"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."  ― Henry Miller


Rio de Janeiro's massive favela, "Rocinha" cascades over the "Two Brothers" mountain.  Image credit: Joshua Fouts

Six months after my transformative Invoking the Pause experience in the heart of the Amazon, I have returned to Brazil for the first time. The purpose of this brief journey is an invitation speak to two of Brazil's largest universities, Rio de Janeiro's UFRJ and São Paulo's Universidade de São Paulo (USP).  USP is widely recognized both globally and nationally as one the top universities in the world.  Both universities are keenly interested in promoting and empowering science education among youth.

I have been invited to speak about the work of Science House Foundation and our Invoking the Pause discoveries in Acre in the far western corner of Brazil's Amazon jungle.  The Brazilians I speak to are almost more amazed to meet someone who has ventured to a part of their country most readily admit they would never dare to visit than they are to meet an American who speaks their language.  Brazil's state of Acre in the minds of many Brazilians is their own Conradian "Heart of Darkness".  Acre is Wild West of danger, disease, drug cartels and illegal timber harvests.  Add to that the dramatic news stories of devastating effect of climate change on the region and you have a bulwark of deterrents to make an already remote part of their country even less desirable.
These stories are all true.  The Ashaninka People with whom our group lived are on the frontlines of climate change. The water level in the river they depend on for food and transportation is at precariously low levels. What once carried large barges now can barely accommodate shallow skiffs.

My first presentation at UFRJ was to a group called "Ciência para Hoje" ("Science for Today") a Brazilian non-profit that publishes a print magazine by the same name, which is distributed to thousands of schools nationwide, thanks to a grant from the Roberto Marinho Foundation, a foundation created by the founder of Globo-TV, Brazil's largest television network. Their goal is to make science education accessible to kids and teachers.

We are invited to meet with the editors of the magazine who show us the stacks of hand-written letters they still receive from children around the country. Despite the widespread penetration of Internet across the country, with Internet even in Brazil's favelas, there is still a significant poor population that does not have access to the Internet. Mailing letters via the Brazilian postal service is still meaningful.

My colleague and collaborator on this journey is Erica Paiva, a Brazilian artist-educator, and researcher of languages and philosophy, with a focus on innovation in learning, whose articles and research at FASM, the department of artistic and contemporary languages can be found on her blog. She works as a creative director and design thinker on projects that spark perception, creativity and social transformation. She explained some of the nuances in the evolution of Brazilian culture during the meetings and speeches.

“Energy is Money”

As Erica and I sat parked in São Paulo’s dense traffic congestion on our way to the USP, lines of motorcycles wound like a thick, greasy rope through the narrow gap between the cars making it impossible for any car to change lanes. Erica gestured from behind the steering wheel to the lines cars in front of us:

“Many of these cars are people who have moved from the interior of the country to the city in hopes of finding work. They buy a car and move here, when they could possibly be gainfully employed elsewhere. Once they add their car to the traffic, they enter into the losing game against time that is life in São Paulo. People earn more money in large urban centers, but lose vital energy disproportionately.

“Moreover, they don’t understand that they are losing energy disproportionate to their earnings. Because of stress, horrible conditions due to the overpopulation of people and from the daily routine that is the battle for day-to-day survival in their commute between home and work.

“This is essentially a problem of modernity, that started with the creation of urban centers, which reached extremes at the end of the last century with overpopulation. People lose time, peace and quiet, personal space, and, now, vital energy.”

A City of Knowledge

At USP I am guest of Prof. Gilson Schwartz of USP’s Department of Cinema, Radio and TV. Gilson is the former Chief Economist of the Bank of Boston, filmmaker, entrepreneur and head of Latin America’s Games for Change, which seeks to design games for social good. I first met Gilson after I ran a worldwide contest in 2005 to encourage aspiring game designers to design games for social good. Gilson also runs a research project at USP “Cidade do Conhecimento,” (City of Knowledge) which utilizes digital networks to explore new definitions of city, storytelling and community, as well as an effort called Iconomia, which works to streamline access to commerce for the very poor of Brazil.

As I describe the work of Science House Foundation and our MicroGlobalScope program, which is combining storytelling with science education to create literacy, we discuss the role of Game Design in science education and the importance of storytelling as a component in the success of all of these projects.

Gilson tells us about an alternative form of currency he has been championinng to help the poorest of Brazil safely participate in the economy.

We discuss Gilson’s long-term goals, in an around economic innovation. Interestingly, the concepts all come back to the importance of incorporating storytelling into everything. “Cinema isn’t just making films anymore, he says. It’s changing the world.”

