Alto Paraíso — “What nature is teaching me about leadership…”

Daily Prompt: Alto Paraíso — “What nature is teaching me about leadership…”

As we traveled toward Chapada dos Veadeiros, our travel companion Edmilia began dropping notes in our WhatsApp chat — small pieces of context to help us SEE what we were seeing. And slowly, the landscape revealed itself: the Cerrado, one of the most important yet one of the most overlooked biomes in all of Brazil.

People call it the Brazilian savanna, but that phrase is too thin to hold its truth. The Cerrado is vast — nearly 2 million square kilometers — stretching across the country’s center and forming the second-largest biome in South America, right after the Amazon. But unlike the Amazon, it doesn’t demand attention. It whispers. You have to pay attention to understand its power.

And as you’ve heard me say throughout this trip, Brazil feels like home — not metaphorically, but spiritually. Like the place my ancestors were dropped before being carried into other parts of the Americas. So as I rode through this landscape and read about the Cerrado, I couldn’t help but compare this ecosystem to us back in the States.

I couldn’t help but see the lesson nature was giving us about leadership, survival, and community.

From the Cerrado to Congress Heights: What Brazil’s Great Savanna Teaches Us About Black Survival, Roots, and Renewal

There’s something poetic about learning the story of the Cerrado while standing thousands of miles from home, carrying with me the pulse of Southeast Washington, DC.

The Cerrado is massive, ancient, ecologically critical —and yet overlooked. And in that truth, I heard an echo.

Because communities East of the Anacostia River know exactly what it means to be vast in contribution yet overlooked in narrative.

And Black people everywhere know what it means to be essential and still treated as expendable.

The Cerrado felt like home.

🌱 Deep Roots: The Power Beneath the Surface

The closer you look, the more the Cerrado reveals itself. Its trees stand with twisted trunks, low canopies, thick bark, and sun-scorched leaves — looking almost fragile to an untrained eye. But what you see above ground is only the surface.

The true strength of the Cerrado is underground.

Its roots plunge 5, 10, even 15 meters deep, storing water, nutrients, memory, and strength for the inevitable dry seasons and fires.

And that reminds me so deeply of us — the people and communities that make up Southeast DC:

• Grandmothers who held entire neighborhoods together

• Mothers who stretched one paycheck into five blessings

• Elders whose stories are libraries

• Faith leaders who built institutions from nothing

• Organizers, entrepreneurs, teachers, aunties, godparents — our ecosystem of survival

Like the Cerrado, our power is in the roots.

Our contributions may not always be visible, but they run deep, wide, intergenerational, and unshakeable.

Nature reminded me:

Leadership is not in the show — it is in the unseen strength that holds communities together.

🔥 Fire + People = Co-Evolution

The Cerrado is a fire-adapted ecosystem. Fire is not an ending — it is a beginning.

Here, fire:

• thickens bark

• opens seeds

• activates dormant roots

• clears space for new growth

• restores balance and nutrient cycles

In the Cerrado, fire is a teacher.

Not an enemy.

And when I look at the story of Black people — here in Brazil, in DC, across the Diaspora — I see the same lesson reflected back:

We have endured:

forced displacement, redlining, segregation, environmental contamination, political neglect, underinvestment, state violence, gentrification, and dislocation.

Those flames were meant to destroy us.

But instead, they made us evolve.

We became:

• fire-forged organizers

• seed-carriers of culture

• builders of institutions

• protectors of community

• visionaries who regenerate no matter what tries to scorch the ground beneath us

Like the Cerrado, our ecosystems — our families, our neighborhoods, our movements — learned to grow with the fire.

Leadership lesson:

The flame doesn’t define you. Your regrowth does.

🌾 One of the World’s Most Overlooked — And Most Essential

Despite being one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, the Cerrado sits in the shadow of the Amazon. Overlooked. Underprotected. Undervalued.

This, too, felt familiar.

Communities East of the Anacostia River are rich in culture, creativity, leadership, and history — yet too often reduced to statistics and stereotypes.

And Black people globally — from Brazil to DC — have shaped culture, democracy, labor, and innovation, yet remain sidelined in policy and investment.

The Cerrado teaches us something urgent:

What is overlooked often sustains the whole system.

Its deep roots feed half of Brazil’s major river basins.

Its underground biomass holds unimaginable carbon stores.

Its fire cycles maintain ecological balance.

Likewise, our communities — from Congress Heights to Bellevue, from Washington Highlands to the broader Diaspora — have been the moral and cultural groundwater of the cities and nations we call home.

We are the roots that anchor the whole structure.

🌍 Leadership Lesson: We Are a People of the Deep Root and the Renewed Flame

The Cerrado’s wisdom is this:

You cannot measure strength by what you see above ground.

You must read what is rooted beneath it.

Black people everywhere are the same.

We are not defined by our struggle but by our ability to regenerate.

We are not fragile — we are fire-forged.

We are not marginal — we are foundational.

Standing on this land in Alto Paraíso, I felt the reminder:

We are the biome they overlook,

but we are also the biome that keeps the whole world alive.

And that, for me, is what nature is teaching about leadership —

to honor the roots, respect the fire, and lead from the regenerative power that lives below the surface.