Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [142]
I would like to emphasize that this entire process is being organized, overseen, and executed by African-Brazilians, nearly all of them from the shantytowns of Salvador. These are the people whom Bahia Street serves. Part of the effect of this building project is that it is giving employment to shantytown residents. Such legal employment is scarce in these neighborhoods where residents must generally turn to informal or illegal activities to survive. The wages Bahia Street pays to the workers on this building are giving this group of men respectable work and money, which they can use to feed their families.
The work is even more powerful because those directing the project are members of their own community, people who they can admire and use as role models. Although Bahia Street is doing this work because we need a new Center, the process of the reconstruction is also providing an important service in itself.
So, it is now the next day from when I began this letter. On my bike ride here, I sniffed the scents of autumn, a crisp edge to the warmth of the morning sun. As I left the house at seven thirty, the sun was barely above the horizon. We are moving toward winter, a time of tempestuous storms, rain, wind, and the intimacy of indoor warmth. I wish you all strength and good will through this season of change.
abraços
Margaret
thirty
resting on the wings of a butterfly
I sat on the couch in the office looking at Depression K406. Depression K406 didn’t say much and had a leering grin. I called him, “No Exit.” Beside him sat his fat companion. I didn’t know his companion’s name. He just blocked out the sunlight.
No Exit. What was my plan when Bahia Street reached this stage? The building was going great. Rita was sending me photos. It had been demolished in less than two months and now they had laid the foundation. In Seattle, we had just had our biggest fundraiser of the year, a summer Brazilian Harvest Festival. Everyone had a great time. The most talented Brazilian and Brazilian-style musicians in the area participated. Long time volunteers pulled everything together. We had a silent auction organized by an experienced volunteer. Food was donated and organized by a professional chef.
I was gratified. I was honored. And I had to force myself to do every tiny piece of organization.
I was tired of it. I wanted to go hiking, do some interesting research, some fun writing. The meager funds I had been able to put aside when I quit my teaching job were long gone. I was tired of buying all my clothes at second hand shops and never going out to eat. I should have been saving money for my older years, and I had nothing. I had been living on $15,000 or less for years now, and it wasn’t working any more. I wanted to go on kayak trips, to do something that engaged my mind. I wanted out.
But there was no way out.
Grant writing. I always hated grant writing. I was not bad at it. I’d done it for years, long before we started Bahia Street. I’d funded most of my research through grants. But then, it was a necessary, ugly task leading to a delightful end. Now it was the whole. My skills now focused on taking complex situations and ideas and reducing them to simplistic bullet points that a reader, who knew nothing about the subject, could understand by skimming a one-page review. My job now was to tailor an application to fit the funders’ desires without compromising what we actually did at Bahia Street. I could now write what the funders wanted, and not actually lie about where their money would go. I spent my time resisting the temptation to convince Rita to change the program in Brazil to something that had less relevance there just because a certain idea was trendy and more likely to get funding.
Something had to happen. I couldn’t continue. I was hollow. With this attitude I would never inspire. I felt like a cheap sales promoter. More and