Whistle While You Work

I have just come back from Russas, a city approximately 3 hours south of Fortaleza, population 66,000. Maira travels there by bus every week to work at CRIAS, an organization that offers protection for children who are experiencing sexual, physical and emotional violence. Russas (pronounced Hoo-sahs) is HOT. Hot being that you can actually cook your food on the sidewalk in the peak hours. I have never experienced such heat and I believe I probably drank at least 15 litres of water per day I was there.

I sat in on an intake interview between Maira, Regeanna, a social assistant and and woman who was discussing her nine year old daughter and the sexual abuse occurring in the family. It was difficult for me to follow, but after just 2 weeks I'm starting to understand bits and pieces. Unfortunately my questions, in broken portuguese were answered by "she has many problems".
As a side note I noticed myself in Russas getting frustrated with constantly being corrected although I'm sure the heat played a major role in this. It was quite humiliating knowing how horrible my pronounciation is; also people tend to get quite upset when I don't understand their english and often say, "you don't understand this word?" As if I'm completely illiterate. The sotaque (accent in portuguese) is quite heavy... the word rent is pronounced hent here, my last name is pronounced Gloyjeh which I've learned to accept, after all we mispronounce names in Canada too. So I answer to Imy Gloyjeh now.

Anyway in Russas I was able to get a tour of the Poste de Saude and Russa's CAPS, Ceara's unique, publicly funded mental health centre. I participated in facilitating a "music therapy" that I liked so much, despite the extreme heat, and I have decided to go back and spend a full day at CAPS to see more of what they do. It was very powerful to see how much the people looked forward to this group, although it felt a bit silly to me at first I couldn't help being quickly won over by the incredible Latin beats and the happiness/excitement in the room. It was one of the best moments I've had here, dancing with a patient with my eyes closed then guiding him, his eyes closed, around the room to the beat of the samba drums...

Speaking of samba, I went to my first samba club. It started at 1am and goes until mid-morning. I thought I had some dance skills but nothing compares to the way Brazilians dance. I felt like a huge gringo, to say the least.

Back in Fortaleza I was asked to teach a seminar course on work psychology. Yes. Teach. I was quite nervous about this, being that I had only taken one course in my undergraduate degree on Career Counselling. However, I am here for the experience and have a feeling it would be a huge mistake to let this opportunity go by, so last night I taught my first class of eight on Introduction to Work Psychology. The feedback was positive :), however, the number of people in the audience did begin the dwindle from 40 to about 25 :(. I did have a broken projector so it was difficult to see my Power Points from the computer screen and translation slows things down to a crawl so it may not have been the material.

We'll see if anyone shows up next week....

I've also been asked to do a half day workshop for a RELUS mountain retreat on working with groups. I'm pretty excited about this; finally something I know a bit about! I was asked specifically to include creative methods to work with various groups, and it seems there is a big interest in combining the arts with group work. I'm searching for cheap clay within the city to set up a hand building (pottery) station, I remember this being an especially good type of art therapy so I'm hopeful that the group will like it. Any suggestions would be great!!


As for leisure time, I've had some good times walking around Bellamas, a huge artisanato market, and by huge I mean South American huge. I bought a few Brazilian instruments and a whistle that unfortunately did not survive the Samba. It did provide enough entertainment that night that it was worth the 2 Reis I paid for it. My first time bartering (through Silvia my new friend/interpreter) was pretty amusing, it doesn't really work so well when you look like an illiterate gringo so I mainly paid full asking price which, of course, was a steal when you convert it to the Canadian dollar. It's the least I could do since the items are beautiful...

Hopefully I'll be better at keeping up to date, so many things happen during the day that would be interesting but it's hard to find the time to write it all down.

Tchau!