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.
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