The video of Chimamanda Adichie on TED Talks was really touching for me. It makes us think about when someone tell us a story… we should think why THAT person is telling THAT especially storyhow is he/she telling. Mainly when that story is about some people. Because these people are more then when, so they are all different and so they can’t be represented by only one story.

It is so danger because if you tell the story about a people and many listen to you, you will make that people became what you said and this will go on trough the history. This gives origin to stereotypes that are not just lies but incompletes storys that can event take dignity of people.

We shoud let anyone speaks about themselfs and respect what they have to say without making judgements because everyone has a sotry!

Quinta do Mocho is a social neighborhood in Lisbon. There you can find  many differents nationalities. The most part of immigrants come from Africa. When you go to Quinta do Mocho by bus, you go down of the bus and can not see it. It’s quite hidden what make us thing if the rest of society, the rich natives of Lisboa doesn’t want to see that neighborhood or if the residents in Quinta do Mocho doesn’t want to bee seen.

We were received there by a resident named Carlos, nickname Cali. He took us first to a great restaurant, famous in the region and we could eat typical food of Africa there: Cachupa. It is beans with chicken and pork. After we have lunch, we started walking around the neighborhood with Cali so he could explain more about it. I asked myself with I went there alone, by myself I would be so well received too.

Carlos explain that some time ago it was very violent and dangerous and that the residents rob each other instead of going out to rob. He even showed us that the windows have some metal protection which was used to help people to climb and go inside other people apartment to steal. He said they learn from it and create their own rules so now they can live in peace and also tech the kids how to behave in society. He also said that the residents take care to all children, rather than their own. e could see it’s true because Carlos was with his soon Rodrigo that stopped in a playground to play and a woman that was there with her kids said it was ok, and she could look for Rodrigo.

In 2014 Quinta do Mocho received some graffiti artists who started a project there. They painted some walls of the building with graffitis that are not only paints but they all have a meaning and a criticism to do related with Quinta do Mocho, immigrants, society, etc. Some artists called other and today they have more than 100 wall painted with beautiful graffitis. Carlos instead of explain the meaning of which one of them, he was always asking to see what we think about it and saying that we should use our creativity to answer thinking outside the box.

The last one we saw was a transexual african boy giving her hand to a white female with the says “unity is strength”. It was very impactating for us that study Cultural Diversity.

And in the end I could talk with Carlos about racism and compare it with my country and he also told me that now that Quinta do mocho is famous for the arts and a lot of tourist go there to see it, we can think if they are really going for the paint or if they want to see how the residents live there, something that is similar in the favela da rocinha. We concluded that we live now a days in a very globalized world, so cultures have to interact instead of disputing which breed it’s better or what some breed shoud or should’nt do, but sometimes tourism is gentrifier and respect is something that we can not lose.

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Part of Erasmus Program is living together with people who comes from differents countries. As we come from many parts of the world, which one of us has a very different culture and customs. It starts in the language we speak and goes until what we eat, wich time we eat, for who we pray or if we don’t pray, etc.

In the class of Diversity Culture we learn to put ourselves in the place of the other so we can respect the decisions and the way of being of every single person. This make us better human and so, we would like pass this on, for the next generations.

The children learn faster and better than adults and this is a important message from them to learn since now. So we create this book to encourage children to have this intercultural vision about the other.

ABOUT THE HISTORY

The girl is named Duygu and she lives in Turkey. She has a grandpa that sings every day the same lullaby. We choose a grandpa instead of a mother or father to don’t represent any sexism and because it can exist many kind of families.

We also choose to pass the message using lullabies as the main element because we believe it is something that exist in every culture to show love to the kids.

Duygu goes to Spain and after to Brazil to discover new lullabies seeing if it will help her to sleep. We choose those countries because they are where the members of group come from.

In the end she is so tired of the trip that she can sleep and also discover that is why she slept, not because the song. So, the moral of the story is: “That is not a perfect lullaby, what is perfect is discovering new things”.

