Brazil: Week 6 (7/25/05)

My Dear Friends of St. John’s & St. Peter’s and Bishop Michael,

            I only have two weeks left in my trip.  Where has my summer vacation gone?  It seems like only yesterday that Sergio was greeting me at the airport.  My Portuguese continues to improve and I now understand more and more of the conversations that are happening around me.  I’m not getting all of the details of these conversations, but I’m getting the general ideas.  It is very exciting.

            This was a very different week altogether.  Having Loretta here with me has been a real treat and blessing.  It has been a real push for me to attempt to translate for her.  I’ve been very surprised at just how much Portuguese I have learned during my time here.  It seems like I’m always struggling to learn, and I haven’t done a very good job of looking at just how much I have learned.

            Monday began with my usual morning Portuguese class with Camila.  Life is different with Loretta here.  The bathroom is small and we have to plan our time carefully.  Our solution is fairly simple though; she gets to sleep in since she has decided not to take the Portuguese class with me. 

            The rest of Monday was spent in fairly typical fashion for me.  I spent most of the morning in Portuguese class with Camila and then we had lunch with William and his family.  Lunch was a fun time.  After lunch, we were all talking and we discussed the idea of a local parishioner making towels and then selling them at St. John’s as a way of raising money for Santo Andre.  The towels are beautiful hand-painted works of art.  A couple who are members of Santo Andre make them; he does the painting and she does the crochet work.  After we saw some of the completed towels, we placed an order for 30 to be delivered before Loretta leaves for the United States.

            At the same time, we also discovered that Ana, one of the matriarchs of the parish, makes things for the altar.  She makes purificators, corporals and palls that are simply beautiful.  She gave a set of her work to St. John’s and asked that Loretta take them with her.  They are hard to describe, but hopefully they will be on display for a few weeks before they get used for the first time.

            I continue to be amazed by the quantity and quality of gifts and talents that can be found in this little parish.  At times it seems like this Japanese congregation doesn’t want to brag and at other times the surprises keep bursting forth.  It is truly a talented and creative congregation and we are blessed to be in relationship with them.

            Tuesday was a typical day, but I’d like to use this opportunity to describe a personal cultural matter.  I told Loretta that I would be describing this several-day-long event, so please feel free to laugh over this one…we certainly have and will continue to do so for a while.

            I think that I have described the fact that most homes here don’t have hot and cold running water.  They have running water, but not heaters and hot water tanks like what we have in the United States.  The water here comes from a local mineral water spring, but it arrives hot.  What usually happens is that the water is stored in a tank outside the house and it is allowed to cool to the local temperature (I have heard that during the summer, this isn’t very cool).  This basically means that people here have one temperature of water and that the water is heated on the stove or by a water heater that is wired to the shower.  I haven’t seen too many ground wires on these units, but that is a different matter.

            In the bathroom in our room in the pousada, there is a small hose that one is supposed to use in place of toilet paper.  You are supposed to wash yourself and then use the toilet paper to dry yourself off.  The used paper is supposed to go into a trashcan under the sink.  I didn’t know this.  And if I didn’t know it, I certainly couldn’t explain it to Loretta.  But, I’ve jumped ahead and given you the punch line.

            Because the water is coming from an outdoor tank, it lacks a lot of pressure.  This means that the people here don’t put toilet paper in the toilet.  I think that you are able to figure out where this story is going.  We ended up with a clogged toilet and almost flooded the bathroom.  The trouble was that we kept doing this and the problem went on for a few days because we didn’t have enough Portuguese to understand what the people at the pousada were telling us.  We understood that we were supposed to put the toilet paper in the can, but we didn’t understand that we were supposed to wash off with the hose.  I couldn’t understand why you would put used paper into a trashcan, and we refused to do it.  In a place where a typical winter day feels like late spring, putting used toilet paper anyplace but down the toilet seemed like a very bad idea.

