Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [64]
Eduardo was also in Salvador, visiting his family. He took on the task of tutor recruitment and had advertised through the Bahia Teacher’s Association. It turned out that his aunt was director of the Association, so she also offered us the use of a lovely, large room on the top floor of their centrally located building. Of the forty-five applicants, Eduardo interviewed six. Of these, he recommended one, Madalena, a woman he’d known when he was a principal in Bahia before he immigrated to the States. He thought she’d be good because she’d worked with special education children, the idea being that maybe this experience would give her an advantage in helping these favela girls learn the discipline needed to study. Since Rita and I had previously discussed whether the teacher should be African-Brazilian, I asked Rita about Madalena. By my U.S. definition, she was definitely “black,” but by Brazilian standards, or more precisely, by Bahia standards, I wasn’t sure.
“She’s brown,” Rita said, “but I would call her white or at least ‘earth-white:’ someone who’s white but has African blood.” She shrugged. “But, I don’t know. Eduardo seems to understand a lot more about this education system than I do. If he thinks she’s good, then I’m fine with it.”
I nodded. I, of course, hadn’t a clue. We thought we should get approval from the board in the States, but since Eduardo and I were both members and none of the rest of them knew anything about Brazil, we decided to just go with Eduardo’s selection.
“So, when she starts the tutoring, she works with you and you let me know how it’s going, right?”
“And I ask you what you think I should do next.”
“Right, Rita. And what do I tell you then?”
“Maybe I could teach the girls photography. Then we wouldn’t have to hire a tutor. I’d love to teach photography.”
“And you always say that it’s your photography that got you through school, right?”
“Yeah. But no one we asked said they thought photography was going to change the future of Salvador, did they?”
“No. Maybe someday when we have all these girls and some kind of good program going, we could offer photography as well as whatever else we’re doing.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe me,” I said.
“Photography would take an entire expensive photography lab.”
“Well, Rita, I think we have to dream in this project of things we would also really like to do. So, no harm in dreaming about photography. After all, aren’t we asking more than that of these little girls?”
Rita laughed. “All right. So, I’ll dream about my photography lab. What are you going to dream about?”
“I don’t know, making the thing actually work on an international level?”
Rita shook her head. “Nope. Not enough. You have to think of something better than that.”
I avoided the question and suggested we go out for a beer. I was completely out of my depth; I had no clue how to swim in these turbulent waters. Why was I doing this? Because I couldn’t handle being in the States with no connection with Brazil? Because university life was too confining for me? No matter what other people had begun to say, it certainly wasn’t altruism nor was it just thinking it would be fun to try this. Even more disturbing, I thought, how in the world was it actually going to work?
To Bahia Street Mailing List of 15: January 10, 1998
Dear Founding Donors,
Well, we have paid the admission fee for Juliana! So, here we go. She will start in February. Our next payment, made in a few weeks, will cover books and uniforms for the year, a month