Year: 2019

By David, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Since coming to Brazil and working at R3 Animal , I am constantly confronted with the challenging irony that is my relationship to animals and the environment. As much as I am fascinated by wildlife (it was the first “encyclopedic passion” that I had) and fostered a great love for nature and environmental protection, the very method that I live my life states otherwise. Back in my life in the United States, I live in a house that is much larger than my family of three need (high water and electricity usage), utilize an enormous amount of single-use plastics (which take centuries to at least partially degrade), and want to engage in worldwide travel (contributing to the already large quantity of greenhouse gas emissions
attributed to air-travel). It only adds another layer of complexity to add the fact I consume meat, including a good amount of red meat, one of the biggest contributors to global warming and land development. I chose Florianopolis Brazil in part to work with this remarkable organization that is deeply committed in the conservation of native wildlife, yet the way of life I have brought with me, especially what I eat, contributes to the contrary.

The very Brazilian society that I have become immersed in sends mixed messages. Even though the biodiversity and beauty of the land is a source of national pride, there lacks a consciousness and motivation to protect it. Brazil is the land of the Amazon (the world’s lungs, producing 20% of its oxygen), the Pantanal (the largest wetlands in the world), and the Mata Atlantica/Atlantic Forest ecosystem (the most bio-diverse ecosystem in the world), to name a few. Yet it is the land where it is most dangerous to be an environmentalist, especially in the frontier regions to the west, where logger barons, agricultural developers, and rogue mining companies take advantage of weak law enforcement and currently, a government that is friendly to construction rather than conservation. I have conversed with many Brazilians (not only those in Florianopolis and the South where I live, but also in the Southeast and Northeast regions from my travels) and a good many of them mentioned that Brazil should exploit more natural resources to increase national wealth. In times of economic strife and financial ruin, the environment and its protections are often the first to go. Factor in limited government spending on environmental initiatives/projects, a dysfunctional national parks system, and lack of education and awareness among the populace, and the demise of Brazil’s natural integrity looms close by.

In addition, Brazil is a land of carnivores; the diet and many classic recipes are dependent on meat. Churrasco, the Brazilian barbecue, is fundamental to social gatherings, where cutting boards of picanha (grilled sirloin cap) and linguiça (Portuguese-style pork sausage) are passed around. There are even churrasco flavored chips sold in supermarkets, which are very popular. Beef is the preferred meat of choice (in addition to being the most environmentally taxing), going to/in everything from steak, burgers (which have taken their own radical spin in Brazil), to being ground in pastel (the Brazilian-version of empanadas). Even many snacks, salgadinhos, contain meat, with among the most popular being mini-pastel (containing ground beef), coxinha (a fritter filled with shredded chicken), and misto-quente (literally a pressed ham and cheese sandwich). Although the vegetarian and
vegan movements have been gaining traction in the country, for many Brazilians, a meal is not a meal without meat.

I have grown up eating meat and I love its flavor; it is something personal that is hard to give up. As I travel and learn about cultures around the world, food plays an integral role in what connects us together, crossing borders and generations. Specially here in Brazil, meat plays a crucial role in not only diet but also in social bonding. Yet, given the unique apprenticeship that I have, as well as my personal desire to be a aware and sustainable traveler, I am constantly confronted by one central question: where is the line between engaging with a nation’s culture and refusing to engage in it on the basis of moral grounds and the welfare of our planet? Culture is supposed to be perpetuated and esteemed through generations, yet what happens if the culture is literally too environmentally unsustainable to continue at our current trajectory? I am a lover of humanity and its culture, yet I am passionate about doing my part in protecting this one planet we have. For me, it is only when I came to Brazil that these two sides have been at odds, the lines clearly blurred. The personal debate is ongoing, one I’ll take back to the United States and my
continued journey. I write this to hold myself accountable to whatever roads I choose to take and the lifestyle choices I will make in this personal and complicated impasse.

