Category: 2017-2018 Tufts 1+4 Fellows

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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.
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The End of an Era

by Stephanie, Tufts 1+4 Participant

This was the first January that I had free time in several years. From 7th to 12th grade I was a part of a Girl Scout robotics team in Austin and the first three months of each year were completely monopolized by my commitments to the team. Every day after school and all day on the weekends I would be at the Girl Scout Kodosky Center in room 110 using power tools, programming, and designing a robot. I would do no other activities during this time, all of my focus was on the task at hand. And I loved every minute of it! At the end of each season I would feel an enormous amount of pride finally witnessing my creation come to life.

This year, I watched the build season from the sidelines. After last season, I thought I was ready to leave this part of my life behind as I explored new opportunities in college. But I did not know how much I would miss it. This activity was such a pillar in my life and now that it’s gone, I can’t help but feel a little lost. I am now an alumna of the team, but that title does not come with the same perks as being the leader. I can no longer just go to robotics to forget my problems and build cool stuff. Now when I go, it will be as a mentor and my job is to assist others. I can help the new CEO in leading the team, but I cannot make the decisions myself.

I’m struggling a little with how to cope with this loss. Robotics was a massive part of my identity. It was my passion, a place where I could lose myself in the work, and it created a community for me that was incredibly instrumental during my teenage years. But all good things must come to an end. I always knew this was a short term passion that would end with my leaving high school, but I never imagined that I would feel the loss this strongly. 
But I’ve since realized that my internal struggle may not be about losing robotics as much as it is about leaving home. Retiring from robotics and graduating from high school was the end of an era for me, the first sign that my childhood is coming to a close. This activity that I loved so much must come to an end because I need to move on to do bigger things with my life. And I have to leave the comforts of home because it is time to see what I am really made of and how I can function in the real world. I think in the back of my brain I understood this, but just projected it onto the loss of robotics.
But now I realize that just because I am far away from Texas and I cannot participate in robotics the way I used to, it does not mean that I must leave a part of myself behind. My home and activities, like robotics, will always be part of my identity and they have all led me to be the person I am today. Maybe without robotics or without my childhood being the way it was, I wouldn’t have even applied to Tufts 1+4 and received the opportunity to live in Ecuador. The lessons I learned and the experiences I had throughout my childhood will always be with me.
Moving to Ecuador and taking this bridge year was the perfect way for me to test these new boundaries of adulthood, like completely managing my own schedule. This year I have felt free and on my own. I can make choices based purely on what I want and need, but I am still firmly connected with my family and my home in Texas. My bridge year has allowed me to have many experiences (like hiking to giant waterfalls and and participating in cultural rituals) that I cannot have at home and it has shown me that I can adapt to change and thrive in new situations. This was the perfect transition year between childhood and adulthood. I live my life in Ecuador as an adult, but this summer I can return to my family home as a kid for the last time.
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My Odyssey

By Nicolas, Tufts 1+4 Participant

As a kid, I never took much pleasure in reading. I would do it when I had to, but it was never something I did voluntarily. Dyslexia made it hard for me to read without giving me headaches, especially in English since it was my second language. Although I hated reading, I really loved being read to. I loved when my parents would read me stories about adventures and made up places. I must have listened to The Odyssey book on tape at least ten times growing up, and it was without a doubt my favorite story. Once I was older and my reading improved, I had the chance to read my favorite book for the first time. The difference when reading the words myself as opposed to it being read to me was tremendous. I loved experiencing the adventure of the story first hand. This was the first time I’ve ever had that feeling where I didn’t want to put the book down, not even for a second. I thought Odysseus was the most incredible character ever. His leadership and determination was incomparable and he was really someone I looked up to. This story really changed my life. I loved The Odyssey because of the thoughts it provoked me to fathom. Different conflicts and challenges, and questionings of what I would have done if I were in that position. I now know, the deepest pleasure of reading isn’t the words on the page, but what thoughts those words trigger in your head. What do those words make you feel and why.

My best friend, Raf recommended this book to me a couple weeks before I set off on this incredible journey of a year. He said it was one of his favorite books ever and he hoped I would like it as well. So I bought this book and brought it with me to Brazil. The story of Siddhartha is that of a young Brahmin boy who sets out to find the Buddha in hopes of learning the purest form of wisdom and self discipline. The story is filed with love and compassion and fear and hope, and the portrayals or these deep seeded human emotions made me reflect of the foundation of what it is to be human and what it means to be alive. I felt extremely connected to this story in the sense that, I too was a young boy taking off to gain wisdom in a far and strange land. This story provoked so much emotion out of me that it literally brought me to tears on several occasions. Once again, these words on paper changed my life. I feel so lucky to have felt these connections with these books and emotions that ultimately shift my thinking. In a way I feel like these books are very similar to my gap year; they both have helped me grow and mature a lot, even in ways I can’t see yet, and I’m super excited to discover the ways in which these changes will unfold.

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Just Audrey

By Audrey, Tufts 1+4 Participant

Like an idiot, I came to Ecuador carrying expectations.

In August I looked ahead and saw “cool traveler adventurer Audrey,” the girl that could solve any problem. The girl that could speak fluent Spanish, change the world with her art, and maybe has a cool haircut. Independent, strong, and a citizen of the world: I saw myself as I thought that I should be, every secret aspiration candy-coated with stereotypes.

And now, over halfway through, I am dealing with the consequences of that notion of who I should be. Because I am not that girl. I am still scared and stressed and homesick sometimes, I still occasionally get lost, and I still worry about what I am doing here. I still feel like I have wasted time, and I still don’t really like eating guinea pig.

But while I am not the girl that I thought that I should be, I am also not the girl that I was. Coming from such a small town, my reputation had proceeded me. I had been Audrey the valedictorian, Audrey the vandal, Audrey the loud artist, Audrey the big fish in a small pond, Audrey the ambitious, Audrey the feminist, Audrey the creative. Identity upon rumor, I was known for many things, and other people’s expectations often proceeded me.

And now, sitting here in Ecuador, I am neither who I expected to become, or who people in my past thought that I was. I have settled into just Audrey. Coming to a place where nobody knew (or could pronounce) my name gave me the chance to forget about who other people thought that I was. I am imperfect, independent, creative, loud, ambitious, scared, and silly. I have not gotten rid of my imperfections or reputations, I have been forced to embrace them. I have learned to feel stupid when I could not understand something, and I have learned to feel proud of myself when I can. I have learned how to live in a city, and I have gotten better at making friends. Living here has taught me to enjoy my own company, and to embrace things that do not make sense to me. Overall, I have learned to be gentle on myself, and to let go. Instead of becoming what anyone expected, I have just become me, settled into my body and my personality in a way that I have not been before. I still do not fully understand this new version of myself, but now that’s OK, because nobody here pretends to either. I will still come back to Idyllwild differently than I left it, but instead of returning as “perfect, citizen-of-the-world, social justice warrior, fearless, adventurous Audrey”, I will just be me. And I could not be happier.