Rodrigo Baggio has a few stories that he likes to tell when explaining the successes of CDI. One of them involves a remote jungle village using email to seek military assistance to combat invasive narcotraffickers. There are several stories of homeless kids who were able to use skills learned in CDI’s schools to find employment and escape the favela. But there’s one story that I love. It’s about a village, a river, Text Editor, and PowerPoint.

Somewhere in Brazil there is a small village on a river. The people in this village used to throw their garbage in the river. Some concerned villagers worried that the river was becoming too polluted, and they mounted a campaign to teach people why they should try to keep the river clean.

First, they used Text Editor to create some flyers that they posted around the village announcing a special meeting at the computer school. Then, they gave a PowerPoint presentation at the meeting explaining the importance of keeping the river clean and proper waste disposal methods. Rodrigo says that this campaign was 100% successful, that no one in the village continued to throw their garbage in the river after the meeting.

When I heard Rodrigo tell this story, I thought “100%?” because I’m skeptical of such perfection, but I suppose that the point of the story is that the campaign was very successful. But that’s beside the point. For me the real takeaways were “Text Editor?” and “PowerPoint?” because I didn’t think you could do anything neat with those programs.

Yet the fact that the campaign was successful seems to prove that you can.

PowerPoint meets Senhor Marks a Lot.

This gets me thinking about a relationship that many people have already thought about. You can take courses and read books about this relationship. It’s the relationship between what you say and how you say it. The only course that I remember taking about this topic is Edward Tufte’s “Presenting Data and Information.” I recommend that course to anyone even remotely interested in public speaking and presenting. The time and money I spent on that course might be one of the best academic investments I’ve ever made.

My point in writing this entry, however, is not to give any tips on presentation, but to examine the mechanics of presentation and what it means to be compelling.

Part of my aversion to PowerPoint—€”or my belief that it isn’t neat—€”is informed by Tufte’s excellent criticism of the program and how it has affected how we communicate. Having already sat through countless PowerPoint presentations in my short life, I agree with Tufte that there are serious flaws in PowerPoint as a medium to communicate complicated ideas. It dilutes the power of both words and images, yet somehow, it remains a compelling medium. And, despite its shortcomings, was able to clean up a river.

I think the secret to PowerPoint’s success as a medium thus-far is the fact that most people don’t know how to use it. Read on…

All of these looked cool once. If one looks cool today, it’s not for the same reason that it used to.

I vaguely remember the first time I was able to use a dot matrix printer to print out my name. I thought it was neat. I remember thinking the same thing when I saw my name printed on a laser printer. I don’t know what I’d think seeing my name on a marquis, although I’m pretty sure I’d rather not know. I know that people pay to see their names written on a grain of rice.

When I saw my name printed, my name was nothing new to me, but I enjoyed seeing it in a new way. I had never been able to write my name as clearly as a printer could. My name had never looked so official.

I guess that it’s by the same token that old, insignificant, or false information can become exciting by being presented in a way that appears to demand some sort of professional skill. This is why people will trust things printed in books sold in a nice store or sometimes published on good looking websites. This is also why many people will tolerate pointless PowerPoint presentations (neat pun!). This is also why a literate person would probably not pay to see his name written on a piece of paper with a pencil.

The tragedy of PowerPoint is that it is a massive time waster. People waste time creating PowerPoint presentations in lieu of rehearsing what they will say to their audiences and often in lieu of creating convincing arguments. A PowerPoint can allow a lazy presenter to stand in front of an audience and say almost nothing for an entire meeting, but I’m digressing.

Despite its shortcomings, PowerPoint was used to provide an argument compelling enough to clean a river. Now, Rodrigo, believing in the power of technology, believes that PowerPoint, as a medium, made the river cleaning message more compelling. I think I agree with him. A PowerPoint presentation will impress anyone who is unfamiliar with how it is made, and the villagers who attended the presentation were probably very impressed.

I’d wager, however, that the presentation would have failed to impress me or any other person familiar with PowerPoint. The information in the presentation might have enlightened me, but the presentation itself would have commanded no special attention, nor would the Text Editor flyers.

