5/30/12 Today we had a relaxing day at the house. We got to play with the kids and soak up some of that Brazilian sun. It has been so fun to spend time with the Cacique's children. Marcos Paulo, the oldest is five years old and full of life. He is charismatic, animated and kind. He always makes a point in telling the women they look nice if they got their hair done or are wearing a nice outfit. He is quite the entertainer, tonight he showed us his dance moves, with his little brother Yuri Mateus.

Yuri Mateus is the definition of a toddler. He, sort of reminds me of Tommy from the "Rugrats" going on all of these adventures that us grown ups don't know about. He is a man on the move, busy playing hide and seek, and giving everybody love. It is crazy to think we will be leaving the Aldeia Santana in a week. I'm really going to miss everyone here. - Erin

5/28/12 Today, Marcia and Lee accompanied Marcos into Pesqueira to buy paint for tomorrow, so the rest of us had a free day to work on some homework. I spent the morning playing with Yuri Mateus; I’m glad that he has really started to warm up to me. We sat outside on the patio and listened to music, danced, took a million pictures, and snuggled in the hammock.

I like to joke that he’s my favorite in the house because we’re on the same language level (which totally isn’t true, because there’s no way I’d be able to pick a favorite… plus I think he knows way more Portuguese than me).

I’m starting to worry about how hard it’s going to be to leave next week now that I’m getting really attached to the people who live here. It’s hard to grasp that we’ve already been here for 10 days… time is going by way too fast. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately about the great opportunities we’ve had during our stay here.

We’ve been living with this family for almost two weeks and they have graciously shared their lives with us in the meantime. Playing with the children just seems so natural, even if we can’t communicate via words, and it has become a nightly routine to play in the living room after dinner until bedtime. It feels like we’re starting to become a part of this family, which is going to make leaving all the more difficult.

-Shayla

On Saturday, May 26th the Cacique brought us to a very sacred site to his people. Apart from being honored at the fact that we were in a place that many Xukuru don’t even get to go to, I was amazed by the simplicity of the site and how close to nature it all was. The first stop on our journey to the site was at a small, simple hut built out of sticks and palm fronds and we stopped there for a while before climbing to the top of mountain to the main site. As soon as I saw the altar at the top of the mountain, my breath was taken away from me. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to encounter up there, but it definitely was not this. It was a simple, plain altar built out of the same rock that covered the mountainside making it indistinguishable from a distance. There was absolutely nothing spectacular about it in a architectural or decorative sense, but in a spiritual way, it was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen in my life. Although I have toured and performed in some of the great Cathedrals of Europe, this simple site was more magnificent than even the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I think that this is because we build our churches and cathedrals out of wood and stone which are often not native to the area, and we decorate them with stained glass, tapestries, and other adornments. Overall, it seems that we are trying so hard to impress someone, while this small stone altar was more spectacular than all of these because of its simplicity, and because it seemed to have come from the earth itself and the only decorations were simple white candles and the pink flowers that we picked on our climb. This was truly a sacred place and no words can completely describe the feelings of awe, inspiration, and something utterly spiritual that I felt at this place. It reminds me that spirituality does not have to be a show that only takes place in a church, but it can be something that can be felt in the simplest places. - Beth

5/29/12 Today we went to a small village to paint part of a school. We all hopped into Cacique Marcos's truck, and started our journey to the village. Many of the roads in the Xukuru territory are not paved, to say they are bumpy is an understatement. If the roads seem hard to travel on now, they are almost impossible to travel on when there have been heavy storms. When we made it to the school, we all hoped out of the truck and got the paint ready. Like magic men appeared to help paint. The day started out cold, but the sun soon appeared. I have been recovering from a cold that has been going around, so needed to take a break from painting and sit down. As, soon as I sat down, I was followed by little girls.

