The Tyranny of Distance

Update from Brazil!

Brazil: Day 1

After 7 straight days at sea, and seven straight days of classes (which culminated on Friday with a test and two papers due) we finally reached our second port: Salvador, Brazil! I woke up at 6am to try watch us pull into port. Unfortunately it was cloudy so it was hard to see and even harder to get pictures. After waiting a while to go through customs and the diplomatic briefing, we were finally allowed off board. SAS had tried to prep us for our visit to Brazil by scaring the living hell out of us. I had come to terms with there being a good chance of being mugged or pick pocketed, and so I was relatively calm and unconcerned unlike many of the other students. A group of about 10 of us decided to walk to this big market, which was about six blocks away.

Salvador is divided into to parts, the old city and the new city. The old city is at the bottom of a steep cliff, whereas the new city is on top. To connect the two, the city has come up with the coolest form of public transportation in the world! There is a giant elevator!! It is awesome. It costs 5 centavos to ride (about 2.5 cents, since 1 U.S. dollar equals about 2 reals). Since this week is Carnival, though, the elevator is free! Our boat is docked in Old Salvador, so having the free elevator is quite convenient.

After visiting the market, my group went back to the ship for lunch. Half of the others had planned tours with SAS to go on, so the rest of us decided to go back into town for the afternoon. We first went to this place set up for a British cruise liner, and since we were white they assumed we were with them. I was able to exchange so cash into reals, and bought a calling card. We then walked back to the elevator and walked around New Salvador.

It was relatively early in the afternoon, and Carinval was just getting started for the day (the first night of Carnival was Friday, which we missed, and runs until Tuesday, when Lent begins). We walked around for a few hours and had a blast. The streets were relatively empty, and there were a lot of families around. They were setting up Trio Electros, which are literally massive trucks with a MASSIVE speaker system on both sides. On top, a band would play and slowly go through the city. There were also a few Afro Bloco groups, large percussion troupes that march throughout the streets. These were really fun to see, but more on those later…

After a few hours, went back to the ship to hang out a little before dinner. A few hours later, we decided to go to a restaurant in New Salvador that was recommended to some friends by a tour guide. A group of fourteen of us all got in a big taxi-van that drove us to the elevator, since as soon as night falls it is no longer safe to walk there at all. By the time we got to the top of the elevator it started raining, and we had absolutely no clue where this restaurant actually is. We finally found a cop to ask where the restaurant is, but he did not know. A man approached us who spoke a little English, and he said he would point out where the place is for us. Now, I learned in India not to let people show you to a place, since they will just want money. I thought he was just going to point to the restaurant, assuming that it was on the same street, but little did I know…We finally reach another cop, who begins yelling at the man. She tells us never to follow such people, and tells us that the restaurant was only 1 more block away.

We finally reach the restaurant, soaking wet, and we begin reading the menu outside to make sure we could actually afford the place. We notice that the same man as before is behind us, asking for money for the “tour” he provided. We all ignore him, assuming he would just go away. I noticed that he kept bugging this guy Ben, so I walk around him and walk inside. While I’m walking in, I see Ben giving him 10 reals. As soon as he walks in, Ben says, “we were just mugged.” I think he is kidding at first, but he explains how when I was walking behind the guy to go around him, the man says to Ben “I can make some serious trouble for you” as he flashes a knife in his hand. So obviously Ben throws him the money and runs inside! I knew that Salvador was unsafe, especially for foreigners, and especially during Carnival. I assumed that there was a decent chance I would have money stolen from me sometime throughout the week, but never did I imagine that we would be mugged on the first night!

So we are all freaked out, but we sit down and order. The inter-port lecturer, Luccio, who rode from Puerto Rico to Salvador with us, came and spoke to my Food && Society classes (he talked to all of my classes on the same day, actually, but the food class is the most pertinent). Luccio recommended certain foods we should eat, and he said we couldn’t leave Salvador without trying moqueca, which is a seafood stew with coconut milk and palm oil. I split an order of shrimp moqueca with a friend, and it was absolutely delicious! The restautaunt itself was sort of expensive, but it was really nice (it had a back patio in a garden) and live music (a Brazilian man singing old American music, such as Dylan!) so it was overall a good experience once we got inside the restaunt.

