Vou me embora pra Bahia...

Y sí... mañana nos vamos a Bahia. Ya me la estoy empezando a creer. Casi a dos semanas de viaje me doy un momento y trato de escribir en español, dirán que es una farolada, pero cuando uno está realmente inmiscuido en el mundo externo, el idioma se va disolviendo. La cosa ahora es cuál mundo externo me está envolviendo, o dentro de cuál me estoy poniendo.

El viaje por Brasil empezó hace casi dos semanas y podría decir que está casi al final, aunque para mi a penas comenzará. Hasta este punto fue todo introspección, reconocimiento y valentía; a partir de mañana será el doble, será realidad, cuidado y mandinga.

Hemos visitado organizaciones, hemos visto la televisión, hemos comido lo más que podemos, hemos extrañado nuestros nidos y hemos creado pequeños recovecos de nostalgia. Nos hemos quedado en casa de voluntarios y de madres de voluntarios, hemos vivido la pérdida y el dolor de estas madres que, como las nuestras, añoran a sus hijos que están por ir a África, queseque a salvar el mundo. De esta experiencia saco mucho conocimiento y fuerza, en estas madres veo la importancia de lo que hago, veo el corazón de mi camino. Ellas nos preparan de comer y nuestro placer ven el de sus hijas, en los miedos y en los corajes ven las manos de ellas, que están en la misma batalla. Hoy estas segundas madres nos lloran. Una noche más en el aeropuerto, una noche más de mochila al hombro, de investigar cuál es el camión con destino clandestino.

La pobreza no es distinta, la miseria no es otra, el tráfico no cobra vidas ajenas, la basura huele igual, la desgracia humana tiene el mismo nombre y las barreras son aquellas que encontramos en cualquier sistema. El voluntario no está fuera del sistema todo el tiempo, pero tiene la posibilidad de darse el lujo de ver desde la perifería la realidad, puede decidir si volver o no, si abrir la vereda utópica del cambio o si volver a consumir y a desear aquello que está hundiendo a otros.

Esta no es más que una lucha por la igualdad.

Por mi parte estoy enamorada ya de la vida rural. Aquí, en Recife, recordé el tránsito, recordé el olor a camión, el viento contaminado y caliente, recordé recordé recordé...

Bahia, tierra de esclavos, tierra de resistencia, de danza, de macumba, de capoeira. Tierra de gente invisible de ojos profundos.

todo este dolor es porque ya siento la diferencia... porque ya sé que no soy la misma... y da nostalgia, ver como aquella nena se va hundiendo en el espejo, diciéndome adiós. No soy más lo que fui, no leo libros como antes, no escribo ensayos para otros, no me preocupa tener eso o aquello... No me voy a dar mi taco, esto es un proceso lento... sólo hay que aceptarlo para que duela menos.

Veremos que sigue...

Bahia

Sao Paulo

Rio de Janeiro...

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Foi na ora que eu chegei...

So. I was thinking how to start this little report, this first piece of the puzzle of the travel around Brazil. To be honest the ideas that I have are unwritable now, are really diffuse, but at the same time that's the magic part, to understand what I think writing it down. So, I'm learning how to let go my feelings and thoughts in English, its not easy when my mind is learning Portuguese and my blood runs in Spanish. So may be the result will be funky, but that's me today, a funky Mexican traveling around Brazil.


The Travel started last Wednesday, from IICD to Detroit airport to Miami to Manaus, the biggest city in the state of Amazonas in Brazil. When I think in the amazonas I think in animals and plants, but now I also think in big factories, in pollution, in poverty, expensive transportation, crazy traffic, and rivers, amazing rivers. During the two days in Manaus we visit the permaculture project of the amazonas and a museum that show the way that the with slaves where living inside the amazonas.

The visit to the permaculture project was really amazing, Im still impress about it and Im really willing to know more about it, because the system that we saw there is ... like a dream, a really autosustentable environment. They have 35 pigs that produce the methanol gas for the kitchen, they have a completely functional dry bathroom where all the human feces work as compost for the big gardens and the amazing fruit trees. They have chickens, hens, and ducks that are part of the system giving eggs and organic material for the pesticides and the compost. The water system is unreal, all the waters comes from the roofs and is filtrated by different thanks with different natural filters. Everything there is cyclic and reusable. The next team needs to go there and... DRH should have a place like this. The pictures will come later because know I'm using an other computer just to take all of this out of me.

The visit to the Museum was interesting because we met a lot of local people that is passionate about the indigenous of amazonas. We had a little adventure to get there because we needed to take a little boat, and of course that all of them wanted us to pay a lot of money to takes us to every place but the one that we wanted to go. At the end we found a public transport to go there, we lost a lot of time but was worth it. The Museum is really small and the idea is to recreate the old Ceringeiros (may be that's not the right spelling). The men from the Northeast of Brazil use to go there to work in the jungle taking the rubber (borracha in Portuguese) of the trees. It was a slavery work, a really crazy system. The cool part of the museum was the lady that works there, she took us to the places and did a representation of everything, she took out the rubber from a tree and show us how they make the product. We talk with this lady and at the end she was really interesting about our project so she didn-t ask for money, she said from volunteer to volunteer.

Now... the magic part of this is to understand that the investigation period is every day in every little second of the life. To be honest I cannot place the deep thougths that I have about people, judgement, talking, identity, nationality, food, money, racism, fear... but everything is around that, around the point of who we are and who we want to be... we travel to know something, to meet somebody, so we cannot wait to that moment, we have to go for it, and be really awake to not miss it... is so easy to get lost. I'm sure that I will not be the same after this, after every single step in my life. After this lady in Fortaleza who is in love of her volunteer daughter... who kiss me like kissing her.

People is people and we will never be perfect, so why to ask the others to be who we want them to be? why to talk about somebody as if we knew him or her? nobody is their nationality or their color or their social class... nobody is their language or their look... nobody is everybody.

Lola Diaz Barriga
11 April 2010

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