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@socialsabbaticalbrazil2016-blog
The End
This is my last post on socialsabbaticalbrazil2016. After a good journey back to Germany I'm happy to be back home.
But I am sure in only a few days I'll also miss Brazil, and most of all the warm and always happy Brazilians.
Most of all I will miss the great team at Unilehu!
The Great Finale
An intense and amazing four weeks have come to an end. The last three days were all about wrapping up our work and delivering everything to Unilehu in a final meeting with the entire staff. We were also filmed giving final statements about our time here in Curitiba. Everyone was very appreciative about not only our work here but also about the very much desired outside perspective we were able to provide.
Today everything came to a big final culmination in a big meeting with all organizations, professional volunteers and project assistants held at the school of our client Unilehu - as always extremely well organized and with a lot of great food.
They also brought a group from their students in to play Bossa Nova while we had lunch - and since we are in Brazil, slowly but surely one after the other started to dance after they finished their lunch… Brazilians are great!
Finally then everything ended for Janne, Roxy and me how it all had begun 4 weeks ago with a picture in front of the Unilehu school.
Fußball und seine leider unschönen Folgen
Gestern hat unser koreanischer Kollege Jinho mega Pech gehabt. Unsere Kollegen sind gestern gegen eine Auswahl brasilianischer Client Mitarbeiter im Fußball angetreten. Dabei ist Jinho die Achillessehne gerissen ! Oh, das ist wirklich ernst !!!! Heute war er im Krankenhaus und mit Krücken und Gips zurück, der Arme, und am Wochenende will er zurück fliegen. Brasilien - Korea ist ein verdammt langer Flug ! Hoffentlich lässt sich mit der Airline ein Spezialpaket vereinbaren, ich drücke ihm alle Daumen !
The final week has begun!
Time certainly has been flying… The last week of our four-week Social Sabbatical has begun.
Last week had ended with a pretty emotional meeting with the management team of Unilehu in which they had thanked us for our work so far and most importantly for providing them with a very much needed open and honest outside view of their organization which helped them a lot understanding where they are standing today and how to prioritize for the future.
Today we started our final week with a visit to the new inclusion school Mundo Para Todo Mundo (a world for the entire world) which - after many months of going through a lengthy, complicated process to get the necessary approvals by the state - will open its doors next Monday to both regular children as well as children with all kinds of different special needs.
Our last Weekend
This final weekend of our stay, all of the Social Sabbatical team spent in Curitiba exploring the city and its nightlife. Me and several others started the weekend with a great dinner at a Thai restaurant followed by a private party at the apartment of one staff member from one of our projects. From there we continued on to go to the most well-known club in town called "The Shed". It is a club which only plays what is called "Brazilian Country Music". It is nothing like US Country Music or anything we have in Germany. There even was a live band playing, getting the crowd all excited. However like my fellow colleague Britta, I also didn't find the music too exciting. I guess country music just isn't for me, regardless how different it might be.
On Saturday I decided to go and explore some of the local highlights. I could have taken a tourist bus like you would have it in many other cities too. But since only few of the stops the bus would make caught my interest I decided to go walk to Rua das Flores, the country's first "calçadão" (black and white decorated street exclusive for pedestrians), considered to be one of the marks of the city's cultural revolution.
From Rua das Flores I wanted to take a cab to go to my next stop, the Museu Oscar Niemeyer. Unfortunately though I couldn't get a cab even though there typically are many orange-black cabs cruising the streets of Curitiba. Therefore I ended up just walking for almost 45 minutes to the museum, which actually was quite an interesting walk as it gave me quite a good impression of the nice and the not so nice areas of Curitiba.
Finally at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer my expectations were highly exceeded. I was in fact looking forward to a nice modern art museum, but it turned out to be much bigger and much better than I expected. The museum is the largest and the most modern museum in Brazil, and I certainly didn’t expect the largest one of Brazil to be in Curitiba. The museum, also called the "Eye" was designed and build by the highly acclaimed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and is home to a very good exhibition of Brazilian and international modern art.