Now, I might be wrong, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I’m so convinced of it that I’m betting my career on it, at least for a little while. I’ll explain that in a moment, but before I do, I want to say that ideaနand Rodrigo’s story about the clean riverနkeep me believing in CDI’s work.

Early on in my internship in Brazil, I quoted Steinbeck’s East of Eden on PushSamba, a blog I tried to create about open source software in Brazil. I quote him here again, with the same conviction:

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Technology can be used as a tool to allow the mind to “take any direction it wishes.” It can be poorly used and it can be lazily used, but it can help people make compelling and beautiful and important things (e.g. river cleaning programs). Even PowerPoint can do it, as long as the presenter knows his audience and has something to say.

I’ve enjoyed blogging, and I hear that people have enjoyed reading my blogs. I could not have written these things and published these pictures without the help of technology. Nonetheless, I don’t know if I’m going to keep blogging in the traditional sense of the word (is it funny that there is already a traditional sense of blogging?). I have decided to move on to another medium…

A Gentle Bossanova—The Filmmaker

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned “betting my career.” Many of my readers already know that I’ve been working on a short documentary film about Cilantro for about a year. A series of revelations has led me to commit myself almost full time to the film for the foreseeable future. I like to tell stories about people and places, and I think that people enjoy my perspective (unless people have been lying to me). I believe that film can be a more compelling medium than text, especially when considering documentaries. I love the richness of imagery and sound that film provides. I am excited to learn how to make films, and I’m stoked that Cilantro will be my first.

I invite all of my readers to watch for news on the Cilantro documentary film website. I’m a little sad to inform you that Vivo Sonhando is now officially closed. Thanks for reading! I love you all!

One thing I kept forgetting to mention earlier in my journals of Rio was the vast* number of Cats (the musical) shirts I saw down here. I’m almost positive that I saw two soon after arriving in Rio, although I remember neither sighting very clearly. All I know is that I saw some Cats (the musical) shirts and I coveted them.

*When considering these shirts, 2 indicates vast.

Then, when Mandy was visiting, we saw the guy pictured above from the bus somewhere near Flamengo. While not a Cats (the musical) shirt, it’s glorious and it embodies the specific type of cat-love that I’ve long wanted to advertise on my chest. I coveted the shirt, but it seemed that my coveting was forgiven because nothing other than divine providence could explain how the next day Mandy, Lauren, and I spotted the same shirt on a woman near Arpoador. Lauren, being awesome, ran over to the woman and asked her where she got it. We found out the shirt could be obtained at the Ipanema hippie fair held every Sunday afternoon.

The hippie fair is something of an arts and crafts bazaar where local artisans come to sell their wares or the wares of factories that mass produce arts and crafts type things. They’ve got goods from bamboo spatulas to tamarind seed earrings. You can (supposedly) also buy cat face shirts there.

While blessed with the knowledge of where to obtain the shirt, it remained just out of reach. None of us would be able to make it to the fair that Sunday; Mandy would be leaving on Friday and Lauren and I would be in Caxambu (Photos 1, 2, 3). Nevertheless, the shirt didn’t leave my mind (dreams), and about three weeks later, I found myself free to hippie shop one last time on my last Sunday in Rio.

By the time I returned from my tour of the country, Rio seemed to have shut down. The skies were gray, the streets were wet and empty. As the quiet gray Sunday demanded, I didn’t rush to the hippie fair. I got delayed…a visit to my Lauren’s and my old apartment building to pick up some things Lauren had left for me, a long lunch at Livia’s, a piece of cake from Fornalha (my old neighborhood’s 24-hour bakery), another fresh strawberry milk from my favorite juice bar. I finally headed towards the fair, but got off the bus too early and had to walk a ways to get to it.

By the time I arrived, most of the vendors stands had been abandoned, night had set in and rain had scared people away. I wandered the remains of the fair, asking about a black shirt featuring a cat’s face. One woman said ask next door, the woman next door said “no.” Resolute, I kept asking. I asked a woman and her daughter as they closed shop, folding their shawls and stuffing them into garbage bags to go home. The mother’s eyes lit up with recognition.

