I have been over 2 months in Brazil.

Fight Poverty Team" de Quijingue

It has now been over 2 ½ months that I have been in Brazil. The experiences that I have had have been many, varied, and always interesting. Since I have already written fairly extensively about the travel period in a former report, I will only address it briefly here.
The travel period was one month of travel. We got around mostly with a combi driven by our team leader Marcela. We visited many sites within the East, Northeast of Brazil. In addition to major cities such as Brasilia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador, we also visited some quieter and more natural environments such as
Chapada Diamantina, Vale do Jequitononha, a farm in Tucano and the historical city of Ouro Preto. It was quite the adventure always on the move sleeping somewhere different several times a week, but it was
an incredible learning experience and well worth it.

In the beginning of February we arrived a tour Project Headquarters in Quijingue - Humana Povo Para Povo. Here the time divided to 3 different projects – 2 to Cansancao, 1 to Tabua, and 3 to Lagoa da Barra (including me). Due to the transition of the last team of poverty fighters leaving towards the middle of the month our move to Lagoa da Barra was delayed until they left because we were to use all the same resources that they were still using (refrigerator, beds, stove, cooking materials, etc...) So we ended up living in Quijingue for about 10 days or so before moving into our community. This time was valuable however as it acquainted us better with the people at Humana and gave us some time in one place to decompress after the long month of
constant travel.We have now been living in Lagoa da Barra (our community) for over a month and have become settled and familiar with the rhythm of life there.

The day starts early for this community – it is not uncommon to wake up at 6 in the morning and hear music playing loudly from some neighbor´s house as well as the sound of many voices and business as
usual. It is also not uncommon to hear music coming from a neighbor´s house until fairly late in the night (usually the same 5 songs on constant repeat!!!), but although these things take some getting used to they
are not as invasive as they may sound – just a different way of life.
To travel to and from the community we go by bus, motorbike, and on occasion by car. But the busses in this region are hardly the ones we may be familiar with in developed cities. I´m talking about the type of bus where you can fill it with 10 kilo packs of rice, wheelbarrows, unlimited numbers of people and many other things you would never
see on a bus where I come from such as long metal poles dragging from the back of the bus over 25 km of very unsteady terrain! While all this is a bit shocking on some level it is not very difficult to adapt to because the people have a very strong sense of helping each other and generally a friendly spirit.

It is also fun to ride on the back of a motorbike through the mountains of Bahia for long distances If not a bit tiring and scary at times!
In the beginning children and even adults would just show up at our back window and catch us off guard at any time of the day so eventually we had to set some rules about entering only through the
front door which took some effort and once or twice some yelling at children which was upsetting to me, but perhaps necessary. But instituting this rule hás not hurt our relationship with anyone, even one boy who I was particularly strict with one time is today one of my most reliable and helpful amigos there.
In our backyard we have various animals and other visitors. We have chickens, a rooster, a black and a white rabbit, large and small frogs, dogs and cats, and even the occassional donkey! In the house we have many creatures as well: grasshoppers, large cockroaches (not tôo many fortunately), lots of large beetles, flies, lizards, bats (a few times a
week), birds, some mosquitos, and other things whose names I am not familiar with.