After breakfast we spent the morning with free time, which basically meant working on individual projects in an air-conditioned space with a large communal table. I started photographing leaves I was collecting in the back of our room.

Before lunch, we had a wonderful presentation by Renata Peixe-boi introducing us to the many edible plants in the forest. (Many days later, after the residency was over, we actually went to visit a farm called Sitio Panc and met the man who was her teacher, but we’ll get to that later.) I fell in love with the Taioba leaf Renata was carrying, so she gave it to me as a gift and I started experimenting with it in my work. Taioba is an herbaceous plant native to the tropical and equatorial Americas, especially Brazil, where it is actively cultivated.

The title of Renata’s talk was “Natural Food from the Forest.” She explained that the forest offers a great variety of smells and tastes. We were asked to guess how many species of plants there were. Answer: over 300,000 species have been officially identified. Of those, 30% are edible. 150 can be found in the market. But most people eat only about 30 species. When you think of how people existed early on without supermarkets, and how they maintained their energy, I might think of rice and beans. But in the Amazon, the typical diet has always been much more diverse. Manioc is the staple protein source, rather than rice and beans.  There are over 150 different species of this root, and many products come from it—including soups, flours, and tapioca.

Renata emphasized the importance of eating a diversity of foods. Many diseases are caused by the lack of natural food in our diet. Health insecurity is felt by nearly one billion people around the world. It doesn’t have to be that way. Knowledge and access to traditional, localized, diverse food ways are crucial. 

One of the symbols of the amazon is the fruit of the cashew nut. Cashews are great for the economy because they are raised domestically, and you don’t have to cut down trees to cultivate them. Whole families meet in the forest to gather the nuts. 14 types of trees are protected in the amazon, and cashew is one of them.

After lunch we had a talk from Dr. Igor Luis Kaefer, whose specialty was frogs.

We then took a walk down the same path but to a new destination: a waterfall where we could bathe in the afternoon. It was a very fast, arduous walk, and Bruna was kind enough to offer to carry my backpack so we’d get there more quickly– so we could spend time there and still hopefully get back before dark.

On the way back, I was at the head of the procession carrying my pack and stopping along the way whenever Igor found a little leaf frog.

That night at dinner, we celebrated Juan Ferrer’s birthday—my new friend from Chile who I look forward to seeing in New York this fall.