weekend report and the prison hospital

So yep this weekend was really nice. Gabriel took us out on Friday and Saturday which was fun, we got to play with the two dogs including their 7 month old golden retriever Mallu, who is huge and not quite aware of that yet, haha. We also took a side trip to Pindamohangaba, a smallish city about 40 min away where all of Tia Camilia's family lives and where lots of my fam has lived in the past. We also went to a pizzaria (pizza is really different in Brazil and pizzarias here are fancy, a nice dinner to go out to.) and some barzinhos, went sofa shopping, and I even ate Subway which here tries so desperately to be like Subway in the US and falls sadly short, haha. But yea it was a relaxing weekend and returning back to the Centro wasn't particularly welcome, haha. But at least it's been sunnier so that'a a relief. I did a bunch of laundry last night and didn't freeze in the process because it's a bit warmer, and that's always a relief, hehee.

Yesterday we went to the prison hospital. When women enter prison in Brazil and they're pregnant, or if they become pregnant (it happens at times, the Brazilians are allowed to have husbands etc visit sometimes) they are taken in their 8th month to the prison hospital to an area for prganant and new mothers. They give birth there and get to stay with their babies for 6 months, in order to form a bond and to breastfeed them. So we went there with Heidi and talked to women and saw a gajillion adorable babies, including one who was only four days old! the unit was recently taken over by the department of health instead of the prison system, which was really a step in the right direction, as Heidi put it, because now they have actual nurses and doctors--people trained to care about and love their patients, not the guards of the prison system who so often seem to be lacking a soul.... haha. We also visited a man from Cameroon who has been in the hospital for months. He had swallowed the drugs he was taking and had to have a surgery to remove them, and was also so beat up by the police that he can still barely walk. He was sweet though, and speaks about 5 words of Portuguese and that's it. Another Maryknoller who left to go back to the US to start medical school used to go visit him a lot and he was sad because he didn't have people to speak English to, so that's why we went and visited him. It was short since it was time to go and he was a bit distracted because the two nurses who were there (who were really wonderful and chatted a lot with us too, who we were what we were doing etc) were sticking him with an IV sort of thing and his veins weren't cooperating. We told him we had seen the babies and he told us over and over how we just needed to let those women out so they could care for their children. I wish it were that simple. It was heartbreaking though, seeing the mothers--the mãezinhas--I kept thinking about how they must just be counting the days they have with their babies. The bigger babies were so cute but the older they were the sooner you knew they'd get taken away from their moms. However tragic it is, it's much better than it used to be--the time allowed just changed from 4 months to 6 months, and until some years ago the women would have their babies and then be back in the prison without their children the next day. All the time things are getting better, but they were so bad to begin with that it doesn't seem like much.

in São José

so this weekend we're in São José visiting my Tia Camilia, Tio João, and cousins Gabriel and Elisa. Gabriel goes to school in a southern suburb of São Paulo so he picked us up and brought us here which was nice of him.
It's relieving to finally be with some relatives, and to be in a real house with family life etc, and especially to be somewhere I'm familiar with. Happy happy.
Ok that's all for now. =]

e mais ainda!!

Na Parada Gay!! hehe












Chad's girls with us at a waterfall close to Ibiúna, my god they were so cute









At one of the organic farms that also raises animals, yay goats.









Na Parada Gay de novo, com Vanessa, who works with us at ITTC

more pics yay

In the Parque de Luz, outside the Pinacoteca.












Same. The bird really liked that statue thing.

















From the window of José's office at sunset.












Skyline again. The church in the middle with the greenish dome is the Cathedral, and the greenness in front of it is Praça da Sé. We walk through it a lot, and it has a huge homeless population. The first buildings to the left of the praça include both Heidi's office and aparment buildings. The street you see stretching off into the distance between the two big buildings is the street that we walk down to get back home (and up to get to the Praça, literally it's a huge big hill). It's about a15-20 minute walk from the Praça, being Ponto Zero da Cidade.

finally could upload a few pics

My bed in our room in the casa. We have no usable dresser or anything, thus the mess.











