Making Mothers Out of Molehills

I came to Brazil this year to get out of my head and start living in the real world by doing something constructive and of worth. I can't argue that Brazil is any more deserving than alot of places in the world and neither can I argue that I have any specific skills that could really be of much use to the people over here that are really trying to solve the problems that Brazil has and make a positive change in society. All I am worth on a realistic stage is my physical labour, time (money) and my most valuable asset of being a native English speaker. Of course it bothered me at first that the most beneficial thing I can give to people is something that is so disconnected from me as an individual. Anyone in the world can be taught to be English from birth. I was just lucky. No, I didn't need to fly for 11 hours across the Atlantic Ocean to find someone who would want to learn my language skills, so I can't argue my trip is purely humanitarian. There are enough immigrants at home in Bradford to keep me busy for a long time on the English teaching front (which is future food for thought). So I guess I indulged myself in the choice of venue. I have family in Brazil so I could live cheaply, visit relatives and get to know my mother's home and feel a bit more a part of her family.

My first visit with the organisation I was to teach with was today. Turns out I won't be teaching as I'm only here for a short time and as such I wouldn't be able to teach them much. I felt useless and pathetically young and inexperienced. Fortunately though, they found a place for me among the younger girls, more or less as a guinea pig for them to practice their English on.

Grupo Primavera is an organisation offering complementary education for girls from a poor neighbourhood in Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. They teach them values and skills that make them employable and provide them with activities to keep them off the streets and keep them out of drug trafficking and prostitution. Lesson number one was why girls? I asked John the co-founder, a Chinamen with an American education and a history in architecture, why they only provided this for girls in the neighbourhood when in my mind it seemed that it was men who fed alot of the problems - namely providing and using prostitutes. He replied that aside from the fact that he found girls and boys to benefit academically from being apart during part of their adolescents, but also because women are the carriers of values. It is women who in their roles as mothers pass on their values and form the moral basis for the next generation. Particularly so in this neighbourhood, where despite 62% of the families (where Grupo Primavera girls come from) being nuclear, the men are often absent in raising their children and it is left to the mother to discipline and nurture the children, girls and boys alike. So in effect this was also a way of attending to the male population of the neighbourhood by providing the mothers with values that aided employment and a cooperative lifestyle.

Only minutes later I was reading 'The Constant Garedener' by John Le Carre and came across the sentence,
'Only the emancipation of African women could save us from the blunderings and corruption of the menfolk.'

I've been thinking recently about how the role of women as innate mothers has been suppressed in the political and cultural arenas. Women are built to nurture and care and heal, it's our biological purpose. But sadly over the years this has been undermined to become what's called 'being emotional' and seen in a negative light, particularly when it comes to politics. As such politics has become apparently emotionless and arguably I think inhuman as a result. When will we let the nurturers make big decisions on the political stage? In the meantime projects like Grupo Primavera could make waves in the areas of development and conflict resolution, by training girls from poor, devasted communities in the way of education and values and to begin making mothers out of molehills.