Londrina, September 18, 1965

The visits seem never to end. High society rushes to the favela with Brazilian beginner's zeal. Favela social work is the current craze. My head reels from so many new faces bubbling with torrents of Brazilian sounds. I am so confused by all this that my brain cells can no longer differentiate between Portuguese, French. Serbo-Croatian and Russian.

A comical side of our life is the constant shuttling between the poorest, shabbiest part of Londrina and the city's prominence. Suddenly it's "to the mayor!" and we hastily wipe the red dust from our shoes and the red ring from under our fingernails (po, dust, is the number one subject during embarrassed silences instead of the weather), try to cover up flea-bites, rip off the favela clothes and rush to the prefectura (city-hall).

We hardly arrive home with our faces stiff from smiling when the next visitor is announced: a German family which is "developing" in Bolivia. They no sooner leave than two nuns arrive who are in turn replaced by the business manager of Fuganti's, Paraná 's Macys.

The following is a song about a child from a Rio favela who died because "there is no telephone in the favela to call a doctor and no car to fetch him".

Acender as Velas (Light the Candles)

O doutor chegou tarde demais
porque no morro
nao tem automovél pra subir
Nao tem telefone pra chamar
e nao tem beleza pra se ver
e a gente morre
sem querer morrer.

(The doctor comes too late because there is no car to come up to the favela, there is no telephone to call him, there is no beauty to see, and the people die without wanting to die.)

O menino está  morrendo! The child is dying. Maria came running to fetch us. We went. It was already dead, lying on a wide board alongside the other sleeping children. Why didn't the mother go to the Santa Casa clinic as I had urged her to? The child died of dehydration. Dysentery and the heat deprive the body of so much liquid that it dries out. They sit there crying and do nothing, call us when it is too late. Were the poor in Germany ever so apathetic? Are apathy and thoughtlessness the results of misery (which would disappear with better living conditions), or are they characteristics of these people?

Está  morto!

You suddenly feel empty, helpless, stupid, knowing nothing. What can you do? I snap off my flashlight, a definitive sound, like an exclamation point behind the morto.

Here you are closer to life than would ever be possible in Europe. Birth, death, marriage, sickness, crippling, idiocy -- you're right in the middle of it and not shut off by walls from all the vital, essential human events as in Europe where sickness is hidden behind hospital walls, madness within a sanitarium, birth behind maternity ward walls.

At a birthday party for a one-year-old Syrian boy I studied Londrina's haute-volée. The party took place in the living room and on the balcony. Suddenly I realized that I hadn't previously noticed the strict separation of sexes. I speak with a man on the gentlemen's balcony - for shame! The ladies sit stiffly in the living room like hens on a perch wearing powder and mascara masks, praising the birthday child who is plump and overfed, a little Farouk. With much effort they are able to coax a smile from the fat dumpling face. The child isn't treated as a human being but as a curiosity for the grown-ups to dance around.

The children of wealthy parents, spoiled and pampered, are in stark contrast to those others who will not even be born because their potential mothers are too weak and under-nourished.

During the night Dona Antonia sends for us. She has had a miscarriage. The third in her twenty-five years. The long shadows the petroleum lamp throws on the walls make everything seem even more wretched than it is.

E dura a vida da casada. A married woman's life is hard. Nevertheless, the women of Brazil, rich or poor, black or white, yearn for only one thing: to marry as soon as possible, despite their daily experience that drudgery begins with marriage – especially for the poor, of course.

Their lives are determined by the great rhythms of life – birth, marriage, motherhood – to which they are harnessed as though under a compulsion they must obey. A compulsion which gives their lives a certain structure, but no freedom to move outside this pre-ordained course. Life exhausts itself in namorar, casar, criar (fall in love, marry, bear and raise children).

I recently experienced a similar apathy and resignation in a dream. I lay stretched out on the earth (red earth!) and was about to be burned. I covered myself with paper so the fire would ignite more quickly. Adolf and Kaspar stood to my left and right and watched, unmoving. I said goodbye to them and lay down again with my arms stretched out wide and my face towards the sky. No fear, no desire to be saved, resigned, as though a will stronger than mine had decided.