She pointed.

I looked.

She looked.

We saw the metal tube skeleton of a booth. She said, “she must have left. Lots of rain.”

I might have to have my connections in Rio seek this out for me. This is why networking is so important. Until then, I’ve.

BEST JUICE BAR
To be honest, Copa Lima (on the corner of Rodolfo Dantas and Barata Ribeiro in Copacabana) might not be the best juice bar in the city, but it’s my favorite. Granted, Lauren and I lived a few blocks away so I might be a bit biased, but the juicesmiths at Copa Lima did mix up the most consistently great strawberry milks (that’s fresh strawberries with milk) and acerola+orange juice than anyone else that I patronized in the city. Plus, the dudes there are really nice.

BEST DOORMAN
This is Tonny Ribeiro, doorman of 94 Barata Ribeiro in Copacabana. He maintained a positive energy vibe zone in the foyer of our building to ensure that everyone in his building felt awesome as they hit the streets or returned home. I think he took some cues from Bob Esponja, who I’d see Tonny sometimes watching as he sat at the reception. He also sings (Video! quicktime, avi) and is a great guide to Rio’s permanent Northeastern Culture Fair at São Cristovão.

BEST ARAB FOOD
Arab (1936 Avenida Atlántica, phone: 21-2235-6698). Shansby seems to think that this place might serve the best Arab food in the world. All I know is that they have a lamb and lentil soup that changed my life forever. I don’t know if their fresh pita bread is more authentic than the stuff I get in the states, but oh man!

BEST POTATO CHIPS
You can get these at the monthly Samba night in Praça Mauá. I never found a similar chip making cart on the street, but they make excellent homemade chips at Rio Lisboa in Leblón if you need them more than once a month. Video! quicktime, avi

BEST DUB
I wrote about this place before. Get your mind blown at Digital Dubs every other Wednesday at Casa da Matriz. The DJs and soundsystem are among the best ever heard (by me).

BEST SAMBA
I’ve also written about this, but honestly. You will never have a better night anywhere than the once-a-month Friday night samba night at Praça Mauá. No cover, good food, and nothing but totally positive vibes. I think the schedule for this event is erratic, but it seems to happen about one Friday night each month. Email me if you want to go, and I’ll find out when it’s going on next. Pics here and here. Video! quicktime, avi

BEST TROPHY
Much to my surprise, I found out that the Fluminense soccer club isn’t just a soccer club, but a full on sports club. They have ALL SPORTS, including diving, table tennis, and apparently greco-roman wrestling. Mandy and I took a self-guided tour of Flumiense’s trophy room but never found anything better than the two massive über-detailed monuments to naked wrestling dudes that stand at the entrance.

BEST THING MCDONALD’S HAS IN BRASIL THAT YOU CAN’T GET IN THE STATES
This is the last bite of a McDonald’s Banana Pie with a bit of Nutella on it. The banana pie immediately impressed me when I first tried it, but for some reason I became fixated on the idea of eating it with Nutella. I didn’t actually combine the two until the very end of my time in Brazil, probably because I rarely went to McDonald’s (I promise). The combo was fine, but the Nutella didn’t add as much as I thought it would. The pie is excellent on its own.

BEST PIZZA
Zona Sul is a chain of grocery stores with the worst website I’ve ever seen. Not all of their stores have pizzerias, but many do. Do yourself a favor and stop in for lunch someday. Not only do you get to experience one of my favorite experiences as a tourist (that of walking around a foreign grocery store), but you’ll get some excellent pizza at the same time. I like to go half and half between the Four Cheese (Quatro Queijos) and Margherita.

BEST ANTIQUE WAREHOUSE AND CLUB
Rio Scenarium (20 Rua do Lavradio in Lapa, phone: 21-3852-5516). This is another place to catch great samba or buy several antique telephones or apothecary jars. They’ve got hip hop on Saturdays too. The place is huge.

