Back from the Desert

We´re back from the desert after an amazing week long experience living amongst sand dunes in a tiny town called Tatajuba. It would take a long time give the story due justice so I´m just going to tell the watered down version. On our first day of exploring in our rented dune buggy we passed a very small building which sort of resembled a school in the middle of nowhere. We drove across the sand and jumped out to present them with the translated letter explaining what we were trying to do. The teacher seemed to understand and we explained that we would come back in the morning to treat anybody that needed help. After some sandboarding, a little dune jumping, and a few caparinas at the lagoon; we found our way to the town of Tatajuba where a little oasis called Santa Maria Pasada was waiting for us. We met a Brazilian woman there named Renata that had lived in the US and offered to be our interpreter the next day. Our team was then complete and we were ready for our first clinic. We showed up the next morning and surprisingly found a good ten patients waiting to be seen. On the first day both Justin and I pulled our first teeth with Sloan pulling out a good 20. We continued to run the clinic till we ran out of supplies on the fourth day. The town of Tatajuba couldn´t have had more than 200 people living in it so you can imagine that we quickly met most of the town characters. On Saturday afternoon we were invited to see the town´s children's choir perform at the modest community center. Upon our arrival we were serenaded with a welcoming of guests song followed by a unique version of Start Spreading the News. We were asked to speak to the community and were rewarded with thanks and appreciation from the villagers. They asked us if we could play any instruments which we can´t but I still got up to play the drums. This led to a cool little jam session that had hands clapping and heads bobbing. It was such incredible experience for us to become part of the humble community surrounding Tatajuba. Our planned one day visit quickly turned into a week and in the end we had to search for a reason to leave. We have tons of pictures that need to go up but I don´t think it can happen today. That´s it for now. All is well here in Brazil.