I go to school but I never learn what I want to Know - Calvin

HEELLOO!

I am now going to talk a little politics, and those of you who know me (I.e all 6 of you) know that it´s going to be rant, so I´m not even going to try to disguise it as anything else.

Brazil recently had it´s elections, and for me the election process was a extremely difficult. There seemed to be about 7 different things that needed voting for, from president to district representative. And publicity was something else, everywhere you went, any free wall space was painted white, and then painted with number of the candidates, presidential candidates had like a double digit number, below some line that I didn´t really understand, then the other representatives had higher numbers, going to 5 digit number for district rep. When you vote you are meant to remember the numbers of all your reps and put them in the voting machine, its maybe a good thing that I dont get to vote, I would have remember the numbers wrong for sure. In any case, voting is manditory or you get fined, which made me wound up, and I demanded to know if they had the option of a null vote or it wasnt democracy, like I would have been able to do anything about it, even if they didnt. Well they do, but they have something else called the Blank Vote. The difference between the Null Vote and the Blank Vote is the following: The Null vote, is kind of like a vote of nonconfidence, you dont vote for anyone for whatever reason, you disagree with the system, you havent found any candidates that you trust in, or no one has paid enough for you to sell your vote so you are protesting. The Blank vote is a kind of vote that well, either you have forgotten the numbers, or you don´t really know who to vote for, but you trust everyone else to make the decision for you, so you vote blank and that vote goes to the person who is already winning in a bid to put them above the percentage line that they need to get to win. Sneaky eh? The thing about all of this is, that the a lot of the Brasilians that I work with, they dont know the difference. Hardly anyone does. And they are encouraged to vote blank, and they dont think what that can do, so they do.

It is no secret that I think that education is the number one thing that needs to be improved to improve society, and this is one area of education that I think requires work, communication, the people know the truth about propaganda machines, that when someone slings mud at someone else, it doesnt need to be read to be the out and out truth. But thats what I have come across here, and its hard to sit back and watch. But I am happy to say that at least some work is being put into it, at the moment at our Cha da Cruz project were the teenagers are doing a communications course dealing with exactly all of this! Praise God!

Wow, rant over.

Otherwise things are going really well here, the project is growing every week, and we get better at handling it every week, although we are still a couple of steps behind, and I am not sure that we are ever going to catch up, and sometimes its hard to learn the lessons that need to be learnt because all you want to do is lie down and sleep until you feel better (which could probably be weeks). But what is life without challanges? And when the challanges that we face are the kind that once we fgure them out, we can make differences, or see God make massive differences in the life of these young people, well it makes you get off the bed and try to sort it out, gives you new energy.

We have so many adventures planned for October-November-December that I am really excited for the next couple of months, I will buy batteries for my camera and put some pictures up!

Thank you all for all the support that you have shown me in my time here, emails, messages, packages, financial support, prayers. I am a blessed individual to have friends like you. Thank you.

Love
Emma

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