BEST TAXI DRIVER IF YOU LIKE THE SMITHS / WORST TAXI DRIVER IF YOU DON’T LIKE CREEPY STALKERS
His name is Marivaldo, and you can call him for a ride at (21) 9909 0712. Lauren and I met him when we hailed his cab to go home after a date. He was listening to some jazz and I asked him if he was a jazz fan (I don’t know why. conversation, I guess). He said “no. I like rock. I like Os Smits.” That last part means that he likes The Smiths. I couldn’t believe my ears. Before I had a chance to say “CROC!” we were listening to “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” as we drove through Ipanema.

He and his Smiths CDs took me to the airport when I left the country and I paid for the ride by giving him my cell phone. I forgot to erase the numbers I had in there and he thought it’s be cool to call the ladies whose numbers I had. My beloved co-workers Livia and Déborah both started receiving collect calls from the fool, but they never answered. Phew! Anyway, I leave it up to you, the reader, to decide if you want to take a ride with this guy.

Also, he goes surfing at night (at least that’s what he said).

BIGGEST SURPRISE SPORT TEAM
American Football? In Brazil? Yes! Two guys from CDI play football for Os Reptiles, which is an American beach football team that plays in Botafogo. One of my greatest regrets of the summer is never making it to see them play.

BEST BATHROOM SIGNS
I like how they say masculine and feminine. Mandy and I took these pics at the Fluminense sports club.

SCARIEST CHILDREN’S RIDE IN MALL
I would never let my child* ride this. It’s located in an arcade in a massive mall somewhere outside of Niteroi. There is nothing good about this mall, especially because it’s haunted (by this ride).

*I don’t have a child…that I know of! LOL!1

My computer’s dictionary defines milkshake as:

a cold drink made of milk, a sweet flavoring such as fruit or chocolate, and typically ice cream, whisked until it is frothy.

This is flat out WRONG. Well, it might be correct, in the sense that it’s an accurate definition, but it’s morally wrong. I’m of the belief that the definition should instead read:

a cold drink made of milk, ice cream, and typically a sweet flavoring such as fruit or chocolate, whisked until it is frothy.

When you order a chocolate milkshake, it should be made of milk blended with chocolate ice cream. Same when ordering strawberry or vanilla or whatever else. Flavoring might come into it, but that’s secondary, and if it does, you should know about it. One should never be given a milkshake made of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup after ordering a chocolate milkshake.

I’m shaking with anger just thinking about how often this happens every day.

Nonetheless, it’s not wrong to mix different flavors with vanilla ice cream. Vanilla, while succulent on its own, plays very well with chocolate and fruit flavors. This is why vanilla is the standard base flavor; do not deviate from this standard unless you’re absolutely sure of what you’re doing. Otherwise, you risk ruining something that should be very good.

My ice cream policy strives to minimize this risk by emphasizing two axioms:

1. Quality over quantity.
2. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I cringe at citing such clichés, but the wisdom is all there. It turns out that misguided consumption of ice cream is a great way to highlight the wisdom.

Because ice cream is such a treat, it seems to lend itself to bingeing. Because most people don’t eat ice cream very often, they tend to overdo it when they get the chance. First of all, the returns on each bite of ice cream diminish pretty quickly. That is, each bite is less enjoyable than the previous. The more bites, the less you’ll be enjoying yourself by the end of the treat. Second of all, even the most dairy tolerant stomach will have trouble withstand too much fatty cream. You’ll get a bellyache.

Also because of ice cream’s treat status, it seems that many forget to take ice cream seriously when constructing their desserts. Mint chocolate chip doesn’t work well with gummy bears and caramel just as coke doesn’t blend well with sprite and orange crush. Nonetheless, gimmicky crap ice cream peddlers like Coldstone encourage all sorts of ridiculous unnatural combos.

If you want to have a positive ice cream experience, I recommend that you spend your money on one good flavor at a time. And again, if you’re going to bring syrups or toppings into it, use vanilla as your base unless you’re positive that you know what you’re doing.