We create this history to encourage children to travel, meet new people, having many different experiences and mainly to always remember to respect different cultures.

ABOUT THE BOOK

It is for children from 4 years old and has no limit aging, anyone can read our history!

It is easier for children to understand and learn when they can also play or participate of the history. That’s why we wanted it to be interactive. First we thought about it having our draws pasted in a velcro so the kids can rip it out and put in other page, but unfortunately we couldn’t find this material.  So those draws the children can move to another place, it paste it with a tape and you can still move it, because if we putted if glue, you would no longer be able to change places.

Colors is also something that calls for children attention. We use differents colors for the 3 translations to represent each country. Yellow for Spain, Red for Turkey and Green for Brazil.

During the story there are some numbers in the lullabies that we associated with an audio so that the kid can listen to the song.
And as the teacher oriented us, we also putted the partitures of each lullabie so the children is able to learn it correctly and the book can also be used for a sing class.

We have done everything together! First we seated and write the history, and each one of us helping with the correct ortographe to our lenguages and with english we always reached a consensus. Then we divide that story we created in pages so we could visualize better where to put the draws. Lara made the most part of draws because she is better in it. Later we printed our history and paste it in the correct pages, and then we pasted the draws. Later we did the first and last page and then we write the text we used in our presentation.

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What are the rules and importance to create a international curriculum in my own country?

Actually I don’t think that goverment and also people from my country do any efforts to create a international curriculum. We have a very mixed population but people are still very very racist and the worst is that no one assume it. So, if no one talks about the racism and fake that it doesn’t exist in our society it continue to be a tabu and the racism continue to exist. So, in the schools they only talk about black and african people to say that they were slaves when we were colonized. They don’t talk about any important woman or black man, so the black kids don’t have an inspiration and the white kids still look them as they are diffferent. This happen more in private schools because in the public ones the maiority are poor, and in Brazil exists also white and black poor people.

In the universities you almost don’t see any black people and even there the society condemn the racial quotas.

Talkin about different nationalities, we only have english in school and even in the private school the teaching is really bad.

How I deal with interculturalism?

I personally believe I am an intercutural student and also citizen. I started to love learning about other cutlures because when I was child, my mom putted me in a Spanish school in Brazil, who had an agreement with Spain. Beside learning the lenguage spanish, we also had history and geography about Spain and I loved it.

I always found it easy to lern other lenguages and also loved to practice my English. So I’ve already done another exchange to South Africa. It was really nice to know a total different cultural from my own.

So, after I learn about so many cultures and had these experiences I always try to create in people there I talk with the sense of the understanding that all the races of the world are at first human beings, only have different cultures because they have lived different histories over time and therefore must be respected equally.

Land

Brazil is a real big country (8 515 767,049 km of area) divided in 5 regions. It is the biggest country in Latin America and is the 5º bigger in area and population in the world!

Traditions

As we are a very big country, wich onfe ofe those regions have differents traditions and also differents ways to say the same lenguage with differentes accents. The region where I live is the Sudeste, where is also Espirito Santo (where I was born), São Paulo (the biggest city) and Rio de Janeiro (the famoust one).

Specifically in the state of Minas Gerais, we have a very strong tradition to make and eat PÃO DE QUEIJO. I really love it and I’ve already made it here in Portugal for my friends and they also love it. – I also enjoy cooking very much!

We use to eat these with coffee for the “café da tarde” or the afternoon coffee.

We have a tipical food for the luch too wich is Feijão Tropeiro. Tropeiro is the name that was given for the men who made the transport of differents things by horses in the colonial period. So they use to say they eat this type of beans with pig meat, eggs, flour and “couve” and thats from the name comes. Feijão Tropeiro is famous in the city for been served in our football stadium, the Mineirão. I love it! And of course I already made it here too!

