Brasil 2004: After First Week
A house in the city decorated with various Roman-Catholic emblems and slogans (paintings on walls below) and a few political campaign banners.
I just got back from the airport. We left off Jeremy Kochendorfer, and two short term missionaries I only know as Annie and Corrie, for their return flights to the USA. I am now the only representative of the Evangelical Church missions here in Brasil, and I am not even a missionary (my visa says I am here on tourism).
On Monday I really didn't do too much. I wandered around with Jeremy just trying to learn my way around the city a little bit. He showed me were the grocery stores are, and what some of them have and what some of them don't have. On Monday night we went out to eat at a churrascaria, which is about of a luxurious a meal as one could ask for. It is an all you can eat barbecue where they come around with different types of meat during the entire evening. This also includes such things as fried bananas and other delicacies.
On Tuesday we went out into the favela ministry. One of the men in the church that knows English really well has been teaching English lessions in two of the poorest areas of the city. Many of the houses in these areas are illegally built, similar to what our homeless people build in the USA. However, they are far more involved than that. Many of them figure out ways to steal or rent electricity connections, and sometimes illegal water connections from various places. There is bus service through the area, and at least some of the people have low paying jobs of some sort. There are several Assembly of God churches scattered through the area as well.
The church outreach that teaches a little English is primarily for the children. Some of the adults live in the favelas because they choose to spend their money on pinga (a type of sugar cane alcohol that can also be sold to the gasoline stations as a motor fuel. It is for those who wish to drink themselves into oblivion for a nominal fee) and other things of the world. The children of the favelas don't have a choice on where they live, however. I noticed that there are one or two adults that show up for the classes, but mostly the ages are 9 to 14, with one or two 16 year olds.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the ministry is located in Isla Bela (beautiful island) and on Wednesdays and Fridays the ministry is located in Vila Esperança (Hope Village). This was sort of a passing of the torch time for Jeremy to introduce me to the children, with the teacher of the class there as well.
I think also Tuesday was the day that Jeremy allowed me to drive the missions car one direction out to the favela. I think it was the afternoon session that day, but I don't remember. Driving here is an interesting advenute, particularly in that area because none of the roads are real roads. They are narrow illegal lanes that are between tiny illegal shacks. There are dogs, children, and people on bicycles all over the place on these narrow roads, plus the occasional bus and dump truck. However, I had no major catastrophies. Also no major problems when we went out to Vila Esperança on Wednesday.
The children in Vila Esperança had all kinds of interesting questions about me. Keep in mind that most of these are 9 to 14 year olds. If the children were children of Americans, they would probably be asking questions about American style, sports, and maybe celebrities. Is that what we discussed? Instead one of the longest discussions was about the fact that America has a death penalty, while most places in Europe, as well as Brazil, does not. It is well known, from American movies and TV shows that come to Brazil, that America has legalized death penalties and legalized abortions, but Brazil has neither. How on earth do you explain to a 9-year old girl, who has been exposed since birth to the Roman Catholic teachings and secular European customs that prevail in Brazil, the purpose of such a thing as the death penalty? Most of the people here think of the death penalty as being a barbarian custom and something that would only practices among eccentric Islamic fundamentalist countries. Certainly, it isn't something that the secular civilized countries practice, and it also isn't something even Brazil practices, and where on earth does the USA fit into that?
I think Jeremy was able to answer their questions reasonably well, but I can tell already that this isn't going to be an easy group of kids to answer their questions.
They also asked various things about the places I had traveled, and the people I had met. They were really surprised when I suggested that there might be places on earth that have worse problems than Brazil with trash in the streets.
Jeremy mostly wanted to show me where these places are located, so that I would be able to find them on my own after he left.
Jeremy had been having to do a lot of running from one bank to another due to some money transfers needed to make some payments. On Tuesday I went with him, and while he was in the bank I got into a conversation with those inside a local Christian book store. The local Christian book stores are not huge but at least they are here. One is primarily Roman Catholic in focus, and the others are more general purpose. I purchased two of the Diante do Trono CD series. These are produced by a church in Belo Horizonte, the third largest city in Brasil. On my previous visit I was unable to purchase CD numbers 5 and 6, and now I have both. I was told by the guy behind the counter that they had just finished making CD number 7, and that there were over 1 million people on hand in the audience for its recording. CD 4 was recorded in front of a live audience of approximately 210,000. Apparently for CD 5 they outgrew the huge estàdio do Mineirão in Belo Horizonte, as they moved the recording to the Esplanada dos Minisèrios in Brasilia. This is something along the lines of "The Mall" in Washington DC along the reflecting pool. Well over 1 million were apparently in attendance for this concert.
Also on Wednesday, we had a really warm day. I think it was at least 80 deg F, but I don't know for certain. I don't know where there is a thermometer anywhere near where I live, though I think there is a bank or something with a temperature sign on it somewhere in Santos - about 20 minutes drive from here. Because it was a warm day, we walked up to the top of a hill near here that has a miniature replica of the Chirst the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. They also have several small cages with animals in them, including toucans and a few other birds of interest, miniature monkeys, and a few other things. There was a wild toucan wandering around the park as well, and I was able to get a photo or two of him. They are amazing birds. They are colorful in general, but some types are really beautiful.
