Do you have a sex life?

Been awhile! Everything that's happened in this past week and a half has amounted to a lot of ridiculous.

First off, I wanted to tell everybody that the fruit to my left is my new baby. My host-mother, despite all the cultural insensitivity and general wrongness, will give me these at least 3 times a week. It's fantastic. I don't know the name is English...it's called "pinha" in Portuguese, and I know it's also found in India. But it's effing delicious and tasty as all wonderful. If you can't someday, I'll try it for you. 3 times a week. On my patio as I stare down at the populace. Will be posting a picture of what that looks like shortly, so don't you worry.

Last week was the beginning of epidemiology, which is stupid, because all of us are doing qualitative research (i.e., getting random interviews from people to clarify our semi-hypotheses, or, as our academic director calls them, "problems") and not collecting major data. But it does give SIT time to pay speakers to slowly explain to us in Portuguese what a mean, median, and mode are. Or how race is only biological, and talk to us about understanding. Which some of these kids need, don't get me wrong. But I would rather ask what makes a marginalized community more violent than others than hear about why I'm special.

This week was especially strange for a couple of reasons. First off, I saw Bastardos Inglorios (yes, Inglorious Basterds) at the cultural cinema here and really liked it. Weird? Basically, it depicts an alternate ending for the Holocaust in which a womyn who's family was massacred while they were hiding under a shepard's floorboards while she just barely escaped, gets the chance, after being sexually pursued and harassed repeatedly by a nazi soldier, to blow up a theatre in which all of Hitler's command will be watching a movie of the "glory" of the nazi soliders' recent war efforts. At the same time, strangely Southern-twanging Brad Pitt leads a gorup of 8 disgruntled Jewish soldiers to maim at least 800 nazi soldiers in pursuit of frightening the nazis out of the war.

SPOILER! I think this movie was really good, but this will spoil it for you if you haven't seen it and thrive upon not knowing the endings of movies before you see them.

Problem 1: Jews aren't supposed to kill unless it's in self defense. Is scalping and beating nazis with a baseball bat in a cinematic-type gladiator show self defense?

Problem 2: Um, Hitler wasn't shot to death in a theatre after being caught in a room of fire by a Jewish womyn who wanted payback for his war crimes.

These two things aside, I really liked seeing it as a Jew. I don't know what common Jewish review on the movie looked like, but for me, it was actually kind of satisfying to see several acots of nazis being killed mercilessly and mutilated. I know that's violent, but it satisfied a lot of the pain I feel as a part of one of the identities that was persecuted in the Holocaust. Gruesome, I know. But justifiable? I'm not quite sure.

That aside, well-acted. Except, Brad, your accent confuses me. Stop it.

Then, there was a gay parade on Sunday, hence the naming of this weekend by the other queers here and I in the program of Gay Weekend. We went to a gay bar on Friday, and chatted gayly on Saturday, only to go happily early (about 4 hours early) and wait and beer until the floats started moving. Basically, none of us could tell our families that we were going, because the homophobia here is pretty rampant. You can blame it on the machista element of sexism here, or the Catholic church influence (78% of mothers here is Catholic, and abortion is illegal, among other strange things). But both of my friends' families have already made homophobic comments in the past (i.e., "This guy whose party you're going to is gay?! Be careful! Haha!", "[The parade] is crazy out there! There are men kissing men, and womyn kissing womyn! And the men are pretty, right? Prettier than the womyn, that's how it always is! Crazy!") So, unlike the other students who could happily go frolic at a parade that actually means a lot to visibility of the issue, and get drunk and use it as an excuse to hook up with other straight people there (most of the people who go are straight, which I find weird, because a. no one's straight, but that's a conversation for another time, and b. the same people who go to the parade who are straight are the ones who makes comments like the ones above and laugh at and brutally victimize even their friends who are gay, as I've witnessed personally, at events such as the party bus, ref. Bissexuality: EVERYTHING'S good!), we had to hide for fear of discomfort where we live. Hello, Twenty-First century.

There was a whole lot of pee on the streets, and I got these nifty stickers "Contra a Homofobia", along with some condoms that a man on the street pick-pocketed from my friend, not being able to get into her wallet (HAHA! I will pick-pocket all of your money! ...Oh, wait! I guess I'll just have...safe sex with your condoms?).

