were gobs of children in the community. These folks were under siege but were committed to staying. As we came off our comfy air-conditioned van, the community members cheered for us, for showing up, for our support. I will never forget the feeling. I can’t describe it, but it was humbling and I know I want to do more than just show up.

     We also visited members of the People Affected by Dams (MAB) and communities of indigenous folks who are living along one of the most beautiful rivers I have ever seen, the Sao Francisco, and are…in the way of “progress.” There are literally hundreds of plans to dam and move water from this and other rivers in Brazil to keep up with its growth and prosperity. Sigh. We met one woman who was 101 who was having a chapel built near her home that she had wanted her whole life. Her goal was to live to see it finished. If the powers that be have their way, it will soon be under water. Ironically in this same area, the Tourist Bureau is featuring photographs of this gorgeous spot and the lovely river as part of their publicity—never mentioning that it could all be gone, along with the land that has belonged to these people for generations. Call me naïve but I don’t get it.

     I was sitting at the window of the restaurant atop the JB Hotel, looking out over Petrolina with the Sao Francisco river in the middle ground. I kept tearing up. The river means so much to so many, and big guns have their sites on changing its course and the course of a lot of people who've lived along its banks for generations. Epic. And then, how much cash should I get at the airport? Will I have time for a shower now or after the site visit? Wonder how the dog is doing...Popcorn brain. It often confuses me that we can think and feel almost conflicting things at the same time. I just spent ten days meeting with folks fighting for their homes, land, history. And we laughed and danced and ate really well and traveled with good people.

     So now I am home and all the things that are here to do stand before me and I think about those people in a small state in northeastern Brazil who were so grateful and so gracious for and during our visit. What to do? I’m pondering on that.

Note: I have posted photos on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3715570682588.2151231.1075330452&type=3) that have captions and on Flickr where they don’t. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23615534@N06/) I don’t know if these will work, but we do what we can. Let me know if I can be of assistance.

Things I am Learning

& Miscellaneous Observations

• I get a kick out of the Dewey Decimal system. Al Franken and Ann Coulter next to each other. Love, relationship books segueing into marriage, and parenting, and then divorce, civil or contentious, gay or straight.

• As I have mentioned before, I live in a rural kinda setting and there are lots of people who know how to do things I don’t. Now, they are trying to citify us a bit by paving the road (well, not our road—the one up a ways--but I fear it’s in the works). When I was walking the large hound, I saw a tree leaning precipitously over the road. I thought, Well at least those handy folks in the ‘hood are around to deal with this so I don’t have to, and Bear and I ran under it. On our way home (30 minutes later?), the tree had already been cut down and shoved into the woods—turned out the folks who are paving the road couldn’t get their gigantic machinery under the tree so they used some of that machinery to remove the tree—remarkably quickly.

• Why don’t people call you when they say they are going to, and in this case, I am talking about people I am paying? “I’ll call you when they are ready.” “We can make an appointment when I call you to check on your tooth.” Nothing from either. And that’s just this week.

• The things people choose to wear to the airport. Oh my!
• Who from the airlines thinks these menus up? Breakfast = pound cake, cream cheese, crackers, orange gel with some unidentifiable fruit matter. In what country is this breakfast? 

• On the less serious side of our trip to Brazil (and there was plenty of less serious, believe me), we became good friends with the adult beverage of Brazil, the caipirinha. Basically muddled lime, cachaca (sugar cane rum), sugar and ice. I don't miss it, but it sure hit the spot after a day on the road. 

• I took a grrrreat quilting-esque class this week that kinda turned a light back on in my mood. It’s funny what can do that. Let’s see how long I can keep it burning.

• I have been spending way too much time doing health related things. They are all unrelated—multiple eye dr., treatment for pinched nerve (and lousy posture while we are at it), and dental work for the dentally abused as a child. I had a dentist who fought the “big bad brownies” in a child’s mouth by attacking them with a honking big drill and no novocaine. Left the tooth with little to keep it in fine fettle and the patient with a terror related to dental appointments. This year, my dear friend and dentist of nigh on 30 years, Roni Dawn, released me (she’s in CA, BTW) to find a new dentist closer to home. It’s been an unpleasant adjustment. Today, when they seated a new crown (love the lingo), the new dentist said, are you ok? I said, yes, I just want this to be over. I can be such a child sometimes. I said, it’s nothing personal, I just want to go home. I realized as I left, all of this stuff is almost over…for now. I am at my worst just before it ends.

• Someone dumped a McDonald’s bag along the road last week. I tried to pick it up but it was falling apart so I thought I would wait until I had a large bag to put it in—I do a lot of trash collecting on my road. I did note that there were some French fries left and I thought, oh man this is going to be a mess. One week later, in the land of bears, raccoons, possums, wandering dogs, not one French fry has been touched in that bag. Says something, don’t it?

The Mystery of the Body in the Bag

     Bear found a large bagged object one morning while walking. That night, it started to smell. Sculley said he wasn’t going to touch it. David said it could be a body because if you chop a body up small enough, there wouldn’t be any elbows poking out. The next morning, it really smelled. I called Jeff and we decided I should call the Volunteer Fire Dept. They said they didn’t do stuff like that. (How is a body in a bag different from a cat in a tree?) They said to call the sheriff. I called Patrol, they said to call Communications. There was a fellow here in under an hour which I thought for a non-emergency event proved that despite a crime wave in Asheville, things were still pretty slow. The poor deputy went down to the bag and poked it a few times—each time, he came up for air, with a sour look on his face and I assume a sourness in his stomach. Finally, he came up and said he needed back-up, someone who was more experienced with this sort of thing. He considered it suspicious. Sculley said we didn’t want to disturb the crime scene. Many other TV crime show lines were bandied about. I said I didn’t think it was human, and the deputy asked why not and I said because I didn’t want it to be. He said it was suspicious though.

     Later he came by my house and reported that it was a deer. Turned out the suspicious part was long hair that was seen through a rip in the bag. It was the deer’s tail. He said he and his partner pondered what to do about it and they figured they couldn’t move it and really it is DOT’s problem as it is a state maintained road. He said I could try to get them to do something but they probably wouldn’t.

    The Final Chapter: This morning, we walked by and the body was gone! The bag was in the creek (and the men in blue had thrown their crime scene gloves into the bushes…not a politically correct move in my book. I, of course, picked it all up, since that appears to be my job.) Per Loveeta’s suggestion, Bear rolled in what was left. The End.

    Moral of the story: There is a lot going on out there that we don’t know anything about.