The beginning of the end

In 37 minutes, we will board a bus to the Fortaleza airport and begin the first leg of our 30-hour journey home. We only spent a week here, but when I think about the person I was last Saturday–and even when I look at pictures from that first day–I see something different. Don’t worry, you’ll still recognize me when I get home. But I know that something is different inside of me. There is nothing that happened this week that wasn’t an entirely new experience, and I will carry those experiences with me always.

I promised you a “good things vs. not-so-good things” list, so I’ll get that going now. It might not be the most deep thing I could write to finish this up, but a promise is a promise:

Good things:

• The beautiful, constant breeze
• The flawlessly bright blue sky (not a single cloud!)
• The kindness and warmth of every single person I met
• The abundance of fish at every meal
• The presence of hammocks everywhere!
• Everyone in the group–American students, Brazilian students and even the professors–bonding
• Working with my translator and new friend, Priscila
• Chatting with my bus buddy, Jardis!
• Not getting a bug bite all week
• Spending the last day at the beach

Not-so-good things:

• The first time I rode a motortaxi (aka the scariest experience of my life!)
• Chasing frogs around our room
• Finding a frog in our toilet at 6 a.m.!
• Not being able to flush toilet paper (seriously, that was one thing I didn’t miss about Jordan!)
• The unpaved roads that are even bumpier than cobblestone
• My lack of Portuguese skills!
• Constantly smelling of bug spray

OK, I now have 10 minutes to finish packing and get my luggage on the bus, so I’m going to have to leave the list at that. Look for more updates as my story comes along!

A journal entry and the hint of a list

Seriously, I don’t know how the Deborah of 2008 managed to update her blog every single day while in Jordan. It is almost impossible to do that here in Brazil! Or at least it feels that way. I don’t have any free time until about 9 p.m., and by then I either have to do work or collapse from a long day of interviewing.

I know I owe you more than this, but I’m going to do a little bit of double-dipping. Here’s a journal entry I wrote for my class about the proper role of a journalist in communities like Icapui when you are writing a feature story. As I mentioned in the last post, my story will focus on how the women form the backbone of the Pentecostal churches in Icapui, but some of them are not as involved as they would like to be because their husbands are not Christian. In the most extreme cases, the husbands will forbid their wives to attend the church on a particular night, but the most common circumstance is that the husband complains about his wife attending church and his wife decides to stay home in order to avoid an argument.

The journal entry isn’t pretty, but it can give you a glimpse into how this trip is affecting me emotionally. For a better look at what exactly I’ve been doing here, I’ve started a mental list of “good things” and “not-so-good things” about this trip. It should be entertaining, and I hope to have it for you soon. In the meantime, enjoy the journal entry…

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

As I relaxed on the back porch of a house in Mutamba today after a full lunch of fish, rice, watermelon and pineapple, I listened to Francisco, one of my hosts, share his thoughts on journalism. I found this one sentence to be the most powerful: “I think all humans should be journalists because the beauty of being human is communication.” This trip has reaffirmed my existing belief in the power of language and communication, and it has also shown me that the reverse of Francisco’s statement is true.

In the last three days, I have come to believe that all journalists should be humans. I think some journalists can get so caught up in trying to be objective that they lose their human touch. In truth, no human is completely unfeeling, completely detached or completely unmoved by a compelling story.

It’s important to be objective, but it’s even more important to be honest. If I pretend that I don’t care about the subject, if I put up an excessively thick brick wall between my subject and me, then I am being dishonest with the reader because I am acting like a type of person that doesn’t exist. As a journalist, I have a duty to fully inform my readers, which requires a certain level of objectivity, but I also have a duty to capture real life and tell the stories of human existence, which is impossible if I put up that thick wall.

