Tanned, but not that much

Slowly a soft tan appears on me, making me forget that I have ever lived in a country, where temperature can drop to less than -20 degrees. But, so far, I didn't have to much time to enjoy a cliche life of tanning and surfing on the beach. I started to get to know some projects and groups working with solidarity economy. Some impressions from the past week:

Sebastian and I went last week to Recife. The Federal Agronomy University of Pernambuco (the state where Recife is the capital from) has also an office to promote solidarity economy. In comparison with the office here in Paraiba, Recife has a lot of money and therefore possibilities and activities going on. we were taken to one community 80km from the city, where 40 families work with organic and sustainable agriculture in form of a cooperative. it was amazing to talk to some of the people living and working there. Their consciousness about sustainability and their conviction about organic agriculture was amazing. In general I haven't met a lot of people in this country with one of the worlds biggest usage of agrochemicals with this deep conviction.

This picture was taken in the same community at dusk. The community is surrounded by sugar cane plantations, the typical and mostly only crop planted in this area. Sugar cane needs a lot fertilizer and other chemicals which threatens the people living in this area as well as their crops. Furthermore is the local sugar cane factory is buying all available land which means further pressure for the community especially for the farmers working organic agriculture.

We were staying over night in Olinda, the sister city of Recife. The cities grew together and it is not perceivable where one city starts and the other ends. Olinda is part of the UNESCO world heritage. Google some pics of Olinda. It's beautiful. That's also what the city's names meaning is.

This is Olinda by day and at the horizon you can see Recife. Recife is more and more becoming the cultural capital of the North-East of Brazil. It was once the country's capital and preserved some of it's colonial architecture. The city is growing more and more which unfortunately also crime statistics (some call her Hellcife). We got to know it in action when we were mugged one night downtown. Nothing dramatic happened. We were pretty lucky, we weren't even threatened with a gun, but I can imagine a more entertaining evening program.

Back in João Pessoa we visited a group young people who founded a solidarity economy producing bread for their community and selling it to very low prices in their neighborhood. They're doing all steps manually. They can't live of their activity yet, but created great friendships. I'll search for some articles about solidarity economy in English and will post them here soon, so you'll know what I'm talking about. So far for the German speaking people, search for Clarissa Mueller-Plantenberg, Uni Kassel respectively. In Portuguese Paul Singer wrote nice introductions, search the homepage of the USP or the Forum Nacional de Economia Solidaria.

Did I already tell the João Pessoa is the second greenest town in the world? This downtown. Just around the corner from the university, next to an interstate and some neighborhoods.