The residents of the community Chacara Santo Antonio in the historic center of Salvador are fighting to stay in their homes – due to commercial interests in the area, the community is pressured to resign of their houses. The local government wants to move the long time residents out of their houses and move them to the periphery (more on the previous blog entry).
The community remains little animated and quiet and together with the resident’s association AMACHA, CultureWorlds wanted to change this.
how?
By building with the residents a viewpoint and space for workshops and reunions at the entrance of the community. The entrance to the Chacara Santo Antonio lies right next to the historical Fort and the newly built area should thus also serve as a place for communication with the public: for the residents presenting their community and their cause.

image 1: the entrance area before: over years, the government and neighbors have dumped waste which piled up to little hills
image 2, 3: the work started in the early morning, the entire community was mobilized to help taking out the earth

image 4: Women and men came to work on the project of a community space with a spectacular view

For the day of the common effort for a new entrance, Lu, vice president of the association AMACHA prepared a Feijoada (image 1) – a typical dish of meat and beans, eaten with rice and flour.
Over 40 residents participated in many hours of hard physical work under the hot sun, women, men and children were glad to eat the rich dish.

Above: The the entrance after the common work effort and the collection of items found in the pile of Earth and dirt: some of the objects even seem historical.
However, despite of the huge effort, some more days of community effort were necessary to finish the construction.

With numerous residents volunteering til late at night, the construction of the space was finished. As almost all of the residents have built and maintain their own houses, there was no lack of knowledge on mixing and putting the concrete. The simple viewpoint and area for workshops and reunions was finished and the residents were eager to use it. A small inauguration party followed a few days later on the “Mirante da Chacara Santo Antonio”:

It was a night of giant and regular sized clowns, of poets at the sunset, of pastors, capoeira and samba.
All performances were given by residents of the community. The pastor used the reunion of the residents also to update them on the legal situation in their struggle to stay in their homes. Then it was time for Capoeira, between adults and children, the ambience was joyful and optimistic.
Workshops, events and reunions shall continue on the newly built space. CultureWorld will support the community Chacara Santo Antonio by financing a 1-year program of workshops with the children in the newly built viewpoint. We believe that it will help to animate a community in a difficult situation and that it also shows to the public, visitors and the government that the Chacara is alive. And it will mostly benefit all the children, who find themselves and their families in a difficult situation.
We hope that our efforts will help the community and its children and are proud of this finishing of project MUNDOS. We thank all the residents for their support, hospitality, work and engagement and wish them the best in their cause.

It is almost May and Project MUNDOS is coming to an end. Free art workshops were offered to hundreds of children in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, Minas Gerais and over all Bahia. For more than a month, activities were also offered in Salvador da Bahia, benefiting children of communities in Piata, Sete Portas and Santo Antonio.

In Piata, the last series of workshop benefited some of the youngest children in the program of the Fundacao LAR Harmonia: a mass workshop for children of 5 years.

We thank the LAR Foundation a lot for this great experience. The activities were well organized and integrated into the program of the center. Numerous children participated in and appreciated the creative workshops. It was also very interesting to get insights to the realities in the periphery of the town – the children all live in an almost rural community with dirt roads and horses, just a few hundred meters away from holiday clubs and art residences, in Piata, two different Brazils find themselves one next to another.

In Sete Portas, our activities in the Instituto Augusto Omolu also came to an end with a drawing contest as a final activity. The attendance in the center is low, the children frequent the organization only irregularly. As the photos show, the children that are present participate with pleasure in activities – even if it is just painting the poster of the contest. However, the rooms of the center which offers free dance, percussion, theater and computer classes – are usually empty.

The community in Sete Portas is another reality than the one in Piata: the favela in downtown Salvador has a terrible reputation for violence and drug traffic and abuse. The experiences in Piata and Sete Portas give a very interesting in insight in two very different realities and show, that favela is not equal favela, the neighborhoods differ and one solution does not fit it all.

The last workshops, it was also in the Chacara Santo Antonio, making model houses with the children of the community.

The houses made of cardboard, old boxes, wood and styrofoam and represent the houses of the community – houses that should be demolished in order to build a parking and a viewpoint (see previous blog entry).

image 1: workshop with support by architecture student Aline from Salvador
image 2,3: working on the houses
image 4: Celia Santos, president of AMACHA with the model of her house

In Santo Antonio, the artistic model houses will be installed in the entrance of the community Chacara as a final activity of Project MUNDOS in Salvador. Updates, as always, will follow!

The red sun sinks into the sea, somewhere behind the island of Itaparica -the residents of the favela or community Chacara Santo Antonio observe this great natural spectacle every night from their houses. The community lies in the historic center of the town and is blessed with one of the best views – a fact that now became a problem for its residents. After a landslide and a fire have destroyed a part of the houses in the community, the government is trying to force the (mostly poor) residents out of their houses.

