Months ago, when Brian Stephenson began organizing the second EWB assessment visit to the ICBIE, he expressed an interest in visiting the Kilombo Tenondé, a revolutionary agricultural and social project initiated by an extraordinary capoeira master named Cobra Mansa (Cinézio Feliciano Peçanha), who Brian had met in Washington DC.
As a result of their ongoing correspondence, on Wednesday afternoon, Cobra came to the ICBIE and we hastily organized a trip down to his farm, regardless of the chaos of the huge São João holiday. Thursday morning, our alarm clocks were ringing at 4:30, in order to rush off to the ferryboat that took us across the Bay of All Saints as dawn broke with a beautiful rainbow over the city, on the first leg of our journey.
From the island of Itaparica, we took a bus to the old colonial city of Valença, where we happened on a colorful (and rumorous) parade in honor of São João, and then we crammed into a funky little minibus packed with locals, for a half-hour trip out to Cobra’s land.
Kilombo Tenondé is modeled after the old Quilombos, the communities of escaped African slaves that were formed in the Brazilian outback, where they lived in self-sufficient isolation, and Cobra managed to find some land that met his three pre-requisites: it had to have a river, a spring and a forest. For the last four years, he has helped the land to return to nature, planting trees to absorb the deleterious residue of years of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, creating an earthly paradise that exalts biodiversity and permits his community of volunteers and local people to live off the bounties of the earth, including a mind-boggling assortment of plants, herbs, fruits, cows, sheep and horses. He has learned all this from the elders in the local community and, thanks to his global reputation as a capoeira master, he attracts international volunteers who help with the back-breaking labor in return for intense training in capoeira.
Besides all the agricultural activity, Cobra is building adobe houses, experimenting with different combinations of cow dung and mud, but he is also interested in decorating the walls to make them artistic and attractive.
After hiking all over the farm, admiring the plants and animals, we had a big meal comprised entirely of their amazing produce, and then there was a long capoeira performance, where the fifty-year-old Cobra outclassed his expert volunteers, half his age.
On Friday morning we were able to take another hike over to a neighbor’s farm, where Brian gave advice on restructuring their rustic manioca (cassava) mill, where they make flour and then sterilize it in shallow vats heated by a wood fire underneath.
Just by looking at these pictures, you can well understand our amazement, as we observed the rebirth of ancient ways of living, while seeing their undeniable relevance in today’s troubled world.
