Working at the Crèche

Iago Playing on the Roof

My two weeks of life in Rocinha came about when I signed up to volunteer at a crèche within the favela.

I worked with União de Mulheres Pro-Melhoramento da Roupa Suja (UMPMRS or Union of Women for the Betterment of Roupa Suja) – Roupa Suja being one of the poorer neighbourhoods within Rocinha. The organisation functions on donations to create and maintain their programs; which not only include the crèche, but also an after-school educational program for seven-to-fifteen-year-olds, extracurricular activities for the kids, and health-care and women’s services.

The day care facility houses up to fifty children between 7:30am and 5:00pm on weekdays, from babies and infants, up to children who are five-years old. The kids are separated into four groups: the babies and toddlers, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, and the four-and-five-year-olds.

I spent my entire time there working with the class of three- and four-year-olds. Usually, the three- and four-year-olds would be separated, but one of the teachers was off sick and the classes had to be combined. Depending on attendance, I had anywhere from sixteen to twenty-one children in my group.

A typical day for my class is laid out as follows:

08:00: Arrive at the crèche.
08:05: Change into play clothes.
08:30: Eat breakfast.
09:00: Activities (finger-painting, drawing, arts & crafts, etc.)
09:45: Play on roof if the weather is good; play in classroom, or crafts if not.
10:15: Bathing.
11:00: Eat lunch.
12:00: Nap.
15:00: Wake up.
15:15: Afternoon snack.
15:30: Cleaning and clothing change to go home.
16:30: Wait for pick-up.
17:00: Leave the crèche.

My part went something like this:

08:00: Arrive at the crèche.
08:05: Eat breakfast
(Breakfast was almost always coffee and bread and butter.)
08:15: Help organise children for breakfast.
08:30: Head down to the base to shop for groceries for lunch.
09:00: Wash cups and dishes from breakfast.
09:10: Help with activities.
09:45: Playing with kids.
10:15: Moved furniture and mattresses – setting up the room for nap time.
11:00: Help serve lunch to the kids.
11:45: Wash cups and dishes from lunch.
12:00: Eat lunch.
(Lunch was lots of rice and beans, with a varying meat, stew or eggs).
12:15: Free time outside of the crèche.
(I could nap, hit the Internet café, go for a juice or wander out to the beach in São Conrado).
15:00: Return to the crèche.
15:15: Help with afternoon snack.
15:30: Wash cups and dishes from afternoon snack.
15:40: Put away mattresses and restore room to the pre-nap-time configuration.
16:00: Help kids to put on shoes and otherwise get ready to go home.
16:30: Help corral kids and calm them while they waited for pick up.
17:00: Leave the crèche.

The kids I worked with were an incredible bunch: wide-eyed, cute, friendly (for the most part), inquisitive and – most of all – energetic. They were a delight to be around, yet had me wishing for a tranquilizer gun during those times of the day when they were all encouraging each other and running around misbehaving.

Jamilly and Leonora

Getting all the names down took my about two days, but there were ones whose personalities or other attributes stood out so much that I got them immediately. Leonora was the first child to come up and give me a big hug, while Jamilly, Leonora’s fraternal twin sister seemed less sure of me. Kamilly and Kaylane are the identical twin sisters that I was only able to tell apart by asking their names each morning and memorising the colours of their hair-clips. Yan Daniel is the friendliest of the boys. Davy stands in sharp contrast to most of the kids – blue eyes with a shock of curly blonde hair. Nicole is the mean one, who would respond to anything I did by hitting me.

All of the women working full-time at the crèche are also fantastic. They are goodhearted and were infinitely patient with my lack of any Portuguese whatsoever at the onset of my volunteering (none of the ladies spoke any English). I have to imagine it was frustrating for them that I wasn’t as useful as I could have been for the first few days, due to the language barrier. I did make an effort to pick up as much as I could and, by the second week, they were sending me down to the shops for groceries, secure enough in my communication skills to know that I wouldn’t come back with two-dozen containers of dish soap when they’d asked for a 2 cartons of eggs.

I succeeded in coming away from these two weeks with some functional Portuguese, even if I’m still just augmenting words with hand-signals. I’m still nowhere near to speaking in anything close to complete sentences, except for some phrases I had to learn to function within the crèche.

However, I'm not sure knowing, "Abaixo! Sua cabeça sobre a mesa! Silencio!" (Down! Put your head on the table! Be quiet!) is going to get me very far when I'm travelling through the rest of Brazil.