Well, I´m writting this a bit late but things have been a bit complicated for the last few weeks, leaving blogging low on the priority list.
In the last post I said how we were heading to Argentina for visa reasons, hoping to return to finish up our last four weeks, saying our goodbyes and tieing up any loose ends. Turns out the federal police told us the wrong information about getting our return visa and after sleeping at Sao Paulo airport, we were sent back to whence we just came to try to get another visa. After being deemed an immiration risk, denied the visa and told we wouldn´t be able to return by the Argentinian consulate, we realised that that was it. We had officially (and prematurly) ended our time in Sao Paulo.
This, of course, totally sucked arse big time for lots of reasons but there was nothing we could do about it.
Us not coming back for a month has little impact on the overall rescue and running of Casa da Criança as we aren´t the major players in that area but it has meant that we have left without getting to say goodbye and thank you to all the kids we´ve been working with and all our friends who have been taking such good care of us. Not having that opportunity is something that we are very upset by. Our whole experience has been marked by excellent people, without whom, our time there would have been imposible. We thank you very much.
As for a last bit of project news, Bueno Sensei ran an aikido demonstration with the kids at Sao Paulo´s annual Japan festival, not an insignificant event in the world´s biggest Japanese population outside of Japan. Otherwise, we have been a bit out of the loop lately due to a few debarkles with our new travel situation.
As for us, we have run away to Peru to increase our lung capacity and haggle for necklaces. Once we have enough necklaces, we´ll head down to Bolivia then continue on to Sth East Asia then home.
So that´s pretty much it. Despite the incomplete finish, the whole project and time in Brasil has been a success for both Gabby and myself. I´m sure I had some goals at the begining, probably something to do with learning a new language and learning about kids and myself etc. but they kind of faded away into the Brasilian groove as we got settled and things just ran their natural course. We trained and worked and lived our lives and when things came up, we dealt with them and then got back to it. All in all, a great experience and one I have leant from immensly.
Once again, our thanks to everyone we met and hung out with and who showed us their way of living and training.
Tchau guys.
Oh, and....
If you are interested in seeing videos or pictures of our time in Brasil, we have links to our photos, videos and email on the right side of this page.
Just an update on the everything situation...
A meeting was held a couple of days ago with Bueno Sensie, Janiena (manager of Casa da Criança) and some friends from aikido and other circles, who want to help find the funds to get CdC running sustainably again. It was a room of very intellegent and capable people. Although the meeting was in Portuguese, we could understand that there were some strong ideas and that the meeting was generally positive. Some emergency funds have been raised and at present whether it will be open or closed is a decision made week by week. We will meet again in 10 days to follow up on how the plans are working out.
For our part, we are somewhat limited to avenues outside of Brasil because of the language barrier so Dan and Gab have been burning the midnight cheese working on on a new web page to help raise emergency cash. We have received lots of good suggestions from people we know and spend much of our time persuing those leads. Hopefully we'1l soon have some more complete news of how things are going. For the moment we're just trying different things to see which ones will work.
Oh yeah, and now is probably a good time to go back to something I said earlier about the favela. In our first month or so here, we had only been up and down the street CdC is on, which is the nicest street in the community. I think I said that you would be hard pressed to call it a slum. Actually, I was wrong. As it turns out, it would'nt take much pressing at all. It's a slum. I feel a bit funny saying publicly that the home of I dont know how many people is a bad place. I dont want to be shitting on anyone's dignity. But it is important to know that the living conditions at the favela are very poor.
Outside of the CdC project, life goes on. I realise there is a detatched luxury in saying this because for some, CdC is the life that goes on.&nbs ; ot. But for us, we are still training, eating and wondering at Sâo Paulo's endless suply of tall buildings. Sâo Paulo seems to have forgotten it's almost right on the Tropic of Capricorn and has decided to be really cold. Some nights the slightly crazy, but generally pretty cool, guy who lives on our street (as in, not in a house) builds a big fire to keep warm and the smell of burning plastic permeates the dojo. Soon we will cruise down to Argentina for a few days because of visa issues and hopefully we will be let back in for the last remaining month in Brasil. But thats not for a little while yet.
