During the past week I attended two very unique events, both very different, which I’d like to share with you all.

First, last Saturday, the 13th, I had the opportunity to attend a concert put on by the forró legend and Pernambuco native Dominguinhos at the incredible Teatro de Nova Jerusalém, an immense open-air theater about 20 minutes from Brejo. It was a very entertaining night, to be sure! I went with my host parents, Sérgio and Elô, along with lots of their friends and family.

Forró is a traditional Brazilian style of music, especially typical of the Northeast. I would say that the closest similar American genre would probably be folk, or something along those lines, but forró is more up beat than that and often accompanied with very energetic dancing. The lead instrument is typically accordion, which is what Dominguinhos plays, but then there’s also guitars and an assortment of percussion instruments.

I also have to tell you a little bit about this venue. It is the largest open-air theater complex in the world, and it really is incredible. Every year here they put on a renowned passion of the Christ play, progressing through the 12 different stages present in the complex, I’m really looking forward to attending! The concert I attended was held in Herod’s Palace, a very impressive structure. Here’s a picture of it that I found online (I stupidly didn’t bring my camera because I thought we might be in a large crowd and didn’t want to worry about it… I regretted that…). I’d like to go back during the day and explore the whole complex a bit more, I’m pretty sure it only costs R$1 to get in (about 40 cents at the current exchange rate!).

We got there around 9:15 and met up with a bunch of friends and family who were already there. Rather than standing in a crowd, we were all seated at tables, with servers even coming around, it was great! The concert finally got under way a little past 10, starting with just Dominguinhos, and man, what a character he is! He’s manner was hilarious, telling these stories and little jokes, and at the end of each one doing this hilarious little giggle, it was very entertaining! I didn’t understand everything he said, obviously, but I was able to catch things here and there.

He was soon joined by the rest of the band, and the forró got under way! It’s a very fun type of music to listen to, and just makes you want to get up and dance (which, by the end of the night, pretty much everyone was!). This was also a very special concert, because Dominguinhos was actually recording this for his first DVD release! As such, there were cameras all over the place, so who knows, maybe I’ll end up in one of the crowd shots, haha. But another perk of this was that he kept bringing out different guest artists to join him for a few songs, which was a lot of fun. These included several other accordion players, a guitar player, and a couple singers.

Overall, the atmosphere of the concert was really cool. Everyone was enjoying the show immensely, and singing along with just about every song, haha, I was really wishing I knew some of the words! I don’t know if we have anything really comparable in the US, at least not in my background, I guess some folk songs or something like that, but everyone here seems to know all these songs, it’s really a part of the culture.

So, all in all, a very fun experience! But the night wasn’t over even after the concert wrapped up at about 1:30 in the morning. Oh no, it was off to a restaurant for a little late night pizza! I didn’t actually get to bed until a little after 3 AM, which is the latest I’ve gone to bed in a LONG time, haha. But it was certainly worth it, I had a blast!

Ok, so that was the first event. Now on to the second…

Last night I attended a ceremony here in Brejo called a diplomação where the newly elected mayor, vice-mayor, and city council members for the entire municipality received diplomas as official records of their being elected. I don’t know if we have anything equivalent to this in the US; if we have, I’ve never heard of it. It’s not an inauguration, because that will be happening on January 1 (and I’m invited to that, too!).

Why, you might be asking, would I be invited to these events? Well, several reasons actually. For one thing, it pays having Betty for a colleague, haha. She knows everyone in Brejo, or so it would seem. She is good friends with the new mayor and one of the city council members, who she has worked with through the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (Syndicate of Rural Workers) here in Brejo. So I’ve also had the opportunity to meet the new mayor, Dr. Edson, vice-mayor, Edelson, and one of the city council members, Laelson, which has been a fun experience! However, this is not the only connection I have. Sérgio, my host dad, has been chosen to be the Secretary of Agriculture in the new administration! So I’ve also met with some of the same people at my house. It’s really fun having all these connections, it’s certainly a first for me! This is really a first for Betty too, as she’s never had so many connections to people in office; she told me this was the first time she’d ever gotten an invite to one of these events in the 25 years she’s been here! So it really was quite the honor, and very exciting to be invited in my 4th month here!

But anyway, so last night we got all dressed up and showed up for this event, which was held in the local state high school. It was in a decent sized room, with 300 chairs set up for guests, though many more crowded it. Sérgio said there were about a thousand people there, crowded in and spilling out of the room. The newly elected officials made their entrance to enormous cheers, it was quite the atmosphere. After some welcoming remarks, the handing out of diplomas commenced. Laelson was the first to receive his, to a wave a cheers. Others followed, with varying levels of cheers (and in some cases, jeers) from the crowd. Several people got enormous yells of support for not shaking the hand of the current mayor’s representative upon receiving their diploma. I gather the people of Brejo are ready for a change…

Finally, it was Dr. Edson’s turn, and the room erupted! Fireworks outside accompanied the cheers and applause and yells inside. Here he is waving to and thanking the crowd:

Once the official ceremony was over, the room remained packed with excited people, with much congratulating and celebrating, and plenty of pictures being taken. Afterwards Sérgio, Elô and I made our way to several other gatherings around town, where I got to talk more with the mayor and vice-mayor, it was a lot of fun. Another late night, very much worth it! I look forward to the inauguration ceremony, should be another interesting experience!

