Ok, so I know this is a bit late, but I did still want to share a little about my host-sister Kallyne’s 15th birthday celebration that I was able to attend a few weeks ago just before leaving for Brejo.

So, I knew this was going to be a pretty big deal, but I still wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. So as to look presentable I dressed in the one nice outfit I brought with me, and Joel did the same, and around 7:30 that night we boarded a bus to take us there. Yes, they rented a bus to take a bunch of people from their neighborhood to the club where the party was being held, about ½ an hour away.

The first thought that came into my head as we entered the venue was “wedding reception.” Haha, that’s exactly the feel that I got with the very formal decorations, a large array of tables and chairs, and a bit of a stage set up in front with an enormous cake and some special chairs for the birthday girl and her family! Quite the occasion!

As time passed and more people arrived the anticipation began to mount, waiting for Kallyne to arrive. She finally did, making quite the entrance and proceeding to the front of the room, along with her family, to await the evening's events.

What followed were some wonderful tributes, including numerous choreographed dances from her friends, several videos from friends unable to attend, including a formal SALTer, a slide show of Kallyne through the years (anyone else thinking wedding reception now?!), and much more. It was obviously a very special moment for her, and I was delighted to be able to take part!

The festivities continued on into the night, with numerous rounds of appetizers and many refills on drinks finally being followed by dinner. I can’t remember exactly what time the dinner finally started, sometime after 11 I’m pretty sure! Kallyne made her rounds, visiting each table and thanking all the guests, so I made sure to jump in and get a picture with the glowing birthday girl!

At around midnight it was time for the dancing to start! Kallyne and Valdemir, her dad, started things off, of course, before Kallyne’s boyfriend cut in, haha! Soon after though, we found out the main dance floor was in another room across the courtyard, so we went to investigate. We found a rocking little area, strobe lights and all, rocking out to what we determined was some sort of Christian rap/hip-hop music. It was wild! After some slight hesitation, we joined in with the rest of the crowd, dancing into the early hours of the morning, interrupted only for periodic breathers and then for cake!

The evening finally started to wind down around 2 in the morning, and before long it was back on the bus for the ride home. It was only when I got all the way back to the house that I realized I didn’t have the key to the inside door, only the outer gate, and that the rest of my family would be staying til the very end… I ended up “sleeping” in a chair on the patio until they arrived, haha.

So, it was quite the night, to be sure, and very fun to take part in! The next day everyone was pretty exhausted, haha, Valdemir and Edilene fell asleep in the living room…

And don’t forget about the presents! Later that afternoon they started opening gifts; it was quite the haul!

All in all, a wonderful way to wrap up my time with my wonderful host family in Recife. Valdemir and Edilene, and their daughter Kallyne and son Yuri, were incredibly welcoming to me and I am certainly going to miss them. Hopefully I can visit them periodically during this year when I return to Recife for various meetings and such!

But now that I’m in Brejo, it’s on to a new family! So check back soon for the next blog post where you’ll meet Sérgio and Elo and their rambunctious sons Tiago and Pedro!

I finally have my motorcycle! And it is a thing of beauty. I mean, just look at it:

Mmm. Beautiful.

But seriously, I’m loving having a motorcycle; it’s so much fun! Everywhere I go I get to enjoy the ride, whether it’s cruising the streets of Brejo (right…), or heading out on some crazy dirt/sand/rock roads to visit one of the surrounding communities (more likely). Having never ridden a motorcycle before this summer, I’m trying to make up for lost time! Don’t worry mom; I wear a helmet every time (unlike most Brazilians, at least in town), and my motorcycle can’t go any faster than about 80 km/h, so I stay off the main highway whenever possible.

Ok, back-story time. So when I accepted this position in Brazil one of the things that told me was that it would be a good idea to get my motorcycle license, if I didn’t already have it. The reason for this is that many of the communities that I’ll be working with are only accessible by these wonderful dirt/sand/rock roads that I already mentioned. You try taking a car in some of these places! I guess people do it, but a motorcycle is the more common choice, and it’s easy to understand why. Plus it’s a lot cheaper to buy a motorcycle for one person to use than a car, so…

So I was thinking, alright, awesome, I have an excuse to learn how to ride a motorcycle! I tried to sign up for a class in Grand Rapids, however, and ran into trouble. As many of you know, I wasn’t exactly in any one place for very long this summer, what with choir tour, weddings, and visiting various friends and family, so there was only one week that worked for me to take the class. And it was full. Every class in the state of Michigan that week was full. This had me feeling somewhat discouraged, you might say. However, I persisted, and found out that they usually allowed walk-ins because not everyone always showed up. That was all the opening I needed! So on the first day of the class in late July I showed up, oh, about 2 hours early. You know, just to be sure. Even with that, I was the second in line for walk-in spots. The next hours passed somewhat nervously, but I shouldn’t have worried: in the end, every single walk-in, probably about 10 of us, got into the class, and there was room for more! Hooray!

