Darlisson, Valquiria, Monica, Steffany, Gabriel, Gabrielzinho, Natalino, Natanel, Nataleuza, Alicia, Marcia, Carla, Jura, André Jordan, Ary, Daniel, Daniele, Marcelo, Josiane, Walmir, Marcus, Irlanda e tudos de voces que eu esquci agora um abraço forti e até más.
Lone star
You’re all invited to the official premier of Rede Mocoronga!!
At the moment we’re doing valuations of the workshops here at the office of Saudé & Alegria. Come see us now or at 19:00 when the films are to be screened.
“There are film crews coming here doing documentaries on Amazonas, but that is not the point nor the outcome of this. The idea with this project is that you, as riberinhos, will learn how to show your own reality with your own perspective showing what you find important as a amazonian citizen.”
And that really sums my point of view on our work. I find the criticism preposterous as seen on the invitation posted on the blog of Jeso Carneiro (local blogging newsmachine). The criticism is based on the quality of the films that have been produced. I don’t know whether to cry or laugh; what we see here are the first steps of a person with a camera and as in everything one has to make mistakes before coming out as a pro. The rest of the criticism just makes me laugh as the guy states that the reality of riberinhos is so easy to calculate that it’s not even worth to be mentioned once again. The lack of knowledge is dangerous but I find it sometimes simply amusing.
Well, go check the invitations and parallell reports from my collegues at Saude Alegria here and here.
Cheers, next stop Bollywood.
Btw. Tip of the day must be to light a candle during Earth Hour as the employees at Ikea Canada.
After googling Severena Rumana Belem I find out that she´s probably spelled Severena Romana and is so famous that there´s a film about her, if it is the same which I have to presume. How ever, it´s sure interesting and I keep asking and telling drivers about what I´ve heard so far.
14:00, 31/1, Hotel Santalice – Mst camp with secret whereabouts..
¨Hahaha, you´re mixing the stories. The one who got run over is another girl and Severena Rumana is the legend. The girl is the one stealing your money and leaves everyone frustrated. Or, wait, yeah she haunts the drivers who passes her ¨spot¨- where she got runover. ¨
Me: Have you seen them?
T.D: They don´t exist!! I´ve been driving for 32 years, trust me boy, they don´t exist. I´ve never seen them.
Me: Fair enough, you´ve experienced anything strange apart from un- existing ghosts? 32 years is a lot of memories right!?
T.D: Eh, yeah, I once, about 15 years ago when I drove a VW beetle, picked up a pregnant woman hitchhiking to the hospital. Suddenly she screamed to me ¨STOP!¨ and right after hitting the brake I was delivering a baby. Inside my own car. I´ve been running as a ambulance several time saving kids and pregnant women.
As the ghost stories told by other drivers have caught my attention I keep asking the ones I come across and here another convo on the theme.
19:20 30/1, WSF UFRA – Cidade Folia.
“Ghost in Belém, yes, I know about her. Ha, I know where she´s buried. “
Me: What, where?
T.D: She´s lying in Santa Izabel. I know, because some drivers goes there every now and then to light a candle. Her name is Severena Rumana.
The links are mainly in Swedish but as I find them funny enough to be posted and too important not to be mentioned you’ll have to deal with it.
To the story, here as a news flash in DN, a group of activists broke into a Saab factory in Linköping the 21 of Mars with the purpose of disarming the Swedish infamous “Jas 39 Gripen”. Armed with hammers and supposedly metal scissors the party entered the area ready to bonk. Before doing any actual damage to the planes a guard spotted them and they ended up getting caught. Tough luck?
The culprits of the unsucessful disarming attempt are the following Martin Smedjeback (read his blog), Annika Spalde and Pelle Strindlund published here in names as requested by their organization and themselves I suppose. What caught my attention was the name of one of the activists, Martin Smedjeback, who recently hammered himself to a of 4 months prison sentence and a 15k € fine (still risking another 100k € which were’nt included) after pulverizing parts of grenade launchers belonging to guess who, Saab. That time reporting himself to the police right after the act, which I guess he´d do this time as well.
So in my eyes Martin Smedjeback seems to be one angry man. Angry because of Saabs existence. Not angry due to Saabs lack of existence, as the inhabitants of Trollhättan. He is so angry that he risks imprisonment once again even though he hasn’t served his first sentence. What makes one become that angry?
Among the comments on the ny times article featured above I found an interesting comment from a New yorker (at least signed as if):
¨Good article overall and I feel for the Saab employees who, after a lifetime of relying on their government to support them, could be put out onto the street because of this… However, I wonder what, if anything this has to do with the Gripen deal with the Czech Republic and the growing bribery investigation. SVT TV in Sweden and The Guardian in the UK started this report on the intricacies of the deal to lease fighter planes, made by the Saab subsidiary, to the Czechs. Although it may or may not be directly related I feel the connection should at least be mentioned. Have you looked into this investigation yet
— MediaSlackers, New York, NY¨
Word gets around about the on going dirty bizniz within the swedish weapon industry. According to various sources, such as Martins organization Ofog (yep, I´m a source critic), this is just the tip of an ice-berg since a infected deal was sealed in South Africa recently and another is to be realized in India. I´m not going to mention anything getting your eyes wet on how to spend these countries tax money but conclude that Martin Smedjeback seem to have reasons for his frustration, and hammer obsession.
