Dracula before bed

I am going to Romania in a few weeks time and was looking up some language to learn before going. I am totally amazed at its similarity to Portuguese and to Italian, at least when it's written. Apparently it is "low" Latin - I confess to never having realised that.

Then I made the mistake of reading up about Dracula before going to bed. I know that Count Dracula comes from Transylvania in Romania and thought I would check out the origins of the story. It turns out that Dracula was probably based on a high member of the Romanian court - Vlad Dracula - who was worse than Dracula himself.

Dracula ("son of the dragon") was a Christian Crusador who fought to keep the Muslim Ottoman Turks out of Romania. But he killed anyone (not only Ottomans) who he thought was a potential traitor or a nuisance by impalling them between their legs and up to their chest. He often boiled or skinned people alive.

Among other truly horrible stories about him, he invited all the poor people and beggars to his court for a party and lots of food. After they had eaten he asked them if they were happy, to which they replied that they were. Do you want to stay happy, he asked. And when they said yes, he locked all the doors and burned them all up saying that everyone would be much happier if there were fewer poor people on the streets.

All night in my dreams I struggled to escape from Vlad Dracula in Baghdad. In the meantime, none of the poor people in Paris could hear me warning them to get off the streets. I woke up this morning wondering about today's more and less sanitised equivalents of Vlad Dracula.

Por entre sesmos

When I'm not at my computer I'll be found in the Serra de Arrabida, one of the most beautiful places in the world! Five years ago when I moved here I rarely saw another soul in my wonderings through the hills. I see more people now, which is encouraging. But there's also SO much more rubbish and more people racing through in jeeps and on motorbikes. The Serra has an amazing variety of trees and plantlife, some of which is unique in the world and the animal life is incredible. All that on top of its spectacular views. My hope is that more people will realise and care for such a precious place we have right on our doorstep.

So I'm now co-writing another blog "Por entre sesmos" with my neighbours and companions who share this same passion.

Immigration and Janus

Listening to stories of my son's friends is mostly educational. Today I was hearing about some of their parents who have been working in England for "agencies" (read "mafia"). They went to England with the promise of jobs, accomodation and a future, to find themselves in a country where they didn't speak the language, where they were paid below the minimum wage, accomodation was sub-standard and deducted from their salaries, and where they didn't realise that their rights were exactly the same as UK nationals. In the cases I heard they paid the agency to get them work in catering and cleaning.

At the same time, about 10% of the population of Portugal are immigrants from Portuguese-speaking countries like Brazil, Angola and Cape Verde, and increasingly from the Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania and Russia. Back in 2001, when the economy was booming, everyone turned a blind eye to the numer of immigrants working mostly in the construction industry. It's not so easy now as economic times get hard. In 2002 there was a Report from the European Commission agains Racism and Intolerance which recommended among other things "the protection of immigrants against abuses in the employment field".

I have a friend who works for SEF (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras). He has heart-breaking stories of arresting people on their way into Portugal who spent their (and their family's) life-savings on buying a visa or passport from a Mafia. They are the few (un)lucky one who get sent back home, never knowing what it was that they missed. The others are still here.

I often think of Portugal in this Janus position - a doorway or a gate looking in two directions, inwards and outwards. It knows what it is to be and to receive immigrants. It is in a historic and geographic position to look in both directions for lots of current issues. A post-modern position, no less.

There are a number of informative sites, by Portuguese government and European agencies, with social and legal information to help immigrants in Portugal - but you need to speak Portuguese or English and to have access to a Internet to know what it is that they say!

Uma mensagem difamatória

Na quinta feira passada havia uma mensagem difamatória contra um docente na nossa Escola. Foi criada um endereço do hotmail, e foi mandado uma mensagem com queixas (insubstanciadas) e pormenores particulares sobre o docente para o Concelho Directivo - e para um grande numero dos docentes na Escola.

O nome de baixo assinado era "Manuel dos Santos - O Encarregado de Educação". Manuel dos Santos há muitos - e não ha encarregados de Educação no Ensino Superior.

A linguagem do email indica que a pessoa a) não é aluno; b) talvez faz parte de Escola; c) tem mais informação sobre o colega do que parecer no website ou nos outros meios publicas. A mensagem para o docente vitimo era intitulada "You!" A cabeçalho para os outros docentes era sem nenhum assunto.

Confesso que a minha primeira reacção, talvez como outros pessoas, era para questionar se o informação sobre o colega era verdade. Depois começai um processo de tentar devinha os motivos para uma pessoa a mandar a carta.