As I said before, this “wisdom” is nothing new at all. It’s a couple of clichés explained by ice cream consumption, but the risk I mentioned, the risk of ruining something that should be very good, is the pith of this whole discussion. I’m never comfortable trying to occupy any moral high ground, but I’m beginning to wonder if the minimization of this risk is the basis of many moral codes.

The two axioms mentioned here could feasibly be replaced by:

1. Temperance
2. Circumspection

These are two virtues (among others) revered by one of my favorite moral philosophers: Adam Smith (see A Short History of Economics as a Moral Science). I’d argue that the observation of these two virtues will not only ensure that our ice cream experiences are more enjoyable, but that everything we consume might be better appreciated as we account for our scale, our needs.

To experience this: “Say Can You See” by Wilderness

Some readers might already know that school last year was hard. Now I’m back at it, and it’s hard again. That’s all you need to know beyond the fact that the song I’m sharing on this entry brought me back to life after a day of lines, ping ponging emails, financial aid, post office, and meetings.

It (loud) is all you need to make you stare at the sun again, notice the shape and movement of leaves, and then throw your arms out from you to have them fly off and be replaced by new sprouting arms, which you’ll flail at imaginary drums, your hands falling off at the wrist snaps and burning in the atmosphere on their way to the ground (the drums aren’t really there) to be replaced again, and again and again. If you get that far, goosebumps will surface on your body and fly off and burn the same as your hands but these are sparks after sparks after sparks shooting off your person in every direction faced by your entire skin.

So run. Sparks trailing.

Brazil things forthcoming.

I’m writing this in the Galeão International Airport in Rio, but by the time you read this, I’ll be on American soil again. This is the beginning of a new phase of A Gentle Bossanova: Rio. A phase in which I write about my last month in Brazil on (hopefully) a weekly basis, with (hopefully) more careful writing, and with time and space between me and the events I’ll be reporting on.

In case you didn’t catch it in the first paragraph: NEW PHASE! Be amped!

I’m sorry to do this to everyone again, but the road is calling. I’ll be away from my computer until approximately September 21st because of traveling. Throughout this period, I will be in one of the four cities shown on this map.

• Press time—September 5: Rio de Janeiro
• September 5—10: Fortaleza
• September 10—13: Salvador
• September 13—17: Florianopolis
• September 17—20: Rio de Janeiro, and then back to San Diego!

These dates are subject to change, but that’s the general idea. I’ll be checking my email throughout, so write me if you feel like it. I’m really excited to see what the internet is like in these places.

I will be blogging about my experiences in these cities when I get home, something along the lines of the Argentina vignettes that I wrote last year but more robust, as I don’t plan on losing my camera and I’ll be faithful to this guy:

This will get us there.

In case you missed it, yesterday’s entry, An Homage to a Home, is the least rambling entry on this Gentle Bossanova and it contains some reflections on my life that might actually have substance. Check it out!

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote The Homage to Going Somewhere Else in which I wondered aloud about how I’d ended up in Brasilia. Now, the day after my last day at work down here, I’m wondering why I haven’t lived in the same home or apartment for more than 9 months throughout the past 9 years.

All summer, people have been asking me where I’m from. The short answer is that I’m from DC. The long story is that I was born in Salt Lake City, grew up in DC, and now live in San Diego and my parents have moved back to Salt Lake City. I guess the only reason this is complicated is because the short answer is a place where I was neither born, nor currently live, nor where my family is based. The other complication is that I don’t know where I want to live.

I’ve been in Rio for a couple of months, a marvelous city, but a city with a lot of problems. I’ve been lucky to work with some great people at the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI) who are dedicated to solving some of Rio’s problems and I’d like to think I’ve helped them a bit, but I keep finding myself haunted by the realization that I left a city with problems of its own when I left San Diego.

Comparing San Diego’s problems to Rio’s might sound ridiculous, but problems are problems nonetheless. And while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lending my help to Brazil per se, I’ve found that in whatever way I’ve been able to help CDI, my ability to help solve Rio’s problems is severely handicapped by a number of factors.