A parking and a viewpoint shall be built where now stand more than 100 houses and huts. In compensation for the loss of their houses in the center, the government has offered apartments to the residents – yet their new homes lay far out of the center and the residents would have to pay a small rent for them over 9 years in order to legally become the owners of the space.
The residents want to stay in the community that has 52 years of history. They formed the association AMACHA (Association dos Moradores e Amigos da Chacara Santo Antonio) and a movement and demand infrastructure to protect them against future rains from their government. More on the cause and images of the community can be found on http://www.chacarasantoantonio.blogspot.com.br/

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Images above: Residents of the Chacara Santo Antonio in a reunion with representatives of the local government – Workshop with the children: reflection on and representation of their homes – The children present their demand (“We want to improve our Chacara”) to the representatives of the government.

Rebuilding and improving or abandon of the community? what to do? What can the mostly poor residents of the Chacara do against the power of international investments?
The community lacks of animation and public representation of their cause. So we now started building a model of the community that will then stand at its entrance – right next to the touristy Forte de Santo Antonio.

For Project Maquete, we build the model houses in workshops with the children. Out of cardboard, old boxes, wood and blocks – all material that can be found in the community. As the community does not dispose of a communitarian space or even a covered public area, we held the workshops in the streets with an impressive support of the residents. Our first goal, the animation of the community, was fully accomplished: more than 20 children at times were making their houses and numerous adults passed in the workshop – discussing houses, the community, their destiny and what to do.
More than 20 houses are already build and the workshops will continue. We hope to be able to contribute that this community of the historic center can be maintained. It is a sign of our time that poor people are moved away from the beaches, the centers and the viewpoints in order to make room for lucrative investments. We want to make an effort for these residents to stay in their homes. An update will follow soon…

The island of Itaparica lies in front of Salvador, small boats and a ferry boat guarantee a regular transit between the city and its island. Especially on Sundays, thousands of people from Salvador find refuge on the island’s numerous beaches. Itaparica could be a paradise under coconut trees, right out of Salvador. However, the beauty of the island has a serious problem: Waste!

Photo 1: big stacks of waste can be found all across Itaparica – along the road, in abandoned territories and even in nature. A functioning collection system is missing, in order to make the waste disappear once in a while, residents burn it all – plastic, organic, metal and everything else mixed up.
Photo 2-4: The beach of Barra Grande is also covered by waste – most of it is brought there by the sea. Years ago, the city of Salvador sunk big tanks of waste in the ocean – pieces of it are now carried to the beaches of the area day by day.

Especially PET bottle lids cover the beach. The bottles must have sunk in the ocean, whereas the current carries the lids together with smaller plastic waste.
What to do?

a workshop!

In Piata, we held another workshop, all around dolls made of recycled objects. 26 children of 7 years participated and created with the waste. It was impressive, how these simple objects sparked the creativity of the kids.

The waste-workshop with the children was a great and positive experience. However, what the area needs are more general recycling and reutilization programs. The living standard in Brazil is rising, people consume more and produce large quantities of waste – while public collection and recycling systems are missing. None of the materials besides metal cans pay a high enough price for the poorest to collect it. Salvador and Itaparica need incentives for society to recycle or reuse its waste. Maybe the kids of Piata will know what to do in the future….

Another series of CultureWorlds workshops we are currently holding in the community or favela of Sete Portas. The neighborhood is known for drugtrafic and violence and the crack consumption of the youth without perspectives has become an alarming problem.

The organization IAO maintains a center in the community: dance classes, theater workshops and informatics are offered all day long to children and youth – in the hope to keep them off the streets and away from drugs.
Among the activities, we started filling afternoons and mornings with art workshops.

It was not always easy to hold the workshops – the children come irregularily to the center, teenagers and young kids together. Luckily, the Argentinian artist Cecilia Baiani brought experience of working with children from troubled areas to the CultureWorld project. We left the workshops pretty open, something that has been highly appreciated bt the kids. The main idea was again to create toys and objects out of what seems to be garbage.

A few months ago, the center of IAO also started offering theater workshops. To help this project develop, we started another series of workshops – making masks once again

The activities in both, Piata and Sete Portas will continue after Eastern. At the same time, CultureWorlds is starting activities in a third favela, in the community Chakara de Santo Antonio. In the past months, several houses of the community fell due to heavy rains and a fire destroyed another series of houses. Nowadays, the residents find themselves fighting against the government who wants to oblige them to leave their houses.
Officially, the explanation is that the residents find themselves in danger – yet inofficially, the land on which the favela is built is very valuable: close to the historic center and with a spectacular view of the sea and the sunset. In order to support the community of the Chakara Santo Antonio, several activities are being started. More on this and all other activities in Salvador will follow SOON!

Piata is a peripheric neighborhood of Salvador with a beautiful beach with clean water (see photo). Many holiday clubs and chic residences are built along the beach. Behind them lies a different world – favelas.

The fundation LAR Harmonia (www.larharmonia.org.br) maintains a complete center for the population of the favelas: daycare center, school, kitchen, hospital, dental care, and psycologists. All the medical personal work was volunteers whereas the government of Salvador pays the teachers in the school. Additionnally, the center offers numerous after school activities such as informatics, music classes – and now our art workshops.

