Remanso

After playing tourist in Lençòis for the weekend, we traveled further into the Interior of Bahia to do a rural village study. For about a week, my program was folded into the quilombo of Remanso (quilombo means runaway slave community). The community is about 80 families and completely secluded from the outside world, with the exception of occasional trips to Lençòis. Each family that lives in the community has ties back to the original slave founders, and, at this point, a large majority of the community is somehow related. The quilombos in Brazil are all protected by the federal government, and within the past 10 years, the government has started to provide water wells and electricity. 

During our time in Remanso, we got a serious taste for rural living. With no running water, simple tasks like brushing teeth became a larger ordeal. Instead of taking showers, we took buckets (taking bucket showers is actually very fun, I would recommend it), and we became close acquaintances with some very large insects. 

Enjoying our backyard hammock with my friend Nicole

My house 

My host mom in Remanso has 7 children (ranging from ages 22 to 4), and is incredibly strong in all ways. Her husband is currently suffering from throat cancer, and because of the lack of health care in the quilombo, he no longer lives in the house and travels for days every month to receive the care that he needs. This leaves my host mom at home to take care of all of the children on her own, and manage their agricultural business (conveniently located in their backyard) of harvesting aipim (cassava/route vegetable). 

Two of my host siblings (Jackson, 4, and Roberta, 7) with some VERY fresh fish

Throughout our time in the village, we pretty much did everything that our host families did, made art projects with the children in the local school, learned capoeira (kind of like zumba if you replace the dancing element with fighting), took a day long excursion down the river to a beautiful waterfall, and had some course discussions about social determinants of health. 

rowing down the river to the waterfall