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The better way:
Conscious traveling + Easy acting = Redistribution and
benefits for all
The long and the short of it: I too preferred to leave Lençóis after 13 years of socio-educational volunteering and sensitive tourism work. But I did not turn my back on the Chapada, nor the Northeast of Brazil, which for a long time now are my South American primary home base.
I continue to work mainly with social and ethnic fringe groups. Melanin-rich women kept in multiple poverty and discrimination, Native American nations, which managed to survive and resist over 500 years of attempted genocide, and subsistence farmers (who sometimes are descendants of former runaway slaves), just to give a few examples. But I also work with travelers who are keen to spread their holiday money. Into the pockets, that is, of the right (= impoverished & marginalized) people. Tourists who are also interested in avoiding to contribute to the steady worsening of the world’s most obscene abysm that separates Brazilian haves from Brazilian have-nots.
Such people get in touch with me via e-mail. Always as early as possible in order to rule out schedule clashes (since I’m frequently “missing” for weeks somewhere in the vast Latino hinterland doing research and emancipation work through knowledge redistribution). And we’ll mostly do things not prescribed in the travel bibles and which unfortunately have become kind of soulless mass-track tourism. We’ll have a tour instead, that exactly matches individual (small group) interests and wishes.
In a sensitive, caring, deep and redistributing way, and in direct contact
with unspoiled culture and nature.
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