The workshop we held with 18 children from 10 to 12 involved several elements: recycling, papier mache, painting and a little bit of theater. the images below shall illustrate the working process with the children:

Fome Zero (“Zero Hunger”) was launched by the government of Lula in 2003. The program has become famous in the world for its success to efficiently eliminate hunger among the poorest of society.
In rural areas, the project supports families to grow their own food in a more efficient way. In cities such as Salvador, the government runs restaurants which serve a complete meal for 1 Real (equivalent of 0.5 CHF). The “prato do povo” (meal of the people) is served from monday to friday, from 11am to 13pm to anybody who pays 1 Real.
Link to the governments page on Fome Zero: http://www.fomezero.gov.br/

A Self-experiment:
(unfourunately, it was forbidden to take photos in the establishment. People say that this is because it is a program by the government, but nobody really knows. Thus, only a few secretly taken snapshots can be showed here).

Lunchtime, it is hot in Salvador, almost 40 degrees, we are hungry and are as so many looking forward to eat. Yet the meal at the “Prato do Povo” is still far – first, we have to get in a long line in the burning sun. The line moves quicker than expected and we get closer to our meal at 1 Real. At the entrance of the establishment, crack addiced kids beg for money – they say that they want to eat, but nobody gives them money – it is obvious that the money wont be spent on food. The kids are not interested in entering with us when we offered it.
Inside, we pay 1 Real and receive a plastified card, upstairs, after a few more minutes in lines, we hand in the card and can get into a food line. Mechanically, women serve the meals: two spoons of rice, two spoons of beans, free choice between chicken and lasagne with meet, cooked bananas, a bag of farinha (flour that is eaten with the meal), a piece of watermelon and a cup of juice – the plate for one real.

The hall is full, hundreds of people are eating their plate. Mostly men are eating on the tables, there are a few women with children and some elderly. Workers, streetsellers, homeless people, but also men in shirt and with polished shoes, all of them enjoy the cheap and good food. It is obvious that the people here are hungry, most of them eat fast. On our table, a conversation only comes up when the plates are empty. No food is left, everybody finishes the plate, mothers collect the leftovers of the farinha, homeless people secretly fill up plastic bags with the food – it is strictly forbidden to take the meal outside.

For most people, the visit in the “Prato do Povo” is a quick thing – come in, eat and then back down the stairs, back to work or the streets – everything as it was before, yet the hunger is gone.
Fome Zero is a success because it allows thousands of people access to a much needed daily meal – without registration or conditions. It can be that simple to help the poorest and this is what has made the government of Lula the most popular one in Brazilian history. may the project continue.

CultureWorlds activities

We currently do daily workshops for children from two different projects. In the center of the Fundacao LAR Harmonia, we do art workshops with children from 8-10 – all of them from a favela in Piata.
In the center of the town, in the favela of Sete Portas, we are holding workshops for children and teenagers in the localities of the organization IAO.
Photos will follow soon on this blog!

CultureWorlds now arrived in Salvador da Bahia, the destination of our boat Cataya. Salvador is traditional and contemporary point of culture, Capoeira, dance, music – especially percussion – and also plastic arts are being lived – and presented to tourists from all over the world.

The Pelourinho is the historical and cultural center of the city and also the area that attracts most tourists. The Pelourinho is full of colonial buildings and old curches and the beauty of this old neighborhood (the first street the Portuguese built in Brazil leads to the Pelourinho) win the hearts of visitors from all over the world

Yet Salvador is not quite as beauiful and perfect as visitors should see it. Salvador also is a city of poverty. Who rises early will see all these churches and spectacular buildings with crack addicted children sleeping in front of them.

The homeless in the streets of the Pelourinho disappear before the tourists arrive – the police wakes them up early. Yet in other neighborhoods of Salvador, sleeping people in the street are part of the view. The homeless explain that they prefer sleeping during the day as the streets at night are dagerous. They spend the night awake and vigilant in the hope of surviving another day.

The number of people in the streets is impressive in Salvador. The problem is especially significant as there are numerous abandoned and empty houses all across town. The image below shows the Mercado Modelo, one of the cities top tourist destinations and the abandoned houses in front of it.

The police seals the entrances and windows of these houses and regularily evicts people who occupy the space. A policy of order which seems bizzar in a city full of homeless.

CultureWorlds will stay a while in Salvador. Numerous activities are planned in the city and in the island Itaparica. We will work with partner organizations such as LAR Harmonia, with community projects in favelas and if possible also with the children in the street.

All updates, as always, will follow HERE

Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais and with over 5 million inhabitants Brazil’s third largest city. The probably most stunning impression for a visitor is probably the enormous amount of (mostly new) cars. Residents tell that until 5 years ago, there were only few cars in the city, that 12’000 new cars are registered in Belo Horizonte PER MONTH (!) and many find themselves concerned with the movement – yet are circulating in the city by car themselves.

Yet Belo Horizonte is not only a city full of new cars and glittering buildings – it is also a city full of Favelas and other than in other cities of Brazil, favelas and “official” buildings stand one next another. The white shiny building in the image above is the “Boulevard Shopping Mall” – standing in between the houses of the poorest.
The visual of Belo Horizonte shows very well that Brazil does not have a problem of poverty – yet a serious problem of inequality. It is difficult to say whether the recent progress of the country helps reducing the inequalities – or whether it makes them worse.