            On Tuesday night we were treated to dinner at a local restaurant along the river.  While I was out on a dock seeing the city from a small distance at night, William and Loretta had a conversation that explained the local bathroom customs.  Part of me would really have enjoyed being there during that conversation, but in the long run it was probably best that I was out on the dock.

            Being used to hot water, we are not ready to wash ourselves in the typical manner with cool water, but we did cut way back on our use of toilet paper.  William also agreed to lend us his plunger until I leave in August.  Hopefully this problem has been solved, and is ‘behind’ us now.

            On Wednesday Loretta and I took at trip to Aracatuba.  This is a city that is about two hours away.  Our excuse for going was a doctor’s appointment for Ana. (All of her tests came back negative and all is well.)  During the morning of this trip Loretta and I visited the local Anglican parish and then we went to Casa Dia – a drug treatment/rehabilitation center that is run by the church here.  The facility is located at an old pork farm.  The farmhouse has been converted into the main building complete with a kitchen and a dorm room that all of the boys/young men sleep in.

            Casa Dia is currently in the process of constructing a new building about 100 yards away from the farmhouse.  It will be beautiful when it is finished and they are hoping to have the construction finished by the end of the year.  This new construction will allow the facility to house and serve about 18 young men instead of 12.  It doesn’t seem like too many more beds, but the program rarely has an empty space and when they do, it isn’t vacant for long.

            It was wonderful to hear about how the funds for this new construction were obtained.  The initial funds were gathered from the Episcopal Church from our annual United Thank Offering collection (UTO) that happens every fall.  If you haven’t been contributing to this annual additional offering, I’d like to encourage you to consider doing so this year.  The work that is done with this money will go a long way and improve the lives of not only the young men at the facility, but the lives of their families as well.

            This is a hard ministry that is very needed.  In the face of such poverty as I have seen, it would seem to me that it would be very easy to turn to alcohol and drugs as a way of escaping from the difficulties of life.  The Casa Dia program focuses not only on drug rehabilitation, but also on learning work skills.  As part of this philosophy, the young men there are learning to make baskets from newspapers and they are also learning to make dolls from yarn.  Right now they are perfecting the techniques, but soon they hope to be able to sell these products as a way of earning money for the program.

            The young men are also learning to make concrete tiles for the new building.  They have poured a great many of these tiles and they think that they have enough for the building.  A local priest had a wonderful idea of paving the driveway with these tiles.  Once the construction of the new building is done, the young men will once again begin pouring concrete and making more tiles for the driveway.  The concrete pouring skills may or may not come in handy later in their lives, but the skills of learning how to look at a problem and then working to solve it will be very valuable for these young men.

            They are making plans for the other buildings of the farm, but one plan that has some real hope is to convert the building that has the old stalls into a retreat center.  It would be monastic living and I think that there is a real need for this.  Everyone there was excited about this idea, and after they finish this round of construction they hope to begin raising the money needed for this project.  It sounds like the hope is that they retreat center will be a steady source of income for the Casa Dia program.

            We returned later in the afternoon and basically took the rest of the afternoon off.  Our pattern has been to visit a local paderia and get a small snack.  Today was no exception.  We had a lot to talk about after seeing Casa Dia.  I am very humbled and proud to be a member of a worldwide church that takes mission work so seriously.  The parish in Aracatuba does not have enough money to purchase liturgical vestments; it has only one set (a white and gold one); yet it still finds a way to serve those in need.  After spending a semester studying the Windsor Report and its implications, it was a refreshing moment to come across people who didn’t know what that document was and really didn’t care.  They knew that there were people in need around them and that their faith called them to do something about that suffering.

            Wednesday night was spent working with the choir.  I’m not going to talk too much about this yet, because you will be reading more about it later in this letter.  Let me just say that it was really interesting teaching English to people who don’t speak the language.  I got a taste of what others are hearing from me.  It was very humbling being around people who are trying to speak your language correctly.  It was a good rehearsal and we all had a great time working together.

