We are being followed. Not by drug lords, but by colorful computer monitors and recycled mice. Computer chip earrings are making quite the fashion statement in the communities we have visited in the last two weeks. However, we have finally located the epicenter: CDI Belém, Pará. And the driving force behind the colors and eco-friendliness is a project called Lixo Que Não È Lixo, or Trash That is Not Trash.
The project’s focus is the three R’s: Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse. Computer monitors are turned into trash receptacles and old keyboards into picture frames. Or, they may be moved into pre school and kindergarten classrooms where the letters are used to teach spelling. (One playground house I encountered at Terra Mirim had such a keyboard present. I asked the little girl through a translator to point to the first letter in her name. She pointed to the one.) The computer machine itself is painted, emptied, and used as a bookshelf. Previously barren desks are transformed into fully outfitted furniture.
As a pilot project started in Belém, the idea became quickly popular at a CDI conference and has since spread throughout the network to other schools. CDI-Pará has since developed the program to include workshops where computers are disassembled to teach students about the mechanism of the computer. Many people I have talked to desire to go into the computer repair business, and such workshops that Lixo Que Não E Lixo provides are priceless.
The trifecta aspects of the project are the three R’s. The three R’s have extra poignancy since Belém is in the Amazon basin. Located at the mouth of the Amazon River in the state of Pará, Belém houses over half the population (by some estimates) of a state twice the size of Texas. Most people who live in the Amazon cluster around the river, and the demand for food and industry has left the rainforest (which contains 1/3 of all species on Earth) disappearing at a rate of 97 square miles per day. As more people flock to the big cities, demand for expansion forces even more land to be cleared. CDI is doing its part to reduce trash and technology pollution.
The Duke team shall see the Amazon rainforest first-hand as we travel upstream tomorrow to another CDI school in a town built partially on stilts. Raincoats and cameras in hand, it promises to be the boat ride of a lifetime.
(Editor’s Note: As we would soon discover, our romanticized pre-conception of Villa da Barca, the community we would explore the next day, wasn’t quite accurate. There was no rainforest to be seen; Villa da Barca is an urban slum.)
-Dani