Day Oito: Yellow fevering

I wish I had received the yellow fever vaccination after today. While interviewing Elisabeth Santos, the director of the Ministry of Health at the Evandro Chagas Institute under the Sectretariat of Surveillance in Health located in Belém, Pará, Brasil, I began to feel an ache in my stomach. Santos doesn’t understand why it’s not a requirement for tourists to receive the vaccination since confirmed cases are still reported on — 59 last year in fact.

The indigenous peoples here are an interesting facet of the country whether it is a discussion about disease, land use or supposed secession. The military here, according to another person we interviewed at the Museu Paraense Emilio Goelde, Claudia Lopez a researcher and anthropologist at the park, seem to think that indigenous lands (similar to that of reservations in the United States) hope to secede from the country of Brasil and make all the efforts they can to relocate these peoples to another location other than country borders. Anthropologists, she says, working with these indigenous groups have no motivation to discard Brasil as their own.

As far as disease and the indigenous people, according to Santos, they are pretty accepting of Western medicine when it is available to them, but that the spiritual healing part of their tradition is not ignored either. She said that usually the local healer has just as much say in treatments as those who are visiting to help. She said that once contact is made consumerism and Western materials are too hard to avoid but that traditions are still observed. If they weren’t still observed then they probably wouldn’t have any desire to stay as remote as they do — they would just move to the city or the suburbs.

Sustainability is also an issue here as it is anywhere else in the world. Figuring out a balance between deprivation and preservation so the environment and those using its resources can both come out as winners is not easy. There are always differing opinions out there, especially when it has to do with the use of resources. Some ask why not just do reforestation where deforestation as occurred, however with nutrient-lacking soil in Brasil this solution is not so easy, besides from the fact that once deforestation occurs, the biodiversity in that area has already been affected. Part of why so much deforestation has happened so rapidly in Brasil is because the land is so infertile that crops do not persist efficiently in the soils for very long, maybe around 5 years on average, so new land is constantly required. While this was not discussed at any of the lectures, legumes are being used around the world as a long and short-term solution to this issue. Education of the advantages to planting legumes with crops is still underway and while it is not a new plant the widespread use for soil sustainability is only at its beginning.

After purchasing more Brasilian-like clothing and getting my hair braided people have been staring at me less, and seem more shocked that I do not speak Portuguese. I like this comfort; it makes me feel less likely to be mugged because it is not so obvious I am American. Once I return to the states, however, people will probably stare at me because I have braids!