View from a house in Lagoinha and insight in a home of a family.
Lagoinha is one of Belo Horizonte s marginalized neighborhoods. The project “Nesso bairro encantado” brings cultural activities to the houses of the poor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fnyrdEzbDU&feature=g-upl&context=G271ef6cAUAAAAAAACAA

Masked actors and singers march every saturday through Lagoinha, singing traditional songs in front of bars or in the houses of the residents or small businesses like the barbershop in this film.

Several initiatives in Belo Horizonte try to use arts as a tool for social mobilization. The walk with the project “Nesso bairro encantado” gave some very interesting insights in the neighborhood and attracted many people into the streets and to their windows. Here are some snapshots:

“Nesso bairro encantado” is one of many initiative to use arts as a tool for social mobilization. It is an independant initiative taken by professors of theater at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
As for our own workshop, we held them this time in a community daycare center for children aged 2-4

The daycare center or Creche “Crianca Feliz” was run by the church for a long time. A few years ago, the local government started supporting the project and renovated the space. Now, four women are employed full time to take care of 27 children age 2 to 4 every day from 8am to 5pm.
Most of the boys and girls are children of working single mothers. The educators make a daily effort to offer more to these children than just food and a place to spend the day and happily invited us to do a workshop.

it was our first workshop with children of such a young age and we decided to bring a salt and flour modeling mass and cookie forms. Four almoust three hours, the little children played, experimented and modeled with the self made mass

The women of the center told us, that this mass was better than any that they have ever bought. As it is also simple and cheap to make, they told us that they will start making modeling mass for children on a regular base – yet next time they will use our receipe and add food colors…

Above, the art materials of the center which tries to offer as many creative activities as possible to the children. We left more than 100 Caran d Ache pencils in the center, in order to support creative activities for the children of the periphery of Belo Horizonte in the future.

“A escola e ruim” – the school is crap. This is the answer we heard in four different states of Brazil when asking about the educational system. Parents and the educated class all across Brazil complain about a public school system in a terrible state.

above: physical education for teenagers – this is the only sports ground of the school…

After the long holiday period from Christmas til the end of Carnaval, we finally had an opportunity to work with a school. In Milho Verde’s neighbor village Sao Goncalez, we were invited to hold a workshop on natural materials within a geography class. It was impressive:

35 children in one class, many of them yelling and running around, teachers lack authority and can at best try to reach a handful of the most motivated students – while ignoring the others.

An interactive activity in order to focus the children – the difference of age among the students of this one class is obvious

Most impressive was the difference of age among students of one and the same classroom. A recent law in the state of Minas Gerais allows children to already enter school at age of five, yet many children across Brazil only enter schools years later – and then start at first grade. Several teenagers are present in each classroom full of children, either because they only got a late access to education, or because they have repeated the year three, four our five times.
Loud and unmotivated teenagers, often bored with activities dedicated to children make it hard for anybody to learn something.

above: girls experimenting with the plaster – paint can be made out of stones!

When asking about these conditions to teach children, Marcela, the geography teacher just smiles. In Belo Horizonte, she used to teach classes with over 50 (!) children – all of them from favelas. “This was way worse” she says.

Indeed, the public school system in Brazil needs reformation, parents who value education will send their children to private school – if anyhow possible. While the West celebrates Brazil’s rapid development, skilled professionals are scarce all across the country. Sure, Brazil is able to attract highly educated workers from other countries. Yet whether this is preferable to reforming the proper educational system remains to be seen. After all, Brazil wants to lose its status as a raw materials producer – and wants to move forward.

In the public school of Sao Goncalez, little of this was felt…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrcVLd9csY8

attention: please excuse the poor quality of the video, under the current internet connection, it has not been possible to upload a higher quality version. it shall follow soon!

Carnaval – the biggest party of many around the year in Brazil. The images of the colorful Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro, Receife or Salvador go around the world and thousand of tourists assist the event every year. As you can see in the video, the show was way more modest in Milho Verde. So how is Carnaval in a little, remote town like Milho Verde?

In this town, where more cows than cars usually circulate in the streets (see the last blog entry), hundreds of visitors from the near cities arrive in their cars to pass the Carnaval.

The roads are full of new cars during Carnaval – and are obviously not adapted for this amount of vehicles. Traffic jams on the main road (in the photo) were part of Carnaval

The usually empty camping ground mutates into an animated tent city for the five days of Carnaval….

Five days of full roads and waterfalls, lound music and a lot of beer later, the town will be silent and empty as before again. What remains after Carnaval is mostly waste:

Overflowing trashcans mark the image of Milho Verde after the Carnaval. The waste will only be collected one week later – and then burnt the same afternoon without being separated first…

It is events like the Carnaval that bring Brazil’s recent progress like waves from the cities to remote places like Milho Verde. A new asphalt road is being built at the moment, which suddenly makes the town easily accessible for people from all over Minas Gerais.

The partially finished asphalt road partially explains this excess of cars arriving in Milho Verde for the holiday – more and more are to come, the locals watch the building of the road with mixed feelings.