First: language. I can converse in Portuguese and even hold an engaging conversation with several people at a time. Nonetheless, I’m no expert and my inability to understand the nuances of the language prohibits me from working at my fullest in a professional Portuguese-speaking environment.

Second: culture. Let it be known that when I say I love Latin Americans, I mean it. I love being in Latin America and I attribute most of this love to the people here. I love the people I’ve worked with, dined with, danced with, worshipped with, etc. We laugh! I feel very welcomed and at home here, I feel as though I have a robust understanding of the culture, but…there’s a membrane, something barely there that—for all I’ve tried—I can’t penetrate.

The fact is, that despite my scattered roots within the United States, I’m a full-blooded United Statian (let’s be aware) and there’s nothing I can do about that. There’s also nothing I want to do about that. I love my country and my fellow United Statians, passionately. And, thanks to this divide, it follows that I’m not Brazilian.

Third: I don’t want to live here. While more time immersed in Rio could probably solve the first two factors, that’s not going to happen because I’d rather live in San Diego than live here. I could level some criticisms at Rio and/or wider Brazil, but I could do the same for San Diego and/or United States. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Brazil. The simple fact is that part of the priceless perspective I’ve gained from traveling is that my home is somewhere in the United States. Right now I feel like it’s in San Diego.

Whatever work I do down here is diminished by these three factors. The first two factors entitle me to a kind of special treatment because I’m often exempt from heavy work because my colleagues often assume that I don’t understand (due to language) or don’t get what’s going on (due to culture). Furthermore, if I’m ever feeling lazy I might be tempted to play the “I’m a foreigner card” (Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m just a caveman.) to get out of any hard work.

It’s the third factor, however, that I believe is most crucial. Admitting that I don’t want to live here is hard for me because I really do love it here and I’ll be sad to leave. I love working with the people I’ve met here. However, part of what makes me love this so much is the fact that this place is foreign to me. My mind is constantly stimulated by the newness of the experience, but that’s not going to last.

Much of the glaze of my life down here is owed to the brevity of the experience. If I were to stay longer, not have a fellowship, have to make a living, etc, my life would become more of a grind no matter what. What’s more, I’d feel like I’d abandoned a lot of family and friends in the United States.

It’s this brevity that I want to talk about most. Except for some fleeting fantasies, I’ve never seriously considered permanently transplanting myself to Rio, Brazil, or anywhere outside the United States. This, more than anything, has shielded me from having to fully immerse myself in the work we’re doing at CDI.

One of the most poignant experiences of my Mormon mission in Venezuela happened towards the end of it, six years ago. I walked, mentally surveying some of my accomplishments as a missionary in the city where I’d been living. I soon found myself overwhelmed by the feeling that much of what I’d managed to build there would eventually crumble and whatever impact I’d had would soon be forgotten or unnoticeable. Then, I suddenly found my hope restored by my faith that, somehow, everything would be alright (the essence of hope and most rock and roll).

Now, that was a nice faith-building experience for me and I can take comfort in that hope as I leave CDI, but I feel like I’m reaching a time when I should commit myself to something other than finite service projects in places that aren’t my home. To me, knowing that there’s going to be a time when I can retreat from whatever problem I’m tackling and go home inhibits me from giving my all.

As I mentioned before, San Diego has problems. Why am I not excited to tackle them? Well, because those problems keep coming, and I can’t walk away from them when I get tired. Because saying that I’m going to Brazil to work for a non-profit, sounds much sexier than building a life in San Diego and volunteering at the library and being a good neighbor. Because if I tackle problems in my home, I have to own those problems and they’re cumbersome by definition.

Besides the fact that I believe I’d work better in my “home” environment, I hope that some discipline and permanence will allow me to actually develop a real expertise (perhaps a fourth factor keeping me from giving my all down here). Perhaps in a few years, when I’m really good at something other than traveling, I’ll be able to come back down here and lend a much more helpful hand.

Discipline. Stay put. Hold still. Discipline!

Today is my last day in the office and I spent most of it at school. I visited two of CDI’s schools. One in a low-income community far north of the city and another in a co-op on the 35th floor of an office building downtown.

