Serrinha Part One

(this is the first part of a rather long post written on the computer while we were out in the rural area of Serrinha, enjoy)

I write this as we complete our second day in Serrinha. It’s a place that can’t be described in a word. It’s beautiful, dry, sad, lonely, stunning, green, calm, peaceful, simple, caring…so many things. I have a hard time verbalizing the feeling of being here. First things first, I’ll try and describe the terrain. We bused from Sobral to a little town right outside of Taperuaba. On the way we were presented with some of the most beautiful country in Brazil: tall green hill/mountains probably about 800 meters tall. We drove through valleys and saw lakes. The classic red soil preceded us wherever we went. Serrinha is one of these hills (it literally means little hill). We took motorcycles to the bottom of the hill, loaded our backpacks onto a donkey, and started our hour-long ascent. And I truly mean we were walking up the side of a mountain for an hour. It’s nothing like the temperate rainforest we’re used to. There’s lots of dust, and dry and cacti, and loads of rocks. I don’t know what ancient force created these hills, but whatever did tumbled HUGE rocks over and under each other. They create the coolest multi-rock caves I’ve ever seen. Imagine tall smooth monoliths leaning against one another leaving just enough room between at the bottom for a loaded-down donkey to pass through. That’s where the beautiful and stunning adjectives come into play.
The “village” itself is actually a collection of 26 houses spread over several hills and valleys, each belonging to a subsistence farmer. We’re staying in a school that no longer operates, but used to teach the first 3 grades. Our tent is set up inside, and for good reason. We’ve already seen a tarantula, wasps the size of Andy’s hand, 8” centipedes, giant lizards, snakes, and loads of flies. It’s comforting to know none of the aforementioned has figured out how to use a zipper. Last night, though, we definitely heard one of the wasps walking around our tent. When you can HEAR a wasp walking, you keep the door closed no matter how hot it gets.
Actually the weather is perfect. It’s only hot during the day. In the morning and once the sun goes down, there’s a beautiful mountain wind that cools everything down. We like it a lot more than Sobral, where it’s 90 degrees no matter the time.
The sadness mentioned above is brought about by two major reasons. The first is the ongoing drought. For the last 5 years or so there hasn’t been nearly as much rain as is needed to grow all the crops. They have the ability to grow bananas, manioc, corn, beans, papaya, mangoes, all sorts of delicious things (there is practically nothing better than a mango right off the tree). However, with the lack of rain, they’ve been forced to buy most of these things recently “down below” as they call the city at the bottom. Can you imagine walking up and down a mountain every day? They work as a community though, so if a guy needs something and someone is already going down, more often than not they’ll pick it up for them.