The progress arrives more and more in Milho Verde: houses are being built all across the village, many of them are inhabited before even finished, many remain empty weekend houses and some are not finished at all:

Ruins like this one are found all over Milho Verde – and Brazil. Construction is easily started – and not always finished.

But not only cars and construction excesses mark the arrival of the progress in Milho Verde: with each wave of visitors, more and more people from cities discover the quiet country life and find it preferable to the stressful existence in the city. Every year, more and more Brazilians form the city come to live in villages – and with them arrive modern forms of living and new ideas.

The weekly feira (market place for local goods) for example was founded by people from the cities Santos and Belo Horizonte who are now living in Milho Verde. The feira offers a space for local farmers to offer their organic agricultural products. With the sellers also arrive a lot of children to the feira. And for them we held another workshop:

The girls and boys learnt to cut silhouettes out of paper – here are some of the outcomes:

None of the children thought at first that they could do it – and all of them have learnt the technique by the end of the workshop – and loved it.

Cutting silhouettes is a simple and fun technique that is basically unknown in South America. CultureWorlds has taught numerous children and adults across Brazil and will continue – as the reaction was always very positive. In the case of the sunday feira, the children proudly exhibited their work in a special place:

During the days of Carnaval with schools and local institutions closed, we have also held further workshops in our neighborhood. The experience was very positive, these small workshop allow a very close contact with the children and gives children an opportunity to participate in the preparation of the workshop as well. The increased intimacy of this workshops has children living their creativity more freely, trying out many different things with the materials disposed. The experience of small workshops in the respective neighborhoods will be continued in other communities….

With the Carnaval also ended a long period of holidays from Christmas til late February. The schools are opening again and we held a first workshop in a local public school. An update on this experience will follow…as always: Soon!

“Once upon a time, there was a rich and brutal farmer. He owned more cattle than he could count and burnt the lands. One day, the Wise Black Man revealed two prophecies:

1 You will have a son with a heart the size of a cow

2 A special cow will be born into your herd with a heart the size of a star.

The boy was born and received the name Esponteano and when the special cow was born, the farmer gave it to his son as a gift. The son and the cow grew and their goodness made nature flourish. Soon, the farmer got jealous and angry. He one day secretly sold the special cow to his friend. The friend took the cow to his farm, walking a long way. Yet the river along the way was dry and the cow was slowly dying of thirst.

Esponteano was waiting for his cow to return when thunder filled the air and God’s tears rained down on Earth. The water filled up the river and the cow came back to life. It returned to Esponteano and left his father amazed yet angry. The farmer then decided to kill the cow. Yet when he pointed an arm on the animal, a light as bright as a star blinded the farmer. After this day, he never burnt the fields anymore and became a good and respectful farmer.”

This is a folkloric tale from Milho Verde in Minas Gerais. The story is sung and accompanied by music, folkore, samba and capoeira sounds all mixed up.

For a presentation in the local feira, we made a cow mask – it was then put on a Jaguar figure which danced to the locally invented “Samba do boi” – “Cattle Samba”. The tale shows the importance of the cow in the area – indeed, cows are a part of Milho Verde, they are literally found anywhere, even in the town’s natural reserve as shown on the photo below :

Despite of an increased effort of the local government in the past years, environmental laws are not yet being respected. Yet free running cows are a part of Milho Verde. The sign below warns drivers from outside of town to drive carefully “in our streets, cows pass”

The cattle pass in the streets, looking for places to graze. They enter in gardens or even in the area of the cellphone antennas.

Partially, this presence of the cow is explained by the fact, that meat has become part of the daily meal for many Brazilians: eating meat used to be a privilege, nowadays, common restaurants offer lunches and dinner always accompanied by meat.

Yet as the tale shows, the importance of the cow in the local culture is way older than the recently increased consumption of meat: Minas Gerais is known all over Brazil for its cheese. Indeed, cheese is eaten everywhere and by all classes:

Food offer in a simple gas station in the North of Minas Gerais: Marmalade, two types of cheese and “Pao de Queijo” a traditional bread filled with cheese.

Below, the cheese selection in the central market of Belo Horizonte:

And our workshops?

The photo above shows the workshop we organized in the local feira for the children of the salespersons and the kids of the neighborhood. The feira was started a few years ago, on the one hand to offer a platform for locals to sell agricultural products and handicraft, on the other hand as a cultural space. We hope that regular activities for kids can be started on the basis of our workshop, which we will be continuing giving.

With the upcoming Carnaval, we made simple masks -the jaguar pattern was very popular among girls. The coming blog entry will be about the experience of Carnaval in a small community like Milho Verde.

Besides the activity at the feira, we offer twice a week creative activities for small groups of children in the neighborhood. This smaller and less official form of workshop gives us a very direct and regular contact to the children.

And, to end this entry, a last statement of the omnipresence of the cow:

Yes, this cow entered in our backyard to give its participation in the making of the mask….

The art-boat journey ended in Cumuruxatiba in the South of Bahia. The boat did not receive the necessary papers to extend its stay in Brazil and we will now start in the second half of Project MUNDOS in the mountains of Minas Gerais, in the inland of Brazil.

