Sunday, May 19, 2013

Waiting for the bus

We all have our luggage and our waiting for the bus to pick us up in about 40 minutes.

Brazil's First Breakfast Back in the US

Dulce de leche tapioca cake brought back from Brazil!!

Sweet Dreams Chris

If only the rest of us could sleep so easily on a plane !!

Back in the United States!

Our international flight made it in safely and we are picking up our bags in the baggage claim area. Now it's just a 5 hour bus ride and we are home from this big adventure.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Drumming

Just before leaving today, we had the chance to take drumming lessons with one of Salvador's best known Samba drummers. We went to his house, built on a steep hillside in a favela, and walked down several sets of steep and winding stairs, to find ourselves in a fully modern recording studio filled with traditional African drums and instruments. We sat in a circle as we learned about each instrument and had the chance to try them out. We learned 4 of the main beats, for Samba, for Condomble, the main Ghanian beat, and a special rhythm that's local to Salvador. It was a lot of fun, and lets just say that some of us were quicker than others to pick up on the patterns...

Afterward, we have a couple hours now of free time before we leave for the airport. Most students went out shopping for last minute gifts. We have some in the hotel pool. We are all packed up and ready to go. We should be home by mid-afternoon on Sunday. It will definitely be hard to say goodbye to Brazil; this has been an amazing class and an absolutely wonderful group of students. It's been such a pleasure to travel together and share so many new experiences. It's truly been fantastic.





Friday, May 17, 2013

Our last full day in Brazil

We had free time today, and students were out all over the city.

We had people visiting the famous Bom Fin church, known as the church of miracles. This is a church that has served a poor neighborhood since it was built several hundred years ago and is known as a place for healing. Inside the church is a special miracle room filled with photos of people who are sick, photos of diseased or injured body parts, and hundreds of full size wax replicas of body parts such as feet and hands. The wax body parts line the ceiling completely. Outside the church, the iron fencing is covered in thousands of bright colored ribbons. These ribbons come in multiple colors, each of which represents an area of life such as love, money, work, family, etc. People tie ribbons on the church or on their wrists and make wishes and prayers. All over this city almost every person we see has a ribbon on her/his wrist.

Most of our students went to the market. Many friends and family members back home will certainly be getting some lovely gifts from that market today!

Some students took the giant outdoor elevator from the market in the lower city up to the old Pelourhino neighborhood. This giant elevator links the two levels of the city; it was built in Art Deco style almost 100 years ago, and is packed with locals who use it to get around.

In the Pelourinho, Chris and Jasmine went to a traditional street food cart to buy the local fried acarajes. These savory donut-type buns have bean flour mixed in to make them thick and dense. They are cut in half and filled with things like little crawfish still in the shell, rice, tomatoes, etc. Acarajes are sold by traditional bahianas, the older African women who still wear the African style clothing--long cotton skirts, blouses with puffy sleeves, and headscarves, all in solid white or else in really bright colors.

In the Pelourinho, we ran into a large drumming performance, and stopped to see the drum troupe play an incredibly spirited set of songs. Many of the drummers were kids. The bigger kids were playing drums made out of large metal drum barrels. They hefted their drums above their heads to the beat; they were ridiculously coordinated and strong. The crowd danced along and laughed and clapped. It was so fun!

On our way back, we saw a group of men practicing the Brazilian martial art, capoeira. We watched for a while as the men slowly kicked and ducked and spun and hit in perfect coordination while several other men drummed a beat. Then they invited us to try! Lauren got up there, and so did Bri. Jasmine too. Ella could not be persuaded. But even Mariam went to try it out!

Kayleigh, Natalie, and Sam managed to have an adventure on the local buses today. I believe they saw a rather large swathe of the city, in fact...

Most of the students ate dinner around the hotel tonight; there is a little street market outside. People are starting to pack and think about home. Tomorrow we have a drumming session for half the group, while the other half will learn to cook maqueca. And then we leave for the airport at 3:30 on our way home.









The Running Chronicles - Final Edition

Since I last updated the running chronicles, we have run in the Amazon ( from one one end of our lodge to the other since running in the jungle was not an option). After we got to Salvador we have run every day. Our hotel is across from the beach and there is a nice side walk along which we have been joined by many other people walking or jogging.

The sun rises by 5:30 and already by then there are quite a few people out and about. By 6:15, the sidewalk is positively crowded and as Tia said, it's like Mario Kart out there.

The sea here is a bit rougher and there are many more rocks. The beach is not very wide but that means we can hear the sea and the waves crashing on shore as we run which makes it more interesting. There is a lighthouse about half a mile up which we pass on our route. There is also always a group of elderly gentlemen playing a game of volleyball with what looks like an elongated birdie (what is used for badminton). There are 3 or 4 fishermen usually casting nets in the water, a few kayaks, a group of serious swimmers doing laps in the sea and assorted vendors and bystanders on the sidewalk. All in all, a lot of activity for 6 a.m. ! Today, Jaz and I decided to blend with locals; at the end of our run we took off our running shoes and swam in the sea to cool off. Quite invigorating.

