Rosalvo, Mar Grande, Ilha da Itaparica

Rosalvo (pronounced HosARvo) is a farmer who grows and then sells fruit and vegetables door-to-door from the back of his donkey named Medalha. He is a "vendedor ambulante", literally a mobile, walking shop. Seven days a week he leaves his smallholding at around 7am with Medalha laden with coconuts, aipims, cashew fruits, roasted cashew nuts, lemons and bananas (the produce varies with the seasons), for a one hour ride to reach his first cliente (customer) in Mar Grande.

We met Rosalvo through our interpreter, Wilma, who is also one of his clientes. Her gardener's mother lives near Rosalvo's mother so Wilma was able to cycle up to the mother's house and leave a note asking for Rosalvo to visit her house to discuss the project with us. 

We arranged to joined him for a four hours one Saturday morning to photograph his clientes, walking his regular route, winding through the dusty roads on the outskirts of the town to the beach front houses and the town centre. During this time he took about R$60 (17 UK pounds). Our day with Rosalvo was extremely hot, and whilst we and Medalha drank a few litres of water, Rosalvo drank none. When we mentioned this later, someone said some Brazilian men are made of leather.

Even later, Luis at Sacatar recounted a childhood memory of a similar enterprise in his aunt's home town, Vitoria da Conquista, Bahia. Using donkeys' ability to be trained to remember a route, the farmer's donkey, straddled with two churns of freshly drawn milk would walk the route on its own, stopping at pre-arranged places where clientes would take what they needed and honour the farmer and pay in person at the end of each month.

LITORAL Mercado, Ilha da Itaparica

This is Fabio and his father Guido. Guido owns and runs a grocery store called LITORAL Mercado in Itaparica Town. He set up the shop with and for his family. Because of the low income on the island - the average minimum wage being R$400 per month (£120) - the shop has to sell a little bit of everything at decent prices to keep itself going. They will also order items not usually available, especially for non-locals who might be missing something from their home town. One customer doesn't like the bread so Guido gets different bread delivered by motorbike from the other side of the island. The store has been open since Carnaval 2007 and is one of a growing number of independent shops in a town where few existed five years ago. They offer credit for people they know - which is a typical system on the island - but need to manage it carefully so cash flow doesn't put their business at risk. Guido worked for many years as a manager of a supermarket in nearby Bom Despacho, as well as a waiter at the local marina. Fabio said his father dreamed of opening up his own enterprise, so saved money until he was able to do so. With LITORAL he has generated relatively secure jobs for his family (children and siblings), which would have been hard to find elsewhere.