Portuguese class ended, which means that we're no longer treated like 5 year-olds, though my family still talks to me like that anyway, despite me knowing Portuguese--just to keep a habit up, I guess. But, that won't matter, because I'm leaving in a day for a hotel with wireless for a village study (I don't know what that means, but we'll all know soon, I hope), and after that, I come back to Salvador for my ISP (project) in my NEW SNAZZY APARTMENT! I'm staying with 2 other students in a 3-bedroom apartment, with a bathroom, living room, TV, wireless, washer, and a block away from the beach. It's beautiful, and I'm getting it all for less than $400 for a month. And the landlord speaks English! Despite the fact that we ran into him at the gay parade and he fondled some womyn in front of us in order to look straight, which was both sexual harassment and not okay. But I guess that's more normal here? Men were grabbing womyn and making out with them in the street. Like, people they didn't know. My thing is, as long as the womyn are okay with it, go ahead. But if not, then, go fuck yourself. Excuse my language.

Lastly, I went to a gynecological appointment, you know, just to make sure everything's going on okay down there, and my male gynecologist that my program booked me with (without asking, but hey, qualifications don't depend on gender) was about to use his speculum with purpose when he asked me, "Voce tem uma vida sexual?"

So, here's the thing. You don't laugh during gynecological exams when you can't explain in their language why you're laughing. That's awkward.

But yes, I suppose I do, good sir. I suppose I do.

You are so IN LOVE!

Hey populace,

So, I have decided, after much thought, that a follow-up post/note is in order on this blog. I have presented a very ridiculous view akin to Marxism, wherein, just like believing that class struggle and exploitation are the basis for racial struggle instead of effing race (i.e., Marx, go fuck yourself, racial struggles have meaning), I have led myself and everyone reading this blog to believe that bad experiences are the basis for my time in Salvador, Brazil (i.e., I align the idea of standalone "class struggle" to bad, and "racial struggle" to Salvador, both being bases of my post-modern view). Just to say, fuck Marx, and fuck bad experiences. Excuse my language.