Sadly all good things must come to an end. Tomorrow is our last day in Brazil and our last run in the morning. It promises to be a full house as Shadae, Tia, Jaz and I have planned to meet bright and early at 5:30 a.m. If only we can keep this up after we get back home....

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Photos from rural Bahia, Santa Amara, and Cachoeira





















Day Trip to Cachoeira

Yesterday we took a road trip on our bus to the town of Cachoeira, about 90 miles outside of Salvador.

It was our first trip out into the countryside, rural Brazil so to speak (not including the Amazon in this category). The drive was beautiful; the landscape varied between thick clumps of tropical foliage and green rolling hills dotted with cows feeding placidly on the grass. All cattle in Brazil is grass-fed and so beef is really tasty compared to the corn-fed cows in the US (I had a McDonalds Quarter Pounder yesterday and it was the best burger I have ever eaten at a McDonalds).

We passed by many bamboo plantations and a paper mill that makes paper out of of bamboo. We also saw a grove of mangrove trees that naturally filter the water which had a lot of salt in it. The leaves of the trees are hence salty and are used by the local inhabitants in their cooking.

On the way we stopped at a town called Santa Amara and walked around for a while. We stopped at a newspaper publishing house which still uses a hand operated printing press, the oldest in Brazil and probably the only one in the world which is still operational. We next stopped at an 18th century church, Our Lady Saint Mary of Purification. Our visit happened to coincide with a mid- day Mass so we sat in the back row and listened to Mass in Portuguese. It was accompanied by a recording of acoustic guitar and even though we couldn't understand the words, it had a spiritual, uplifting quality to it.

We got back on the bus and about three hours after we left Salvador we arrived in Cachoeira. Cachoeira is a picturesque town built along the Paraiguacu River by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The town has a very European feel to it because of the architecture of the houses and churches and also the plazas and narrow cobblestone streets which our bus driver expertly navigated around. However there are distinctly Brazilian elements as well, such as the markets for fruits and vegetables as well as crafts and household supplies; the vendors on the street selling different types of goods, along with the small shops ranging from barber shops to bakeries. The northeastern part of Brazil was the center of the slave trade by the Portuguese so 90% of the population here is of African descent.

Many of the houses were also not well-preserved although there was some new construction that definitely looked out of place amongst the older colonial style of houses. One street was packed because a new shoe store had just opened and the store was offering a new car ( which we saw) as a prize to some lucky shopper.

We drove across the bridge over the River to the old farm house where we were to eat lunch. It was called Fazenda Santa Cruz (Fazenda means farm in Portuguese). The house was beautiful and sat atop a hill overlooking the river and the town. There were enormous mango trees in the yard and the ground was scattered with fallen mangoes. Such bounty! We later saw someone raking the fallen mangoes which were hopefully going to be used later on.

We sat on two long tables on a verandah which wrapped around the house. It rained briefly but cleared up soon and we enjoyed a delicious meal in idyllic surroundings. The main course was steak
which had doubtless come from one of those peaceful placid cows at some point. Needless to say it was scrumptious. There was a buffet with various side dishes and mango sorbet for dessert.

After lunch we stopped at a cigar factory to see how cigars are made. The factory was started by a German entrepreneur named Dannemann in the 19th century. Apparently these are some of the finest cigars in the world and some of you can look forward to receiving them as gifts in a few days!

The factory was a large room with about twenty women working on different stages of the process. We watched each stage starting with rolling the tobacco leaves,
followed by gluing the outer casing on and closing up one end and then testing the cigar to see if it was rolled the right degree of tightness.

The cigar factory was our last stop and we hopped back in the bus for our long drive back to Salvador.




Condomble

Yesterday we had a visit to Salvador's largest Condomble center. Condomble is the Brazilian form of Santeria and Voodoo. It's an animist religion created out of traditional African religious ceremonies and brought to Brazil by imported slaves. The center we visited, Jle Axe Opo Afonja, is dedicated and ruled by Xango, one of the main Condomble Orixas. The Orixas are the gods of Candomble, and each has a particular character and form, and a special attribute that helps people who pray to them. Xango is a warrior god, owner of thunder and fire, and represents masculine power.

