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 I’m slowly awakening from a fitful sleep on a too-long plane ride from Miami Beach. I changed planes in Rio, and am now beginning to descend into Confins International Airport, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. But I’m still partly asleep, and wondering what I am doing so far from home. I also ponder what adventures are in store for me.
The clouds break and I can see the rolling green hills scared with rich orange patches and tracks of dirt sketched through the grass. A huge open mine is visible, as the plane descends onto the runway.
Dr. João Meira and his two young daughters warmly greet me, along with Luís Vieira and his son and daughter. We load up my one small suitcase and set off for Sete Lagoas, a small town north of Belo Horizonte.
Everything is new to me: the political signs and advertisements colorfully painted on every possible flat surface, the unique method of slowing the down cars through the villages with car bumps high enough to take out the car’s transmission of a careless driver, and all the colorful blossoms.
It’s spring. There’s blue, white, purple, pink and orange bougainvillea on every house, bright orange Royal Poinciana trees in the town plazas and farm fields, and a variety of yellow and purple flowering tress and bushes, not to mention the multicolored hibiscus along the roadside.
As we slow down to for every road bump, I ponder my situation. I’m a Partner’s volunteer from Colorado. My new friends—João and his family, and Luís and his family, are Partners from Minas Gerais, Brazil.
My friend and fellow Partner from the University of Northern Colorado, Bryan Cooke, somehow enticed me to become a Partner and come to Brazil.
Because I am a playground designer and builder, he volunteered me to build a playground for a low-income nursery program that he and other Colorado Partners were assisting. It’s October 1996.
But I am terrified! I have never been to Brazil before. João and Luís are total strangers, and I cannot speak Portuguese—in fact, until I came to Brazil I thought everyone spoke Spanish in Brazil.
And, I have never built anything using the metric system, which is, as I find out later, the measurement system used in Brazil.
Traveler
It’s not that I haven’t traveled before. I came to America from England at age 16. I lived in the Highlands of Guatemala doing earthquake relief work in 1976, and I have traveled as far south as San José, Costa Rica. In my youth I visited close to every state in this country.
But I have never traveled to the Southern Hemisphere. And, although I have a PhD, and feel somewhat educated, I know very little about South America. What I do know is based on friends who grew up in Paraguay.
But I know absolutely nothing about Brazil. Like many Americas, I thought all of Brazil’s population, with exception of a few Indians, was Latino.
I remember reading an article in the Rocky Mountain News about all the people visiting Denver for the World Youth Day—a Catholic celebration for young people.
The story in the paper said everyone coming from South America were Hispanic. But I did know about Brasília, the capitol built on a desolate plateau in 1956, because, as an avid art student in high school in England, I was absolutely fascinated by its construction and its far-out modern buildings.
I had no idea about the size of Brazil (the same as the United States without Alaska and Hawaii), its population (50% of South America), its culture, and the tremendous diversity of people that make up its population—Amerindian, Afro-Brazilian, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, German, Middle-Eastern—and, of course, mixed race.
My incorrect and narrow concept of Brazil was a result of what I call our horizontal perspective of the world—a fascination with Europe, Africa, and an increasing interest in Australia and New Zealand, but little interest or knowledge in the southern part of our own hemisphere.
In schools, news reports, and even travel articles we seem to always be looking east and west, rarely south.
Building a Playground
My Brazilian Partners took me to Creche André Luiz, and showed me the enclosed slab of concrete where I was to build the playground.
After taking measurements—thankfully I brought my trusted imperial standard measuring tape!—we decided to tour the city of Belo Horizonte to purchase the appropriate equipment.
Belo Horizonte is the third largest city in Brazil, with a population of over 3 million. It was the first planned city in South America, and is settled in this giant bowl, surrounded by the rolling hills of Brazil’s interior: thus its name—beautiful horizon in English.
I had fully expected to find playground equipment that I could purchase and then simply install on the playground. My job, I surmised, was to design the playground, select the equipment, and then supervise its installation. I would be able to build the playground without getting my hands dirty.
