Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [143]
I wanted to leave, to go live in Europe or Canada. I didn’t care. I just wanted out.
I traveled to Alaska for two weeks, spent the time hiking in high alpine meadows and coastal forest, encountered a moose, camped with the door (not the mosquito netting) of my tent open to an endless light that compromised to twilight for the shortest of time. I didn’t think about Bahia Street. I didn’t think much about anything. I did crossword puzzles. I met strangers and learned about their lives.
When I returned, I rang Nancy. I didn’t know her well, but she had been a long-time supporter of Bahia Street. She was vice president of the Seattle World Affairs Council. Over the past seven years, she had developed a very successful global education program in the local schools. She also had had two children and finished a Master’s degree in Public Administration. I wanted to ask her for advice, to see if she might be interested in some joint project. I wasn’t sure what.
“I’d love to do something,” she said. “When I have time. I just quit my job, but I’ve already applied for a job at the university. In Southeast Asian studies.”
She seemed a shoo-in for the job. I was convinced she’d be hired. But when I called a week later, her husband told me that no, they’d hired an equally qualified Filipino man. Nancy is white. Hard luck for Nancy, but I probably would have made the same decision myself. I tried hard to sound sad for Nancy, but I’m not sure I succeeded. She wanted a job with an internationally-oriented nonprofit. In Seattle these were very few and far between. I had no idea what I could offer her at Bahia Street—certainly not a third of the salary she had received before, but maybe she and I together could create something.
And that is exactly what we did. I put forward some ideas, and she exploded them to triple the size and scope I had envisioned. We explored the idea of an educational program in Bahia to teach people about NGO management and global inequality. The program would make people aware of how they could be activists here in the States in order to change our collective relationship with the world. We’d coordinate work placements with Brazilian nonprofits, where half the fee would go directly to assist the local nonprofit and the other half to a new project to provide legal, infrastructural, and fiscal advice to these groups. We’d commission a series of forums tied to the overseas programs. We could set up programs with universities to take students to Bahia and teach them about a host of international issues. I had the contacts and standing to get the programs certified and to lure my friends from around the world to teach for us. Nancy had the experience and understanding to actually set up such huge ideas.
I presented the concept to the board, coaching them in private first so they wouldn’t have to face surprises in front of others. I told them that this would require an amendment to expand the parameters of our nonprofit status. They all asked good questions and gave the project their total support. They seemed energized in a way I hadn’t seen at Bahia Street for a year. I rang Rita and told her about it. She grasped immediately the political aims and gave her support.
“It’s the next phase,” she said. “We’ve been teaching Brazilians to be activists. Now we can begin to teach Americans the same thing.”
I never feel I have left Brazil until I hit U.S. soil. On this return flight from Salvador via São Paulo and Dallas, I’d been speaking only Portuguese. I’d chatted with the airline staff, the fellow sitting beside me who was a salesman from Rio, and the woman across the aisle who was a journalist from