After 6 years I am finally back in Salvador, to see Bahia Street, the school for which Alex and I provided money to purchase a new school building. 

Pictures:  http://flickr.com/photos/97143488@N00/sets/72157594347542864/

I arrived into Salvador on Wednesday and went to my hotel/apartment called Barra Flat.  Everyone is very nice there, which is sometimes uncommon for Brazilian business.  I called Rita to let her know I had arrived and she beckoned me to come to the school, so I wrote down the address after some difficulty.  Talking in Portuguese on the phone is still very difficult for me; I really rely on being able to see the person's face to aid my comprehension.  I wasn't sure where it was, so I went down to the lobby to ask.  One of the bellboys there lived in the area, but he had not heard of the street.  However, he assured me a cab driver would know, so I hopped in a cab with the laptop that I had brought for Rita.

As we got closer and closer, my worries intesified, probably due very little to the actuality outside.  What I saw, however, was that this was a busy neighborhood, and it looked to me like it was on the edge of a slum.  My greatest fear, and I think I share this with a lot of Brazilians and a lot of tourists, is that I will mistakenly stumble into a slum with no sense of my bearings.  Too many Brazilians have warned "don't go into a favela, they will kill you there."  I know this is pure hyperbole and that paranoia seems to be a cultural trait that rivals even my the people of my own country, but at that moment, those thoughts echoed in my head.  We had to stop and ask for directions once we had arrived in the general area, which worried me even more: this would of course let everyone know that I did not know where I was going.  After a few minutes we wound up a small hill, and then rolled around a small road, which descended through a small alley paved with cobblestones.  The buildings were dillapidated.  After about a hundred feet we stopped at the address Rita had given me.  I was relieved to see her appear immediately after I knocked.  The door was open, but there was an iron gate in the way with a padlock on it.  She let me in.  I had arrived, and safely!

I quickly found out that I had not come on a normal day.  This was the week of "gincana" which as far as I can tell is a celebratory competition.  The girls were broken into teams of four, with names like "gatas in ação" or "chicks of action."  They compete as teams and over the course of the week tabulate their points.  There were various forms of competition, judged by teachers or visitors like me. 

One of the most amusing was when six opaque plastic jars were placed on the table, filled with liquid and something else.  Natalia, a teacher and graduate student from Sao Paulo, organized and ran the event.  One girl from each team was selected; she had to stick her hand into each jar while blindfolded and then whisper what she thought it was to Juliana, one of the younger teachers there.  Most of the girls stuck their hand in only for a second before yanking it out and hurriedly whispering to Juliana, who then recorded their answer .  Everyone was laughing, and the girls not involved in the competition were rapt at attention.  After everyone had tried each of the six jars, the items were removed and placed on the table.  The items were all plastic toys: a rat, a ladybug, a frog, a snake and a spider.  Natalia then read the answers given as Feo tabulated the points on the wall.  Sample answers were "a shrimp" for the rat, "an onion" for the ladybug, and "a plant" for the spider.  It was hilarious to witness and see the looks on the girls faces when they saw what they really felt.  It was also fitting for me, as I noticed the connections and disconnections between what they felt and what was really there, as I experienced the same thing only moments before, in the cab, experiencing my own reality grazing up against the new reality I found myself in.

On Thursday I returned again to the school.  Afterwards Rita and I sat and talked, and she showed me the upstairs, which is still under construction.  It was really enlightening to hear her take on things, and I was suprised how much I understood of her Portuguese.  It was really fun.  She told me how they were able to purchase the building for R$ 40,000.  When Margaret from Bahia Street visited for the first time she expressed some worry because the building was completely destroyed, and she wondered how she would tell her board of directors, and how she could talk to the people who had loaned the money to make the purchase.  I really laughed at this, because after spending a day there I was convinced this was the best money I had ever spent in my life.  Being around the girls for even a moment makes you want to commit anything to them.  It is obviously a place of safety and happiness for them, and I imagine that is not always the case in their lives.  I told Rita I thought the building was "maravilhoso" or "wonderful."

