Kristina

 

 

I was born in 1942 in Berlin, Germany, very much Virgo with Ascendant Pisces, and grew up in Sweden, Stockholm and Bergslagen, the forest and mining district west of Stockholm.
I studied to become an architect at the Royal Technical High-school in Stockholm. After a collective journey to Japan I made my examination work about  Zen Buddhist abstract gardening, and passed my examination the same year as I married a Brazilian art student in 1966.
We lived for some years in Lund, an old university town in the very south of Sweden, where I had one foot in the hippie world and the other in the Marxist-Leninist world, and worked as an assistant at the Architecture Department at the Technical High-school, where I among other undertakings participated in founding the Socialist Town-planning group.
There I also gave birth to our two daughters, Gisela 1969 and Paula 1971.

The first journey to Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and Nova Viçosa, Bahia, I made with my family and some more Swedish and Italian friends, to start a self-supporting ecological collective, which turned into a fairy-tale and a nightmare, and I went back to Sweden and Bergslagen after one year, separated and alone with my two daughters and in love with Brazil.

I participated in an ecological exhibition at the Modern Museum in Stockholm “Ararat – Technique, Art, Future, Society” 1976 and worked with the theme “Quality of Life and Planning in Smaller Communities” at the Architecture Department in Stockholm 1978.
Between 1977 and 1991 I was a member of the Building Board, president of the Technical Board and ran my own architecture firm, in the community of Hällefors.

In 1972 I came in contact with the Tarot Cards, and in 1980 I started studying Astrology, as I have always been interested in human relations and mysteries.

I learnt Portuguese and traveled three times to Brazil, before I left in 1992 with UBV (Education for Foreign Aid Activities), a Swedish NGO, as a volunteer and coordinator to Recife/Olinda  for three years. Travelling around in the northeast of Brazil I found the fisherman´s village Redonda, in Icapuí, Ceará, which at that time was famous because of its fast developing achievements with popular participation under the government of PT, the Labour´s Party.

In the autumn of 1995 I gathered my Swedish traps into a ship container and settled down in Redonda, where I fall in love with a lobster fisherman, José Orlando, and bought a smaller fishing boat. I participated in founding a tourist cooperative and carried out some architecture projects for the town council. I also participated in founding a new resident association, which administrated a scavenger campaign with financial help from some Swedish friends. I´ve also been representing the village in the Health Council of the community.
Nothing of  this has however been very successful or lucrative; the fishermen already had his family, the lobsters disappeared, the tourist cooperative turned into a fiasco, the local politicians are mere intriguers and the people in general have very little organizing habits. But shame on the one who gives up. I keep on battling and anyway I´m not feeling cold and all the time I´m setting down more roots among the people.

I bought land and designed my house, which was completed in 2000, including the renovation of the already existing Yellow House. A Swedish friend bought the neighboring land and I designed the Blue House which was completed in 2001.
The activities of letting out the two guest houses to mostly Brazilian and Swedish visitors started at once.
I work with Astrology and Tarot, I care for a small fruit- and vegetable garden and I make my own bread.
The fisherman José Orlando and his wife Jakeline  help me to take care of the establishment. They have a peace of land with cashew and other fruit-trees, some hens and other domestic animals, where it is nice to arrange barbecue parties. Their quality of life is developing slowly but steadily, as well as the infrastructure in Redonda as a whole, and I swim calmly in the warm sea when I have left over time.

 
 
Krsitina