            Thursday was Loretta’s big meeting with the ‘Saturday’ School teachers.  I had had a meeting with some of these teachers before Loretta arrived and we had discussed what they are currently doing and what they would like to do.  As we brainstormed and discussed things during that meeting, it was very clear that the teachers here are talented and dedicated.  It was also very clear that they were looking for something different from what they were currently doing.

            With this in mind, I asked Loretta to bring materials from Catechesis of the Good Shepherd with her.  Unfortunately, these materials weren’t the only things that she had been asked to bring and in the last minute flurry of packing, they were left behind.  The good news is that she did pack some of her class notes/outlines and she was able to give a wonderful presentation and explain the basics of this program to the teachers.

You could easily feel the excitement in the room as the teachers heard about how this program has impacted the younger children at St. John’s.  The teachers are now eagerly awaiting Catechesis Materials so that they can begin some sort of a program in September/October.

            One of the big challenges that they will face is the difference of seasons.  For us at St. John’s our Sunday School program ends around Memorial Day weekend and doesn’t start up again until sometime in September.  So any materials that we provide will be lacking about 3 months worth of lessons.  It won’t be a problem this summer, but if they go with this program, they will be forced to create their own materials for a time when we aren’t in session, in other words: they can’t translate our work and use it themselves.

            Another large challenge that they will be facing is that they have never been in a class that follows the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd model.  It is one thing to hear something explained and it might sound very exciting, but it is very different thing to see the program in action.  I can talk about how wonderful a choir sounded, but unless you can hear the choir yourself, you haven’t really experienced it and can’t really understand it.

            The meeting was scheduled to last about an hour, but it went on for over an hour and a half.  Afterwards there was more conversation in the churchyard.  Loretta and I had made reservations at the local paderia for everyone to go for pizzas.  We had scheduled the reservations for 9pm (Brazilian time – which is very fluid).  By 9:40 we were really getting worried that they might not hold our reservations, so we left the people in the churchyard and headed off to hold the table.  People came shortly after we left and more people came than we expected.

            Thursday night is pizza night at the paderia.  They prepare a variety of pizzas and then they bring them out one at a time.  This way you can try an assortment of pizzas.  It is an all-you-can-eat event that goes on for about 2-3 hours.  It was a lot of fun being social with the people of the parish.  No one had to cook or clean up; we just had the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company.

I have to admit another cultural difference:  they don’t put tomato sauce on their pizzas.  The pizzas are wonderful, but when eating one it just seems like something is missing.  When I get back to NYC, I’m going to treat myself to a large, sloppy, Italian pizza.  Loretta and I didn’t get back to the pousada until almost midnight.

            Friday was a sick day for Loretta.  She developed a case of traveler’s diarrhea and I spent most of the day sitting with her.  This was actually good news for me; I didn’t fall asleep right away and so I only got about 5 hours of sleep.  Since she wasn’t feeling well, I decided to skip my morning Portuguese class.  That evening the parish had its usual Friday night Eucharist.  I attended and helped with the service, but Loretta stayed in the pousada and slept.  Luckily her diarrhea was basically over in one day.

Loretta’s sickness brought another reality to light for me.  I am amazed by the drugs that we in the United States have at our disposal.  I’m also amazed by the quantity of drugs that we have.  We had brought plenty of medications with us and didn’t need any, but I visited the drug store and looked around for some simple drugs such as aspirin just to see what things are like.  In Brazil, aspirin is sold in much smaller packages; usually it comes in a blister pack of about 6 pills.  I also didn’t see different brands of the same product.  In the drug store that I visited, there was one kind of aspirin and it came in a small blister pack.