In favour of showing the good parts of this experience, I'll start with things I've left out, and lead to today. For instance, the first week I was with my host-family, my host-nephew (awkward, since he's older than me, but my mother here is a grandmother, so the family life is kinda weird in terms of ages) told me that he liked hip-hop too, and asked me if I knew "Fif-tee Cent-ee". Which was pretty hilarious, especially considering that hardly anyone in the black world outside of the United States will ever know black rappers who don't say "bitch" and "where's my money" and "Viacom, please enslave me". So I laughed, and he basically admitted that he was a tool.
I also have recurrent episodes with the womyn who made me cry (Post 3) for not bringing the right clothes to the Candomble Terreiro wherein she is mean to basically everybody, and not too understanding, but had to go with me to my first part of my ISP project (Independent Study Project) to an HIV/AIDS reunion with people from all over the city for information collection surrounding the hospital they attend (semi-interesting experience wherein I got to nervously try out speaking Portuguese with people who didn't know anything about my program, or me, for that matter). So she came with me, and told me that the large intersection in the middle of the city is something similar to "Meeting of the Pineapple". She doesn't speak English, so this was all in confusing Portuguese. And when I paused confusedly, she laughed for the first time NOT AT ME. Little victories! No one can say "Meeting of the Pineapple" in ANY language without laughing. I win!
I also have bought a bikini in my first 2 weeks here, which I wear everytime I go to the beach, which is at least once a week, since Salvador is basically a humongous beach everywhere except for on the streets (WIN). And the bikini has only highlighted my beauty. For every womyn who may be reading this, immediately BUY A BIKINI. No, don't say it doesn't look good on you. It looks amazing. I have seen wonderful large ladies rocking a bikini like a song from your favourite Fender guitar. GO BUY IT. NOW. I am beautiful and so are you, and bikinis only reaffirm your confidence. Especially in Brazil, where every mama goes with the bikini. Except for a lot of real mamas. With babies. In which case, they choose for themselves, and look beautiful either way. But lots of general mamas rock the biquinininhis. I.e., really small bikinis. DO IT.
In terms of school, my classes are completely arbitrarily graded (based off of grading criteria not given, as in, "Your interview in this paper seems a little rushed", or "You did not interview someone [outside of the interview you were told to do]"), but the reading is in some cases very interesting. As in, recently, we've been reading (if we want to, since the classes are completely disconnected from expectations for doing the reading and lectures are quite repetitive and out of order of information needed, i.e. A lecture on how HIV functions two lectures after a lecture on how HIV affects black people in Brazil, two weeks before we here more than one lecture on race relations, and the list continues) is on the intersection between gender and race, and critiques even authors that I used to look up to as G-D. As in, one authortears down Cornel West (No, really West, WTF IS "NIHILISM", p.s. you can't indoctrine people with the idea that racism can be solved through "TENDER LOVE AND CARE", I.E. YOU'RE A JACKASS) and looks at several critical analyses of how race fuctions in the U.S. that I had never really thought of before. And I know a little bit more about transvestites. And domestic violence here in Brazil.
In terms of my project here, I'm going to be analyzing the difference between behavioural bases for enforcing condom usage amongst adolescents and structural bases for enforcing condom usage amongst them instead. As in, it really came to me here, through a mixture of Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power (If you haven't read it yet, please do; it changed my life and explains health as a humyn right instead of a consumer good, really interesting idea for future policy), different adolescent sexual interventions, and information on gender, racial, and personal relationships in Brazil, that societies put female adolescents at risk for HIV infection and pregnancy, and not the womyn themselves. Specifically through zeroing in on the tactics for communcating safe heterosexual sex (for the purposes of my project, only analyzing heterosexual transmission through vaginal intercourse of HIV and for purposes of analyzing pregnancy and risk; therefore, not looking into intraveinous transmission, homosexual transmission, and oral sex [TRUST ME, I TRIED]), I found very interesting research possible for communication techniques among teens for safe sex and how societies could decrease teen HIV transmission and teen pregnancy, starting with young womyn, by incredible leaps and bounds by several fairly common-sense steps forward in their policies, and resources available to this population.
Sorry if that doesn't make much sense. The paper's coming out shortly, and if you ask me nicely, I'll give it to you via e-mail.
Also, my Portuguese is good enough now to actually have conversations with people. I want to explain to you how bad I was before I came here this summer in comparison to how good I am now.
BEFORE: After a summer of not studying Portuguese and focusing far more on Swahili, I could say "chocolate", "diversity", "community", "water", "thank you", and person-subjects (I, you, us, they) without getting nervous.
NOW: I can have in-depth conversations with my academic director about racism inherent in health systems without getting nervous.
That's insane. The one problem most prominent that I find with SIT is that it's one of those programs structured for anthropological investigation of subjects. And I hate anthropology. I'm sorry if you like anthropology. I understand if you do, and you wish to work as a lone ethnographer, living with families and talking to people in the culture you're investigating every day. This actually sounds interesting, and, though a little strange ethically for me, because you're not part of the culture you ideally investigate (though you live with them and eat their food, surely), you still have important research to do, which I understand. If you're in SIT, my program head, you basically live in home-stay families, have badly structured classes on "understanding people", and end up doing a project for a month on something to your apparent choosing (though it will only go well if your academic director likes your investigation idea, totally based on their experiences with project in their own past, if you're in a program like mine), and don't really have a format based on interacting with the community, but rather, observing them. Thus, it's been kind of hard for me to arbitrarily make friends on my own, a conglomeration of not knowing the language that well at the up-take, having an abrasive home-stay family, and being pissed that I didn't pay for an actual program abroad, but rather, some interesting photocopied reading. But, all that said, I've learned an amazing amount of Portuguese, leading to:
This past Thursday, I realized I knew Portuguese. It just sort of...clicked. The best way I can explain it is if you've also been in an experience in a country where you didn't really know the language and walked out knowing it fairly well. Like, we had this discussion in my ridiculous Portuguese class for 5 year-olds/aka "Advanced Beginners" about adolescent pregnancy, and since that's currently my shizz, I spoke five miles a minute. And it was great. I was more-or-less very well understood. And we went to a bank (there was a strike here for 3 weeks and travelers checks are the DUMBEST IDEA EVER in countries like Brazil where the exchange rate is dropping RAPIDLY, please note) and got travelers checks turned in, and the guy understood me fine. And we went to a restaurant for post-lunch across the street from the bank, and the waitress understood me fine. So I got a Pina Colada, and I understood me just fine. I actually had an entire conversation with my host-mom at night, and told her about the dog attack. She told me the guy was really "uneducated" (her own reason, not my paraphrase). She also told me not to run at Dique anymore, to which I wanted to tell her that she could not just ask me not to do things 'cause she ain't ma mama. And then, I caught myself and realized that this was in English in my head and wouldn't translate.
The next day, I decided to wear a dress I really like, because of Friday. I love Friday. So I wore it and walked to class like I usually do and got ice cream when I was supposed to go back to class and mango sorbet was never sweeter. And I spoke a lot in portuguese. And my teacher had to almost shut me up. It was great. And I almost cursed out a guy in the park in the middle of campus, which is a sign that I know me some Portuguese. And I got to have lecture with my favourite doctor here, this amazing womyn who understands medicine (i.e., really irregular here in my program). And then, I had a chocolate granola bar. And went home with a friend and had her mother's amazing soy. And went to the movies to see "Novidades do Amor" (WHAT IS THE NEW MOVIE WITH CATHERINE ZETA-JONES? It was only briefly mentioned in English), which was IN ENGLISH WITH PORTUGUESE SUB-TITLES, yes. And cute.
And the part attributed of this day to the title for the post was before the soy-eating, being when I was at the office for SIT, and I was waiting for my friend to finish writing on the internet. So I was asking her WTF she was doing for so long when the evil womyn who made me cry was eyeing me. And she'd told me that I need to speak more Portuguese (why me in particular? no idea). So I just started speaking in Portuguese. And it was perfect. Like, grammatically, and it wasn't hard at all. So the two advisors still there were like, "I'M SO IMPRESSED! YOU SPEAK PORTUGUESE WELL!" So, I went out to the terrace of the office to look at the bay and wait for my friend to finish, and was singing "Apology Song" by the Decembrists (they're just good, okay?!), and came back inside, and the advisor I actually like was laughing, and she just told me, "Look at you! With your new braids, and your pretty dress, and looking out at the bay, and singing to yourself: you're so IN LOVE!"
And I giggled. And said, "It's just a great day to be living". In Portuguese. And trotted out with dress in hands, twirling.