Condomble is a matriarchal religion. There are several reasons for this, the first being that animism holds that gender doesn't shape us or our bodies, and we all have many spirits and the possibility to hold many others, both male and female. Condomble is quite gay friendly, in fact. The other reason for the matriarchal structure of Condomble has to do with the particular history of slavery in Brazil. Male slaves worked almost exclusively in the fields and were heavily policed. The work was difficult and dangerous and life expectancies were low. Female saves worked mainly in and around the houses. Some of them were educated. The women were able to congregate and were able to preserve the oral traditions of Western Africa. The "Mother" of each center is chosen by the Orixas and runs the church independently of other centers. There are a number of "Daughters of the Orixas" who act like priests, preparing the ceremonies, teaching the children, making the traditional all-white garments, communicating with the ancestors, and receiving the sprits of the Orixas in their bodies through a kind of possession. The Mother of the congregation we visited was named Mao Stella, and she is probably Brazil's most famous Mother. She is an Anthropologist and public figure who is a member of Brazil's Academy of Arts and Literature. We were shown around by a Daughter named Dare, who was about 40 and wore the all-white dress and headscarf.

The center itself was created 110 years ago when its Mother raised enough money to buy a large piece of land outside the city. This was only 15 years after slavery was abolished in Brazil and many former slaves had no place to live, no work, and were in terrible poverty. Condomble was illegal, and the land was bought under the guise of providing cooperative farming opportunities for former slaves. They erected a cross, which still stands, and practiced their religion in secret by continuing the practice of syncretism, which links Orixas to Saints and makes them on some ways interchangeable. This kept Condomble underground and secret.

Today the city hems in the land, and in fact, the center has lost almost half of it to squatters who went in overnight and built favela homes. The land has been planted with trees and plants imported from Africa, and serves as a kind of African cultural centers. There is a school that teaches 400 students in both Portuguese and Yoruba. Many families live at the center and practice communal living. Each Orixa has her or his own 'house' or shrine or place of worship.

We walked for a while around this place, with acres of forest, hemmed in by poor neighborhoods on all sides. It was beautiful and peaceful. There was lovely art and bright-colored plaster walls. And then there were the bones and carcasses. Yes, giant balls of bones, chicken-feet, patches of animal fur, feathers, skulls, and horns, tied in large clumsy clumps and hung from the rafters of an open-sided veranda. They looked dark and alarming, and they were such a contrast to the lovely warm community around us. But when we asked about these dark displays, the story behind them was completely benign. In fact, animals are sacrificed for Condomble rituals, but for the purpose of communal eating. Part of the ceremony is to bind people together by sharing a meal. The bones and skulls and feet and fur are the symbolic representation of being bound together into a community.

We were asked not to take photos so I can't post any.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

More photos of the African market in Salvador















Relaxing in hammocks

Kayleigh and Sam enjoying the hammocks at the Eco lodge after a long day out on the water.

Panoramic view of the Amazon river from our boat



Cooking experience in Manaus

We sat at this long table after we were done cooking, to sample all the delicious food that had been prepared.







The African market

The traditional market in Salvador is one of Brazil's largest. Most of it is still set up traditionally, open-air or open sided areas, lots of winding passages that are crowded and dark, packed with people and animals, and filled with amazing sights, sounds, and smells.

The government is trying to modernize the market by bringing in concrete stalls that can shutter and lock at night and are lighted and hygienic. This is only partially successful. Tradition holds strong here.

We saw live animals that were being sold for people to DIY slaughter for meat. Live traded chickens a d pigeons in cages. Baskets for home use and for religious uses (offerings to the gods are put in baskets and floated out to sea). There were ceramic housewares made right there. Carved wood implements. Every kind of housewares imaginable. Foods, fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, spices, long black ropes of tobacco, clothing, herbal medicines, ingredients for religious or magic rituals (small bones, dried starfish, noxious pastes and such), recycled cans and bottles turned into lamps, shoes, and just about anything else you can imagine.

We saw giant bunches of sugar cane, which none if us had seen before. There's a photo here of Cheryl standing with it so the size of the cane is clear. It's very tall and sturdy. We also saw the raw cashews still attached to the fruits. The fruit of the cashew is a popular juice here, and it's a common flavor for ice cream too. I'm posting a photo here of the orangey colored fruit with the dark cashew nut at the bottom.

The market smelled....ripe. And overripe in places. Very fishy. Slightly rotten. And spicy and delicious occasionally. Street dogs looked happy and well-fed. Cats wandered freely. Birds in cages chirped and sang. And many stalls had their own music playing, not seeming to care that the next stall over was playing something equally loud. We heard Elvis, Tupac, opera, the Beatles, and lots of Latin American salsa, meringue, and Cuban music.



















Maqueca

We had the chance to go to the African market today to find the ingredients to make the Bahian cultural dish, maqueca. This is a kind of fish stew served over rice, and it is delicious!!

The main ingredients are fish, coconut milk, palm oil, and chopped tomatoes, onions, and peppers. It's stewed together, garnished with cilantro, and served straight in the pot.

We have the recipe, straight from a professional Bahian chef who specializes in traditional cultural food...