first day in afogados da ingazeira

Today we left Recife early in the morning to spend three days in the brazilian desert, known as the sertão.  Our goal is to meet with various farm owners to learn how they survive living in the sertão with such little water and to learn about their lifestyles and the fruits/vegetables they produce. We will be staying in a Pousada, which is like a big house with lots of rooms in the city of Afogados da Ingazeira.  The city is the biggest city in this sertão, with a population of around 40,000 inhabitants.  

When we arrived at our destination, I was surprised at how green the “desert” looked and how it did not look like the desert I had seen in movies we have watched about the sertanejos.  I think tomorrow we will be in the REAL desert because this doesn’t seem too bad at all.

Our little hotel room was adorable and very comfortable.  

Here is our hotel along with the surrounding area.

For lunch, we ate at the hotel restaurant then we heard a lecture from the Coordinator of Diaconia, the NGO that is over our internship.  We learned all about the projects that Diaconia is involved with in the sertão, and how they have provided thousands and thousands of cisterns in order for the people to collect water when it rains.  These cisterns take 4 days to make with 3 workers and they last for decades. They make an enormous difference for these families in collecting all this water so that they have water to drink, water their crops, cook, bath, etc.

After listening to the lecture, many of us rested while others taught English to some of the brazilians with us.  They are traveling to Africa, Norway, Belgium, Italy, etc while representing Diaconia and a base of English would be good for them.  

After English instruction, all of us went to the praça to have dinner.  The church in the middle of the city is so beautiful! I wish we had seen it in the daylight so I could take pictures it was so pretty and a different style than most churches here.  It amazed me how much people were out at night, all over the center of town, outside the church, etc.  It seemed like such a lovely, safe city. I love it here!