Curitiba Pilgrimage 9 (11/24 – Jovens)

Fonte dos Mosaicos, Cascavel

Palotina – Give a kiss to Arnold

Janete, Nancy, and Jordan

We had a reasonable wake-up time, and Jordana and Janete were already out of the house by the time we got up.  On our way to the pick-up point, Jussieur drove us by a public park known as Fonte dos Mosaicos, where locals go for fresh drinking water.  We filled our water bottles and then headed to the house where other members of our group were staying and the van was parked.

We drove for an hour or more to the city of Palotina and pulled up in front of a school.  We were greeted by the principal Silvio Schmidt, an Anglican priest on sabbatical, and who said a few things to us in German.  That got my head spinning, as I tried to think of something to say back in German, which was the last language I had studied prior to an extended visit to Germany in 2006.  This end of Brazil, like the adjacent countries of Argentina and Uruguay, was heavily settled by Germans, Italians, and Japanese, not only after World War II but also before.

The principal led us into a classroom of high school students, older than the group we met with yesterday.  As soon as he said that we were California, the room came alive with murmurings, bad imitations, and laughter about Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Since I work for the State Department of Industrial Relations, and the Governor is my ultimate boss, this was a great opening for me to do my own bad imitation and say “Yah, I vork for Arnold” while flexing.  Nancy also came alive for the kids — this is absolutely her environment — we made a big deal of telling them in Portuguese that we’re married, and Nancy embraced and kissed me, generating more shrieks of laughter.

We said some things about ourselves, with Roberto translating.  As Roberto has become more familiar with the stories, he has said more and more in translation, filling in parts that we forget.  He especially likes to describe Open Cathedral and how Nancy goes around U.N. Plaza summoning people to join the service.  After our introductions we asked for questions, and they wanted to know first what we thought about Obama and why the U.S. won’t sign international environmental accords.  They also wanted to know what we thought of their President Lula.  We tried to explain as best we could in terms that would register with this audience, making no secret of the fact that we are all politically progressive.  I said that people in the United States (even though it’s probably okay, we try to avoid calling ourselves Americans since we’re in another American country) don’t know enough about leaders of other countries, but that my impression about Lula is that he is popular and tries to do things to improve the lives of ordinary people.  I explained that this was also what I like about Obama — that he seems focused on trying to solve problems rather than on what he can do to get reelected.  The teacher here or perhaps the one in the next class or both, asked lengthy questions with a serious face — she may have been more interested in expressing her views to us than our give-and-take with the class.  The students were just animated, likely due to the fact that they were just days away from the end of the school year and summer vacation.

We reminded the students that we were there on a church pilgrimage and shared a few impressions about our visits with the landless the day before.  Everyone then wanted pictures.  A girl in the back held up a sign, written on a piece of notebook paper, which said “Give a kiss to Arnold.”  I went back and posed with her and her sign and said I would get it to the Governor. (I don’t know the Governor, but my agency director does.)  We all crowded in for group pictures; we shook hands and hugged, and then everyone left the room, smiling and laughing for the mid-day break.  As we stood in front of the office before leaving the grounds, a boy from the class approached Nancy to tell her that he is a Christian; and seeing us made him a little less self-conscious about who he is.

There was some grumbling and wonderment about where we were going for lunch.  We went into a restaurant down the street with a buffet and meat counter on the side.  At the end of the line, someone weighed the plate, said what it cost, and handed back a card with a number on it.  Other staff came to the tables to take drink orders and glanced down at our cards, apparently to make a mental note of the numbers, and add the cost to the charge for the buffet.  The guesswork about totals became moot, however, when someone collected all the cards and said that lunch was being paid for by . . . well, it was never clear to me who picked up this tab.  Near the front door and cashier were a few desserts and coffee — cafezinho — at no extra charge, which appears to be customary for Brazilian restaurants, or at least the ones we’ve visited.

Farther up the street we walked through and around the church of Paróquia Cristo Rei.  There was no one to meet us there.  Michael said the last pastor had left suddenly a few months ago, and since then the parish has been using supply clergy.

We returned to the school.  I fetched my computer from the bus and the gate was unlocked to allow me to enter the school grounds — the school having been emptied out completely for the midday break.  I followed Principal Schmidt into the office and all the way back to a large break room where I could plug in and do some writing in private for at least a few minutes.  Gradually more and more people came in, teachers and staff returning to wait for the start of the afternoon sessions and a few of our group.

When the next class period started, we went into another classroom for a repeat performance.  This group was nearly as animated as the last.  Nancy saw that they had texts for studying English and got them all to a few things aloud in English.  Kate sang; this time, for a change of pace and in honor of a culture that loves to dance, she sang “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady.”

We then left Palotina and returned to Cascavel for our last stop at the Molivi center (Molivi is an acronym derived from the full name “Movimento para Libertação de Vidas”).  Molivi is a detention and rehabilitation center for males from the ages of 9 to 18, who have committed drug offenses.  We first walked through the facility, stopping at one end to hear about a women’s sewing circle that had once operated there to provide women whose husbands were incarcerated and then others in the community with a means of self-support and an opportunity to learn a trade.  We walked back to the other end of the facility, to what was probably a classroom, and sat in a circle with a group of young males, who were decidedly less animated than other students with whom we had been in the last two days.  We were also joined by some staff members. We said who we were, and they said their names, their ages (at least a couple were small boys), and how long they had been in the center (often down to the day).  All were there for drug offenses and to deal with addictions; I heard crack mentioned more than once as a particular problem among youth in the region around Cascavel.  I think Deborah said or asked some things to try to draw the boys out and a couple told their stories, essentially about developing addictions and committing crimes such as robbery to sustain those addictions while living without any family or social support structure.  When asked, one of the boys said he far preferred the discipline at Molivi to his life outside, and he feared what would happen when he returned to the outside.  I believe we were told that the usual term of someone’s stay at the center is six months.

After Molivi we had some free time together, first at a park surrounding a lake in the center of town, and then walking through a shopping area to find an ATM. We then went back to São Lucas where the parishioners were hosting us for dinner.  We had driven by the Fonte dos Mosaicas, and a couple of group members walked back there to fill up our water bottles.  Nancy and I then were fortunate enough to be able to go home (we all often refer to wherever we are staying as “home”) to take a shower before returning for the dinner and program.

We had another wonderful meal and another opportunity to tell the São Lucas parishioners about ourselves and what we had observed over the past few days. As at Ascensão, there was a young woman who had spent time in the U.S. available to translate and give Roberto some relief from the chore.  By the time we were done, I think it was close to 11, and we were told that we had to leave town by 7:00 the next morning in order to make a planned 9:30 a.m. meeting at the Itaipu Dam and Hydroelectric Plant.  Nevertheless, Nancy wanted to accept Jussieur and Janete’s offer to take us for a tour to see the Christmas lights in the city center.  We then went home to talk some more and for me to get on e-mail.  We exchanged gifts and discussed their plans, and we shared more pictures from Nancy’s I-phone.  We seemed to wake up more and find it harder to stop talking the later it got.