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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”.
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