Paul
Firstly, thanks to all of you who have emailed me with great advice on what we can do to get Casa da Criança back up and running. Hopefully I will be having a meeting with Janaina and Bueno Sensei tomorrow to talk about it further and to discuss what we can do, as Australian volunteers.
I've just found out what is needed to run Casa da Criança and I thought I'd share because it blew my mind. This is a list of the groceries needed to run the centre for one month, as compiled by Janaina:
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Food: |
Hygene products: Cleaning products: |
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I just got some bad news...Casa da Criança is closing.
The facts are these:
a> They are a poor community supporting and running a service to a poor community, with no professional help
b> Private donations have dried up - they have no money to feed the kids any longer
c> Janaina, who runs the centre, works full time and was only getting paid R$300/month - that's about AU$200. She has been working for free for the past 3 months.
I'm not trying to sell you a sob story, but I can see that this place is really making a difference to the lives of 60 children and I am hoping someone can give me some good advice on how the problem can be fixed.
Janaina, Bueno Sensei and Saulo Sensei recently attended a management course for NGO type work and were working on a plan to make the centre self-sustainable, but none of them are professionals in this area. Sensei Bueno estimates they need about R$4000/month (AU$2500) to keep the place going, and a business plan obviously so that this doesn't happen again.
If you have ANY suggestions or advice, please leave a comment below or email me directly gabrielle.paynter@gmail.com
thanks,
Gabby
Daniel has arrived and indirectly we are seeing Brasil again with fresh eyes. Now we're not just the Australian couple, we're the Three Gringo Amigos :) I would like to say that he's having a fantastic time but the truth is he's in bed right now, sick as a dog. Ah that fresh Paulistano air....
Had a meeting with Bueno Sensei tonight about creating a website for Aikido Harmonia - emcompassing the dojo, the NGO social projects and the aikido corporate work. I'm excited about having something new to work on, a contribution that will last for longer than my stay in Brasil.
Loving my Wednesday morning class. I have a small but dedicated group coming along and we just finished learning the first Yuishinkai jo kata this week. Keeping the theme to weapons.
Things are moving along at Casa da Criança. Paul and I have been giving the kids a one hour English class each week. We try to incorporate games and songs, keep it interesting (keep them interested!!). Janiena, the "mother" of Casa da Criança says that it is difficult for them to learn english because they don't have a good base in Portuguese to work from. The public schools in Brasil are, apparently, terrible. Interestingly, the public universities are the best, and free. Of course the kids from public schools have buckleys chance of getting into them because they haven't had a decent education. So, learning english one a week for 5 months may not make any difference to these kids, but...Maybe one kid, one day, will get an opportunity that'll involve learning english and those 5 months might just make them feel a little more comfortable about it. More like exposure to a language than learning a language.
Gabby
This weekend we celebrated Aikido Harmonia Dojo's 13th birthday!
As tradition dictates, the morning was spent thoroughly cleaning the dojo. Paul and I took advantage of the time to improve the Volunteer room. The whole place looks (and smells) great.
Late afternoon we had a special aikido class with some special guests. A bonus for me was that the three nidans present (me included) were asked to teach a couple of techniques each.
Afterwards everyone crowded around a large box of photos (actually it was more like a crate!) that had been collected for the past 13yrs, reminisced and then of course there was food, drinks, music and dancing . A good night.
More photos here
Gabby
We were invited to accompany Bueno Sensei on his tri-annual visit to Recife in the north of Brazil to visit dojos, kids, do an aikido demonstration and, of course, to see some more of Brasil.
From the plane Recife (of Pernambuco state) looks like the Gold Coast - highrises on the beach, palms, canals and bridges. It even felt like home as we walked out into the Queensland-like humidity. But fortunately that's where the similarities to the Gold Coast end. Recife is culture-rich, being one of the first places to be settled by the Portuguese. Poverty meets luxury in even closer proximity than here in Pinheiros - favelas line the base of luxury apartments or are neighbours to large shopping malls. The beaches are beautiful, even in the high-rise areas, but are bull-shark infested in many areas so you can't swim or surf.