But no. Here was another of many surprises in store for me!
All the equipment we found in various stores was vintage American playground equipment of the 1950s—metal equipment with sharp edges, protruding spikes, entrapments, and platforms far too high off the ground.
Having been schooled in the latest U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission playground standards, I could not bring myself to use this unsafe equipment. Here my cultural values came into play!
So I decided to design and build my own equipment.
Partners of the Americas
Colorado is a state with a strong mining tradition, an economy that includes tourism and agriculture, and cities with many institutions of higher education.
Minas Gerais is a beautiful mountainous state with a rich history of mining—particularly gold and diamonds—an economy that includes agriculture and tourism, and many federal universities and other institutions of culture.
Colorado and Minas Gerais are matched as partner states in the overall scheme of Partners of the Americas. In fact, when Partners of the Americas was created 40 years ago, a careful attempt was made to match states and countries that are similar in terrain, economy, culture, people, history, etc.
In 1963 President John F. Kennedy proposed a people-to-people program between the governments of the Americas. The next year Partners of the Alliance program was created within the Alliance for Progress, with the purpose of allowing private citizens to build unique partnerships to work on self-help projects in North and South America.
Soon afterward the program’s name was changed to Partners of the Americas, and became a private not-for-profit. Sixty partnerships—120 chapters—have been formed between the United States, Latin American countries and Caribbean islands.
These partnerships have engaged in a variety of projects including society and government, education, youth and children, agriculture, women and violence, justice, and farmer training projects.
The mission of Partners of the Americas is, “to work together as citizen volunteers from Latin America, the Caribbean and the Untied States to improve the lives of people across the hemisphere”.
When Partners’ volunteers travel to their matching country or state they work with local people who are well connected within their communities. Thus the impact of their contribution has a ripple effect far beyond individual contact.
Further, local Partners provide all the food and lodging required for projects, all the local contacts, and additional resources, people, and funds. The advantages for the projects are obvious; for the volunteers it allows us to learn about the new culture at the real, grassroots level. After all, Partners is a people-to-people program.
Significant Projects
Colorado-Minas Gerais exchanges have included a classical guitar player from Brazil playing the music of Villa Lobos and other Brazilian composers in Colorado, a Colorado classical guitar player learning the rich tradition of guitar music in Brazil, a Colorado lawyer visiting Belô to learn about programs for women and violence.
It also included farmers from Colorado providing technical advice to farmers in Minas Gerais, university professors visiting both states, an internship for a Brazilian surgeon in Colorado, artists and photographers visiting Colorado, and Colorado support—teachers, curriculum specialists, fund raisers and a mining expert—of an Atlantic Rainforests research farm in Iracambi, MG.
Last year, four musicians came from Minas Gerais to conduct a series of performances, teachings, and concerts at a variety of venues in the Denver and Colorado Springs area.
These young ladies performed in restaurants, presented in concert halls, and gave drumming workshops to inner city youth. They also engaged in many spontaneous “Brazilin sing-a-longs”
Over the past five years there have been more than 85 exchanges between Brazilian and U.S. Partnerships. While Partners funds the initial exchange, this money is leveraged through attracting additional funds and human resources.
For example, for the past four years the West Virginia-Espírito Santo Partnership has engaged in exchanges of 12-25 lawyers, judges, law professors and law students every year between the two states—a project that involved extensive financial support beyond that of Partners.
Activities have included social justice and community development, attending major law conferences in Brazil, supporting Justice on Wheels programs that take the courts to the people who cannot easily get to them, and strengthening university linkages between West Virginia and Espírito Santo.
The Maryland-Rio partnership has been involved in a 12-year partnership between universities in Maryland and in Rio, engaged in joint teacher-student environmental projects in the Guanabara Bay in Rio and the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
For the past four years, high school youth leaders from Washington, DC, and Brasilia, DF, have engaged in a variety of fundraising activities to enable low-income students from both countries to participate in their “Ambassadors of Hope” youth leadership program.
These exchanges focus on environmental issues, school exchanges, and community service projects, to develop mutual understanding between the young people from both counties.
