BRAZIL PART I

I arrived in Rio completely exhausted. After seventeen hours of airports and airplane air, I was left with a stiff neck and very little sleep. When I stepped outside the airport, a breeze of warm air hit me. It carried the scent of salt water, pines, and eucalyptus, mixed with the air coming from the running engines of the yellow taxis lined up in front of the arrivals door. The air wasn’t just warm because of the temperature it instantly felt warm in energy.

People were smiling everywhere, music somewhere in the background and the golden light right after sunrise. It felt a bit magical.

I hopped into an Uber and couldn’t wait to see the city.

When I arrived in Ipanema, I stood there in awe of the long white beach, hearing the waves crash while people played footvolley, a sport I later learned only exists because football was once banned from the beach.

Behind the tall buildings across from the beach there’s just… green.

No small trees, but full-on jungle. Mountains rising behind the city and up there I could see the Christo, arms open, like watching over everything.

It took me a few days to fully arrive.

People kept warning me about the dangers of Rio, but in my experience I felt safe.

I finally started reaching out, sending messages and trying to find the people who might know someone who would like to share their story with me.

Once I finally did, I got to visit a project called As Parteiras.

And that’s where the Brazil journey really began.

Roni and Liliane started this project about ten years ago, not because it was their dream, but because a woman asked for help.

As Parteiras is a small volunteer-run project that supports pregnant women with the most basic things: food, clothes, diapers for their babies.

They don't have an office, no funding and no storage space.

So the donations end up in their own home.

Roni is an Uber driver and Liliane takes care of elderly people. They are not wealthy people.

And yet, in their free time, they organize support for pregnant women from the neighboring favelas, women who often receive little to no governmental support.

They have a small team of volunteers, including psychologists, midwives and doulas which come to help.

Many of the women they support are young. Some pregnancies are the result of sexual violence. Some of these girls are still children themselves.

Abortion here is illegal except in very specific cases. So for many girls, there isn’t really a choice. I sat with them and got to listen to their stories.

One woman told me it was her first day there.

Her husband had left and she had no money, no support, two children and was already 36 weeks pregnant.

That morning she had walked almost two kilometers uphill with her kids, who were five and nine years old, just to hoping that she will receive help from the project.

She told me how depressed she had been.

Before she was pregnant, she said she sometimes had thoughts about ending her life.

But now, with another life growing inside of her, she felt like she couldn’t do that.

She said she didn’t know how she was going to feed her children and I didn’t know what to say.... how do you respond to a story like that? And this was only one of many stories that day. I left that day with a heavy feeling in my stomach. We did nothing to deserve the safety we were born into.

Nothing.

It’s luck. And sometimes that luck was built on other people’s backs.

I just kept thinking that maybe we can do more... we can't change the world overnight.

But we could pay a little more attention to the people around us.

Looking to the right and to the left. Helping where we can.

A few days later I left Rio and continued my journey to São Paulo.

There I had arranged to visit a place I had been very curious about: Casa Angela.

A birth center run by midwives and a place that represents a very different approach to birth in Brazil. Because the role of midwives in Brazil is a little complicated.

Unlike in countries like Germany, where midwifery is a clearly recognized academic profession, the word parteira  for midwife in Brazil is often associated with traditional birth attendants, women who learned through experience and community knowledge rather than through formal university training and are not officaly recognized by the government.

Women who want to work in maternity care usually study nursing first and then specialize to become enfermeiras obstétricas - obstetric nurses.

The training itself is actually quite extensive and, in many ways, similar to midwifery programs in Europe. But socially and institutionally, their role is often different.

Birth in Brazil is still largely dominated by obstetricians and hospitals.

In fact, Brazil has one of the highest cesarean section rates in the world.

So places like Casa Angela represent something important: a space where birth is supported differently, with time, autonomy for women, and a stronger focus on physiological birth.

Casa Angela itself has a long history.

The birth center was inspired by the work of the German midwife Angela Gehrke da Silva, who came to Brazil in the early 1980s. In her twenties she left Germany and joined the Monte Azul Community Association, where she began working with families in the favela Jardim Monte Azul in the south of São Paulo.

At the time many women in the community had little access to respectful maternity care. So Angela simply started helping.

In a small room inside the community clinic she welcomed pregnant women, supported them during birth, and later visited mothers and babies in their homes.

Word spread quickly.

More and more women came, first from the favela, later even from wealthier parts of the city, all looking for something that was rare in the medical system: time, respect, and trust in the natural process of birth.

In 1997 she opened the Casa de Parto Monte Azul, the first birth center in São Paulo.

The center closed two years later, and in 2000 Angela sadly passed away.

But her idea didn’t disappear, her work inspired many people so years later healthcare professionals from her community continued her work.

In 2009 Casa Angela was finally opened, named in her honor.

At first the project relied almost entirely on donations and volunteers. For years the team kept the center running with the support of partners and donors.

When Casa Angela finally became integrated into the Brazilian public health system, it was a major breakthrough.

Standing there, it felt like her vision was still very much alive.

Angela once said:

“The future of humanity lies with children, and the more opportunities we offer them to be born without trauma, with great confidence, the more we contribute to making that future a better one.”