i have spent my time here walking around lost. not due to lack of personal awareness. simply due to language barriers and people being vague or just not knowing.
My complaint about WSF which i have heard a lot of people agreein, is the lack of organization. We went to one building for a workshop where there was supposed to be 13. There ended up only being 4. Delegates had not shown up and without warning. I am not blaming them. apparently though incomparison to past forums this one is terribly unorganized and all over the place. the workshops are all over the city, and so quite hard to find and get to on time.
The government also put a tremendous ammount of money into entertainment for the WSF and last minute withdrew the promise. Leaving artists and musicians at the airports wondering where their tickets were.
we are leaving tomorrow. so today we are walking around the city picking up memories and taking pictures and talking to as many people as possible.
as i have said before... and really i cant stress enough... everyone is so nice here. We met 3 youngsters on the subway, Daniela, annalee, and pedro. we were trying to get to a punk show. through our broken spanish and hand gestures we thought we were all going to the same place. when we got out of the subway we blindly followed these venezuelans. They took us to an open park right on the street where there was a reggae band playing. and lots of press. and i think every group of people were smoking pot in some form or another. The music was really good and it was such a warm scene to just run into. The band is from jamaica and calles red e band. pronounced red eye band. the press was from a local alternative media stations radio and tv (i think). We met a young man names Ceaser who spoke english very well, and portuguese and french. He studied language at the local university and wants to move to the states to teach. he was really nice and offered to show us where the punk show should be. as we had walked far from where the flier said. we declined his offer and walked off confident that we could find the place-- We ran into 3 punks\ anarchists who were looking for the same space. we tried to speak with them and joined them in the search. for some reason we were having a much harder time understanding them and found out later that they were actually from brazil. They told us that the anarchist scene in brazil is extremely strong and connected and even showed us photos of kids hanging out at a squat. Luckily we ran in alba and daniel who told us that the show had been canceled. of course it had. this is our luck in this country. We went with them and they told us how to get to the anarchist house where a lot of alternative forum events were taking place. and again we were lost when left alone to find the house. Bhav is writing about it so you can read from him.
i think i am done for now. i am sad to be leaving, i havent fallen in love with the city the way others in this group have... i am very happy here though, and still believe that i have a lot more to learn. I will learn spanish and come back with the ability to really talk to people. i am just craving tofu. and my cat. and some sound sleep.
posted by Freya Powell on Sunday, January 29, 2006
