Cartão Postal de Paraty

Cartão Postal de Paraty
Originally uploaded by Fernanda Marques.

Beautiful.... this is Paraty, where the Desafio Solar Brasil 2009 will take place.

Biofuel, for or against?

I get arguments from the horse's mouth, from both sides. For, from the president of Petrobras' new biofuel company, Petrobras Biocombustivel; against, from ecology professors from the best research centres in the country... And what am I to make of it?

Mr Kardec, the president of Petrobras Biocombustivel, a student of mine, tells me that the world needs biofuel to diversify its energy sources, fight against CO2 emissions and global warming. But that only a few countries in the world have the space and the climate to grow biofuel crops, like Brazil, for example. Here, biofuel crops will not take the place of food crops, or of the forest, or of indigenous people he says. There's a need, there's a market and Brazil has the potential to grow into a sizeable competitor. Biofuel crops are diversified - the oil isn't only produced from sugar cane here, but also from sunflower, mamona (see pic), soya, and others. And Brazil's Science and Technology Research council has just released R$4.5 billion for research into biofuel, including research into the use of microalgae to produce energy... So the race is on and Brazil has already jumped off the starting blocks.

Now what do the ecologists say to all this? Well. Biofuel is not a totally clean energy, because producing it produces carbon emissions. "The amount depends on the crop used, the cleanests being sunflower and ethanol" tells me Mr Kardec. For my ecologists friends from the Fiocruz Foundation, biofuel crops are only trouble. They are against. Acres and acres of monocultures are a disaster for biodiversity. For the soil. For the workers too - they work in near slavery conditions for a miserable salary.

I need more to make up my mind really... But my gutfeeling tells me biofuel is far from being all bad.

I will investigate more.

One day at UFRJ...

Caique and Esminia doing the coverage of the event















Flavio, Maxwell and Jose Clenio proud of their work















The girls doing their show

Rio, here we come!

Just imagine the mess: a busload of teenagers storming in on the literature department of a public University, happy, full of adrenaline, ready to invade the place...

The bus trip from Macae to Rio went surprisingly smoothly - the kids were anxious, with this mixture of anticipation and anxiety actors know well: stagefright. But then, once in the hallway of the 'Faculdade de Letras' they forgot all about knots in the belly and simply took over the place. The 40 students from the Colegio dos Pescadores were there, at UFRJ, to present their work, our work, and they didn't give anyone the chance to ignore them. There were dance shows, plays, panels, films, paintings - all the result of the work done in the school over the past years.

The kids probably didn't fully grasp the meaning of their presence there, for us, for the project, for the University. Our work is part of a social project ran by UFRJ, as part of their 'extension' programme. Our work is an attempt by the University, still considered a motor of social change in Brazil, to bring directly to the community the work of its experts. To share the knowledge it produces. To reduce the abyssal inequalities that exist in this country. Rare are the opportunities for people from the favela educated in government schools to enter a public University. They are kept out of it - what a contradiction! - by an appalling public education system and an unfair selection process, which favours rich kids educated in private schools. But now our kids got in there once, and may this moment motivate them to want to come back in a couple of years. Many of them are good and clever enough - they have all the genetic material for it, and if anything impedes them, then it is nurture, their environment, not nature that is to blame.

A day on the island

People Power

World's 'first eco nightclub' to open

ITN - 2 hours 45 minutes ago

The "world's first eco nightclub" is due to open later in London with a high-tech danceflooor that generates electricity when danced on.

Surya - Sanskrit for Sun God - which admits cyclists and walkers for free, is the brainchild of property developer Andrew Charalambous, aka Dr Earth, who has invested £1 million of his own cash.

The club in Pentonville Road, Islington, north London, has its own wind turbine and solar energy system and there are plans to donate any surplus electricity to local residents....

You can read the rest of the story here.

It would be great if this were serious... It seems so simple, why not use people to produce energy? All clubs, and gyms, and schools, and dance studios should be like this. I support People Power.

I'm in Holland!

I've been in Europe for 10 days, filming the Frisian Solar Challenge, a solar boat race taking place in Friesland in the North of Holland. You can watch our films and read about the race on our team's blog.

Of turtles, and death, and gold

This is the turtle that the kids found on the beach near the school, tangled in a fishing net, a few months ago. The poor thing's got a big tumour (you can see it if you look closely) on its left forelimb, probably due to water pollution...

Many things land on the dirty strip of sand that runs along the school... most of them sad reminders of the brutal and dirty reality our students live in.

