Favela Children

Ute Craemer

Chapter 9

THE CORAL-COLORED SERPENT

Once upon a time there was a coral-colored serpent and a little black girl. She lived in the middle of a dense jungle. The trees grew so high and the undergrowth was so thick that the way had to be hacked out with a bush-knife, after which the jungle closed in again. The strength of the sun and the sap of the earth were so strong that every trampled blade of grass and every cut-off branch grew back almost immediately. Wild animals, tigers, serpents, armadillos, monkeys and parrots inhabited the jungle; crocodiles lounged lazily in a wide muddy stream that wandered slowly to the sea.

Talinha, the black child, lived in this jungle. Her mother had died at her birth. As the angel descended to carry her mother to heaven, she spread her wings over the new-born child, which made her invisible to human eyes. Even her father could no longer see his daughter. Sad because he lost his wife and daughter on the same day, he left his house and the jungle for good in order to live in a place where there were more people. Talinha, small and defenseless against the threatening jungle, stayed behind.

As the sun disappeared behind the treetops the animals appeared, surrounding the plaited hammock in which Talinha slept. When she began to cry because she was hungry and cold, a mighty growling and murmuring went through the animal world: how can we help the child? After long deliberations, the onca, the tiger-cat, said: I will raise her, give her milk to drink and warm her with my fur. I will show her which plants are poisonous and which are edible and which have curative powers. And I will explain to her how the strength of the sun and the moon are transmitted to the plants and the animals.

Thus Talinha grew up among the animals of the jungle. She jumped over streams, frolicked with the cubs, rode on the backs of the young oncas, swung with the monkeys from tree to tree. The only things the animal mother could not teach her were to walk upright and to speak. She grew to be a pretty young girl with brilliant eyes and a softly expressive mouth.

But she changed during her thirteenth year. She became thin and sad and her arms hung limply at her sides. All her high spirits and joy of living were gone. A meeting of the animals was called again and they deliberated long on what they should do. Finally they all agreed: the coral-snake must help.

The coral-colored serpent lived lonely and secluded behind the mountain. Three monkeys were appointed to bring her. Swinging from tree to tree, they soon reached their destination. "Cobra, cobra, come out, Talinha is ill!" The serpent slithered quickly out of her hideout and began her journey. It was high time, for Talinha lay completely exhausted in her hammock. As the coral-snake looked at Talinha with her glowing, powerful eyes, suddenly thunder and lightning raged through the bush and a cloud descended on the serpent and completely enveloped her. Then the cloud vanished and in the place of the serpent stood a young prince in a coral-colored, royal cloak. He said to Talinha: "You have redeemed me from the enchantment. An evil magician transformed me into a serpent, so that I had always to creep along the earth. Now I can stand upright and have recuperated my speech. I can be human again".

Talinha suddenly understood her illness: she was born a human being but was not yet able to be one -- she lacked speech and an upright posture. The prince's words warmed her heart and filled her with joy. She spoke the first words of her life: "And you, my Prince, have redeemed me and made me a human being. You have given me speech. Only now have I been really born."

They were so happy about the gift of speech that they decided to wander through the land and tell fairy tales. The were the first story-tellers.

Chapter 10

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-man. 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 good 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 descendent - 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.

Chapter 11

October 1971

The Spring holidays were reserved for my long overdue visit to the Vila da Fraternidade in Londrina/Paraná. For four years saudade-letters have been going back and forth, and now the legendary figure - a Rute do Jardim, Ute of the kindergarten - will appear in flesh and blood. On the one hand I am looking forward to it; on the other I am thinking: will they be disappointed when the real me stands before them, after having become idealized with time?

I packed two huge suitcases with all the presents accumulated over four years in Germany as well as in Sao Paulo, bought my ticket, not for the bus but for a narrow-gauge railway, second class (I wanted to arrive as I had left Londrina then) and was seen off by Katerina. I remember clearly the feeling I had as I rode four years ago through the gloomy, endless outskirts of Sao Paulo and imagined how queer it must be for people loaded down with belongings and a dozen children coming from the northeast and hurled into such a confusingly enormous city and then having to adapt to an industrialized society. The first stop for most of them is the bus or train station, in which they find themselves among the crowd wrapped in rags or lying on newspapers. The second stop for many is a favela or sleeping places under bridges and underpasses.