I was immediately struck by how independent both schools are. They only get two visits per year from CDI, the rest of the time they’re on their own to develop their curriculum, raise funds, find resources, etc. CDI checks in to help them identify goals, obstacles to achieve those goals, and tasks needed to overcome said obstacles.

The low-income neighborhood school is housed in a…house on a dusty street lined with broken down cars. I couldn’t get a good look, but it looked like someone had build a lean-to against the street wall opposite the houses and was running a small garage out of it.

Within this house are several rooms devoted to community learning maintained by a baptist church. The computer classes are given upstairs in a narrow room with PC’s lining the two walls that stretch back away from the door. It was about 1/3 full when we peeked in, with most of the students around 11 years old not using the computers but writing in notebooks. One kid, however, was dabbling in Microsoft paint. He was designing some kind of poster for ARTES MARCIAIS (MARTIAL ARTS) that featured a figure that I think was supposed to be doing a roundhouse, but looked like it was doing ballet. Either way, it got me amped.

I’m moved by the work done by CDI because the computer seemed to be engaging this kid in the same way I’m engaged by my computer and have been engaged by computers ever since my parents bought a Macintosh 512 when I was 5. I was thrilled to see this kid exploring his creativity and hope something comes of it.

I accompanied my two guides from CDI to a room in the back where we discussed the school’s challenges with its director and two of its volunteers. Their goals included starting history classes, getting a DVD player, a van, and developing relationships with private donors and public schools among others. They discussed the problems of bureaucracy (regarding relationships with public schools in particular), the lack of resources, and, most importantly, the plight of the community.

Oswaldo, the director of the school (who, incidentally, doesn’t have an email address), lamented that the biggest strike against them is “the violence and the low self esteem of the community because this is what [the school's] students grow up with. This is what they grow up knowing, and they’re left thinking that they’re poor and that escape is impossible.”

I tried to shake his hand after the meeting had ended and we had to leave, but he wouldn’t leave it at that. He wanted to hug me all of us before he left even thought I’d barely opened my mouth all morning. He sees me, as a representative of CDI, as something of a savior. He and his volunteers lamented that we couldn’t visit more often. You know how people feel humbled when that sort of thing happens? That’s what happened to me. I’m excited to visit two more schools tomorrow.

If only I had the courage to devote myself to something the way he’s given himself to his church and community. More on this tomorrow.

I want to write all about the weekend, but I already talked about samba night, and I don’t want to re-hash anything. Still, let me give you some videos, OK? This is how I kicked off the weekend on Friday night.

Samba! (avi)

Potato chip machine! (avi)

Samba with flute! (avi)

You can see more pics of the whole evening here. Somehow, I forgot to report last week that my friend Andrew Shansby is in town. He’s been enjoying the beaches while I’ve been at work, and we’ve gone out to dinner while he’s been in Rio, but he and I just shared one of the adventures of our lifetimes on ILHA GRANDE! BEHOLD!!!

Bamboo

If there’s a soundtrack to anything like this (and there always is), it’s this:
“Jacknuggeted” by Manitoba

This is an island whereupon Andrew and I walked all weekend. We’d occasionally foray into the sea to cool our hides, but we spent most of the weekend hiking through the jungle. Also, I took a nap on the beach.

Day one (Saturday) of the trip to Ilha Grande is called the day of four naps. The first nap lasted from a little after midnight to 3:00am. Andrew and I awoke from 3 hours of sleep following an evening of Samba. We grabbed our things and bolted out the door to get some 24 hour cake at a place near my apartment. It was boomin! Then we walked past a street full of prostitutes and waited for the bus to the bus station.

The bus was taking too long and I thought we’d be late (boy was I wrong!) so we took a cab that ripped us off by driving too far. When we pulled into the bus terminal, we noticed some burning garbage out on the sidewalk. It was a smokey fire and a long steady plume flowed easily into the terminal, filling it. It could have been put out with a splash, but no one did anything about it. We quickly learned that the bus we meant to take at 4:20 am didn’t leave until 5:25. So we got to sit in a smoke filled bus terminal with no hope of sleep. I read.

