O DIA EM QUE ACOLHI O MENINO SOL NO COLO

O DIA EM QUE ACOLHI O MENINO SOL NO COLO

Veronica Pinheiro

13 March 2025

"With thin and strong threads
The spiders weave
Their webs.
Sometimes,
a drop of water
hangs,
or a ray of Sun."¹

There are many ways to tell the story of a place. This diary presents the records of a teacher who, from the school library, weaves threads of memories. Sometimes awakened, sometimes constructed, these memories are composing a web with thin and strong threads. A web with invisible threads that connect dreams, forests, villages, quilombos, cities, rivers, large and small beings. With the spider, the Huni Kuï women learned the art of weaving, the enchanted spider Basne Puru Yuxibu is the guardian of the cotton threads and the knowledge of weaving. With the shaman Dua Busë, I learned to weave paths for a living school. Dua Busë lives in the Heart of the Forest Village, in Acre state, he is the guardian of deep lore of Huni Kuin cosmology.

Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit, a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency. When weaving with threads of memory, a multitude supports the hands that weave. And it´s this multitude of visible and invisible beings that make it possible to dream of life and practice good living. The weaving is movement, a permanent dynamic that occurs in many directions, opening paths and generating possibilities.

In 2025, the Ways of Knowing Group will continue weaving meetings, workshops, and outings with the children of Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória; simultaneously, it will be generating movements to expand and deepen dialogues with Management Departments and Education Secretariats, Social Projects, and other schools. These dialogues are not always sweet and deepening them sometimes means knowing pains that we wouldn't see if memories were not awakened.

Returning to the Pedreira Favela Complex is part of this movement to expand and deepen dialogues, while renewing our commitment and courage. 'We agreed not to die.' This agreement was signed in the Ancestral Memories Cycle, during the Vigil of Orality, and is renewed with each new cycle that Selvagem allows me to share. The first month of school is the time to understand the state of the territory, and also to listen to the desires of the children and adults.

With the meeting prepared, the books separated, and the reading room organized, it was time to resume activities interrupted by the school holidays. On the first day of meeting with the children, with the box of books in my hands, I repeatedly heard the sounds of gunfire very close to the school. Immediately, I went to the classroom to meet the students. When I opened the door, I found all the children crouched on the floor to protect themselves from the shots. In the corner of the room, under the table, trembling with fear, the Sun boy covered his ears with his hands; with his mouth closed, he prayed that no one would get hurt.

The Sun boy, as the student became known, played the role of the Sun in the film produced by the children at the end of the 2024 school year. Resulting from the workshops 'Playing Lights Up the Sun' (workshops facilitated by Paula Novaes, Carol Delgado, and Clarissa Viegas), the film made by the children is a beautiful experience of listening and creation. For a few weeks, the shyest boy in the fourth grade was the 'Sun of the School.' Playing the Sun, he shone in such a sensitive way that he managed to move teachers, staff, and the children of the school during the film screenings in the reading room.

We ended the activities in 2024 with the Sun boy calling for the summer holidays. Returning to Pedreira and finding him frozen with fear was too hard. Without knowing exactly what was happening outside the school, to the terrifying sound of gunfire from the war, I also got down on the floor with the children. Under the tables, I distributed poetry books. 'The web of waters, who would like to read?' Curiously, everyone wanted to read, because as they read, they could occupy other places and leave where we were, even if only in their imagination. I held the Sun boy in my arms, seeing that he couldn't read alone.

When I read: 'A giant forest / breathes. 

'The boy took a timid breath. 

I continued reading: 'Amazon is its name.' 

The boy in my arms looked at me while I read, as he had realised that 'breathes' was not an imperative spoken by me to him, but a vital process performed by the 'giant forest.' His gaze seemed to be the gaze of someone who remembered something. I believe the boy remembered the forest and continued to breathe. In my arms, he dared to continue reading and, like the flying rivers that cry when embracing the mountains, he also cried. These witnessed tears called me to stay. To stay weaving affections. To stay by the children's side. 'Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit; a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency,' I kept repeating this out loud. I’m still repeating this now