Edifício Irlanda,
R. Florentino O. dos Santos 310/202
Afogados, Recife, PE., Brazil 50830/470
30th August  2010
     
Creche bulletin 96 for August 2010.   

Dear Creche sponsors,
                      In the July bulletin  you  read about four members of the Creche committee, in this  one some more of the committee are being presented

Adriana Alcantara Teixeira was born on 1962 and  took a degree  in  Speech Therapy  at the Federal University here in Recife, later doing a Masters in Science in Community  Disability Studies at the  London  University, works for the state  government and also  teaches  at the    University of Pernambuco and at FAFIRE, a private faculty.
As a  teenager she helped collect funds for the   building  of the  Creche and  has been  a committee member for several years though she  finds it hard to  get time to attend the meetings. Her father is Dr Joaquim Alcantara, who was Creche president for over twenty  years. Her mother , Dra.  Wanda, an  anesthetist, died earlier this year of concussion received in trying to  save  Alcantara from falling against the lift door in their apartment in Boa Viagem

Sanelvo Cabral da Silva was born in 1939, married with  four children and  ten grandchildren...did a degree in Journalism at the Federal University  in Recife and  a diploma in   Rural  Communication.... now retired.... worked  mostly for Recife´s  top  daily, Diario de Pernambuco  and  as press officer in various local organizations

Jovita Agra, born in Recife  an undisclosed  number of  years ago..... did a degree in  Architecture  at the Federal University here in Recife.... specialises in  interior  decoration...unmarried and childless, takers care of her father and  grand mother who is over 100 and  incapacitated...a bit like Stevie Smith but neither “waving or drowning”.  Her father has been  associated with  the  Creche for  many years and suggested the Creche as the beneficiary when the commercial travelers  association to which he belonged had to   dismantle   due to the age of its members.  The Creche thus got a building with eight  apartments and three small shops, which yield  a monthly rent of something less than three thousand reais

Poem by Paul Durcan from “Greetings to our  Friends in Brazil”

“On a Saturday afternoon in Recife, humid,  grey
An amiable  Englishman, Eddie  Edmundson,
A linguist  whose  father was a clogger in Clitheroe-
“An eddy  semantic of scruples” he was later to say –
Drove me into the suburbs and  shanty towns
To visit  Fr Frank Murphy, Holy Ghost  missionary,
Funder of the  Recife Children´s  Project:
A  seventy-year-old County Wexford  priest
Who has organized a school for the children of mothers
Who have no  choice but to work on the streets
Selling their bodies for  shelter  and  food.
Father Murphy was proud of his   creche -
That´s  what he calls it, his  crèche –
But  mostly  what he wanted to talk about  was poetry.
In the  dying  day darkening by the edges
Of a concrete pond of  black, red-headed swans
In virgin jungle in northwest Recife
That aged, placid Wexfordman lifted his sore head
Skywards past coconut  trees, quoting
In all its meticulous  intricacy,
“Rage for  Order” by Derek Mahon.
When he had done, giving the  thumbs-up sign,
He put  his hand on my shoulder:
“This is what we do in Brazil”
Driving back into the  centro of   Recife
Past “scorched  gable ends and burnt out buses”
We drove in silence  until I declared
“We have been  this afternoon with  Che  Guevara.”
“Yes, I know  exactly what you mean, you are  right.”
Father  Frank Murphy, founder of the Recife  Children´s Project
Thirty years  working in the streets of  Recife,
For whom poetry is reality, reality poetry,
Who does not carry  a  gun,
Who does not prattle about politics or religion,
Whose sign is the  thumbs-up sign of Brazil,
Who puts his  hand on your  shoulder saying
“This is what  we do in Brazil.”
Che? Frank !
No icon he –
Revolutionary hero of the twentieth century”.