May-2015
Mango tree house
It’s so amazing how Brazil has so many games happening under a mango tree, or other fruit trees, that you could write a treatise on the subject. It was no different in Abadia, this small village near Carbonita in the Jequitinhonha Valley.
While the girls swept the dry leaves and rotten mangoes, setting the ground to make their dollhouses, a group of boys swung on the branches, catching ripe fruit, or almost ripe fruit.
Cleaning the area was the very first step for building the house, then they arranged the flowers – after all, beauty to these girls is an essential condition for turning a space into a house. Here, the game of playing house started with beauty, the rest came later.
With the area swept, they planted flowers in the moist ground, and then started thinking about what else was needed to make a house. While some went to fetch little pans, dolls and cloths, others stayed behind arranging banana leaves, which served as a roof.
Once everything was in its proper place, came the next phase: cooking. Mixing soil with water, creating cakes, decorating them. These are scenes that recur independent of the region or culture in which they take place.
Each step happened in this order: arranging the area, decorating the surroundings, arranging/putting things in order, and, finally, cooking.
A process of building that comes from within and ends with food.
Text and photos: Renata Meirelles
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