On an isolated and warm breeze-swept peninsula on the east coast of Brazil, Indians and the descendants of slaves have waited decades for electricity and telephones. Now, by the graces of the Lula Government, electricity will be arriving this December or so. Low capacity telephone lines may arrive soon afterward. But there have been no promises that broadband Internet will arrive, so humble residents are taking matters into their own hands, with the help of an ex-patriot lawyer from the United States, by starting the Brazilian Peninsula Project.
DailyKos readers have donated enough money through PayPal to pay for the first month of Internet access fees.
And in an extraordinary measure of the reach and influence of DailyKos, the single largest donor is a white woman surrounded by Republicans in a small town in the Deep South of the United States, a woman who is not even a member of DailyKos and does not post or comment, and yet she reads DK is moved to action.
In addition to paying one third of the Indians' first month of access fees, and promising to do so in future months, she has promised to mail a digital camera to Brazil for the project to take pictures of its progress and post them at DailyKos. If all goes well the grand opening of the "people's Internet" will occur on Friday, October 6. It's heartening.
There are few mundane things as frustrating as waiting at home for the telephone or Internet installation person to arrive. While the world marches on constructively and productively, one whiles away the hours until that magical time when one can communicate with the world again. And boy, can whiling take a while!
For centuries, these inhabitants have carved boats from tree trunks, fished from their ocean and river, harvested manioc and picked native fruits such as _maracuja, mamão, cacão,
and jacas and cajú.
It's easy to forget that within the rainforests upon whose preservation the salvation of the world depends, the trees are full of an edible and ecologically sustainable fruit bounty. This fruit bounty has sustained local populations for millennia.
Mamão - a sweet fruit for eating with a spoon or making fruit juice and cakes. Tastes like a cantaloupe but grows on trees. Eat the seeds regularly for regularity.
Maracujá - a tart fruit with a lemon-like taste whose viscous innards can be whipped into a delicious fruit juice, with or without milk added, and which also lends itself to custards and meringues, just as lemons do. It is most ripe and sweet when it looks like it's rotten.
Acerola - a cherry-sized fruit tasting like a cross between a cherry and a strawberry. Makes a very refreshing juice with crushed ice. Great for refreshing juice and all sorts of pies, tarts, cakes and other pastries.
Pitanga - This little fruit is the size and color of a ripe cherry or rosehip, sweet and tart. They grow on trees a couple of yards about the ground, so picking them is a great project for little kids and adults.
Cacau - Who'd have imagined that the cocoa "bean" is really a seed, the tiny innermost part of a much larger fruit? The white seed's milky, sticky outer layer seems much sweeter than sugar.
Jaca - a hideously ugly cankerous looking fruit that grows on trees, even around the capital, Brasilia. Hack it open and pry the seeds loose, like prying dried prunes from an overstuffed can. The seeds are extremely saccharine-sweet and other-worldly. It grows on trees but comes from outer-space. Many Brazilians adore this fruit, but I'll pass.
Caju - Have you every wondered where cashews came from. Would you ever have imagined this? The cashews stuck right there on the tip of that thing that looks like a ripe orange pepper. The fruit itself has the eerie consistency of wet cheese inside. Makes great fruit juice, if you can stand it. Cashews literally grow on trees in Brazil.
Acaí - Acaí might be of the cranberry family if I were a biologist. It's about the same size, and they are made into juice drinks as well as dried and used in granola and granola drinks. Big business. Runners and swimmers swear by the force of acaí.
Goiaba is a about the size and color of a peach, but with the outer texture of a cucumber. It's flesh tastes a lot like strawberries, but with crunchy flesh and small edible seeds inside. Makes great jelly, juice, cakes, etc.
(Although someday I'd like to photograph all of these fruit, these photos were all culled from the Internet.)
Although this Brazilian peninsula remains marvelously un-urban, life has changed there over the past twenty years. First hippies and now more conventional tourists have found this peninsula. New restaurants and bed and breakfasts have opened. As transportation increases, more and more residents depend on outside sources of education, jobs, customers, clients and replacement parts.
Communications needs increase as well, but the technology available has not kept the pace. Because there are no landline telephones on the peninsula, residents are forced to rely on cell phones that are wildly more expensive. A month ago, on the birthday of one the daughters in my host family, I bought $25.00 USD credit for the family's cell phone, to facilitate arrangements for a birthday party. Calls that would have been "free" on a landline sped through the cellular phone credits like water through a sieve, even though the birthday party invitees were but a few miles away. The same amount of money would last me a month on Skype, calling the United States and Europe. While wealthier individuals and corporations are reducing the expenses through VoiP (Skpe, Vonage), there is no good reason why people with less money should continue paying more. And so often the poor do pay more.
The 200Kbps satellite connection that we have ordered has but twenty percent the download capacity that is common in the United States, yet it will cost $ 275.00 USD per month, which comes to about 11 times (?) what a broadband connection would cost in the United States. $275.00 per month is an incredible amount of money here, which explains why, on a peninsula with four thousand residents, there are only half a dozen broadband connections, only two of which are available to the general public. And that, in turn, explains why most people have never touched a keyboard.
These are daunting economics but the Brazilian Peninsula Project is determined to change them. By opening a "people's Internet" and sharing the cost broadly across the entire population, tourists and donors from the United States, it will soon become possible for poor people on the peninsula Instant Message and Skype their friends and family like the rich do. And that puts a smile on my face, which is why I've become involved. If you'd like to be one of those American donors who makes this project a reality, please make contribution to the BrazilianPeninsulaProject@Yahoo.Com through PayPal.Com.