I thought of this again as I rode slowly for over an hour through the city's outskirts. I took out my sleeping-bag, for it's still quite cool at night, and was thankful that the seats aren't still made of wood as they were in 1967. After a fifteen-hour ride though, I was so stiff that I could barely lift myself from the seat. I dozed and was woken around midnight by an excited argument. Although the light isn't turned off at night, a male passenger was bold enough to touch his neighbor's thigh in an unchaste manner, whereupon the incensed woman began to shriek. Two parties formed immediately, one in defense of the woman, the other for the man. Each inveighed loudly against the other, getting hotter and hotter.

More and more passengers came up, not wanting to miss the show. Suddenly there was respectful silence: autoridade approached in the person of the conductor. Very serious, he listened to the witnesses, wrote down addresses and finally handed down his decision: the lecher had to leave the train. He was pushed out into the pitch-dark night at the next god-forsaken stop. He stood on the platform cursing the departing train. The next train would come on the following day. The discussion continued for a long time. An old man spoke important words about the seriousness of the situation, which had a comical effect, especially as his eyeglasses were tied over his ear with a black shoelace.

I dozed again until sunrise. With great composure the train left the miles behind it, winding its way through the fields, stopping every twenty miles or so. It seemed to me that there was less coffee planted than previously and more useful things: beans, rice, corn, manioca, etc. Perhaps the government's measures to eliminate unproductive coffee-plants was having effect after all. The train went so slowly and in so many loops that it seemed to want to greet each field personally. A trip like that is so nice because you can look at the landscape calmly without having to worry about traffic, you take part in the general conversation and drink a cafezinho now and then.

Finally, at about eight o'clock in the morning, we came to the Paranápanema River, which separates the states of Sao Paulo and Paraná. Happy cries went through the train: Paraná, Paraná! Three more hours and I would be going past the Vila da Fraternidade and pulling into the station accompanied by the familiar toots. I found it especially exciting and moving this time, as though the train was announcing my return to the whole city with its tooting.

I walked through the streets as though I had never left. Still the same shops, the music store where we bought the records for the quadrilla, the wool shop where we bought our cheap wool. Only the store selling Macumba supplies - herbs and saints, was new. Then the end of the asphalt, down on the terra roxa through the red-light district, a right turn at the corner, past some wooden houses, then left down the hill and there was the Vila da Fraternidade with "our" house standing before me.

I knocked at Gelsa's house and Uranio, who used to clean our school, saw me at the same moment. He has grown, but is as funny as ever. He recognized me immediately. "Ah, é a ut ! Demorou mas finalmente chegou! (Ah, it's Ute. It took a long time but finally she came.) An abraco, an embrace, and I was pushed into the store where a crowd of people stood around and Gelsa's mother was behind the counter. Gelsa came running with her two-year-old Marcelo. Abracos, embraces.

On the surface a lot has changed. The old barracks and the wooden shed as well as the abandoned bus in which an Indian family lived have all disappeared. There are many new houses with electricity and running water and the streets are partly paved. A health-center of the Prefecture operates in our old house. They do the same kind of work as during the development aid times: fighting the parasitic diseases, stool-examinations, etc., only with more people. Even my work with children has found its successors. Three, sometime four women from the prefecture care for some children. Their efforts, however, seems to be limited to letting the children play on their own with wooden blocks and then pushing the blocks together again with a huge broom -- at least as far as I could determine during the week I was there. Smartly dressed young ladies, they mostly stand around watching the children.

