2-18-06
I learned a very important lesson this last week—one that I dare not forget as Salvador approaches its season of madness. Soon, hundreds of thousands of people will take to the streets, yearning to brush of their inhibitions, their constraints of everyday life. For a week and a half, all business will come to a grinding halt, as people come together to celebrate the largest most extravagant party in the world. I went to the festa Itapua last week, and experienced but a little taste of this unbound alegria. With danger, drama, and adventura, it’s a story worthy of a least one good telling. Please excuse the grammatical errors and lack of flow. I really didn’t have much time to work on it, and even had to skip my homework for a couple of nights to get it done.
* * *
Tap, tap, tap. The sound was faint, almost inaudible. Leo sat typing furiously away on his laptop, lost to his thoughts, his work, in the corner of his host family room. Hunched over a small glass topped desk, little beyond his own deliberation registered in his head.
Knock, knock, knock. Sullen and ignored, the sound came again, this time more insistent. More out of instinct than a willful desire to know who was rapping, Leo slowly moved his head toward the sound.
“Quem é?” he yelled, perhaps a little rougher than intended.
“Ninginha. Posso entrar?” The voice was muffled behind a heavy wood door, but carried just far enough to justify the interruption.
“Pode, clado!” he replied, now fully in the room and away from his thoughts.
Slowly, the thinly framed twenty seven year old maid popped her head in door—the rest of her scurried in after. She greeted the estrangeiro with a smile, not in the least bit apologetic for having interrupted his work. She wore short cutoffs and a red bikini top, clearly not the typical work day uniform.
“Voce quer sair para a festa?” she said, her smile widening.
He looked at her and paused. God, he thought, how many parties can a single town have. The last few weeks had been a madhouse of revelry for the young tourist, looking to study and live in Brazil. Each time his head obstinately gravitated toward a pillow, some grandeous festa or back alley party was declared. The smallest sign, providential or not, could spark these events. If your cat died, good, throw a party. Find a six pack of Skol hiding in the back of your refrigerator, fine, throw another. This was Brazil, and Salvador moreover, where social-celebrations were simply a way of life.
“Errr…uh…talvez…uh…maybe” he replied, staring up at the ceiling. “Qual festa é?”
“Festa Itapua” she said curtly. He thought about it for a second. It didn’t ring a bell.
He stared at her, back at his work, then back at her once more. Ah, what the hell, he thought, life’s short and opportunity doesn’t come a knockin’ everyday.
“Sim, estou vou” he answered, giving her the obligatory thumbs up, registering in the affirmative. She laughed quickly, turned on her heals, and ran out the door, happy to have enlisted a companion.
Within minutes, after a quick change of clothes and shower, they were both on their way out the door. Leo assumed his favored party dress: low hanging board shorts with a side pocket for cash, a sleeveless tee, and sandals. The only jewelry he wore was a tightly bound silver chain hooked around is neck. It was common for Brazilian men sport these, even in the best of crowds, so little worry was afforded.
As they began to head out the door Ninginha started singing, her sandals wrapped against the pavement in time. Very typical of Bahiana, she knew a host of popular tunes—the present day classics, sung at all hours throughout the city. Afrodisiaco, Ivete, Timbilada, there wasn’t a moment where some stereo, speaker, or passerby celebrated these artists and their showcase tunes. At the larger festas, giant semi-trucks called trio elétricos – rigged with thousands of watts of sound equipment and a band on top – would parade down the street, playing these and other favorites at extremely high volumes. A bloco would follow behind, where paying customers would dance and sing, secured behind a roped off area as the semi crept along. Those outside of the roped area were known as pipoca, or popcorn, jammed as it were in the thousands, struggling to catch a glimpse of the band and its followers.
Ninginha and Leo, wide-eyed and energetic, climbed on the bus that would take them to Itapua. Stepping onto the large vehicle, paying the 1.70 centavos, squeezing through turn-style—this routine proved common and casual for them both, despite the precarious rollercoaster ride promised ahead. Before long, the bus began to creep behind a long line of traffic as it neared the festival site. Eager to head into the mix, Leo grabbed Ninginha’s hand and led her off the bus onto the sidewalk beside the road. She motioned to a street vendor, where she bought chicklets and cigarettes for the walk ahead.
“Vai em frente” she said, pointing towards the beachside avenue and the large mass of people gyrating beside. The road extended far beyond her outstretched arm, farther than the eye could see. Trio elétricos paraded amidst a swirling throng of people dancing, singing, giving themselves to the gods of passion and revelry. Ninginha tapped the wide eyed gringo on the shoulder, laughed, and then began to maker her way into the crowd.
Walking along the beach front, their rubber sandals trampled through pools of water, trash, and an incalculable number of feet. Bloco groups danced far ahead, swirling like a mass of stirred up confetti. Accustomed to the monotony of smaller places, Leo marveled at the diversity of the humans twirling before him. They reminded him of points of light in a large galaxy, each star, each person revealing its own unique shape and brilliance within a greater pattern.
Making his way around street vendors and dançarinos, Leo’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a sharp pain to his backside. Turning his head, he caught a glimpse of a smiling girl standing behind him, brandishing her hand in front of her like an impromptu weapon. He returned the smile, surprised by the random pinch, and continued on his way. Before long, his thoughts and progress were yet again interrupted by a pinch to his bottom. Two pinches turned into three, and three into ten—each by a separate woman. What the hell is going on, he thought, taken aback by the unabashedly forward behavior. I’ve never seen anything like this, even at other festas.