The girls were very fascinated by me, and also fascinated by the fact that I could not speak Portuguese. As we made are way to the pack of the school, we were greeted by a couple Xukuru women, who wanted to show off their lace work. The lace work that the Xukuru women do is beautiful, intricate and time consuming. The women take a great but humble pride in their work. When we went back into the school, we were given a chicken soup. There we sat, with one of the little girls who had been following me around, like a shadow happy to be getting attention. The other people in our group continued to paint as several children came out to see these Americans painting. Some of the children picked up brushes and started to help paint. Meanwhile, I was feeling very dizzy and ill, one of the teachers noticed and asked if I would like to lie down. I followed her to her house that was behind the school. Their was something about her energy, her kindness, that made me instantly feel at ease, and trust her. She, then brought me to a room to lie down and took a blanket and covered me up. I was in and out of sleep, and could hear people talking. A strange thing happened as I drifted in and out of sleep; I was able to understand some of what was being said. I could not see anybody, to distinguish body movements, and I could not tell you what the words meant, but I could loosely follow the conversation. This has happened a few other times, when Marcos was telling a story, and when we were sitting in on a classroom lecture. Although this time was different because I was not able to see the people who were talking. After I woke up, I walked down to where the rest of our group was. Everyone, was chatting and some women came with several pieces of lacework, and would walk to and from their homes to show off their work. After about an hour, we loaded in the truck and drove for awhile, than stoped at another leader's home. Their was something very calming and relaxing about this home. The couple that lived there were kind and sat and talked to us, they had a relaxed energy about them, like we had known them for years. The women even said she feels like she has known us for a long time. She is a teacher at one of the schools we had toured last Friday. She had worked very hard to get her degree and proudly displayed graduation photos in her living room. Like every Xukuru home we have been in we were offered food. She had prepared a sort of Guava pudding, fresh orange juice, and homemade coffee. When, we were preparing to leave, we all knew that we wanted to come back and see this family again. Today, I am filled with happiness in how kind and genuine the Xukuru people are. Erin Previous Item Next Item

On Tuesday, May 29th we went to Pao de Acuca to paint the wall surrounding the elementary school there. In December of 2011, Global Citizen's Network came to stay with the Xukuru and part of the service work they did was to move the school wall closer to the school itself in order to create space for parking and other activities in front of the school. We left the house at 7:30 and arrived around 8:00 in the morning. Cacique Marcos has arranged for community members to meet us and together we began to get all our paint materials together and ready to use. Two men from the community mixed the bright yellow paint, which Cacique Marcos selected a few days before, with water to expand the quantity of paint and to thin it out. We used paint rollers, paint trays, and a large brush to get into corners and to paint the lowest part of the wall nearest to the ground. The wall had been painted with white primer and was approximately 10 feet tall, and at its tallest points extended to approximately 15 to 18 feet where it connected to the school building's tiled roof.

Painting time to complete the wall was approximately 4 hours. We were provided with a great chicken and noodle soup as a before lunch snack around 10:30 in the morning, and at 12:30 we were taken to a local bar/restaurant to eat a feast made by the owner. The lunch included several kinds of meat, rice, beans, salads, vegetables, fruits, soft drinks and water. My students will provide details about how much food we were given and how much we enjoyed being with the community. After lunch, the women who make exquisitely intricate and beautiful lace, learned from Portuguese colonial women, arrived to show my students their work and to demonstrate how the lace is made. I've included a photo of a dress being made by a Xukuru lace makers.

The wall looks great, the color is vivid, and as we were leaving via the dirt road that wound through the low mountains we could see the bright yellow wall of the school for some distance. One of the most enjoyable and self-reflexive aspects of doing anthropological field work are the friendships made while in the field. Friendships are not a superficial experience, but are based on being open and ready to see yourself and others in new ways. As humans, we are extraordinarily primed for socialization through our evolutionary past, and we have developed the capacity to intuitively know each other in ways that surpass our cultural prejudices. Working with new experiences, opening up to new ways of being, challenging yourself to go beyond what you "know" and being willing to grasp what often appears as strange and at times frightening is what allows us to receive in some measure the world views of others. One of the best ways to achieve this is to work along side the people you are living with, and through this exchange of daily living in all its complexity, while challenging and stressful, is also what generates new insights that can lead to deeper understandings of the ways in which humans construct their sense of self and their world views; what we call culture.

