Where the Journey Begins!

By: Noorullah Ahmadzai

I along with a group of my fellows from the American University came to attend our practicum program in this culturally diverse, historically vibrant and an emerging economy of Brazil. I spend my first week in Rio de Janeiro to attend various discussions and lectures with Brazilian experts to understand the bigger picture of economy, politics and governance of the country. There, I had a mix of feelings about Brazil’s bigger picture.

A group photo of class fellows with Prof. Eve Bratman @ FGV in Rio de Janeiro!

After an exciting and busy week in Rio de Janeiro, the next destination was to visit Iracambi, a research center located in the city of Rosário de Limeira in the state of Minas Gerais to understand rural livelihood and life of people that are living in rural areas. The country side has such a beautiful landscape, very green hills and cloudy sky that one can only dream of it. Everyone in the group was so excited to reach to Iracambi but we had a stopover in the middle of our way to take delicious lunch and do a little shopping of chocolates, candies and fruits to energize ourselves during our stay.

Every society and community has its own pattern of living, culture and community practices and so is this community in Limeira. There are number of great lessons that one can take from this vibrant community as a lessons to apply in professional work in the field of international development and also to share with your country fellows. I would like to highlight couple of lessons that I personally realized were helpful to me to apply in my next journey of professional life.  

Robin Le Breton, Noorullah Ahmadzai, and Binka Le Breton

First, the two individuals who founded Iracambi, Robin and Binka, have an inspiring story of their life that how they ended up in this small community. They did incredible work here in the last two decades, and along with it they established a research center to spread their vision not only in Brazil but to the globe. Among the great and incredible work they have done in this community is the reforestation of the area that was deforested many years ago. From the discussion with both of them, I realized that they have a passion and commitment, which were the reasons that this reforestation happened along with many other things. Such stories has to be shared with local rural communities elsewhere as well to get the inspiration that anything is possible if one can struggle for it. Their efforts are countless and I am glad that I got this experience of knowing such stories through this practicum program.

A photo of the area that has been reforested!

The area has a great climate for the growth of various medicinal plants that can be used for various treatment purposes but also for economic development. Importantly, these medicinal plants has been preserved and further has been expanded. Where most of these medicinal plants can help in improving the economic status of poor farmers.

This photo is of one of many species of a medicinal plants in the forest

Local farmers drying coffee beans to sun, they are in the process of filling the dried one into bags!

One of the major plantation here that farmers are doing is coffee. It’s the country most productive land for coffee and contributes a lot to the GDP of Brazil. Every farmer has some sorts of coffee. Here are some of the photos that can highlight the traditional ways of drying coffee by sun and also some newly adaptive way of drying coffee. We as a group had visited number of coffee fields and did the collection of coffee beans, which was an interesting experience to work with local farmers. I wish to do those more and more in my life!

Local farmer vicinity where he is drying coffee beans

The new coffee bean drying technology a local producer recently installed on his property

In many of my experiences of travel to multiple developing countries, usually rural farmers are just keeping livestock for their own needs. An interesting story that I heard from one of the farmers is that he keeps cows and developed such an interesting system that he maintains all by himself and his wife. Both of them are working hand in hand to have much easier and happy life. He showed us the process of milking from cows and at the end of the tour we enjoyed taking coffee with organic fresh milk. Here is their work in few photos:

Local farmer (Cristiano) during the collection process of milk from cow

The milk storage tank, where during the milking process, milk comes through a pipe and is chilled here.

A photo of a cow on the farm, this particular cow gives 60kg of milk daily

In sharing these brief highlights of the trip, one can understand that how rural areas of Brazil are vibrant in terms of their life. As an outsider I enjoyed every single day of visits to farmers to know there stories of life, visits to nearby small cities that gives a picture of a history and how they are preserved and maintained, above all the people of this region are so warm to welcome you. The most important lesson is not just learning for myself but how to transform these stories of know-how of rural life of Brazilian context.