Diary 1970-1975

November 24, 1970

In view of the Brazilian coast. Another day and the ocean journey will be over. We are really carefree here on the ship, our Brazilian duties receding more every day instead of approaching. Since Las Palmas we have had beautiful weather, sunny and warm. We lay all day on deck, the ocean's vastness ahead, the mild wind over us and the officers' gaze on us. They observe our every movement with binoculars from the bridge. The poor fellows aren't allowed to come down and mix with the common folk.

December 1970

Well, here I am in the Waldorf School in Sao Paulo. In this bustle of cars, people, buildings, super-markets, banks, buses, in this contrast between big and small, poor and rich, under-developed and over-developed. Luckily I live outside the skyscraper zone, about a half-hour bus ride from downtown, in an attractive residential area with many trees and flowers. It's a bit cooler here than in the city and, above all, there is a very precious commodity: air. In the city after walking around for a few hours one is as black as a coal-carrier. A city of six-million (1981: thirteen million) inhabitants without an underground railway system. Transportation in the city consists of buses and cars. One bus after the other, rattling, squeaking, emitting a black sticky cloud of smoke. A crazy town!

A new building seems to be finished every hour. If you haven't been in the city for two months, when you go back whole streets have changed. You look in vain for some building because it has already been torn down. Entire rows of houses disappear overnight in order to make way for a widened street. You can waste hours looking for something because it isn't in its usual place.

In order for a normal mortal like me without a car and living in Santo Amaro to send a telegram, three hours are needed what with traveling by bus and waiting. Everyone is in a hurry, working and running - and in this heat. Nevertheless, much of it is unproductive because the people paralyze each other, more so than in, for example, Paris. The skyline looks imposing and nice from a distance. Less pleasant is to have an elevated highway running by two yards from your third floor living-room window.

The Waldorf School is situated in a beautiful, quiet residential area. The teachers are nice, not like the ones you see in many schools who have seen better days. The school makes an inspiring impression and one can surely feel well here. I will take over the third grade of mostly German, German-descended and also Dutch children.

This Brazil is very different from my social-worker time in Londrina. For the first time it is really clear to me how wide the gulf is between the Brazilians who have a roof over their heads, enough to eat and can send their children to a decent school, and those who live from day to day in a favela and often have no way to prepare themselves or their children for a trade or profession -- not only in respect of the distribution of wealth, but also in respect of consciousness. Here they speak a grammatically pure Portuguese, don't much like the dark-skinned, in fact fear them, and cannot empathize with someone who has made the jump from being an agricultural laborer in a drought area into the confusing diversity of a modern city of millions. I am often angry at this lack of understanding. Comments such as: "She married a Black; I almost fainted." Or: "The Blacks must know their place," (that is, in humble jobs, in the favela, in mud). Or the lack of understanding about student movements (all bandits). It all drives me crazy.

In Londrina I lived very un-European and closely allied with simple people. It is good that I now have the opportunity to get to know the other side of Brazil. But in general this "white" side of Brazil seems to be the tip of an iceberg which peeks out over the surface while the essential part remains hidden. For me the real, alive and vigorous Brazil is that of the favela, of the country people, the Brazil of Dona Jacinta, the Macumba priestess; of the laborers who pick coffee and plant corn; of the fishermen who bring their fish to market on the litoral; of the workers who, year after year, must make the same monotonous movements.

It is now much clearer to me how huge a country Brazil is, in which many forces are still in formation or must be awakened, in which the most diverse peoples - from Indians and blacks to Europeans and Japanese - contribute to making Brazilians a people, a nation. Like in Greece, where migrations had to take place in order to form the Greek people and make their culture possible. I don't really consider Brazil as being a nation yet, in spite of their great national pride. You can buy posters everywhere stating: Brazil - love me or leave me, Brazil - confide in me, or God is Brazilian!

But in reality there are thousands of Brazils, which are often fundamentally different from each other and in quite different stages of human development. What does an agricultural laborer of African descent – who is practically his employer's slave and has to live on the roots he digs up during droughts – have in common with an industrialist of European descent in Sao Paulo, whose life is completely dominated by technology? What do they have in common? Only that they are both human beings.

I believe that the students are almost the only ones who perceive something of the profound differences in the Brazilian people and try to find ways of coming into contact with the other classes and to break down the invisible barriers between them. To overcome the gulf between rich and poor, between life in the city and on the land, between people who are educated in schools and those whose only education derives from their mean daily lives and perhaps also Macumba; also the gap in white understanding of the blacks. I believe that the students at least attempt all this when they go on vacation to the Mato Grosso or to the northeast to work there with the simple people and explain some things to them.

May 1971

I survived the first week of school. The mutual teacher-pupil sizing-up has taken place to the satisfaction of both sides - I like the children, they like me...but, what a job to teach them some order and discipline. They are a wild bunch of lively nine-year-olds who have a lot to offer but are very disorderly and have little consideration for the others. The boys especially are bursting with energy. I immediately steered this energy in the right direction: gardening. It was a pleasure to watch them remove the yard-high weeds with hoes, spades and rakes.

A black Brazilian recently passed behind the gardening plot on his donkey-drawn cart collecting old paper, bottles, etc. My pupils were frightened and came running to me. There will be a lot to do to teach the children that these people are also human beings.

The image of Brazil that the wealthy and the German-Brazilians and probably many Waldorf teachers and parents have must be fundamentally different from mine. Somehow one always unconsciously feels threatened here in Sao Paulo. By the people who are poorer or by the jeunesse dorée, for they also mug people and steal money and cars. Threatened by so many speeding cars, from which one is always fleeing. The bars on the windows, broken glass on the walls, watch-dogs in every house (recently one bit me on the calf and left a large blue bruise), the whistling of the night-watchmen – and if you include the runny-nosed children hanging around the streets and the women sleeping on the sidewalks (typical comment: She'd rather sleep there than in her bed!), then you feel on one hand fear of the brutality and unpredictability of the people and, on the other hand, a feeling of superiority arises. Sometime when I have more time I must ask the teachers what is done to awaken an understanding of the poor classes. In Londrina, in the interior in general, everything is calmer, quieter, more human, and you feel safer and freer.

To be continued...