Escola Araucária in Camanducaia – Annual report 2009

Dear friends in Europe,

After an unusually hot day for our altitude, which was followed by a 2 ½ hour long thunder shower, I am sitting here looking over our lovely mountain panorama. Everywhere wreathes of mist are rising up out of the woods and hills. Fortunately all this water flows away quickly here in the mountains. I am reflecting on what was important and meaningful for our school and environment this year. Water, water! That was a fundamental theme. When it is lacking then it’s a terrible worry, but this year the blessing was too great! Hubertus Loewens, the founder of our school, has been measuring temperatures and rainfall up here for over 40 years. According to his records, in all these years there have never been such hot days in winter or such high rainfall. We had no dry period and practically no winter.

Irrational politics

But now to the politics of the educational system. Children are to start attending school one year earlier. Brazil is joining in the international panic that the country’s children might possibly lag behind in becoming intellectualized. The Waldorf Schools Association here sent a letter against an earlier start of school to the ministry of education in Brasilia. Two of our teachers, Ursula and Christa, helped to formulate the document.

The municipality retrenched our two most capable and experienced cooks last year, because they failed a multiple choice questionnaire. They had no chance as they are both illiterate. Fortunately, we were able to keep them on, but at a cost to our support association. The two women that the municipality sent to us in their stead, (who had enough marks in the questionnaire test, of course!) showed themselves to be a letdown. One suddenly disappeared and was discovered by one of our teachers doing another job in the valley. The other is so overweight that she spends most of the day complaining about how much work she has to do. Everything is too much for her.

Of bad roads and spontaneous help

Our official director Christa was reprimanded by the mayor. She had made a record of how often the school buses were not able to drive due to of the very poor condition of the roads making it impossible for lessons to take place, because so many pupils couldn’t make it to school. She sent the report to the school committee and the mayor with a plea for help. She was told by the mayor to stick to school matters and not to concern herself with the state of the roads! It was not understandable to us, why it isn’t a school matter when the children are not able to come to class. Of course the mayor can’t do anything about the rain! But the municipal government could forbid heavy trucks from driving on the muddy dirt roads. The trucks still drive with heavy loads of wood or potatoes even if they have to be towed out of the mud by two tractors. I’m sure you can imagine what the road looks like after that. With sensible restrictions many road repairs could be spared.

The school year started 14 days too late, due to impassable roads. Before that, during the holidays, 12 of 16 teachers were not able to come to the holiday seminar for natural science and history with Manfred von Mackensen and Hendrik Ens in Botucatu. They were stuck in the mountains. It was the same story with the mathematics and geometry seminar with Georg Glöckler. The children could catch up on the missed lessons on Saturdays and during the holidays, but there was no way for the teachers to make up for the missed seminars. After the July holidays all schools were closed for a week due to swine flu. But here in the mountains there was no swine flu! Then we had 1 ½ weeks of lessons and then once again 1 ½ weeks of no lessons, because of the roads etc. etc.

A positive aspect is that under these difficult circumstances here in the mountains people are ready to offer help spontaneously. For example when our driver, Chico, picked up the high school pupils for their evening class in the school bus on one of these pitch black rainy nights and slid into a ditch. The group had to follow Chico for several kilometers through mud, rain and darkness (no one had a lantern), until the most of them had reached home again. Those who live very far away were brought to Chico’s house and from there by motorbike to a house from which they would be able to reach their homes by foot the next day. The unprepared hosts, who were woken up long after midnight, took very good care of their unexpected guests, providing them with dry clothes, a warm meal and a place to sleep.

Building projects and cultural initiatives

Then the rainstorms caused the termite infested roof of our handwork room to collapse. And so we come to the topic of building projects. We had to begin renovations immediately, even though we weren’t sure if we would have enough money. The roof and ceilings of the older buildings were built using pine, due to lack of money (we could get pine wood very cheaply from the regional saw mills). Unfortunately, one cannot use such soft wood for building in our climate. The wood has been eaten away by termites to such a degree, that we have to renovate over 1000m² of the roof, including the ceilings, which we now want to have made of concrete, which will also make the unheated rooms much warmer in winter. The tiles (at the time of building also the cheapest of the cheap) have rotted through and must be renewed. Fortunately, the four newly built classrooms were ready for use by the beginning of the school year and so we were able to evacuate the two .most seriously affected classrooms. Besides that, the physics and music rooms have to serve as classrooms for the meantime.

A particular source of joy was the spontaneous initiatives which have come into being quite independently of the school, mostly under the direction of former pupils. A drama club in upper Jaguarítal, for example. First, a former pupil performed a play in the local church at Easter with inhabitants of the area. By now their repertoire contains folk comedies and much more. Any one may join who wishes, from the smallest child to the oldest grandpa and much fun is had by all at the rehearsals and performances. At the Fazenda Esperanza meetings are organized from time to time, in order to revive a traditional dance from this part of the mountains. The people in this area, who had so few recreational possibilities, profit greatly from all these things.

That was the news for you, our dear friends, of daily life in our mountain school in the province of Minas Gerais in Brazil. We thank you most warmly for your interest and help and wish you all a wonderful Christmas and all the very best for 2010!

Ulla Kolpatzik

More information

• Back to the main page