Tuesday August 25,2009
Dear Family and Friends,
What follows is an account of our experience here in our new home in Brazil for any of you who might be interested and a way for us to record this unique experience as it changes. Please let me know if this is or isn’t of interest for future writing…and know that we are thinking of you and sending you our love.
Tomorrow will be 2 weeks since we arrived so I thought I’d write a little about what It’s like here. We are staying in a very small village on the outskirts ( about 6 kilometers) from the closest town of about 200,000 people. That town, which is called Santo Antonio do Descobertos, seems to be filled with barbers and hair cutters and stores that sell beds, go figure. It also seems to be filled with teenagers. We’ve been only twice to use the internet and stop at the grocery store and bank and we can’t say it’s one of our favorite towns in Brazil, but as it’s only a place we need to use for shopping occasionally, we don’t mind it.
Brasilia and its many satellite towns is about 60 kilometers away and has everything a large city and government capitol has. We have been once or twice to take care of business and of course for the airport.
Cidade Ecletica is a village unlike anything I’ve ever been to and thus a bit more difficult to describe. It has about 500 people living here. The central part of the village is located inside gated walls and is posted as private. The main feature is a Temple which is open to the public on Wednesday and Friday nights and Sunday afternoons and used most other days for teaching and private healings. Next door to the Temple is a hospital which currently is functioning only part time with a volunteer staff of various doctors and nurses. Also inside the gated part of the village is a school, playing fields, radio tower, administrative offices, a bakery and several streets of houses. Outside of the gated area is a restaurant and small hotel, a pharmacy, general store, snack shop, clothing and thrift shop, the town hall and a book store. These various shops and offices do not resemble anything you will probably have seen in the US. They are very modest and simple. With American eyes this place looks very poor and very sparse, however once we, ourselves, lost our "American eyes" this place began to look quite beautiful. Between the Temple and the hotel and restaurant, is a divided street, with an island down the middle. Everyday you see the people walking to and from the various places from their homes which are also located on side streets outside the gated part of the village.
Here we sit on the high central plateau of Brazil and the street through the center of town is a high flat mesa on top of the hill, while the side streets slope downward into a valley on either side. The landscape here is called Serrado, which is something like high dessert with soil the color of deep burnt orange. The word dessert is misleading though as there are some trees and various brush, though it is not what you would call lush tropical foliage. There are abundant mango and cashew trees all around and here and there a river and an occasional waterfall. This is dry season and the roads are dusty, with the orange soil in the air when the cars go by, filling your nostrils and coating your socks and your clothing with a fine layer of orange dust. But just the other day we had the first rain of the season, called by the locals, the Caju (cashew) rain. Now the trees will begin to come into bloom and the landscape will light up with the colors of blooming flowers and fruits.
We’re enjoying the beginning of the rains as we have just replanted the kitchen garden of the hospital which for some time has lain dormant and neglected. As was familiar to us in Vermont, when the rains come, often the power goes out. It was quite magical this past Friday night when the rain came and the power went out just as nightfall came and the Friday night long distance healing service began at the Temple by candlelight.
Another unusual feature, common in South America but not in the US, is the prevalence of un-neutered dogs, mostly male, roaming freely through the town. We have one who is very cute who will not leave our side and follows us everywhere, sleeping outside the door to our hotel room every night. We call him little Amigo. We hesitate to adopt him before we have a more permanent home, but fortunately someone is feeding him as he does not appear to be hungry. This feature of sovereign dogs does not appear to distress anyone and is just accepted as a matter of course. Most families have 2 or 3 of their own inside the walls of their houses. This too is another unusual feature common to Brazil, but not quite so common in the US. Every home seems to be enclosed inside a wall of one kind or another with a gate. When we inquired about this we were told it is more for privacy than for security. There are some dress codes inside the community: women must wear skirts or dresses, no pants or shorts and keep their shoulders covered while men may not wear shorts while in town. These dress codes come from the Essenic school ( a school of esoteric teachings) established years ago and continue to be in effect. Having the privacy of walls around the houses allows the freedom to ignore the dress codes while at home.
This is a spiritual community started by a visionary named Yokaanen who brought a couple hundred of his disciples here from Rio de Janeiro in 1946 to establish a homestead dedicated to helping many people. The main thrust of the spiritual practice is known as Spiritism, based somewhat on the teachings of Allan Kardec and known as the Kardecist school of Spiritism. Here at Cidade Ecletica ( the eclectic universal fraternal brotherhood of the Essenes,) the practice is a blend of both Kardecist Spiritism with Umbandu, a more mystical approach of spiritism. I am not equipped to explain in detail yet the ins and outs of this belief system, but I can say that all of what we know so far about it aligns with what we believe, without ever knowing that there was a name for these beliefs. Perhaps at a later time if you are interested I can explain in more detail.
In the short time that we’ve been here, we have met many members of the community and had many opportunities for both private special healings and public healings. We’ve been invited to join the community, to study with them and to work with them. The Elders of the community are advising us through our English speaking friend Gaudencio who translates for us and is helping us with our government documents and details like housing, communication, orientation and transportation. We feel very lucky to be so well cared for and very much at home and at peace here, although living in a hotel has its’ ups and downs.
