Sambazon
Imagine my surprise, on a bright near-zero New England day in December 2005, walking across the windswept college parking lot behind my house, and seeing a decal on a car window, bearing a face and one beautiful, enigmatic word: SAMBAZON . What could it possibly mean? I have spent more time in the Amazon than most New Englanders (that's an understatement) and I know how to somewhat samba, as I like to say. Was this sticker about a band? A movement? A dance club? What could it be?

As soon as I got home, I got online and the mystery was solved in a more delightful way than I could possibly have imagined. During my three visits to the Amazon, I have enjoyed the many fruit drinks that are available there. Street-side vendors sell delicious juices and smoothies of mango, papaya, passion fruit, orange, pineapple, and banana juices. They are healthy, refreshing, inexpensive, and just wonderful. Back home, I buy these tropical fruits and juices whenever I can, but some of the most special fruits are impossible to find -- we do not even have words for them in English: acaí and cupuaçu have no translation, and although I can describe what they look like, I have nothing to which I can compare the taste. Even my friends in southern Brazil have no idea what these fruits are like!

It turns out that SAMBAZON is a fruit-drink company founded by people who had a similar experience, but decided to do something about it! Sambazon is a fair-trade company that imports highly nutritious fruits from the Amazon rain forest and prepares nutritious drinks and drink mixes from them. This business benefits not only the consumers, but also people and the environment in the Amazon region. Consumers get healthy drinks, growers are treated equitably, and forest lands yield profits without losing trees. I benefit, too: I can now share the experience of these drinks with my friends and students, without taking them all the way to the Amazon to do so (not that I've never done that -- I have!).

Please note that although the SAMBAZON web site features acaí, cupuaçu is available by special request. Please also note: I love these fruits, but not everybody does. The flavors are strong and may seem peculiar at first.

If you like the SAMBAZON story, you may be interested in some of my other web pages:
  • Rondônia Web describes my travel and scholarship in the western Amazon basin.
  • Music of the Americas in Global Context is my page about Latin American music, particularly the music of Brazil, Cuba, and the U.S./Mexico borderlands.
  • Geography of Coffee describes my interest in fair-trade coffee, and a field-based course I teach on the subject.
  • Cape Verde is an island nation located off the coast of West Africa. This page describes a study tour that I am leading there in March 2006, in which the focus will be strategies for sustainable development.
 Cupuacu
During my first visit to Rondônia in 1996, I found that most of the friends I made there had fruit trees in their yards. Nobody believed I would climb this cupuaçu tree with my young friend Carolina. So of course I did!


PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT A BRIDGEWATER STATE COLLEGE PAGE;
IT IS BOTH AN EDUCATIONAL AND A COMMERCIAL PAGE.
I receive a financial benefit from referrals to Sambazon.com .
JAMES HAYES-BOHANAN, Ph.D.
Return to PAXMUNDO.ORG
or my Environmental Geography page.
UPDATED DECEMBER 16, 2005
TRACKING