Fio Dental - Chapter 14: Paraíba

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“Rich, Maria Rita called.” Luciana interrupted my zoning out session on the hammock chair in their living room. “She is taking a three-day trip into Paraíba’s interior to establish contacts for state tourism. I told her this might be of interest to you. She has invited you to go along. Would you like to acc-”
“Yes! When do we leave?” I already had made up my mind right after the “three-day trip” part. It mattered not to me what this woman’s age, appearance, job, zodiac sign, or vaccination record was. Now six days in João Pessoa, my feet have been itching to move on. The second half of my time in Brazil underway, I feel a sense of urgency to move on to other destinations. While I cannot register so much as a single complaint about João Pessoa, I have become too comfortable here and the days have become a sweet and splendid routine of sufficient sleep, bountiful meals, leisurely excursions, a meeting or two, and being chauffeured around town. There comes a time when events run their natural course. The call could not have been more opportune.
Ignored by international guidebooks and even by Brazilians, the interior of Paraíba remains a mystery to outsiders. Maria Rita, department head for Tourism Studies at a private university in João Pessoa, has rented a car and has made bookings in advance for accommodation and tours. All I essentially have to do is go along for the ride and try to behave. Moreover, it is quite impressive for a single woman to ask a man who she has never met and does not really know to head out into the hinterland with her. Yet, I am sure she checked with Luciana first and got her blessing before the invitation came my way. Since arriving in João Pessoa, Luciana has been my adoptive Brazilian mother. She has checked up on me when I have been late and expects to know how things are going with my day. At one point, she called more than once to get my status when I retuned from Areia Vermelha and got sucked in by a beach hut selling cold beer and appetizers. I tell her my thoughts and observations before I put said observations and conclusions into the typed word. Without hesitation, she firmly corrects me when I am off target. “Yes, Mom, I’ll be a good boy while I am gone.” With that, she went off to her morning meeting and I placed my bag to await Maria Rita’s call to go down and I’d soon be on the move.
Maria Rita got a good deal for a rental, a recently renovated 1924 two-door Fiat hatchback, equipped with tires as thin as those for mountain bikes, minus the treads. Powered by a team of cute gerbils under the hood, our “car” better resembles those attached to supermarket carriages used by young children, only ours isn’t as sturdy. The steering wheel is that of an arcade video game. If there should remain any doubt about the toy-like qualities of our transportation, the single-blade wiper for the windshield removes all doubt. Fisher Price makes a better car than this. Pausing for a moment, I was still happy: I was not on a bus and I now had the freedom to roam off the main thoroughfares. Best of all, with map in my hand, AC blasting (the windows were rolled all the way down), a nice-looking lady was doing the driving for me. Life was just fine.
As João Pessoa became smaller in the rearview mirror, I re-entered the Brazil with which I was already familiar. The neat high rises of Intermares were now a memory. Now, I saw dusty roads, empty alleyways, hanging laundry outside two-room concrete dwellings, and a traffic jam of mule carts delivering goods to locals. It would be hours before we would be in Areia, and that would mean endless countryside, green hills, and other classic scenes that I had come here to enjoy. I never asked Maria Rita where we would be staying each night. Nor did I try to find out where or when our next stop would be. Her itinerary did not interest me. I did not know what awaited us ahead in the distance. Zipping up and down the bumpy road, wind in my face, and my right arm darkened by the afternoon sun, I really did not care.
Conversation between she and I flows easily. She has a knack of informing me about matters I had not already entirely understood and completing thoughts from others knowing full well that I lack the cultural wisdom to grasp it all, no matter how good my vocabulary is. My attempts at humor in a foreign language sink in with her, as does my sarcastic wit. Hers is even more pointed. For the time being, it appears as if she also knows when not to talk, that conversation for the sake of hearing our own voices does not lead to bliss nor does it add to the quality of the journey. I have come to like her.
“Moço, I have a quick question.” Maria Rita pulled over, and stuck her head out in the direction of the military police officer. This has become predictable on her part. She habitually pulls over upon the slightest uncertainty. This time, we had been discussing if it would be OK for me to drive certain legs of the trip. East-west distances are great in Paraíba, the roads none too smooth entering and exiting towns, and places to rest roadside are inconsistent at best. “He is American and we were wondering: Is it OK for him to drive on his national license, or must he have an international permit?”
The officer was simply not ready for such a challenge. Used to waving on passenger cars and inspecting larger vehicles for contraband, he called over his partner to confer. Both spoke softy to each other in the ear to keep us from understanding. It must have gone like this:
“American? What is he doing out here?”
“Beats me”, says the partner. “So, how do you want to handle this one? And, you know our break is coming, so let’s make it quick. Get rid of them.”
“Let’s just say, to keep us from looking bad, that he needs the international papers and they’ll be gone.”
“Good one! Hey, is the safety lock on for your submachine gun? It looks loose.”
“Always! Do you know if he can actually drive with is own license?” Ah, that is a key question in Brazil, the answer to which reveals much about the national character.
“Umm, I heard once that a few countries in South America….”
See, neither one has a clue as to my legal status behind the wheel. But Brazilians are incapable of uttering the words, I don’t know - really. Ask a Brazilian the capital of Madagascar. More than half will convey ignorance in a way as not to lose face without ever saying I don’t know. Arm them with an automatic weapon and permission to discharge it, and those three words are unheard of.
The first officer walked quickly back to us. “He needs the national license to drive, Senhora.”
“OK! Obrigada.” Two miles down the road, I broke a period of silence.
“Maria Rita, it is not what you say, but how you say it in order to get the desired result. Better to have asked, ‘Moço, does my friend here need an international permit’….pause, and with inflection and the second half, ‘or is his normal driver’s license just fine?’ Then smile. I assure you I could be driving right now.”

