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Emmanuelle Goncalvesdesouza Ogland is a twenty six year old woman from Belo Horizonote Minas Gerais, Brazil. Belo Horizonote is located in the South East of Brazil. She moved here a year and a half ago to live with her husband Kurt. She is an educated woman who could teach in our public school system in the valley of the sun if she chooses to. But she does not, due to the lack of respect kids in America show adults let alone teachers. She is very lonely in the states, yes even with her husband. He works a lot and she does not have many friends here. She says it’s expensive to go out and have fun her. But she wouldn’t go back in time and change how things are today.
During my interview with Emmanuelle, about her
migration story from Brazil I kept thinking back to all of our class
work through out the semester. I thought about our class trip to
Nogales Sonora Mexico with the international nonprofit organization
Border Links. I found many similarities to Emmanuelle’s story about
Brazil and the hardships we witnessed on the border town. The lack
of personal transportation and the tight net communities were the
two big similarities that kept coming up in Mexico and in her story.
In my research for this project I found some information that said that 68% of the Brazilian population yearly income totals only $4,300.00 (Insight Guides, Brazil, pg.81, Lexington books, New York, 2005). By far the residents of the southern and southern eastern parts of Brazil are much more prosperous then the citizens of the north. Also different parts of Brazil are much better off then others. Namely the Northern part of the country, the accent of the people in the northern part of Brazil is very different then the accents of the people in the southern parts of the country (Insight Guides, Brazil, pg.283, Lexington books, New York, 2005) German writer Williams Verlag AG Zurich wrote in his book that while the upper-class citizens of Brazil play games and go to casinos the working class (most of the population 68%) plays the lottery and work very hard to make it every day. (Brazil and the Future, Translated by; Lowell Bangexter, Riverside Cal) Williams who spent a lot of time in Brazil say the equality of the economically rising country. Brazil’s economy out gains all of the rest of the South American countries and continues to grow year after year. They are able to do this because of the low cost of man power. Just like Mexico Automobile companies are moving factories to Brazil to build their vehicles but the people who build them will never be able to afford to buy them. Anther topic that came up a lot during the interview which I expressed above was the closeness of Brazilian neighbors. This wasn’t surprising to me due to the research I discovered while reading the book Imaging Brazil. While there are race wars in America and other countries Brazil has a long history and is considered exemplary in race relations dating back to the early nineteenth century. (Imaging Brazil; edited by Jesse Sauza and Valter Sinder, Lexington Books, New York 2005, pg. 145) Hearing Emmanuelle talk about how difficult it was for her when she first moved here to the states made me think back to the beginning of the semester when we did our agency reports. My report was on the Lost Boys Center in down town Phoenix. It’s an agency to help support the lost boys of Sudan. Emmanuelle told me about a new support group that she is going to be all the members are from Brazil. That’s similar to what the Lost Boys Center is trying to accomplish. The migrants in the city report passed threw my thoughts many times when Emmanuelle spoke of her family and her neighbor’s daily events as a community. Watching the families of Guadalupe walk together to church is just like her stories of picnics and family gather. In other words while I was conducting my interview I really looked back though out the entire semester putting the pieces together about our valleys immigrants and how I have learned so much about people and cultures in this class. This last crossing the valley assignment just placed all of the pieces in place to this giant puzzle we have called Migration and culture for the last four months.
If it wasn’t for Emmanuelle and her husband Kurt giving me the opportunity to step into their lives for a few short moments I might of never been able to put all of the pieces of this class together and in turn realize all of the great new knowledge and understanding that I was able to discover this semester. For that, Thank you. check out my Crossing the Valley page. check out my Crossing the Valley Brazil page.
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