Valdenice de Oliveira and her 7-year-old son Vandeildo sit together on the porch of their Habitat house.

Enriching Life's Tapestry
New homes serve as catalyst for community change

By Teresa K. Weaver

In Brazil — a nation of mega-cities, teeming with people and traffic — the village of Varjada operates at a different pace. Most people in this hilly, semi-arid region make their living by farming corn and beans, and walking is the primary mode of transportation.

Before Habitat started building spiffy concrete houses here in 2006, most homes were made of dried mud, which not only required constant patching and reshaping but also served as a breeding ground for a type of beetle that poses a real health threat to humans.

As an outgrowth of Habitat’s building program, project leaders began working with World Vision to teach the women of Varjada, long renowned for their embroidery skills, how to team up and market their wares. The new houses, with water cisterns and indoor plumbing, had freed the women from the back-breaking daily duty of walking several miles to collect water from a common well. With newfound time and collective marketing strength, this group embodies the life-changing power of improving basic living conditions.

These women started to understand that, by coming together, their work is more valued,” says Claudio Braga, coordinator of the Varjada project, which was singled out for a prestigious award in 2007 by Caixa, the national bank of Brazil.

Embroidery circle leader Severina Guilermina Ferreira, 63, was born in Varjada. Ferreira, affectionately known to all her neighbors as Dona Tata, and her husband raised their seven sons and two daughters in a mud house. “Now I live in a paradise,” she says.

Paradise is relative, but family is family. Most of their children have settled into Habitat homes of their own in the same community.

Next door, Valdenice de Oliveira recalls the difficulties of raising two sons, Vandeildo, now 7, and Valmir, 12, in a mud house. “The worst thing is that I was ashamed and embarrassed,” she says. “I cleaned and cleaned and was never able to get it like I wanted.”

Valdenice’s in-laws, Maria Josefa de Oliveira, 60, and Manuel Costa de Oliveira, 61, raised their eight children in a mud house that was full of holes. “At night we couldn’t sleep,” Maria recalls. “We were uncomfortable and nervous. When it rained, our children slept under the kitchen table to stay dry.”

Manuel sits quietly, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, listening to his wife’s memories. “We are safe here,” he says. “We are all safe.”

Such benefits are intangible and immeasurable. But everywhere there are striking physical reminders of how this community has been transformed, one house at a time. One particular mud house stands as a museum-quality testament to the changes. Jovane Virginio do Paraiso, 67, lives in the house his father built 100 years ago with lumber from an abandoned church. Jovane shares the house with his two young grandsons, Josef and Luci, and countless chickens, who have free roam.

In the middle of a South American summer day, this house is cool and dark, with crisscrossing sunbeams casting the only light through inch-wide gaps in the gray mud walls. The floors are dirt, packed smooth and undulating gently. There is no running water, and the only electricity is jerry-rigged from a neighbor’s utility pole.Jovane has turned down several offers to apply for a Habitat house, primarily because construction would require that his century-old home be torn down. Though he cannot bear that thought, he is an ardent supporter of the building going on all around him. “It is a big change,” he says. “People are happy.”