On Friday the girls had the last day of gincana.  Normally they had their usual lessons of Math, Portuguese, English and others, for most of the day, with gincana at the very end.  Today, however, gincana started early.  They had a competition to see which team could jump rope the longest.  One of the teams never made it past one as the girls spun the rope too fast for the jumper to enter.  She was very frustrated by that.  Another competition involved skits where the girls had to make a commercial for sunblock.  They had ten minutes to come up with the skits in their entirety.  The last of the competitions the teams were told they had to take a song and use the same lyrics but change the genre, going from hip-hop to classical, for example.  The last team to compete had three of the younger girls in leotards and tutus while the oldest sang in a beautiful voice in opera style.  She truly was amazing, and to compose the song in a few minutes made it doubly so.  As she sat down the teachers asked if she sang in church and she responded that she did.  I was asked to be a judge again for the final competition, and the sight of those shy 8 year olds in tutus dancing while their older mentor sang alone in front of sixty people made my heart melt, so I voted for them.

Feo and Rita then tabulated the points.  Over the course of the week there had been various competitions, and different teams had succeeded in different ways.  The winning team, in the end, was the same one with the young girls in the tutus dancing to opera.  They exploded when they won.  Rita noticed that some of the other teams were disappointed, and made an inspiring speech about what the gincana was about: teamwork.  She said that the team that won, in the end, competed as a team, was not negative towards their teammates, and supported each other over the course of the week.  I really got the importance of the gincana right there, and it was inspiring to see Rita recollect everyone at the end of the week for a common purpose.  The winners took home gold medallions suspended around their necks by a ribbon; they all proceed to bite on the metal as if to prove the consistency of the gold, but everyone got medals of some kind, even me, chocolate medallions made to look like Canadian currency.  As the girls left with their mothers they clutched the medals and showed them to everyone around.

This week has been different, where the girls returned to their normal class schedules, which meant I only got to see them at lunches, or in the few minutes before they left the school for home.  I forgot that this week was a vacation, no school on Thursday and Friday, so that meant I would only see them on the final Monday before I left for Rio.  Not realizing this, I did not come for lunch on Monday or Tuesday because I was trying to get work done, which meant I saw them very little those days.  Oh, I regretted that.  I did get to spend some time with them after school as I showed them the pictures I had taken of them at the gincana, which happened to be in the same account as a bunch of other pictures.  I showed them my ex-girlfriend, who looks Brazilian.  They all said she was very pretty, and were amazed that she didn't like me anymore, which was funny and flattering.  I did spend Wednesday during lunch with them, which was terrific.  One of the older girls, Rafaella, kept trying very hard to properly pronounce my full name ("Christopher, Christopher, Christopher" over and over), and I asked them all simple questions in English.  The terrific thing about kids is that you can ask them ten times to repeat something and they really couldn't care less, because the urgency to tell you something is so much stronger than their concerns about communication problems.

Lula, the president of Brazil for the last four years, was re-elected here last Sunday.  One of the assignments at the school was to write down what they wished for Lula to do.  Their responses are heartwarming and heartbreaking:

"Educação, saude, emprego, compromissos, amor, carinho"  ("Education, health, employment, compromise, love and caring")

"Senhor presidente.  Lula eu te amo é goste muito de você.  Eu axo que você  o melhor presidente para o Brasil eu te amo." ("Mr. President.  Lula, I love you and like you very much.  I think that ou are the best president for Brazil.  I love you.")

"Eu gostaria que para melhorar a minha vida.  Eu moraria numa casa melhor que seja menos perigosa."  ("I would like you to improvde my life.  I would live in a better place that is less dangerous")

"Quero que não mude a Bahia (Street)"  ("I don't want you to move Bahia Street.") 

"Lula eu quero que você dê casas para as pessoas que moram na rua." ("Lula I want you to give a place to live to people that live on the streets."  by Vanessa) 

I have to leave for the airport mid day on Monday so I will not get to say goodbye after school.  I know I am going to bawl when I leave on Monday.  It has meant so much to me to be around these brave and beautiful little girls.