As I stood there, I remembered visiting a CVS in Lancaster one day when I had a headache.  I had the luxury of comparing prices between different brands of the same product.  (Not a task that I wanted to do at that moment, but it was still a luxury that I didn’t know I had at the time.)  I can think of several brands of aspirin as I’m sitting here and that doesn’t include the generic store brands.  I also had the option of purchasing a different product entirely.  When I have a headache in the United States, I can purchase several different kinds of drugs like aspirin, Tylenol, Ibuprofen or other kinds of medicines.  If I have a cold, the number of treatments available seems almost limitless.  I can also purchase my medicines in very large quantities.  In fact, it is very difficult to purchase medicines in smaller quantities.  This is not the case here.  You get one kind of aspirin.  Period.  You get a small number of these pills.  The wealth of our country is amazing and it is truly remarkable in how many little ways this shows up in our lives and not in the lives of the people here.

I don’t know what to make of this and how to place it in the context of my life of faith.  I know that it is good to have the choices that we have in the United States, and I really would hate to not have that privilege.  At the same time, I want to see the people here have the same options and choices that I take for granted.  How do I or we or anyone make this happen in the face of the kinds of poverty that I have been describing over the past several weeks?  Is it possible?

            Saturday was the exciting day of the week.  Because of our activities, I cancelled my morning class with Camila.  We met Sergio and Rosana at 9am in order to prepare for our gathering with the ‘Saturday’ School class.  The teachers had agreed to forgo their usual catechetical instruction so that Loretta could teach the children how to make American chocolate chip cookies.

            Prior to the children’s arrival, William and I said Morning Prayer in English.  He recently purchased a copy of the Book of Common Prayer from the United States and he asked Loretta to bring it with her.

            After with finished Morning Prayer, I moved over to help Loretta in the kitchen.  She and Rosana had already gathered their materials and had organized things in the kitchen.  They were just waiting for the children to arrive.

            At this time, Sergio led the children from one of the classrooms, much like the Pied Piper.  They came into the parish hall chanting ‘Queremos cookie’ (this loosely translates as “We want cookie.”  It was very cute and so I stopped them all in order to get a picture.  Once I had the picture the entire group again picked up the chanting and went into the kitchen.

            It was so much fun watching the children working in the kitchen.  They all gathered around a table and stood patiently waiting for their turns to help mix the ingredients and offer their help.  They were very good to each other and clearly enjoyed the opportunity to help make their own snack.  The group made a double batch of cookies that turned out very well.

            Something to know is that cooking in Brazil isn’t the exact ‘science’ that we have in the United States.  Measurements are much less exact and they don’t have special measuring spoons and cups.  Instead, they use the usual household spoons and cups.  The result was that it was a fair amount of guess-work to figure out how to translate the recipe into Portuguese.

            We had some difficulties understanding the difference between American ingredients and Brazilian ingredients.  Brown sugar, as we know it in the United States is not the same brown sugar that is used in Brazil.  I’m not an expert but it seems to have more molasses in it.  There is also a difference in their chocolate, their chocolate seems waxier to me.  I don’t know exactly how to explain the difference but chocolate in the United States is creamier and it melts at a lower temperature.  I guess that without air-conditioning and summer temperatures in the 100s on a regular basis, you can’t have chocolate that melts easily.

            After the mix was completed, it was time for the baking.  I had to leave the group for a little while in order to find a comparison chart between the two different temperature scales…another unexpected difference between the two cultures (and a very important difference).  After a few minutes on the Internet, I had a conversion chart in hand and the ladies fired up the oven.

            At that time, it became very difficult to have the children in the kitchen.  Between the hot oven and the hot items such as cookie sheets, the kitchen became a very dangerous place for the children to be.  With this in mind, Rosana and I took the children into the larger parish hall and played dodge ball with them.  After what seemed like a little while, but was probably a lot longer than I realized, the cookies were done and we all gathered together again and ate them.  The cookies turned out wonderfully and everyone was happy with the results.

            Later that day, we returned to the church and prepared for Evening Prayer.  I had been asked to lead this service in English and we had been advertising by word of mouth in the community for almost two weeks.

            The choir gathered together around 6pm and we rearranged the room so that the pews faced each other.  After that, we sang our hymns until everyone was comfortable with the English pronunciation.  It was important that the choir felt comfortable with the music since they would be leading the congregation.  After about 30 minutes of rehearsal everyone felt comfortable and they were ready.