Olimpia e eu!!














São Paulo skyline, ugly ugly eh? Hehe

thoughts on the whole prison thing

K well I'm scanning again (letters from the 17th of April, lord it makes me so sad.) and so I have a tiny bit of time to write.
I'm glad we're doing more at ITTC now. Like today I started writing up the pamphlet taht Olimpia and I are doing for the new prisoners in PFC. We're going to have a meeting about it with Heidi in a little bit, when she gets here at 4. We still have lots of work to do on it but at lest something concrete is done. Plus I said this already but yesterday the prison visit was so much better tht we were DOING something, haha. Cuz before we had a lot of time just sitting there after interviewing the women for the pamphlet. Now we're hurrying trying to do as many letters as possible, we have such a huge pile, and Olimpia spent the morning sending the urgent ones and now I'm working back at the beginning of the pile, aka April. =[
Yesterday a bunch of new girls were interveiwed, doing their prelimiary survey info thingy, and Olimpia was doing translation since they only spoke Spanish. There was one from Spain and was only 18. God. Really hits home seeing these young girls, people YOUNGER than me in a prison in a country totally foreign to them. Dunno. But the work that ITTC does is really great. Something I've learned here is that people in prison are people too. It seems a simple enough statement, btu the reality of it is that unless you have some job which deals with prisons, you put blank faces on prisoners, assuming they're "bad" people, and then just stop thinking about it. But, as I'm sure I've said before, most of these women are more victims than anything else, and if they are, just here in this one little prison in São Paulo then how about all the other millions of people in prison the world over? Granted Brazil is notorious for its unfairness etc in its prison systems, but still it just makes me think about how many poeple are caught up and victimized by systems and organizations that are so much bigger than them.
Anyway haveta go this whole getting a visa to go to France thing is still killing me. Who knows maybe I'll end up at ND next year after all, at this rate France won't let me in. Hah.

long weekend, fabulous weekend

Ok I'm alive, but this is the first time I've had internet since Thursday, man. So this last weekend was super amazingly fun but I have just a bit of time to write so this'll be short. Slash I'm watching Play it again, Sam by Woody Allen so Ima be distracted too.
So Friday we went to Ibiúna, a little town about 2 hours away from here. Chad, another Maryknoller just like Heidi lives there with his wife and his two daughters. Chad works with an organic farming coop and does all sorts of cool things like he has a beehive and fruit trees and chickens etc. His wife, Angel, was in the US for a annual meeting but we stayed there the first night and played with his girls who were just wonderfully sweet, ages 7 and 9. Reminded me of Bia and Tessie so it was nice cuz of that. They live in the country and it reminded me a lot of Sitio where my grandparents used to live up until a few years ago and it was just absolutely beautiful. He took us around to some of the different little farms and we talked to some of the farmers, usually there are just two workers for the farms, cuz they're really little, and cuz it's winter right now so there was mostly just lettuce and peas growing, hehe. The next day we went and stayed with Juliana, the babysitter of the girls, and she was super cool. Friday was the Brasilian Valentine's day so we went out and had some fun, not too much esp because the town is little, 40,000 or so, but it was nice to be able to DO something at night. Hehe. We came back on Saturday and on Sunday went to São Paulo's Parada Gay which was a street party with 3 million people in attendance, and therefore fun fun fun. Lots of music and dancing and costumes etc. Today we went to the prison again and this time we got to do a lot of the stuff ourselves, helping the women with the stuff that ITTC staff usually does, but they were short handed today. Olimpia had to translate for a bunch of new prisoners from Spain. Tomorrow we'll be working a lot, we have a lot to. Ok ahveta go we're late to get back to the Casa. Whoopsies. That was just a quick recap hopefully I'll write more later about specific incidents, dunno. Tchau tchau