Greetings from Bahia!

Watering the peregrina transplants at Sathya Sai

Today was filled with lots of adventure and new beginnings. For the first time this whole trip, we took a public bus rather than a private, chartered bus. That was an experience within itself, and overall quite interesting. We then arrived at Sathya Sai, which is a private charter school located on the edge of Bahia. What we thought was truly amazing about this school is the principles, morals, and standards on which it was built. Sathya Sai was built in a time of distress and despair within the community. A wealthy shrimp farmer, who was unsatisfied with his current impact in life, sold his farms and created this school. He instilled a sense of peace and unity amongst the citizens and gave people a warm and welcoming shelter after the 2016 earthquake. Sathya Sai was built as a symbol of hope, peace, love, and unity, and truly became an inspiration to the community. Throughout the morning, we worked in the gardens with the Eco Club students from both Fanny and Sathya Sai school. The work we contributed towards benefitting others has really opened a lot of our minds to how much work the Eco Club members do without recognition. We ate a delicious vegetable pasta lunch, with bagged lemonade. Something that we all thoroughly enjoyed, without knowing; we had been eating vegetarian for 24 hours. Our Guru, Hippie trip leader David, secretly had us do a meat free day. We later learned the beneficial impact that a single day of being vegetarian can do towards reducing environmental consequences related to a meat filled diet.

Planting the peregrina to make a living fence

Planting seeds in the germination bed

Don Francisco handing out mangrove seeds to plant at Isla Corazon

Next in our day, we traveled to the mesmerising mangrove forests of Isla Corazon. This was a surreal experience because it made us all realize that despite the harm that humans have inflicted on the planet, there are still people that care about our global health and safety. This was a milestone in our adventure because it was one of the more heartwarming experiences of our trip, creating a new mindset of putting our environment first and keeping our minds open. Oh, we also saw a lot of cool birds.

 Canoeing through the mangrove tunnel

We quickly traveled back to our hostel, grabbed our things, and set out for the beach. We had an enjoyable time and created many fun memories in the waves. While some of us swam, other played a competitively fun game of soccer on the shoreline. 

Lowkey dripping, we dragged our soggy selves to Don Carlos’ restaurant where, to our surprise, we had our first non-vegetarian meal of the day. Some were disappointed, others were ecstatic, but overall, everybody left content. 

(insert transitional phrase because we’re tired)

We had a meaningful discussion about morals, friendship, and open-mindedness. Everybody contributed their thoughts and opinions, while also being very respectful. We all had a lot of laughs, but also had a meaningful conversation about how our experiences that had an impact on our lives.

So we sit here writing this to you all, our loving parents, we’re all okay, we’re all alive, and we’ll see you guys next Sunday!

Adios, 

Dylan, Tess, Marcus, and Mia.

P.S. Shoutout to mama and papa Whitfield, hope you guys are having fun in Hawaii. I still want kalua pork though, thanks. 

(Many braincells were lost in the making of this blog post, and there was no thesaurus use involved.)