Lunch in the lethargic university town of Areia, ninety-minutes north of Campina Grande, consisted of comida a quilo. It is a buffet style meal at which you place your full plate of beef, vegetables, and sides on a scale. You pay upon the weight of your plate, regardless of the items you select. It makes sense and I have been living on comida a quilo for the most part over the last month. A local guide, whom Maria Rita arranged for, joined us and took us on a tour of a former cachaça plantation home. It is now a museum on the university campus, and an up-and-running cottage industry cachaça distillery.
How we got to Areia embodies the joy of travel. No longer human cargo for São Geraldo, Real Expresso, or Cometa, traveling by car through Brazil exposes us to our vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it takes little time to deduce that Brazilian roads have been signposted by people who have no concept of distance, space, or time. Now responsible for actually getting there ourselves, plowing through Brazil’s suburbs and avenues is frightening. Here are some common predicaments of which motorists must be aware.
1. Just because the signpost indicates that the road to Areia is to the right, this does not necessarily mean it will be the next right. Result? At last count, we have driven into two warehouse parking lots. “No, dear. This is not the main road out town unless you want to follow that forklift for a bit.”
2. If headed for a large populated town, do not expect the signposts to read this well-known municipality. Instead, the signpost will mention an insignificant town on the way, one that appears on no map and experiences a sharp spike in population every time twins are born.
3. If you’re a man, forego our gender’s stubborn tendency of saying you’re not lost. You are. Believe me. Pull over and ask for directions.
4. Whenever in doubt, follow the flow of traffic conditional that it is heading in the general compass direction of where you want to go. We were heading west in the late afternoon out of Campina Grande. Thank God it was sunny. We followed the sun.
5. If there is a fork in the road, it will not be signposted. Carry a coin with you. You’ll need it.
6. Pedestrians make themselves moving targets by crossing divided highways. Mules and donkeys are, on the other hand, stationary targets. When bearing down on livestock at fifty miles an hour, these dense creatures don’t even twitch. Within a few hundred feet, blaring the horn and uncontrollably swearing immobilizes them further. To avoid several hundred pounds of Eeyoreburger and Fiat scrap metal scattered about the highway, it is advisable to gently nudge the beast with your right front fender. Oh, the best part: Mules and donkeys go out at night for walks. How they are not extinct in Brazil is beyond me.
7. The height of some speed bumps in Brazil should be measured in feet above sea level. Many surpass the highest points in Pennsylvania. Given the Brazilian’s deep affection for adhering to the rules of the road particularly the speed limit, they are situated within town, but also when entering a community. Many, but not all, are signposted. For fun, some signposts are gone, ensuring an even deposit of spare mufflers, struts, and springs nearby. Failing to slow down at a speed bump while at full speed can land you in a town for a week while waiting for half the suspension to replaced or delivered to the local garage.