Everyone else was getting their stuff packed, so left to my own divices to scare up some dinner, I went across the street to an evening sandwitch stand and got an x-bacon burger and can of guaranà for R$4.30 (about US $1.50 even at a so-so exchange rate). What exactly is an "x-bacon"? Some decades back, Brazilians started hearing the word "cheese burger" and "cheese bacon burger" and so forth in American television shows. "Cheese" doesn't really sound like the Portuguese name for cheese (queijo, pronounced something like key-gju, but we really don't have anything like the Portuguese j in English). Cheese does sound like the Portuguese name for the letter X. What is an X burger? Who knows? But it sounded stylish because it was in all the American movies and television shows that are distributed here by the American owned entertainment companies here. Therefore, all over Brazil you can now find all types of X burgers for sale. This includes x-bacon, x-calabresa, x-frango, and x-tudo.
Naturally, the sandwitch stand had a television and had the Brasil vs. Paragui game playing. Unfortunately, Paraguay scored a goal in the first half before Brazil did, but Brazil came back with a goal of its own perhaps 10 minutes later. It is obvious from my Portuguese that I am not a Brazilian, and so they knew I was here with the Evangelical Church Mission. After all, no one else has visited Cubatão. These are not people associated with our church here, but this isn't a very large city, and so an awful lot of the city knows of us just because who else would have Americans visit this place? All in all I probably spent about 45 minutes to an hour talking to the people there. I don't want to be eating out all the time, but I think that I could develop some real friendships there without much effort.
Today was mostly a day of preparation for the departure of those who were serving here as missionaries.
Brazilain farewells can take a long time. The short term missionaries have been here for 6 months, and have become an intimate part of many people's lives. The fact that these short term missionaries come every semester is good for the Brazilains, but it also means that there are many long loud tearful goodbyes.
At 4 in the afternoon, they started coming. At first it was only four children from the favela here to say goodbye to Annie, who helped teach their course for a while. By American standards the farewell process would seem a little strange. But this isn't America. While certainly they came to say goodbye to her, they were also just as pleased to talk to eachother and just have her physically nearby.
Of particular interest to the children were the Brazillian atlas of the world as well as the most recent Evangelical Challenge magazine. American children in that age group would probably have been distracted when Jeremy turned on the TV, and while most of them at least glanced at it, they were really interested in what was in that atlas. After all, even in the favelas TV isn't so very rare, but a world atlas, half of which covers in detail the nation of Brazil, isn't so very common. The Evangelical Challenge was popular because "Hey, I know him, and him, and her, and I remember her from last year, and her as well, and I know him, and him, and I've heard about him." I think one of them even found a photo of herself in a group picture of some sort.
Then others came, and then a few more. We probably had close to 15 people stop by during those final hours for them to say goodbye.
By about 5:30 they had all gone, except those that were coming to the Guarulhos airport with us - which was only a really small number of people.
Although I have seen the Guarulhos airport busy, I have never seen it quite this bad. For reasons known only to themselves, the American airline companies that serve Guarulhos airport in São Paulo all have flights that leave at almost the exact same time. The lines for both the ticket counter and the passport exit control were of such size that it would easily take 20 minutes to wait in them. Therefore, I waited in line with Jeremy's things while he and the Brazilians and the girls had dinner together one last time - at the airport McDonald's of course. Jeremy then came after a while and waited through to the actual check-in process, while I ate with a few of the group and the rest went to look for certain things. We then left for a dash down to International Departures Terminal 1, where we bid farewell to Corrie and Annie. We then came back down the building to the line for entering passport control for International Departures Terminal 2, where Jeremy was still waiting in line. We waited in line with him until the last possible moment, when he disappeared behind the wall that leads into the international departures inspection area.
On the way back from the airport one of the Brazilians told me "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for us to say goodbye to them? They were in our lives for six months, and now they go, and maybe we will never see them again." Then she smiled at me and said "but now you are here with us to take their places for a little while."
So, as of now, I have just become the only representative of the Evangelical Church and Evangelical Church Missions here in Brazil.
A few days ago, Jeremy was talking to me about how crazy it all seemed when he first arrived here. He didn't know Portuguese; he didn't know anyone here; he didn't know that much about surviving in the culture here. The Evangelical Church Missions director Duane Erickson came through to visit the Brazil field as it was then, and assumed that since Portuguese and Spanish are similar languages in many ways, that he would be able to get by just fine here after spending so many years in Bolivia. When he asked the local restaurant for a naptin and received instead a vat of ice cream (the Spanish word for naptin is apparently similar to the Portuguese sorvette = ice cream dessert), he realized that he might have gotten a bit more than what he had bargained for. Yet, through the grace of God what looking back now appears to be quite insane has turned into an amazing ministry.
I only pray that God would give me the wisdom and patience to continue in the footsteps of this ministry until the real missionaries return.
- Glenn