These exchanges are particularly meaningful because the Partners’ families in their counterpart’s chapter host the young people.
Brazil-US Partnerships
Amazonas—Tennessee
Bahia—Eastern Pennsylvania
Brasília, DF—Washington, DC
Ceará—New Hampshire
Espírito Santo—West Virginia
Goiás—Wyoming
Maranhão—Western Pennsylvania
Minas Gerais—Colorado
Pará—Missouri
Paraíba—Connecticut
Paraná—Ohio
Pernambuco—Georgia
Piauí—Nebraska
Rio de Janeiro—Maryland
Rio Grande do Norte—Maine
Rio Grande do Sul—Indiana
Santa Catarina -Virginia
São Paulo - Illinois,
Sergipe—Rhode Island
Partners International has also supported seven character education workshops in several Brazilian states for local teachers, educators and community leaders.
Volunteers from both chapters work together to implement these programs. The Indiana–Rio Grande do Sul Partners have, for ten years, carried out a Youth Ambassador program in which youth from both countries spend several weeks with families in their counterpart state.
Currently Partners is also supporting a Fellows Program, which provides internships of government employees in agencies. A member of the Minas Gerais Partnership just completed a very successful Fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta.
Culture
While I was building the playground I stayed with Luís and his family. I would also walk a couple of blocks and visit with Dr. João Meira, because he spoke English and I could not speak Portuguese.
I soon learned to enjoy a breakfast of a variety of melons, delicious local Minas cheeses, apple slices, cheese balls and very hot, pre-sweetened Brazilian coffee; have my dirty clothes picked up every morning and washed by the maid (this still embarrasses me!) and enjoy the company of João’s two sweet girls, the two Marias.
I enjoyed staying at Luís’s typical Brazilian home: orange ceramic tile roof, wooden floor, wooden lattice on the windows, and the fresh spring air circulating throughout.
While I enjoyed my living quarters, I soon became frustrated with the pace of getting things done. I would wait on the playground site for hours before I could get the basic tools I needed and the wood required for the project.
It soon dawned on me that nothing happened during the siesta hours! So I spent considerable time waiting on equipment, materials, or advice—sketching in my writing pad and enjoying the rich diversity of Brazilian and American music wafting across the street from a nearby dance studio.
I also learned that, unlike in the United States, I could not simply go to a one lumberyard and purchase all the wood, tools, cement, chain, nails and screws, and attachments I needed.
We bought large lumber in one store, finished lumber from another store, chain at a car dealership, and nails and screws from yet another store. We also ended up having a local carpenter custom make the ladder rungs and a local craftsman weld the eyehooks for the swings. The swing seats were made from old car tires.
Personal Growth
During my several volunteer visits to Brazil, along with my hosting Brazilians in my home in Denver, I have learned a great deal about Brazil.
While visiting Brazil I discovered the American classical music composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk. He was the first composer from the United States to be recognized by Europe, and challenged the widely held European view at that time that Americas could make bridges and build trains, but could not create culture.
Gottschalk composed several very popular Brazilian tunes, including the “Grande Fantaisie Triomphale sur L´Hymne National Brésilien (Brazilian Hymn), and actually died of yellow fever during an engagement to perform for the Emperor of Brazil.
As a result of my visits I found out that one of the classical composers I admire, Darius Milhaud, has composed some wonderful music based on Brazilin folk tunes and idioms.
Milhaud is a turn-of-the 19th –20th century French composer who was also an ambassador to Brazil. His Brazilian influenced works include “Saudade do Brasil,” variations on a folk theme known as the “Bull on the Roof,” and his composition “The Creation of the World.”
One of my fields of study is race and ethnicity. Yet I knew nothing of the tremendous diversity of Brazils’ population. On my visits I also studied Brazil’s approach to multiracial identity.
Because I am white (British) and my wife is African American and Chickasaw (American Indian), our children are multiracial, and I am very involved in issues involving mixed-race children in this race-fixated country.