All of this is to say, I even went to the beach yesterday and got the cheese-sticks they have here that are amazing, and tanned a little, and swam in this crystalline water, and got juice, but only after dining and dashing for the first time in my life (by accident, I swear! We got a beer and guarana, and the guy never asked us for the money, and we were there for awhile, and left without remembering to pay, but still, THRILLING when we realized half an hour later), and slept for 13 hours. My life is pretty luxurious here. And my host-mom, while being the donna of a family completely out of their effing minds and rude, still makes amazing cake.

Basically, I am in love, and life is more-or-less amazing.
And, fuck Marx. Excuse my language.

Bissexuality: EVERYTHING'S GOOD!

So, I'm catching up on about 2 weeks of ridiculous. Hold on and bear with me!
my last weekend was amazing, because i really reconsidered my perspective. i lived with this host family on this island called ilha da mare in the bay of bahia, and my mother was amazing and so welcoming to me and even though i couldn't speak portuguese, she talked to me more than any other person so far in brazil, and her child, 3 years-old, was literally the most adorable kid i've ever had the pleasure of playing with, and she was so happy i was her "sister" all weekend, and would be annoying and do all the little things that children do, and i wasn't ever pissed because i really loved being around her. i just felt so much apart of a family, and it's been so long since i've felt that, like years. i explored this beach at night on the rocks in the bay (because low tide is REALLY LOW TIDE at the ilha) with these two other friends of mine in the program, and we got really far out, and saw these really small glowing things on rocks thatg stuck to our shoes and humongous mean-looking crabs and fish and it was beautiful. and the moon was so big. and the entire afternoon, after interviewing some people with health conditions that are tended to on the island (ethics issue? maybe? no, because apparently people with high blood pressure and pregnancy have the right to be interrogated by my program! woo-hoo!), the womyn taking us around bought us sweets and passion fruit popsicles, and we hung out on the beach with my friend's host-sister and wrote "love" all over in the sand. it was pretty :-). and i felt really accepted and my host-sister was effing adorable. she would yell my name in the morning and give me hugs when i got back to the house, and i was only there for two nights! cuuute. we also had to go to a bullshit health fair at Ilha da Mare, where I was supposed to work with a gynecologist (exciting, right?) who never came (downer, huh?), and ended up sitting in on a sexual health lecture which some people had to attend (everyone had to attend one lecture in order to get medical attention). and they had these great slides about abortion ("Abortion causes malnutrition in children!" Wrong.) and condom demonstrations (Me: do you have an actual penile model? Lecturer: No, but we can just use our fingers and have them giggle at how unformatted this is!), but namely two slides on "different sexualities". And, for bissexuality, she literally said, "People like men, womyn, everybody. Everything's GOOD." Thusly was this blog named for a female health worker who's slightly too excited about bissexual lifestyles. YES.

then, in the next week, we had second AIDS talk of the program and these people have a very defined way of driving me crazy with their ignorance. the only thing that saves me is these two other queer kids in the program that actually understand that the world has issues. we peaked into rooms with very sick AIDS patients, and, as always, were given strange examples of risk groups, namely the "What do you mean, womyn can be homosexuals? We only discuss MSMs in this country, because we're afraid to deal with large risk groups that make us feel awkward, like womyn who apprently can't appeal to our machismo!" and the "Bisexuals are no longer a discriminated risk group in South America!" bit. Yeah, I wanted to shoot somebody. STFU, Brazilian scientists working with AIDS patients, STFU.

