I've left America to live in a small city on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, now commuting by bus to an even smaller oasis, a tiny peninsula that forgotten by most modernities. The road between the city and the peninsula includes an hour of unpaved earth rutted by rains, winding over hill and dale, across rivers whose only "bridges" are a few dubious slats of wood to support the bus's tires on the left and right.
A week ago, I brought a new computer and some peripherals to this island with the idea of beginning a rudimentary Internet access point, teaching locals to type and use the Internet, supported mostly by Internet access fees from tourists.
As I and other passengers traveled the impossibly bumpy road to the peninsula by public bus, I was tempted to ask the driver how far the bus could tilt to one side before it would roll over into a ditch. With every enormous bump, one of which cracked the windshield of the bus, I wondered whether that would turn out to be the precise jolt that also cracked the motherboard of my new computer, preventing it even from booting up upon arrival. Fortunately, it worked perfectly in spite of my worries.
But along the road, as it began to rain, the path became a slippery mudfest and, at one point upon arriving at an outrageously steep incline, the driver asked that we all get out and walk up the hill, to increase the bus's chances of reach the top instead of sliding backward into the river we had just crossed.
I hope I can help to bring a new Internet access point to this remote place, but I'm hardly sure it will be possible, as sorely needed as it is. In Brazil, the most basic PC costs three times the monthly minimum wage, if bought in cash. But, few are able to buy in cash. In March, the annual interest rate in Brazil was 74.4% on consumer loans [ http://quote.bloomberg.com/... ] and this month the average interest rate on revolving credit was as much as 12% PER MONTH. [ http://br.news.finance.yahoo.com/... ] Needless to say, for most low-income Brazilians, purchasing a computer could be a ruinous financial decision.
There is an Indian cooperative on the peninsula with two computers and Internet via satellite charging $3.00 USD per hour for Internet access. Considering that the monthly minimum wage in Brazil is just $150.00, a Brazilian who accessed the Internet for one hour each day, all month, at the Cooperative would have to spend $90.00 USD or 60% of his monthly wages for Internet alone. If there were multiple children and adults in the household, all depending on one minimum wage salary, it would explain why most people here have never touched a keyboard. Although Internet access is becoming cheaper at cafes in big cities, it remains unthinkably expensive for many people in smaller, less accessible towns.
I would like to make the Internet more accessible on this peninsula which has lately become my second home. I've placed a computer in the home/business of a well-known local family, in the hopes that they can offer Internet access to tourists and thereby reduce the cost in Internet access for locals. Last week, my wife and I pooled our cash and bought a computer and printer in a way that for most humble Brazilians is unthinkable: we'll make four monthly payments, with 25% down and three post-dated checks. Post-dated checks are a common form of credit in Brazil and enable purchasers to sidestep some of the outrageous interest rates applied by banks by paying more quickly, but payments are much higher and the failure to cover a check can close one's bank account completely.
Of course, I feel very foolish now for having purchased and brought a computer to this community without first investigating more carefully every detail of the satellite link that will be needed. It turns out that the very least expensive satellite link available that would handle tourists' needs, like Voip calls, a 300 kbps connection, would cost about $350.00 USD per month, plus $150.00 USD for installation, with a one-year contract, and the provider insists that it all be paid for by credit card. This is a financial limb upon which no local will be able to climb. I have no way of knowing whether the locals' new Internet access point will generate this much money. If I charge this to my credit card for the benefit of the community, then I and my Brazilian wife will become impossible philanthropists, spending as much on others' Internet access as we spend each month on food for ourselves and our three children.
What sort of insanity makes me get myself into such messes? Or is it actually the flight from the insanity imposed by boredom and ennui that drives me from my comfortable couch into the most impossible of challenges? With good Internet access in the city, why should I care so much whether poor people have it on an isolated peninsula?
Whatever the case, over the last three days, local residents' have contributed half the $150.00 cost for the installation of a satellite dish. Seven locals have become "partners" in the project, by contributing ten dollars each, and my host family is talking with other neighbors to raise the additional funds. I figure this very public effort is a measure of support and excellent publicity it in advance of the actual arrival of the people's Internet.
One neighbor who was unable to donate ten dollars nonetheless contributed an old but functional 64K Ram PC, fully loaded with Window 95 and Word. This can be used to teach typing and research skills!
But this advance effort and popular involvement also present an opportunity for residents to be deeply disappointed and for me and my hosts to be profoundly embarrassed, if we are unable to find a an affordable satellite connection after all. Maybe it just isn't possible at this time? What sort of lunatic would whip out his own debit card to pay a whole community's access fees when he can hardly afford his own?
In the face of overwhelming financial realities, perhaps I should simply admit defeat and return the contributions to those who have "invested" in the hopes that their children would learn to type and research their homework on the Internet? I would not be the first to offer hope and then disappoint others, in Brazil or elsewhere. Yet, frankly, few things move me closer to tears than the struggle than expressing my conviction that the poor should have access to the basics of communication that the rich and the rest of us take for granted.
With each day, I learn more about the economy of this peninsula. In the summer months, between December and March, the area is flush with tourists from all over Brazil and the world. The many restaurants, bed and breakfasts are full, as are riverboat and rafting tours, and there is work for locals who make their living as guides. During the summer months, the locals (mostly Indians) pay their bills, save and make investments that they have planned all year long.
When April comes, the weather gets cooler and the rains more frequent, the peninsula is once again inhabited almost exclusively by its native population, and dependent on fishing and outside work for its sustenance.
