More than a week has gone by since the Study Abroad group left the Midwest, and there has not been much free time for writing and reflection. This is a bit of a reconstruction of the trip so far.
The trip looked like this:
At first, airport after airport. We left on Monday (June 8) and flew from Milwaukee through Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro, then finally to Salvador in Bahia.
In Rio there was the usual wandering through customs and resettling the luggage on a regional flight — which, of course, has somewhat different baggage policies than the international flights. Since I am carrying an extra hard-case of camera equipment the customs officials enjoy looking through the gear to make sure it is old (it is, much of it older than I would like), and patiently listening my explanation in Portuguese (well rehearsed at this point) that I am the assistant and photographer for a university Study Abroad class.
Sometimes that works, but if not we go on to talk about our research in the Northeast. The customs officials understand pesquisador (researcher), and fotografo, and journalista — some combination of which will usually get me through (while the students are patiently waiting). If that were not enough, I normally set off the alarms with a steel shoulder replacement, which lights up the monitoring equipment as if I were a walking bomb. Looking as harmless as possible, I try to enjoy being patted down in variety of languages. I am thinking about having a multilingual sign made that says something like “I am a harmless photographer with a few renovated body parts, none of which explode.”
What they really want to know is if I will explode or try to clandestinely sell smuggled equipment.
None of this compares, though, with the trip a few years ago when we brought back a four-foot puppet ox from the festival. It was a cherished gift that was understood by everyone in Maranhao, but each airport closer to home found greater and greater incomprehension. Then we also realized that it was a large artifact with many places to smuggle this or that. We did confirm that the ceremonial herbs in the ox’s horns were not on anyone’s wanted list or would be sniffed out by the drug beagles in the U.S.
Monday & Tuesday Airplane and airports (Milwaukee, Atlanta, Rio de Janeiro and, finally, Salvador in Bahia)
Tuesday Land in Rio de Janeiro, wander through customs, transfer to Salvador (Bahia) flight
Arrive in Salvador in the afternoon, looking and feeling our very best, test our land legs, attack a local restaurant (stupendous “Red Fish,” Red Snapper or what is called Huachinango in Spanish) — about 50 feet from the sea.
Wednesday
Downtown Salvador (Pelourhino)
Samba da Roda classes from a folklorist/scholar
Walking tour of Pelourhino (including two churches — “Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks,” the old Salvadoran slave church, and the Church of San Francisco (built by slaves with about 700 kilos of gold and a bit more ostentation that you might expect for a church dedicated to the saint of the poor and animals. On the other hand, his image looks a bit cruciform and agonistic — as it he were a bit pained at what was done in his name)
The best place to sample regional cuisine is the remarkable SENAC, a culinary institute that trains its students in the hospitality industry, particularly in preparing and serving Bahian specialities. It includes some of the best that African/Brazilian cuisine has to offer (some of which, of course, like Acaraje, are the preferred foods of various orixas).
The evening program was back to the Pelourinho historical center for a performance of the Bale Folklorico da Bahia, whose program is based on stylized movement related to Afro-Brazilian culture — West African deities (orixas), Brazilian/African martial arts (capoeira), and a rural samba (Samba da Roda) that predates by generations the social dance form and Carnaval form of samba that is more widely known to visitors.
The evidence of Afro-Brazilian/Catholic is so pervasive that the most famous church here has a special service for Oxala, the syncretized version of Jesus Christ. A very high percentage of Salvadorans are African-descendants or mixtures with a high African cultural component, and many (perhaps most) practice both Catholicism and Candomble.
Thursday
Ecology day: Day at Praia da Forte where Projeto Tamar has created a preserve for giant turtles who breed on these shores but were nearly wiped out by predatory fishing and capture for commercial products. It is a beautiful fishing port, where the old pattern of predatory fishing that endangered the turtles has been turned into a preserve. Projeto Tamar creates local jobs in the preservation effort and in the associated tourist industry. Hundreds of families are supported by making products and providing services at Praia da Forte.
Praia da Forte is a site of Projeto Tamar, a broad program to preserve the habitat of the huge turtles.
Almost every day’s activities leads back to the Pelourinho area in the historic cultural center. The word refers to a whipping post once used in the square for the public punishment of slaves. It is now a center of Afro-Brazilian culture and tourist activity. The Bahaianas are a kind of welcoming committee sponsored by various stores. The one on the right is an old friend — she remember us from a few years ago when I got separated from the group while taking photos. The Bahaiana told them where to find the “tall guy in the white hat.” On this visit she assured the group that she would keep track of me again this year.
These Bahaianas are a touristic/commercial phenomenon, but they evoke an older cultural history. The street trade in food and crafts was dominated by free slave women and they have been a presence in the center of Salvador for centuries. This is also the dress of the women of the Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice of Candomble. Bahaianas dominate the Candomble houses and hold a major spiritual process from the lower city/harbor of Salvador to the church of “Our Lord of the Good End” (Nossa Senhor do Bonfim) where they carry an image of the oriya Iemanja (or Yemanja) and wash the steps of the church to purify it for the Afro-Brazilian entities known as orixas. This syncretism is particularly strong in Salvador for many reasons — including the high concentration of African descendants in Salvador (and the surrounding state of Bahia), the emergence of an urban commercial culture of freed (manumitted) slaves, and the durability and tenacity of African-based cultural forms in the region.
More about this complicated connection between Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian practice in later posts.