The day when the body of a young teenager, dead, strangled, landed on that beach, I stopped, horrified, to think. What a violent, brutal world these kids live in. How close to death do they live! And what kind of a person does living so close to death and dirt make you? What becomes of your perception of life, of people, of good and bad? Every time I go to the school I hear a new story, the terrible life story of one of our students. Many lost their parents to drug trafficking, killed, assassinated. Many live very close to drug trafficking and are probably directly involved in it, maybe acting as couriers or sentry: they're the ones who crack fireworks when the police arrives in the favela, to warn the dealers. (The noise of these fireworks regularly wakes me up at night, coming from all surrounding favelas.) Many of the kids also live far away from their parents, who had to leave them with an aunt or neighbour to go and look for work far away.

What a hard, unforgiving life. I wonder then: how do these kids even manage to come to school, to sit and listen, even undisciplined as they are, to our lessons? If this is the only world they know, what can they expect from school? Surely, nothing. Least of all, that it should help them get out of that world of theirs. They know they're bound to remain in the favela, and perpetuate the situation... Who cares about school then....

But no, we cannot think like that. And many students are there to remind us that there is hope, that there is gold among all this dirt. The bright, the curious, the avid students, they're gold. And there are some in this school. They're the ones we have to work for.

French connection

In Macae, I have started giving French classes to a group of really keen students who asked me to. So after classes on Fridays, we sit down in the refectory with Uelinton, Aurelio, Felipe, and talk about France and learn a bit of French. Our last class was about French culture, French food to be more specific. So we talked (dreamt!) about French bread, crêpes and croissants, about cheese and wine... Things that these kids have never seen or tasted but that most of them had heard of - like Uelinton, who'd heard about the Brie in a local TV series (telenovela) and about the crêpe suzette in a cartoon... I'd love to make them taste all these things, but they're, obviously, really expensive here. I'll try and organise a crêpe cooking class with them...

Room with a view

The view (nearly) from my window here in Santa Teresa. This picture's not very good, but I like the sky in it...

No, Rio's not always sunny... It's been really cold and rainy recently, 'winter' is coming!

Rio Graffitis

Dreams of a canal that's clean and blue...

The canal near the school in Macae - it's very, very dirty, more like an open air sewer than a canal ...

Um dia...

This week we worked with a poem by Arnaldo Antunes with one of our classes of 10-11 year-olds:

Um dia

1) sujar o pé de areia pra depois lavar na água
2) esperar o vaga-lume piscar outra vez
3) ouvir a onda mais distante po trás da mais próxima
4) não esperar nada acontecer
5) se chover, tomar chuva
6) caminhar
7) sentir o sabor do que comer
8) ser gentil com qualquer pessoa
9) barbear-se no final da tarde
10) ao se deitar para dormir, dormir

(Arnaldo Antunes is a poet but also a musician and artist, he worked with Marisa Monte and Carlinhos Brown as the Tribalistas...)

So we asked the kids to do the same thing as him: list 10 things that they would like to do one day, 10 desires.... The result was great, here are some of their sentences:

One day....

Walk on top of an elephant
Ride a giraffe
Have a strawberry milkshake
Go to the cinema
Jump into a river that's clean and blue*
Know how to sing in French
Go to Paris to have fun
Buy a country house for my mum and dad
Swim in a sea of chocolate
Take my girlfriend to have an ice-cream

*See picture above for explanation

Wesley, proud of his painting

Notice New York in the foreground of the painting, and the favela (MV, for Malvina, the favela where they live) in the background.

This painting was supposed to illustrate a short story, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, about the first steps of man on the moon.... And the kids managed to drop the favela in the middle of it all! Dani, with whom they did this work, was devastated - 'It's got nothing to do with Drummond! Why do they always have to come back to these themes, favelas, guns and drugs?'

National day of the book! Success?

Last week on Friday was the National Day of the book. We had decided to organise an event in the school, to use this day to read, study and talk about books, writing, reading and literature in general. So we invited a professor from the university (UFRJ), who's also a writer of books for children and adolescents, to come and talk to the kids. And we organised workshops of storytelling, poetry, illustration... and told everyone in the school that Friday afternoon was to be left free for the day of the book.

Come Friday afternoon: we were exhausted, because organising an event like this around here is not easy, and the kids were in hysterics. The first part of the afternoon was for them to present the work they had been working on for the past two weeks. One of my groups refused at the last minute to present the mini play they'd been working on... the others presented their poster, book and cartoon story. After that it was time for them to choose the workshops they wanted to do. And by then it was total chaos!

But I think overall the event was a success. Many of the kids attended the workshops. The younger ones, who had studied Georgina's books, were really impressed by her presence there. They could barely believe that it was her, a writer!, flesh and bone, there talking to them. They hugged her, touched her, mesmerised. A real writer! This was very touching.

