Well, it’s hard to believe I’ve been here in the settlement for 5 days already. So much has happended both in terms of daily life events, such as swimming in the river, touring the settlement, hanging out and playing mandolin with my new friends, preparing for a massive festa (party) that they had, struggling with Portuguese, succeeding with Portuguese, and that doesn’t even touch on what has been happening with my research. If I was bom (good) I would have written something each day for the blog, maybe that’s what I’ll shoot for, the days have been so busy though, especially the first few that the thought of trying to recap has been overwhelming.
As I haven’t posted anything about the setttlement and general impressions in the context of my research I’ll do that at the expense of giving y’all a daily play by play, which would probably be boring anyways. I will do a little bit of a play by play though for the first few days though as some interesting and important things happened.
But first some general impressions:
In many ways the settlement has surpassed the few expectations that I had had (it’s very hard not to come to a place, especially when one is laboring with grant applications and trying to come up with such silly things)
Demographics of the settlement:
Approximately 800 families live in the 17th do Abril settlement. The “average” family {based upon simple observations} consists of either a male or female (rarely both) and three or four children. Given the rate of teen pregnancies (it is definetly not uncommon for a 16 year old girl/women to already have had three children, or be pregnant with a fourth) the settlement is growing very rapidly. Estimates are for between 3-4000 people.
Spatial context of the settlement:
There are (from my understanding) two general types of organizations of settlements. One is the agrovilla, (which is the type of settlement t“Ladies and Gentleman, hombres o mulheres” A common refrain in the house I’m staying in as the teenage boys repeat the few English phrases they know, such as Ladies and gentleman (which I think they got from WWF) (and I translated into Portuguese…)
Well, it’s hard to believe I’ve been here in the settlement for 5 days already. So much has happended both in terms of daily life events, such as swimming in the river, touring the settlement, hanging out and playing mandolin with my new friends, preparing for a massive festa (party) that they had, struggling with Portuguese, succeeding with Portuguese, and that doesn’t even touch on what has been happening with my research. If I was bom (good) I would have written something each day for the blog, maybe that’s what I’ll shoot for, the days have been so busy though, especially the first few that the thought of trying to recap has been overwhelming.
As I haven’t posted anything about the setttlement and general impressions in the context of my research I’ll do that at the expense of giving y’all a daily play by play, which would probably be boring anyways. I will do a little bit of a play by play though for the first few days though as some interesting and important things happened.
But first some general impressions:
In many ways the settlement has surpassed the few expectations that I had had (it’s very hard not to come to a place, especially when one is laboring with grant applications and trying to come up with such silly things)
Demographics of the settlement:
Approximately 800 families live in the 17th do Abril settlement. The “average” family {based upon simple observations} consists of either a male or female (rarely both) and three or four children. Given the rate of teen pregnancies (it is definetly not uncommon for a 16 year old girl/women to already have had three children, or be pregnant with a fourth) the settlement is growing very rapidly. Estimates are for between 3-4000 people.
Spatial context of the settlement:
There are (from my understanding) two general types of organizations of settlements. One is the agrovilla, (which is the type of settlement this is); in an agrovilla, the houses are clustered together, like a small town, complete with central park, stores meeting places etc. In this type, the people (all I think?) have their own farm plots that are located on the outskirts of town. Envision a donut….hmmmm…donut, a boston kreme donut….Ok, in the other type (of which I don’t know if there’s a formal name), the houses are spread throughout the countryside, and each is surrounded by its own agricultural land. Maybe this one is more like beans and rice? Ok, you can guess what I’m thinking about, and what I’m about to eat (more on this later).
Major Landmarks within Settlement
There is a central grass plaza that the settlement is centered around (the absolute center of the donut). Around this plaza there is a cement water tower which supplies water to all of the houses (a relatively within 2-year recent development). The water that this tower delivers is not potable, but is used for washing, and toilets etc (for those who have it “properly” connnected, many have the plumbing set up but not really working, i.e. some have a large cisten that they manually take buckets of water out of, as does the house I’m currently staying in. They do have purified water though. I haven’t quite figured out where the central filter is, but people bring litros (used 2 liter bottles) to some central place where they fill them with purified water for drinking.
Other landmarks include the IT center (from which I hope to successfully upload this post). The IT center, and its various equipment (LCD projector, sound system, speakers) are a product of a Brazilian project towards “Digital Integration”. As a result, they have an airconditioned room with 10 nice Dells and all the trimmings (I would have recommended Macs but no one asked me).
FIRST PHOTO!
Probably one of the longest lasting landmarks (soon to be demolished) is the primary school. This school is full of character, but for those who have been going there for the last 13 years think that its horrible, I guess it’s one of those exotic things, a lunchroom covered by by palmfronds, fence made of rough cut wood….but all of this is soon to change for the students and community as the gigantic new school is about to be finished. This “concrete prison” as Dan refers to it, will likely be like most schools I have seen in Latin America, concrete structures with little character….but it will certianly be much larger.
PHOTO 2 COME!
O centro da Saude (the hospital) is fairly nice per my brief perusal (I have luckily not had to have a significnat visit there, and hope to keep it that way!) Not sure what kind of procedures they are prepared to deal with, but seemed clean and well-equipped.
Aside from these major landmarks around which the settlement spatially revolves, the streets are on a grid structure, with each house (which seem pretty uniform from my few visits) with a small front/backyard. What is amazing about the settlement, from my limited observation, and this is something that I might like to explore in later research, is the degree to which the environmental landscape of the settlement has changed since the MST took over the land from the landowner. As people have told me, and as the yellowing photo on the wall shows, the land on which the settlement now reside was completely devoid of any trees or significant vegetation. But now, it is a fruit-lovers paradise. I haven’t done any sort of formal tally yet, but I’ve counted probably 10-15 different types of well developed fruiting trees, shrubs, and vines. Each family has at least 2 different types of fruiting trees on their property. For the novice gringo, it has been an ABSOLUTE DELIGHT to take walks around the settlement, asking my “guide”, the teenage boy Walderham I’m staying with, what each fruiting tree is. My favorite, I think, that is currently fruiting at least, is called “Inga” with the “a” accented. Coming from a tree the very long bean pod is picked, and twisted to open. Inside, when ripe, are large black seeds, approximately the length of a half-dollar, these seeds are covered in a delicous white fur that one nibbles off, what does it taste like?......Inga of course! Other fruits Capu (pronounced ka-poo), passion fruit, mangoes, oranges, bread fruit, and a number of others for which I need to write down the names.
Name that fruit
Well, that was a very long blog entry devoted to context, but for those of us of the anthropological/cultural geographical bend: what is more evocative than a blink?
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