Blue sky peaks out between buildings and congestion in São Paulo. Image credit: Joshua Fouts

Transforming São Paulo

On the drive back through the towering corridors of São Paulo’s skyscrapers, throngs of people and cars stacked end-to-end like fallen dominoes, Erica continues her observation. “In Brazil, the fluidity of the financial situation of the country, has revealed new challenges to the urban structure of cities of economic importance, and the role of their leadership in innovation, especially in historic magnet cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.”

The challenge, she said, is to decentralize services and decentralize the work centers. “This is possible with the increased ubiquity of Internet technology and a greater number of people working from home offices. The development of urban transportation, however, has matched the growth of the population of consumers.”

What we need, she says, is “A survey by educators working of awaken the conscience of people to transform their habits and customs to new ways to enjoy the weather, and urban space, with creativity. Building new spaces of urbanity in remote and isolated regions in an effort relieve the center of the capital.

Contrary to what many might think about Brazil’s poorest, Erica says “There is a lot of creativity and urbanity in communities and among Brazil’s poorest people. These people have developed a group consciousness, their own ethics, and simple way of living with scarce resources.

“Students from universities and wealthy upper classes are approaching communities and developing friendship with slum dwellers. These are projects of art and creativity, improving urban conditions, and especially understanding the value ​​of humility, community and living simply. To redeem the historical values ​​and ancestries of the country.”

But the losing challenge against time means that the creative classes have to find a new way to be productive.

“Mass transit and subways in São Paulo have not been able to keep up with the population growth,” Erica told me. “Time and our relationship with time is changing. What people need to make a difference and overcome these challenges is the energy to transform themselves.”

Five Types of Time

Back in New York City I am invited to meet Tuwe Huni Kuin a chief of the Huni Kuin people from the Amazon.  Pamela Kraft, the creator of Tribal Link, an NGO that connects indigenous peoples around the world, has invited me to meet Tuwe and share our Invoking the Pause stories.

I learn that Tuwe lives just five kilometers from the Ashaninka people. He was born and raised in the world that Invoking the Pause took me to. Tuwe is in New York City on a fellowship to learn English and filmmaking. He desperately wants to develop the skills to produce films to tell the story of the “Isolados.” Isolados are humans who live in the Amazon completely isolated from technology and other human contact. They are often small groups of people that may or may not have been part of other tribes. But they refuse to interact with other humans. As a result, they have no representatives. Tuwe describes how the combination of illegal timber harvesting, climate change, and drug trafficking has dramatically reduced the territory of the Isolados and has forced them to move closer to the land of the Huni Kuin people. He would like to use film to be their de facto storytellers.

Brazilian journalist Elaine Paiva (sister of Erica Paiva) interviews Tuwe Huni Kuin. Image credit: Joshua Fouts


After I tell the story of my Invoking the Pause quest into the Amazon, Tuwe tells the audience how the indigenous people see the earth as having five time periods.

• Tempo Maloka -  Time of the Malokas. Malokas are the thatched huts the indigenous peoples live in. The Time of the Malokas is the time before colonization in which people lived in their own villages.
• Tempo da Correria - Time of fleeing. This is the time when they ran from the Portuguese colonists.
• Tempo da Cativeiro - Time of capture in which they became slaves to the people and the government.
• Tempo da Direitos - Time of rights in which they received their own territories recognized by the government.
• Tempo Nosso - “Our time” in which the indigenous peoples can advocate for themselves.

Just as the Ashaninka people, after our Invoking the Pause visit, agreed to study science to protect their knowledge of indigenous plants and to help defend themselves against the devastation of climate change by advocating for themselves, the Huni Kuin are also working to do the same through film.

New paths and more Kairos

“Lives are shaped by chance encounters and by discovering things that we don’t know that we don’t know. The arc of a life is a circuitous one. … In the grand scheme of things, everything we do is an experiment, the outcome of which is unknown. You never know when a typical life will be anything but, and you won’t know if you are rewriting history, or rewriting the future, until the writing is complete.” -- Glenn Gould

My trip to Brazil comes on the heels of an invited speech at the US State Department where I gave a similar speech to a group of science diplomats. The diplomats who regularly work on topics ranging from climate change to communicating science, instantly grokked the importance of collaborative science education and our Invoking the Pause project. They offered to collaborate with us to help expand our reach.

I look forward to sharing these stories with you as they evolve.

About the author
Joshua Fouts is an anthropologist, photographer and writer whose work chronicles the cultural intersections of science, technology and art. He is the creator of “Points of Science,” a global initiative to make science education accessible to all, and executive director of Science House Foundation, an international New York City-based NGO that seeks to spark the imaginations of
kids worldwide to the excitement of science and cultural collaboration. You can follow Joshua on Twitter @josholalia.