After dinner, we walked around Carnival! Carnival has three different routes, one of which is a lot more laid back, and is where all the families with children go. This is where we started our adventure. We walked through the streets, and different groups of dancers and musicians (mainly percussion and brass) would be playing and everybody was dancing. We eventually reached the main part of Carnival, and watched as the Trio Electros and Afro Blocos went by. Over half of the group decided to head back home, while the rest of us stayed. We kept walking down the main road and we noticed that we were reaching the “real” Carnival, where the streets were packed with people (Carnival is the world’s largest party, with over 2 million people celebrating every year!) We watched and danced as the Trio Electros drove by.
I have never seen so many people in once place at the same time in my life. There was just a constant sea of people throughout the entire city. Most of the roads and shops throughout Salvador are closed for the week. In Global Studies we learned some about the history and cultural context of Carnival, which was very interesting to actually see in person. Carnival occurs right before Lent, so people are supposed to get rid of all their “bad energy” before this time. Men dress like women (Catwoman, to be exact, since this years theme was batman for some reason!) poor people dress like the rich, etc. It is a time where all socially constructed groups are temporarily dissolved and everyone has fun together. If we were to come to Salvador at any other time than Carnival, we would have such a completely different experience. Brazil is a country with one of the widest gaps between the rich and the poor. There clearly was immense poverty in the city, but due to Carnival, everyone was in good spirits. For almost a week, it is like the people of Brazil come together and forget all of their differences to have fun. I never realized the social significance of this event, and living through it definitely gave me a new meaning to Carnival.

We eventually decided to head back, but we found this to be physically impossible at the time. Behind the Trio Electros would be thousands of people following, who were enclosed in by a massive rope being held by bodyguards. Due to this large rope, group of people, and security guards, we could not go behind the Trio. We tried working our way up front past the sound truck, but the streets were too crowded to even move. At times, we found that literally the only thing we could do was dance and wait for the crowd to thin out. It was almost like being in a mosh pit and a punk show, with everyone dancing and bumping into each other. It was really an awesomely crazy experience. As anyone who knows me is aware, I do not dance. But I was dancing during Carnival, and it was awesome.

We eventually realized that making our way in front of the truck would be impossible, since the truck was turning and blocking the way through, so we started slowly moving back to go around the back. During our expedition to the back, I felt numerous times people’s hands slipping into my pockets, but thankfully nothing was stolen. By the time we made it around the back of the crowd, it became relatively easy to get through. We finally made it back to the elevator, and squeezed eight people into a tiny cab for the ride back to the ship. All of this, inside the first day in Brazil, and we still have four days left!

Brazil: Days 2-3

After the crazy Saturday, I had very low-key days on Sunday and Monday. Both days, I woke up late, had lunch, went to new Salvador and walked around in the afternoon. Then I came back, had dinner, and went out for Carnival. On the walk back for dinner on Sunday, I was walking with a group of people, some of whom I did not know. A girl from that group was holding her raincoat in her arm, when two random men came up and grabbed the coat from her hands, and ran away. It was pretty scary. The second robbery I’ve witnessed in two days…Sunday night I had a ticket for “traditional Carnival” with SAS, which was ok. I probably didn’t need a ticket to do it, since the money basically went to security guards who just walked us to the square and walked us back. I originally thought they would be around the whole group the entire time, so that way I could have brought my camera. I decided against the camera, which was a good call, so no pictures of Carnival. Monday night I went out to the same place and just hung out with Mark, Kate, Stef, Rick, and Noopur, and we came back relatively early. They were very relaxing days, which is what I needed to recover from the craziness that occurred our first night.

Brazil: Day 4

Tuesday was absolutely AMAZING! I signed up for a trip Cachoeira, which is an old rural village, whose architecture has been preserved since the 1700s. Almost all of my friends were on the trip, which was great. We started off by going to a small rural town to see a market. Since it is the day before Ash Wednesday, the Market was small and almost everything was closed. Even so, it was really great to see some of Brazil outside of the craziness that is Salvador. We had an incredible tour guide that knew everything and talked literally the entire time.