I discovered, to my delight, that Brazil has a much more progressive approach to this issue than we do. I have benefited from studying this approach, and have already used some of my new information in articles and books.
It’s impossible to visit Brazil without learning about its rich history, politics, and culture. I learned about the Baroque history of Minas Gerais, from Ouro Preto and Diamantina to Congonhas do Campo, Sabará, and Serro, the tremendous impact of Portuguese colonial history and culture, the impact of the Catholic Church, and Brazilian art, dance, music, architecture, and other cultural aspects. I also discovered that the architects of Brasília did their first significant work in Minas Gerais.
As a professor of education I am very interested in the educational approach of different countries. Thus I was very curious and learned a great deal about the Brazilian educational system, from the dual approach of public and private schools, the variety of tests students must pass to enter a university, and the free federal universities that exist throughout this massive country.
As an educator and writer of many things educational, I found this knowledge interesting, and somewhat perplexing. For example, while the federal universities are free—and often provide other free services, such as child care, the only children who can pass the entrance exams are children whose parents can afford to send them to private high schools.
One cannot be a Partners’ volunteer without making friends, and I made many. I am still good friends with João, his wife Maria Jesus, and his two Marias.
In fact, I spent a memorial millennium celebration with them in the beautiful mountain town of Diamantina. Then there’s Heloísa, Mônica, Elzeni, Acyr, Regina, Luzia, and Mário, not to mention the members of my own Colorado Partnership.
I also have become all too familiar with some of the problems that face modern day Brazil. When driving through Belo Horizonte I saw families living under the bridges and women hanging laundry along the road medians.
I was told to roll up the car window and lock the door while traveling through certain parts of town, I observed the electric wires and sharp broken glass on the top of protective walls around house and apartments, and I noted the guards with guns at the entrance to apartment buildings, businesses and banks.
I also experienced the poor children literally ambushing the cars with candies, fruit and trinkets every time we stopped at a traffic light, and saw little children playing as their mothers tried to sell produce under tattered canopies along the federal highway to Brasília.
More Playground
Because I could not find the equipment I wanted for the playground, I decided to build equipment I had designed and constructed for a Head Start playground in Denver, Colorado.
I built the swings of white pine poles, the climbing structure of cedar, 2x4s, and 4x4s, and the swing seats of old car tires (cut a certain way and then turned inside out).
But we had to make some interesting changes due to local resources: we substituted eucalyptus tress for the pine poles (eucalyptus is a renewal wood that is very popular in Brazil), predrilled the hard ipé wood to prevent splitting, and actually shipped a plastic slide from the States, because none was available in Brazil (the slides are either wood or metal).
We used sand for an absorbent material under the equipment. Luís provided slate for the sand retainers—the barriers used to hold the sand. This was a novel approach for me. Luís has a business that provides slate and other stones for local homes and projects.
Throughout the project I continue to have contact with a variety of people in Sete Lagoas. I still enjoy the company of Luís, João and their families. I also attend a Rotary meeting and Lions meeting.
I am interviewed by a local educational TV station, and work closely with people at the crèche. In this way I get to know many different people in the town, and really feel like a member of the community, rather than a tourist.
Returning home
Although the rains have begun to fall now that it’s the beginning of the rainy season, there is a break in the clouds that allows the bright sun to color the landscape.
I get into Luís’ car for the trip back to Confines International Airport. The two Marias are accompanying me, as is Diana, João’s oldest daughter whom I have also come to know during my stay. Big, black vultures sit on the fences that line the road, drying their wings in the warm sun.
The political signs on the buildings, high car bumps along the road, and colorful tress and shrubs are now familiar to me. They have been replaced in my mind with a wealth of new sights, sounds, memories, and ideas.
And with all the new friends I have made during my short time building a playground in Sete Lagoas, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
More information about Partners in Brazil, and each U.S.- Brazil partnership, can be found on the Partners web site: www.partners.net
Thanks to Dennis Shaw of Partners of the Americas, for providing some of the information for this article.
Francis Wardle, PhD, is President of the Colorado-Minas Gerais chapter of Partners of the Americas.
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