Author: jcrowe01

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Cabin in the Campo

by Max, Tufts 1+4 Participant

This weekend, a couple 1+4 participants, my host brother, his friend and I traveled to San Fernando (a small town 2 hours outside of Cuenca) to stay in an empty house his friends own. It was super fun, and also a little terrifying. The house was straight out of some horror movie that should be filmed there and called Cabin in the Campo. At first glance in the daylight it looks fine, just a bit isolated. 

But as you can see in this second picture it can be pretty ominous looking.

We played poker and told scary stories in Spanish. Much of the night was spent making up stories about all of the terrible things that had “happened“ in the house in the past. We spent the night all huddled onto the one mattress in the house, bumping the floor occasionally and pretending like we didn’t, to scare everyone else. 
During the poker game, fellow participant Henry noticed the shadows of fellow participant Maxwell’s luscious curls had spelled a word on his forehead. It’s funny now, but at the time a not so small part of my brain was thinking, the ghosts are telling us to leave we need to leave what are we doing here in this scary house who even owns this house why are we here this is exactly how horror movies start- 
  While the scary stories were told in Spanish, and we were surrounded by vast fields of cows instead of woods, I realized that this had been such a familiar cabin in the woods trip. My host brother’s stories involved cursed rosaries instead of men with hooks for hands, but other than that, I could imagine having a very similar trip with friends back home. When I came here, I expected to be having a million new life changing experiences all the time. And while I have done a lot of exciting new things, it has surprised me  how familiar many of my experiences are. I’ve missed heading down to my favorite pizza place with my friends back home, but grabbing some late night pizza with my host brother when neither of us really want rice for dinner has turned out to be a fairly normal occurrence. From going to stay at a scary empty cabin, and proceeding to scare each other as much as possible, to complaining endlessly about our respective governments over dinner, there seem to be some universally human experiences that you will find in places as different as California and Ecuador. 
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A Thank You Letter To My Host Mom

by Kelsey, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Sandra, thank you for taking me into your home with open arms. 
Thank you for being patient with my Spanish and letting me take forever to say one sentence because I’m conjugating in my head. You encourage my to keep trying even when I make mistakes. Thank you for letting me have space when I need it, but always making sure I feel included when we do things with our extended family. 
Thank you for your sympathy when I am homesick, and taking me out to get ice cream to cheer me up. Thank you for drying my tears and listening to me patiently. For putting into google translate phrases like “everything will be ok, we are here for you, we care about you, you are strong” when I could not understand Spanish. 

Thank you for the tough love and incredibly sound advice you give me. Sometimes I need someone to tell me to stop crying, and you manage to do it in an incredibly understanding and supportive way. I am consistently Impressed by you and look up to you more than you know. 
Thank you for including me in family traditions such as drenching me in cold water for carnival, or staying up all night on Christmas eve so we can say “Feliz Navidad!” right at 12:00. Thank you for spending lazy Sundays with me watching movies. Thank you buying exotic fruits for me to try, and trying to learn how to cook vegetarian dishes for me. Thank you for every conversation, every meal and every adventure we’ve had together. Thank you for making me feel like I am part of the family.
You prioritize those you love in all you do. You work incredibly hard to run your own business and support your family as a single mom. You are incredibly strong, and you remind me that I can be too.
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Where Even Am I?

by Leonardo, Tufts 1+4 Participant

When I first arrived to Campeche beach, I was left amazed with the outstanding beauty of Florianopolis, considered the island of magic. Now, months later, when I go on a morning run, I pass the beach and I am used to seeing the ocean with its waves and the few people that have awoken early to enjoy them. It is wild that this is sometimes part of my daily routine when a couple months back I had never experiences the salty waters or the sand that never seems to leave even after leaving the beach. It seems almost normal and I feel the urge to make myself aware of everything, so it can be appreciated. I keep asking myself, “Where even am I?”

This can be a simple or tricky questions depending on how it is approached. It’s always easy to state the obvious: I am in Brazil. I am waiting for a bus. I am going to my apprenticeship. Although this is the truth, it is not the whole truth. There are so many other sides of my experience here that are so difficult to convey. They are what truly make it all unique.

I am in Campeche, Brazil, where it takes seven minutes to walk to the beach. In the mornings, the beach and its quiet cool winds and the low crunching sounds of my shoes on the sand create a safe space for me. Much of my reflection occurs with the sounds of waves crashing in the background. Even though the ocean took my favorite pair of eyeglasses, I still fell in love with it. I am unsure how I will feel when I am forced to leave this very crucial part of my bridge year experience behind.

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Food Insecurity in Brazil

by Dominique, Tufts 1+4 Participant
Here I was, splitting a banana tree with a machete in the countryside of São Paulo. The pieces of banana tree, filled with water, were being strategically positioned in the dirt to aid the other crops for the rainless days. The other crops– chinese and lamb lettuce—would use the banana tree as a sort of back-up juice box. These were the kinds of small scale agriculture techniques that farmers in São Luiz do Paraitinga were using. This family grew all of their food right outside of their house. Their garden looked disorganized, with many different kinds of plants growing together in close proximity. The different kinds of crops and fruits were growing together symbiotically to protect one another from insects and other parasites. This technique may appear quite confusing to a city girl, but it was actually a very meticulous process that helped them avoid the use of insecticides —or any other chemicals for that matter. They took a lot of pride in their work. 
Today, 66 million people in Brazil are food insecure. Food insecurity, a noun, is understood as the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.  Though food availability is sufficient for the entire population, widespread poverty has made it extremely difficult for people to purchase food. Therefore, the problem is not that of availability but rather, in-affordability which leaves several communities nutrition insecure. This problem is a difficult one to tackle. The Brazilian government has already implemented policies in attempt to aid this continuing problem.