Seu Esau was doing the same from a place in the shade -- in front of our ex-bicycle shed -- playing "lady" with great intensity, with one eye watching the children on swings. He hasn't changed a bit, the same help-seeking look, an eternal imitator of the higher placed. It is all quite bureaucratic, orderly and risk-free, but without life and enthusiasm. The main thing is that at the end of the day the list is ready and entered in a thick book that reports on the activities of the recreacionistas, play-time supervisors. It looked something like this: ball-playing -- aims at coordinating the limbs and encourages sociability; building-blocks -- encourages the imagination and equilibrium, etc, etc. And every day the same trash and the same warmed-over words. My skin crawled when I saw children who were too young for me to know them, but who knew my name from hearing it. A thousand things could be done with them, such as sawing their own building-blocks, weaving on simple wooden frames, making games, etc., all that we used to do with the children and what I have learned in the meantime. (Since 1975 things have improved somewhat; at least there are now sports.)

I had the feeling that this house, with all its employees, was like an island in the Vila without any radiation streaming out to the other inhabitants. No one really knew who these people were, what they were doing and what their names were. It's strange to think that they are Brazilians and we were the foreigners. Kaspar, Adolfo, Ute, Otto have become unforgettable names. The entire Vila still vibrates with us. A vila ficou chata depois que voces sairam, it has become dull since you left. I was amazed at how deeply those two years are anchored in the children; nothing, but absolutely nothing have they forgotten. Tereza, Otalino, Vena and all the others could repeat word for word what I had once said on some occasion or other. They remembered every detail of the festivals, the outings, the sports-festival, the exhibition, the secret visits to Koch-Weser's Fazenda, our raids on the abandoned fruit-farms, the wood gathering for the Sao Joao festival. All of it still lived in them, as though it had been yesterday and not four years ago. And whenever we reveled in nostalgia, it ended with the final words: mas agora é chato, nao tem quadrilla, nao tem brincadeito, (it's so dull now, there is no quadrilla, there are no games).

For those children, who now mostly work as house-maids or in factories, those two years were a kind of golden childhood, full of the joy of life and crackling with the spirit of adventure. Now they must work, swallow their mistress's insolence for a wage of 20 to 40 dollars a month, or get up at five in the morning and fill honey bottles till seven in the evening, or whatever other spirit-killing work they can get. But no one is there now to undertake something occasionally with them, organize a festival or encourage them in some other way.

Despite the separation which, for children, is a long time, we haven't become strangers to each other. They are as open and willing as ever to tell me about their namorados, noivos (lovers, boy-friends) etc., as they once were to report on their childish experiences. Most are already engaged or on the verge of marriage. Even little Dirce, whom I left as a spindly nine-year-old, who has shot up but is even more spindly and angular, proudly told me of her forthcoming marriage.

I used my time to visit everybody. I sat in the same chairs in the same houses only with larger families now, sipped coffee like before, listened to what had happened in the meantime, and felt very good. But how much coffee I had to drink! And how often I ate beans and rice! Sometimes I ate lunch three times and dinner twice, always beans and rice. Come a comida a casa, eat here at home - I couldn't refuse. The first two days everyone said I was much thinner (and prettier!) than four years ago. At the end of my stay they said I had gotten fat in Germany. In reality this was the result of the six-day stuffing in the Vila da Fraternidade. "Has life become better?" I asked. "Que nada, ficou do mesmo jeito." No, not at all, it's all the same."

Or, nothing much has changed, the Vila looks better, no more favela, but there is still not work for everyone, at least not regular work. A maid still doesn't earn more than $20 a month, the legal minimum wage is $75. Sack-carriers earn by sack carried and earn up to $400 depending on how fast they can run, but only when there are sacks to carry. Gelsa's husband was without work and dragged himself around the house somewhat embarrassed. Otalino, as an car painter, earns a kingly wage: almost $250, regularly, every month. He told me proudly about his trade and, cavalier-like, lost no opportunity to spoil me.

