SMC Amazon: The work begins!

Last night we had a great conversation about sustainability and how our thinking about that subject has changed since we've been here. When we were at the beekeeping place, our host told us that there were many people who wanted to claim this riverfront land to plant soybeans. The argument is that the profit that would result from the soy would be more valuable than the various undertakings of the community at present. We disagree, and this conversation helped many of us to really crystallize our thinking about what matters, why it matters, and what criteria should be used to make collective decisions.

And now today it's Sunday so we got up early and part of us went to Catholic mass and those who didn't cooked pancakes for all of us once church was over. Mass was as you'd expect, except that today Shawny was the comic relief. We had all been intently trying to pay attention to what was going on despite the language barrier, and, of course, we could tell when the Lord's Prayer and some of the standard mass content were occurring. But at a certain point (after the homily), the priest was talking about something else and we weren't quite following. One of us had slipped out the back with Dona Odila to use a nearby bathroom and Shawny decided to start making faces at the baby in front of her who was playing peek-a-boo over his mother's shoulder. Suddenly the priest turned everyone's attention to us and at that exact moment, Shawny was actually sticking out her tongue at the baby. We all hissed "Shawny! He's talking to you!" and she jumped up and went to the front, speaking in terrible Portuguese trying to let them all know who we are and what we are doing here. Fortunately while she was up there, Dona Odila returned and Shawny could say "Help me!" in Portuguese to get her up there too. Odila said: "She says 'help me,' but really they are the ones helping us. They have been here five times, and many of the projects that you enjoy in this community are because of our partnership with them." We got a round of applause and lots of hugs.

And then we got to go eat pancakes and get our plan together for today. Jesse skipped church and met with the community leaders and roughed out a schedule for our projects here. He arranged for us to start today, but not until after we made one more big push to get our things organized. That ôca has never been so neat and tidy in all of our visits here. We distributed all of the collective goods that always get lost and/or forgotten in the bottom of some bag and we even found some fairy lights that we lost track of in Tanzania a couple of years ago and strung them along the perimeter of the ôca to make it even more adorable and spectacular than it already was.

And then we got to work on a small introductory project. There is a big retaining wall down by the Catholic Church we attended today and it has crumbled away. At the same time, there is a big pile of rocks that someone brought over from a nearby riverbank that probably was on the shore at one time but now -- due to the high water -- is under water about waist deep. Boats keep getting snagged on the pile so it needed to be moved, but also those rocks can serve as the base of a new retaining wall, but only if they get moved closer to where they need to be.

So guess who moved them? Of course, us. Our friend Zé walked out into the water and dug the pile up out of the sand and then we did a "bucket line" (without buckets) to pass the rocks up the beach and to the top of the old wall. It took us two sessions and two water breaks to realize that there was a way to line ourselves up under the pier so that most of us could be in the shade as we passed the sometimes heavy rocks from person to person. We almost finished the whole pile but had to stop because we had another very important appointment: a "friendly" soccer game.

We play at least four soccer games (two men's, two women's) every year here (sometimes more) and the place goes nuts like it really matters who wins. So we agreed to a "friendly" match today to stir up interest in an eventual real showdown. We were late getting there after our two hours on the chain gang -- that is, bucket line.

When we got there, our only available opponents were about six little boys and about thirty chickens/chicks. We started kicking around with the boys and eventually a whole team of women and a whole team of me arrived. But by then it was too late to play two games (friendly or otherwise), so we decided to play one "mixed" game with both men and women. Their men suddenly evaporated into thin air, so we all played their women's team. Despite rolling a few chickens (our motto: "if you want to play a game of soccer, you have to break a couple of chickens") we did pretty well at taking on their rather organized and well-practiced team. Almost all of us played, so we can all take credit for not embarrassing our country (today anyway). [Special note: no chickens were harmed in the playing of this soccer game, despite their unplanned somersaults.]. The final score was 1-1. We'll take it.

Some of us ran right into the river in our soccer jerseys while the others went and got our inflatable solar lights to help us stay in the water even longer. It was heavenly. The shower lines were a bit long after all of this activity but no one minded. We haven't gotten to our reflection for tonight yet but we are about to do just that. Had a quick opportunity to post this so we decided to do it. Now the signal is about to disappear so we have to sign off and come back tomorrow . . .