On Sunday most of the team went to visit the weekly fair in the historic center of Curitiba. I had been told that it is quite big, but again I was very surprised. It isn't just big, its huge and you can easily spend hours browsing endless rows of little stalls which are selling everything from local handcrafted art to all kinds of cheap stuff from China.
Finally we ended the weekend with dinner at a very nice Churascaria where most of us followed local tradition and had just way too much food as the waiters kept on bringing one type of meat after the next as well as a lot of other very delicious local specialties.
… Danach geht es zu einer Privatparty von einem der Clients unsere Gruppen , Vorglühen kennt man auch in Brasilien 😉 .. Danach geht es nämlich in DEN IN Club in Curitiba… Leider spielen sie dort brasilianische Country Music , wie ich finde nicht sonderlich tanzbar und auch zum Zuhören eher nicht so mein Ding, also gehe ich relativ früh. Interessant war aber, wie intensiv sich die Mädels hier aufbrezeln, schon besonders !
Graffiti
One of the favorite pastimes of what seems to be some very fine Brazilian artists seems to be painting Graffiti. Over the past almost 3 weeks that I have been to Brazil now I have seen some very beautiful paintings - some of them on what seems to be the most random walls in the city.
Okay, I admit especially one of the Graffitis above might not count towards being very beautiful or done with a lot of fine technique. I still had to include it for its historic relevance ;-)
Anyway working on a project with street artist could make for a good idea for a future Social Sabbatical project, I think.
Heute muss ich mal über die Busse in Curitiba schreiben, die sind hier nämlich ziemlich besonders. Wie man auf dem Foto vielleicht sehen kann, bestehen sie aus 3 (!) Abteilen, haben also 2 flexible Elemente und sind somit extra lang. Angeblich gibt es das nur hier. Da sie meist eine eigene Spur haben, kommen sie auch schnell durch, aber wie gesagt, der Verkehr ist aus europäischer Grossstadtsicht eh recht entspannt. Besonders sind auch die Bushaltstellen, siehe erstes Foto, sie bestehen aus großen Glasröhren.
Tuesday, July, 26.
After being sick pretty much all of last week, it is good to be back working on the Unilehu project again.
Yesterday and today we continued the work Design Thinking work with the Unilehu team. It is still quite challenging as everything has to get translated both ways. This is no ideal setup for doing the typical interactive, creative design thinking work. However, today it seemed the group got the hang of it. They started to be a lot more engaged and were ready to take a more active part. At one point my teammates Janne, Roxy and I were actually able to completely step back and just watch as the Unilehu team worked on the challenges themselves, creating ideas, rating and prioritizing them and discussing how to turn them into concrete action. Mission accomplished! ;-)
Tukan Alarm ! Der Sonntag morgen startet mit einer Überraschung. In den Bäumen vor dem Hotel tummeln sich Tukane !
Frühstückspause auf Brasilianisch !
Am Freitag frühstückt das Alianca Team immer zusammen und wir sind natürlich eingeladen. Heute war es einfach klasse, Helena hatte sich überlegt , uns mal die brasilianische Musik näherzubringen und Lautsprecher fürs Handy mitgebracht. Die haben uns die verschiedensten Musikstile vorgespielt, leider kann ich mich absolut nicht mehr an die Namen erinnern, Foho war dabei, Favela Funk und ein Art brasilianische Country Musik mit Herzschmerz und noch viel mehr. Das Beste aber : Sie haben uns auch die Tänze vorgeführt !!!!! Es dauert nicht lange , das war die Kaffeeküche eine volle Tanzfläche, alle sind da völlig offen und unbefangen, eine super Stimmung… Und dann wurde ganz normal weitergearbeitet.
Great atmosphere at the falls this morning. I was all alone where I was yesterday with hundreds of tourists.
Iguazu Falls Boat Ride
Filmed by a colleague with a waterproof case.
Iguazu Falls
Sunday, July 24. This weekend we spent at the absolutely amazing, breathtaking Iguazu Falls, which are located right at the boarder to Argentina in Parana. Some of us went for a Helicopter flight (I didn't) others on a boat ride ride under the falls (I did). In any case, it is beautiful and almost too overwhelming. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I am also planning to post some videos if that works.
