Jessie's Amazon Journal
Monday, August 20th
This morning just after we woke up (around 5:30) Djalma is already right outside our window bright eyed and bushy tailed saying "let's go to the river!" Still in a state of half-asleep-ness, I throw on my swimsuit and follow him down the very steep path to the beach. There are some kids playing in the water already and the sun is just rising over the other side of the river. The air is deliciously between warm and cool and the water is like a bath as I slide on in. I have decided that THIS is how all mornings were meant to be!
Djalma and Angela walk down the beach as I swim around like the fish that I am. When we head back I take a much deserved shower (no creepy crawlies during the daytime!). After a quick breakfast we were off to the school. We had arranged to spend a full day at the school, observing classes and talking with teachers.5
School children in class
We got there just after school had started, and immediately saw a group of 6th(ish) graders in gym class outside playing volleyball. Apparently this is one of the few games that comes even remotely close to soccer in competing for the kids' attention.
The next class we got to observe was third grade Portuguese. I have to say it was pretty bad. Even as a non-speaker of Portuguese, I could get the basic idea of what was going on in the classroom, and after the fact Angela confirmed that it was indeed quite a disaster. Most of the students were sitting at their desks, reading different short stories (at least that is what they were supposed to be doing). One student would come to the front of the room and read their story to the teacher, while everyone else continued with their own work, again, supposedly. Then some of the kids would copy random sentences from their stories on the chalk board. After there were several totally random sentences on the board, the class would read them out loud together. There seemed to be no evaluation of reading comprehension whatsoever, no class discussion of the stories, or even validation that the students had in fact read the stories.
The second class was quite a bit better. It was first grade Portuguese, and the teacher was one of the women we have interviewed. While the teaching methodology was quite traditional, she did seem to be getting through to the kids. They were learning sound combinations, in this case "mi, me, ma, mo, mu". One of the things the kids had to do was come up with their own examples of words that used these sounds. This was a good example of engaging the students.
In another class the teacher showed us some tools that she used, which included puzzles with different letter combinations that the students could put together themselves to make words. It seemed like she was very interested in encouraging creativity, which was a positive sign.
The next class we saw was 8th grade math. I was actually quite surprised at how advanced the math was. They were doing algebra with order of operations including exponents. This really isn't that different from a regular level 8th grade math class in the US (not that the US is exactly a world leader in math…). However, the frustrating part of it was that while most of the kids seemed to be able to crunch out a problem on the board, I didn't get the sense that they actually knew what it meant. Did they really grasp the concept of what an exponent actually is, or were they just going through the motions, copying the method of calculation that they have seen their teacher do over and over again? Do they really understand what a variable is and why you would use one? To be honest, I wonder how much of the math the teachers really understand since many of them have only gone up to 8th grade themselves. And there was no mention whatsoever of a real life application of the problems. I wonder if they ever use story problems - that would sure make a big difference!
We also saw the English class6, which was quite rudimentary to say the least. To be honest, I don't think they should teach English this way given the very limited English language skills of the teacher. She has a very hard time answering the most basic questions such as "how old is your daughter?" Every time I saw her, Djalma, if he was there would insist that she practice her English with me. But anyways, the class was obviously thus very basic. They were going over the verb "can" and had to give examples of things they can and can't do. For example, I can swim, I can cook (which the teacher spelled "coke"), I can play soccer, etc. The lesson was actually not bad - I just wonder where are the kids going to go from there, as the teacher has pretty much taught up to the limit of her own knowledge.
The final class we observed was Amazon Studies, with the same teacher as the English class. The topic was energy - where they get energy from, how they use energy, and how to conserve energy. This was a very interesting topic, and the teacher had definitely put in a lot of effort to prepare for the class. However, she seemed to have prepared a script, and had a lot of difficulty in being flexible to deviate from the script in order to address students' questions.
