Trying to keep up WITH MYSELF.

I have been losing myself in not following time. No longer wish to carry a cell phone, never turning my head to see a clock or a watch because no time that i have been following for 19 years no longer matters. and it never should have matter. at night i know that we are not of this world only in it, but i have been blinded by knowledge i already know and i only seem to see when its convenient for me, but i promise to continue living in this light i have always knew but never followed, constantly. promise to walk by faith and not by sight. i no longer wish to go back and forth,, because the light holds meaning, understanding, and this light provides light for life. and I don't have to worry about watching time to find me, cause i was lost, am found because of light. that shines.

Maybe this is a beginning of a poem, not sure, i have so much going on within me that this just came out. i remember the things i love again: dance and poetry i remember what matters the most to me: God , family, and friends. 

Bless to have made a promise to my mother, two months ago,  i told her i would blog my journey and i think even after Brazil i will continue because it not only provided communication for you but it also helped me find more of me, the pieces i lost, the pieces i wish to forget, the pieces that needed appreciation, the pieces that i didn't want to believe in, the pieces that needed changes, the pieces that were broken, and the pieces that may come.

i have been keeping about 3 journals:1 blog 2 my green journal notebook 3 random microsoft documents on my mac. some get more writing in them then others but i keep forgetting to write on here. i keep forgetting to share. But i am a firm believer that a person makes time for what matters to them, so i apologize for not making time.

so picking up where my last blog left off: july 15 harry potter came out and i couldn't go see it because it was sold out everywhere! and to think the previous day i sat in a lecture where the prof. was explaining to me how films and cinemas in Brazil are not big..lol. well i guess i forget im not the only person who has read harry potter. its big every where. but i did get to see it thursday. so i can breath. although it was 2 hours and half long, i wish it was longer. the book had so much more in it, but i remind myself that this is only a movie, they cant put everything in it. but i thank j.k. rowling because she was a huge influence on my reading. i read through all her potter books, the 300 page, 400 page, 500 page, 600 page, and she might of had one 700 page i read it. and harry potter was never assigned through school, i read this on my own time. when i read through these books i believed in myself, in my reading level, abilities, and after that no book seemed to thick or to hard.

I had a lecture by Ana Alice  entitled: the condition of women in a brazilian society, blew me away. i had to keep my cool, all the truth i had discovered with my own eyes by living here just came to a reality with this professor's truth. i was not the only one who sees non-white brazilian work. and work. and work. here and there. i wasn't sure if white brazilian work here because i barely see it. All the maids, cooks, nanny's are non-white brazilian women. in the USA people would say they were black or mix. but brazil is not seen in black and white, when you here you have to unwrap your mind around those concepts because 'race' is a made up word. We, i mean many,  just believe in it.

so here are some statistics that blew my mind: 

women make up 53% of the population in salvador

but only occupy 44% of jobs

in Bahia, 71% of women are domestic workers

women get paid 71.3% less than men and women with an equal educational back ground receive 40% less than men

The way domestic working works here, in my opinion resembles  slavery, only its legal and they are receiving some type of money.  Its such a complicated situation, let me try to explain: first remember it is really hard to find decent jobs in brazil, after slavery was abolished the people that were enslave were discarded to the streets, so they did what they knew, some went back to the fields to try ad work and make money and others stayed in the city. The ones in the city for example the women, they made money by doing what they knew- cooking and cleaning.

And today thats what i see here. this is a sad truth: you either are a made or you have one. one of the many problems for most domestic workers is the fact they have no benefits: 60% have no protection, no social security. everyting is documented  (suppose to be) in a notebook called 'carta profiahna' (sp?) but there are no description no policies on what it means to be a domestic worker, all of that is worked out with the worker and the head of household. this concept of domestic workers is one i have struggled to grasp here. 

That and poverty have been the hardest truth/ realities for me to swallow. but i don't think i should be able to swallow this. these. i have to speak about it and share what i have witness so that other people understand the realities of others lives in another country. maybe put their problems in perspective to the rest of the world. 

I talked to my brother a few days ago and he told me how he was mad that mom accidently put a dirty towel on his new pair of shoes. i was like did you seriously just tell me this story about your shoes? i said dominick you are bless to have shoes, do you know how many people i see everyday with a house let alone some shoes. There is a man some mornings i see who sleeps on the hard cobblestone ground with a sheet and two bags. there is a woman and her son that sit under this tree and ask people for money. There is a woman i see who wraps her home, a cardboard box around her on the ground. 

I have this battle within me between helping and not helping, i mean yes anything would help but the problem is they keep coming back and sometimes they bring others or follow you, and that would be a very difficult situation for me, at this particularly time in my life. I don't have excessive money to just give. I am seriously thinking my last day here i will give what i can, i even plan on giving some of my clothes, even food if i am able to. Poverty isn't something that can be healed with a little donation here and there. Those gestures help and provide hope for more change. 

on a more positive note, i seen an amazing ballet foclórico in pelurinho it was ótimo (excellent)! i don't know why they called it a ballet or balé, because it was an amazing african dance! with the influence of orixas and at the end there was capoeira man! there was even a dance where a man dances with fire, including walking over it and continuing to dance, rolling the fire on his skin, and then extinguishing the fire with his mouth. wow! the live music, the dancing, the energy made me want to get out of my seat and join them. i remember why i love dance so much. th emotion and energy  dancers are able to give to the audience, the power the dancers have at making the audience feel. 

the very next day everyone from the program headed to Cachoeria, well this was a blank mission. It was 2 and half hours away we were told we were going to go inside Irmandade da Boa Morte( the sisterhood of good death) and Casa Grande( which literally translate to big house means the master house during slavery). 

The things we did were visit the farmers market and talked with a political party named Projecto do movimento dos sem terra (MST). The market was so interesting, we saw people cutting up cows, fruit is everywhere, and i seen tobacco before it had been process. There was fruit and food everywhere. They told us we were going to to do these things, got on the bus and everyone is sleeping, i mean its 8am in the morning when we left and it was around 11 or 12 when we got back on and there was like an hour lecture going on, so everyone thinks were going to the other two things. We stop at this huge house to eat lunch and then we headed to see the other two things. why we get there and there close. it was like 4 or 5, clearly our tour guide fred knew when these things closed, why did he change the plan. i asked him, he said because he thought people were hungry, more like he was hungry.  so we basically took a tour of Cachoeria.  i mean i can be positive, at least i got to be there and visit the city but wow, i could have goggled all of that,

So monday came and me and my crew of friends decide to express our opinion respectfully to clara, the lady who runs the program. so after a long discussion with her she said she will make sure that before we leave Brazil that we will go on another trip. so we shall see what happens...