Field Work In Matinhos

We spent Sunday in the coastal town of Matinhos doing research in two informal settlements, Vila Progresso and Vila Nova. Vila Nova has been going through the regularization process for some years, while Vila Progresso is about to start. Below are some photos from Vila Progresso.

In Vila Nova my group had a certain area, about 6 blocks, to look for signs of recent improvement (fresh paint on houses for example) and we interviewed 5 households. "We" is a loose term, I certainly didn't do much speaking in Portuguese with the people, besides greeting and asking permission to take photos, as I was the photographer of the group. Since my photos from Vila Nova are all of fences and roofs, I deemed them too boring for the blog, and all the ones below are from Vila Progresso.

Today we went to Universidade Positivo to put all our information in one place, so I downloaded all my photos to the main drive. Thursday we begin working again on the actual meat of the project, Sunday was just data gathering/updating. I'll be mapping socio-economic data in Vila Nova. I might also be helping another student who is working independently but alongside us in updating the geo-spatial data for the areas, using GPS points she took on Sunday to make the GIS maps of the two settlements more accurate.

More to come as we progress!
















My team was looking at environmental aspects of Vila Progresso, such as rivers and virgin forests. Here we are out and about, probably marking the location of some pictures I just took, while another group passes by.





















One of the younger residents. She was very shy and I took this photo blind, holding the camera down inconspicuously. Very lucky to get such a good shot.
















Your standard fence in Vila Progresso, though many have creative security measures like shards of broken glass along the top, and nearly all contain very protective dogs.





















These guys were playing a Brazilian adapted game of cricket in the street. We saw other groups playing soccer of course; I especially liked the one kid playing goalie with his shoes on his hands for protection in place of gloves.




















This would be from inside our bus back to Curitiba, and the lights are the tow truck pulling our butts off the freeway with us inside!!! The clutch blew out going up the mountain and we had to wait nearly 2 hours for another bus to arrive. Quite the day.