Clued into the strangeness of it all, Leo’s eyes began to focus more acutely. Looking at the crowd, it suddenly dawned on him that he was the only light skinned person there—the only tourist, gringo, non-resident and non-Brazilian. Everyone around him was dark or tan, a testament to the cities ill repute as the largest slave port in Brazil. With blue eyes, highlighted hair, and fairer skin, he stood out as an irregularity, an abnormality, a point of exoticism for the darker ladies of the crowd.
Well that explains the nips, he surmised.
Walking further down the street, Leo and Ninginha had to take more care as they picked their way along. The great stands of people became thicker and thicker, until all but standing room was allowed. Holding a hand, shoulder, or anything to keep from being separated, they slowly continued onward, sometimes stopping for minutes in places where the cross traffic became to busy.
“Vai em frente!” Ninginha yelled, urging Leo onward, raising her sing song voice in an attempt to somehow be heard over the din of the music.
“Praonde!?” he replied. There was nowhere to go.
Just as the crowd began to gain further weight, things started to get crazy. Fights began to break out in random areas, over a push, a hard look, whatever. People were getting hit in the face with full beer cans chucked randomly into the crowd. As soon as violence erupted, the surrounding group of people would move desperately to get out of the way, pushing, shoving, and kicking their way forward. Lines of military police wearing camo and carrying thick black nightsticks shoved their way toward each fight, often breaking it up with a hard and swift justice of their own. Thieves, combatants, and bystanders caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, were aggressively pulled away, bloodied by their own exchanges or their run in with the cops.
The festas music rose, the crowd sang louder, everyone seemed to become increasingly agitated. Fiercely shoved from side to side, Leo began to get scared. He knew this wasn’t safe, wasn’t normal. He knew he had to get out of there.
Looking desperately around, he realized that the only exit was past a large trio electrico moving slowly down the street. People were jumping and slamming into one another next to it, their screams drown out by the large speakers below the band. They truly did look like popcorn as the Brazilian word described.
Grabbing Ninginha’s hand and shoving her face into his chest, Leo tried earnestly to move his way through the crowd. Another fight broke out beside them and they were both almost knocked down. In a place like this, getting thrown to the ground could be the end. Adrenaline pumped through Leo’s veins as he pulled her onward.
As they neared the side of the semi-trailer, Leo began to feel hands searching forcefully around his clothes. One in particular, thrust from behind, tried to open the zipper pocket of his shorts. With all his might he grabbed the hand and squeezed, hoping the pain and his knowledge of it would deter the crime. The hand retracted and Leo turned around, trying to find his assailant. A thousand faces stared blankly at him.
Looking ahead, he could see the end of the route just steps away. The crowd thinned there, offering a potential escape. Out of the blue, a strong hand grabbed his necklace from behind, pulling his head sharply backward. Leo turned around, ready for a fight, but again was met by a sea of innocent faces. Turning around one last time, the hand quickly found him. With one violent tug, his neck was squeezed inward, and he could feel the necklace break away. Acting instinctively, he grabbed the silver chain and lunged forward, breaking contact with the thief from behind. Eyes open and enraged, he turned around to meet the assailant. He followed the hand this time, and was ready to take someone down. Just as he began to move, a sharp crack broke his concentration. To his utter surprise, a police line was right behind him. A jet black bludgeon quickly descended, finding the man before he did.
The man’s face broke open, and blood flew everywhere. His tough visage quickly turned from resolve to terror, as he was grabbed around the neck and dragged away. Wasting no more time, Leo seized Ninginha’s hand and pulled her away from the sweat of the crowd. He shoved the broken necklace into his pocket, and quickly got the hell out of there.
Away from the danger and noise, sitting himself next a well lit restaurant, he began to settle down. Ninginha took a slow drag on a half crushed cigarette and laughed at him.
“Porque voce é muito nervoso?” she asked.
“Porque?” his brow furled. This had to be the most ridiculous question in the world.
“Esta é normal”, she calmly said, “e Carnaval é pior.”
Carnival is worse, he thought, she must be joking!
Before he had a chance to answer, she grabbed his hand and began to move away. But two eye winks later, they were yet again on a city bus, hoping for safe passage through the sprawl of the city. Leo felt a bit tired, but was happy to have lived through the experience. Later that night, he learned from a Brazilian friend that most locals heartily avoid festa Itapua. “It has a reputation for petty crime and violence”, his friend had flatly stated, “and at least a handful of people die there every year.”
Wiping the sweat of his brow, once again animated and smiling, Leo took the info in with a shrug. What better way, he thought, to witness the madness and unabashed foolery of some human beings. And in the least, he surmised, it all had the makings of a good story.
* * *
When I left the festival that night, with my energy drained from the stress and the movement, I was a bit disgusted with the hostility and bloodshed. Actually, I was more disgusted with the empathy towards these things than with the things themselves. For Ninginha to see the thievery and violence as normal and customary spoke volumes to me. Yes, people were drinking. Yes, some criminality was to be expected, but in such extremes? Was this part and parcel to the more destructive elements pervading Brazilian culture, inhibiting its movement and progression into the Ordem e Progresso that the flag so optimistically promised?
I didn’t have answers to these things, only more questions.
