Well, here I am in Fortaleza. We've been here for about 2 weeks now, but I haven't had any time to really use the internet until now. I'm here in an Internet cafe a few blocks from my homestay with Kevin and Jean-Christophe who also live in my neighborhood, which is great because they are both incredibly cool guys.
Fortaleza is a lot different from Salvador. First of all, there's less people. Second of all, there's less black people, which is really weird for me right now, after spending 5 weeks in Salvador. In Salvador, when I walked down the street I could blend in, but here I stick out and am a target for all kinds of comments, mostly from men who think I'm exotic. Let's just say that it's uncomfortable to objectified that way all the time and that I'm glad that I'm doing my ISP in Salvador. Not to say that Salvador doesn't have issues with racism, but I prefer dealing with that than having men on the street scream out "oi preta" (hey black girl) at me all the time.
As far as the SIT program goes, it is sooooo much more organized here than it was in Salvador. Now we actually know what's expected of us, lol. This weekend we did our first excursion to an MST settlement. The MST is the landless workers movement here in Brazil, it's one of the key social/political movements in the country right now. The Brazilian constitution says that the people have the right to claim unproductive land for farming, building homes for their families, etc... Unfortunately, the people who own the land are the rich people in power, and when poor farming families try to break out of the system of sharecropping and latifundios and get their own land, it rarely goes through or it takes forever. So the MST organize these people to occupy the land and force the government to speed up the process and basically hold the government accountable for the rights that it has promised to the people. So we visited a settlement that was more established and then an encampment that has only been there for a year. In the encampment, the people live in shacks made out of sticks, dried palm leaves, plastic, and whatever else they can find. Even though conditions there are bad, the people still have so much faith and so much strength. It's their right to have a piece of land to farm and provide for their families. It's their right to be treated like human beings. It's their right and they refuse to back down. It was a really intense experience. If you want to read more about them, check out this web site:
www.mstbrazil.org/Spread the word, publicize the struggle.
On a less serious note, today is Halloween, but it's been pretty anticlimactic so far because it's not a big deal here in Brazil. But tonight we are going out to a bar called the Pirata. During the day it's a store but at night there is a pirate ship underneath and it becomes a bar. Fun times.
My camera is broken right now (I think there's sand in it or something) so I'm afraid that there probably won't be anymore picture post here, sorry. I am going to buy some disposable ones to take more pictures while I'm here though.
Alright, gotta head home now and get ready for tonight. Shout out to my mom (her birthday was last week). Shout out to all the peeps who email and comment on my blog, it really makes my day. Shout out to everyone else too. I love you and I miss you all.