The people we met in Recife were ultra-nice and the hospitality we recieved was amazing. First day we dropped in on the "Instituto nossa Senhora de Fatima", a convent running a similar program for favela kids as Casa de Criança. The aikido class at the convent is run by Paulo, our kind host and a sensei in Recife. I was interested to see that the kamiza was the famous pic of O'Sensei sitting cross-legged pointing up....to a shrine with small statues of Jesus and Mary. Aiki-catholicism.
That night we were taken to a dojo thinking it would be an ordinary training session and walked in to see 40 or so people on the mat! The students were from three Kawai-affiliated dojos of Senseis Paulo, Mario and Wilson, otherwise known as the Three Stoogies (self-named). We were treated like guest Sensei for the rest of the stay there which was a strange new experience for both of us and I was asked to teach a technique. Bueno Sensei talked for a while at the end of the class and mentioned that we were from Aikido Yuishinkai and afterwards a girl in hakama came up to me and said "You are from Yuishinkai?? Do you know Michael Williams with the beautiful flowing aikido??" It turns out her friend Circe trained with Andrew Sunter in Sydney and brought back the syllabus DVD to Recife with her.
The next day we went to a T'ai Chi demonstration day and did an aikido demo which I think went down quite well. In the afternoon, 15 of us headed out to Mario's beach house, 2hrs south in a paradise called Maragoji. The morning was bright and the water was sooo warm and clear. I was ready to throw away our trip to Salvador just to spend a few more days there.
Back in Recife we went to a kids class at the convent. The kids were excited to see Bueno Sensei again and because we were with him, they seemed happy to welcome us with a hug. 4 of the girls did a dance performance for us at the end and I still have that song stuck in my head! That night we had another class with gradings and a dinner after. Really nice people. I left my black belt there accidently which I think I will ask to be given to the first woman who grades to shodan. Really nice people.
Next day we flew to Salvador, Bahia, the oldest city in Brasil, and home of Capoeira.It was really beautiful - I can see now why people go to Europe to see those old cities. We hooked up with a friend of Bueno's, Renato, another aikido Sensei with a sense of humour. We did a fair bit of sightseeing and on the last night were taken to a capoeira dojo by Renato and his friend, an off-duty cop. Strange to be hanging out with someone carrying a gun and in, as it turns out, a really dangerous neighbourhood. We have visited a few places now that other tourists wouldn't come out of unscathed. The teacher was Mestre Falcão, big and very tough-looking but really friendly. The capoeira was great, more of a demonstration than a class and we got pulled up at the end to play at the end - and I have the embarrasing video to prove it.
For more photos of Recife please click here
For more photos of Salvador please click here
The nice thing about gradings is seeing your friends, after a great deal of stress beforehand, put themselves out there, 100%, in the moment, often performing better than you've ever seen them perform. So it was a great pleasure to attend a weekend of gradings and to give our support to our good friends Renata and Marcos as they demonstrated aikido at 5th kyu and 2nd dan levels respectively.
Aikido Harmonia dojo is part of the Uniao Sulamericana De Aikido, an AikiKai organisation of Brasil. All gradings (including kyu gradings) are done here in São Paulo, at the head dojo of Kawai Sensei, who was the first teacher to bring Aikido to Brasil 40years ago. His dojo is large, with an elevated stadium-like seating area for spectators, which was completely full on Saturday and almost full on Sunday.
Saturdays kyu gradings started with a class. I trained with one Sensei 4 or 5 times who was as soft as a KiSociety yudansha - quite a surprise! Also had good experiences with a couple of kyu grades who had nice aikido and more importantly, nice attitudes. Also trained once with Márcio, one of Kawai Sensei's ushideshi (although I didn't know that at the time) who did nice, big leads and had effective but soft technique. I mention all this because I was suprised. I had heard that Kawai Sensei was "hard", or atleast, harder than Bueno Sensei, so I was imagining tough students, techniques from static position and lots of breakfalls. I experienced none of this. Obviously I need to get out more...
