Willpower conquers everything. So says former rural producer José Soares Costa, 75 years old, who has just graduated in Zooctenics from the State University of Alagoas (Uneal), on August 29th.
To complete his higher education course, the retired countryman did not measure distances, as he walked the 100-mile route every day for five years. kilometers (round trip) from his home, in the city of Batalha (185 kilometers from the capital, Maceió), to Santana do Ipanema, where the university.
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Upon receiving his bachelor's degree from the acting dean of Uneal, Anderson de Almeida Barros, Costa did not hide his emotion: “I was born and raised in the countryside, my father was a farmer and was an agriculturalist. I worked my whole life in rural areas. It was a dream of my life [to graduate], which I have now realized.” Together with ‘Asa Branca’, a nickname coined by friends, another 12 graduates reached the final stretch, in the Zootechnics and biological sciences courses.
When he started the Animal Science course in 2013, Costa had already retired as an animal vaccinator from the Alagoas Department of Agriculture. Five years later, upon completing the subjects, he remained at Uneal, in order to complete the Course Completion Work (TCC), focused on an area of collective interest. “I did the forage improvement project, which is food for dairy cows,” he says.
Entitled “Influence of the lactation stage on the composition of milk in crossbreed girolando cows in the semi-arid region of Alagoas”, the TCC chosen by ‘Asa Branca’ forced him to visit dairy products in the region to gather information, having finished the work with a score of 10 in the presentation.
When I was about to graduate in 2020, the pandemic changed everything. Since then, as all graduations began to be held virtually, ‘Asa Branca’ decided to wait for the opportunity for a classic, in-person graduation. And finally, that day arrived. “I wanted to wait to do it in person, everyone together”, he admits, as he proudly poses for photos, alongside his wife Maria, their three children and Mariah, one of his 4 granddaughters. “Only we know what he went through to get here,” said Maria. The oldest in Alagoas (created in 1996), the Santana do Ipanema Animal Science course is a reference for producers in the Alagoas hinterland.
