Three Jacarandas

January 16, 2026

We’ve gotten good at the morning thing, with no resistance to our early morning wakeup call. It’s surprising since we are all definitely experiencing sleep deprivation, partially because we keep staying up not to miss out on anything. When someone is really feeling it, we have them stay in for half a day and most often they rally from there and are fine. 

We had a sleepy one yesterday and another sleepy one today, but neither had fevers or other symptoms; they were just tired. We are also feeling some mixed anxieties: one set related to our reluctance to leave next week, another set related to wanting every project to get as far as it can possibly get. 

On the coop, we fashioned a door that was much more substantial than the prior one, made with wooden slats. We sealed every hole we could see in the chicken coop, as we intend to have chickens in residence tomorrow. I guess we will find out how well our repairs have gone. The team up there has been 100% committed to taking that project to the next level at every turn. They have great pride in what they have accomplished and rightly so. 

The people who are working the garden are feeling equally committed to their task. They get parts of it organized and cleared, but keep finding more and more to do to make it better. They felled a couple more trees at the request of the garden stewards, always preceded by long conversations about the best direction to drop the tree for the highest possible order of safety. They stripped vines and weeds out of the surviving plants in the garden, and continued to rescue transplantable trees for distribution to the community. We found rows and rows of ipe, which we recognize as a popular wood in the U.S. We found dozens of trees that are native to the area, including the precious and endangered jacaranda. Known more popularly as “Brazilian rosewood,” it is not the kind of jacaranda found in the southern parts of the U.S. Perhaps because of its beauty and strength, it was overharvested in the 20^th century and is now considered an endangered species. No one can cut down a jacaranda without special permission and no one can use the wood from a newly-felled jacaranda for any commercial purpose. The discovery of these jacaranda starts was like finding a buried treasure. Casey dug three holes in the front of the garden, and we collectively planted three jacarandas up there to serve as the entry point for all who visit. We hope they survive and thrive for many, many years. 

We broke for lunch and took an exceptionally long sesta to help everyone catch up on laundry and rest. We considered not returning to the worksite, but then most of us decided to do so. A few opted to stay home and they took care of some jobs that would help all of us. Win win. 

Tomorrow is a big day. We will do our last pushes on the garden and the chicken coop. We hope to move some chickens into their new home. We hope to deliver some sapling trees to new homes. And we will bid farewell to those two primary worksites, having already bid farewell to the Tink Tink Tink (which held a gathering today that was similar to yesterday’s meeting for children and families; this one was for “the elderly” and many of the folks we’ve been passing on the road over these weeks were there). 

As if these events are not enough, we have another big commitment tomorrow: the Brazil v. U.S. soccer match! We look forward to busting out our new uniforms and running around like maniacs on their field as they zoom past us and outscore us massively. There will be a men’s game and a women’s game, but the women’s team will be highly dependent on some of our Brazilian friends to fill our ranks. The men will need a few extra teammates as well, and we are trying to figure out if the young kids that hang out with us all the time can outrun the older adults or if we need some of those older experienced guys to outsmart those young guys. We will figure it out. 

Our reflection tonight focused on the sustainable practices that we have observed or used here that we hope to bring home with us. People talked a lot about efficient use and reuse of materials (including hammering the bends out of nails so they can still be used), about water conservation, about creative use of available items (like the canoes that became planters in the garden or the plastic bottles that become many things here once they are emptied), about accumulating less stuff in general, and about really valuing the people and things that are around you. 

We then moved to the induction of our next member of the Order of the Purple Bike: Taylor. You may never meet a person more even-keeled than Taylor is. He certainly can notice things that are worthy of complaint, but he almost always finds a way to overcome the issue. He has connected individually with everyone here, and everyone appreciates him as a listener and a conversationalist. When someone is down, he is particularly attentive to their needs and finds a way to boost them. He has been a central advisor on video planning and he gets a large portion of the credit for our best shot so far (one where they passed the camera through the kitchen window seamlessly). You have probably noticed his beaming smile in some of the selfies related to pickup soccer and the triumphs of the roofing crew. It is a thrill to watch him love his experiences here, which he clearly does. Here’s hoping these last few days bring lots more joy and more huge smiles. Congratulations, Taylor!