The kyu gradings followed. There must have been atleast 100 of them. There were three "panels" of Sensei's across the mat, or maybe I should say "judges" as, unlike Aikido Yuishinkai, you don't automatically pass if you are asked to grade. After each grading each Sensei passes a "yes" or "no" paper and a democratic vote is made. Not everyone passed that day... Two of the panels had two gradings running at the same time, so there was usually 5 gradings happening at once. Towards the end, Renata was finally called and did a lovely little grading. There's a video of her grading here if you want to take a look. The gradings were followed by demonstrations from the Sensei's with a finalé of course by Kawai Sensei.
Sunday started with another class, which I didn't attend this time because I wasn't feeling well. Because Sunday was the yudansha gradings there were mostly black belts on the mat, so it was a great opportunity to take some photos. There were many, many shodan gradings and just a handle of nidan gradings so Marcos was one of the last on the mat. The nidan gradings consist of about 8 tanto techniques, 2 futari techniques, followed by "Jyu waza", which is where the person grading takes ukemi from Kawai Sensei. Marcos did a great grading, he looked relaxed and in control. Paul was his main uke which was special honor for him.
Videos of Marcos' grading are here:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z2unV_Vu8E
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUPjlL4U3Hc
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWEyZktUMng
Gabby
You're probably starting to think that all we do is holiday, party and practise aikido, so perhaps it's time to write a little about the project that inspired us to come here in the first place.
First, a little background. Ação Harmonia (Action Harmony) is an NGO set up 5 years ago "offering new perspectives and new options to children and young people living in environments marked by poverty and violence". Specifically, there are about 36 kids from the favela, Jardim Jaquelini who are lucky enough to attend a care facility for children and adolescents called Casa de Criança (literally, house of child). The kids are split into two groups and aikido classes are run every Friday, one class for each group. Açao Harmonia also provides dogi's and even transport for some of the older students to train at the Harmonia Dojo. Many local yudansha have volunteered in the past 5 years, some from other aikido clubs. Last year Ação Harmonia recieved its first international volunteer, Mark Walsh from Aiki-the UK and now...well here we are. Our first day was a mixed aikido/capoeira class with Columbian Capoeira teacher Michael Nino showing the kids some games. Michael does the same work with kids from slums in Colombia. See blog post: 10 de Março de 2007 - Capoeira @ Harmonia Dojo
Gabby: I guess I need to say, first up, that we had no experience with kids classes, and little with kids generally, and really had no idea what to expect. A kids class had started up at our aikido club a few months before we left but hadn't taken off while we were still in Brisbane. And, honestly, it's cool. I can handle 2 x 1hr of playtime every Friday with these kids.
Paul: yeah, we have only been doing these classes for about 5 weeks now so we are only starting to see how it all works. we have about 20 or so kids in each class and I can only remember about 5 names so far. They are not part of the English speaking Brasilian population that we've had so much contact with, so our portuguese ability is stretched.
Gabby: I think Paul is doing amazingly well wih his Portuguese with the kids! I am usually reduced to hand signals, body language and miming.
Paul: hmm, i dont think i'm doing great. I think we are both reduced to hand signals most of the time but also there is usually one other Brasilian volunteer who either takes most of the class or can translate for us. From this point on though, it looks like we will be doing more stuff, leading class more etc.
Gabby: The class has an establshed dojo feel - the older, more experienced students setting the example and generally playing the senior student role in the class. I was amazed the first time we arrived, and every other time subsequently, that they are all in their gi's, sitting in a line in seiza when we arrive. When we were late once a senior student had already started the class and was taking them through some warm ups. Speaking of warm-ups, Bueno Sensei seems to have an original, fun way to practise any useful warm up, making it a game or a co-operative exercise. For example, backward ukemi practise (rock and stand) he may have one group tightly bunched in the centre (a mountain) and the rest in a circle around (the waves). The "rock" makes a crashing sound, as they push the "waves" backwards who make a wave-like swooshing sound as they practise backward ukemi. The kids love it.