In between classes we spoke with the teachers some more about the challenges they face. 21 teachers in Suruacá serve 7 communities. The teachers as well as the administrators have to travel to go to the other smaller schools in the area. They thus spend many hours traveling, and have to stay overnight in the other communities to make the trip worthwhile. Again, the lack of energy came up, as they would like to have a computer at the school for administrative purposes (they didn't mention for student learning purposes) as well as a TV to use in their classrooms. Also they mentioned that they did not have enough learning materials.
Evening meeting with one
of the community groups
For the remainder of the afternoon after school we had a nice break. That evening after dinner we met up with the youth group, and ended up talking with them for several hours. Since I had been quite out of the loop on some of the earlier meetings (due to language barriers), Angela had decided that I would lead this meeting and she would just be a translator. It has proven in our past experience that her translating for me can really break up the flow of conversation to the point that valuable information is lost. But in this case, where it was a big group setting and no one individual would be speaking for too long, we thought that translating might be a little easier because the conversation would be more broken anyways. So I wrote down a bunch of questions. However, when we first got started, it was like pulling teeth. There were about 30 youth (ages about 13-22) gathered at the telecenter7, but nobody would speak up when I asked a question. So I decided to start picking on people. I know, I am so mean. Even then, the youth were very brief in their answers, and it was hard to tell how genuine they were. At one point, when I asked what their hopes for the future were, we got an interesting though rather sad response from one of the young men. He said that even though he wanted to go to university, he knew that he wouldn't be able to because he came from the Amazon. He didn't feel that those types of opportunities were available to him. Some of the youth mentioned goals such as becoming a doctor or nurse, or studying biology. But you got the sense that this was more of a fantasy than an actual goal they believed they could achieve.
An interesting thing happened when we turned off the microphone that we used to record our meeting. Following all our meetings, we usually ask people if they have questions for us, which we did in this instance. But man, with the youth did that sure change the tone completely! They started asking questions left and right about what is life like in the US and what it is like in Rio. All of a sudden I could see that they were so curious about us, they had just been shy about answering questions from random unknown people (even though we had explained who we are). I told them about all the different bodies of water we have around the Pacific Northwest - lakes, rivers, the ocean, etc., and how I have to drive over a big lake to get to Bob's house, which they thought was funny for some reason.
5. Link Social, our partner in Brazil, is piloting the Certificate for Teachers' Mastery (CTM) in Suruacá. For more information about this please see our announcement for the establishment of an office in Santarém. Link Social will operate CTM and CEN's cCLEAR project concurrently during 2008
6. This isn't the English class CEN has started. Ours is build around Rosetta Stone software and is mediated by Telma, one of the more motivated teachers, and Djalma's daughter-in law.
7. Bob Bortner, the Founder and Director of CEN managed the USAID-funded project to build the telecenters in Maguari and Suruacá. Information and information technology are important tools to help realize CEN's objective of empowering the communities
Tuesday, August 21st
This morning we met with a few members of the women's group. It seems like the group is made up mostly of middle aged or elderly women from the community. They explained that Projeto Saude e Alegria (PSA)8 formed the women's group back in 1987. They showed us some of the basket weaving they had done, and I purchased a couple pieces from them.
Meeting with the women's group.
Jessie is seated with the white skirt.
Angela is on the far right.
They also showed us the fruit processing unit, which PSA helped to put into place. It consists of two rooms. One room has a stove for heating the fruit and another room has various tools for preserving the fruit. One of the women mentioned that they have had difficulty working in the room with the stove because it gets way too hot and there is not enough ventilation. So when they used the fruit preserve unit in the past, they would end up heating the fruit outside using fires. Another difficulty they mentioned was the fact that they didn't have energy, which they need for a freezer. I was unclear as to why this was a necessity, and never quite figured it out. If you used local fruits, I would think you would be able to heat them and make them into a jam which could be canned. But I do not exactly know much about preserving fruit - perhaps you need to stick things in the freezer or fridge at some point.