But life has changed, one just doesn't notice it amidst the daily monotony. After a four-year absence the difference was immediately apparent to me: many children stream into the city and attend high school, many more have finished primary school with a diploma. The older siblings were left back sometime during their school time and finally dropped out in order to earn some money. Their younger brothers and sisters live in more orderly homes, do their homework on clean tables and finish school faster. I was happy for each one who told me he had learned a trade. And I was sad for each one of whom I heard that he had gone back to the land, to the roca (planted land), where there usually are no schools. In practice this means that at least another generation will pass before there is any kind of chance in life. Cido and his family also returned to the land.

In these four years Cido has an odyssey behind him. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see him, although he was advised by radio that I was finally back in Brazil. Shortly after I left Londrina in 1967, Cido's family also moved, trading their house for a bar near Londrina. That didn't work, so they traded the bar for a combi, packed their worldly goods and went to Sao Paulo. It must have been horrible: where to go in that monster-city with a family of ten? Seu Pedro, the father, was underway from morning till night in the combi transporting goods from one end of the city to the other. After three months they packed their things again and drove north, to Pernambuco, from where they had migrated twenty years before. They had relatives there (even a son who had been left behind with his grandparents because he was too small to withstand the strain of the journey to Paraná). The relatives had a piece of land from which now, suddenly, ten more people had to be fed. I think it was this idea of a piece of land in his own homeland which decided Cido's father to turn his back on the "wealthy" south - saudade da minha terra. Gelsa told me how the whole family appeared again one day in Londrina looking so gaunt and miserable that they were hardly recognizable. From Londrina they continued to Faxinal, about 100 miles farther, where they traded the combi for a piece of land in Marumbi, the end of the world.

I will visit them for Christmas.

Dona Jacinta, the macumbeira, glows with composure and peace, as always. You feel calm just being near her. You sit on a rickety chair in front of her house, say something now and then, listen, make automatic slow movements. Haste gives way. And I believed her as a matter of course when she said that she had been sure of seeing me again. "E o destino". So I went from house to house accompanied by Tereza who, just as before, never left my side. It is still somehow nice in the Vila, but the atmosphere that prevailed before, when something interesting was always being prepared, is absent.

On Sunday I had to leave. I was so tired that I slept through almost the whole ten-hour bus ride to Sao Paulo, but I was glad to have finally been in Londrina again.

Chapter 12

Londrina, 16 January 1972

Up and away to Marumbi!

I rode the whole night in the bus. Luckily, Daiggers brought my two impossibly large suitcases to the station. In Apucarana I made the usual connection with the Viacao Londrinense, the Londrina bus company, famed for its busses breaking down after a few miles, which is exactly what happened. We all got out and sat at the side of the road waiting for the replacement bus. We were covered with dust by the time it arrived in a cloud of red dust an hour later. It got as far as Faxinal before giving up the ghost.

Thank God I was only going that far, where a jeep was waiting to take me and my voluminous luggage the remaining fifteen miles to Cido's adobe hut. It flew over rocks and holes, at one point getting stuck in one, and had to be pulled out. When I finally arrived, children and dogs came running and jumping all over me. They were all happy that I had really come again. I was given something to eat right away: a cucumber, saved especially for me, rice, beans and a piece of smoked bacon. And everyone talked, talked, talked, the children about how they had counted the days to my arrival, how they listened to the sound of every jeep; I, about how I had run around Sao Paulo inquiring about schools and work and how I told everyone about their life at the sitio (home on the land) and that everybody gave me things for them: dresses, shoes, shirts, suits, school-books, notebooks, pencils, sweets and a chocolate Santa Claus which was divided into twenty parts so all could have a taste.

The overweight suitcase was suspensefully unpacked to the accompaniment of much laughter. Ivan the Great's trousers came up to Seu Pedro's neck. His shoes were too big of course, but they are bound to the feet with laces and thus offer protection against snakes during field work. The new frying pan was consecrated with pancakes filled with strawberry jam donated by my Yugoslavian pupil.