The Winter Weather and its Aftermath.
Before coming to Curitiba we were told that although Winter in Brazil can be quite nice in areas like Rio de Janerio were you still have temperatures around 30° C, in Curitiba it can get pretty cold with temperatures dropping to 0° C at night. So we were advised to bring warm cloths and ideally dress in many layers as during the day it can get relatively warm again. We were also advised that many buildings including offices do not have a heating. On cold days most people will therefore not take off their winter coats all day long until they go home.
Now, coming here the weather was much better than expected. In the first couple of days we had blue skies all day with temperatures around 24° C. Nice enough and if it stays like that, than it will be quite pleasant – we thought. However, after 4 days or so, a big storm came in with a boat load of rain and hail. I have seen thunderstorms that strong before where they lasted for a few hours, but here it lasted for an entire day. And with the storm the temperatures dropped significantly and very suddenly… At night it got very cold and we all started to freeze in the hotel. And just as we were told, there is no heating in any of the offices...
Unfortunately the quick weather change also brought a jump in flu cases with it. The state of Parana is now experiencing a H1N1 epidemic (swine flu) with more than 200 people dead already.
Unfortunately I also caught it – my personal “Aftermath”. As a result I had a couple of very rough days and nights. I ended up going to the hospital on Monday because I was so miserable. Luckily they didn't want to keep me there and released me after I got an injection against the fever and proper medication. Not even the hospital has a heating. Imagine… All the staff is working in winter coats the entire day, doctors and nurses wearing oversized white lab coats over it. Very interesting... So clearly not a place I wanted to spend a night or two.
Anyway, I am much better today. Also the sun is out (see above) and the temperatures are on the rise – a little bit at least. All of the team (many have a cold, but luckily no one else got the flu) is now looking forward to a great weekend at the Foz do Iguacu...
Favelas - An unexpected experience. As part of the stay in Rio we also saw a few favelas. And we visited the favela Rocinha just a bit more closely. Rocinha is the biggest favela of Rio with about 80.000 people living here, as our tour guide explained - without whom me most certainly wouldn’t not have dared to come here. Before coming here I thought Favelas are areas where extremely poor people live in wooden or metal sheet huts in very bad sanitary conditions, fearing that every day some big excavators could show up to tear everything down. I also believed that Favelas are extremely dangerous, so much so that middle class Brazilians would never set a foot in them, let alone should any tourist ever do so.
While of course Favelas are still where the poorer people live, I was very surprised that people are actually living in very small but very decent stone houses with electricity (though often stolen), running water and even cable TV. Rocinha, as most Favelas in Rio, was “pacified” many years ago and it is now relatively safe to go here. Our guide Frank took us to the house of a friend of his which has a small terrace with a great view over Rocinha towards the ocean. I am sure there are many much more rich people in Rio who do not have a view anywhere close to this. While enjoying the view Frank explained that originally all the houses were built illegally and people in fact had to fear that everything would be torn down any day, many years ago a law was passed allowing anyone owns a house in a Favela for more than five years to keep it forever. Therefore people have been able to live in the Favelas in pretty stable, safe conditions now for many years, allowing them lead a modest but decent live, build businesses, send kids to school - having chance to approach middle class.
So maybe a social projects in Favelas could actually be very interesting for future SAP Social Sabbatical engagements. I am sure these would make for some very exciting and rewarding projects.
Rio de Janeiro
Saturday - Sunday, July 16 - 17. After an exciting but also exhausting week we are spending the weekend in Rio. What a beautiful city due to its outstanding location. The main attractions we visited were Corcovado with the Christ statue (very crowded, but an amazing view), the artist quarter Santa Theresa, and the tiled stairs of Lapa. And of course we couldn’t miss the Sugar Loaf (Zuckerhut) with its equally stunning view and then Copacabana and Ipanema were our hotel was right at. We also visited one of the infamous favelas - but more on that in a different blog. Unfortunately for me I came done with a fever during the stay. More on this also in a different post.
(Sorry if you wonder why I keep changing this post, but I am some serious trouble with Tumblr... :-( and hence needed to repost a few times.)