So I think they got something out of the event and out of the work we had done beforehand. These kids don't read, not because they don't want to, but because it's not part of their parents sculture. There are no books at home. No magazines and no films either. They live in a world that's devoid of such cultural manifestations, of such intellectual stimulation. When I think about it, the difference between me and them scares me: I was born, and have always lived in a world that's absolutely full of that stuff. I cannot think of myself without this in my life. It's such a big part of me. What I know, what I've read, seen, heard is what defines me!

A typical class...

We get in. Five students are messing around - listening to their mp3 player, playing with their phone, fighting, flirting... We have to wait another 10 minutes for the rest of the class to get in and sit down. And then it takes another 10 minutes to divide them into 4 groups. I leave the room with mine, to go work outside, in the refectory or under a tree in front of the school. 10 minutes later we're ready to start. I start. Today we're reading short stories. A few minutes into the exercise Mairone goes off to pick the fruits of the tree we're sat under, I tell him to come back. Roger asks if he can go to the bathroom, I say no not yet. And Anderson asks me if there are badam trees in France. Now guys, we're reading short stories here, and we need to choose one to present for the day of the book, I mean, this will be marked, don't you think you should be paying attention?? And so on. Why is it that these kids have absolutely no attention span? Why is it that they see absolutely no obligation in listening to you and paying attention to your class? The problem is not that they're not interested in learning or are not curious, it's that they will not accept to be forced to sit down and think during a predetermined period of time. For me, they've all got ADHD. And no respect at all for the school, the teacher, and whatever knowledge these can give them. But when we get to understanding and analysing the text, they all do a brilliant job! Even ADHD Mairone, who's actually the cleverest, and this might explain the hyperactivity. How frustrating! How much time lost every class trying to keep the group together and focused!

National day of the book - preview

Erica - turma 601

... swimming in Brazilian literature

We've started working with literature with the kids, to prepare for the National 'Day of the book' on the 18th April. It's been fun - and hard work for me - looking for interesting texts and books to use. I didn't know much about Brazilian literature, I now know a little bit more.... Clarice Lispector, Cecilia Meireles, Fernando Caio De Abreu, Carlos Drummond de Andrade: I am discovering amazing writers and really interesting literature. I particularly like the 'chronicles' - cronicas - typically Brazilian short texts originally destined for newspapers. A bit like clever and well written columns. They can be commentaries on recent events, or just reflexions, on details, the minute and inconsequential. And so some of them can be very poetic, like A arte de ser feliz (The art of being happy) by Cecilia Meireles, which I am studying with a group of 13-year olds...

In action

Flashback - week 4 and 5 - Les triplettes a la rescousse

A few weeks ago I brought Belleville Rendez-vous to show to the kids and use as a starting point to practice story-writing. Belleville Rendez-vous is an absolutely brilliant animation film set in France and in New-York in the 50's. I asked the kids to focus on one character, to then write a description of him/her, paying particular attention to the character's relationship with objects. Most characters in the film use objects in really inventive ways: hoover and lawn mower become massaging instruments in the hands of the grandma Ms Souza, the triplettes owe their survival to their makeshift instruments - fridge, hoover and newspaper - and pans, hats and shoes turn into arms in the final battle against the French mafia.

I was worried the students might not get the story or might find the whole thing too weird and too 'foreign'. But I was wrong, most classes liked it. They understood everything, caught most details and found it funny.

I explained to them that the French are called 'frogs' by the British and Americans because they eat frogs, like the triplettes, and that I too have eaten frog thighs before... They absolutely loved the story...

Happy Easter!

For Easter there were various cultural events around Santa Teresa (my neighbourhood, see pic), including a carnival 'bloco' yesterday afternoon - the Carioca love carnival so much they can't help spreading it across the whole year! The whole thing was a wonderful, and so Brazilian, mixture of sacred and profane, of religious and pagan... The crowd following the musicians, singing salacious carnival tunes, was in gaudy outfits and wearing plastic crowns of thorns on their heads... with, in the background, arty projections of the passion of Christ and famous representations of it... all this washed down with beer and sweat... wonderful!

Flashback - week 3 - Projeto Morrinho

On that week, Leonardo arrived determined to show a documentary about TV Morrinho to the kids. I am not sure he knew exactly what he wanted to do with this material, which questions and discussions he wanted to trigger among the students, and I blame him for that. We could have used this material a lot better had we been prepared for it.