Music

For music we have the Funk wich same brazilian don’t like but I think it is part of who we are and I also enjoy the music. Its becoming famous as we could hear the Portugueses listen to it all the time. The Funk emerged in the favelas of Brazil and there are the “Baile Funk”, tipical parties who still happens inside the favelas with funk. Some people are afraid to go because the dealers are there too but if you respect people they will respect you too. Usually it becames a mess only when the police comes with the intention of ending the party for no reason.

Religion

People in Brazil are mostly religious. The most followed are Catholicism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is dangerous when it become to hitch the politic. Some shephered took advantage in the faith of people to eran money and this is so wrong.

We have another problem with african matrix religions. People have a large prejudice aganist Candomblé and Umbanada and always connect them with bad things.

Brazil was colonized by Portugal in 1500. Portugueses come looking for our gold and other valuable things. In that time, natives who livid by the fishing and hunt were almost there. When I look about the colonization, I can see mainly these points. That’s why I (and most part of Brazilians, I think) have a little recentment with Portugueses, because they “stole” our precious and enslaved and used the people who already lived here to get this. They also brought african slaves from their other colonies in Africa.

When I came to Portugal, i felt a little of prejudice coming from the portugueses about the fact I was brazilian. We know brazilians are every where here in Portugal, it almost seems that here have more brazilians than portugueses but even there I was so mad with thinking they don’t like us because were they that “invade” our land first, and as I said “stolen” our gold.

So then was created the State of Brazil wich was a Colony of Portugal.

The mix of Indians, Europeans (portugueses and other that came running away from other wars) and the Africans resulted at the blend of brazilian populantion and the socioeconomic disparity. Brazil is the most mixed country in the world and I personally thinks like Tarsila do Amaral, i can see so much beautiful in it.

Then, around 1800, the Portuguese Court needed to run away from France to Brazil because they were subjuded by the Peninsular War.

Here they elevated the condition of Brazil to a Kingdom, but still united to the Kingdom of Portugal and Algarves.

Only in 20 years later was declared the Independece of Brazil about Portugal and Algarves and then founded the Imperium of Brazil. So for this date we have a national holiday wich is the Independence Day on Semptember 7.

Finally in 1889 was declared a Republic but in 1930 we retoced to a Dictatorship when Brazilian people couldn’t be free to say or do what they want because the military censured them. We have a national holiday por Declaration of Republic too, on 15th of November. This date is also my mom birthday, so it has a more special meaning for me.

15 years later we could recovered our freedom and became a Republic again, with a new Constitution.

But as you can see our people was almost always dominated so that’s why until today some people around the world, mainly Portugueses, think they are superior and that our country is a mess. But in fact, I think that this is the history gave birth to our “jeitinho brasileiro” (brazilian way) to turn possible to scape and do things at our way.

We are not a very nationalist people but we are that kind that ” I can speak ill of my family, but no one else can speak” with our country. And every time we see someone with our flag in another country, we will do some party.

Nacional simbols

Our flag how we know it today was created after the Independence, when the blue ball replaced the royal family crest in the center but the green and yellow are still the same from the Imperium flag. Green originally symbolized the house of Braganza, of which D. Pedro I was part, in reference to the personal standard of D. Pedro II of Portugal, while the yellow symbolized the house of Habsburg, of which D. Maria Leopoldina was part. In the comum sense people use to think the green represents our forests and the yellow our gold.

The stars, whose position on the flag reflect the sky seen in the capital Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889, represent the federative units – each star represents a specific state in addition to the Federal District.

In the last year, with the elections for President, people were extending the flag in their cars or houses for support Bolsonaro believing he could be a solution for the country to leave the crisis that many thought was the fault of the corruption scandals of the left-wing party. His motto was “Brazil above everything and God above everyone”.

But I don’t really think he is the solution. Actually I think he can turn Brazil even worst being a very racist, sexist and also corrupt man. He is the opposite of everything we’ve been studying in Cultural Diversity! He desrespects all kinds of minorities and differents cultures.