Our next stop was to a commune run by MST (Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), the social movement for the landless peasants. We walked around and saw how they lived, farmed, etc. The cooperative makes homemade chocolate with the coco beans that they grow, and we tried some of it, which was absolutely delicious. We saw how they picked and roasted the coco beans, and how they were turned into chocolate. I also tried the fruit that is grown from the coco plant, which was delicious and tasted nothing like chocolate. It was a sweet, white fruit that was around the seeds. They had the chocolates for sale, but I opted out, and instead I bought a stylish MST hat. It rules, to say the least. We learned a little about MST in Global Studies, so it was really amazing getting to meet some of the members and see how they live. Recently, they have had much success and have become a relatively powerful political bloc in Brazil.

After visiting the MST commune, we finally got to Cachoeira, which was beautiful. We first stopped at a restaurant in a hotel for a few hours and had the most amazing lunch. We then walked around the town. Almost everything was closed due to the holiday, but it was still great seeing the city, in almost the same condition it was in a few hundred years ago when the Portuguese first colonized Brazil. It was also great finally being able to take pictures, since I did not dare take my camera outside anywhere in Salvador.

The plan after Cachoeira was to come back to the ship for dinner, and then head out to Baha for Carnival, a beach about 25 minutes away. The past three nights Ive gone to the two other parts of Salvador’s Carnival, and I wanted to see what the last one was like. I’ve heard it was huge, but a few of my friends went the other night and said it was very fun and safe. Arguably more importantly, Fatboy Slim was performing there. As anyone who knows me knows, I’m not a huge fan of techno, or Fatboy Slim for that matter, but we all thought it would be fun to see him perform at Carnival! My roommate, Kyle, had been on a three-day trip to an island seven hours away. He asked if the group could wait for him to get back Tuesday night, since he missed every other night of Carnival due to the trip. The trip was supposed to get back to the ship at around 6:00pm. We met at around 7pm to get taxi’s to go to Baha. Kyle hadn’t made it back by that time, and I didn’t want everyone else to have to wait up since they were getting antsy, so I told them to go ahead while I waited for Kyle. Three hours after he was supposed to get in, Kyle walks in the door. I ask if he wants to go, and we are out the door inside two minutes.

The group and I organized a plan so we could all meet up once Kyle got back. We had an exact meeting spot picked out and everything. Needless to say, Kyle and I squeeze into a taxi with 6 random kids from SAS, get to the beach, and spend an hour or two looking for everyone at our meeting spot. We eventually gave up and found a spot on the side of the road, which wasn’t too crowded, so we stayed there for a few hours and watched the Trio Electros drive by. We saw some good Brazilian bands playing, and Fatboy Slim, which was actually pretty cool. Around half past midnight, we decided to try to make our way back to the ship, which was much easier said than done. We had to fight our way past jam-packed streets for a good 30-45 minutes. For a few minutes a big mosh-pit of people separated Kyle and me, which was pretty frightening. I realized shortly after we found each other again that my watch had been stolen! In my rush to get to Carnival, I forgot to leave my watch in the room, like I normally do, and so I put it in my pocket when we got there. It is funny since up until that moment, I was thinking how weird it was that no one had tried going into my pockets yet. Thankfully, I kept all my money out of my pockets, and even more importantly the address back to the ship wasn’t stolen or else we probably would have been screwed. Knowing Spanish has helped an incredible amount, since it is much closer to Portuguese, but I definitely couldn’t have gotten us back to the ship without an address.

We eventually made it back to the room. Although I personally saw three robberies, and was directly related in two, overall Salvador was a really great experience. Cochoeria was probably the best experience of the trip so far. With that being said, I am so glad that Carnival is finally over and that we set sail for South Africa. It will be nice to not have to worry about being the victim of theft for at least over a week.

I will try to upload pictures on the flickr site, so be on the lookout for that. As I mentioned above, I couldnt get any pictures of Carnival, or Salvador, for that matter, but it is better than having the camera stolen! For now, you can see the picture below, of me with the Archbishop! :)

posted by eric @ 6:24 AM