May-2015
Rebeca is a shrewd girl, she always has the right answer on the tip of her tongue. Besides the answers, her tongue is always sharp when it is time to sew, a daily habit in the life of this 7-year-old girl. She uses her whole body as she sews, from her tongue to her feet, […]
May-2015
Velho Tonho connects with places that not everyone can reach. He travels far, solitary, persistent. He stays committed to his own singular trajectory. This is how he became deeply immersed in the Reisado, or Three Kings’ Party, in his region, when he learned the traditional songs through people who came to live in Tatajuba for […]
May-2015
Who has line? Who has a hook? Just finding these things is a mighty hunt for these boys. Finding what’s needed to play, or in this case to fish, is a game in itself. The boys of Tatajuba are always trying to find what they need, be it tins, hooks, wood, carnaúba straw, palm leaf […]
May-2015
You need help to see the surroundings of Tatajuba, like in the Eduardo Galeano story in which a boy, upon looking at the sea for the first time, asks his father, “help me to see.” The natural exuberance calls for silence while looking, calls for a new way of seeing, a child’s eye, of those […]
May-2015
The sea calls for navigators, it calls for floating with sails puffed by the wind, it asks for the precision of boys skillful in cutting foam as they build their canoes. Here in Tatajuba we are learning about the nature of liquid play. We are noticing how a good foam canoe captain must know […]
May-2015
The days go by but the kids’ desire to show us what they know remains. When night falls they’ve already surrounded us with suggestions for the morning. “We still haven’t made the spool car,” one of them says. “Why don’t we go hunt crabs in the mangrove?” says another. The list never ends, they really […]
May-2015
For days the boys of Tatajuba have been telling us about their tiny weapons made of palm straw. I’ve seen entire arsenals of children’s weapons, but one made from palm straw was new to us. Does the weapon fire something? I thought it did. But no, it doesn’t fire anything, instead it launches the boy […]
May-2015
The fire invites us to talk about fear, to listen about courage, to warm us from the cold. The moment we sat around it, stories began to appear without invitation, they simply appeared. In Tatajuba, every child has a terrible story to tell. No, not stories they heard, stories they lived themselves. These children have […]
