Casten Trip to Brazil, 2010

DIGGING FOR ROOTS IN BRAZIL

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his article must begin with thanks to the Casten family, whose grants for foreign travel plant diversity and therefore health in our school culture. Also, thanks to Vladimir Klimenko for having the idea for the trip to Fazenda ouro verde in Bahía, Brazil, and for being a chaperone. Chaperones Meredith Maddox and Fran Stanek both gave more than I could ask in their total commitment and positive attitudes. The following Hackley students were kind, cooperative and enthusiastic throughout: Maria de la Piedra, Nick DiPietrantonio, Maddi Ginsberg, Taylor Holland, Olivia Avidan, Jill Horing, Metika Ngbokoli, Alice Sun, Emily Schwartz, Kathleen Sullivan, and Victoria Tarantino. Obrigada, you guys!

Long before the 2010 Casten trip to Brazil took place, I began to wonder how we would bring it home, especially, how our students would translate it into their experience at Hackley.

Eleven Hackley students and four teachers in rural Brazil, studying traditional dances, using farm tools, and focusing on the restoration of Atlantic rain forest—undoubtedly, this trip would focus us on “roots culture.” As its leader, I felt compelled to ask about the value of searching for things that feed a culture slowly, often invisibly, and over long periods of time.

How would our students bring the roots home? Could they coax them to grow in our native environment?

Kathleen, Nick and Metika

While we had regular work on the farm, we also saw ecological work on a much bigger scale when we met experts in forest restoration. Patient pioneers of the renewed or “secondary” forest (growing back what cash crop cultures brought down) met with us to show how they germinated trees, planted saplings, and studied the struggle for survival that might let the Atlantic rainforest of south central Brazil survive. They showed and described the difficulty of trying to “grow back” what evolution designed over tens of thousands of years. These scholars work in the place where the planet has its greatest diversity of plant species. In this, Bahía holds an inherent natural wisdom, one with deep and very old roots.

Did we bring some of this ecological potential back to our own wooded campus?

We worked with different sorts of roots. The first were literal roots, covered in locally composted dirt. In a radiantly green valley in the rain forest of south central Brazil, the eighty-acre Ouro verde farm harvests cacao from its colonial-era grove, and grows produce for its owners and for people in the local community.

Its owners, Tisza Coelho and Cabello Rolim, were our devoted guides and teachers throughout the trip. Cabello showed us the slow and sustainable process by which he grows food and restores forest on his property. Our students cleared beds and sifted compost, dug holes for saplings and pruned spiky pineapple plants, with simple, often hand-made tools. To cool off they jumped in the spring fed pond. Permaculture is an agricultural model for feeding ourselves sustainably, turning waste into nutrients and managing food production in the natural parameters of a local eco-system. Cabello and Tisza did more than tell us about it: They let us into the ecosystem where they live and work, and showed us what to do to be part of its growth.

The second sort of roots we found were musical. Kathleen Sullivan described a moment when the roots of rhythm grew into a show of Brazilian pride. It was World Cup time, and we watched the game with locals in the village of Serra Grande: Each time Brazil scored, everyone stood up, cheering and dancing, and Cabello led all who were present in a percussion circle. The drums and dancing continued for about ten minutes every time Brazil scored, and after the game, the festivities moved to the town square and continued for about half an hour.

How easy it seems to drive to Home Depot to buy a shovel, a pot and plastic wrapped starter plants! But how much more meaningful it was to share the home-built shovels of Fazenda Ouro Verde, to transplant seedlings into our hosts’ empty milk cartons beside their open air nursery/turtle pen! One evening as our travelers reflected on their day, Alice Sun said that the farm work inspired her to make her own garden when she returned home. Many of the students expressed the certainty that Hackley gardens would be “awesome” for our community… The question of how we connect the simple, hard work of permaculture to Westchester and Hackley culture lingers now, months after our return home… Might our cafeteria compost be photosynthesized into lunch?

