I Love Goiaba

Speaking of Portuguese, I ended up acing my oral test, with the comment "sem pausas". Oh yeah.

So, putting that good language skill to the test, I've basically been sitting around with my host aunt Maura talking about everything in the world: what kinds of fruits are here in Belem, anthropology and community development, the Brazilian public health system, the obligation of people to pay pack to their communities, and so on. You know, typical Dan stuff. I live for it. She's a pretty amazing woman, she works as a doctor and a teacher of public health, so I'm guessing the fact that I am living with her family is no coincidence. She finds anthropology to be really interesting as a medical person, someone who has to work within and with various cultures everyday, and we had a really cool conversation about the differences between anthropology in the U.S and in Brazil. In the U.S, we have anthropology, and applied anthropology. In Brazil, it's the same thing. In the U.S, it's hard for anthropology peeps to really do a lot in the public sphere, write in newspapers, make their opinions and thoughts widespread, affect public policy; in Brazil, they are all over the place, from writing in newspapers to working in government bureaus. She wants to take me to the Emilio Goedli Museum here in Belem sometime, that would be very cool.

Today our Mini-ISP group got together at Neil's apartment to put our findings together. I'm going to be responsible for the conclusion of the paper, so tonight I need to write about what our main findings were, what the problems with our research was, and how these could be remedied in the future, and how the project could be built upon as a whole. That's kind of my thing, so it should be good. Our main objective was to see if ALCOA had an effect on health in the town of Juruti, so, obviously, we found that there was an affect on health care in the town. In general, although there were some contrasting opinions, the common thread was that the health care system had improved with the recent developmental boom due to ALCOA: hospitals had become more frequent, more clinics were being built, and there is now more access to doctors. Yet, at the same time, there aren't enough doctors to keep up with the population boom, nor are their enough specialized doctors. People also held doubts about who would benefit from ALCOA's promises and rewards to the town, and who would miss out. While the system had generally gotten somewhat better, overall health conditions had declined. With a high population that is quickly becoming more technically oriented comes more cars, more industry, and thus more contamination of common resources such as air and water. Many of my informants spoke of the high frequency of respiratory problems from the recent heavy air pollution. Coupled onto this was the fact that in order to find any specialized doctor, such as someone to deal with all the lung concerns, one needs to travel to Santarem or Manaus. Thus, this lead to much distrust and dismissal of the medical professionals in the town. So, while there is more satisfaction with the health care system in Juruti, this is hampered by the disdain for the recent wave of health conditions brought about by the heavy development. To throw some numbers out there, from 2000 the town experienced a population boom from 14,000 people to 50,000 people. Most of our informants have only been in Juruti for a few months. Nevertheless, getting together to discuss the project was a cool experience. I had been a little wary about group dynamics when we started, but doing a qualitative project was so much easier in the end working with 4 other people. Just being able to bounce ideas off of each other and get suggestions for each of our sections made the whole thing less of a hassle. It also gives me some faith the qualitative is the way to go, for me at least. To each his own, but I think its best to let people speak for themselves, such is the point of democracy in general.

This weekend is Cirio, the world's largest Catholic festival in the world, held at the Basilica de Nazare here in Belem. Unfortunately, my family, ie Maura, is Protestant, so, they won't be doing anything. I will need to tag along with a friend for sure, I don't want to miss this, it is supposed to be an insane and awesome experience. The exchange rate is INSANE here right now, everything is so cheap. So, tomorrow is shopping for bad clothing day. There are so many strange t-shirts here with English that makes no sense. I also recently discovered that there is a supermarket close to my house, so, all I do is get goiaba juice. Goiaba=gauva=the most refreshing thing in the world, personally.

Today, I went with Karina to grab lunch at the Bosque and stare at the bamboo everywhere. It's very cool, it is a mini-zoo, in a way, but it is great to grab lunch and go, look at the monkeys, the manatee (which is quite depressing actually), and walk around in. There's even a cave you can walk through and look at bats in. It's cool. One of the things about Belem I actually like. Then I proceeded to get ice cream across the road with Megan and Jacob before going to Neil's to work on the Mini-ISP. So, full circle. Tonight I need to write up my section and keep plugging along at the reading for my actual ISP. The more I talk about community based participatory environmental health, the more excited I get. There's a chapter in, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment, the book I mentioned about the concept of "popular epidemiology" that I can't wait to get to. Despite how boring and same-old-same-old life can feel once we are stuck in a schedule here in Belem, I feel more passionate about actually doing something with my life than I do at Bard. And thus why talking to Maura tonight was so cool, because it keeps coming up and coming up and coming up: I blame Robert Weston for making me obsessed with the "gift relationship". But it is everywhere! The whole book by Marcel Mauss, The Gift, is all about this one simple concept that one finds in everything from archaic society to modern states: I give, so that you give, and that the giving of a gift demands reciprocity. Simple but everywhere. I say hi to you, with some intent that the next time you see me, you will say hi too. If the structure of my society allows me to go off to college and study whatever I want while there are people who would take full advantage of the college experience but can't, then don't I have some obligation to return that, in some way? At least, that's what she seemed to think in reference to the Brazilian education system, but it holds the same water in the United States too.

There is so much to think about here.