Yessssss! After six months of cold showers, I have hot water! It cost me about R$ 100, but was worth every last centavo in my zestfully clean opinion. You know, they may be baby steps but I love moving up in the world!
In Brazil, we mix electricity with water because frankly we are just plain braver than you.
I arrive at Porto da Barra beach at an early hour. It is a luminous day and the Bay of All Saints seems magical in the sunshine, a heady mix of greens and blues. As the wind whips through the sky flinging sand and sea birds farther inland, the body of this century’s old secluded port churns with laughter, broken only by the monstrous cargo ships that assail her tepid waters. On days like today, when Iemanja the goddess of the sea really lets her gifts shine, all feel blessed, streaming to the beach in groves to offer their own happiness as reward.
On a small stretch of shore, situated by the solid Forte de São Pedro, the Porto da Barra beach quivers with revel rousers—a crown stylishly jeweled with a thousand beach chairs, shade umbrellas, and passerbys. The site of Bahia’s first European settlement, Vila Velha, or the Old Village, this place has seen its share of history. To think, how many people must have stood there, two feet planted in the sand, with a smile spread headlong into the sea. An emperor’s army, I think, enough to fill the sky.
I arrive by motorbike, burning my 250 cc machine past the beach front bars. Weekends, full of sun are what Latin/Lusitanian America is all about. I park my bike and join in with the crowd, grabbing my havaianas to walk through the sand and smile with the rest of them. “Would you like a chair amigo, a beer, a place to sit?” Hawkers are everywhere, selling their long dangled earrings, their hammocks, their beach towels, necklaces, and sun screen. One taller black man walks through the swarm, singing a melodic “Meu nome é João, eu vendo camarão!” that plays softly in my ears. The place seems to pulse with life, a kind of natural torso that moves in and out as it breathes.
In the middle of the beach by the volleyball net, I sit down and relax, trading my board shorts in for a revealing sunga—a kind of men’s swimwear reminiscent of a jungle thong. I sit down to bathe in the sun, hoping to increase my legitimacy as a native by tanning in between the lines. To my right, my beach side companion grins, a beautiful girl of poetic charm, a kind of Salvadorian muse whose laugh reminds me of the sea.
Taking it all in, all of it, including the sand crabs, the laughing kids, the guys playing racquetball, I smile to myself, joining in the holy communion of the crowd. What a Saturday this is, a beach day, a winter day in Bahia, Brazil! Sometimes the tropics are nice, sometimes they are unbelievable.
I have been having a reoccurring dream of late. It seems to be a subconscious affirmation of my present reality. The dream is hazy, the setting variable, but it always ends in the same message. In the dream I find myself traveling back to the United States. Usually I’m visiting family, chatting with my mother, spending time with friends. After a couple of days I feel a very pressing and overwhelming desire to get back to Brazil. “I can’t stay”, I mutter, “I have to get back”.
Some days I wake up to the noise of my bairro popular, to happily tweeting birds, dancing palm fronds, and incessant cries of Jesus from the neighborhood evangelist, and I wonder what the hell I am doing here. At times I feel such an outsider, straining to laugh when people laugh, trying desperately to affirm my place in this vivacious culture. At times I think to myself, who in their right mind leaves a secure and happy life, a nice house, a dog, a beautiful motorcycle, to come live like this—alone in the slum, with little work, and few luxuries. And then, upon waking from my dream, I remember “Ah, yes, I do!”
As frustrated as I become at times—driving my little moto through the torrents of rain—I feel on a subconscious level that my work is not done here, that my presence is part of some greater scheme of self-development and maturity. I am here because I shouldn’t be anywhere else, because I want to be independent, because in the end I wish for nothing more than to challenge my crazy, self-styled adventurous 27 year old self.
Currently listening to...
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So back from vacation, life moves on. July is a month without formal work, as in work in the paid kind that gets you places. All of the schools are on break, and I find myself spending a great deal of time at home, scribbling away on my final ACBEU project and papers. I admit to reaching a greater point of familiarity with Brazil, which in some respects is bad for my writing. I feel like things are become normal, that after having launched myself into another world I am become slowly accustomed to it. I struggle between the desire to remain anthropological—a participant observer with an outsiders view—and to become a red-blooded native, who knows how to take busses, order breakfast, and who feels at ease with his home land.
So back from vacation, life moves on. When away from homework, I find my time most pleasurably spent chasing women and doing martial arts. Things have gotten more serious with “the girl”, and yet they haven’t, which on some level has led me to a point of dissatisfaction and a yearning to open my eyes and look elsewhere. There are, my dear lord, so many beautiful, lithe, long haired vixens that grace my poetical path. Brazil is no yardstick short of attractive women, and I have only been hesitant because of my place in the middle ground, of not knowing if I want to desert my present “non-relationship” for another.
Ahem. Check Please.
July has also been a month of returning to the fighting arts. Oh, how I have missed thee! I bought some Capoeira gear on Avenida Sete, and eventually forced myself back to practice almost a year after abandoning the post. I have avoided digging into Capoeira here for many reasons, but I think primarily because I am mourning the loss of my Capoeira social circle back in the States. Here I feel like an outsider, and the playing lacks a sense of camaraderie that I used to have.
To fill that gap I am very, very happy to announce the finding of a Kendo/Kenjitsu dojo here in Salvador. Kendo is a fighting art modeled on the war inclinations of the Samurai that involves full contact with Japanese bamboo swords and lots of yelling and getting sweaty with overly-serious men. It is just brilliant and something I have greatly missed since my fighting days in Michigan. I impressed the residing sempai with my crazy energy level and kiai, and he practically begged me to join the group at the end of class. Now I just have to get my armor and swords sent from the States, and I look forward, with a warrior’s glee, to many bouts and glories to come.