Here's a little who's who of Brejo...

This past week I had the opportunity to travel to Monteiro again, this time to observe and help out with the construction of a 52,000 liter cistern at the local high school there, the same one where John and Julie have been working on the school/community garden that I think I mentioned in a previous blog post. To give you a better idea of the size of this cistern, consider that the cisterns MCC builds for individual families are a maximum size of 16,000 liters. The entire process was to take 8 days, though I was only able to stay for the first 4 or 5.

So, first of all, I set out on Tuesday for the community of Santa Maria, which I had previously visited with Keith and Cristina, where they are putting in a pipeline to pipe water down from a dammed reservoir they have up in the mountains down to several access points in the community. This was my first solo visit to a community, and I must admit I was a little nervous, going there to take stock of where the construction was at and to make some recommendations based on the little analysis I had done of the system. Once I got there everything was fine though, I was able to take some good measurements and had a good talk with Ze, who’s been helping a lot with the construction. Hopefully next week we’ll be able to get the last parts we need and finish things up, since we’re into the dry season now and they’re anxious to have access to water!

From there it was 2 hours by motorcycle on some wonderful dirt/gravel roads. The scenery was great and I had a fun time, but I’d rather not do too many long trips like that on my motorcycle – my legs were quite sore the next day, plus my arms were starting to peel (despite multiple applications of sunscreen). But yeah, I made it to Monteiro Tuesday afternoon and took it easy the rest of the day, as the construction wasn’t going to start until the next day.

Wednesday morning it was up bright and early to make it to the school by 7 to get things started! I’m not going to describe the entire process, but it really was very cool to see how the cistern was constructed. There are two principal methods of cistern construction that are used here: one is with metal forms and poured concrete, and the other is with cement plates that are put together to form the walls. The plate approach makes much more sense for these large cisterns, as any metal forms for walls would be enormous! These 52,000 liter cisterns are nearly 7 meters in diameter!

The first thing that had to be done was to dig an enormous hole, roughly 8 meters in diameter and 1 ½ meters deep. This had been accomplished (thankfully) prior to our arrival to actually construct the cistern. The majority of the cistern is buried in the end to help withstand the force that all that water exerts on the walls. Rather than describe all the steps in detail, I’ll include a series of pictures to show some of the process:

Sifting sand to mix with the concrete

Bitonho making the plates for the cistern walls

Getting there! 3 levels of 36 plates makes for a lot of plates…

Some of the students from the school helped briefly. Very briefly…

Making the beams for the cone-shaped roof

Ready to start pouring the concrete floor

About to start putting the first level of plates in position

Eduardo, Bitonho, and Orlando work on the placing, leveling, and securing the first level of plates

On up to the third and final level of plates; the notches on this top level are for the beams for the roof.

The walls are wrapped with wire and then plastered to make them stronger

That’s all of the construction that I was there for, as I had other things to do and couldn’t stay in Monteiro for the entire 8 day process. I was very glad to be able to participate, though, I learned a lot and had fun working with Bitonho and Eduardo, the two pedreiros (stone masons), as well as Junior, Orlando, and Paulo, the other three workers on the scene. They were a fun bunch of guys, always laughing and joking around (especially Eduardo…), but still working incredibly hard. Eduardo was pretty ridiculous, though, haha, he had the most hilarious giggle I’ve ever heard! And yes, giggle is the only word to describe it. His voice would get really high as he giggled about something and then he’d try to say something but still in that really high voice, oh man, ridiculous.

One of the things that turned to joking around on me was the, what shall we call it, constant heckling, dare we say cat-calling from the young women of the school directed towards me. I heard everything from “hey beautiful” to “kiss me,” as these meninas would hang out of the windows of the classrooms to watch us work. It’s like they didn’t have anything to do! Things certainly didn’t calm down any after Julie told them my name… thanks Julie… pretty soon Junior was joining in with the girls on the yells of “Miguel, Miguel!” Yikes… Let’s just say I was very happy to work on Saturday! So peaceful!

So that was my week. I had a very good time there in Monteiro, great to observe and help out with the construction of the cistern, and also fun to spend some time with my MCC coworkers there. I’ll be seeing them more next week when we have a team meeting for a couple days in Recife, which will be my first time back there since moving to Brejo about a month ago; should be fun! Hope to visit my host family some too, which will be great!

Yesterday, as you all probably know, was Thanksgiving. I didn’t realize until last week that we were already to Thanksgiving, and even after that I kept forgetting. Somehow the constant 85° plus weather just doesn’t lend itself to that… Anywho, hope you are had a wonderful day with family and friends, I’m giving thanks for all of you and your continued support of me on this wonderful adventure! Thank you!

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Ok, just got a picture sent to me from John in Monteiro: it's done! Hooray!

Done!