By Olivia, Tufts 1+4 Participant

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I was not in a great mood when Señorita Charrito, a woman who cooks and cleans at my work, approached me. I was waiting for the kids to finish eating so we could continue with the many hours left in our day, and I was less than enthused. But a less than enthused facial expression would never phase Charrito. She grabbed my bag that I had tucked under my arm and began rummaging through it – something she likes to do when she’s bored. As she was pulling items out and messing around with them – my headphones, chap stick, a headband – she came across a loose tampon. 

She stopped, examined it for a minute, and then asked me what it was. Not knowing the word for tampon (which I now know is just tampón), I attempted to describe in Spanish what a tampon is used for. It was more graphic than I would have wanted because the most helpful words I knew how to say were “hole” and “blood”. Once she understood what I was saying, she unwrapped the tampon and proceeded to examine and play with it. It wasn’t long before we were joined by one of the educators, Veronica, and several of the kids. Suddenly I was giving a full lesson, placing the tampon in a glass of water to show how it expands. Charrito and Veronica were fascinated. They told me they had heard of a tampon but had never seen one before. While I laughed to myself at the thought of a tampon lesson in this environment, Charrito and Veronica were marveling at the idea of this modern approach to women’s hygiene. They had a million questions: does it hurt, how long does it last, does it ever fall out or get stuck? When the kids finished eating and it was time to move on to our afternoon workshops, Charrito and Veronica handed back the wet tampon and the empty applicator as if they were returning a diamond necklace I had leant to them, and they thanked me for teaching them about it.

​The next day when I arrived home for lunch with my host family, I was ecstatic to hear we were having tacos. Juanita, my host family’s house keeper, joined us for lunch as she always does on the days she works. I finished my soup before everyone else and thus moved on to making my taco. But as I began piling on the beans and guac and cheese, I noticed Juanita was watching very intensely from her seat beside me. I didn’t think too much of it and continued creating my perfect taco, but it was hard not to notice the look of total confusion mixed with a tinge of fear in Juanita’s eyes. 

When they all finished their soup, my host mom and host sister began putting together their own tacos, but Juanita sat quietly at the table with her hands in her lap, again watching closely. Finally, my host sister looked up at Juanita and asked “Quieres que te ayude?” (do you want me to help you?). She nodded, and my host sister walked her through step by step how to put together a taco. As it turns out, Juanita had never had a taco – it’s not as common to eat foreign cuisine in Ecuador as it is in America. Her face lit up with her first bite. She couldn’t believe how good it tasted. Just like Charrito and Veronica with the tampon, she had a million questions about where and how tacos are eaten and how much they cost. We enjoyed the rest of the meal discussing our favorite taco ingredients.

Tampons and tacos: two mundane things in my life. And suddenly they’re entirely different for me. I never would have looked at a tampon as a treasure and tacos as strange or difficult to assemble. Yes, I’ve been educated on the disparities of feminine hygiene around the globe, but education is different than experiencing it first-hand. And yes, I know that in many countries it’s not as common to eat the traditional food of other countries especially for less wealthy families, but it’s still shocking to see that a taco can be a foreign concept. Signing up for my gap year, I was eager to experience a whole new perspective on the world, but for the past 6 or 7 months I haven’t revisited this idea much. And though I’m sure when I get home I’ll realize all the ways in which my view of the world has changed, for now I’m left with a new perspective on tacos and tampons.

By Faizah, Tufts 1+4 Participant

This year, so many things did not go as planned. 10 months ago, I might have looked at this sentence and thought, Oh no! But today, I write this with a pleasant feeling. This year, I planned on teaching. Instead, I was schooled. Over. And over. And over again.

My students taught me from day one to never underestimate their brilliant capacity. Everyday, they surprise me with how quickly they grasp new ideas and complete their work – or don’t by cleverly avoiding work. They teach me to be patient, that greatness takes time. My students remind me that every child needs a role model. My students teach me that there is no such thing as a good kid or a bad kid; they teach me that it is all in what I choose to do and say. My students remind me to be sensitive of the emotions around me. They teach me to love and to laugh. They remind me to celebrate small victories, and they motivate me to never lose sight of my larger goals. I’ve learned that every student is special, and every child deserves a chance.

