Brasil bound. Saving the world one person, animal and forest at a time.

That is right my friends I am going to be in 5 countries over the next 4 months. On December 14^th I am leaving South Africa to travel for 2 ½ weeks to Mozambique to see friends, catch up, hear some music and enjoy the holidays. Then on the 5^th of January I will travel to Kenya where I will stay for just over three weeks. I already have been generously offered places to stay in Nairobi and Mgori and if you have any thoughts on other places to stay and visit they are most welcome. My main reason for going to Kenya is to attend the World Social Forum as well as seeing friends and making new ones. I will be coming back to South Africa on the 27^th of January and flying back to the States on the 29^th. I will get home to Portland on the 30^th and be home till the 8^th of February when I will fly to Rio de Janeiro in Brasil.

In Brasil I will be volunteering for Iracambi, http://www.iracambi.com, at Fazenda (farm/ranch) Iracambi for 6 months till early August. Iracambi is located in the province of Minas Gerais. At the Iracambi site you can see maps of where I will be staying. I will be the program coordinator taking over the position held these past 6 months by my friend Rebecca from SIT. During my 6 months I will complete the 2^nd half of my 6 month practicum/internship for SIT and work on my capstone (research/thesis paper) for SIT.

I will surely write more about Iracambi in the coming months, especially when I am there. It will be my first time to Brasil and I am very exited about this. I am also thrilled to get to speak Portuguese again on a daily basis and will enjoy hearing and learning different accents, slang, etc. Most of all the idea of getting out of the city and being in a rural nature area again is really exciting. I look forward to long hikes, learning about the forest, wildlife, people, etc. and sharing it all with you. To give you a better sense of what Iracambi was created to do I have cut and pasted text from the entry page to their website.

“Volunteers and Researchers from all over the world come to Iracambi to help us fulfil our mission to make conservation of the rainforest more attractive to our community than its destruction. We live on a working farm in the Atlantic Rainforest, where we daily face the same issues as our neighbors: how can we make a living from the land, whilst also preserving the biodiversity of the area?

The Atlantic Rainforest has been identified as one of the world's most globally important biodiversity hotspots, but this has not prevented it from being reduced to only eight fragmented per cent of its former size. The attack on the forest started when the Portuguese first arrived in Brazil 500 years ago, and continues today. Iracambi is working to reverse this trend. We believe that it is only by helping to find a future for the people who live and work in the forest, that we can provide a future for the forest itself.

To help Iracambi achieve its mission we have programs for volunteers and researchers. There are other ways to get involved in our project too. There is also information available on our project for teachers and children. To find more about our projects: either contact us, or click here to e-mail us.”