Mas agora percebo que nem o conteúdo nem os motivos de autor tem interesse. Basta que alguém mandou este email com mal-intenção ...

Não sei qual é o lei em Portugal, mas qualquer maneira se fosse eu o responsável, fazia uma participação e levava o caso para o policia. A pessoa que mandou o email é malicioso (no melhor) e tem problemas mentais (no pior). Além de ser um assedio contra um indivíduo, isto provoca uma problema de falta de confiança nos docentes na Escola.

E preocupe-me pensar que uma pessoa com problemas mentais podia continuar fazer o mesmo - na próxima vez contra outro docente.

José Manuel Fonseca

I've slightly embarrassed that I've only just come across José Manuel Fonseca of the Universidade Lusíada who has a book called "Complexity and Innovation in Organizations". It's in the same series as two leading writers, Ralph Stacey and Patricial Shaw, on complexity and change in organisations.

If you don't know Stacey or Shaw's work, and if you don't know how conservative the academic establishment is in Portugal, (and how steeped in systems thinking) you might not appreciate how determined José Fonseca must be and how inspired I am to see what he's doing and how far he's got. In 2002 he was singled out by "Ideias & Negócios" for being one of the "5 portugueses que fazem a diferença" (in management research). I see that, like me, he had to use his own means for doing a doctorate. And now he's there writing in the same series as leading complexity thinkers. That discovery has made my day!! This is his profile in that nomination.

«outsider» do management
José Manuel da Fonseca
40 anos

Um "fractal" nascido na mina de São Domingos (onde hoje se fazem 'spots' publicitários com as guerras do futuro)

Nascido entre mineiros em São Domingos, perto de Mértola, no Alentejo, José Fonseca veio para Lisboa com quatro anos de idade, mas ainda mantém "uma orgulhosa relação familiar e histórica com aquela região". O gosto de ser alentejano traduz-se hoje na ambiguidade e ambivalência na sua relação com o mundo; numa dose de conformismo (com o país) por optar em não emigrar de vez; na tolerância com os alunos e, ao mesmo tempo, num sentido de insatisfação, de subversão e de risco que o faz ser uma espécie de "outsider" dentro do sistema. Esse modo de ser levou-o a interessar-se por teorias pouco ortodoxas e muito pouco "digeridas" em Portugal no mundo académico. Não consegue ser como os que escrevem vários artigos científicos sobre uma mesma pequena investigação e os apresentam em conferências sucessivas. Não morre de amores por conferências e "papers", mas tem predilecção pela docência e pelo contacto com os alunos. Acima de tudo aceita o desafio de contribuir para que se assuma que no mundo académico "todos os reis vão nus".

Primavera na Arrabida

Oferece-lhe um retrato de uma paisagem mais bonita no mundo - na Serra da Arrabida. A maioria dos meus vizinhos não conhecem este paraíso tão perto. Porque será?

Entretanto a Serra fica o nosso Universo - dos meus amigos São e João, cadela Ali e cão Duq - e vez em quando um ciclista ou caminhante!

P.S. I know the photo is too wide - but I like it like that.
(Photo by Concieção Godinho)

Wanted: Uma Bloga Portuguesa - com certeza

Uma oferta com vinho e sobremesa para as BlogHers ...

Nancy White of Full Circle Associates is offering to sponsor volunteer bloggers, especially who blog in a language other than English, to the BlogHer conference in Santa Clara, CA at the end of July.

The aim of the blogger conference is to:
1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide.

Com certeza uma bloga Portuguesa!

Sign up here.

Rhoda Brett O'Neil Trayner

Today I find myself catching glimpses of my mother's life on the anniversary of her death. I only have fragments of stories and impressions as most of the traces of her life in Kenya have been covered over by the recorded and unrecorded social changes the country has seen in the last sixty years, the images created by films like "Out of Africa", and those exotic images of Kenya as a tourist destination. In contrast to this invisibility, Mum's Web-page rather weirdly floats around cyberspace six years after she died. More than ten years ago, even before I had heard of the Internet my mum had started her home-page - with photos and exotic backgrounds and ... she even blotted out my face because I was concerned to think of my photo or information online! I can see her now grinning at my indignation in finding she had put me on her page. "One day you'll laugh at yourself!" she told me.

OK mum - so you were right!

Mum was the youngest of seven children born to a tough Irish woman from South Africa. I say Irish because that was the identity my grand-mother hung on to, a descendant of the Irish Owen Rowe O'Neill clan, forced to leave Ulster during the British invasions under Cromwell generations earlier. My grandmother was sent by her parents in South Africa to live in Kenya. She had scandalised the family by falling in love with a Jew and her parents hurriedly found a suitable man and paid him a large dowry on the understanding that he would take her to live far away in Kenya.