While we are on the subject of dreams, here is another of my Brazilian ones. I am on a jungle river, probably a tributary of the Amazon. Hanging plants dip low to the shallow, turbid, lazily flowing water. I know that dangerous Indians live nearby. Then a huge, wild-looking, bearded man emerges from a cave. Quickly I hide among the hanging plants. He disappears into the cave. Shortly thereafter a half-civilized Indian emerges and just as quickly disappears. Then an Indian splendidly dressed in brocade appears - he seems to shine - with a child in his arms. He shows it to me and speaks calmly and peacefully to me. I think: these are the three phases of human development - the caveman, the normal, average man and the royal man, shining from within.

Londrina, September 28, 1965

We were invited to a children's party at the home of a black family. Their hut always seemed somewhat mysterious after some children told us that the Holy Ghost puts up there. Recently we heard, at night, loud tom-toms, African jungle drums in their monotonous singsong. Curiosity overcame my indolence and I went there. Through the window I saw women dressed in long white gowns dancing in a semi-trance. In a monotonous chant, gradually increasing in volume, they cried, Domini! Domini! It was African Sarawa Cult, a mish-mash of Catholic belief and African hedonist exorcism through which sickness is apparently cured (white Sarawa) and spells are cast (black Sarawa).

Now to the children's party. I was prepared for a birthday party but not for what awaited me there. As the daughter of the house led me into the shack I heard a wild drumming and smelled a penetrating odor of wine, incense and other indefinable things (mostly blood as I later learned).

The first thing I discerned in the semi-darkness was a black woman dressed all in red kneeling in the middle of the narrow crowded room. She held a convulsively twitching chicken fast while a fat black woman hung with pearls and chains (apparently the high priestess, she looked weird with one eye half-closed and the other goggling fearfully) cut the chicken's throat, caught the blood in a bowl, mixed it with oil, wine and honey and drew a cross on the other woman's forehead and throat with it. The one in red then drank the horrible brew and immediately went into ecstatic convulsions, similar to those of the slaughtered chicken, fell down, sprang into the air, danced wildly and finally threw herself onto the floor and rolled her eyes. Then another went into the circle, knelt, another chicken was sacrificed and so on, some fifteen times in my presence.

The atmosphere was uncannily thick, somehow stimulating and oppressive at the same time. It was like being in deepest Africa, although by no means only blacks participated. At intervals the drums stopped beating, the priestess rang a delicate bell and all was still. She said something about Jesus Christ and Domini (I had the impression she felt duty-bound to introduce a Christian element) and at once the singing, dancing and twitching continued. All this in a tiny, dim, candle-lit room crammed with sweating people and many children who delightedly clapped their hands and sang along and who I drew around me as a protective wall. Everyone was very attentive to me, held my bag, secured a good place for me to see, fanned fresh (sic) air in my direction. I was invited for the evening session and, being most curious, I didn't let the opportunity pass.

The atmosphere was completely different: calm and solemn. The initiates, the filhas de santos, also children, were dressed in blossom-white gowns trimmed with lace. They formed a circle around a white tablecloth spread on the floor. A child put candles and flowers on it, then six plates. Bahia food was brought. Six children were allowed to eat of it, representing all the children in the world, for the ceremony was an exorcism of the spirits who can harm children. This part was most solemn, only to be transformed suddenly into violent drumming and dancing.

But I didn't have the impression that the people thus carried away -- and it was real, not faked -- were any happier for it. Their faces were distorted with pain, sudden cramps shook their bodies, they put the backs of their hands on their spines as though they had motors there that called forth the ecstasy through cramps and writhing. The Sarawa priestess told me afterwards that the descending spirit occupies the lower vertebrae, literally possessing the person.

It was somehow nice when a nine year old child sprang into the circle, danced delicately, jumped for joy into the air and took my hand and placed it on an old woman's wrinkled face. She was the only one whose facial expression was calm and happy.

Then I was called aside. I expected the worst. I was to try the Bahia food. Manioca meal mixed with some green stuff and a mountain of meat that threatened to stick in my throat: the chicken which I had seen twitching several hours earlier. The thought of the flowing blood and the memory of the penetrating odor so nauseated me that the physical exertion of forcing it down brought tears to my eyes.

Londrina, 1 October

The stream of visitors has ceased. It is raining. The terra-roxa dust, which normally covers the land, furniture and people like a cloud, has been transformed into clay-like, slippery sludge. We are as good as cut off from the outside world; no automobile dares to penetrate this mud. It began last night with an electrical storm. This morning we viewed the mess: water in the kitchen and living-room.