We thank the Captain of Cataya, Miguel Livingston for his effort and support of our initiative and wish him and Cataya the best on their trip out of Brazil.

Without the boat however, it will be impossible for us to travel with team and material in the small communities along the coast. So we traveled from Cumuruxatiba to Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais.

On the way to Belo Horizonte, we got to see something rather unusual in South America: a functioning train. The mines, the paper and metal industry that extract the raw materials from the rich earths of Minas Gerais maintain the trains to transport the materials to the port in Vitoria. The discussion about a system of public transportation involving trains is still going on in Brazil. In the 50ties, the government has stopped the construction of railways in order to attract Volkswagen and other car manufacturers into the country. The official explanation for the abandon of the railways was that Brazil was too mountainous to have trains – greetings from Switzerland…..

Indeed, we found mountains in Minas Gerais. From Belo Horizonte, we traveled to Milho Verde, a small village in the mountains north of Belo Horizonte. We found very simple ways of living:

Despite of its very small size, Milho Verde is like a center for various even smaller communities in the area. Only a long journey over dirt roads will bring you to places like Capivari, where we held our first workshop in the area.

In Capivari (Photo above) live a few families with many members. Most people do neither have cars nor work and live a rather isolated life.

With the clowns of Palhacos Gigantes, we organized a puppet theater workshop for the kids in the community: first, the kids would make their own puppets out of PET bottles, milk boxes and other waste.

We were going to hold the workshop in the local school – yet this was not possible without the permission of the “prefeito”, the mayor of the area. To the question, whether the prefeito himself has ever visited Capivari, nobody knew an answer. We used the walk from the school to the community center to collect bottles and other materials for the workshop:

The first day involved once again papier mache and a lot of cutting and experimenting with bottles and cardboard.

The second day was dedicated to the individual painting of the creations – and to a collective painting of a background for the puppet show

It was then time for the show of the PET bottle dolls and animals:

Dino from the circus group Palhacos Gigantes (see our partners on our website) taught the kids how to play with the puppets and set up a little theater at the end of the workshop.

The experience of mixing the arts and involving theater and circus in our workshops was very positive and we will continue to work with artists from different fields.

For the start of the Carnaval, we will participate in an Art Feria in Milho Verde: we will complete the program of theater, music and dance with another workshop.

During our extended stay in the community, we also met Ruda K. Andrade, grandson of the Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade. With Ruda, we produced a first film about our trip from Rio de Janeiro to the South of Bahia.

We hope this film gives an overall perspective of our journey, the various places we got to know, the different worlds we visited. enjoy!

A longer stay in Cumuruxatiba: behind the culisses of a paradise

Cumuruxatiba seems to be a paradise: a quiet little town in the middle of spectacular beaches, with turquois water and coral reefs. Tourists from all over Brazil come to make holidays there, tourists from Sao Paulo or Minas Gerais will tell you that they LOVE the place and that they don’t mind traveling 1600km one way just to be here every year.

Indeed, the tourists are highly welcome in Cumuruxatiba: as fishermen are telling, the fish in the area is ending. What used to be a traditional fishing community is now relying more and more on tourists coming to “paradise”. And tourists come, every year more of them as more and more Brazilians are getting wealthier and travel to the beaches of their country.

However, to Cumuruxatiba, tourists only find once a year, during the Brazilian summer holiday in the month of january. Restaurants, bars, hotels – all of them make nearly all of their yearly income between Christmas and Carnaval. During one month a year, there is work for everybody in Cumuruxatiba. The owners of establishments such as restaurants and hotels are usually people from Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro or foreigners, their employees are locals. When the owners are asked what their employees do during the 11 months of the years when they are not working for them, the answer is: ” I have no idea – this and that”.

Curious, I went asking them myself. I spoke with people working in construction, others painting houses, others repairing cars and also met many who do not really have a profession besides the summer job in the tourist industry.

In fact, despite of the relative wealth that came to Cumuruxatiba with the tourism, the town offers no perspectives to its children. Parents of all classes animate their children to leave town at age 16-18 to study in the city, to learn a profession or even a language elsewhere. The only perspective lies in going away, but who wants to go away from paradise?

And then, there is of course all those who do not have the perspective to go away: young adults from troubled families in the outskirts of the town or the numerous children living in the indigenous aldeias who only get to see “paradise” when they go and sell handicraft in the beach. For them, the only perspective lies in hoping that more tourists will come to town, buying their items.

Cumuruxatiba has the potential to attract more people. Brazil keeps developing and every year, there will be more overworked people from Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte who will want to come relax in Paradise. Then maybe, tourism will be able to generate a more steady income. But even the owners of hotels and restaurants will have to ask themselves the question, whether they really want to attract more tourists and risk to eventually destroy the paradise in which they came to live.

Progress has its price. Even in paradise.

by Silvana Baumann

Wow – this beautiful view I had from Cumuruxatiba’s poorest neighborhood Areia Preta. The place where the photo was taken is a typical restaurant with a patio that attracts numerous tourists on this hill of the poor.

Our main interest yet was not the view, but the little building located behind the restaurant: A community project that teaches girls embroidery and helps them to sell their work. The project has been run for years by Elisete, the owner of the restaurant.