The class consisted of two sessions during the week, kind of like a driver’s-ed course, learning about motorcycles, etc. Then the weekend was when we actually got to ride! We had two 5 hour sessions, Saturday and Sunday mornings, with the wonderful 125 and 250cc motorcycles that they provided for us.

I had so much fun!

The class was a blast, pretty basic obviously, and we never got above 3rd gear, and only got that fast once, and it was held in a parking lot… but I still had a blast! I passed the test at the end of the course with flying colors, if I do say so myself, and I was then certified to get my license! I couldn’t wait to ride more… only problem: I wouldn’t ride again til I got to Brazil. Nothing like a nice little layoff to forget everything I just learned, huh?

I got my license issued (after some trouble with the Washington DMV who didn’t necessarily like my Michigan course certificate… luckily I had cleared it earlier through an email to the head of the DMV, or something like that; the lady at the DMV didn’t seem to like it too much when I pulled out a copy of the email, haha!), and I headed off for some Brazilian motorcycle adventures!

I’m not gonna lie; my first time riding a motorcycle here was a bit rough. But I’ve already blogged about that experience, haha! More recently I’d been driving Betty’s motorcycle around a bit, and getting used to it more and more each time.

Then, middle of last week, I got word that a motorcycle had been purchased for me to use! I was ecstatic! So I made my way to Pesqueira, about an hour and a half from Brejo, since that was where the moto was. After some struggles with D-TRAN, which I think I mentioned in my last post, we finally got things squared away, at least enough for me to take the motorcycle, which is all that mattered to me! I still will have to go back there sometime in the next couple weeks to finalize some things.

So I headed out from Pesqueira, out onto the back roads that would take me to Brejo with only some rough GPS directions that Keith had given me, haha. I didn’t get lost, but I don’t think I would’ve cared if I had! I had a great time! Driving along, getting to know my motorcycle, just the two of us, riding through the Brazilian countryside in the bright morning sun… oh yeah… the sun… kinda forgot about that… I had conveniently forgotten my sunscreen back in Brejo, and hadn’t given it much thought the morning I set out. Then, almost to my destination, I realized just how foolish that had been: when driving a motorcycle, as you can imagine, one’s arms and the backs of one’s hands are constantly exposed to the sun the ENTIRE time. I was fried. Quite painfully so. But not for one second did I regret it, because it was proof that I was the proud owner of an awesome motorcycle that was mine to drive whenever I wanted!

It’s is a 2003 Honda, 125cc, with some extra suspension than the normal bikes here, which makes the back-roads a little easier to handle, which I’m grateful for. Also, after driving Beth’s bike (which is quite the specimen, from 1983, I think), this one is a dream!

So yes, I love my motorcycle! And I can’t wait to take more pictures with it, haha! And I can’t wait to get one of my own when I get back home!

When it rains, it does indeed pour! The last couple days have been the source of so many blessings it’s incredible! But before I get into all that, I think I need to give a little bit of the back story.

So, I’d been in Brejo da Madre de Deus for about a week and a half, which obviously isn’t that much time, but after 7 weeks in Recife I was ready to get to work. However, my initial time in Brejo didn’t provide much opportunity for that. Instead, it was more of the same; visiting projects, going to meetings, etc. While those things are valuable, I couldn’t help feeling somewhat useless, especially as I sat in on meetings where I understood maybe 5-10% of what was being said, or just tagged along with Betty wherever she was going. Not only that, but I still had really no concrete idea of what I would be working on during my time here, and absolutely no idea where to start!

Then, last week Betty had a conference in Fortaleza (about an hour north of Recife by plane), which left me by myself here in Brejo. She left me a few things that needed taking care of, but most of my time was spent catching up on email, following the US presidential election online, and reading. While I have been able to get some wonderful reading done (I just finished The Brothers K, which was amazing, I must say, and I am now reading Wicked), the feeling of uselessness was only compounded as I sat around Betty’s house all day. It was then that I got an email from Keith and Cristina, the country reps, saying they were going to be making a trip to Pesqueira (where she is from) and Monteiro to visit some MCC projects and that I could come with them if I wanted and also pick up the motorcycle that had recently purchased for me! Needless to say, the timing was perfect, and so I met up them on Wednesday and off we went.