The fruit processing unit
that is never used.
The main problem with the food processing unit, though, is that they aren't using it! The women explained to us that while they know how to make the fruit preserves, they don't know how to market them and who to market them to. It appears that PSA installed all of the equipment and trained them on how to make the fruit preserves, but did not provide any type of business training. This really illustrated for me CEN's role in the community, or what CEN's role should be: promoting soft skills, such as learning how to discover things for themselves and business networking. While PSA has done a lot of good work in Suruacá and in neighboring communities, it has been-from what I can tell-ad hoc projects to address specific needs: water, electricity, training in specific crafts, etc. However, what PSA is lacking is a more general-skills training in broader areas like how to run a business or-broader still-problem solving. These types of skills would allow the communities to act more independently. Rather than the women waiting around for PSA or someone else to address their problem of finding a market, they could research and take the steps necessary to address this issue themselves.
Today we also had a meeting with Leonidas, who has been the community president for 2 years. He showed us the water pump where the community gets a lot of their running water. The pump uses solar energy, so we saw that when a cloud blocked the sun the pump slowed down. Suruacá does have other sources of running water, though, so it is pretty consistent.9
The new solar water pump.
After lunch we went to the school briefly for a performance. It turns out they had prepared something especially for us! A couple of kids read some poems, and then the 8th grade girls performed a skit. It was so hilarious - I wished I had brought the video camera. They were acting out that they were filming a scene from a Hollywood movie. The scene went something like this: Woman is busy at home doing some chores, the postman comes to the door to deliver a letter, the woman opens the letter and faints for some reason (I never figured out what the reason was - but that didn't prevent me from enjoying the skit!). Now, the funny part was that after take one of the scenes the "director" kept asking the "actors" to redo the scene with several different feelings/moods. The first was melodramatic, then they had melancholy, and then more sexual (which of course had the other students in the audience rolling on the floor with laughter), and some other different moods. At the end of the skit, it turns out that after all of those different tries the video camera wasn't even on. I could understand enough from their acting to get the gist of what was going on without even understanding the lines. It was really quite creative and well acted!
The telecenter's photo-electric system.
The batteries and controller are
housed in the little house.
This afternoon we met with the telecenter monitors. We spoke some about their individual lives and also about the telecenter itself. We spent some time trying to fix various computer problems. We learned that the community only uses one out of their 3 machines, because the other 2 are old Linux machines which people find under-powered, difficult to use and offer few applications.10 They prefer using windows on the newer machine. Also, they explained that because some of the batteries are "low" they seem to start and stop erratically. Or at least that is what they think is happening. Apparently the batteries are supposed to last for a minimum of 5 years, but it has not even been 4 years yet.11
Suruacá's telecenter.
The photo-voltaic system
can be seen in the back of the photo
This evening after speaking with Bob by Skype we went out to have a beer with Djalma, since it was our last night in the communities. Well, Angela will be back later during her trip, but I will be leaving for quite some time probably. I sure hope to come back, though, especially if I can learn more Portuguese!
8. PSA is a leading NGO in the region and partnered with USAID and Bob Bortner with the implementation of the original telecenter installations in Suruacá and Maguari.
9. Suruacá was the pilot community to implement a diesel-powered water system about 10 years ago. Later systems build in other communities in the region applied lessons learned in Suruacá. As result, Suruacá's system was not large enough to satisfy all the communities growing demands. Earlier this year a new solar-powered system was implanted by PSA. The old system remains as a backup to the new system.
10. One of the Linux machines isn't even booting. Angela tried to fix it, but it appears as though the operating system will need to be completely reinstalled. Angela didn't have the time or expertise to do it and we're not sure it's even worth all the hassle. CEN will try to locate a couple of newer machines to replace the old Linux machines.
11. CEN is leading a drive to replace some of the damaged batteries. Please consider sponsoring a share in one of the replacement batteries by clicking here.