I navigated Maria Rita from Campina Grande directly by way of the map. I missed only one minor detail. On my folded up road map of the entire country, I needed a magnifying glass to read the towns and an electron microscope to determine the quality of road being described. I failed to discern the difference in tint between grey and pink. Pink was the desired route, a paved road but for the potholes and eroded flanks. Grey, well, that’s what I chose. It was the direct way to Areia, yet hardly the quickest. Grey got us unpaved, earthen trail into the outback that happily eats up unsuited vehicles such as our motorized tricycle. Mildly riled, Maria Rita did not steer away from the challenge of unmarked roads lacking any directional or safety signposts. For the next hour covering only a dozen or so kilometers, we bounced over ravines, dry river beds, and climbed steep inclines, all the time passing solitary farms of cattle grazing on thick grass, hillsides of banana trees, and no hints of a Dairy Queen, the accomplishments of the Wright Brothers, or that Brazil had even received its independence from Portugal. Our necks snapped and bodies were tossed about the inside of the Fiat, and we were buckled in. The sheer absurdity of being inside this contraption on these roads, in this setting, brought us to laughter. I had, after numerous years, found someone with whom I could travel on the same wavelength. How long would this enjoyable state of affairs with this woman last?
The distillery tour, I concluded very quickly, would render few surprises. If you substitute the brutal, back-breaking labor of harvesting sugar cane for fifty-pound sacks of corn, the physical process differs none from making moonshine in the hills of Appalachia. In Areia, however, the cachaça operation is legal. The Engenho de Triunfo produces a humble one thousand two hundred liters a day in an oversized garage on steroids. Be it in the fermentation chamber, bottling room, or warehouse, the fumes of sweet alcohol are ever-present. The artisan crafted standard and cinnamon-infused varieties are bottled manually and then palletized the same way. Mechanization is minimal at best and distribution extends only into three Northeast states. The end product is a fine, potent liquor, which Brazilians enjoy with the same zeal as Scots do whiskey or Russians do their vodka.
As the primary purpose of our exploration of the interior is to develop a touristic infrastructure, Maria Rita and I must endure the unfortunate requirement of sightseeing. Sightseeing, tragically, involves stepping into art museums. To make matters worse, Areia has two of them, both forgivingly small. And it was a sunny day. Brazil has no law, as it should, about entering museums when the sun is shining. Much to my surprise, some collateral usefulness came out of my time in the public galleries. Pedro Américo, born in Areia, is known as Brazil’s greatest painter and is the creator of O Grito de Ipiranga, a victorious scene depicting Brazil’s independence from Lisbon. The painting, along with all his major works are nowhere to be found around his birthplace. Rather, they are hanging in museums in Rio and São Paulo. At the other exhibit, I learned that local artists’ contemporary portrayal of Areia on oil and canvas mysteriously lacks the mobile loudspeakers atop vans campaigning for local candidates, stray dogs foraging on rotting papaya and peeing on car fenders, weeds protruding from cracks in the pavement, and the film of diesel fumes suspended in mid air. The paintings on display are what a sanitary Areia must be like if it existed in the vacuum of sterilzation. Yet, firmly away from the modernity and contentment of Paraíba’s coast, Areia soothes me into Brazil’s mostly rural and simple lifestyle. Its authenticity appeals to me. If not for the current pre-packaged itinerary and burning angst to move north to Ceará and Maranhão, I would not mind staying here for a while.