Then! Nap #2 was on the bus. I don’t remember this bus ride, but the sun was up when we got to Mangaratiba where we got on a ferry. By this time I felt well-rested. We got a room in a hostel, bought some water, bananas, apples, and granola bars and started walking. We were to hike from the main town (it’s called Abraão or Abraham) up through some hills and down to some beaches. We got to Praia das Palmas (or something like that, it means Beach of the Palms), swam, talked to people, and then before I realized I was tired, I was face down drooling on my towel. That lasted about half an hour, it was nap #3.

We continued on to another beach and stopped to eat muscles with the boat guys along the way. They asked me if I liked the muscles and I said yeah, this is the good life. Then one of the guys said in broken English “I likee my life!” I said, “yeah, I likee your life too.” Jeez. Then we got to another beach called Lopes Mendes that had waves and surfers. We swam until we had to run and catch the last boat back to Abraão.

We were thinking about going on an evening boat trip out to a fancy restaurant and had some time to kill. This is when I took nap #4. We didn’t take the boat ride and ate a massive seafood stew instead. The heavy food knocked us out by 11pm. This wasn’t a nap because we had big plans for the next day.

This dog saved my life (and Andrew’s but he doesn’t seem to care)

We got up early, got breakfast, hiked! I wasn’t about to take a nap yesterday when I had so much ground to cover. We were to hike to Caxadaço (Cash-a-DASS-oh), a lagoon that I’d heard superlatives about the day before. Supposedly the water was a beautiful color! It was huge! Stupendous! Crazy! So we decided to go, never mind the hours of hiking it’d take to get there.

It wasn’t that great, but getting there was awesome. Here’s what happened. We first went to Dois Rios, which is something of a town that used to be or still is a remote campus for the University of Rio de Janeiro. It felt creepy and abandoned. Before we left Caxadaço, we met these two dogs. The gray one is a boy dog and is named Ernie and the other dog is a girl dog named Shasta.

Ernie started walking with us just before we started out of Dois Rios and Shasta showed up chasing after him as we headed out. At first I thought they were going to run off into the woods and make love, but they never did. Instead, they followed us ALL DAY.

They followed us through the thick jungle trails that lead to Caxadaço. I didn’t realize they had kept following us until I felt something furry and wet brush my leg as Ernie passed me. It scared me and I yelled in terror (he’s wet because he always sits down in water when he sees some). Once arrived at Caxadaço, I tried to play fetch with them, but the concept seemed entirely foreign to them. All they wanted to do was keep following us.

So we went on. This is the scary part. We wanted to head back to Lopes Mendes where we could catch a boat taxi back to Abraão instead of backtracking the whole huge trail. The problem with that is that there’s no official trail. We’d heard about a trail that was sometimes hard to follow back there, so we decided to find it. We found it, but there was one moment when we were almost lost. This folly, combined with me venturing into an abandoned house in Dois Rios makes me the foolishest boy scout in Brazil these days. I couldn’t wait for Andrew to use his first aid skills.

We’d lost the trail, thought we’d found it, realize we hadn’t found it, found it again, backtracked, made circles, etc. Until we ended up again at the point where we knew we couldn’t find the trail anymore. At this point, Ernie led the way and we continued on. Bless that dog. Until that moment, I had been relishing in my ability to recognize traces of humans (footprints, knife marks on trees, etc) whenever we were unsure of the trail, but it was Ernie who carried me when I was too weak on my own. It felt good to commune with the earth like that, deep in the jungle, interfacing with the soil through a dog who could smell what I couldn’t smell. Too bad I was too afraid of bugs to pet him.

The rest of the trail was long, humid, sometimes rough, never too steep, but mostly long. We saw a monkey. I scraped my wrist. An ant bit my little toe and burned! We sweated buckets (literally! just kidding). Then, we got to the beach and both drank Cokes which had never tasted so good. We left Ernie on the beach (Shasta disappeared at Lopes Mendes) and took a boat and a ferry back to the continent. There was a bus waiting to take us home, and it did.