Right now is the "winter" time on this peninsula, when tourists are few, restaurants serve a couple of meals per day, if they serve any at all. The temperature is in the seventies most days, and gets down into the high fifties at night. The "streets" of sand and the river that will be full of traffic in four months are now sleepy, inhabited mostly by locals sharing jokes and fish they've brought in from the sea.
A major topic of conversation now is the coming of the electrical grid. The first electrical cables to reach the peninsula are to be installed in November. Until then, and since the advent of diesel engines, all electricity has come from private generators that populate back yards of locals. My host family, whose income comes from its seven meter fishing boat at this time of year, turns on the generator just long enough each day to keep the fish cold in the freezers and to watch a few soap operas on television at night.
In the daytime, locals clean algae from the hulls of their boats, and when then come back from fishing the have one or two milk crates filled with a variety of fish and shrimp. During a recent week on the river front, not a single power tool was to be heard, but fishermen drilled with brace and bit and drove nails. In some ways, this peninsula is like Venice, Italy might have been one or two centuries ago.
In six-meter wooden canoes hewn from a single log, they traverse the river that leads to the mainland, returning with crates of food, sand, cement and bricks for construction, and even motorcycles (which cannot be driven on the peninsula, but can be stored for the road-trip back to the city later on, after another canoe trip across the river). Those with modern kayaks are models of independence, going about their errands paddling on their own, without paying the one dollar fee charged by the wooden canoe rowers. Toddlers play in the water at river's edge while three men fix the motor in a large seven-meter wooden fishing boat, powered by a one-cylinder diesel motor (if I understood correctly).
When not working, the men women and children sit on plentiful benches and seats at water's edge, joke and chat and greet virtually everyone who passes by with a hearty "Oh-puh!"
There is one school on the peninsula with four teachers and perhaps 150 students, where students from first grade to eighth-grade study in four classrooms. When they reach ninth grade, the closest place for them to continue studying will be ninety minutes away by rutted road. If the are to continue studying, they will have to live away from home with all living expenses footed by their parents. For most, eighth grade will be their last, if they get that far.
My host family lives mostly from fishing at this time of the year, although they have a restaurant and dance hall that will earn money when the tourists come back in December. For now, the father and two sons, 21 and 19 years-old, awaken at 5:00 AM and head 45 minutes out into the ocean to drop their nets for shrimp and bait fish. After an half an hour, they'll bring the nets in and pull the fish out one by one, separating the shrimp from ten or so varieties of other small fish while throwing the star-fish back into the sea.
Now, with a milk-crate full of small bait fish, they'll head another 75 minutes out to sea, where the coast has become invisible, to a spot called the "pesqueiro" (fishing spot), where they line fish until three in the afternoon. When nightfall nears, they return to port through the narrow channel in the sandbar that protects their river and its lush green "mangues" (forested marshlands) from the ocean. The father of the family has been fishing this way for twenty-five of his 43 years.
Back at their restaurant, in the little room that they've made public for computer access, I've been teaching the children and neighbors to type. I have never taken a typing course, but I nonetheless type fairly quickly and impressively, so readers will hopefully forgive me for the unorthodox teaching method. My method is simple and children as well as adults like it, even if it might seem like torture to those who haven't tried it yet.
It's natural for children and adults who have never typed before to instinctively want to hunt-and-peck with their dominant-hand index finger until they learn where all of the keys are. Unfortunately, this practice "maps" the keyboard in their brains in a "monofingular" way that makes typing terribly slow and inefficient, but which nonetheless quickly becomes habitual. Habits are hard to break.
To help new learners use all of their fingers from the start, I ask that they offer me their thumbs, which I tape together for them. I inform them that the keyboard is divided into two sides - left and right. The right hand is for the right side and the left hand is for the left side. This is the only rule they need to know. I ask them to type the alphabet using all of their fingers, and within half an hour they have learned and begun to brain "map" where all of the keys are and which of their fingers can reach those keys most efficiently because those fingers are closest.
Although the thumb-taping sound like torture, it's actually quite harmless. It's fun as child's play and seems to make all of the other fingering of the keyboard fall quickly into place. I have no idea what they would learn if they took a professional typing course, but they seem to feel empowered by this method, and it's far more accessible than the nearest typing school. I've taught three kids and they've begun teaching the neighbors, tape and all.
A couple of days ago, the second-youngest daughter of my host family wrote her first school report on a computer, about the sand and rock reef that separates their river from the ocean. Her teacher had warned that the report with the most details would receive the best grade. Although we brainstormed together about that reef, I couldn't help thinking how much more she could learn from preparing this report if she had access to the Internet, to read about reefs the way my own daughters have learned to do when faced with a similar project.
I desperately want for these kids who have become my second family to have the learning advantages that even slow Internet access can bring. Yet, basic as it is, this goal has long been beyond the means of the community and seems, perhaps, beyond my means as well. I'm going to call the company and try to negotiate a better deal. I'm going to call other companies . . .
Up the hill, the Indians' cooperative sometimes offers Internet access during business hours, but their generator has been broken for almost two weeks. I thought I had had a stroke of genius, siting a computer in an all-hours restaurant the same family that operates the establishment could learn to operate the computers and then teach their neighbors, and where the owner was bound to have electricity, if only because he had to keep his own fish frozen. But at $350.00 per month, the immense cost of satellite access is humbling me, forcing me to consider backtracking, humiliatingly, on what seemed only last week to be a modest and achievable initial goal.