In all honesty, Bananeiras looks better in the dark. Slightly north of Areias, Gil and his wife Mariana greeted us at the Pousada da Estação. The guesthouse occupies part of the old train station, which overlooks the hilly community along with clusters of banana groves, after which the town was falsely named. Much like Areia, Bananeiras does little to impress or dissuade. Its former position of importance in the coffee trade and a railway stop, Friday market, welcoming attitude, and lush surroundings are more than enough to keep a newcomer in town more than one night.
Gil took the keys from Maria Rita to give us a spin around town. I paid little attention to the dates of construction, which order of nuns occupies the convent, and how many different fields of agronomic study the state university offers. Rather, while leaning over a retaining wall with the three others gazing down on the softly lit streets below, I bent my neck upward to the heavens bursting with constellations I have only seen on astronomical maps. The southern patterns look nothing like those in the north. No big dipper. Orion comes out in the winter, but not this far south. Up north, it isn’t winter anyway. Instead, I marveled at an endless number of glimmering and pulsating lights totally unfamiliar to me. Bananeiras’ street lights do not impact the stars’ intensity, nor do they filter out the bright sliver of moon suspended over a tree-lined hill. By the time Gil got around the discussing the plague that destroyed the region’s coffee crops in the 1930’s and ‘40’s, my attention was focused on a mammoth tree in the middle of the road, around which the pavement has been laid for cars to pass on the left and right of it. Its trunk has been painted white to call attention to this surprising obstacle, particularly in the dark.
At a paltry sum of $12 a night, it is best not to cling to very high expectations for the Pousada da Estação. Staff placed no towel for me. The soap was either not in my room or hidden under a bed post. My only covers were a paper thin transparent cotton sheet. The windows do not shut properly, welcoming flying insects into my realm of sleep. Thankfully, a mosquito net hung above one of the beds. The hot water is purely theoretical in spite of the wires taped into the shower head. Linked to a switch on the side, it is emblematic of most showers in Latin America. A classic marriage of running water and two hundred twenty volts of electrical current only inches apart ensure that you bathe in lukewarm water at best or get a numbing shock if you reach too high with either arm. Either way, you’ll be awake by the time you rinse the shampoo out of your hair. Both Luciana and Maria Rita were adamant about my taking a set of sheets with us for the trip, just in case. I brought none and it did not matter. The incessant noise from a party on the gazebo out front kept me awake more than any matter of hygiene or six-legged creatures.

The next morning, Gil arranged a heavy duty Toyota pickup to collect us at the guesthouse for an excursion into the countryside. Our Fiat could not handle the rough terrain, never mind the first hill. Off we went into an untouched Paraíba very few know outside of the state itself. Only a few kilometers from the Banco do Brasil and the local pizzeria, a teenage boy herds his mule packed with timber on its back through a pastoral backdrop of banana trees, farmhouses, and physical hardship. Rural Paraíba’s beauty and simplicity is accentuated by its people’s pacific demeanor and destitute living conditions. Country roads go past unstable moldy single room homes. Yet, unlike the dog-eat-dog world of urban despair, residents who survive in the countryside do so with an air of dignity. Salvador’s and Recife’s poor have no such self-esteem.
Dona Terezinha resides in one of these houses. Due to a life of physical exertion, she looks quite a bit older than her seventy-three years, yet she has the cheerful demeanor of a woman half her age. An assentada, she occupies the residence and works the accompanying land in order to take care of her family, which includes seven grandchildren. Nonetheless, she does not own the land or the house in which her family lives. Instead, as with hundreds others involved in various factions of Brazil’s landless movement, they occupy the property on condition that it be maintained and the land productive. No family can buy or sell the land, nor can any outsiders arrive and occupy it for their own purposes. Such is the agreement between the public entity that owns the land and those desperate people fortunate enough to pare out a living off the fruits of their labor.
A true character of Paraíba, Dona Terezinha is a walking library of local folklore and happily gathers a few chairs, completely unconcerned and unimpressed with where Maria Rita and I were from, what our background was, or why we were even there. The President of the United States could have dropped by and all she would have done was nonchalantly pulled up another plastic patio chair and asked him if he wanted a mineral water. The oral legends date back years and are passed from one generation to the next. Nothing is written down, which most likely enhances Dona Terezinha’s story telling. Her echoes and body movements are so convincing, you’re left questioning whether she was actually a leading character in them. If in the American southwest, she could easily be taken for a Navajo. Teeth beyond repair due to neglect, her deeply pigmented leathery skin and flat face accentuate the emotion with which she tells her stories. When asked about her upbringing, Dona Terezinha still speaks fondly of her mother’s firmness and perseverance. “She was a well-read woman and taught me to read poetry.”
“Did she teach you how to read?”
“Oh, certainly. I was one of the few who could.” Nowadays, her family thankfully does not suffer from illiteracy. Yet still faced with pitiful living conditions, Dona Terezinha sends her half-naked two-year-old granddaughter inside to be diapered. She takes each day’s challenges in proper proportion, as well as ensuring that the flow of water from the reservoir uphill provides enough for her family to move forward.