Thursday we attempted to get all the documents transferred and sorted out for the new motorcycle, but we ran into some problems at D-TRAN (Department of Transportation) and were unable to get things resolved. However, I did get to ride it for the first time, and oh, what a glorious feeling that was! It’s awesome! But I won’t go into detail now, this deserves its own blog post, so stay tuned…

That afternoon we headed out for Monteiro, where we met up with some of the other MCCers based there, including Joel, the other SALTer. We had a nice relaxed evening together, including a visit to a community garden they’re working on there and later a Bible study. That night Joel and I got to talking and realized that we were both experiencing this feeling of uselessness, and just wanting to be able to contribute in some way. From my journal that night:

I’m hopeful that this will change in the near future, but the feeling still lingers. Last night at a Bible study at John and Julie’s we talked some about the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do, so I think that was a good reminder to be patient and trust in God to lead me where he would have me be.

It was as if God heard that and said, “Say no more, Mike!” By the end of the next day I had one main project that I will be principally responsible for, as well as three other projects that I will be directly involved in, and numerous ideas for additional research in areas that particularly interest me and could lead to other potential projects! God, you rock!

So, what all happened on that day (Saturday?). We first went to visit a biodigestor pilot project in a small community near Monteiro. I won’t go into too much detail, but the biodigestor essentially takes manure and captures the methane gas that is produced, allowing it to be used for cooking and other uses, while also producing valuable fertilizer. This is a very new project, still in the start-up phase, so, naturally, we brought along several large containers full of manure (and other assorted things…) that we got form the local slaughterhouse… that’s right. We then proceeded to shovel/dump this wonderful stuff and mix it with water to make it ready to be biodigested, or something like that. All in all a wonderful time. The first transfer kind of caused a little splatter. I luckily avoided it, save a few drops on my shirt, but Orlando, one of our coworkers, wasn’t so lucky; his shirt was pretty well “soiled,” you could say. But yeah, a very interesting project, to be sure, I’m interested to see the results. Where I come in is preparing some CAD drawings for construction of future biodigestors.

Mmmm, love that smell!

Orlando, pre-splatter, doing some mixing...

The other project that I went on to visit with Keith and Cristina is a water pipeline project in the community of Santa Maria, up in the hills about an hour and a half from Brejo. They have already begun construction of a pipeline to convey water from a reservoir up in the mountains down to the village, probably a couple kilometers away. However, there are several unresolved issues that need addressing, so I will be doing some research and basic analysis in the next couple weeks, while also probably visiting the community several times to help with the project. I’m really excited, and a little nervous, since I’m basically going to be the go-to guy for this project! The good thing is that I at least have some experience with situations similar to this, whereas most of the other stuff I’ll be involved in here will be brand new!

Part of the pipeline already under construction

The reservoir located up in the mountains

The other projects that I will be jumping into include some basic analysis for a small-scale irrigation project for the community garden in Monteiro that I mentioned and drawing up a floor plan and some other drawings for a new women’s community center in another community near Santa Maria. I also would like to do some more in-depth research on subterranean dams, which are becoming more and more popular here in NE Brazil. I am very excited, as well as somewhat relieved, to have so many great things on my plate now! I feel like I can begin to really contribute in some concrete ways to the work that MCC is doing here, which is a very good feeling.

Now, as if all that wasn’t good news enough… Monday I will be moving in with a host family for the remainder of my time here in Brejo! Talk about a big time answer to prayers! I’ve been living with Betty, who is wonderful, but I was really hoping to have a host family for this year. A host family is just such a great way to adapt to a culture and meet new people, I have learned so much from staying with families in the past, and those were only for 4 or 5 weeks at the most, so I am very excited to be part of a family here for such an extended period of time and to really develop those relationships. I don’t know a whole lot about my family, but Sérgio is the dad, who I met at one of the first meetings I went to here with Betty, and he seems like a very genuine, fun-loving guy, and I am excited to get to know him better. He and his wife have 2 sons, ages 6 and 2 ½, whose names I do not yet know, but should be plenty of adventures with the two of them!