after that, it got hard again for awhile. i was walking home last tuesday night and got attacked by a dog right outside of my house. it was the owner's of this bar in front of my house, and he was in the doorway with the owner without a leash, saw me walking past to the door of my house (remember, i live with the famed host family) and ran over, barking, and bit down on my bag, pulling at it and growling at me, obviously about to go for my leg. after about 15 seconds, trying to fend myself from it, the owner finally came inbetween us, but all that he did was see if it bit me. when he saw that it didn't, he just tended to the dog. until this day, he has not said sorry for anything, and i'm scared every time i walk home that it will come out again and go for me for real. it was really upsetting. after that, i started to realize that i should have changed my host family a month ago. along with the fact that they've eaten a cube of my cheese for my lunch food, used my toothpaste, and that the children only say hello to me if i say hello to them first, and weakly at that, i accidentally ate a chicken salad the other day, and it was really traumatizing. i had already eaten some of the stuff they had prepared for me and realized, after seeing a small bone with marrow in it, that it had shreds of red meat in it. after being really upset about having eaten a spoonfull, i told my host mom when she got home that i thought that it had had meat in it. she responded that it hadn't (even though it had) and left my room. but she came back in a couple minutes later and told me that the salad i had eaten had had chicken in it, and that vera (the maid in my rich house who comes several times a week and cleans and cooks occasionally) had put it in the wrong container (the ones that she usually puts mine in). thus, even though it was on the wrong side of the fridge, i ate it. and then she stood there in my room, smiling a little. and it was really upsetting and i didn't know what to do, so i cried. and then i started sobbing. and she kept on asking me why i was crying and to stop, and i told her that it wasn't their fault, since i knew they didn't mean it, but that it's completely against my ethics and ideas (having to do this all in portuguese) to eat meat, and that it was just really bad. and of course i'm not gonna stop crying. and so she pats my shoulder, sees her daughter (40 years-old) come in, tells her what happened in a hushed voice outside of my room that i could still hear, and left to get me some tea and ask my pardon and see if i'd "calmed down". then, the next morning, when her daughter-in-law came into the kitchen, she told her what had happened and the daughter laughed at me. not in front of me, of course. and her other daughter laughed atg me when they slowly told me thatg they separated my food. so the disrespect is pretty obvious. people stare me down when i'm walking home, on the two streets leading up to my house. basically, i was really close to leaving. i still am. but yesterday, my mom actually remembered to call somebody for me to get my hair done by here, and she was nice, and then, everyone in the family semi-talked to me more than they usually do, and nicely. i only have about 2 weeks left with them, so i might not change families. but it's hard.
last weekend, we had a long weekend, and i got to just chill and hang out with my friends here. i drank with my friends at this touristy beach, drank with them at the zoo and saw bitching animals, attended the event "Precarious 9" at the movies with them (use your imagination there), and then went to a weird party-bus-beach day with lots of creepy men (annoying) and no organization and my friend Alex got mad sunburn. It was ridiculous. And every single person on the party bus/trip got a little too drunk and did the preppy picture thing. We, instead, did the bitch-but-except-that-we're-not-in-a-program thing. and we had meals in between at each other's houses.it was really cute. long weekends are amazing :-).

i've decided on the name for my independent study project "Societies should wear condoms: How We Can Prevent HIV Infection and Pregnancy in Adolescent Womyn in Salvador". also, i ran today for the firstg time in awhile and fainted in the shower. why does that happen? tip for the week: DON'T EVER PASS OUT IN THE SHOWER. it was only for a couple of seconds, i think, but i hit my head twice on the wall (i think) and had to sit down for awhile. i came to before i hit the ground, and didn't bruise, but it was intense. DON'T DO THAT, YOU PEOPLE.

key words (in the mood of the abstract i'm writing tonight): gay womyn/bissexuality, existence, missing gynecologists, vegetarian/not chicken-atarian, exclusive cheese, bratty kids, leash-your-effing-dog campaign, beach, drunk zoo, precarious 9, naughty party bus, sexually promiscuous societies, fainting

Wait, did anyone hear that they were communist?