Development around Bananeiras is steady, yet painstakingly slow. The Bica dos Cocos is a retreat four kilometers from town. Owner and staff prepare banquets while guests bathe in a simple yet idyllic setting of waterfalls and collection pools borne of mountain streams. The Igreja Cruzeiro de Roma displays a marvelous view above Bananeiras’ regional villages, hilltops, and ecological wealth. Dozens of butterfly species flutter about among bamboo trees, gurgling waterfalls, and monkeys leaping from overhead branches. A brief incursion into the forest requires Gil to point a stick in front of his chest to detect and slice aside spider webs, some three feet across the trail at eye level. A millipede creeps over my left shoe. Gil picks it up and lets it duck under and through his fingers. Then, he photographs the creature. He has also taken pictures of multicolored grasshoppers, and some distant relative to the praying mantis. Gil’s eye is keen enough to spot the fauna camouflaged in tree bark or on lily pads. The protected forest is being studied to see if camping will disturb its delicate balance. When Gil and other officials find the right equation, many in Brazil’s northeast will very soon be able to enjoy in a masterful balance of nature and locals’ knack to both harness it for future progress. The original appeal will remain intact.

The same cannot be said for Sousa. Forgotten by just about everyone except those who live here and the Catholic Church, it is hidden at the extreme western end of Paraíba’s sertão. Six hours and four hundred forty kilometers from the coast, it may as well be a thousand. It will be several years before casual outsiders arrive in throngs to explore its wilderness. The gas stations at the edge of town are among Sousa’s best qualities, as you can fill up and keep going elsewhere. Anywhere. Sousa is that solitary rest stop in the Arizona desert where you get out, stretch, get a cup of coffee from Flo at the diner, and bolt out of town leaving screech marks. Only thing, people actually live here.
Sousa lacks any sense of organization, but makes up for it with strewn coconut shells, days old, and soiled paper trash once swirling in mid air on the sides of the street. And this is one of its better qualities. Street signs in Sousa are for losers as is anything with a fresh coat of paint. Thank God we arrived at night so my eyes could be sheltered from the setting of Madmax Beyond Thunderdome. A community of two-floor powdery cement block buildings, perplexingly still in the vertical position, Sousa is home to droves of insects, both airborne and terrestrial. The ants arrive in legions to devour the remains of larger bugs, some so evolved they seem to have a full skeletal system. I’m glad I missed them while they were alive. The thunderous chirping of the crickets could surpass Pavarotti’s best exertion at La Scala. On an agreeable day when not downwind from the swirls of dust powerful enough to lift our Fiat off the ground, hordes of flies join diners for lunch and dinner. Soon enough, swiping at them becomes futile and easily distinguishes you from longtime residents, who have long ago just disregarded them. It is a scene not too unlike the impoverished in Africa too weak to fight back. Women in the hotel kitchen boil rice with a dozen or so flies on their backs, either unaware of or unmoved by their presence. In no time, I can count a dozen on one’s chubby arms. Beetles surface into the bathroom sink basin in my hotel room from the pipes below. Ants constantly appear from cracks in the corners of my continuously scrubbed and cleaned hotel room because of my pack. It carries odors that attract them, from cologne, detergent, to dirty laundry. The hotel has placed hooks on the walls, which I use to hand my pack. This keeps ants away. Even when invited to dinner at the home of Maria Rita’s colleague, bugs jumped in to try the cabbage and carrot salad, though the moths and beetles preferred the pasta topped with parmesan cheese. It took much inner strength not to get up and leave to dine elsewhere. Problem was, where would I have gone? Sousa has no airport.

