Nourish goes to Brazil

Hello All,

The last four days have been a whirlwind!!!!  They were filled with excitement, crazy experiences, and great relationships.  We left for the Caravana on Wednesday, May 28th, around three in the afternoon.  Before I start to tell you a bit about our experiences, I will give a brief overview of what the Caravana was.  So Banco Palmas was the first community bank in Cearathat became an establishment.  After 10 years of business, the leader of the bank wanted to plant more community banks in poor communities to help them gain economic solidarity.  With help from the Governor, 10 more banks were granted permission to be built.  This led us to our trip.

There were about 50 people traveling with us on one large bus.  I have now found that if you put a lot of people in a small area for extended periods of time, they are bound to come together, (even if they speak different languages.)  On the bus we had dance, singing, and joke telling contests.  Everyone was asked to participate, and no one ever turned down the opportunity.  Things got pretty crazy at times, but that was the best part!

I felt extremely honored that our Nourish group was asked to join Banco Palmason this excursion.  I not only traveled through the beautiful country of Brazil, but I got to meet and see the people as well.  Those that do not speak the language found that we didn´t have to in order to understand the people of each community.  Every community was different and I found this to be wonderful.  I was asked to dance by women and men, played the triangle in our band, and finally for our last performance, dressed up in a wild costume and paraded around.  There will be pictures.  All in all I had a great time.  The best part of it was forming better relationships with the people of Banco Palmas and Bache Palmas (the band who we are making the drum factory for).  I will forever remember this experience and the people.

*this is Julia not Jerry

we´re back at work in Fortaleza, but we are all a bit redder. This weekend we all had an amazing trip to Jerycuarcuada (spelled horribly). Caroline liked to frequently point out that it is one of the top 10 beaches in the world, and it was very beautiful. The town is in the dunes and we had a bumpy ride getting there. The sun had just set when we got to the beach and there was still some pink colors reflecting in the waves and on the huge sand dunes, and the silhouettes of the masts of the fishing boats were against the sky. We spent the weekend lazing on the beach and by the pool when the beach was too windy (or when jelly fish attacked). We also climbed up the dunes and watched the sun set and the people sand board down.

Our beach excursion ended with a very fast and bumpy ride in the back of a truck to this large rock arch. It´s famous in Brazil and we weren´t going to leave without seeing it. We took many pictures and then hurried back onto the truck so we wouldn´t miss our bus back to fortaleza.  

The project has progressed so much! All of the tiles we washed have almost all been put back on the roof, all of the rubble has been cleaned up, and all of the new walls have been finished. We still have some stuff to do, but tomorrow we leave for the Caravan! Have to run now, we have percussion practice.

ciao!

Hello,

So I was informed that my first post a few days ago did not actually post until a few minutes ago, woops.  Our group is still kicking!  We have accomplished so much this week and have worked really hard.  We wake up super early, work for the morning, go to lunch, then work some more in the afternoon.  It makes for a long day, but we all know the final product is more than worth it.  Today we finished a task that had started on Monday and required a great deal of time and patience.  This particular task was washing the tiles from the roof.  There were probably 500 or so of them, and it was a colaborative effort; even from the kids in the community. 

Carlos came yesterday, and he has taken control of the filming of our work, which is really great!  Today he filmed us knocking  down a wall, let´s just say it was crazy!!  We are working on schedule, which is great.  Tonight we are all going to spend the night with families from the community, something that I am really looking forward to.  Tomorrow we are going to a Futbol game, which I have heard are wild!  We are always staying busy and having a good time.  I am off to lunch!

Tchau

-sara

Hello Readers,

I am astonished that our group in Fortaleza will finish our fifth day tonight! It has been a whirl wind since we landed, meeting new people, riding in the crazy streets of Brazil, and exploring the city. The group has taken in a lot already and we are loving it!! It is great to have Caroline here, with all of her expertise, translating and showing us the ropes. Another great asset to the goup is Louise, who lives in Fortaleza and speaks English as well.

We started the intense labor yesterday and while it was a long day, it felt good to accomplish something. Working at Banco Palmas is fun because you are sourounded by a community filled with close ties and laughter. Furthermore, our goup knows that repairing this building will provide these people with a source of income and hopes to better living conditions. The work is coming along great! We are on schedule and have been working very hard. We arrive around 8:00 or 9:00, break for lunch around noon, and back to work from 1:00 until 5:00. Its a long day.

So far we have taken off the tiles of the roof, closed a door and window, and are now in the process of raising the roof. We have come across a tedious job that entails us washing each one of the tiles. There are about 500 tiles, it not more, that need to be washed. It has taken awhile, and I know we will all be happy when the washing is complete.

We have been filming our work and hopefully we will post pictures in the near future. We are all doing well and enjoying oursleves in Fortaleza. We will keep in touch!

-Sara

first a disclaimer, brazillian keyboards confuse me, so capital letters will be missing from my posts.  \\\\\\\\else it would look like that every time i try to press shift.

if anyone has been waiting on our first post, sorry for the delay, we haven´t had much progress for the ´project until today due to certain factors

so, today we began the project for banco palmas, and what a start it was.  for everyone whp is unfamiliar with banco palmas, it is a community bank founded in a ´poor neighborhood on the outskirts of fortaleza (generally speaking, the farther from the center of the city, the less developed the area is)  banco palmas is celebrating ten successful years of serving as the foundation of this communidad.  It provides no interest loans, fosters the local economy with the local ´´palma´´ currency´, and it dedicated to the development of this area, conjunto palmeiras

banco palmas invited nourish to come help them with a recent project: the construction of a musical instrument factory.  The local band has gotten all sorts of offers for the instruments they play on, but they have no way to actually sell these unique instruments without some way to massproducing them.  That´s where nourish comes in.  our plan is to rennovate an existing building near banco palmas and implement all the necessary machinery into the building.

i´ve got to get back to work, but here´s the basic outline of what we hope to achieve:

raise the roof about a meter (remove clay roofing shingles, add layers of bricks, re-lay the shingles)

seal off a door and a few windows

knock down a brick wall (sounds fun? it will be!)

open a few more windows in the walls

buy and install the proper machinery

This may not seem like much, but even with a few professional masons and a team of volunteers, we expect it to take about 2 weeks of solid work

The community we are in is so great, they have made us their family and are always supportive

I gotta run, talk to you guys soon!

joel, if you´re reading this, the correct banco palmas website is: http://www.bancopalmas.org.br/

-Jerry