How am i? we have weekend "excursions", completely unsurpervised and unprogrammed, while we're here, and got to go to stay with the MST [moradores sem terra] (this big communist group that believes that agrobusiness is bad and took their land away,which is true and they deserve land as rural workers and they took it and people died defending it from the government and it's really cool; they even have liaisons with cuba for studying medicine and stuff). it was insane because we lived with them for two days and hardly learned about their policies and i instead got to watch my classmates take pictures of the "adorable children". which reminded me of unicef ads. when you go to a foreign country and you're making friends, i understand the propulsion to take pictures, but sometimes, it borders on exploitation, which is really weird for me. It makes me really upset because I feel like we use these “third-world cute kids” to make ourselves mask the actual situations we’re observing and our own disgusting prejudice. I hate it partially because i don't connect to kids really well at this point in my life (i'll be the first to admit that it's a proponent of my insecurities that still lingers even since i've bloomed into who i am today), and partially because, we didn't learn about why these people are in make-shift camps and doing major community organizing for their lives. we just played with children and took their photographs and forged fake connections with them after not really knowing them much at all after 2 days, you know?
then i came back into yom kippur, which i showered really quickly before and then basically locked myself up in my room to the sound of partying outside (people here in my neighbourhood party every day of the week except wednesday and thursday). i had to work during fast on reading, which made it much less holy andwhich i think is the reason g-d didn't speak to me in some way. i spoke aloud my resolutions for this new year (be closer to friends and family, seize all my opportunities when i can, and be more physically connected and healthy with myself), and it was more or less positive. but the problem is that, and also the reason that i didn't go to synagogue for the services, because there are some random ones here lurking in the shadows (apparently, the first synagogue in south america was here in salvador, but i can't find it :-( it's really sketchy and has no address listing i've ever seen and everyone who's natural to this area thinks it's ridiculous thatg there're any jews here, that's how semi-clandestine they are here): there's just no community i feel apart of here for prayer. no jews i really have a center already established to grow with during the new year here. it was kind of like being a community in myself, and that gets kind of lonely after 10 days of new year. it was a little sad, but hey, made me stronger and made me realize that i really need a jewish community in the future to live near/with. basically, now i know that i'll be going to israel for 2 years after peace corps after finishing brown. i'm an obsessive planner.
back to it: and then, last week, we went to an AIDS day care for little kids. and i was so confused. i cried and had to leave while no one was watching. here i am, the product of a womyn basically tricked into a disease before people knew what it was, who avoided at all costs my being infected by even not breast-feeding me, losing that connection, just to see these kids today. with opportunistic infections that make themhave uncontrollable diarrhea and ear infections in hospitals for 15 days, and we read them story books? it's not bad, just confusing. no one here could understand the depth of AIDS. nobody. not one of them. It really upset me but I couldn’t talk to anybody about it. The head of the day care came outside while I was there and asked me (after a couple tries in Portuguese) in English whether or not I was sad, and I just lied and said not really. I felt so ashamed. How can I cry when these kids should have nothing to cry about, or be ashamed of? Should I not be upset? It was really confusing and I’m still not okay with it. And I’ll be working there with HIV-infected young mothers and getting more contacts through them, so it’s gonna be really hard. I don’t know. This’d all be alot easier if more people here in my program weren’t so fucking ignorant and still thought they understood public health and therefore came to Brazil. Iknow that’s negative, but race and class and HIV are big deals. You should get them before coming here. Is that really obnoxious? I’m really confused about what I should be feeling right now.
it was tough. basically, I'M learning a lot, and visiting a lot, but getting frustrated that people still think i'm not speaking portuguese when i do, yet i feel like i speak pretty competently. i can't tell if it's a mixture of racism and confusion, because the other students get understood just fine, or if i'm really awful.
happy note: family is slightly better. they stopped talking to me as if i was a jackass when they came home and saw i was having a full-out convo with the repair man and he liked my company. SURPRISE! i know how to speak portuguese. IF YOU TALKED TO ME, YOU'D KNOW THAT! growl.

more blog updates to come, things have gotten a lot better recently. like, i stayed with a bunch of communists! credit of quote above going to: ignorant comment #198756478569378 on this trip.