Traveling home on the bus, feeling more comfortable as I put distance between myself and Itapua, I experienced yet another episode that was so characteristically Brazilian. Just as we pulled away from the festival site, two musicians entered the bus—one carrying some kind of mandolin and the other a drum. Before a word passed between them, they gave their audience a sly smile. The mandolin was strummed, the drum beaten, and lively song began to issue from both of their mouths. Niginha immediately took up their cry, beating her feet against the metal baseboards of the bus in time with the music. Two girls behind me joined in the singing, then three others, then four. Before I knew it the whole bus began to play.
Whatever negative emotions remained after the festival melted swiftly away. I began to beat an empty beer can against the seat in front of me, amazed at how happy everyone seemed. Here was a group of complete strangers, united by a singular desire—to sing and be joyful, to join in songs born to the city, known exclusively by its residents.
As I continued to sing, I was overwhelmed by a feeling that this was Brazil—mixed and proud. A society of bottled violence and alegria, where happiness and despair, poverty and riches could live side by side. This feeling lasted but a moment, yet somehow, I knew I would find it again. I knew I would find more textures of this strange and beautiful land.
Tasting it once, my eyes were now open, and I knew more would come to me.
Thursday, February 23
Wednesday, February 15
A little bit of love, a little bit of game
2-14-06
It’s Valentines Day, so what better subject to write upon then:
Ahhh, the single life. Affirmations of my liberated status have begun to manifest in a number of ways. First came the personal changes: an increased desire to work out, a new cell phone, a bitchin’ new haircut. In the competitive din of bachelorism, peacocking and communicative prowess is a must. Then came an introduction to the more subtle arts, where the eyes become open to body language, the mind receptive to demeanor, and the interaction masculine yet playful.
Become a strong yet sensitive alpha male, and one will win hearts. Learn to tease, learn when to become scarce and when to give a girl your full attention, learn to never let a stranger have control over your own self-worth, learn to always approach indirectly, learn to calculate every single that you do. There is truth to these things, and I have opened myself to it. Here in Brazil, it’s beginning to pay off.
Friday I scheduled a first date with the ever jovial and youthfully exuberant Tai, the so called “10” that I met in Pelourinho. I first spied her dancing at the far end of a crowd, sweating to the heated rhythms of a live samba band. She was the kind of girl that every man drools over, with a lithe feminine physic, long dark hair that cascaded over her back, and eyes—such large entrancing eyes that could make you forget your time and place in the world. I spotted her dancing, getting hit on by random passerbies, and I tried not to stare. Tried and failed. After breaking my trance, I put my head down, dancing, trying to forget about her all together. But we were two planets caught in each others enormity, meant to lose our own space and collide together in fire. When I pulled my head up again, not two minutes later, I noticed that her and her friend where dancing right next to me. I knew immediately that this was premeditated, my proximity alarming firing, telling me to move in closer. Slyly, and with little hesitation, I moved into her friend’s space, asking her in broken Portuguese if she knew the name of the band playing, and the type of dance everyone was swinging to. Yes, I played the curious gringo card, and it worked in good form.
It turned out that both of them spoke English. To my surprise, Tai had lived in Michigan for a year, finishing up high school in a foreign exchange program. When I told her I was from Michigan, her eyes lit up like a swarm of fireflies. Both of them cooed and I knew I was in. I used the following couple of hours to build rapport and social proof, running back and forth to my buds in the crowd, to Tai and her friend, solidifying the fact that I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t needy, and that other people liked me.
Let me take a quick moment to say that I really kind of detest the game. I would much prefer to stroll down the simple road, the “Hi my name is Dick”, and “Hi my name is Jane”, and “Let’s fall in love over coffee or tea.” I would much prefer small doses of sweet sincerity, where everyone is straight, innocent, and there is no push, or pull, or tug. But herein lies the great irony of modern dating, a truth I have found in my short time at play. In order to gain the attraction of the opposite sex, you much initially pretend as if you don’t want to. You much challenge and intrigue the person, hooking them in a world of unpredictable, challenging, and intriguing sites and sounds.
Those that do not open their eyes to these things, to the intense complexities of the male female interaction, are destined to remain on the sidelines. Those that do not accept the challenge, and play the game, however far from ideal that it may be, are destined to isolation, to twiddling thumbs and playing video games. True, people do tire of the game, but I would uphold that with marriage, a new game simply emerges. The rules are slightly different but the principles remain the same.
So there I was Friday night, sitting across the table from a gorgeous girl—petitioned to be a model, by the way, always extra points—praying that I wouldn’t screw things up too badly. It was after all my first date in like seven years. From the get go, I started things off super playful, busting her balls (ackkk, weird expression!) about being late, and how I would remove fingers if it happened in the future. Immediately I could tell that she was into me. She lifted her left hand constantly, playing with her hair, and displaying the undersides of her wrists (a big sign in the body language world). I took her out for a drink at the Caranguejo de Sergipe, then on to an Italian place for meatless pizza, as she is a vegetarian. We had a lot in common, and she laughed at my jokes—one of the most important factors in my book. She was intelligent, a law student, with a penchant for adventure and a love for dirty funk Brazilian songs. Hehe, two thumbs up.
We finished the night by folding our paper placemats into little boats, and then setting them free into the salty waters of the Bay of all Saints. I got hit by a large wave and was soaked from the calves down. The night finished with, what else, a beautiful lingering kiss, which I cut off just as things started to get interesting. Push, pull. Push, pull.
Our second date was more the same, albeit with vastly increased doses of kissing in public places. This is, I have come to find, a very Brazilian thing to do. It’s almost as informal as a handshake and no one else around seems notice. As usual, I was determined to immerse myself in the cultural peculiarities of my new country, and with little hesitation I might add.
The date ended with a conversation about ownership, boyfriend-girlfriend status, and the necessity of maintaining singleship prior to carnival. This, again, is rather normal. People want a guilt free holiday.
I got back to the apartment around 9:00, and by 10:00 was out on the town with another group of girls. I’m rather interested in one of them, a small spit fire of a lady that has the tendency to slap men for the simple joy of seeing them in pain. I think I’ve received six or seven of them by now.
Ahhh, the single life.
Happy Valentines Day all.
It’s Valentines Day, so what better subject to write upon then:
Ahhh, the single life. Affirmations of my liberated status have begun to manifest in a number of ways. First came the personal changes: an increased desire to work out, a new cell phone, a bitchin’ new haircut. In the competitive din of bachelorism, peacocking and communicative prowess is a must. Then came an introduction to the more subtle arts, where the eyes become open to body language, the mind receptive to demeanor, and the interaction masculine yet playful.
Become a strong yet sensitive alpha male, and one will win hearts. Learn to tease, learn when to become scarce and when to give a girl your full attention, learn to never let a stranger have control over your own self-worth, learn to always approach indirectly, learn to calculate every single that you do. There is truth to these things, and I have opened myself to it. Here in Brazil, it’s beginning to pay off.
Friday I scheduled a first date with the ever jovial and youthfully exuberant Tai, the so called “10” that I met in Pelourinho. I first spied her dancing at the far end of a crowd, sweating to the heated rhythms of a live samba band. She was the kind of girl that every man drools over, with a lithe feminine physic, long dark hair that cascaded over her back, and eyes—such large entrancing eyes that could make you forget your time and place in the world. I spotted her dancing, getting hit on by random passerbies, and I tried not to stare. Tried and failed. After breaking my trance, I put my head down, dancing, trying to forget about her all together. But we were two planets caught in each others enormity, meant to lose our own space and collide together in fire. When I pulled my head up again, not two minutes later, I noticed that her and her friend where dancing right next to me. I knew immediately that this was premeditated, my proximity alarming firing, telling me to move in closer. Slyly, and with little hesitation, I moved into her friend’s space, asking her in broken Portuguese if she knew the name of the band playing, and the type of dance everyone was swinging to. Yes, I played the curious gringo card, and it worked in good form.
It turned out that both of them spoke English. To my surprise, Tai had lived in Michigan for a year, finishing up high school in a foreign exchange program. When I told her I was from Michigan, her eyes lit up like a swarm of fireflies. Both of them cooed and I knew I was in. I used the following couple of hours to build rapport and social proof, running back and forth to my buds in the crowd, to Tai and her friend, solidifying the fact that I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t needy, and that other people liked me.
Let me take a quick moment to say that I really kind of detest the game. I would much prefer to stroll down the simple road, the “Hi my name is Dick”, and “Hi my name is Jane”, and “Let’s fall in love over coffee or tea.” I would much prefer small doses of sweet sincerity, where everyone is straight, innocent, and there is no push, or pull, or tug. But herein lies the great irony of modern dating, a truth I have found in my short time at play. In order to gain the attraction of the opposite sex, you much initially pretend as if you don’t want to. You much challenge and intrigue the person, hooking them in a world of unpredictable, challenging, and intriguing sites and sounds.
Those that do not open their eyes to these things, to the intense complexities of the male female interaction, are destined to remain on the sidelines. Those that do not accept the challenge, and play the game, however far from ideal that it may be, are destined to isolation, to twiddling thumbs and playing video games. True, people do tire of the game, but I would uphold that with marriage, a new game simply emerges. The rules are slightly different but the principles remain the same.
So there I was Friday night, sitting across the table from a gorgeous girl—petitioned to be a model, by the way, always extra points—praying that I wouldn’t screw things up too badly. It was after all my first date in like seven years. From the get go, I started things off super playful, busting her balls (ackkk, weird expression!) about being late, and how I would remove fingers if it happened in the future. Immediately I could tell that she was into me. She lifted her left hand constantly, playing with her hair, and displaying the undersides of her wrists (a big sign in the body language world). I took her out for a drink at the Caranguejo de Sergipe, then on to an Italian place for meatless pizza, as she is a vegetarian. We had a lot in common, and she laughed at my jokes—one of the most important factors in my book. She was intelligent, a law student, with a penchant for adventure and a love for dirty funk Brazilian songs. Hehe, two thumbs up.
We finished the night by folding our paper placemats into little boats, and then setting them free into the salty waters of the Bay of all Saints. I got hit by a large wave and was soaked from the calves down. The night finished with, what else, a beautiful lingering kiss, which I cut off just as things started to get interesting. Push, pull. Push, pull.
Our second date was more the same, albeit with vastly increased doses of kissing in public places. This is, I have come to find, a very Brazilian thing to do. It’s almost as informal as a handshake and no one else around seems notice. As usual, I was determined to immerse myself in the cultural peculiarities of my new country, and with little hesitation I might add.
The date ended with a conversation about ownership, boyfriend-girlfriend status, and the necessity of maintaining singleship prior to carnival. This, again, is rather normal. People want a guilt free holiday.
I got back to the apartment around 9:00, and by 10:00 was out on the town with another group of girls. I’m rather interested in one of them, a small spit fire of a lady that has the tendency to slap men for the simple joy of seeing them in pain. I think I’ve received six or seven of them by now.
Ahhh, the single life.
Happy Valentines Day all.
(Valentines Day me)
Monday, February 6
More good times...
Ahhh, good journal of mine. How I so neglect you. So many white pages, so many spaces left unfilled. Forgive me for my absence, my long belated embrace. Life beckons and my attention falls on other things. I have been out of the house almost every single night these last two weeks. What extra time I do have is usually spent on my homework for class, and I’m often too wiped out when I get home to do anything but fall asleep. I’ve had too much sun, too much beer, and enough new experiences to fill a small lifetime.
The sun rises early here. Despite the often late hour that my head hits the pillow, I usually wake up around six in the morning. Salvador is a place that is mercilessly loud, and if not for the rays of sun that touch my head, I am often roused by the urban concerto breaking open outside. Like many great operas, it begins simply, with a single note—but a drawn out whisper. Then, with time, force, and will, the harmony gains in complexity, taking on a life of its own. Here, the song begins with the chirp of a bird, the bustle of a car, and then falls into more intricate patterns. Each morning, a man in a blue and yellow uniform circles the block yelling “Gaizzzzz, Braziuuuuuu Gaizzzzz!” He pushes a cart with eight or nine kerosene containers; the kind that people use to heat their kitchen stoves. Yapper dogs with too little room and not enough play bark with his approach, and from the street people honk their car horns seeking the attention of the commuters laying wait inside. Within the apartment, the day begins with mince and pound of the juice grinder, squeezing sweet nectar out of an assortment of fruits for breakfast. Doors slam, toilets flush, the symphony rises in complexity. Little choice is afforded to those that wish to stay asleep.
After taking my shower and coffee, I begin my long track downhill to the school. Graça is situated about 30 min walking distance from Rua Greenfield, where the building resides. The route takes me past fruit vendors, small supermarkets, large gated historical buildings, and a number of other small lojas opening for the day’s comings and goings. Taking this path numerous times a day, I often see the same people, hear the same punctuated tones of street vendors selling their wares, catching their curious glances as I pass on by. The route is rather pleasant, animated by the cooler morning air and first light, but becomes quite a chore when I must hike back up the hill after midday. I’ve been doing so much walking lately that my feet are swollen and covered in sores. I bought a new pair of sandals—the cheap kind that almost everyone wears around here—but they only created new wounds in new places. My feet hurt so bad yesterday that I had to walk the entire length to school barefoot, mindful of the dog droppings and broken glass littering parts of the road.
Classes at Idioma have been steadily increasing in difficulty. Portuguese is quite a complex language, with a structure far more intricate than English. For every English word, they often have four (or like seventy if you want to count the verbs), divided by masculine, feminine, and plural forms. It is hard enough for Brazilians to understand, let alone a monolingual woefully incompetent speaker such as myself. I used to think that I was a worldly person, having experienced a bit of traveling in Europe and Latin America. Of all the students at the school, however, I remain the least advanced. Thanks be to the States where language remains an undeveloped pastime. Take Yasmina for example, a classmate and travel buddy over the last two weeks. Her fluency extends to French, Italian, Spanish, English, some German, and now Portuguese. And she is by no means an exception. Lately, I try my best to keep up with conversation in class, but it seems as if everyone else has a far greater vocabulary to draw open, and a far better ear to work with. I sit with my mouth hanging open, trying to parcel out the sounds that pass so rapidly by. I only hope that time and discipline will be my friend in this regard.
Just last week, Yasmina, Cori (another student…actually from the same town that my older brother lives), and I decided to do a little bit of traveling over the weekend. Our destination of choice was an island town known as Morro De Sao Paulo—a popular resort station for seafarers, Brazilians vacationers, and foreign tourists. The island lay about five hours ride, by ferry boat and bus, from Salvador. The trip was a perfect chance, as Yasmina cleverly mentioned, to “have a vacation from our vacation”. We hopped on a boat, first to the large island Itaparica, and then took a bus to a small colonial town known as Valencia. The bus ride was horrendously long—about two hours in total. All of the seats were taken and we had to stand up the entire way, perilously balanced as the bus over sped each turn. When we arrived in Valencia, it was late, after dark, and we came to find that the last river boat to Morro had left an hour before. Depressed and languid, we took a seat at the Tuica bar just by the waters edge. As we sat sipping a bit of cold beer at a yellow table outside, my mood was further darkened by the horrendously loud music slamming out of the speakers just beside us. Brazilians have a rather annoying tendency to over amplify music—often to the point where any redeeming sound is lost in the rattle of the hardware. At the bar, the music was not only pounding from huge black boxes just steps beside us, but also from a car across the street. The cars cd kept skipping, and it took about 15 min for anyone to notice and do something about it. Some random guy kept lighting firecrackers off near my head, for what purpose I wasn’t really sure, and it was all enough to make me question my sanity.
The night did fortunately improve after leaving the bar. We had met a young guy on the bus who recommended that we stay at his mother’s pousada, if we became stranded in town. The pousada turned out to be a clean well run establishment, founded by a Japanese Brazilian couple, who insisted that we try some of their Bahian cuisine for supper. The hotels slogan read “A sua casa em nossa cidade”—your house in our city. Everyone seemed excited that we were there, and after meeting up with the young guy again, we were offered numerous free drinks from the bar. I was served a Cervejaroska, a strange mixture of vodka and beer that threatened a quick T.K.O.
After bedding down for the night for a measly $10 per person, we caught a slow river boat out to the island. Discovered in 1531, the small tourist village promised a picturesque lighthouse and maravilhosas prais—blue green rock strewn sand and surf. We stayed at the Encanto Do Morro pousada, and hit an Italian beachside restaurant for dinner. Highlights over the following day and a half include eating the best damn french fries I have ever tasted, and acquiring an award winning sun burn that continues to plague me to this day.
On the way back home, riding on the bus to Valencia, I met a pretty blond haired Brazilian girl from Santa Catarina, a state near the southern tip of Brazil. Both she and her friend were very friendly and fun, and we exchanged numbers, promising to rendezvous later that week. All in all, the trip was quite the score.
* * *
Ahhhh…..Brazil. I have been so ridiculously busy here. Damn near every night I’ve got something going on. Take this week for example. Monday night I went to dinner in Barra with friends, eating Italian and talking over beer. Tuesday night I hit Pelourinho, dancing the night away to live samba ballads, and picking up the number of a girl who registers quite close to a ten. Ouch! Wednesday night I went out with Larissa, one of the girls I met on the bus returning from Morro de Sao Paulo. She was super sweet, trying earnestly to show me the sites and sounds of Salvador; the places a tourist wouldn’t go. We went to a local dive called Nossa Coisa – our thing – and ate clams and some kind of dish with fresh tuna. Thursday was a huge festa in Salvador—the Festa Iemanjá—celebrating the goddess of the sea, a major figure in the Orixas pantheon. People congregate in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, offering up thousands of flowers and other gifts to the mulher do mar. I didn’t have small change and couldn’t buy a gift, so I instead stripped off my shirt and ran head first into the ocean. Everybody around thought I was crazy, but I just felt like being spontaneous. Like a mini carnival, bands strolled boisterously down the street, singing, dancing, being vicariously Brazilian. My group ended up as some ladies house, where we ate shrimp soup and danced to the classic music of Caetano Veloso. On Friday, I was planning on a quiet dinner with Corri and Yasmina, but instead ended up being dragged to see Olodum, an incredible live singing/percussion band known throughout Brazil. The concert was free, unusually so, and spectacular. After the show ended, I got tickets through Larissa to a private V.I.P. live concert party in Pelourinho, where I again danced the night away, flirting with the other girl I met on the bus last weekend. And if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m heading to the Festa de Verão, a huge Woodstock like weeklong concert, where I’m going to see the oh so popular reggae band, Burning Spear. I’m sure I’m going to return tonight rather cooked and tired, ready to crash into oblivion. Sunday, I promised to hit another festa with the two maids that work in my house, Maria and Ninguem, who are 24 and 28 respectively. Then the week begins anew.
Ai, Meus Deus! And it’s not even Carnival yet!
* * *
Ahhh……que pena! My luck turns sour. If I wasn’t going to slow down my body was going to do it for me. After eating a rather large portion of meat and rice yesterday, I started to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. Things started to move in directions they shouldn’t, and I had to immediately head for the bathroom. The maids, mindful of my predicament, started to break out all sorts of ad hoc remedies, first a lemon and then some sort of disintegrating water tablet. The first only increased the burn as I began to worship the porcelain god, and the second made me want to throw up even more. I was immediately taken back to my honeymoon in Mexico, when I experienced a dreadful bout of Montezuma’s revenge, where all sorts of liquids decided to exit one end and then the other (sorry for the mental picture). This time, it was the worse sort of vomiting, where nothing had quite been digested and no relief afforded after. I kept puking and puking until my throat burned from the acid and my whole body ached in complaint. I ran to the bathroom at least twenty or thirty times—just call me the chunky monkey.
And worse still, I had a Festa do Verão Burning Spear ticket in my hand, and quite an expensive one at that. It cost me about 65 reais, which is a small fortune for a concert ticket here. I so wanted to go, but my body said otherwise. In the end, I weakly handed over my ticket to a wide eyed Ninguem -- the maid I mentioned earlier -- who works everyday at the apartment cooking meals for Silvia’s catering business and cleaning the house. I would guess her daily salary to be at the very most 20 reais a day, although it is probably less. I knew that buying such a ticket would be damn close to an impossibility for her, and that she would appreciate it more than my other friends here. Her smile mirrored that fact.
This exchange got me thinking about an unfortunate truth of Brazil—that many people work their asses off here and make next to nothing. I see so much need, such hard resolve in many people’s faces. Lines and cresses communicate a demanding life, tough and unforgiving. Almost every time I sit outside at a restaurant I am accosted by young street children looking for handouts or bits of food. I have a difficult time looking at them, not because they are scarred or in some way disfigured, but because they look strangely unlike the children that they are. The innocence, given to a child sheltered and loved, is all but gone from their eyes. It’s like looking into the face of an adult with a child’s body, and it’s so saddening.
It makes one wonder how socialism or communism failed to take hold in countries such as these, where the system falls short for so many. I see great value in capitalism, structured as it is on the innate principles of nature’s survival of the fittest. Founded on the structure of the Savage Garden, it offers great possibility when functioning ideally, to the benefit of the greater good and the collective whole. When a man can earn his own keep, and is rewarded for his labor, he is given to a much greater desire to achieve more—to shoot farther than what a handout would provide. But like nature, capitalism lacks a sense of higher justice, driving it’s losers into the heat and press of the grindstone. When it is democratic, when the greater majority wins, then it is easily justified. But when the greater populace falls, and only a few ring strong, one can only begin to wonder. Is this the better way?
Anyway, maybe that’s the fever talking. I still am weak, achy, and in need of some good rest.
The sun rises early here. Despite the often late hour that my head hits the pillow, I usually wake up around six in the morning. Salvador is a place that is mercilessly loud, and if not for the rays of sun that touch my head, I am often roused by the urban concerto breaking open outside. Like many great operas, it begins simply, with a single note—but a drawn out whisper. Then, with time, force, and will, the harmony gains in complexity, taking on a life of its own. Here, the song begins with the chirp of a bird, the bustle of a car, and then falls into more intricate patterns. Each morning, a man in a blue and yellow uniform circles the block yelling “Gaizzzzz, Braziuuuuuu Gaizzzzz!” He pushes a cart with eight or nine kerosene containers; the kind that people use to heat their kitchen stoves. Yapper dogs with too little room and not enough play bark with his approach, and from the street people honk their car horns seeking the attention of the commuters laying wait inside. Within the apartment, the day begins with mince and pound of the juice grinder, squeezing sweet nectar out of an assortment of fruits for breakfast. Doors slam, toilets flush, the symphony rises in complexity. Little choice is afforded to those that wish to stay asleep.
After taking my shower and coffee, I begin my long track downhill to the school. Graça is situated about 30 min walking distance from Rua Greenfield, where the building resides. The route takes me past fruit vendors, small supermarkets, large gated historical buildings, and a number of other small lojas opening for the day’s comings and goings. Taking this path numerous times a day, I often see the same people, hear the same punctuated tones of street vendors selling their wares, catching their curious glances as I pass on by. The route is rather pleasant, animated by the cooler morning air and first light, but becomes quite a chore when I must hike back up the hill after midday. I’ve been doing so much walking lately that my feet are swollen and covered in sores. I bought a new pair of sandals—the cheap kind that almost everyone wears around here—but they only created new wounds in new places. My feet hurt so bad yesterday that I had to walk the entire length to school barefoot, mindful of the dog droppings and broken glass littering parts of the road.
Classes at Idioma have been steadily increasing in difficulty. Portuguese is quite a complex language, with a structure far more intricate than English. For every English word, they often have four (or like seventy if you want to count the verbs), divided by masculine, feminine, and plural forms. It is hard enough for Brazilians to understand, let alone a monolingual woefully incompetent speaker such as myself. I used to think that I was a worldly person, having experienced a bit of traveling in Europe and Latin America. Of all the students at the school, however, I remain the least advanced. Thanks be to the States where language remains an undeveloped pastime. Take Yasmina for example, a classmate and travel buddy over the last two weeks. Her fluency extends to French, Italian, Spanish, English, some German, and now Portuguese. And she is by no means an exception. Lately, I try my best to keep up with conversation in class, but it seems as if everyone else has a far greater vocabulary to draw open, and a far better ear to work with. I sit with my mouth hanging open, trying to parcel out the sounds that pass so rapidly by. I only hope that time and discipline will be my friend in this regard.
Just last week, Yasmina, Cori (another student…actually from the same town that my older brother lives), and I decided to do a little bit of traveling over the weekend. Our destination of choice was an island town known as Morro De Sao Paulo—a popular resort station for seafarers, Brazilians vacationers, and foreign tourists. The island lay about five hours ride, by ferry boat and bus, from Salvador. The trip was a perfect chance, as Yasmina cleverly mentioned, to “have a vacation from our vacation”. We hopped on a boat, first to the large island Itaparica, and then took a bus to a small colonial town known as Valencia. The bus ride was horrendously long—about two hours in total. All of the seats were taken and we had to stand up the entire way, perilously balanced as the bus over sped each turn. When we arrived in Valencia, it was late, after dark, and we came to find that the last river boat to Morro had left an hour before. Depressed and languid, we took a seat at the Tuica bar just by the waters edge. As we sat sipping a bit of cold beer at a yellow table outside, my mood was further darkened by the horrendously loud music slamming out of the speakers just beside us. Brazilians have a rather annoying tendency to over amplify music—often to the point where any redeeming sound is lost in the rattle of the hardware. At the bar, the music was not only pounding from huge black boxes just steps beside us, but also from a car across the street. The cars cd kept skipping, and it took about 15 min for anyone to notice and do something about it. Some random guy kept lighting firecrackers off near my head, for what purpose I wasn’t really sure, and it was all enough to make me question my sanity.
The night did fortunately improve after leaving the bar. We had met a young guy on the bus who recommended that we stay at his mother’s pousada, if we became stranded in town. The pousada turned out to be a clean well run establishment, founded by a Japanese Brazilian couple, who insisted that we try some of their Bahian cuisine for supper. The hotels slogan read “A sua casa em nossa cidade”—your house in our city. Everyone seemed excited that we were there, and after meeting up with the young guy again, we were offered numerous free drinks from the bar. I was served a Cervejaroska, a strange mixture of vodka and beer that threatened a quick T.K.O.
After bedding down for the night for a measly $10 per person, we caught a slow river boat out to the island. Discovered in 1531, the small tourist village promised a picturesque lighthouse and maravilhosas prais—blue green rock strewn sand and surf. We stayed at the Encanto Do Morro pousada, and hit an Italian beachside restaurant for dinner. Highlights over the following day and a half include eating the best damn french fries I have ever tasted, and acquiring an award winning sun burn that continues to plague me to this day.
On the way back home, riding on the bus to Valencia, I met a pretty blond haired Brazilian girl from Santa Catarina, a state near the southern tip of Brazil. Both she and her friend were very friendly and fun, and we exchanged numbers, promising to rendezvous later that week. All in all, the trip was quite the score.
* * *
Ahhhh…..Brazil. I have been so ridiculously busy here. Damn near every night I’ve got something going on. Take this week for example. Monday night I went to dinner in Barra with friends, eating Italian and talking over beer. Tuesday night I hit Pelourinho, dancing the night away to live samba ballads, and picking up the number of a girl who registers quite close to a ten. Ouch! Wednesday night I went out with Larissa, one of the girls I met on the bus returning from Morro de Sao Paulo. She was super sweet, trying earnestly to show me the sites and sounds of Salvador; the places a tourist wouldn’t go. We went to a local dive called Nossa Coisa – our thing – and ate clams and some kind of dish with fresh tuna. Thursday was a huge festa in Salvador—the Festa Iemanjá—celebrating the goddess of the sea, a major figure in the Orixas pantheon. People congregate in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood, offering up thousands of flowers and other gifts to the mulher do mar. I didn’t have small change and couldn’t buy a gift, so I instead stripped off my shirt and ran head first into the ocean. Everybody around thought I was crazy, but I just felt like being spontaneous. Like a mini carnival, bands strolled boisterously down the street, singing, dancing, being vicariously Brazilian. My group ended up as some ladies house, where we ate shrimp soup and danced to the classic music of Caetano Veloso. On Friday, I was planning on a quiet dinner with Corri and Yasmina, but instead ended up being dragged to see Olodum, an incredible live singing/percussion band known throughout Brazil. The concert was free, unusually so, and spectacular. After the show ended, I got tickets through Larissa to a private V.I.P. live concert party in Pelourinho, where I again danced the night away, flirting with the other girl I met on the bus last weekend. And if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m heading to the Festa de Verão, a huge Woodstock like weeklong concert, where I’m going to see the oh so popular reggae band, Burning Spear. I’m sure I’m going to return tonight rather cooked and tired, ready to crash into oblivion. Sunday, I promised to hit another festa with the two maids that work in my house, Maria and Ninguem, who are 24 and 28 respectively. Then the week begins anew.
Ai, Meus Deus! And it’s not even Carnival yet!
* * *
Ahhh……que pena! My luck turns sour. If I wasn’t going to slow down my body was going to do it for me. After eating a rather large portion of meat and rice yesterday, I started to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. Things started to move in directions they shouldn’t, and I had to immediately head for the bathroom. The maids, mindful of my predicament, started to break out all sorts of ad hoc remedies, first a lemon and then some sort of disintegrating water tablet. The first only increased the burn as I began to worship the porcelain god, and the second made me want to throw up even more. I was immediately taken back to my honeymoon in Mexico, when I experienced a dreadful bout of Montezuma’s revenge, where all sorts of liquids decided to exit one end and then the other (sorry for the mental picture). This time, it was the worse sort of vomiting, where nothing had quite been digested and no relief afforded after. I kept puking and puking until my throat burned from the acid and my whole body ached in complaint. I ran to the bathroom at least twenty or thirty times—just call me the chunky monkey.
And worse still, I had a Festa do Verão Burning Spear ticket in my hand, and quite an expensive one at that. It cost me about 65 reais, which is a small fortune for a concert ticket here. I so wanted to go, but my body said otherwise. In the end, I weakly handed over my ticket to a wide eyed Ninguem -- the maid I mentioned earlier -- who works everyday at the apartment cooking meals for Silvia’s catering business and cleaning the house. I would guess her daily salary to be at the very most 20 reais a day, although it is probably less. I knew that buying such a ticket would be damn close to an impossibility for her, and that she would appreciate it more than my other friends here. Her smile mirrored that fact.
This exchange got me thinking about an unfortunate truth of Brazil—that many people work their asses off here and make next to nothing. I see so much need, such hard resolve in many people’s faces. Lines and cresses communicate a demanding life, tough and unforgiving. Almost every time I sit outside at a restaurant I am accosted by young street children looking for handouts or bits of food. I have a difficult time looking at them, not because they are scarred or in some way disfigured, but because they look strangely unlike the children that they are. The innocence, given to a child sheltered and loved, is all but gone from their eyes. It’s like looking into the face of an adult with a child’s body, and it’s so saddening.
It makes one wonder how socialism or communism failed to take hold in countries such as these, where the system falls short for so many. I see great value in capitalism, structured as it is on the innate principles of nature’s survival of the fittest. Founded on the structure of the Savage Garden, it offers great possibility when functioning ideally, to the benefit of the greater good and the collective whole. When a man can earn his own keep, and is rewarded for his labor, he is given to a much greater desire to achieve more—to shoot farther than what a handout would provide. But like nature, capitalism lacks a sense of higher justice, driving it’s losers into the heat and press of the grindstone. When it is democratic, when the greater majority wins, then it is easily justified. But when the greater populace falls, and only a few ring strong, one can only begin to wonder. Is this the better way?
Anyway, maybe that’s the fever talking. I still am weak, achy, and in need of some good rest.
Time is said to heal all wounds. In my current state I’d rather pass the moments quickly.
(street vendors along side Igreja da Bom Fim)
(side of Igreja de Bom Fim)
(military fort, still used and abused)
(couple overlooking downtown Salvador)
(approaching Itaparica)
(pousada perfection)
(fighting over dinner at the Hotel Valencia)
(Arrgggghhhh...a pirate venture gone bad)
(bluer waters of Morro de Sao Paulo)
(red gringo)
(the tide is out and so is the modesty)
(a translation gone bad)
(ilha tropical)
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