Work Hard, Play Hard

[Special Note: Still trying to get small versions of the videos to load. It’s happening, just slowly.  Keep scrolling back to see what’s there. Everything we have up to 1/21 is posted in some form now.  New videos from 1/22 on will post tomorrow or after.]

Beach parties are beautiful no matter what, but it’s particularly lovely when a patch of beach that is very familiar becomes a lighted zone with a food table, a cake table, a woven palha Happy Birthday sign (in English!), a cooler full of fresh water and juice, and a grill for roasting a whole pig.  In one of the trees where we sometimes hang our towels and flashlights for evening swims, there were bottles hanging on strings filled with water and blooms from all of the plants around the camp.  They had even stretched wires from pole to pole to get electric lights to illuminate everything.  And, of course, there was a sound system so that Junio could perform little comedy routines in English and different folks could deliver short speeches when there wasn’t music playing.  

We got enormous expressions of gratitude from various community leaders and Jesse gave an overview of the relationship between DIRT and Anã that had people from the community shouting out other anecdotes to add to the ones that he was recounting.  They talked about the impact of the DIRT projects on their lives, their excitement that we have returned, and their hope that we will be back.  No doubt we will.  

We danced a little and talked a little and ate a lot, then headed back up to get a good night’s sleep before our last push in the garden to get up a new fence for the living pharmacy and as much of the roof as we can get done.  We are having to use natural resources to compensate for the fact that we don’t have all of the materials we need and we don’t have a hardware store to help us solve our problems.  We are using the fibers from a reed-like plant to tie things off, so you might see pictures or videos of us softening the fibers by scraping them on posts to make them easier to curve and tie.  

The fence for the living pharmacy is definitely needed, as the neighbor’s chickens have gotten very accustomed to using the garden in general as their main feeding ground.  We don’t want the precious starts that we collected to become chicken feed in the next week. 

This afternoon we are invited to join the community in its trek to another nearby community, Vila Franca, to watch a penalty kick competition and then join in a party.  There will be live music and lots of dancing.  The locals are all really excited about this day of relaxation, so we are ready to get in the spirit.  

Our medicine is helping us all to recover (we have three more people on it now, so our patients are Scott, Katie, Jaron, Boo, Lauren Soares, and Mylan, with Megan considering joining them today).  Boo has been through a whole course of meds and it perhaps more pumped up than she was before this all began.  The others are all mobile and happy, just a little busier in the bathroom than they would like to be.  We suspect our bathroom needs are going to be burdensome in our trip to Vila Franca today but we will figure it out, as we do most things.  

We’ll tell you tomorrow how our excursion works out.  We’ll also give a report of the REAL (no longer “friendly”) soccer games.  We bought a big trophy in the city and have every expectation that it will rightly remain here in the community after our games are over. We might as well wave white flags right as the games begin, as surrender is probably our best option.  We’ll give it a try no matter what, and our Brazilian friends who will play with us will maybe save us from utter humiliation.  We’ll see!

Romario holding a beautiful neon butterfly.

View from our boat on our way to Villa Franca to enjoy a festa. We got to watch Scott and Max join in on their penalty kick tournament. (they lost…)

The hulk (aka Boo) holding a tree above her head. It was cleared to allow space for a new fence.

Little pathways in Anã.

 Scott and Shawny working together to build the new fence for the living pharmacy. 

Katie, Lauren Smith, and Mylan being excited on the boat ride to the festa… then there’s Scott. 

We kept calling this walk to the festa “The Tunnel of Trees” – no matter what the name is, we know that Vila Franca was an absolutely beautiful community. 

A moment in time at Vila Franca’s festa, which is a neighboring town throwing a penalty kick contest alongside dancing and live music. 

 Mylan found a great dance partner! 

 Max and Scott courageously entered the penalty kick contest – here you can see Max shooting the ball. They did great (even though they got kicked out the first round)!