Breakdowns and Rescue Songs

so, i had a breakdown today, and on sunday. basically, my family talks shit about me when they don't think i can understand their portuguese. to start, my host-little-brother unraveled my dental floss and poured shit over my photos, and then didn't admit to it directly when i confronted him, and instead tried to be all buddy buddy with me afterward (in the morning in the space of time it took me to walk out of my room to the bathroom and back, therefore not locking the door) by banging on my door and window and opening my door twice while i was changing. so i just sat on my bed and sobbed. i was really overwhelmed with these two kids in my house (my host-little-sister was also banging on my window with him), who i knew were just accidentally making mistakes and trying to have fun with me, but made me feel so overwhelmed and invaded in my privacy. and i think they heard me sobbing and some adults get up coincidentally at the same time, because they stopped all of a sudden. but later, my host-mom had her 2 sisters and other family over, because sundays are family days in my house and we have lots of food and drink (not so much me, but everyone else because i think my host-mom is touchy about me drinking a lot), and i think she got drunk with her family and started talking about how i had forgotten to call her before coming home late 3 times the past week. and i had. but one of the times was when i was literally out with everybody (pelourinho on tuesdays), the other was friday night (which i had told her i would be out for, but not very late, and was rosh hashanah, jewish new year, which she knew i was celebrating), extending to saturday night (jewish holidays go from sundown to sundown). and i believe she literally said about me, as i listened to her family talk about me for half an hour, that "it must be because she doesn't have a mom. that's why she doesn't like calling to let people know where she is."
i was hurt, but i let it roll off. i figured it wasn't worth it to get upset about, because it all sounded so indignant, after she had already discussed it with me infront of her family members who i do not know at all over lunch, laughing a little when i didn't understand what they were saying to each other about me. then, today, we were supposed to go to this religious ceremony of a religion holding over from angolan slaves here called "candomble". and you're supposed to wear white to it, right? but i didn't understand that you were supposed to wear a separate set of clothes to the temple, have a shower there to cleanse yourself, and THEN change into white clothes. because it was all said in portuguese. and i'm still learning portuguese, right? so i show up in all white clothes, and one of the program coordinators basically yells at me (in portuguese, again, which i cannot understand very well at this point, and she doesn't understand english at all, no words, whatsoever, so this is a very stressful situation in which to get yelled at, and my friend tanya has to translate for me) and tells me that i'll have to buy something else to wear. but i ran out of money (i think i had the equivalent of about US$40 stolen, and literally eat fruit and cheese sandwiches for lunch, because that's what i can afford) until i can cash in more travelers checks, so i have no money to buy anything with and she just kind of laughs at me while i tell her this. and tanya asks me if i want to go to the bay look-out that's in my program office, and i just start sobbing again. about how incompetant i feel, and how i'm getting low Bs in this bullshit program that has literally taught me close-to-nothing near a brown class in more than 3 weeks, and i can't even complain properly in portuguese, which sucks, because only 2 of my 4 program coordinators knows good english. and then the womyn that had been so mean to me looks really shocked that i'm crying, and other students see me, and it's almost this really big scene before tanya kind of calms me down. and yeah. it's been really tough here.

but on the bright side, i've tried to compensate for the bullshit in my program right now in doing positive things for myself, which is a really big benefit to this program in the end. i'm near the beach, i'm learning about my insecurities with language and how to overcome them or security and laughter, and i'm jogging every day now near my house at this beautiful lake called dique de tororo (it's 3 km, and i do it once every day).
basically, even though i have to read about what an ethnography is over 80 pages and why humyn rights are important for 150 more, i'm building my own character. and i love it.

i'm enjoying myself, but in a very different way than i expected i would. learning some essential things about barriers i cause myself in every-day tasks and interactions, even in english.

today, in a field trip visit to a candomble temple, people go into trance as they "become" angolan g-ds which imitate christian ones (it's kind of problematic), and this womyn in trance had to smoke cigars basically (it's kind of strange, but really interesting to see) and dance to improvised music through the deity she's imitating. and as the room filled with smoke and left the room and came back in circulation, i felt something. not much of anything, but i think it was a certain amount of inner clarity. i acknowledge that my anger here is because i hate feeling incompetent. i'm just frustrated that very few people here understand/care to understand my issues with the curriculum and assign us diaries to complete in the place of field research. though it gives me more time to go to the beach.
positively, i picked a g-d in candomble that i most identify with, and its name is iansa. and she's married to a g-d named xango. and iansa's the g-d of storms and lightning and wind, and xango's basically the g-d of fire and power. isn't that interesting? my life is full of rebel mamas.

in summation, i put my itunes shuffle on on my laptop every night now too, and a bunch of good songs came on, including "i dreamt i was an architecht" by the decembrists. if that's not the title, i apologize to the decembrists. but it made me feel like a g-d. check it out sometime. it's all about why you are the way you are for me, and i love that.

spectacularly,
Akinyi

FIRST POST IN BAHIA

So,

In case you guys are new, I'm in Salvador, which is basically the Afro-Brazilian capital of Brazil. It's in the state of Bahia, and it's pretty BAMF.

