World Cup, Dishes, and Pioneering

It seems difficult to sum up the past two weeks when every day was different and they all seem to be running together. One thing I can say for certain is that the World Cup has been a really big deal down here. Today, my 'little sister' only goes to school for a couple of hours because all of the schools are shutting down for the game. Brazil is playing in the world cup today. I told my family that United States schools do not shut down for soccer games, and they were shocked. But it's not just the schools that close; businesses, stores, and factories shut down too.

Cultural differences fascinate me. For example, how do you do your dishes by hand? If you're like me, you wash a dish and then rinse that dish. When I was doing that here, my mom looked at me like I was crazy and said that I must have a dish washer in the United States because I obviously didn't know how to wash dishes. Here you soap up all the dishes and set them soapy on the counter. Then you rinse them all. Makes sense to me, but I'd never thought of doing it like that. That is how everyone does it here.

A fun thing here in Itu, Brazil is how rare foreigners are and thus how excited people are to hear about other places in the world. Especially kids and teenagers show visible excitement and surprise to know/ meet you. Today I went with the kids I'm staying with to school, and all their friends were like "Where is she from?" and "No way!"

To highlight an activity we've been doing, we invite the homeless of Itu over for lunch every Friday. Last Friday, I managed to attract and talk to both of the men with slurred speech and mental confusion and disorientation while waiting on the beans and rice to be served. I think I am a magnet for these kinds of people and apparently even in other countries. One of them thought he was speaking English to me and told someone so, but his gibberish was nothing like English or Portuguese.

Homeless lunches here are always interesting and almost comical, but not without positive outcomes either. Every man is offered a hot meal, a warm shower, and perhaps most importantly... a sense of belonging and community. One man told me, "At 'Xig-X-Shol' (pronounced shiggy shol and is the name of the Friday lunch group... the words mean groovy, or really amazing) we are more than family." After lunch there is music and dancing and joking and laughing, and slowly people open up to one another.

According to the missionaries here, they've looked all over Itu, and there are no non-profits or churches with programs for the homeless. There are no soup kitchens or salvation army units. Fortunately, the restaurant culture allows for the men (and a few women) to beg for food in the back at closing, and they graciously pass the food out the back door, but nothing formal exists at all to help these people. The homeless are in danger of abuse from the police and have no refuge offered them by city, state, ngo, or individuals. I predict a cultural shift in the next 30 years because of the globalization of music and pop culture and the growing emphasis in the Western World on humanitarian efforts, but in the meantime, I'm a part of a group of true pioneers here. Xig-X-Shol.

-Ashley Musick