A typical day starts with café de manha ( breakfast) served at the hotel at 8am. We have been the only hotel guests for breakfast since we arrived, so there is one table set for us with a carafe of coffee and one of hot milk, a basket of bread, a plate of cheese and some fruit. We chat in Portuguese with the two women who manage the restaurant and cook all the meals and they work diligently to have us understand and learn from them. They are a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and incredibly lovely. Rocket waits behind in the room.
After breakfast we get Rocket and head over to the hospital courtyard, winding our way through the entrance and a series of corridors to get into an enclosed courtyard which houses a small fenced garden nestled between the walls of the surrounding buildings. A man named Elsio lives in a small room just next to the garden and unlocks the storage room where the tools are kept for us each morning. We are just now beginning to be able to communicate with him a little. Rocket wanders around the courtyard and generally stays out of trouble.
Almoca (lunch) is served at noon, self service, buffet style from a heated table and there are generally a few other people there for this meal. We are beginning to see some regulars as well as new people each time. The plates are weighed and charged by the kilo and lunch usually runs about $2.50 to $3.00 per plate. Everyone greets us and exchanges a few words. Usually we will return to the room after lunch and spend time studying Portuguese or writing if we are not taking care of business with Gaudencio or being shown around to different places. The children of the women who cook in the restaurant will often come around to play with us. At first this was endearing as the children are delightful, but lately they have become a bit of a small problem, coming over constantly and needing attention while we are attending to our studies or resting.
Jantar (dinner) is nearly identical to lunch every evening at 6:30 although most evenings it is only the two of us unless it is a night for public healing at the Temple on Wednesdays and Fridays. Some evenings, Sevanna has us come into the kitchen to fill our plates to save the energy from heating the table.
The routine of living here at the hotel can get to us if we let them, needing to be on time for meals and at particular services at the Temple. We sometimes feel as if our time is not our own, but this is a minor inconvenience in return for all that is wonderful about this place. We are eager to have our own place where we can prepare our own meals at our discretion and be less interrupted by the children, but please don’t misunderstand as we adore 8 year old Pablo and 3 year old Carolina and their mother Allinni. We are eager to have our own car and be less dependent on the kindness of our friend Gaudencio to take us around and help us with even the most insignificant of activities. And we are eager to master the language so we can get on with a regular life and begin our studies in the Spiritist school and begin teaching in the school and working in the hospital. It often feels difficult to be patient, but looked at differently it could seem that all is moving quickly. Many of the elders say that our visa process is going very quickly and easily (compared with most) because we are supposed to be here.
The people here are fascinating. Gaudencio fills us in on who each of them are and their history whenever we get together. Many of the community who are here working as mediums are, or were, professional people: teachers, lawyers, government officials… Some have kept their professions and have very nice homes and new expensive cars. Some have given up what was once a highly paid job and lifestyle for a simpler life here and live extremely modestly. Others are illiterate, though some highly skilled in some trade. These people who live and work solely inside the community do not have to deal with money in any way. This really appeals to me. In many ways it is a non-monetary system, or quite close to one. We are learning more about how this works and it is of great interest to us. Sometimes there is bartering, sometimes there are donations made, some is government funding… The general principal is that they will not charge for any services they render. All is given free of charge. In exchange however, the people receiving the benefit of these services may make a donation, usually specified as to how they wish this donation be applied. There are a great many needs here as many of the buildings are in need of repair. The school and the hospital, for instance, are in need of great attention. The school is considered to be of very high quality and has opened its doors to the neighboring cities, whose schools we are told are sorely lacking. What is really needed is a new school building as this one is badly in need of renovation. We’ll know so much more when we begin teaching inside the school after our permanent visas are approved.
The hospital which was once fully functional was in such a bad state of disrepair, that it had to be shut down. There were so many patients coming (all receiving free care) that there was no time to attend to upkeep. Since that time many renovations have been done, but the government approval has not yet been reissued to open full time and there are no funds to pay a staff so all the staff are volunteers. We are told there are now 8 patients there full time and a minimal full time staff with visiting doctors a few times a week coming on a volunteer basis. The gardens we have planted will be used to feed the patients and nurses and a few of the single townspeople who come there for lunch.
One of the things that I find somewhat seemingly contradictory in this place of what would appear to be ecclesiastic or monastic, these people know how to party and have a good time more than I’ve ever seen. The first Saturday we were here a woman near the hospital was celebrating her 75th birthday. She has been here a very long time and is highly revered and loved. Her birthday celebration began around 10 in the morning and lasted well into the early morning hours of the night with great music and festive lights and many people coming and going. It seems that the people here are mostly happy, fun loving folks, working diligently to help as many people as they can while never complaining and enjoying life fully, without the need for much in the way of material wealth. I love that!
That wraps up my 2 week report for now. Let me know if you are interested in hearing more and I’ll continue to include you on my mailing list. I understand that for many, time is short and these letters are very long. I’ve stopped writing on my web blog for now because the government officials working on our visas have my web site address and I don’t want to say anything that might interfere with that process.
We hope all remains well with each of you and love hearing news from your life when you can. We send love……Mindy and Paul