Tink Tink Tink Ceremony

 

January 15, 2026

We got to bed early last night (except for a few late night stargazers), so morning was easy. We all went to the garden and were there just after 8am. Some of us got organized on the roof project and others followed Joelma to the riverfront to claim two more damaged canoes that will be incorporated into the garden. Even though we had just gotten started, we broke from our tasks to go to the Tink Tink Tink at 9 to observe the opening ceremony for the new space. 

We were nervous about the unfinished doorframes of the storage areas, but our hosts hung some brightly colored curtains to hide the flaws of the work still in progress. They set up some of the toys and books in the new play space and invited local children between ages 0 and 7 to join in a morning introduction to the space. The kids all got gift bags with mystery presents in them and they were all eager to frolic and play in the new toy area. But first, community leaders and the nurse talked about their excitement over their expanded health facility and introduced us as some of their helpers in making it come to fruition. We all joined in a prayer for the future of the space, the community, the children, and their parents. We were asked to speak so Jesse told them what an honor it has been for us to participate in this project and we wished them good health, happiness, and joy as they use it. 

The plan going forward is for this area to be a bit of a babysitting place when parents are seeking healthcare, but they also have an ongoing contest about who comes and gets checkups regularly (monthly?). Since the DIRTies' first visit here, improving public health offerings has been a top priority for Tonico and the community. The changes that were funded by the government last summer have made a huge difference and our work this week has helped them make even more progress. It is fascinating to have seen a big open space that was underutilized a week ago turn into an important community resource. We are proud to have been a part of it. 

The Tink Tink Tink took on a series of sessions today to introduce the new children’s space to the families and their children. So we were all in the garden and/or chicken coop trying to push the projects there as far as they could go. On the coop, we ran into materials problems, as we ran out of the special roofing nails that we need to complete that job. We hate to consider it, but it might be the case that there were, in fact, the appropriate number of roofing nails, but we struggled so much in hammering them in that we wasted some. We guess this is an understandable result with a group of novice workers, but we would have loved to preserve and conserve the available materials instead of leaving some of them unusable. Oh well. A boat came today that brought more nails. In the meantime, we noticed that the small brick wall surrounding the coop had suffered some damage, so we employed our tink-tinking skills on that area and filled the broken places along the foundation of the coop. We were very proud to have some elementary skills that helped us not only fill our time but also helped us meet a need for the community. 

In the garden, we kept clearing the edges of the main garden area, using machetes and mini-scythes to clear vines and brush all along the fenceline. There was a small internal fence that had collapsed, so we revived it. As for the perimeter fence, it was highly impacted by a lot of invasive growth. Emphasis on “was.” Our strong group, with particular heroics by Guido, just tore into that underbrush and got back to the original footprint of the garden. All along the edge, vines and broken limbs were hanging out over the garden so we endeavored to remove those as well. At one point, Guido, Brendan, and Sofia were working on a particularly stubborn limb wrapped in brush and vines. Practically out of nowhere came Casey, who effected about a 32” vertical leap that allowed him to get a hold of that limb so that he could twist it out of there like it was nothing. It was awesome. And no one had a camera in hand because no one saw it coming. We will all just have to hold this superhuman act in our memories, as it is not documented in any other way. But it was memorable to be sure and whoever saw it will certainly store it for quite a while. 

We created burn piles for all of the brush we were cutting away, which seems very non-Californian but we are not in California anyway, are we? We aren’t sure when the piles will be burned but we hope not to be around for it because we don’t want to add any extra heat to our current environment. In fact, we went away from the worksite and after lunch, almost everyone made a beeline to the river, including some of the local boys who are our friends. We stayed for quite a long time, as the day was a bit cloudy (not entirely) and therefore cooler than the temperatures that we normally face. Our afternoon snack was fresh pineapple and watermelon, which we supplemented with peanut butter and Ritz crackers. 

We could see the boat coming when we were enjoying our snack, so we knew that it was time to mobilize again. The nails arrived as planned, so the roof crew went nuts and finished the tiling of the chicken coop. The need for a crown/cap still remains, but we are definitely not skilled enough to be the ones to install that piece. We also finished the brick and concrete work in the coop and now just have to work on a door and a few gaps in the chicken wire to be ready for new chickens to take up residence. Shawny and Jesse hope to secure the chickens tomorrow. 

We look forward to showing the before and after images of the main garden area, because it is pretty fully transformed. We took out some trees that were not of great value to make room for lots of new desirable plants. Some have already found their way into the canoes but we haven’t planted any new ones in the ground beds yet because they seem to be waiting for the soil to settle (or something like that?). Either way, we were very efficient workers today on all jobs and have made more progress than we expected to make. 

Almost everyone dipped in the river before dinner, which consisted of lasagna and some cheesy rice dish that was quite a surprise. After dinner, we first played a game of “Heads Up, Seven Up,” where players try to guess the identities of the people who touch their hands when their eyes are closed. The team leading the reflection talked about what evidence we sometimes use to make assumptions and how that evidence can often lead us astray. They then opened up a conversation about assumptions we made coming into this trip that have figured into our learning here. People talked about how different they expected the food and culture to be from those that are familiar to us, or about their fears about functioning as a group together. We largely agreed that facing things that appear new with open hearts and minds seems to make it pretty easy to adapt to whatever we might face. 

We then turned to the next inductee into the Order of the Purple Bike: Casey. Casey has earned recognition several times this trip, including when he carried every single bucket of sand related to the concrete production at the Tink Tink Tink himself. He volunteered to do it for his team and they eagerly agreed. We can’t even estimate how many pounds of sand he toted, but each bucket was heavy and he carried lots of buckets. They became concrete/mortar to support the brick walls we helped construct in the children’s area, so his work was central to all parts of the Tink Tink Tink project. Casey is apparently a bit of a caffeine addict in his non-Brazil life, but his norms of caffeine consumption (which involve lots of ice) cannot be met here so he is experiencing withdrawal. He is managing pretty well considering his level of suffering. Casey is somewhat quiet under normal circumstances but he is really coming out of his shell/cocoon here. He is quick to offer affirmations (which we all hope to earn), he is always eager to help, and he makes meaningful contributions when he chooses to speak up. We have already mentioned that he is viewed as some sort of god by the local teenagers (perhaps due to some resemblance to characters in K-Pop Demon Hunters?), so he is getting used to getting lots of attention in that way. All of this, when combined with his superhuman leap in the garden today to bring down that dead limb, made clear that he was the obvious next inductee into the Order of the Purple Bike. Congratulations, Casey! 

    A selfie of Taylor, Gianni, James, Ava, Oscar, and Junio posing after finishing the last of the chicken coop roof tiles.

    A pretty large fire that was part of a controlled burn. Likely to clear space for more housing and farming.

A photo of Gianni, who caught and returned a stray baby chicken that managed to get stuck in one of our garden plots.

A tarantula Thomas found early this morning. The spider was very chill and let us get very close without moving

                    This is a photo of the shoes of the children from the health clinic 

 

Here is the dirt group gathered around the dining room table in the pousada 

        Here is the group’s bathroom area that we use to take care of ourselves hygienically.

Here is Lilly working hard with her hatchet at the viveiro garden work station. 

Here is the group getting some food and water, as they work tremendously hard.