Well, like I said, it’s been an incredible last couple of days, filled with so many blessings I can’t even count them. I’ve got plenty of exciting projects to keep me busy for a while now, which is an incredibly wonderful thing, and I’ve got a sweet new motorcycle to tool around on, haha, what more could I ask for? Many thanks to all of you for your continued prayers and support, love you and miss you all!

In other news, I finally got my absentee ballot today! Think there’s still time for me to vote?

Well, I made it to Brejo da Madre de Deus, my new home for the next 10 months or so! I will be living, at least for the foreseeable future, with Betty, who has worked with MCC here in Brazil for 25 years, the last 8 of which she has lived in Brejo. We tried to find a host family for me to stay with but were unable to, but I think living with Betty will be great. We’re still going to keep our eyes and ears open to host family possibilities, since that was an experience I was really hoping to have, but in the meantime I am excited to learn as much as I can from Betty. She’s worked on such a huge variety of projects here, it’s really incredible, and I have a feeling I’m going to be learning a lot!

We got to Brejo on Monday around lunchtime, and then we accompanied Betty out to the village of Lagoa de Pedra (Rock Lake), where she was delivering the metal forms used to construct cisterns, shown here:

After dropping off the forms, we got to explore some more of the area, and the highlight was definitely seeing all the different rock tanks they have developed there to collect and store water. There are tons of rock formations in the area (hence, the name Lagoa de Pedra), and they’ve constructed tanks in these areas by either building a concrete wall to close off a natural collection area or by excavating the dirt and plant growth that has filled in sizeable holes in the rock formations which naturally collect water. The number of tanks and the volume of each was really quite astounding; a single large rock formation could support 5 or 6, if not more, rock tanks, each holding thousands of liters, like this one, which Joel was about to go for a swim in…

MCC has done some work with constructing rock tanks as well, and I will likely be involved in some of that during this year. Such a simple idea, but so valuable, it’s awesome!

The other part of my first week was going to a couple of meetings with Betty. The first was here in Brejo with an association that works with sustainable development that she is president of, CONDESB (Conselho de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel de Brejo da Madre de Deus), where I was able to meet a lot of people from the area who I will be getting to know better as the year goes on. The second meeting was in the city of Petrolina, which is about 10 hours by bus from Caruaru, which is about an hour from Brejo by Toyota (I’ll have to write a separate post about Toyotas…). So we took an overnight bus to get there, and the meeting there was with an organization called Associação Brasileira de Captação e Manejo de Água de Chuva (ABCMAC, translated as the Brazilian Association of the Capture and Management of Rain Water), of which Betty is also the vice-president. This meeting was to work on planning a conference that will be held next September, which they have every 2 years, to discuss various aspects of the management of rain water resources, primarily in semi-arid regions such as this part of NE Brazil. Unfortunately I will be gone by the time the conference happens, but I should be able to help a little bit at least with some of the planning. After the meeting we visited some other areas around Petrolina, including a huge agricultural area with somewhere around 50,000 acres of sugarcane! The whole project was made possible by a series of canals built in the 70’s to reroute water from the San Francisco River. Here are some pictures from our visit:

The landscape without irrigation

One of the principal irrigation canals

With irrigation – sugarcane! And lots of it!

So that’s what I’ve been up to recently. Also, things can still be sent to the original address I gave in Recife and I will get them eventually, but I do have a new address here in Brejo at Betty’s house, so here it is:

Rua Jose Batista Queiroz Sobrinho 3 – Apto 1 Andar
Centro – Brejo da Madre de Deus – PE – 55170-000 - Brasil

Alright, I’ll leave you with a couple more pictures from Lagoa de Pedra; fantastic scenery, I love it here!

Wow, that last few days have been very eventful, and I do not have time to write about everything now, but... stay tuned for more on the following:

1. Our final Portuguese class was Friday. 6 weeks down, lots to learn still! But we're getting better, to be sure.

2. Last night was my host sister Kallyne's huge 15th birthday party; it was awesome! Quite the extravagant party, felt more like a wedding reception than a birthday party!

3. Tomorrow I'm off to Brejo da Madre de Deus! I can't wait! I'm going to be visiting some projects in the Brejo/Monteiro (where Joel is going) area during the next couple days, before jumping into things on Wednesday (whatever that means...)

So, that is all I have time for now, I'm afraid. I'd appreciate your prayers as I completely shift gears here and start out on a whole new aspect of my SALT experience. It's going to be a whole lot of NEW, should be great!

Love you and miss you all, more later,
Mike