My team teaches me to trust. They show me that I can cry, laugh, and scream in a safe space. They teach me that trust goes both ways. They teach me to have open and honest conversations. My team teaches me that a support system catches me when I fall, and also provides a resistance that bounces me back up. They cheer me on as I step outside my comfort zone, and give me the space to trip and fall on my own. They teach me that people will care for me in surprising ways, and that acts of kindness are no burden for people who care. My team teaches me what it feels like to have people in my life who truly matter, and that maintaining my relationships with my teammates might just be the biggest takeaway I get from City Year.

My partner teachers exude with passion for our students. They come back to the classroom everyday in the face of an unsupportive administration and uncooperative behaviors, an act of true perseverance and love. They teach me how to advocate for others, and that to be a teacher in a Title I school means to give and be the voice for our children. They push me to remain consistent, ultimately in the best interest of our students. They remind me to be my best, to self-care, and to ask them for help when I need it. They teach me to do it all with excellence, for the kids.

By Zach, Tufts 1+4 Participant

As I’ve been approaching my last month here in Ecuador, something that’s constantly been on my mind has been gratitude and how I can thank the people who have played a role in making my gap year as positive as it has been. When I think about the people who I am thankful for here, my mind immediately jumps to my incredible host family. My family here has been a massive part of my time here and before I leave, I certainly plan on showing them how thankful I am for them. One of the ways which I planned on doing so was to write them a note which they could hold on to. Of course, that letter would be in Spanish— and despite the fact that my Spanish has immensely improved this year, I do feel like I can express myself much better in English. That being said, I wanted to write my host family a letter in English, and despite the fact that they wouldn’t read it, it would be a lot more honest and expressive than that which I will write in Spanish.

To the Galans:

The only proper way to start this letter is to say thank you. To thank each of you for being so kind and loving to me this past year.When I first saw the family description that was listed for the Galan family, I was honestly a little worried. I saw that your family was described as being an elderly couple who lived a quiet life outside of the city. And of course, I was excited to get to meet you guys, but it’s just not necessarily what I was expecting. I grew up with two brothers in a loud house. I was used to sharing a room with my little brother and doing everything together. The prospect of living with a much quieter family would be a new experience for me.

I’m sure that you guys could understand my surprise once you had brought me home and I met all nine of you plus your three dogs. I was ecstatic.

When I first got here, I must have been much more boring than I am now. My Spanish was pretty poor which definitely affected how much fun I was with you guys. I remember sitting through our Sunday night dinners being completely lost. I remember taking car rides with Mary and just nodding to the stories that she told me— although I couldn’t understand exactly what you were saying, I really appreciated you making the effort to try to include me.

And perhaps because of that, I feel like part of this letter should come with an apology. Even now, I still feel sorry that despite my hardest efforts, I simply cannot communicate with you guys in a way where we all completely understand each other perfectly. There will always be little words, pieces of slang, or jokes that I just won’t get. When I’m not paying total attention to you when you’re speaking I struggle to follow what you guys say. And that’s incredibly frustrating, even though I’ve been here for a year, I feel like if I spoke Spanish perfectly, we would all be so much closer. My inability to speak Spanish fluently inevitably comes with a level of insincerity on my part. There were times— especially when I first got here— that my Spanish would not allow me to keep up a conversation with any of you. But rather than sit in silence, you would tell me stories or try to fill the space with some speaking that I wouldn’t really understand.And I would just smile and do my best to play it off as if I understood what you were saying. And of course this was just a lie, but in my position, it’s so much better to at least pretend to know what’s going on rather than just sitting at the dinner table noticeably clueless. Ultimately, I’m sorry for not being able to understand you guys in the ways that I wish I could.

But it’s honestly incredible to me how far we’ve come since September. Time has flown. I was just driving home from Amauta with you guys. We were just in Gualaceo having fights with the bubble toys or in Turi spinning upside down in a massive swing. Now Angie is pregnant and having her baby shower next week, Paúl has his own tattoo studio, and despite my constant jokes that I can’t speak Spanish, I actually speak the language pretty well.

