The reality I saw while traveling on a budget
Few people have been as kind and devoted to the Brazilian common people as he is. Toru Sadamori (40, from Chiba Prefecture) is not an immigrant. However, he is an unusual case, having spent 17 years in Brazil since graduating from university. He has lived in the favela of Monte Azul in Sao Paulo, in the state of Ceara, and currently in Manicole in the state of Amazonas, where he is working on a project to improve the lives of residents in remote areas with the support of the JICA Brazil office. We followed the trajectory of Sadamori, who has consistently engaged in volunteer activities to improve the lives of ordinary people.
What prompted him to embark on international volunteer work was the reality of social inequality that he experienced while traveling around Central and South America as a student.
In 1989, when he was a third-year university student, he went on a budget trip from Mexico to Argentina. At a restaurant in Buenos Aires, as Sadamori was eating a T-bone steak, a homeless child approached his table and asked for the bone.
As soon as I handed it over, a store clerk came running over, dragged the child out of the store, and kicked him down the stairs at the entrance.
"Don't even do that to a dog," said Sadamori, stunned and deeply shocked. "Why does this happen?" A reality completely different from that in Japan unfolded before his eyes. "I need to know more about poverty," he thought to himself.
In 1992, he came to Brazil as a trainee of the Japan-Brazil Exchange Association. He was sent to the city of São Bernardo do Campo for about a year. "I wanted to work in a favela for about a year, but that was the end of my luck," he says with a laugh. He helped slum residents lay brick by brick to build their homes. During that time, he met Daisuke Onuki, who was volunteering in Monte Azul on the outskirts of São Paulo, and his life changed dramatically.
In March of the following year, 1993, he returned to Japan after completing his training, but the project he had applied for through the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications' International Volunteer Savings Fund was approved, and he returned to Brazil in July. Since then, he has consistently been involved in social activities in Brazil.
He established a clinic and a nursery school in the favela on the outskirts of the city of Sao Paulo. He launched an awareness campaign about AIDS, at a time when the general public was not fully aware of the dangers and prevention of the disease. In 1997, he also built an AIDS orphanage.
After that, he moved to the state of Ceara, where he spent four years until 2001 as a coordinator for the Brazilian Family Planning Maternal and Child Health Project, which promotes humane childbirth methods. After that, he returned to Sao Paulo and helped set up a nursery school for children of AIDS patients. "It's easier for parents to talk to each other when they're patients." Finally, AIDS treatment drugs were becoming widespread, and changes were occurring, such as a decrease in the number of AIDS orphans compared to before.
In 2001, when the project was over and I happened to return to Japan for a short while, the Japanese NGO I am currently a member of, HANDS, told me about ManiColle. We started a project to raise awareness and provide training to Agente Comunitario de Saude (community health workers), who provide disease prevention and health consultations.
"I'm the only Japanese person within a 200-kilometer radius," Sadamori says with a laugh. The situation here is completely different from other Brazilian towns, such as the state of Sao Paulo, where most towns have people of Japanese descent. There is only one Japanese person here, a Catholic nun who was transferred from the city of Sao Paulo.
In the midst of all this, Sadamori worked alone as a project manager at the HANDS Brazil office, leading four local staff members. Four years ago he married a Brazilian woman from the same town, and the couple were blessed with two children.
*This article was originally published in the Nikkei Shimbun on November 22, 2008 and is reprinted with permission.
*The Nikkei Shimbun ( www.nikkeyshimbun.com.br ) is a Japanese language newspaper published in Sao Paulo City, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, for immigrants, Japanese descendants, and expatriates.
© 2008 Nikkey Shimbun
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