Monkey business as seen at Saab Dynamics can unleash the worst hammer frenzy since the murder of Stefan Pakeerah and raises many questions culminating in the word why. I just don´t get why there´s not even a (re-started) debate on video game violence, and new bans on Manhunt, coming out of this!?
Ps. In case you don´t feel the fingers itching and think a hammer is the solution cut classes as these girls. ds.
Iguana outside my window
This seems to be one of the reasons I might end up missing Santarém anyway.
Farewell Santarém in pictures.
17:00, 29/1, WSF camp UFRA – Hotel Santalice (Swedish tax money is a blast)
¨Belém´s good for living but there´s some violence and every other day a colleague has gotten robbed.¨
Me: There must be plenty of hours with chats like these, how is that?
T.D: Man, I´m doing extra as a therapist. I always get to listen to peoples problems, I mean some expose themselves completely and I get to, have to, give some advices.
Me: Any strange ones? Like … I mention the hysteric woman from La paz.
T.D: Yeah, I mean it happens. But nothing really strange to tell you.
Me: What about ghosts? I start to tell him about the ghost story from Lima.
T.D: Oh yeah, I know that one! Many of my colleagues have driven her.
Me: What, the story is from Lima – Peru!
T.D: Is there one over there as well?! Anyway, our ghost tells you a direction and on arrival she disappears into her building telling one that she has to go get money. The taxi driver waits until he looses his patience and go to knock on the door where he´s to be greeted by a family telling him that the woman he drove has been dead for many years. She died in a car accident they say. Every Halloween drivers gather at her grave to light a candle and send her thought.
Me: Where!? Have you driven her yourself?
T.D: No, dunno pal. I haven´t been that interested. That´s all I know.
It’s time for me to spoil what will reach the shelves of every health oriented nature-medicine-witch-cure store within 6 months in Europe. Go drums, AÇAI!! I got to know about the miracle berry before coming here through a friend who’d been living in Rio de Janeiro. He didn’t go all nuts about it; he recommended it as a supplementary breakfast and mentioned the positive effects known from it. In this region, the home of the açai, one can’t avoid it. I mean the in-official logo of Belém is Açai.
Açai is king here, people have it as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Usually served as a creme, similar to frozen yoghurts. When sweetened it tastes really good and normally some tapioca grains are put with it. People do have it raw, no sugar – all healthish, but then accompanied by fish which is, at first glance, quite a odd mix but after a try one can’t resist having it again. Go get a plate yourself at Ver-o-Peso in Belém, and a açai t-shirt.
I’m not a scientist and can’t nor want to examine the health aspects of it, I’m neither a fitness dude going all menthal about such but what I do want to pin-point in this case is what, at the moment, is on peoples lips here: The açai prices are going up hella fast.The price for a bucket, I believe 18 liters, has raised constantly last 6 months (since I started keeping track) and most locals I’ve met don’t have a clue of why is that. Except that there will be less açai each day for them.
I’d say the reason for the raise is simple, lots of publicity in the U.S! A friend of mine mailed me this link after seeing a show on Oprah. If one likes to make a lot of money, an investment in a açai field would do the magic. Getting publicity on Oprah will give the açai enough reputation to conquer the shelves in the western world, the not so funny side-effect is the fact that the locals (who still don’t have a clue on what’s going on) will, soon, be out of açai.
The Oprah effect as described is a micro example on the mechanisms of capitalism and globalisation interacting. There’s nothing bad about it, it’s just the rules of the game in practic. One has to learn, which we the westerners already have done, and here the lack of education in the subject is horrible. One might say that you should restrict, make laws etc. to avoid a scenario when locals loose their food. No need; a proper education and cable for every home all over and this is history.
Besides, side-effect #2, when good stuff gets to Europe/U.S we so badly have to transform it. Bad Hollywood remakes when it comes to film and in this case, as seen in the link above (recommended by Oprah), AÇAI PILLS. Shit.
Rain and one out of many taxis
16:00 Docas (the port) – Hotel Santalice
On arrival we´re being offered a taxi á 10R$ per person from an obvious hustler. I reply 5R$ and to my surprise the deal is sealed by this.
In the taxi the driver goes off by himself telling us about Brazil in general, Belém and the world social forum.
T.D: Yeah, Belém is really calm and a beautiful place to live.
Me: How about criminality here? (We´ve been warned since stepping on the plane back in Stockholm about the city)
T.D: None, only now when thieves from the whole world invades our city. Thieves and dictators (referring to Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez). Look police everywhere, only now when all the criminals comes around!!