“Hey! That’s where I’m from!” Maria Rita had already pulled over for the fourth time to ask directions on how to get out of Campina Grande. This time, we were at a bus stop trying to head in the direction of Patos. Instructions from a Brazilian pedestrian are valid for about two-hundred yards from their cousin’s lunch stand, a security fence and four speed bumps. After that, you’re on your own.
“Richard, we’ll do this à carona. “Hop in!” Maria Rita insisted to the woman. “Richard! Move! She is going à carona!!! À carona is the phrase Brazilians use for hitchhiking or giving someone a lift. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had always learned a boleia. This caused thirty seconds of confusion and a got a scornful look from Maria Rita. While the both of us sorted out this misunderstanding, the woman, in her fifties was unable to get a hold of her previously arranged in order to cancel. She kindly bowed out, apologizing.
“Sorry, but when you’re in Patos”, she insisted emphatically, “go to the-”. We received direction to a bakery, her families home, and contacts in town. She gave us her family’s name and seriously hoped we would look them up. My immediate reaction to her was that she was way too friendly (probably accurate) and that Patos must be a world away from constant bustle of Campina. She completely expected us to pop in and say hello to the family. In turn, we would have undoubtedly been welcome there…as two people, one from João Pessoa and an unknown American who pulled over to ask directions, only to offer her a ride two hours into the drylands.
Patos is a medium-sized commercial center on the way to Sousa. I know nothing of the town itself, but passing through at sunset is rather memorable. Solitary round and sharp rock formations rise up from the prairie in a spectacular fashion. The map says Brazil but my eyes see western Nebraska and Wyoming. The sun drops quickly between layers of clouds from which its golden beams strike the tall and lonely structures. Just after disappearing over the horizon, the fading light lined the flat bottomed puffy clouds in a blanket of brilliant purple and orange.
“It looks just like the West of the United States, Maria Rita.” She could not take the time to remove her eyes from the various obstacles and treachery of the asphalt. Having passed this way more than once, she took little notice of the moving postcard that surrounded us.
“You like it because it reminds you of your country, yes?”
No, that’s not it. She didn’t get it. “That it reminds me of home? Home is Connecticut, three thousand kilometers from this. I enjoy it because it is stunning and a secluded beauty.” Darkness fell over the movie set for a cowboy film. Sousa still lay two hours ahead of us.
Upon pulling into Sousa, Maria Rita and her colleague from town paired up to find me a room. On the surface, I had no major issue with this, just pleased to have been invited along in the first place. I did not expect everyone to open their doors for me. Yet, it would have been nice if I had been a major player in the decision-making process. “What do you think, Marcele?” Maria Rita had already interrupted twice in front of Marcele’s front door as I asked Marcele where she would stay if in my situation. Maria Rita simply could not stay out of a conversation that did not concern her. My fondness for Maria Rita had just about disappeared. I now questioned if one of us would not be making the trip back to João Pessoa.
“Let’s try the hotel just out of town. If you do not like it, there is another”, Marcele quipped. Maria Rita did not approve and it showed.
“Great!” I screamed. Having decided to see both, Maria Rita badgered me in the car about even bothering to see the upscale tourist class hotel for a price that frankly I preferred not to pay. Yet, given my affinity for Sousa, the further away I was from the pall of its dust and exhaust, the better.
I very much liked the first option, absent of any flying pests. But, perhaps the other was a better option. So, we went to see, as agreed. Maria Rita and I hopped in the Fiat and followed Marcele back into town.
“I know the other one is better. You’re not listening to me.” Damn right I‘m not, you pain in the ass. “We should have just gone - ”
“Enough! It is awfully hypocritical of you to tell me where I should stay when you already have been taken care of!!! How convenient for you to be so right!” Maria Rita had already arranged to stay with Marcele at her home. That kept her quiet, but for only a while.
“This one will be fine” I told the receptionist at the Hotel Riberão in central Sousa. “The room is fine.”
“I told you, you see. I know what is good for you.”
While the air conditioning chilled my room quickly, the room was not fine. But, my words were enough to have Maria Rita mercifully depart for the night. Even when I thanked her for all she had done the entire day, she not only had to be right, but put in the last word. Her attitude came right out of the script from an evening soap opera.
“Just today, but not yesterday?” she asked in response to my gratitude. I ignored her question. I would now have to simply tolerate her.

