Day 26: Traveling

Day 26: Traveling

On Monday the 9^th we travelled to the sertão.  As I have said previously the sertão is a dry desert area in the interior of Brazil. I have read, studied, listened, to multiple things concerning the sertão but experiencing it is a whole different thing.

To begin with the bus driver, in true Brazilian fashion, was over an hour late in picking up us. We had to drive for 5 hours until we reached the part of the sertão in which we were staying.

The things that I saw along the way were: dirty, dead trees, dryness, and homes made out of mud. Why? The homes in this part of the country are separated by miles from each other. There may not be another family for at least 30 minutes, driving. These people are very isolated, and thus they lack education and job opportunity, which leads them to live in the way they do.

When we arrived at the hotel, it was a lot more pleasant than I expected. We were 2 to a room, and there was air conditioning and running water, there was an even a pool. We had a large lunch, and I bought a ton of water at the hotel. I always live in constant fear of being dehydrated, and I wasn’t going to take the chance.

After our meal we sat down to hear Mario talk to us about Diaconia. Diaconia is the NGO with which we work.  Here is a little of their history: they were founded by 12 evangelical churches on July 1^st 1977 in Rio de Janeiro. They mostly worked in the favelas and eventually they moved to Pernambuco, which is the state where I am living. The move to Pernambuco was caused because of the rivers which flow through the state; they saw it as a good area to start educating people.  The reason why they work in Afogados, which is a word being the drowned, is because it is one of the poorest areas in the northeast, which allows for a lot of development.

The word Afogados is ironic. There is no water to drown in in this area; it is more likely to die from lack of water, than from drowning. What Diaconia does to help these people is build cisterns for them to hold water. After they build these water retention devices they teach them how to cultivate the land better and how to help themselves develop. They do not only want to help the people, but they want to give them the tools to help themselves.

We had a few friends along with us from Diaconia (the NGO), and Carbonel (from CCJ). Some of us held a class to try to teach them English. English is so essential, it is literally the key to bettering yourself and your circumstances. With English, these people who are working so hard for their communities could do so much more.

We went to dinner in the town, the hotel was on the outskirts. There was literally no body in the city. The streets were all empty, and all the shops were closed, and it was only 7 or 8 pm. It was a little scary, but at the same time it was a small town in the middle of nowhere, why would they stay open late?

After coming back from dinner a few of us played water polo in the beach. It is almost depressing to think that here we were swimming in a pool full of water, when many people in this area do not have any water at all. It made me really grateful for water, and for the special care that Utah takes with its reservoirs.