As many local social programs, the embroidery project of Areia Preta could hope for governmental support for the first time as the Brazilian state got richer in the past years. About a year ago, the project received first funding by the government. The money allowed to finish the construction of the space and to install a little library and an alphabetization point. Various activities shall be offered to the youth of the neighborhood in the future.

One extra activity was then our 2-day maks making workshop. The workshop has become popular among the kids in the Center of Cumuruxatiba and we decided to do the same thing for the kids in the outskirt Areia Preta.

15 girls and boys were invited to participate in the workshop. As we have learnt in previous workshop, we left it up to the local structures to call in the children.

The workshop took place in the morning as the kids usually work in the afternoon. Two of the girls that were invited worked also in the mornings of our activities.

As it was in the hot lunch time when we finished our workshops, we had a special ending prepared: hotdogs and juice.

The 40 hotdogs disappeared quickly. Eaten and brought to brothers, sisters and cousins.

We had a very interesting discussion with Elisete and Carla, a social worker from Sao Paulo that now lives in Cumuruxatiba: what can and must be offered to the youth? Flute workshops, access to computers, sexual education…. The government funds that recently started arriving in the neighborhoods of the poor across Brazil inspire to further actions.

Brazil can improve the lives of the poor and it can do it alone. An example: Used, functioning computers can easily be found in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Let’s say a tourist that comes from Sao Paulo to Cumuruxatiba for holidays every year can be involved in bringing these computers by car in the community here. And an informatics- point for local youth could be created fast and without any big money.

Brazil is a country of opportunities in these years. This can be felt anywhere. The optimism most Brazilians share regarding ahead has also arrived in the homes of the poor. This we felt clearly in this modest Posto de Leitura in Areia Preta and we wish all of them the best for the future.

It was our first visit of an indigenous community: this week, we had an opportunity to visit the Aldeia Tipa. Aldeias are communities of indigenous people, which are usually not open for outsiders. The sign at the entrance clearly prohibits the entrance of “strangers”.

At our arrival however, the gate was open: after organizing various workshops and performances in the center of Cumuruxatiba with the circus project Trupe Gaia, it was time to bring some activities to the numerous children living in the aldeias.

In the background of the image, you see some of the typical simple mud houses of the aldeia. From a western perspective, the people in the aldeia live in extreme poverty. Most of the houses have neither electricity nor running water and many people’s bodies give proof of the absence of modern medicine.

The lands of the aldeias are farmlands, the community grows bananas, mandioca and coconut. Back in the days, a tropical forest covered this land, as the leftovers of tall trees show:

Besides the vehicles we arrived with, we did not see any cars in the aldeia. The indigenous people that do not work with tourists in Cumuruxatiba leave the aldeia rarely. The performance of the clowns was therefore highly appreciated:

When we did our workshops in the center of Cumuruxatiba (see previous blog entry), several children from the Aldeia Tiba were in town, yet missed the workshop because they were working. During the tourist season, the boys and girls of the aldeia sell handicraft work in the beach all day long.

As the ones who we wanted to reach most could not come to our workshop, we compensated with the performance in their community – and with the distribution of Caran d’Ache pencils.

The experience in the aldeia was very positive, yet did we learn little about the tribe and its history. In Cumuruxatiba it is said that the indigenous people in the aldeias are no natives of this land, but that the Pataxo actually came from Minas Gerais – as nomadic people as the indios say themselves, or depending on the version of the story, it is also said that they were brought here in order to appropriate the land.

Indeed, it was difficult to learn something about the culture that is being lived in Aldeias like the Tiba. For the Sao Sebastiao celebration (19-20.1), the Pataxo came to town. They danced around the statue of the catholic saint Sao Sebastiao and were dressed up in “traditional” clothes.

The party also involved a lot of alcohol and the objects the dancers wore were more or less the same as what the children of the aldeias sell in the beach…

So, despite of this contact in the aldeia, we learned little about traditions and culture. Yet we sure got an insight in the conflicts regarding the distribution of land that is going on in all of Brazil.

Symbolically, the conflicts between the natives of the land and those who arrive before take place in a historical setting: just outside of Cumuruxatiba is the Monte Pascoal, the first land the Portuguese sighted when they arrived in Brazil more than 500 years ago.

The Monte Pascoal, an old volcano lays in the inland of Cumuruxatiba. It was the first land in sight of the Portuguese – and therefore the starting point of the colonial history of Brazil. And until today, Brazil is captured in these old conflicts: meanwhile the universities have quotas for indigenous people and the government pays money to native people like the Pataxo. However, as we saw in the Aldeia, the money does not arrive with the people that live in these very modest houses.

When we left the aldeia, the gate was closed again behind us. We returned to Cumuruxatiba and got ready to prepare our next work in the marginalized neighborhood Areia Preta. An update will follow soon.

Cumuruxatiba is a little village on the coast of Brazil – around 800 km South of Salvador and more than 1000km North of Rio de Janeiro. It is surrounded by aldeias, traditional communities of indigenous people.