Cabello is an internationally known teacher of rhythm. He offered us several rhythm “clinics,” which had something in common with the revivals I once knew in the rural South of the U.S. Two of these happened in the town square, where instruments were distributed like keys to another time, letting us in to a labyrinth of sound under his commanding and energetic direction. With shakers, drums and bells, we built on old, syncretic melodies that linked Africa to Bahía, (and now, to Westchester?) The lyrics, as we were told later when we tried to obtain them for our journals, must be learned by voice, and not written or memorized outside the experience— the roots—that they kept alive. Being part of the rhythm circle 6

DIGGING FOR ROOTS IN BRAZIL continued from previous page was exciting and fun, and young and elderly locals drew near to enjoy and join in; but it was also something heavy: loaded with human past and emotion.

Roots of all kinds appeared around us; but there were several moments—long and excruciating operations in fact—when the roots were put into our muscles! Tisza, as multitalented as her partner, turned one day from an earthy and practical mother figure to a passionately expressive and talented dancer.

She lead us in a class of maculélé, a fierce Afro-Brazilian dance in which one smacks together two sticks to the rhythm of live drumming, while swinging the legs, running and jumping. Exhausted by the class warm-up, I wondered what I could safely do with two big sticks; but there was no time for that question, for we were there, in the outdoor pavilion on Ouro Verde’s lake, transported to meanings and feelings passed to us by our teacher from women hundreds of years in the past. Tisza also invited a modern dance teacher to give us two classes. She was a specialist in Afro-Brazilian dance who taught us movements that once spoke for enslaved people. We mimed connections to the natural elements and, it seemed to me, retold stories of labor, prayer and rebellion, with our bodies. Honestly, we could only begin to sense the meanings of these traditional, danced gestures, but the feeling of making them together—including the physical challenge—was joyous.

Cabello and Tisza also showed us how to make instruments. We learned to build the birimbau from local materials: The traditional stick from which the one-stringed instrument gets its name, was harvested on the Ouro Verde farm; the gourd that resonates the string’s sound was grown and dried there; and the single wire that is plucked to make its hard, haunting sound…this I watched Taylor Holland cut out of an old tire with a kitchen knife, as I tried in near terror to focus his inimitable enthusiasm on the avoidance of blood and calls home… I felt safer making the shaker basket, the Ca-xixi—more a “gatherer” and less a “hunter” activity—and I got the chance to help make one on our last morning in Brazil.

Cabello was glad to discover that the empty lot next to the restaurant where we were having breakfast was filled with berry-laden bushes. These, and only these berries are used in the basket of the Ca-xi-xi. After we gathered a bunch of them, students gathered around to peel off their shells. The glistening, purple seeds on an aluminum tray from the restaurant, crowded with the hands of our students, gave me to wonder at the ubiquitous connections of deep, regional culture ready to be touched by anyone who reaches for them. It also made me wonder what we could bring home when we lost physical contact with the living roots of Bahía.

The ultimate encounter with roots was in our capoeira classes. Capoeira is a formalized physical contest between two people, which takes place in a circle of onlookers supporting the play with rhythm instruments and traditional songs. We were trained in the basic moves: Quick switches from standing to lunging, as well as headstands and cartwheels, crawls and rolls. About twenty minutes into our first lesson—I’ll admit it—I regretted being a chaperone: I had to be a leader, keep going, follow instructions, do my best… and this was very painful! But I was intrigued by the contest, by the physical wit it required and the welcome into it by our masters and their local students. When in the play, the bodies of the opponents move in tune with each other through traditional moves, but improvised surprises make each contest a new and personal story of offense and defense.

After two capoeira lessons, an invitational roda or circle play was held for us on the farm. Experienced capoeiristas came, and an old singer named Azul (Blue) was honored by the guests. Once the music and contest began, those who knew Azul knelt to touch their hearts in front of him, hold his hand, and pat his shoulders, clearly humbled by the presence of tradition he brought to the circle. Offering everyone present a chance to play, the roda took several hours, winding down just after sunset. We were honored guests in the capoeira tradition, our names and stories folded into the Portuguese lyrics of old songs. A stranger so welcomed to the deep strength of another culture, I had wonder how to hold the gift and share it, how to keep my part of it growing.

However they choose to do so, I know the students, too, will ask and learn from this question as the memory of the trip lives here at Hackley.

—Anne Gatschet

Matheus Cuoto talks trees in the forest 7