I knew I was already going to like Vale dos Dinossauros. If you are expecting Jurassic Park, the closest you’ll come to the real thing at The Valley of the Dinosaurs is the stone T-Rex in silhouette at the visitors center entrance. Having been stood up for ninety minutes and then enduring lame excuses from Maria Rita and her standoffish attitude when I dismissed her explanation, I ignored her and Marcele (though Marcele did little to deserve this) and followed our guide through the thicket and across wasp infested wobbly bridges to take in a remnant of the planet’s prehistoric past. Implanted in a dry and petrified river bed is a series of dinosaur footprints of different species. Circled in chalk so as not to be missed, I thought to myself from atop the bridge that this is a long way to come to see some very old holes in the ground. As a consolation, skull monkeys scampered about the top rail of the bridge in hopes of a snack from us. I found them far more interesting and the kept my attention much linger than the footprints. Butterflies danced out from every bush in pale yellows and white with red and black trim. The present-day fauna saved the day and made the visit justifiable in the upper ninety degree heat.
Ten kilometers east of Sousa on a dirt road through fields of cactus and grazing cattle seeking shade form the late afternoon heat sits undisturbed an entire community of assentados. A model for the region and all of Brazil, the Assentamento Acauã is home to one hundred fourteen families and a total of about six hundred extremely durable people. They took possession of this semi-arid land in late 1995 and have occupied it ever since. Neglected by large landowners and local politicians, these assentados are unlike the militant Movimento Sem Terra. Acauã’s methodology is passive in nature, which has contributed to its continuing growth. A proud and independent community, it is self-sufficient in numerous ways. Water is manually hauled from a nearby stream to fill each home’s filtered cistern, which sits on the rooftop. Residents bring local goods to market in neighboring Aparecida to be sold and others go to Sousa to buy supplies needed for basic upkeep of the town. Acauã’s children attend a primary school before they reach the age to go to class out of town at the high school level. All are literate. Livestock flourishes in pens, corrals, tied up to telephone poles, or simply left to roam the bumpy dirt streets for scraps. Laundry dries in the waning yet harsh sunshine on meager and rickety staked fences wired together at the top and base. Homes are detached, contain solid floors, but very little else with respect to creature comforts. Tenants on each plot of land are required to grow crops in order to sustain themselves. This is possible thanks to a low-cost system of constructing circular irrigation tanks on each parcel of property. From these life-giving pools animals such as goats, pigs, and chickens can be raised for consumption. Potted seedlings soon to be flowers are taken care of at a makeshift nursery in Acauã’s community center. Maria Rita has proved to be a huge asset in translating from a sertão accent into a Portuguese I can actually grasp. Her patience with me has tempered my attitude towards her slightly. A group of seven pre-teen girls gather around us at the nursery. Their incessant giggling prevents them from answering any questions I pose, no matter how hard Maria Rita and I try to prod them into speaking. They have been in contact with visitors before. The press has been here. Perhaps this time, as they are the center of attention from outsiders, they are not ready to be forthcoming. I seriously doubt they have ever been able to speak directly to an American.
Founded in 1995, Acauã still fights to evolve. Having successfully gained recognition as an incorporated town, the water tower in the hills has broken down. Town officials have waited months for replacement parts to arrive from São Paulo. They continue to exhibit extraordinary patience, they have heard nothing, forcing the necessity of manually tapping the stream several hundred yards away. Adolescents having been raised in Acauã have left for technical schools in other Paraíba towns, some even out of state. They faithfully return in order to apply their agricultural skills to the betterment of the only place they’ve known as home. Astonishingly, not a single resident of Acauã has ever migrated for opportunities in Paraíba’s more populated towns in search for work. The dedication to the town’s survival is practically tangible.
Admirable achievements aside, there is still no denying the Acauã’s impoverished state of affairs. Even the settlement’s location five kilometers off the state highway out of sight from passing motorists exacerbates the utter sense of isolation you feel when walking through the sandy and pebbled streets. Acauã is not even signposted as a right hand turn when headed in the direction of Patos. Job skills outside those that contribute to supporting the community are nowhere to be found. Few have motorized transportation and many boys resort to getting around by mule. Most people sit around idle in quiet conversation in front of their homes in simple clothing and flip flops. Flip flops are for some the only footwear they own. During the late afternoon, finding something to do becomes quite a challenge.

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Photos

Road to Areia
Will we ever get there?

Fine Fermentation
Final product soon to be bottled...

Posh Digs
Imaginary screen on the windows...

Unfiltered Brazil
Mules as transport...

Dona Teresinha
Charming...but tough to follow her stories

Bananas Anyone?
A walk through the groves...

Recreation Retreat
Picnic tables and pavillionsm too...

Groundbreaking Community
The landless stake their own claim...

Very Desolate
Very lonely scene...