The charming village of Remanso

I was actually very pleasantly surprised with my time in Remanso. We were told this village was very rural, housing all of 300 people. I had a rural homestay in Tanzania the previous summer, so for me, I have a conception in my mind of what very rural is. I realize now that this was perhaps a slight overstatement on their part.

Remanso was rural, don't get me wrong. The roads weren't paved, one had to take an hour drive to get into the local town, which had needed supplies. Remanso also had a total population of about 300 which is about 10 times smaller than my highschool. With barbed wire wooden fences and cows in pastures, Remanso did qualify as rural. However, it was not incredibly rural. That was immediately apparent upon walking into the homestay. The floors were tiled, the tv was on, the plumbing was functioning, basically pure luxury right? The family showed us all these fruit trees in the back, and Sarah (the girl I was sharing the house with) and I spent the afternoon just eating fruit and watching/playing with the kids. The local children were absolutely awesome, and might have been bitten by a radioactive spider because they were kind of superhuman, performing feats of agility that were perhaps beyond me. There were four children at the homestay Patricke, Hyesa, Hyla, and Vittor I may or may not have played copious hours of dominos and I may or may not have taught them a little MMA.

brazinho and francisco, showing us around

a beautiful day, but perhaps on the hot side

On the first day, we went with Brazinho, or ze, nicknamed so because one arm was smaller than the other (Brazil is really open about that kind of thing, they call it as they see it). He went around and demonstrated all the different medicinal plants in the village, showing an incredible variety of cures and plants. We were on our way to some of the final ingredients and we were passing by the river when suddenly we noticed the appearance of simply gargantuan mosquitos, larger than most flies, these bloodsuckers attacked. We armed ourselves with branches and played a bit of moquito baseball, swatting this way and that. On the way back, presented with the option of running or slowly walking through an unwilling blood donation, I chose the former and ran until I escaped the clouds of mosquitos. When we were collecting the final ingredient, a series of bees flew at one of the girls in my group named Arissa, and she shrieked, running and swatting at all the bees. The brazilians in our group burst out laughing. I spent the rest of the day playing dominoes with the kids and eating a delicious dinner.

This is me trying to help the old woman with making farinha. We made a quick stop, and they asked if I wanted to particpate...here is my answer.

They actually had cotton here too

This was an almond tree full of butterflies

Breakfast was absolutely amazing! It was a spread unlike anything I had seen in Brazil. There was everything from beignets to juice to eggs to coconut delights to tapioca pancakes, to caramelized bananas, and the exciting thing was that this was just the surface. By far, the best breakfast I have had in Brazil.


Our group went to a neighboring village, and talked to the leaders about the situation in their village. They endure a terrible drought, and they have been working to survive. Assembling us in a circle, a type of indigenous dance commenced and we listened to a traditional midwife tell about faith based healing.
We got the chance to participate in a cultural activity in the afternoon, and I was assigned to the dende oil group. We got an in depth and on hand approach to how one makes dende oil as described below.

first we mashed up the seeds

We used water to leech out the oil

And then separated the seeds from the pulp

We squeezed out the pulp and got oil out, and the oil created a thick layer on the top. After several rounds of this, we skimmed the oil off, boiled it, and while we had to leave, eventually the woman continued to refine the dende oil.

In the evening we played with the kids, endless games of tags, lifting them, and soccer. Sadly, my soccer skills are rather lacking, and some of the 14 year olds already had better foot skills than me. I was the champ of lifting 5 year olds over my head though.

The next day, we went rowing. It had been a while for me. I did crew in highschool, so once upon a time I would have been prepared, but my calluses have long since waned away, leaving baby hands ripe for the butchering. I paired up with the people behind me, the guide, one girl, Sarah, and Elder, one of the people associated with the program. Francisco, one of the leaders of the program and an interesting  middle/old aged man, introduced the idea of the race, how the boats were racing on the way back. One of the boats had 4 men, so the parent in charge declared that he would win the race for sure this time. 

We set off, and the area was really cool; I really felt like an adventurer because I was at the front of the boat and I had to literally push branches and lilies out of the way. We passed everything from jungles to mountains to mini lakes, and I really got into the rhythm of the rowing, explaining the relative paucity of photos.

The group---we're on a boat!!

intersection of different types of environments

The water was reflecting the clouds

We eventually stopped, and got murdered by mosquitos yet again. We had a picnic, hang out on a mild waterfall, and did some quick sunbathing before going on the way back.

And this is patricke, during the break

We continued rowing hard to beat Francisco, and eventually we did, coming back first and very tired. Hyesa, the girl, was napping hard core on the way back. There was only one point where I was slightly worried because our boat got stuck on a log, but eventually we managed to push it off. We came back first though, a fact that the guide and the rest of us were kinda proud of.

In the night, I went on a bit of a run. It was probably one of the most memorable runs I have been on.

It started out fairly average. Armed with a headlamp and a bottle of water, I set out at about 10 pm My friiends on SIT looked at me in askance, but I ran on by. Eventually, the lighted area started to dwindle, and I ran down some twists and turns, trying to mark where I was. I enjoy night runs in general. I enjoy the cool air, the mysterious shapes, the general sensation of a night run. I do not enjoy rabid dogs on my night run. I especially don't like it when the dogs look like this:

                             The dogs reminded me of this (whitewalkers from game of thrones) because their eyes were illuminated by my headlamp, and they were literally glowing blue in the dark. So picture floating, glowing blue eyes and then have that attached to a set of jaws that are barking and rather menacing.

I stopped as soon as I reached the dogs, because the worst thing to do is to antagonize them by just running past them (unless you can outrun them, in which case that is better). However, they were already in the path, so I edged by slowly and cautiously. I continued, and guess what? Not only was there another house with a yard full of whitewalker dogs, there was another one after that, and I proceeded in the same cautious fashion. Probably the worst thing about this was that I knew I had to return by the same path.

I ran without event for another 10 minutes when I heard a gigantic NNEEEIGGHHH, and looked to see a giant horse with glowing blue eyes. There were several other horses that began Neighing as well, and I just wondered "Is this really my life?". \

I continued on, and saw two pairs of glowing blue eyes, and at this point I mentally queried, "animal, human or other?" It turned out to be the first category, two horses casually trotting down a path at 11pm with no one guiding them. I kept running, looking past at them as I went, and followed the path for another 10 minutes before I turned around. On my way back, as I was casually running, lost in thought, something dark jumped out on the path, giving another gigantic  NNEEEIGGHHH. It stared at me with its glowing blue eyes and then started to chase me, running after me. It was a good incentive to run faster, and ultimately the horse behind me lost interest.  After repeating the process on the way back, I got to tell a rather animated story to my host family.

The next morning, we had a group art project, focusing on positive attitude in regards towards trash. Here is the picture that my group made. We clearly had some artists in our group.

And here is me hanging out with Vittor. While I may not have portrayed it here, I really spent quite a bit of time with the kids, and overall it was awesome to hang out with kids and just play, in a really lighthearted and genuinely fun manner. It was really hard to say goodbye.

General reflections: It was an awesome time, I felt like my time was well used between the things I talked about like the rowing to things that I didn't like a capoeira lesson, a xarope lesson, story time and others, it was a great time. I felt like they really accepted us into the community, that we were a part of the community, and even though they might have less money than the United States on average, that does not make their way of life any less valid.