At first glance, this pic might look like sausage, but a closer look at the lighters and separate manufactured cigarettes gives away the fact that this is a rural style of rope tobacco. Most people here don't buy pre-made cigarettes. Instead, the tobacco leaves are harvested, fermented / aged, and twisted together into a tight, sticky (from the tar), dark brown rope that is sold in chunks. You take some dried corn husk, cut into a rectangular shape, chop up some rope tobacco, and role your own cigarette.
Bags of spices and seeds harvested from local plants. The boy is showing Carol how to use a unique bird call whistle. This one is truly unique, we hadn't seen this before, and it took us about 15 minutes to figure out the method, while the boy (who by the way carved the whistles by hand out of wood) patiently explained the bird call process.
Hand carved wooden bowls, axe handles, and mortar/pestle combinations. Notice the size of the one in the foreground. People grind corn and other grains by hand...
Hand carved wooden spoons out of different woods. 
This one is hard to see, but the chicken in the woman's hand is alive, w/feet tied together, hanging upside down.
How do you catch fish in the local Aracuai river or the Jequitinhonha river and bring to market w/o ice or refridgeration? You pray that you sell the fish quickly...
More produce, bananas, and meat on the grill.
The plastic drink bottles for sale here don't look like Coca Cola because the bottles are at the market refilled with the local liquor, Cachaca, a sugar cane white rum. New clean bottles are in short supply, or too expensive.
Garlic, lots of garlic. People also use smaller wooden mortar and pestles to grind up garlic w/salt into a paste that is used for cooking. 
These are the raw sugar bricks (not wrapped, not weighed, no list of ingredients, and w/o a USDA stamp) named "rapadura" from our earlier blog post - now for sale at the market for about R$4.00 or R$5.00 each. The raw sugar tastes wonderful in coffee, or you can even eat chunks as a desert candy. We asked ourselves, do we really need all the plastic wrap, bags - all that we throw away later?
More about fascinating Aracuai to come.
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