51¶ÌÊÓƵ

“It was really fascinating and comforting knowing that you could get to know someone and communicate even though you don’t speak their language,� the junior news-editorial major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.

She said she’d never forget the family she met in that distant place, a family doing everything in its power to help one of its children rise from grinding poverty. And she plans to hold closely the realization she gained while visiting some of the poorest people on earth.

“Probably the best lesson we could learn is to not take things for granted and be grateful for everything you have,� Schmidt said. 

A team of 10 UNL students, their professor and his assistant went to Brazil for three weeks over winter break to document poverty as part of an ongoing journalism project.

Since spring 2008, 55 students have visited countries including India, Kosovo, South Africa and Kazakhstan to shoot photos and videos and write stories about wealth disparity.

The Buffett Mangelson Sartore Photojournalism Fund has paid for the six trips the students and their professor, Bruce Thorson, have taken during the past five years.

Thorson said he looks for places that struggle with poverty and where his students can connect with foreign journalism students.

In Brazil, his class worked with students from the University of São Paulo.

“You guys left São Paulo knowing more about the city (and the country, probably) than most Brazilians ever will,� São Paulo student Ana Elisa Pinho recently wrote to Thorson after seeing his students’ photos on an online blog they are maintaining. “Most are forever shut in their houses, afraid of the dark and of everyone around them.

“It’s refreshing to see how much can be known and done when you’re not paralyzed by prejudice and the fear of an omnipresent atmosphere of violence.�

The UNL students photographed and interviewed people in and around the sprawling São Paulo metropolis on the southeastern coast of Brazil. They spoke to descendants of runaway slaves who today make their living harvesting oysters and to surfers who live in the rainforest and dream of better lives.

They chased after destitute Brazilians who earn money riding motorcycles at breakneck speeds and often die while trying to deliver packages in the world’s seventh-largest city (São Paulo has nearly 27 million people).

They interviewed farmers harvesting meager livelihoods from the soil with nothing but their bare hands and a few handheld implements. They slept in shanties constructed of corrugated metal and plywood and washed themselves in makeshift showers after long days spent outdoors in blistering heat and humidity.

They then sat down before laptops to try to make sense of their encounters.

For Kat Buchanan, that meant trying to explain the complicated history and contemporary lives of Brazil’s quilombolas, descendants of runaway slaves. The freshman news-editorial major said few people know that for every slave taken to the United States during the 1700s, a dozen were taken to Brazil, usually to work on sugar cane plantations.

After the country outlawed slavery in 1888, the quilombolas began forming hundreds and eventually thousands of communities across Brazil. Buchanan found one community that earns money harvesting oysters from a shallow creek. Initially, they collected oysters illegally and without regard to the impact of overharvesting, but eventually they changed their practices to better preserve the oyster population.

Today, they’re considered a success story among the larger quilombolas community, Buchanan said. She said she was able to join them on canoes as they harvested the oysters, and she followed them to the restaurants where they sold them.

Despite long days spent in canoes in sweltering, inescapable heat, the oyster harvesters never complained, she said.

“I complain about everything, and I’m here,� she said.