My grandmother had five children with this "suitable" man while he was losing all their money in the Kakamega Gold Rush. I don't how, but he died shortly after losing the money, leaving her penniless. She worked behind the bar of the Muthaiga Country Club where the accountant there fell in love with her. He took her and her five children under his wing and they had two more children and lived in Nakuru. I don't remember my mother ever talking about her father as he died when she was twelve and the next few years were spent looking after her mother who turned ill and bed-ridden shortly after his death.

At seventeen my mother then lost her mother and faced the big world of Nairobi where she worked as a telephonist for the Kenya police during the Mau Mau and later as an office secretary until she met my father, the captain of one of the Castle Line ships. Her brothers and sisters all emigrated from Kenya, my dear aunt June in Canada, one aunt in South Africa, the eldest in Spain, one in Wales and two uncles in Australia. With the exception of June, who I met once and keep in e-mail contact, I don't know the others.

Many years later and with four almost grown-up daughters my mum went to England. She struggled to create an English identity for herself and I never thought she had managed until it came to her funeral, where to our surprise, we discovered she had found a place for herself with English colleagues in the place (the Red Cross) where she worked. My mum, who had never finished school, and who had hardly worked before she went to England, had become the office manager with a reputation for being the fundi for managing and "fixing" people and technology.

(Fundi is a coloquial word we often used in Kenya to mean a skilful, fix-it person. In proper Swahili it means a craftsperson - master - who passes on their skills to the next generation - apprentice).

KÉÉÉÉÉ ISSSSSS PÁÁÁÁÁ

My son claims that nothing beats Portuguese calão (slang) for drama. It's probably a domain he knows well. He speaks and writes perfect calão in different languages (English and Portuguese) and from Bela Vista and Viso, two different bairros of Setúbal. He says he hasn't perfected his cigano calão, but then I wouldn't know.

You can't translate "Olhe azeite!" into English he explained. I can't put all my facial experessions and gestures into saying "Look here olive oil!" It doesn't work. And how can I show my contempt by calling someone "Rabbit!" or "Duck!"? It's just not the same as channeling my disdain into "Coelho!" or "Pato!"

"Just think," this sixteen year old reflected sagely, "if you only speak English, you will never know how to choreograph a melodrama well."

See ya, soiçe!
Ya = you = tu
Soiçe = sócio = associate = mate = chum

Really blogging in two languages

I read both of Miguel Vale de Almeida's blogs and am intrigued by his use of different languages. His regular blog is in Portuguese. His other blog, webbing ring, is a blog for his fieldwork in Barcelona where he's doing research on same-sex marriage. (Spain is the third country in Europe to legalise homosexual marriages and give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.) In webbingring he mostly writes in English, but also sometimes in Portuguese. He also puts up news and stuff in Spanish.

I'm seeing an intriguing mix of communities (academic, anthropology, gay ..) and sub-communities (international academic, Portuguese academic, Portuguese gay, Spanish gay etc.) and languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish) and discourses (academic, journalistic, gay, ethnographic ..) and modes for recording and communicating his observations and stories (his blog, newspaper articles, books...).

It's the ongoing meaning-making and identity-creation that's happening in this straddling and crossing between communities, sub-communities, languages, discourses and modes that totally fascinates me and drives me in my own research.

Grupo de Fado de Coimbra

The sounds of Grupo de Fado de Coimbra are still ringing in my ears after a concert I went to last night. It's hard to imagine that three young men dressed in black with a Portuguese guitar and a classic guitar (viola) could make such a beautiful and moving sound.

When I first came to Portugal I was fascinated by how many ordinary people seemed to have such wonderful voices. I associate fado with opera or classic music, but it's a working person's music - although Coimbra Fado is different to mainstream or Lisbon fado in that it developed from university students and professors and is sung by young men.

Beautiful sounds and harmonies with roots in Arab, African and Brazilian rhythms, it was a wonderful evening.

A great childhood!

The other day someone (else) exclaimed at what a great childhood I must have had - being brought up in Kenya. That got me thinking ...

One thing I remember about being a child was sour milk. Our milk came from "up country", was transported to the Railway Station (before the days of refigerated trucks), caught the overnight train to Mombasa where it was delivered to Omees, the grocery store. The milk was never entirely fresh by the time it got to our fridge. However, if Omees had stocked Corn-flakes that week, and if the weevils hadn't got too far into the cereal, then we would have Corn-flakes and (slightly sour) milk on a Sunday. It was a real treat.