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Realizations in Rio

by Savion, Tufts 1+4 Participant
I sat atop Morro da Urca, one of the highest and most stunning mountaintops in Rio, staring out across the city. I leaned forward and pressed my bodyweight against the steel railing, taking a deep breath of fresh Brazilian air. Here I was, after a grueling 6 hour bus ride, a short bike ride along the coast, and a tiring hike up the side of the mountain. I was standing on what seemed like the top of the world, with the entire city beneath my feet. I turned back around toward the rest of my group and looked at Jacque, our tour guide for that day. She led my group over toward the other side of the mountain – not to where the view of the city was, but to where we could clearly see the large mass of houses clumped on the side of a neighboring hill, on the outskirts of the main part of the city. I looked back over to her, wondering why she had taken us to view all the favelas. She began to explain exactly what I was thinking.
“Over the decades, the Rio favelas have been portrayed and associated in a very negative light”, she said. “They’re often referred to as  ‘slums’, ‘shantytowns’, or the ‘ghetto’.” She went on explain how favelas have been misconstrued throughout the decades. Summing up the favelas as just ‘slums’ just doesn’t do justice to the richness of the favela culture and history. The favelas originated near the turn of the 19th century, after Brazilian soldiers migrated down from Bahia, having emerged victorious from the Canudos war. They settled along the mountains in Rio. Not long after, recently freed African slaves began to settle along the mountains as well, being complete outcasts from society and not having anywhere else to go. Later, urbanization caused workers to move from the countryside to Rio, where they sought for more work. But without being able to find an adequate amount of work or a sufficient amount of money like they had hoped, these migrants were also ultimately pushed towards the outskirts of Rio as well.
That day, Jacque taught me a very important lesson. Favelas aren’t necessarily the circus show that always seems to be portrayed in the media. They don’t exist so you can safely buy your Favela Tour ticket and silently judge from a distance like they’re some kind of animals. In fact, the people who live in these favelas in Rio are the exact opposite. They are motivated, hard-working people who are self starters and get things done. They may have been completely neglected by the government, but they’re strong people who have spent decades building their neighborhoods and their communities. 
Brazil is a beautiful country, but it does have its problems. But despite all it, I know that when I look back at my experience in Rio, I know that I’m going to picture my first day there: sitting atop that mountain, staring across the horizon, staring down at the beauty of the city, but also down at the beauty built along those hills – the tight-knit communities sewn together from a long line of battered history and a rich culture.
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Tree of Life

by Henry, Tufts 1+4 Participant
Yesterday evening, Max and I were running along rio Tomebamba when we reached the El Vergel bridge and decided to rest a moment before heading back. As our heads cleared and our breathing returned to normal we began to talk about life after this year, something that had been encroaching on both of our minds. What started as a quick breather stretched into an hour long conversation about the future and the big decisions that always seem to arrive before we’re ready. We talked about having to choose a course of study, a career, a home, a partner, and the mounting pressure that so many new adults feel to get it right. At this point in my life, the idea of the right choice is so infuriatingly and overwhelmingly ambiguous that it sometimes seems like I’ll never know the answers. Especially when I can’t even decide on a pair of socks in the morning. I remember years ago being so excited about when I would finally get to choose my path. I never imagined that it would be so hard to figure out what I wanted. After our run I kept thinking about this, trying to figure out what had changed.
When I turn my eyes to the future I still see a wealth of possibility. Each opportunity creates a new path and new opportunities for me to follow, like branches of a great tree. What I’ve realized now, however, is that my life can only take one path. That I’ll only ever explore one leaf.

As a young child, my unyielding optimism told me that I could grow up to be anything that I wanted. This was vastly true, but each opportunity has a cost, and in my head I imagined growing up to be everything that I wanted. I dreamed of swinging from limb to limb as an artist, an architect, a pirate. A traveler, finding great adventure in every bough and leaf of the tree of life.

As I got older, however, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” began to have wrong answers. When I turned 8 I couldn’t be a pirate because they were “too mean.” When I turned 12 I couldn’t be an artist because I was “too sloppy.” When I turned 16 I couldn’t be an architect because I would be “too unemployed.” As I lost interest in some dreams and deemed others unrealistic, leaves began turning colors and quietly drifting to the ground. Big decisions became gut wrenchingly daunting because they could strip entire branches, sending even the greenest leaves spiraling into the dirt. When I chose to attend Tufts several branches were left bare, followed by another when I joined 1+4. Choosing a future is painful because in this moment almost anything is possible. I can still see my life branching into the open sky above me and it fills me with a sense of excitement and wonder and possibility. I’m not ready to give that up. I think a part of me never will be.

Living in Ecuador for the past seven months has been a refuge from these big decisions and I’ve mostly been able to ignore the idea of a life after this year. It takes a conscious choice to get on Facetime and reconnect with my life back home, so I’m naturally focused on the here and now. Maybe I’ve started to think about this summer, but definitely nothing past that. I honestly prefer it this way. I’m no closer to figuring out what I want to study, what job I want to get, where I want to live or what kind of partner I want, but I think this year has helped me to accept that I don’t know the answers, and probably won’t be able to figure them out for a long time. I’ve found that when I don’t worry about who I’ll be next year, I become more engaged with my host family, my coworkers and the other fellows. I play at the park with Josué instead of messaging my soccer team. I invite my boss out after work instead of leaving quietly and watching Netflix. I plot out my next mock spot instead of daydreaming about the Boundary Waters.
I want to learn how to bring this attitude home with me and just focus on where I’m at, although I’m afraid that it will be all too easily swept aside as I slide back into my old routine. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow.