What they really want to know is if I will explode or try to clandestinely sell smuggled equipment.<\/p>\n
None of this compares, though, with the trip a few years ago when we brought back a four-foot puppet ox from the festival. \u00a0It was a cherished gift that was understood by everyone in Maranhao, but each airport closer to home found \u00a0greater and greater incomprehension. \u00a0Then we also realized that it was a large artifact with many places to smuggle this or that. \u00a0We did confirm that the ceremonial herbs in the ox\u2019s horns were not on anyone\u2019s wanted list or would be sniffed out by the drug beagles in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Monday & Tuesday Airplane and airports (Milwaukee, Atlanta, Rio de Janeiro and, finally, Salvador in Bahia)<\/p>\n
Tuesday Land in Rio de Janeiro, wander through customs, transfer to Salvador (Bahia) flight<\/p>\n
Arrive in Salvador in the afternoon, looking and feeling our very best, test our land legs, attack a local restaurant (stupendous \u201cRed Fish,\u201d Red Snapper or what is called Huachinango<\/em> in Spanish) \u2014 about 50 feet from the sea.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Wednesday<\/p>\n Downtown Salvador (Pelourhino) \u00a0<\/p>\n The best place to sample regional cuisine\u00a0is\u00a0the remarkable \u00a0SENAC, \u00a0a culinary institute that trains its students in the hospitality industry, particularly in preparing and serving Bahian specialities.\u00a0 It includes\u00a0some of the best that African\/Brazilian cuisine has to offer (some of which, of course, like Acaraje<\/em>, are the preferred foods of various orixas)<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The evening program was back to the Pelourinho<\/em> historical center for a performance of the Bale Folklorico da Bahia<\/em>, whose program is based on stylized movement related to Afro-Brazilian culture \u2014 West African deities (orixas), Brazilian\/African martial arts (capoeira<\/em>), and a rural \u00a0samba (Samba da Roda<\/em>) that predates by generations the social dance form and Carnaval form of samba that is more widely known to visitors.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The evidence of Afro-Brazilian\/Catholic is so pervasive that the most famous church here has a special service for Oxala<\/em>, 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Thursday<\/p>\n 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\u00a0fishing port, where the old pattern of predatory fishing that endangered the turtles has been turned into a preserve.\u00a0 Projeto Tamar<\/em> creates local jobs in the preservation effort and in the associated tourist industry.\u00a0\u00a0Hundreds of families are supported by making products and providing services at Praia da Forte.<\/p>\n Praia da Forte is a site of Projeto Tamar, a broad program to preserve the habitat of the huge turtles.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Almost every day\u2019s activities leads back to the\u00a0Pelourinho<\/em> area in the historic cultural center. \u00a0The word refers to a whipping post once used in the square for the public punishment of slaves. \u00a0It is now a center of Afro-Brazilian culture and tourist activity. \u00a0The Bahaianas<\/em> are a kind of welcoming committee sponsored by various stores. \u00a0The one on the right is an old friend \u2014 she remember us from a few years ago when I got separated from the group while taking photos. \u00a0The Bahaiana<\/em> told them where to find the \u201ctall guy in the white hat.\u201d\u00a0 On this visit she assured the group that she would keep track of me again this year.<\/p>\n These\u00a0Bahaianas<\/em> are a touristic\/commercial phenomenon, but they evoke an older cultural history. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0This is also the dress of the women of the Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice of Candomble. \u00a0Bahaianas dominate the Candomble houses and hold a major spiritual process from the lower city\/harbor of Salvador to the church of \u201cOur Lord of the Good End\u201d (Nossa Senhor do Bonfim<\/em>) where they carry an image of the oriya Iemanja<\/em> (or Yemanja<\/em>) and wash the steps of the church to purify it for the Afro-Brazilian entities known as orixas<\/em>. \u00a0This syncretism is particularly strong in Salvador for many reasons \u2014 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.<\/p>\n More about this complicated connection between Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian practice in later posts.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. \u00a0This is a bit of a reconstruction of the trip so far. The trip looked like this: At first, airport after airport. \u00a0We left on Monday (June 8) … Continue reading Salvador (Bahia): Getting there, and first days<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uwmmilwaukee-study-abroad-pre-2019"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IMG_0816_DxO\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/IMG_0816_DxO.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a>
\nSamba da Roda classes from a folklorist\/scholar
\nWalking tour of Pelourhino (including two churches \u2014 \u201cOur Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks,\u201d 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 \u2014 as it he were a bit pained at what was done in his name)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>