5/27/12 Today, I learned a big lesson in cultural differences and how our actions (or lack thereof) can be perceived by others. Because of the language barrier we share with our host family, we need to try to be extra careful to not put on any kind of facial expression or emit body language that could possibly be misconstrued due to the lack of dialogue that accompanies it. There are so many things I am trying to get used to when it comes to being here, and at times I have found myself forgetting that there are cultural differences at play here and that it’s too easy to get complacent. For example, the family here gets up super early, even on the weekends. Nobody sleeps in, whereas I didn’t get up today until 9, and didn’t emerge from my room until 10:30 or so. Later, I learned that Dona Helena had gone through all the trouble of making breakfast for us, and eventually put it away because nobody was there to eat it. Upon hearing this, I felt devastated. She works so incredibly hard to make sure that everybody is taken care of in every way possible; from what I’ve seen, she hardly ever sits down to take a break for herself, she is the first one up in the morning and one of the last people to go to bed, and she is constantly making sure that nobody has want or need for anything. When I had a stomachache, she boiled me a pot of special tea to make me feel better. Whenever she prepares a snack for herself, she always brings it out to share. It’s little things like that that make her so special; she always puts the needs of others before herself. The last thing I want for her is to feel like we are taking advantage of her, and I want her to know that I appreciate everything she does. Another example would be our obsession with technology and the kind of presence we emit while we’re fixated on it. We used our “free day” to catch up on homework, get news from back home, Skype, etc., not really realizing what kind of message it sends when we’re glued to our computers. I think while we are here, we’re partly using them as a way to feel a familiar connection; as badly as we want to talk to the family here – converse with them, take part in the dialogue, stories, laughter, etc. – we just can’t because we can’t follow along… and it is FRUSTRATING! So on the flip-side, our lack of involvement can be misconstrued as a lack of interest. We need to learn how to find that delicate medium so we can make sure there’s no ambiguity in our actions. -Shayla

5/28/12 "Life is beautiful, but it can also be difficult, and its full of flowers, but it can also have thorns.." Cacique Marcos The Cacique drove four hours to Recife, for a two hour meeting and four hours back today. Every time he leaves the Xukuru territory he has to have police escorts for his own protection due to assassination attempts, so a non-uniformed officer had to travel with him. When he came home, he made a point to shake hands and greet everyone in the house. Even though he is busy and had a long day, he took time to sit and talk to all of us, like he has done before. Tonight, he talked about how important it is to spread the word about the Xukuru people, and all ingenious people in Brazil. They have a long history of being marginalized, and are often overlooked and cast aside. The Cacique became chief at the age of 21, and he believes that youth have p0wer to mobilize there community.

This can be seen in all aspects of Xukuru culture, they really believe in putting the power of change into the hands of the youth. The Xukuru put great importance and pride into education. They have created a curriculum that teaches about Xukuru values as well as empowerment and love for family, community, and nature. The Cacique is not just an idle leader who pushes papers behind a desk, he is available for people, no matter how large or small their problem is. An important lesson to learn from the Cacique is about being present in everything you do in life, doing everything 100%. If you truly believe in something and are passionate about it, that passion will not go unnoticed.......... I have been taking all of this in like a sponge, earlier this year I was accepted into combined degree program for counseling with an emphasis in rehab. I have always been interested in helping people with disabilities. I grew up going into my mothers special education classrooms, on my days off of school and playing with the children she worked with. As a middle school-er I spent my summer volunteering anywhere that would let me volunteer. In high school, I volunteered in special education classroom, joined anti racism organization and went to workshops. I was never the best athlete, or musician, or dance, but I was always an activist. After, I graduated from high school, I got a full time job at a group home for people with disabilities. I loved the clients, I worked with but knew I needed more education. After journeying through some difficulties, and getting pricked by the thrones of live, I found my way to the University of North Dakota. Where, I have been given wonderful opportunities, like this field school. I have been able to meet wonderful people, hear amazing stores, and see beauty that I have never seen before. This trip, this opportunity has been like a flower, thats helping me see the world in a different way.

Erin