            It was a wonderful service.  There were about 30 people in attendance.  This is a larger group than normally shows up on Fridays at the church.  Everyone was happy to have been there and they were even more excited with the choir with sang one hymn in a round and another in 4-part harmony.  Considering that the choir had only 6 people in it, that was an amazing feat.

            At the end of the service, there was an induction ceremony for two seminarians from Aracatuba.  These men were joining the Franciscans as members of the third order.  I wish that I could tell you more about the Franciscans, but I only know a few things:  there are 3 orders (men who live as monks, women who live as nuns and men and women who live in the world with the rest of us).  I also know that all three orders take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience – the third order takes modified vows of faithfulness to their spouses and a vow of charity.  Here in Brazil or at least in this diocese, being a Franciscan is more common.  I don’t know where they would have a house here in Brazil, but I know that there are two of them in the New York City area.

            At the end of the induction ceremony, the choir was asked to sing “Standin’ in the Need of Prayer” again and we ended the service on a high note with most everyone singing the hymn.  After the service we all walked to the parish hall and had snacks together.  It was a wonderful evening.  There was talk of doing more services in English as a way of getting new people to come and visit the parish.

            Sunday was spent in William’s car driving to Sao Paulo.  I have taken the trip to and from Sao Paulo several times now but this time was different.  Every other time I have made the trip, I was in a bus with curtains and it was dark outside.  There was nothing to see because it was the country.  This time, the sun was out and I was able to see what a beautiful countryside I had been missing.  The rolling hills, the farms and the blue sky were/are simply amazing.  I wish that my camera had not been packed away or I might have gotten some really good pictures.

            The other interesting thing to talk about in this trip was how it reminded me of my college days.  In addition to William, Loretta and I, Paulinho also went with us.  Originally we were going to go by bus on Saturday night right after the evening prayer service, but Paulinho was going to Sao Paulo in order to start a new job.  With this in mind, we decided to all go in one car and leave Sunday morning after a good night's sleep.

            On Sunday morning William, Paulinho, Sergio and I all had morning prayer together and then we straightened up the church, returning the pews to their original position.  After that we picked up Loretta at the pousada and loaded the car.  We then stopped at the church again so that Loretta could say goodbye to Rosana.  After that we picked up Paulinho and loaded his things into the car. 

            For the most part, cars in Brazil are smaller and more economical.  Gas isn’t cheap here, so people want cars that are less expensive to operate.  This means that the average car here in Brazil looks something like a smaller economy car in the United States.  William has a 4-door car that would be considered on the small side.  We managed to squeeze 4 people and luggage in this car by packing luggage in the trunk and on the back seat between Loretta and Paulinho.  I also had some luggage under my feet in the front seat of the car.  It really was tight and it reminded me of when I was in college and coming home for Christmas break with everyone’s luggage stacked up everywhere there was room.

A difficult moment came when we were driving into Sao Paulo.  As we came down the mountains, I was able to see all of the smog hovering above the city.  It was truly a depressing sight.  I live in New York and have gotten used to dirty air and seeing smog, but Sao Paulo makes New York look really clean.  Sao Paulo is built in a valley surrounded by mountains on every side.  I would guess that about 100 years ago, it would have been a stunning view.  Now, you can’t see the end of the city much less the mountains on the far side.  What was even worse than seeing it, was knowing that we were going to be spending the next several days in all of that pollution.

            We arrived in Sao Paulo after about a 7- to 8-hour trip.  We checked into a hotel and then had dinner in a Japanese restaurant.  After that we called it a day.

            It was another good week in Brazil.  After being here for 6 weeks, I’m still amazed at the cultural things that I don’t know and sneak up on me in unexpected ways.  The people here are absolutely wonderful and they have been treating me as if I were a member of the parish.  I can hardly believe that I only have about 2 weeks left of this adventure.

            May God bless all of you.  I’m looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Peace,

‘Patricke’