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Isn’t this part of traveling? Ending up in some random place following a new friend? “A teenager from the community died last night, he fell from a wall..we wanted to go back home in the morning but we will go later today.” I was reading this message again, in front of the gate to an empty house somewhere in rural Pernambuco. Twenty- four hours on a bus, nine dogs running towards me -five were puppies, how cute?-, two farmhouses and infinite yellow earth around me. The landlady video called me on Whatsapp, showed me how to enter the house and how to calm the dogs down. I started exploring the garden: there were a dry toilet, eco-built showers, two small houses, one of which also bio-constructed. Several pots, a hammock, mosquito nets, various chairs, a fireplace to cook. Inside the houses, the furniture was essential, except for the main kitchen that was actually storing towers of metal pots, of all sizes and shapes. Cream cheese and butter in the fridge, rice and beans in the cupboard. My friend Marta arrived on a mototaxi, with a french girl, who was volunteering where the boy had died. Lisa, the landlady, would have stayed one more day in the city, they said. One day became two. Then three. Then four. We had no idea about what to do in the house, and how. Only my friend had spent already five days there, so at least she knew how to water the plants, not to let them dry in the heat. They were slow, feminine-flavored days. Ritual tapioca breakfasts after watering the plants, then crushing excrements to produce compost while dancing funk under the acerola trees, going to sleep on the hammock, waking up with the rising sun. Marta and I, we celebrated our first month of travel friendship there, on a Wednesday. Daily small discoveries were filling our hours there: how do we prepare the food for the ducks? Why don’t we go on the left instead of the right? How many possible ways to cook beans before we hate them? Should we check the one and only bar in the next 20 kilometers according to Google Maps? (Yes, we checked it. It was a guy’s house serving beer and coke at plastic tables in his yard) Finally, on my last night there, Lisa appeared. A short Afro-Brazilian lady in her sixties, big smile, soft breasts, tinkling voice. A source of vibrating, warm energy. I was afraid I would have never met her, honestly. But there we were, in front of a plate of pasta, talking about love, death, ancestrality, racism, fights, grandmas and pelvis. How can we learn to dance gracefully on thorns and stones? Ballerinas of mundane life, training arches to resilience. Then the phone rang. I think somebody was arrested. She began to cry and we all hugged her, bellies and arms all close by. Our desire to relieve, stronger than the trembling discomfort of newborn bonds. I wish that moment was everyone, every day. Ending up exactly where you want to be, with the people you need. Isn’t this part of traveling?