This entry was written in a hammock pinned up in Tota’s house. Tota, his wife, and six children live in the middle of the Chico Mendes Extractivist Reserve- a big block of forest 40 km from a small city in Acre named Assis Brasil.  To get there, one needs two things- a day without rain and authorization from Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency, IBAMA.  We had exactly neither of these two things. Following one misinformation after another, we arrived in the middle of this gigantic reserve without the necessary bureaucratic papers, which meant we couldn’t film or take pictures of anything. That didn't mean we couldn’t enjoy the most traditional lifestyle Acre has to offer: life in a rubber tree forest. For five days we accompanied the work of Sr. Nenê, an extractivist with weathered skin whose right-hand fingers were shorter than those on his left because he has spent 40 years scraping the liquid rubber out of the cups he places at the bottom of each tree he cuts.

The children, our eternal allies, snubbed their noses at all the bureaucratic humdrum, and in turn brought us to their secret hideout where they showed us all the steps one needs to know to make a rubber catapulted sling shot.  In the land of rubber trees, one doesn’t need to buy surgical tubing in a pharmacy to make this rock launcher. Instead, they pour the rubber “milk” into the hollow centers of papaya stalks and then let it sit for a week.  When they come back, they split the stalk open and what’s left is a tube of solid rubber ready to be tied to the forked stick.

Almost everything this family put on the table was produced within a mile of their house. They plant corn, rice, beans, sugarcane, manioc, watermelon, pineapple, and coffee.  They raise chickens, pigs, ducks, and turtles. A dozen dairy cows graze in their fields. So meat is never missing from the table, and besides these traditional animals, they adore meat from the hunt. In the days we were there, we were treated to monkey, deer, turtle, squirrel, and wild boar.

We also learned about Jarina, a rock-hard seed that could easily be confused with ivory they use to make dice and buttons out of.

In Catuaba, another community on the banks of the Acre River, we were introduced to the sweet hugs of Dona Maria, a lady that organized community get-togethers so that she could teach us the circle games she played as a kid. She also showed us a fantastic instrument named “the devil’s horse,” an instrument in the shape of a cross with various pieces of loosely attached metal and a corrugated can to scrape with a spoon.

Mario de Andrade called it “our baby brother,” but for us the state of Acre was a box of surprises. We were enchanted by its creative and resilient people who’ve grown indignant with the neglect and abandonment they've received from the other states. A rural professor we met intensified this sentiment when he asked us to observe network Globo’s national news so that we could see the weatherman who not only doesn’t give Acre’s forecast, but stands in front of the state during the entire report.

I sincerely hope that the games and stories Projeto BIRA has collected over the past months will serve as a means for Brazillians to better understand their country, and that in each toy, song, and verse they will hear an echo of us.