Ozland

And now I have arrived in “Oz land,” and in many ways it feels as though it were some magical realm here in Brisbane, Australia. Comparing the academic experience to that we had in Buenos Aires would be like good ol’ apples and oranges. The five of us Rotary fellows from Argentina arrived to the University of Queensland to find an office set up with our names on the door and a computer for each. Next door we find available for our use a photocopier, printer, and scanner, along with further supplies at the front desk staffed by two lovely ladies. During a safety orientation about our building, I had to force myself to focus as office-worker Ann told us of the highly-trained medical staff that could be at our side in five minutes would there be an emergency. My mind flashed to La Yautia, my community in the DR, and the women trudging up the muddy hill in the 90-minute trek towards the ill-equipped health center. Just as I had to pause and take a moment to calm my dizziness when I slid into one of the campus libraries in search of my student identification and registered its spotless, modern nature, crawling in each nook and cranny with the latest technology.

I reflect back to Rio de Janeiro and the trembling hands of the woman from the favela as she spoke to us of the police force that killed her brother and 29 other innocent people, among them young children, in a random mass killing there. And I contemplate the homicide rate that likens Rio de Janeiro to a war zone.

One of the themes of my life thus far has been bearing witness to such contrasts in realities. Above all, I have learned not to classify one as better or worse, but rather to feel intensely the potential that lies in the exchange of people from different realities. From such deep pain wrought from the violence in the poor communities in Rio, one is able to witness moments of an equally powerful and heart-wrenching joy and glory. Meanwhile, while the seeming perfection of the UQ campus can be instantly appealing, I wonder about the impacts of this security and sterility on people’s sense of community and togetherness, and individual sense of purpose. Perhaps this assessment is exclusive to my soul, which screams of a missing piece as a student here pays for one textbook what in most places in the earth one would need to feed their children for several months… All I know is that I fail to sit comfortably in this new existence, although at the same time I feel so grateful to be in a situation that allows me the opportunity to focus so intently on my studies and to process out the whirlwind of the past six months. I will simply continue to grapple, and engage in this grappling with as many as are willing.

Indeed, one of the greatest lessons I take away from the human rights course in Rio is that each person has a voice with a story waiting to be told, and its one’s right to express that narrative rather have it imposed upon that individual. In this way we can avoid the damaging and exaggerated stereotypes that cause boundaries to be set and walls to be built, and instead bring out the positive human potential in each human being. One organization after another, we visited places that are offering as “weapons” cameras, video cameras, microphones, drums, pens, and paintbrushes instead of guns; ways to use expression instead of violence to deal with painful experiences of bloodshed and loss. This expression needs a caring audience; one that intently listens and reflects back its own narrative in an exchange that validates and enriches each and proposes concurrent action for a “brighter tomorrow.”

There are movements in both directions—walls being torn down and walls being built up. As I alluded to in the last entry, it is a question for each individual in each moment to decide which route to choose.

As I morose through my pictures at four in the morning, still adjusting to the 13 hour time difference, I come across this fitting quote from the MLK, Jr. museum in Altlanta: “Every man must decide if he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

Beauty and fear in Rio de Janeiro

Well, unfortunately Brazil nor Argentina made it to the World Cup final this year, but I did get to witness a caravan of beeping cars filled with Italian vacationers in Rio de Janeiro. I watched the round of penalty kicks in the warm open ocean air right next to the white-sand beaches, so though I missed out on what could have been the biggest party atmosphere in my lifetime would Brazil have been champions, I am certainly not complaining. This city is soul-stirringly beautiful, the food, fruits, music, dance all intoxicating.

I flew into Rio late Friday night and spent the weekend meeting students coming in principally from New York and Chicago. We have a group of approximately twenty including undergraduate and graduate students, several Brazilians, and assisting alumni of this course about Human Rights and Media. Monday morning we hit the ground running with an overview of the major human rights issues found here. Remember Michael Moore´s documentary, Bowling for Columbine, and building up to the statistic that the US sees approximately 10,000 homicides a year? That was supposed to knock us off our feet compared to the much lower count in other countries. Well, with half of US´population, Brazil registers 40,000 homicides a year. One of the principal reasons for this, in addition to the large quantity of arms on the street, is inequality. After two African countries, Brazil ranks as having the largest gap between the haves and have-nots.

In Rio de Janeiro, this manifests as what is essentially a civil war between those in the impoverished mountain shanty-towns, named favelas (approx 700 of them), and the police. The favelas are ruled by drug lords, and everyone living in these communities follows their rules, including a nightly curfew and required behaviors to demonstrate respect to these leaders. The police do not enter these areas unless they are declaring war. Our professor in this course, Peter Lucas, talks of the Friday night he was in the favela when the police launched an attack. He remembers peering out the door of the house he was in to find the children fleeing the police cars... his reflection echoes in my head: "What kind of a world are we living in?"

We have been gradually been going deeper into this sad reality, but are also visiting organizations that are working in amazing ways to bring a positive light into these favelas so that youth may choose an alternative route to drugs and violence. This morning we visited an organization called Kabum! which is a school that teaches young people art and technology; one of the recurring themes thusfar is of providing favella-dwellers with a means to express for themselves who they are and what kind of realities they experience on a daily basis as opposed to being represented in mainstream media as the perpetrators and terrorizors of Rio. Technology is certainly providing means for the typically dismissed and forgotten to voice the realities of their situations.

I find it difficult to not walk through the streets with fear, as much as I reject conceptually its presence in me... hearing testimonies of police violence against innocent individuals makes me feel especially vulnerable. But I firmly believe we cannot let this culture of fear overcome us. We must not let our emotions spin out of control to the point where we lose compassion, love, respect, tolerance, and all those qualities that make this world worth living in... it is a battle for each of us to wage, I suppose, and I am in that with each step I take here in Rio.