Small town of one million

Here we are in Francisco Morato. We have been here nearly a week now and it already feels like a month has gone by. The drive from Sao Paulo was about an hour and a half with a view of favelas, people, horses, and an endless amount of windy dirt roads. So much has happened since my last post that I am thinking I'm going to have to start writing this blog more frequently to keep everyone accurately updated.

Time is always changing here and we can never rely on a set time or schedule. Last Sunday, a rest day and our last day in Sao Paulo, we were invited to go to church with Pedro. There was a lot of confusion at first with the language barrier which was quite funny. First we were going to church, then they were making dinner for us and we didn't want to be rude and leave, then the other people at the base were going to a different church and not coming back, then we were having dinner before, then after at Habib's (who is Habib?) ... We ended up having supper before we left, saying goodbye to our friends that we made there, and getting on a bus. We ended up walking through the streets led by this crazy funny guy Pedro for awhile. We didn't know where we were going but we felt pretty safe with Pedro leading us accross streets and to a night club looking place with bouncers "come on kids". This was the church. It was huge, and full of crying men and women. We walked in with the Pastor leading some sort of prayer/song with a band and I have never seen so many grown men crying in one room. These people are passionate about their god. It was really cool, there were a lot of people our age as well, it was a young church and very welcoming. After this concert/church experience we went to Habib's (yes! 2 suppers). Habib's is a fast food sit down resteraunt with good service. We had desserts and mini pizzas, delicious. The highlight of that experience though was not the food, it was the mechanical ship on the patio. Some of us ran to sit in it and then one of the workers came out and got it going, I thought it was going to go in a full circle with mini handle bars strapping us in. Yikes, hahah it was fun and didn't do a full loop so we were safe. Who knew going to church could be so fun. Tomorrow is another church day and one of the guys from the Sao Paulo base invited us to go back to another church in Sao Paulo, of course we said yes and can't wait to see the adventures that await.

The day we arrived in Francisco Morato it was raining a bit and the bus had to stop at the top of this hill because it would be too dangerous to go down this muddy red  dirt road, I almost fell down a couple of times. We unpacked right away and set up a schedule to prepare food and clean dishes, we were instantly home. These past few days here have been about getting to know the children who hang out at the base all day everyday. They are the sweetest boys ever, always joking around with you and playing soccer non-stop. There aren't too many girls that hang out here, but yesterday we met a few who came to play volleyball, so hopefully we can convince some more to come out and play. There hasn't been too much of a language barrier, we are all trying to learn as much portugese as we can and there is a guy here who can speak english and has been translating for us. The people of this village have been really welcoming, on our first day here we walked down to visit a family and got invited to a birthday party and to go for juice at another house. The hospitality is unreal. We have done some home visits and heard the stories of some people here. One that stuck out was of this grandmother, a really sweet lady, who has a drinking problem. It started after her son, who was an addict, was shot by the police and put on her doorstep because they thought he was a dealer. She now brings up her grandson, this man's son, while his mother has other children to worry about and lives elsewhere. Her place was on some land surrounded by fruit trees and at the base of one of the trees near the house was a pile of bottles, in the tree above was this young boy just hanging out.

Yesterday we had a really interesting discussion with Diego (the guy who speaks english). He was telling us a bit about the education system and how in order to go to university it is nearly impossible for a kid growing up poor (economically). The universities are public but in order to get in you have to pass a really hard test and I think pay for this test, or for education to take this test. If you can pass the test then you may get some funding for room and board and transportation. So the wealthy can be educated and the poor stay poor. The kids don't even dream of university, they may go in to trades and that's pretty much it. The women take care of families it seems like. We also talked about the favelas and how the people who live there prefer organized crime to run them rather than regular police because of corruption and police violence. If the criminals run a favela the people can leave their doors unlocked and keys in their vehicles. There are 2 major crime organizations that are both linked so there isn't much gang violence. A huge win that Diego was telling us was about a major favela in Rio that was taken over by military police, it was the first time that this has happened. The military police (not corrupt) came in and took out the drug dealers and installed some education and government systems. The people of this favela are happy to have the drugs out and some healthy structure. This gives some hope for the future of brazillian favelas.

Two days ago we did the 4 km walk to the soccer gym with the kids. It was indoor and concrete, pretty nice. It was different from what I was expecting. The people of Brazil sure do love their soccer. The mentality of the kids while playing soccer is kind of cool, they don't get caught up in poor plays or slower players. They just keep up the fast pace and want to get the ball in the other net. The only controversy I have seen is over goals being scored. Even those of us with minimal soccer experience feel welcomed to join in without our ego's being hurt. Even though we walked to this gym, we play soccer on the deck all day long. On the way back from the gym I had some uphill races with Daniel, one of the boys here, I won. As we were walking the boys kind of walked on our circumference at one point, there were these 3 guys walking by and we were later informed that one of them was the druglord of this area. The kids were unphased by it. Wow. It's crazy how protected you can feel by a group of young kids. One of the things Diego mentioned was that the druglords would never touch anyone with the church, many were brought up with the church and don't want to go to hell. If they are killed after harming someone from the church you can imagine their afterlife ;)

Francisco Morato is set on many hills and there is a tonne of green around, lots of winding roads and a few paved ones. There are wild horses roaming around and lots of chickens, but what takes the animal cake are the dogs, every family it seems has a minimal one dog, dogs everywhere. Barking all night with confused chickens cockadoodledooing at all hours sometimes makes for an interesting sleep, but we make it work. Our team is becoming closer, Ben and I even shared a morning rapping about our feelings and Sarah started with the first of the life story series. This place is beautiful, the people are beautiful, the handwashed laundry.. well.. we make it work and I can't wait to see what the next three weeks have in store for us.

Until next time, much love
Annessa Nina :)