The month of january is the most touristic season and the town is full of movement. As already mentioned in the previous post, there was a circus festival going on in the week of our arrival. We participated in the organization of various circus activities – and of course proposed some workshops of our own:

The result of a 2-days maks making workshop in the center of the town….

Our workshop attracted kids and adults, indigenous people, natives as well as tourists. The theatre group Colectivo Frigideira from Belo Horizonte also visited our workshop, making their very first masks themselves (seated on the ground in the photo).

The most difficult part of the workshop was finding the paper to mak the papier mache- nobody in the village receives newspaper. Out of school books, phone books and a few newspapers from Sao Paulo, we then built the masks – with two people sharing a balloon and the scarce paper.

Explaining the painting of the maks for kids and adults…..

As many beautiful maks were created, the Gelato Cafe in the center of the town “honored” our workshop with a little exhibition…

As the circus festival included many activities on the beach, we also added a little workshop in body painting. It attracted mostly teenagers:

The paint we’ve used was from natural plaster stones which we went to collect ourselves in a beach outside of Itaunas (the blog entry about the workshops in Itaunas was posted in mid-december).

Local teenagers got inspired to many creative drawings:

……the workshops were very popular among the local youth. Walking along the beach or in the street, kids keep coming up to us, asking about having another workshop. We’ve now planned another mask making workshop in Areia Preta, the poorest neighborhood of Cumuruxatiba.

Actually, we are engaged in another type of work: we are painting the instruments of the local percussion group Cumuru Batuke. The Cumuru Batuke is a social project: kids and teenagers learn to play and to make their own instruments out of recycled material.

The Cumuru Batuke playing on the beach. In the front, you see some of the drums in process of making. Out of recycled metal, the boys and girls build their own drums. Now, it is time to paint them:

The painting and the other workshops planned will involve a little while more in Cumuruxatiba. During this time, we are also planning to work in the aldeias, the indigenous communities nearby the town.

However, without an explicit invitation by the community, we will not be able to work there. Slowly, we find ourselves discovering the tensions between the “natives” and the “gringos” in the otherwise so harmonious community of Cumuruxatiba.

An update will of course follow soon…..

Harmony – fishing boats on the beach of Cumuruxatiba.

Still in Caravelas – in the cultural space Arte Manha, we opened the new year with a 3-days mask making workshop. With the kids, we made their masks for the Carnaval parade in february.

The cultural space is located on the territory of an old fazenda where many families with numerous children live. Over 30 of these children and from the surrounding neighborhoods participated in our workshop.

For the second time since Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro (see entry number one on this blog) we made masks out of papier maché. This time, we made the glue ourselves, following the “traditional receipe” of the cultural center: boiling Manioca flour in water and a while of stirring  gave as a strong glue with which even big paper sculptures could be built.

The center itself builds big sculptures for Carnaval and numerous parties around the year out of papel maché. However, for the kids, it was their very first time of working with the material. During two days, they created a solid head with ears, noses and in some cases even horns out of paper, glue and a balloon.

then, it was finally time to PAINT;

….together it is most fun of course…

As we did not ask for a minimum age for our workshop, numerous children between 4 and 6 made their very first masks:

With the support of the center, the beautiful masks you saw at the beginning of this post were created – by children of all ages. The experience and the work with the children was just as positive as it was also interesting for us.

In a video interview, Do, director of Arte Manha explains his desire to inspire people to create their own world.

The cultural movement Arte Manha started in 1982 in the streets of the peripherals of Caravelas. Do and other artists started to organize dancing activities and exhibitions in the street and animated the neighborhoods of the poor.

The movement grew and started producing all kinds of arts, from percussion, african dancing, capoeira, plastic arts to poesia, theatre and film making – basically all arts besides literature are represented. Nowadays, Arte Manha is a recognized address for cultural questions in Caravelas and starts receiving the first endorsements by the local government.

After a longer stay and many workshops, we left Caravelas and sailed to Cumuruxatiba.

We arrived just in time to attend the First Circus Festival Circomuru.  In collaboration with the organizors, the Trupe Gaia (www.trupegaia.blogspot.com)  we will realize our next workshops.

Caravelas is surrounded by Manguezal, a type of forest growing along rivers and arms of the sea. Only a few people live in this rather hostile environment and the rivers are the only way to arrive in many of these places.

On a fishing boat, we got a ride to Nova Viçosa, two hours up the river from Caravelas. In the early morning we left and passed the Mangue during hours until we arrived in Nova Viçosa, a city of a size that we would not have expected.

The first thing we saw when getting off the boat was also unexpected – a Swiss T-shirt in the middle of the Manguezal.

Of course, our plan was to do a workshop in this community. Immediately, we received support from locals in order to realize our workshop he same day.

Again, we did a modeling workshop with our flour-salt mass. We chose this activity as flour, salt and baking soda can be found anywhere – and thus allows a workshop that can be done in any place.

Around 25 children came to our workshop and surprised us once again with their creations:

The kids enjoyed creating animals and objects out of the mass. Several times, we gave the recipe to mothers and the interest in our boat trip across Brazil was big.

We are now back in Caravelas and will do a last 3-day workshop here in collaboration with the Cultural Center Arte Manha. We will make Carnaval masks for children.

An update will follow.