I have learned that being too detached can hinder my journalism in two ways: First, it keeps me from fully recognizing my subject’s emotions because I have closed off my own emotions. Second, and perhaps most important, it might keep the subject from fully expressing her emotions because she might feel like she can’t trust me. Earning someone’s trust requires a certain amount of give-and-take. I think this statement is true for regular relationships in everyday life and relationships between journalists and sources. Journalists need to give a little bit of themselves or show their ability to empathize in order for the subjects to feel like they can share their innermost thoughts. As a journalist, if I cannot recognize my subject’s emotions or earn her trust to learn more about her feelings, then my writing suffers and the reader ultimately suffers.

Fortunately, I have not learned these lessons the hard way. Instead, I have been able to better perceive my subjects’ feelings and earn their trust because I have shown them that I am a human before I am a journalist. Today I spent five hours with Raimunda Alzira Braga de Assis, a 53-year-old woman who believes she recovered from cancer through her faith in God. When Raimunda first told me about her cancer, she simply explained her health situation as if she was telling a doctor. But after I used my body language, expressions and the wording of my questions to show her that I was moved by her struggle, she opened up to me and told me the heart-wrenching story of how her son, who was 13 at the time, reacted to the cancer. She suddenly broke out into tears as she described every detail of how she found him praying on the floor for her recovery. I could tell that this experience was something she didn’t share with just anyone, and yet it was so essential for my story. I think if I would have missed that powerful moment if I hadn’t shown her that I was there for more than just the quote—that I was there to truly understand her story and her feelings like another human being. In this case, and perhaps in all other situations, being a human first enabled me to be a better journalist.

And then there was Brazil

On a normal Tuesday, I wouldn’t even be awake yet. I would be sleeping soundly until 7:45 a.m., at which point my alarm would ring, I would climb out of my comfy bed in near-total darkness, jump into the shower and head off to my journalism ethics class. But today, my alarm rang at 6 a.m., I stumbled out of my hotel bed with the sun already streaming through the paper-covered windows, chased a frog around the bathroom and headed off to eat breakfast on a beautiful outdoor porch in Brazil.

So as you can see, today is a little different.

Today is my third full day in Icapui, Brazil, a small town of 19,000 people in the northeast of the country. Icapui lies along the beach, so the weather is beautiful. There is constantly a cool breeze to comfort you as you sit outside in the blazing sun. The sun rises at 5:30 a.m., and it is pitch black by 6 p.m.

I’m in Brazil with eight other University of Florida students, seven Brazilian college students, one University of Florida professor and two Brazilian professors. We arrived on Saturday and will leave this Saturday. This whole week represents the pinnacle of one of my journalism classes called Florida FlyIns. Every fall semester, the journalism school chooses a country in Latin America and selects up to 12 students to travel to this country and spend a week reporting on life there, either with words, pictures, video or radio broadcasts.

By the end of this week, I should be able to write a 1,800- to 2,200-word feature story about the women who form the backbone of the growing Pentecostal movement in Brazil, which has traditionally been a Catholic country. Through my interviews with a local pastor and his wife and a few female church members, I have learned that some of the women are unable to be as involved as they would like to be because their husbands don’t approve of Pentecostalism and their wives’ participation in the church. The husbands are motivated by a combination of cultural, psychological and religious factors, including longstanding ideas about gender roles and simple jealousy.

I learned of this problem only yesterday, and I feel like I am seeing the tip of an iceberg. Today I hope to spend the afternoon meeting one of these women; her name is Socorro, and I am told that her husband always picks her up from church early because he believes she should spend more time in the house than in the church.

We plan to leave the hotel in 25 minutes, so I need to wrap this up. I have so much more to say about my first few days here, and I hope to be as conscientious about this blog as I was in Jordan.

Obrigado! (thank you!)

Could this post BE more overdue?

Last time I wrote on this blog, I was about to start six weeks in D.C.

Now I have one week left.

I believe an apology is in order: When I wrote my last post, I fully intended to keep up with this blog if I felt moved to do so. And I did feel moved. There were many times, especially at the beginning, when I came home and thought of everything I could share with you. There were times when I sat in my living room, constructing sentences and clever titles that would convey how much I was enjoying myself.

But therein lies the problem. I sat. I sat in my living room and did not write. Sometimes I even sat in my living room, on my computer, doing everything except for updating this blog. So for that, I apologize.