17 January 1972

Rise and shine! We all creep out of our beds and gather on the bench in front of the hearth waiting for coffee and roasted corn-cobs. First water must be brought up from below where it trickles through the mud; not clear spring-water, but an opaque brew, probably infected will all kinds of viruses. Some of it is put over the fire to make coffee, the rest is for brushing our teeth. The sun is already quite hot and no one feels much like working, but there's no alternative: we must go out to the fields and pick weeds. I put on a straw hat, pick up a hoe and put long sleeves over my bare arms in order to protect my noble white skin from the brutal Brazilian sun. A rice field that had been weeded just two weeks ago waited with a thick new growth. Hoe, hoe, hoe - interspersed with conversation. Cido and Zéca had participated in a church youth meeting and were very enthusiastic. We talked about it. How should they love their parents? How should they love their country? Hoe, hoe, hoe! Why are you against nationalism? Hoe, hoe, hoe! Who was Hitler? etc. etc. As the heat increases the conversation dies out. I push my hat around hoping to lessen the impact of the heat on my head and see only weeds before me and -- as in a dream -- a nice pitcher of cool clear spring-water and a basket of juicy oranges. Then Maricela appears with a pot of not exactly clear but at least thirst-quenching water. Finally it was eleven o'clock and we shuffled back for lunch: rice, beans, a piece of pork and a vegetable treat for Ruti, (Ute) - pumpkin.

Another drink of water and back to work. The air shimmers with heat and the work is hard. The damned tree-stumps are all over, charred and full of holes and sometimes snakes. And this gently clinging grass capim colonial, which only comes out after three or four blows. When you see a mass of capim ahead, you feel like despairing. Luckily Zéca comes to my aid and pulls out the more resistant bushels.

In the evening I am completely exhausted and even a bath in the river doesn't have its usual healing effect. I sit lazily at the dinner table (how good that one can do that here) and don't have the least desire to teach anything. But duty calls. Inexorably Evaristo makes the sign for class: he writes with his finger on his left palm. Entao vamo, let's go! We last until ten o'clock. One after the other we creep into bed.

18 January

A terrible rain-storm. The kitchen swam, the earthen floor turned to mud. In the "living-room" the rain streamed through the door and window and washed over the bean harvest stored there. While Evaristo was busy covering the smoke-holes on the roof with a tarpaulin, Cido was straining heroically in a race with the rain to push out the water that had entered through the door. The situation was serious (because of the beans which might rot), but also fun. Protected from the dripping water by straw hats, we all fought against the superiority of the streaming water, wading and slipping over the gradually dissolving earth floor. The mother, however, stood earnestly at the hearth trying to keep the fire going despite the rain pouring on it. She called us to order, saying that we should pray that the house isn't swept away by the storm, something which she had already experienced. No one knew what God had in store for us.

You really feel more at the mercy of nature and the elements here than elsewhere. A sincere reverence and faith go hand in hand with superstitious acts. For example, you shouldn't look in a mirror after dinner because you might see yourself distorted and remain so. Or a cigarette may not be lit from a candle.

20 January

Seu Manuel and family invited the neighbors to a Saint Sebastian celebration. As every year, Cido said the rosary with everyone who came by horse, donkey or by foot. He gave a kind of catechism class for the children. There were at least a hundred people, but all of them got some coffee and home-made bread. Later pigs and other presents, such as eggs, rice, corn, etc., were sold at auction. Seu Pedro did it very well and with humor. Then the long way home in the dark, stumbling over tree-stumps, springing over streams. No one really wanted to be first in this goose-march; the end of the line wasn't much loved either. Ghost stories were told. The forest over there is enchanted. Zéca rode through it once and his horse suddenly shied, listened to the forest, and wasn't to be moved from the spot. In the still darkness, with the moonlight stabbing out over the scudding clouds, the unexplainable noises -- it all seemed really uncanny.

Translation from the German: FTS

Ute Craemer is a social worker and teacher who has worked for over thirty years in the favelas of Brazil, where her initiatives have had a healing effect (spiritual as well as physical) on many of the poorest of the poor. Her pedagogical methods are based on the indications of Rudolf Steiner. To read the previous chapters of "Favela kinder", click on "Back Issues" below.

Favela Children is available as an eBook. click here to view the Favela Children e-book page.

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