Reflections on six months away

Happy New Government Day 5th July 2024. 

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I'm back in Sao Luis now - I was here for a month in April and HAD to come back for their amazing Sao Joao festival. Here's a video showing a tiny bit of a Bumba Meu Boi play .... 100 different community groups in the state of Maranhao put on their own versions of this play, all telling the same story, all totally different. (A trip to Sao Luis in June is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, tell me if you want to come here and I'll join you!)

As regular readers will know, I am doing a particular sort of 'participative tourism' as far as I can and was actually IN a Bumba Meu Boi play last week...(!) As well as

- visiting museums and art galleries,

- going to carnival in Salvador,

- climbing mountains way out of my comfort zone in Chapada Diamantina,

- being part of a sunset candlelit boat procession at the Festejo de Divino Espirito Santo in Alvaraes near Tefe, and

- watching the Corpus Cristi procession in Cusco,

I've

- been in a Forro band in Camacari near Salvador,

- learned Cacuria dancing in Sao Luis - and the instagram video they recorded of me talking about it went viral!

- met Nelly Marubo, indigenous leader who spoke at the conference in Lancaster in '22 we put on in homage to Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira who were murdered in the Amazon two years ago,

- had the honour of meeting Dom Phillips' widow (who has just set up the new and wonderful Dom Phillips Institute, I'll write more on that in a future blog)

- stayed in Altamira and visited the Belo Monte Dam which has devastated lives there...

- was in a Bumba Meu Boi play here in Sao Luis and will be in it again tomorrow,

- played melodeon in the street with a Rebec player yesterday, (One of my best pieces of learning while travelling is being confident to have very few plans so that I can stop, change direction, and do that sort of thing at any time! that's what kept me in Sao Luis for a month in April when I'd originally planned to be here for a few days....)

- met some lovely people in Manaus who want to set up an 'eco-textile tourism' project to happen next October, handy for COP30 in Belem in November... (ask me for the contact details!)

- visited the Instituto Mamirauá amazing sustainable development science centre in Tefe - which does participative science with local indigenous communities - and reconnected with my inner scientist which had been dormant since I got a 9 in O level biology....

- found three people to volunteer at the animal rescue centre of my friend's sister in Puerto Maldonado (you can volunteer there too!), and of course

- helped to set up the four Hannah Frank art exhibitions here in Brazil, culminating in the ones currently in Cachoeira with the art of Artur Soar...

Also at the last minute when I was in Peru managed to get back to the indigenous village I had visited four times between 1984 and 2008, and totally reconnected with people there.... (one of the big things I'd hoped to do on this trip, but didn't think I'd be able to).

Solo travel is NOT solo travel! I was with my fab niece Jen for the first six weeks (a WONDERFUL travel companion though she hates my general untidiness) and a lovely cool friend Aga ( also a lovely and relaxed travel companion) for the final month up to last week, and we stayed with a gorgeous friend Carlos for a few days near Cusco, but the rest of the time I've been nurtured beautifully by people from Couchsurfing, people from Servas International, people from the Jewish communities of Salvador and Recife and Santarem, friends of friends who are now friends themselves, the staff and students at a wonderful language school in Salvador, Airbnb hosts, lovely hostel staff especially at FLYING DOG HOSTELS in Iquitos and Lima, amazing friendly motocarro drivers and taxidrivers, three of whom are now whatsapp friends and I met their families!.... At every place I was at, people gave me contacts for the next place, or ideas of what to do....

and did it **nearly all** without leaving the ground, using buses and boats (sad to say that I spoiled that when i got the opportunity to go back to the indigenous village in Peru, because I was trying to catch up with myself and still catch the 5 day boat I'd booked from Manaus to Belem to catch Sao Joao festival in Sao Luis. And, note to self, what with planes being full or cancelled, getting there took the same time that overland travel would have taken, and we ended up catching the boat four days later anyway).

left home 19th November 2023

Lancaster/train to

London/ train to

Portsmouth/ boat to

Santander/ bus to

Madrid/ train to

Huelva/ boat to

Tenerife/ ship to

arrived in Brazil 8th December 2023

Fortaleza/ ship to

Salvador/ bus to

Lencois/ bus to

Cachoeira/bus to

Recife/ bus to

Fortaleza/ bus to

Sao Luis/ bus to

Belem/ boat to

Santarem/ lift to

Alter do Choa/

Santarem bus to

Altamira/ bus back to

Santarem/ boat to

Manaus/ boat to

Tefe / boat to

Tabatinga/ motocarro to

Leticia/ boat to

Santa Rosa/ boat to

Iquitos/ boat to

Yurimaguas/ bus to

Lima/ bus to

Cusco/ collectivo to

Urubamba/ bus to

Puerto Maldonado/ plane to

Pucallpa/ plane to

Atalaya / canoe to

Santa Clara-Santo Domingo / canoe to

Atalaya/ and back....

plane to

Pucallpa / plane to

Iquitos / boat to#

Santa Rosa / Leticia / Tabatinga /plane to

Manaus, / boat to

Santarem / boat to

Belem / bus to

Sao Luis !!!!!

and leaving 7th July, flying to the USA on Sunday then buses and trains and boats and ships all the way till home next January,,,

San Diego seeing relatives,

Los Angeles seeing my daughter,

San Francisco,

Vallejo,

Berkeley,

Portland (five days with my daughter here too),

Seattle (a week staying in a cohousing project!),

and then a slow road trip Vancouver to Montreal leading up to KlezKanada at the end of August.....

and then my Big Birthday in Montreal in September with family ....

(and staying with some more Cohousng people in Montreal too)

and a few more months hanging around Canada and the USA before a leisurely 11 day trip home from New York to Southampton in January... (ps that trip cost £500 each, not so much more than a flight)

Thanks for coming with me!

As ever, I prefer to DO than to WRITE, but once I start writing I get carried away.

I worked for years in adult literacy and workplace literacy at Lancaster Uni, and spoke at a lot of conferences, but never wrote anything up in the academic journals because when I first arrived there I didn't understand their relevance or the need to have stuff written. Then years later when I did my PhD (in a different topic) I started to understand why you might want some written records that would be able to be found years later to record what was going on and that anyone could find. So here we are. It's not an academic journal but it's different from a facebook post or an instagram reel!

I plan to make more posts with lots of pix bringing my Brazil travels up to date and coming with me into the US and Canada. If you want to have more daily up to date news, consider joining my travel whatsapp group... i love sharing with a small group of friends and having your comments. Join it here https://chat.whatsapp.com/IAilrufbWa91GyEIDBrE6x   or send me your whatsapp number and ask me to add you. 

lots of love Fiona xxx 

In Belem last month with Mirlan Tavares who made these gorgeous little  June Festival themed hat earrings