Yesterday evening we sat on the stairs with a record player. Right away we were surrounded by a flock of children with whom we danced the Hava Naguila, laughed and "politicized". On Sunday the governor will be elected from two candidates. Even the children are ardent supporters of one or the other. Suddenly a twelve-year-old boy stood on the fence and gave a classical election speech. It was hilarious, especially when he graciously acknowledged our enthusiastic applause. It is the age when they never tire of asking such things as: Is there a Castelo Branco (the president) in Germany too? Is there war in Germany now? Are there blacks in Germany too? etc.

Londrina, October 9

When I look out the window I see a wedding tent. Cido's eldest sister is getting married. It will be the favela wedding of the year. The bride seems to belong to one of the best families. She even owns a radio-phonograph, which stands as a show-piece on a podium in the tent. On the porch are three rococo chairs. A special sign of wealth is that she lives in a stone house. Her father is a piece-worker who carries coffee sacks. The groom is an industrious electrician who lives in one of the new wooden houses. They have been preparing the bride's house for days now: painting, hammering, sawing, even the eternal lamp over the front door has been polished. It is the event. Often more money is spent on a wedding than the family's meager budget can stand. The girls of the favela make themselves beautiful. Their hairdos are veritable towers.

The wedding became a real festival, very gay for us but a torment for the bride and groom who only danced once and otherwise could only let themselves be admired by their relatives, many of whom had come from far away. The day was sweltering like a greenhouse, so I could only pity the bride in her tight fitting dress and long white gloves. We had never been in such demand -- by the children. A flock of them constantly hung onto us: Danca comigo (dance with me.) Finally we organized a dance line.

Since our paramedic once cured a boy's earache, more and more mothers come to us with their sick children. The word spread like lightning that there is a medico here. Most of the children have dysentery, probably caused by the impure water, and parasites. Schistosomiasis, caused by a parasite which spends the days in the intestines and nights in the liver and penetrates the intestinal wall each time, leads to serious liver damage. There is still no cure for Chagas disease, caused by the bite of an insect. One dies a long drawn-out death. Now and then the government launches a campaign against parasites, but as long as the greater part of the population lives in houses without running water and toilets, they are useless. The people are always infected anew. Bloated bellies, lack of appetite, listlessness and apathy are the results. Many parts of the favela are incubators of pestilence. City sewers empty into the favela and the filth pours into a ditch and oozes alongside the water spring. During Pablo Pimentel's election campaign the sewers were lengthened by ten yards. Most likely the remaining pipes will have to wait for the next election. The stench when the west wind blows is bestial. The men wash themselves in the spring and the women do their laundry there. They also wash the laundry of the wealthy. If they only knew what kind of water is used!

This afternoon we watched a fight over twenty cruzeiros that a woman underpaid the iceman. Cooking-pots, clumps of earth and finally knives were used. The word briga (fight) brings everyone running like nothing else. Jos‚ the fight addict, gave this one a miss though; It was only an unworthy women's battle.

A letter from the Vila da Boa Esperanca (Town of Good Hope) Here is a loose translation:

Senhorita Ruti, (me!)

By means of this poorly written letter I come to ask if, through goodness and kindness, you could accept this little girl in the school. She doesn't go to school, has no mother and lives with her sister. She would like to learn embroidery. I can't come myself because I am about to give birth. And if possible could you send milk for two children until my husband is released from the hospital. He has been there a long time. I am without work and ill. If you can do anything I thank you in advance.

Londrina, October 12

Yesterday we delivered our first favela child. All day it was unbearably hot until a thunderstorm finally broke in the evening. We were outside enjoying the patter of raindrops when the excited father came running up. Armed with a midwife kit, a bottle of alcohol, rubber gloves, towels and a flashlight, we tramped hurriedly through the mud, equally excited. The room was very dark, the bed full of lumps, rain dripped through the roof, you could hardly hear your own words over the thunder. We didn't know how to say "push" in Brazilian, the dictionary apparently being incompetent in such cases. We therefore kept calling for mais forca, (more force) and finally the baby came. We were deliriously happy when it began to scream. The afterbirth was carefully laid aside and afterwards the mother buried it, for the child's protection.

A delivery in the Santa Casa, a Catholic hospital, costs about seven dollars, half a month's wages for a housemaid. So they go there only in emergencies and otherwise trust in the help of an experienced mother.