"Educação não transforma o mundo.

Educação mudo pessoas.

Pessoas trasformam o mundo."

-Vai Vai Escuela du Samba

In other words, education transforms people, who then transform the world. I am reflecting on this as I continue my study abroad and prepare for my transition to South Africa.

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same”
-Nelson Mandela

Aldeni´s House: The Unadvertised Hostel

Aldeni is my and Erin´s host mom. She is an adorable divorced middle-aged woman who looks like she just got back from a week at hempfest. I wouldn´t be surprised to see a fiddle hanging over her shoulder. She is very natural, which is hard to find in middle-class Paulistas (people who live in São Paulo). We were both worried our host mom would take us straight to the mall, which apparently is the thing to do here. But once we spent an evening with Aldeni, we didn´t have to worry about that.

She loves fruit!! and every evening she has a fresh salada de fruta sitting on the table for us to eat. Once she discovered I hate papaya she started making two seperate bowls, one with and one without that discusting fruit. I swear, it´s almost as bad as cilantro!

She is an excellent language teacher and knows just enough english to translate something if we don´t understand it in Português. She adviced me multiple times to find a Brazilian boyfriend and warned me that kids are like a box filled with surprises.

She has two sons one that is 15 and another who is currently living in Australia. She doesn´t work. Instead, she hosts abroad students from all over the world. Her house is not large but she has designed it to be the perfect international house. There are 6 beds, 3 kitchens, and 5 bathrooms. During my stay here I met people from, the Netherlands, Australia, USA, Colombia, Mexico, and Japan!!

The neighborhood is also a great place for students. Within a 3 block radius there are around 20 music stores. During the late afternoon, when I collapse on my bed drenched in sweat from that days activities, I often hear a squeeky trumpet stumbaling up a scale or a slow and steady drum beat booming in the distance.

We leave this homestay tomorrow at 6am. I am very sad to go. I will miss our jokes and her fiesty spunk. She is a strong independant women with love and care for all types of people. Well...except for the extremely wealthy, but who can complain about that. Most of all I´ll miss her adorable voice and the way she adds the letter `y´ to the end of most words.

-Kayla

Cradle to Cradle

I just finished a fantastic book called Cradle to Cradle. The book itself (fantastically) is not made of trees, fully supporting the ideas that are contained within the content of the book itself. The authors feel that, as humans, our notions of consumption and production are fundamentally flawed--to think that we would dream of making stuff that cannot decompose back into the earth! Going to South America´s largest landfill recently (see "biogassing") made me think a lot about consumption, and this book envisions a world where there is no need for landfills, because we will not create "trash."

Yesterday we (the group who visited the landfill) gave a presentation about the biogas plant to the rest of my study abroad group and some outside visitors from Sao Paulo. At the end of the presentation, one woman questioned whether biogas plants might actually encourage waste production because the corporations that have capitalized on this resource now need waste. I am extremely inspired by the biogas plant, but certaintly do not see it as something that should encourage waste production. Ideally, it is a temporary solution to an existing problem, while others of us figure out ways to prevent the problem in the first place. This is what the book, Cradle to Cradle, argues.

My focus for the rest of the semester is permaculture! Permaculture is a holistic approach that seeks to redesign systems so that they function without destroying the natural world, and in fact are modelled after functional systems found in nature. I am very inspired to study this ideology in the context of cities, because each unit of a city affects every other part of the whole as well. As we´ve been seeing lately, most urban problems are because of a conflict between parts of the city. Permaculture is an ideological approach that seeks to design systems where all the different parts cooperate. Imagine a city where waste from certain sectors nourishes others! Many natural systems work this way, and permaculture seeks to study and duplicate this "waste-to-food" concept.

More about this later!

"As Albert Einstein observed, if we are to solve the problems that plague us, our thinking must evolve beyond the level we were using when we created those problems in the first place."
-Cradle to Cradle

Erin

Biogassing in Sao Paulo

Today I visited the largest BIOGAS plant in the world! The landfill is called the Bandeirantes Landfill, and yes, you heard me, biogas, as in; they syphon out the methane that is naturally expelled by landfills and harness it in a power plant! Thereby reducing the methane gas expelled into the atmosphere (a warming gas that is 20 times more harmful than CO2) and simultaneously generating power that is added to Sâo Paulo´s electric grid and used to power the city.

A student/supervisor named Caio, a student of environmental engineering, supplied us with tons of information as we toured the power plant situated at the top of the largest landfill in Sao Paulo (38 million tons of waste). Caio described the network of pipes that suck the methane gas out of the landfill (actual dumping was ended in 2006 but the site still has enough organic matter to continue producing methane for the next 30 or more years) and transform it into electricity. Throughout the day, I could not stop thinking about the methane produced by landfills around the world--i.e. freshkills in new york city--that have none of these clever catchment systems--and how much damage they are doing to our environment, both local and global).

The most interesting part was arbitrarily choosing the only restaurant in the area that serves up both delicious Brazilian dishes and a dose of history as well! We happened upon this place without any intentions of further research but succeeded in procuring an interview with a community organizer who shared the other side with us. The main company funding the power plant, Biogas, supposedly shares half of the profits with the municipality of Sao Paulo for re-investment in the local community. The man we talked to, a community leader named Mario, revealed the reality that none of the money promised to the community from the economic success of the power plant has actually been seen by community members. That is a whopping 38 million R$ (about 20 million dollars)!!! At that point, I didn´t feel like Erin Axelrod anymore, but Brockovich, tumbling her way into a mess of corporate irresponsibility. The landfill site, originally chosen because it was far away from people, has urbanized (in the same way as the "protected" rainforest around SP has) and is thus surrounded by informal housing. The pollutants from the landfill have been affecting these human habitations for years and years. The Biogas plant helps to suck out harmful methane from the air, but there is so much more that needs to be done!

In any case, our day today was enlightening and inspiring. I couldn´t help the thought from springing into my mind: Possible THESIS topic yay!!! I´m sure I will find many more interesting topics in the months to come. I´ve just started a book called Cradle to Cradle that is fascinating too, and I went to my first YOGA CLASS in Brazil!!

I can´t help but think that people are on to something when they focus on designing a better world altogether rather than just fixing symptoms. To think that any one thing can solve our problems is a joke. We need careful planning and design now to keep us on the right track. Even this landfill, performing such creative reuse of a toxic material, has so many undeniable imperfections.

Peace and Environmental Savviness!
Erin

Carnaval

We arrived in Sao Paulo one week before Carnaval. Samba schools all over town were busy rehearsing for the big day. We had the fortunate opportunity to accompany the samba school Vai Vai (Go Go!) during their last rehearsal.

Vai Vai is one of the largest schools in Sao Paulo (3,500 people march with them during Carnaval!) They have been champions of the competition in the past. All samba schools act as community centers and neighborhood support groups. They are a place of safety and relief for the community.

Before the rehearsal started, Vai Vai members explained the rules and traditions of Carnaval. They introduced instruments and answered our group´s questions. I tried to be a good student and focus on the speakers but found it absolutely impossible with all the commotion in the room. Kids yelling, intricate costumes being displayed, men chatting drinking beers, and the most distracting of all....more than half naked ladies being interviewed for that evening´s news.

After the explaination, in true IHP style, we were given interactive demonstrations. The samba girls taught us their moves and the band handed us their instruments. After the quick practice we bought a few beers, looked at the elaborate costumes, and attempted to dance the samba while 10 year old girls were more adept at moving their hips than we were. When we caravaned back to the bus we were exhausted from dancing to the music and utterly awed by the brazilian passion for this holiday.

-Kayla