Aged fifteen I went to school in England. Every morning (excpet Sundays) we had the choice of Corn-flakes, Rice Crispies or Weetabix with delicious fresh milk. It seemed such a luxury to me - as my schoolmates complained about the lack of choice. I only knew about having fresh papaya or mango or pineapple which came from our garden - and hardly a day went by when I didn't think what a great childhood my English school-friends must have had!

Com Nuno Crato

Tivemos outro workshop pedagógica - organizado pelo o grupo do qual eu faço parte - "A Comissão Pedagógica do DEG". Antecipando o evento, fiquei com o coração algo pesado - ficaríamos sentados em filas a ouvir alguém a expor, mais uma vez, sobre a importância de não expor e da importância de trabalhar em grupos pequenos ...

Mas não. Gostei muito da intervenção do primeiro orador Nuno Crato. Gostei o seu estilo e a maneira em que ele mostrou experiência suficiente - e peso académico - para fazer um discurso do género "jornalístico provocador" em vez do tal seca de "académico pontifical".

Ele começou com uma descrição da sistema mais flexível que ele encontrou nos Estados Unidos, onde as universidades abrem as portas para todos mas organizam disciplinas para as pessoas que não tivessem o nível exigido para participar na licenciatura. Por exemplo - se há alunos sem base em matemática, a universidade oferece um curso para dar as bases de matemática. (Fiz me lembrar do sistema em Inglaterra da "Open University" - aberto ao todos, só demora mais tempo para algumas do que os outros.)

Concordei completamente com as suas reservas acerca das "competências" - uma palavra que colar na minha garganta. A palavra está na moda - mas, as vezes, sinto que faltar cultura, imaginação, criatividade, desafios, relações, abstracções .... e todo o resto que dar à vida o sentido para viver! Mas por outro lado creio que a palavra, competência, tem sido útil em repensar um Ensino Superior tão esotérico que ficou só para uma pequena minoria os privilegiadas em vez dos cidadãos participantes do mundo do século XXI. (Eu preferia a palavra novas literacias mas isto fica para outro conversa.)

Como sempre, não percebi a utilização de expressão "aplicada". Nunca percebi bem este distinção entre uma disciplina “teórica” e uma disciplina "aplicada". A noção de uma disciplina aplicada deve derivar de uma epistemologia onde o conhecimento é representado como factos objectivos e "o mundo verdadeiro". Neste caso as praticas são melhoradas através da aplicação do conhecimento científico. Talvez faça mais sentido na área de matemática. Ele diz que nada pode ser uma competência sem conhecimento, e por isso percebi que não estava a questionar um epistemologia positivista/empiricista, mas sim a criticar "aplicada" enquadrada neste epistemologia,

Para mim, a palavra "aplicada" fazia mais sentido se for a palavra "contextualizada". Nuno deu o exemplo de Historia como uma disciplina que obviamente não faz sentido ser "aplicada". Fiquei a lembrar as minhas aulas de Historia na Escola (em Quénia). O professor, muito diligente, ensinou o "Industrial Revolution", "Victorian England" etc. Ele podia ter falada em chinês - as palavras dele não significam nada no nosso contexto - nem em termos de arquitectura, relações familiares, valores nem ... nada. Se as aulas tivessem sido mais contextualizadas (aplicadas?) e tivessem ajudamo-nos a perceber a história do nosso actual universo, tenho certeza que ficávamos com alguma estrutura mais sólido para pendurar as outras histórias do mundo. Assim, fiquei sempre um pouco desenquadrada com a disciplina de historia. Cheguei à conclusão que a mesma matéria, podia ter sido perfeitamente bem contextualizada (aplicada?) para alguns pessoas (por exemplo, alunos na Inglaterra) enquanto não é aplicada para outros (como nós na Quénia)!

Finalmente, "ensino centrado no aluno". Como Nuno, nunca foi um conceito que me convenceu completamente. Interesse-me só porque reorientou ensino do senhor doutor professor para aprendizagem aos alunos. Mas não tive coragem para levantar a minha mão quando ele fez a pergunta - em voz incrédulo - se havia alguém que não tive por objectivo levar todos os alunos para o mesmo sitio. SIM - confesso! Eu sou uma destas pessoas. Mas deixo isso para outro conversa ...

A sua intervenção fez me lembrar que não é possível fazer generalizações. "Expor" está fora da moda em termos pedagógicos mas é sempre bom assistir uma pessoa que consiga criar dialogo (no meu caso - um dialogo interno) através da sua exposição.

Obrigada, Nuno, pelo dialogo!