My fam is actually upper-middle class, so much for learning through experience in my home-stay, lol. The first two days I was with them we had a holiday in Bahia on Monday, so they took me with them to their BEACH HOUSE an hour north of Salvador. WHO HAS BEACH HOUSES! Craziness. We have a big balcony that we eat on that overlooks this gorgeous lake called Dique de Tororo, and it's the epitomy of looking down at the proletariat while I literally eat breakfast. Hot shower, fan, room to myself; it's kind of like Brown, haha.
As for the program itself, the academics are really lacking. I'm basically gonna do my ISP (Independent Study Project and basis of all SIT programs, like the one I'm on here in Salvador) religiously, finish it somewhat early-ish, and then hang in Bahia. I like it a lot here, and my Portuguese has really picked up already from the beginning. It gets more cultural to the North and more mainstream to the South. Not like I'm saying Rio wouldn't be fun or anything. Just something to be aware of when I spit love for Salvador, because it's literally reife with cultural influence from Angola and other lovely African slaves that made the Portuguese adopt any culture whatsoever. Like, people practice Capoiera here on beaches for fun. And people drum here like fucking bad-asses, compared to in the US. And there's literally a church for EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR (365). It's pretty Christian. And pretty intense.
I have 3 little kids in my house (from about 7-9 years-old), and the one boy, loves to kill things. Like, when we went to the beach, every big crab we found, he smashed to pieces. And he likes to kick things and scream a lot. He's kind of a psychopath. No, really, I hope he's not a psychopath.

And the other girls think I'm just kinda slow. I've learned a lot from smiling when I don't understand, and trying to have fun with the little Portuguese that I have. It's kind of intense, but really thrilling every time I learn a new word, or a new place. It sounds nerdy, but getting ice cream at this big touristy beach named Porto de Barra last Saturday was the biggest feat I've had in awhile.
I'm gonna learn a lot of Portuguese, if anything to my program's credit. The reading in our classes in general just doesn't match up with much of anything that we're doing, and we (ONLY 7 STUDENTS IN TOTAL, INCLUDING ME) basically make the classes run and interesting. I've made some happy acquaintances here that are Brazilian, but in general, it's hard to make friends outside of the program knowing as little Portuguese as I do. It'll get easier, but it makes me realize how insecure I can be when I'm not speaking a language I know well, like French, or even any language outside of English. It's a good thing that I'm learning that about myself now, so that I can make that the main thing for me to work through while here. And, the beach, of course, and the weather, is amazing. It'll get even hotter than it is here now by the time my dad comes to visit me in mid-December, since it'll become summer (seasons are flipped around because I'm south of the eqautor), and I already only sleep with a sheet, like everyone else, at night. It's hot.
I'm gonna start exploring more this weekend, as opposed to just reading and drinking and feeling a little awkward with my home-stay family.
...Just saying, I've had some sketch sketch SKETCHY experiences here already. Ask for sketchy stories from me personally, haha.

Anyways, more to update later. Just trying to start writing my ISP now, on Teenage Pregnancy and Supporting Systems and its Intersection with HIV AIDS prevalence in Salvador. IT'll be intense. And I get along with most of the people in my program, which I adore. It's gonna be a crazy next 13 weeks.

Spectacularly,
Akinyi

Welcome to my politically incorrect blog!

Hey populace,

So, here's how it works: if you want to ask me for the gruesome details of my life, you can do so privately via my amaaaazing e-mail address, hotrevolution@gmail.com. Or, Akinyi_Shapiro@brown.edu. Either one goes to the same place, and I will answer.

Otherwise, I'm doing big things this next 11 months, and will NOT be at Brown University.

Schedule:
June 21-August 15: Kenya, with my family (and yes, I've done it several times before)
August 15-August 31: FREE
August 31-December 29: In Salvador/other places, Brazil (my first semester program, on "Public Health and Community Welfare", with my independent study on teen pregnancy and supporting systems, and their intersection with HIV/AIDS in Salvador, Brazil)
December 29-January 14: FREE
January 14-May 7: In DC, Vietnam, South Africa and Sao Paulo, Brazil, in my Global Health program

EXPANDED ITINERARY:
Washington DC: January 14-January 27
South Africa: January 28-February 25
Vacation: February 26-March 4
Vietnam: March 5-April 4
Brazil: April 5-May 6

May 7: Back in the US or Kenya for awhile and hopefully employed wherever I go. TELL ME ABOUT INTERNSHIPS IF YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM FOR ME! I'd love to stay with family in California or North Carolina and internship, or stay in Providence and internship, or somewhere random in the world. Kenya would be great. Just something stable, por favor.


This loving blog will be how I relate my thoughts, wishes, and love-sendings to all YOU lovely folks, hand-selected to see them uncensored and free-flowing.


I may not write too often in Kenya, because that'd be kind of like writing from your own home, and that's awkward and self-indulgent.


Spectacularly,
Akinyi