Projeto Morrinho is a really great project, started a few years ago by teenagers from a small favela in Rio. The kids started building miniature models of the favela using bricks and found material, and using them as the set for games in which they reproduced situations from their everyday life in the favela. Their models got noticed and attracted the attention of designers, artists and documentary makers who helped them to create an NGO and show their work outside the favela. The transformation of what started as a game, a joke, into a work of art in its own right, culminated in the Venice Biennale 2007, where the boys from Morrinho project showed a huge model of a favela. There are pictures of the models here on flickr.

The documentary we showed during our classes retraces the history of the project and shows the boys travelling around Europe to show their models at art shows and exhibitions.

For me this project is interesting because it shows the power of inventiveness and creativity. It shows that anyone, whatever their environment and their cultural background can find the means and ways to express themselves through art in a way that's revealing and interesting to the world. On the other hand, you can argue that the favela is such a laden topic, the symbol of social inequality, drug trafficking and the failure of democracy in Brazil, and the entire world, that any representation of it is bound to be interesting to the middle class and to find its way to our TV sets and art galleries...

an improvised French class at playtime

Flashback - week 2 - in which I am called a French witch

The second week was by far the hardest. The kids didn't trust us yet and were clearly testing us. We started teaching on Thursday morning under a rain of paper balls and finished on Friday afternoon, exhausted, after having had to separate two students fighting during the class. We spent most of our time trying to discipline the kids, failing, and losing our temper. I lost mine many times and became really hard and strict with the kids as a result - and became known as the French terrorist witch among the students!

The real problem was that we weren't ready. We hadn't prepared our classes and this is a mistake no teacher should make. We all knew that, and yet it seemed impossible to get everyone to sit down and decide on the content of classes at least for that week. The reason for this is still a mystery to me. Were we scared of suggesting ideas to the group? Was it the fear of planning something totally inappropriate that was paralysing us? Personally, I felt that I really needed to sit down with everyone to discuss my ideas and get them approved by them. I had tons of ideas but felt really insecure as to whether they would be appropriate for the kids, and rightly so. I barely knew them, barely knew the kind of life they lead, the kind of place they live in and kind of education they have, at home and at school.

Roger and Anderson - our first photography lesson...

Flashback - week 1

Week one was a bit of an anti-climax... After all the talking, philosophising, theorising, dreaming, fantasizing we'd done about the project, reality couldn't really live up to expectations... And it was just as well, we needed to get our feet back on the ground. Reading Vigotsky, Foucault and Gramsci was enlightening, but it couldn't help us to deal with the realities of the school.

I arrived half-way through the week to find the school in total chaos: general start-of-year clean up. All students, parents and teachers were supposed to help cleaning and doing the school up, but in fact, the only ones working were us - the teachers sent by the UFRJ-mar project. And there was a lot of work to do, there still is. I helped reorganising the library, others did heavier work like breaking toilets, walls, replacing broken roof tiles, painting... Basically, the school's got so little money that it can't afford to pay anyone to do all this, and has to rely on voluntary work. The library is still being relocated and so is the computer room - so for the moment there's no computer and no internet in the school for us to use. But there will be at some point soon, and I intend to create a blog or a website with some of my students...

After a couple of days of cleaning up we finally got to start the academic year, to start teaching. The first classes were spent asking the students about themselves, what they liked and what they had done last year in PCSA (communication and art, my subject) - film, newspaper, theatre... None of them seemed to have found last year's projects particularly exciting, most couldn't remember what they had done and when they could, only had criticisms to make.... Hm, encouraging, is that what I want them to be like at the end of the year?? It basically seemed like they hadn't taken anything away from lats year's PCSA classes and weren't that bothered about it... First blow to our initial enthusiasm. But it's ok, students are like this we were told, they usually don't realise that they're learning...

I teach five classes, of all levels - ages from 11 to 14-15 years old. There are about 30 kids in each class. 150 names to remember. Plus the staff. Ouch! I still don't know all of their names, and still mix Maique up with Mairone, Cleyton with Uilson, Kettelen with Karoline. We've also got a Victor Hugo, a Roger Walker, a Kennedy, a Washington and an Elvis... the list is endless, they've all got extremely inventive names!

with Anderson in front of the school

picture taken by Roger - turma 901

I'm late!

Yes I'm late. I've been working in the school - Colegio Municipal dos Pescadores - for 6 weeks already but I'm only starting this blog today. It's not that I haven't felt the need to write about all this until today, on the contrary. It's that starting at the school has been rather overwhelming! The kids, the heat, the dirt, the mess, the lack of organisation... you'll understand what I mean soon, I'm afraid these will be recurring themes of this humble diary... which aspires only - I should really make this clear now - to serve as therapy for me, and to offer you a more regular and detailed update on my life here...