Ilha de Maré

The above picture is my host dad number 2 (I have one host family in the city, Salvador, and I had one for the three days I spent on the island) He makes baskets to sell at the open air market on the mainland. He also sells fruit on the island and owns 2 bars and a small grocery store, as far I as I could tell. My mother, Lia, cooked me lovely clams and mussels that my host brother caught. I convinced him to take me “fishing” the next day and he explained to me how to tell which bubbles indicated which species (Rachel, each animal has a special breath that tells you where he is. Don’t you see?) I didn’t, but I did enjoy the fact that he called an oyster, “he”. In Portuguese, they don’t use a word for “it”, they use “he” or “she”, depending on the gender of the noun. (I can’t keep from laughing, for example, when people refer to their doctoral thesis as “him”)

I also was able to shadow the community health agent, Maria, as she walked around her designated community to weigh babies. For the first 18 months, the community agent monitors the weight of babies and watches for normal development benchmarks. They use the verb “acompanhar”—to accompany the baby. Much nicer than “monitor”. In the Brazilian health system, a community member is paid by the government (federal, state and municipal) to be the bridge between the community and the medical providers. Agents do not prescribe medicine or diagnose disease, but they do keep track of families, convince people to seek care, dispense condoms and water purifying pills, and take charge of prevention and education campaigns. Each agent is usually responsible for a few hundred families. The community agent program is fantastically successful, especially in rural areas, because the agent not only knows the community members, but is a member of the community. In Maria’s case, she is beloved, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And because we were with her, we were loved too. Maria told us it is remarkable how the islanders accept gringos now that there have been so many positive experiences with SIT students staying on the island, doing research and helping at the medical clinic or schools. She said before there was a feeling of inferiority among the islanders and they would rather not engage with outsiders, but now, because of the good work of previous students, conversation isn’t particularly hard to ignite. And so we reaped the benefits of respectful people who came and stayed and ate and asked questions before us. Thank God for people who do it well.