I’m just so grateful for you guys welcoming me as much as you did. You made me into your family when you didn’t have to— it would have been so much easier for you to just brush me aside as being an exchange student who was just staying in the house for a year. But instead of that, you made me into an uncle, a brother, and a son. I wasn’t just the gringo living on the 3rd floor, I was the family that you had living upstairs. Welcoming me into your family like that was a choice that each of you made, and I will forever feel grateful for the acceptance that you extended to me.

It’s impossible to sum up this incredible year into a letter, but the laughter and memories are something that you don’t need a piece of paper to remember. Rather, the letter is to thank you all for the packed lunches, late night drives, and spontaneous empanada trips. Words will never be able to describe the gratefulness that I feel towards you all. Please keep in touch, come visit, and let me know if I can ever do anything for you to repay the love and compassion that you have all shown me.

Much love,

Zach

By Becca, Tufts 1+4 Participant

It’s my last night in Brazil and I’m….happy? I set aside time tonight to write something profound. A pontification on life’s beginnings and ends, a graceful foray through my best memories in Brazil, and the things I’ll miss most of all, hammering the keys as tears stream down my face. And yet it’s here and I’m just… happy. There’s no question in my mind, I don’t want to leave, the last 8 months have been the best of my life and I very firmly believe that if I were to stay longer, my personal growth and happiness would only continue to develop. But alas, faz parte. That’s life. I’ve had an incredible experience here, and I can genuinely say that I regret nothing. I went through cycles over the last few days and weeks emotionally. Most of the time I was incredibly happy. Then something would happen, I’d realize it was the last time I’d ever do, see, feel that thing, and I’d be sad for a moment, maybe two. Then I’d lift my head, and realize there were 300 other things to turn my attention to, and my sadness passed quickly. I’ve thought a lot about why that is. My life in Brasil really has been my best life. The idea that any component of that is sealed away into a thing of the past is sad for me, because I’ve been so intensely enjoying the present. But at the same time, I’m immensely and authentically grateful for every bit of happiness I’ve experienced, because I viewed absolutely none of it as given. I had no expectations up until just a couple months before, that any part of this year would happen, certainly not in the way that it’s happening, and I was happy with where my life was at before. With zero expectations and zero sense that I deserved my happiness, every good thing that has happened to me has just been icing on the cake. That, and I really do feel like I did this year right.

I’ve formed meaningful relationships with people from all 5 major continents. I befriended a churro man with a startup, and a Chilean woman who aligned my chakras to ‘life’s tunes’. I made my own drum, performed in Carnaval. I went to Serra do Tabuleiro, Garopaba, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Florianópolis. I went paddle boarding and surfing. I saw a penguin, cheered on a turtle, chased puppies. I climbed a tree and fell out of that tree. I reveled in the banal, and scoffed off the profound. I chased after many buses and missed many buses. I missed a flight. I had an entire airport conspire against me. Twice. I hitchhiked with a woman on her second day back from living in Kenya, and took an uber with a Palestinian man married to a Brazilian Jew. I collected pounds of trash, made paper, re-imagined my concept of waste. I contemplated the meaning of purpose, and the purpose of meaning. I had my phone stolen, then a month later got it back. I learned Portuguese, sucked at Portuguese, and absolutely slayed at Portuguese. I reveled daily in the wonder of language learning. I conducted interviews, and made a documentary. I protested and debated, and way more importantly, I listened a lot. I cooked pão de queijo and nega maluca and really awful beans and rice. I let other people cook me beans and rice and ate enough to last a lifetime. I developed addictions to açaí, Guarana, and paçoca. I drank way too much coffee and escaped a caffeine addiction. I did an obscene amount of paper machê. I gave speeches, and attended lectures. I went to bars and just talked for hours. I took long walks on the beach, and long walks through the city. I sat watching lightning until 3am. I swam in a thunderstorm, danced in the rain, danced Samba and Forró, danced and fought and played Capoeira. I fell in love. I cried, I laughed until it hurt, caught my breath, and laughed some more. I’ve learned and grown, and struggled and triumphed, and I don’t know if its just gap year cliches or if there’s some greater meaning, but this was my life, my real life, and I owned it. So yes. It’s my last night in Brazil. And I’m happy.

by Laura, Tufts 1+4 Participant

I was settling into painting an environmental mural in the warehouse on the botanical gardens of Floripa when the percussive introduction of a very specific song began to ring out of my phone’s tiny speaker. “Magalenha” by Sergio Mendes. I don’t have many songs downloaded in my phone, but this one made the cut.