Paul: One thing that seems like it could be tricky is the age difference of the kids. I think the youngest are around 6 or 7 and the oldest are around 13. I think the 6 yr olds have enough of the aikido after a short time but 13 yr olds dont always want to play kids games. Bueno seems to be able to keep everyone interested for the whole class and it may just be a matter of experience. Like I said, its only our 4th week or something so we'll see how we go.
Gabby: Ah yeah I think that's why the older kids are invited to train at the dojo on Saturday mornings. Also Sensei gives them more instuction and more advanced techniques during the kids class.
Gabby: The most obvious lesson for me so far, especially regarding kids in this situation who may have violence in their lives, is that co-operative exercises & games, that promote self-confidence and give them an alternative way to deal with conflict - this is the important stuff - not "technique". But maybe also for regular Australian kids....I remember teaching my last aikido class in Australia & we invited the kids class to join in with the adults to play some games. One game I initiated - seiza soccor - which I've played before in an adult class, didn't work so well with the kids, the kids got very competitive and one in particular was obviously very upset when the game was over that they didn't "score". Competitiveness is viewed as a normal part of growing up but I wonder now if there isn't too much emphasis on it.
Paul: One thing that I've learnt is that if you are showing them a picture of a kangaroo or platypus or kookaburra or whatever and you're asking them if they know what it is, you have to cover up the big letters that say "Laughing Kookaburra" or they can just read it and make you think they have an intimate knowledge of Australian fauna.
Gabby: kids smarter than Paul hehe
Gabby: Another lovely technique Bueno Sensei uses is, after an aikido technique has been practised in pairs, we all come back to the circle and then he picks a student to come out (with an uke) and both of them demonstrates the technique. The method of picking the student isn't rank ordered or who performs the best, but the one with the best posture. So now the kids are practising beautiful seiza position, without knowing they are, because they want to be the next one picked.
Gabby: OKay so maybe it's not rocket science and a thousand other aikido teachers who teach kids use these methods, but it has honestly opened my mind a little further, to the potential that aikido can have to enrich people's lives. You just gotta take the principles and apply them in the right way.
I should've known there would be trouble when Marcos came into the dojo and his first words were "Gabrielle, I need to drink a beer...*knowing nod*...I need to drink a beer". So after a thoroughly enjoyable class (Ryotetori techniques followed by some grading practise), Fredri, who is a professional musician, suggested we go to a bar in Vila Madalena for some beer & some chorinha samba.
The bar, Feira Moderna, is behind a trendy shop that sells small Brasilian...things from Bahia and cool clothes (including a crazy-colourful shirt that made me think of Andrew Sunter). Behind the shop is a simple room with a bar, the band, and a small dance floor. Behind this, where all the tables are, is a gorgeous garden area, half covered with jasmine covered lattice and the other half with a stone water feature.
The band is playing chorinho samba and soon the place is full of trendy, beautiful young Brasilians drinking, smoking and dancing.
I look around - Paul is drinking beer (some things do change!), Fredji is teaching Renata how to dance samba, Sensei is talking animatedly to two stunning young women (it turns out that he knew one of them, but tthe man's got charisma!). Sensei's son, DannyBoy, arrives and heads straight to the band. He's 16, a cool dude, his plan is to be a professional musician, and this is the second time I've seen him so wrapped in the musicians he's almost hugging them. (See below) Sensei's other son Danilo (DannyMan) arrives, I dance with Sensei, Marcos and Renata are pashing, Fredri has disappeared, Sensei's on the dancefloor and Paul is still sitting, still drinking beer, looking very tired.
Well atleast, that's how I remember the night.
We get to Sensei's at about 2am, feeling elated from the night and, personally, feeling dread about getting up at 6am for a class at Amana-Key. Sensei obviously doesn't share this dread as he tells me that to get up at 6am after a long night of drinking is "balance". He has said on more than one occassion that he feels he doesn't control his life, that life is pushing him from behind. Paul's theory is that Sensei's life is pushing him, and his energy is pushing us.
Sensei is up at 6, leaves for class and kindly lets us sleep...until 8. Then we're up, no time for breakfast (or more importantly, coffee) and off to Casa de Criança for the Friday morning kids class. Needless to say I'm feeling like shit, but this is Brazil baby!