As I alluded to above, it has been a good summer. My internship in the public policy department at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice has been better than I could have hoped for. Before I came here, I was leaning toward finding a job in Washington, D.C., and moving here after graduation. Now I know that’s want I want to do, and I intend to look for jobs both in the world of reproductive rights and in other areas.

The last five weeks have been exciting and busy as I’ve checked things off of my D.C. bucket list (and done some things that weren’t even on there but were enjoyable nonetheless!) I’ve eaten Ethiopian food, seen the Supreme Court in session, walked around Georgetown, visited many a Smithsonian museum, attended a press conference with Nancy Pelosi, oohed and ahhed over the 4th of July fireworks, attended an interfaith service for health care reform, and done some networking. All in all, it’s been a very enjoyable and productive summer.

So, again, I apologize. I hope this post has assured you that I am alive and well and happy as I wrap up my time in D.C. Who knows what the future of this blog will be, but this is where things stand now. Goodnight…

A summer blog. Revisited.

The last time I sat in the Orlando Airport with this laptop, on this Web page, I was typing my very first blog post. I was still a teenager, on my way to what turned out to be my greatest adventure. A year later, I am hardly the same person. True, I’m still a perfectionist, I still have that curly black hair (albeit a little shorter) and I still love peanut butter. But my goals, my dreams and my outlook on life have all changed slightly. It is because of these changes that I embark today on my next adventure: an internship in Washington, D.C.

I’m not sure if I’ll be updating this blog as I try to pursue these new goals and dreams over the next six weeks. But as I sit here waiting at the gate, remembering when I promised you all “nuggets of wisdom,” I can’t help but post an update. And just like last time, now I must go because my flight is boarding. In the meantime, I do want to share these two op-eds (I found them interesting and very well-written):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14rich.html?ref=opinion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14friedman.html?ref=opinion

Hyphens are your friend

I’ll be the first to admit that, second only to commas, hyphens are one of the most difficult grammar concepts to grasp. Even though I’m a self-described grammar nerd, I occasionally have trouble deciding when to use a hyphen with compound modifiers. Here’s one headline I saw in the Alligator today that probably could have benefited from a hyphen:

Large animal surgeon appointed to interim chair

The point of the story was Dr. David Freeman’s appointment to lead the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. It seems clear that he is a surgeon who operates on large animals. But when I read the headline this morning, I just had to do a double take. The headline is slightly unclear; it could be read to mean that the subject is an animal surgeon who happens to be a large man. It’s like the classic example of a small business tax (a small tax on businesses) vs. a small-business tax (a tax on small businesses).

Correct me if I’m wrong, but perhaps this Alligator headline could have benefited from a hyphen?

A like-minded soul

Finally, I’m not the only one who isn’t enamored with Twitter:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edppitts04030409mar04,0,4178309.story

“Melding Obama’s Web to a YouTube Presidency”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/us/politics/26grassroots.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

Like George W. Bush before him, Mr. Obama is trying to bypass the mainstream news media and take messages straight to the public.

At first, this seems like a good idea, although I bristle at the notion that all mainstream news media is biased media that needs to be bypassed. But what about this:

The approach is causing some concern among news media advocates, who express discomfort with what effectively could become an informational network reaching 13 million people, or more, with an unchallenged, governmental point of view.

“They’re beginning to create their own journalism, their own description of events of the day, but it’s not an independent voice making that description,” said Bill Kovach, the chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. “It’s troublesome until we know how it’s going to be used and the degree to which it can be used on behalf of the people, and not on behalf of only one point of view.”

Uh oh. Now it’s starting to sound like a state-sponsored, censored media. And I have absolutely no tolerance for that.

Any thoughts?

Reflections on 2008 BCS National Championship

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orl-bianchi0909jan09,0,5301478.column

The fact is if you hate Tebow, you hate humanity. You hate yourself because he makes you feel guilty.

New media in the new year

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/views/orl-parker0609jan06,0,2213522.column