I love painting because it completely focuses one of your senses while letting the others run free. My mind performs cartwheels while balancing technical and spatial skills with creativity and color, and somehow as I zoom in and out from the tiny details to the whole image, the process helps me do the same in my unrelated reflections. I have had a rocky relationship with my art this year. Removed from my easy access to materials and studio space, I have been unreasonably frustrated with my dimly lit room. Away from other art students, my motivation to produce has ebbed and flowed. The small scale museum at my apprenticeship has been a tantalizing but largely unavailable temptation. So when, after a month of pushing through city council bureaucracy, I had my proposition for an environmental consciousness mural approved, I had mixed feelings. This mural is 3×2.4m. I am, well, very, very far off either of those heights. And I had to be realistic with myself; I had not painted anything on a significant scale since my A Level art exam, which is almost a year ago now. Do the basics, don’t aim for anything too complicated, I told myself. This isn’t some piece of work that will sit under all the other paintings in your room, some people are going to have to see this every single day, I reminded myself. But at the same time, the prospect of having a brush in my hand, buckets of paint around my feet, and a blank space to cover still sparked my imagination.

I proposed a couple of wild ideas to my boss – a portal from a polluted city to a jungle, an entire landscape made out of bottle tops – I should probably thank her for either not understanding these concepts or not understanding my Portuguese. Eventually we decided to tackle the most important issue for the seafront location of the mural: plastic waste. A trip to the island’s turtle rehabilitation center, many meetings with various departments of the city council, and one or two logistical nightmares later, I finally stood in front of my two metal panels, primed, background dry, and outlines drawn on. After about an hour, I realized none of the other workers were using the warehouse that day, so I leaned over my materials to press play on the limited music collection downloaded on my phone.

“Magalenha” by Sergio Mendes. You would assume this was part of the music which I have grown to love while in Brazil. The less embarrassing thing for me to do would be to let you believe that. The truth is that in 2016 Danny Mac and Oti Mabuse did a samba to this song on Strictly Come Dancing. I always knew I wanted to take a gap year, but I think it would be naive of me to diminish the weight that this dance had in my trajectory towards Brazil. I fell in love with Latin dance when I began to watch Strictly, and this samba was what set my goal in stone: I was going to learn to samba and I was going to go where I needed to be to do that.

The percussive introduction cut the still air of the warehouse as the phone speaker crackled. I stepped back from my painting. The bigger picture was beginning to come together. I could see the reflections and shadows of the plastic bottle, revealing its form, and the water splashes framed an empty space where a turtle would hopefully be tomorrow. The bigger picture was beginning to come together in my head too. I thought back to the version of myself that watched that samba in awe. Then, I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I can now. Then, I couldn’t follow the lightning quick samba steps, but I can now. I had a lot of dreams and stereotypes of a continent across an ocean, and now I am standing on that soil, surrounded by the reality of this country. The number of days which I have left in which I can say that is numbered now. 17 to be precise. That’s difficult to come to terms with, grappling with whether I’ve achieved my goals or not, figuring out how to spend my last free days, unsuccessfully trying to create a sense of premature closure. But when I’m painting, as I stand nose to panel for the details, and run to the other side of the room to be able to see the whole image, my mind zooms in and out too. In, to every detail of my daily life here, out, to my personal growth. In, to specific conversations that have defined this experience, and out, to my changed attitudes towards the country I romanticized. And slowly, as the brush hits the surface again, stroke by stroke, things begin to make a little more sense.

I’m grinning now as I look down at my fingers, tapping the keys as this ramble comes to an end. They’re covered in blue paint, smell a little of açaí, and remind me of how I can feel at home anywhere in the world with a little paint, and maybe a little bit of dancing.