Special Note: We were excited to manage to talk to family members last night but we were BUMMED when the entire internet connection went out regionwide. Not everyone had gotten a call off at that point and some were in the middle of sentences when everything went down. We will try again from a different connection point today, but the timing might be inconvenient, as that other point is available only between about 10:00am and 1:00pm California time. On a positive note, it is likely that we will be able to make actual cell calls from there, but we might need to rely on WhatsApp, as we did last night. If you can download the app, it might help us connect. We have some daytime internet access right now so we are adding some content from long before we are ready to report on our tasks for today . . .
January 12, 2026
We get to celebrate with Marlina on her birthday today! Marlina is a veteran of two DIRT trips in years gone by: this one (Brazilian Amazon) in 2016 and SMC Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) in 2018). After graduation, she took up a career in emergency management and has served in disaster zones all over the world, putting the principles and training of her DIRT days into practice almost constantly. Shawny convinced her to use some vacation time from her current gig to return to the Amazon and we are thrilled that she agreed.
We sang to Mar as she came down the pousada this morning and we enjoyed a lovely breakfast as the overnight rain began to break. The sound of the rain on our thatched roof seemed to contribute to some deep sleep for most of us but the calls of the zoguezogues and howler monkeys helped convince us to stop. Yesterday some of the zoguezogues came right up to our oca to help us get a good look at them, so there will be some pictures of them here. We also tried to catch some audio of their sounds from inside our sleeping space today, but you can't get the feel of how loud they are from these recordings; unfortunately, we missed the howlers entirely so we will try to record them both on a different day. Whenever you hear the zoguezogues, it might seem like the sound you hear is either a mating call or actual mating, but we hear that these are just the sounds they make as they frolic in the trees. The ones right by us yesterday were not making their sounds, so we couldn’t quite test this theory.
We are starting into a new work week with freshly-washed laundry (note that we did not say “clean” laundry; there is an important distinction there). Some of us timed our washing poorly relative to the arrival of the rain, but we added some lines under a covered area that should help things air dry until we get some sun to bake them all the way to crispness. Hopefully we will beat the mildew, but if not, rewashing may be in our future.
Yesterday we ran into another group that came through the pousada for lunch, this one a “return to the forest” group from São Paulo that has done some projects similar to ours in this community and others along this particular part of the Amazon basin. Many of them spoke English so we had some enthusiastic conversations and made quick connections over shared perspectives.
The DIRT group was the first to visit the ecotourism camp in which we are staying when it was built. We have collectively been working with the tourism group here to develop and promote the ecotourism footprint without impinging upon the lives and lifestyles of our hosts, so we are thrilled to see the volume of flow that has returned after the slow days of COVID.
There are some glitches in the system to be sure (like the “nudist Buddhists” who consistently swam naked in the river as part of a rebirth ritual of some kind), but our partners here find that for the most part, visitors are full of awe about the community here and they are grateful for the invitation to visit it. Most are respectful and easy to get along with, and some – like us – make meaningful contributions that our hosts really appreciate. As they tell us stories about the glitchy visits (see above), we talk with them about ways to instruct their guests without seeming inhospitable. This entire enterprise was controversial at the start, but has become much less so as long as visitors don’t cause offense. The proceeds from the tourism enterprise pay the federal (and state?) taxes for all inhabitants of Anã, so the benefit of it is truly felt by every family. And as we have discussed in previous blogs, the resources that are generated by this operation and through government and non-profit grants continues to help in improving the quality (and length!) of the lives of those who live here.
In the first photo, there are three zoguezogues, good luck finding them!
If you can't find all three in the first photo, we got one close up in the second.
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