Last night I witnessed the weirdest spectacle ever. Weirder than what I’d observed somewhere in the mountains in Japan with a seemingly drunken Japanese Shinto priest or at a Bhagwan meeting in Denmark.
No, this was something different all together. Candomble, it was called. A bunch of white men and women, sixty of them and maybe two Africans, all dressed in white robes with lace frills that made them look seven times bigger (fatter), and the men often with what looked like a sheet draped over them and skinny white pants underneath, decorated with bracelets of woven straw on which cowries where attached, a white cloth draped around the women’s head, the men often with something resembling a surgeon’s head wear, lots of colorful items attached to their waist belts, some with a string of goat teeth around their necks … these people all throwing themselves, in turn, on the floor in front of their gods and goddesses, dancing around to the sound of drums and their own songs, whilst a woman went around carrying a pot of fumes that smelt very much like marihuana, which might have explained some of the even weirder dancing that followed, as if they tried to imitate the swiveling dervish, and then some other woman pouring a liquid on all those disciples heads, but that did not seem to calm them down much. Anyway, it looked like a circus, or maybe more accurately, a bunch of old hippies gone mad.
After this ‘religious ceremony’ the different reincarnations of deities could call you and give you advice or just energy. I got the latest, from a trembling rather young man whose very warm hands slid over my shoulders and my back, who put rose petals on my neck and kept shivering and trembling while massaging my hands and uttering things in Portuguese of which the last part got translated to me, and said that I ought to put that very rose petal under my cushion for a week and, I assume, that life will be great ever after.
Well, to tell the truth, life is pretty great right now. I guess I was born to just wander around. Whenever I am in airports or on planes, I just feel so very happy, so filled with possibilities that a wide grin shows up. I suddenly feel like the plastic cover around me has been taken off and I can breathe freely. I remember being in an airport in Europe once to take a flight to a place not so far away, but passing by all the other boarding rooms and watching the signs and being so jealous of the ones sitting in the room that said ‘Shanghai’ or ‘Tokyo’ or ‘Rio de Janeiro’. Oh, if I could just walk into one of those rooms and get one of those planes! This time I just did it, I got on the plane to Brazil. Whilst sitting in that boarding room this time, I had expected that half the passengers would be black, or at least some creamy color (I’d promised my girl friends to bring one gorgeous bronze one for each of them!) But it wasn’t. White people only, the whole plane load. My neighbor, who turned out to be a Brazilian vegetable garden enthusiast living in Bristol (whose garden yielded more than 65 different fruits and vegetables last year, with Jamie Olivier filming it and using its produce in his cooking shows), well, this neighbor, who after eleven hours chatting felt like a brother I’d known all my life, showed me a book which said that the whole of Brazil has only 6 percent of African population, and about 30% mixed but the greater majority being white. So I don’t know why I had this impression that it would be mixed like in Cuba…
Here in San Paulo, where I’ve started the journey, you’ll be lucky to spot one African in the street, and in the buildings they are the cleaners, not the residents. Also, another mystery is the impression I had that all Brazilians were good-looking goddesses. What I see here on the street would fit more my idea of the East German population, a few decades ago! With the only difference that every single one of them seems to wear at least one tattoo (and I doubt whether that was the case in East Germany). Also, another difference is that people here talk about carnival all the time -- it seems that their year, their job, their life will only start after the carnival.
Anyway, people tell me it’s good that I’ll be heading to Rio too, that there I’ll see more of what I had been expecting. Let’s see!
Meanwhile it has to be said that the there’s a great offer of food from all over the world, especially a lot of Japanese, and it’s of great quality and easily found. There are coffee shops on every corner of the street and the people are very friendly. When you start talking to someone they are very welcoming, nobody asks you if you are from the police, as people in Belgium ask me on occasion, like when I sit next to someone in the bus or the doctor’s waiting room and start to chat with them.
And the Brazilians are great with plastic. You’ve heard of the haivananas success, those flip-flops in all sizes and colors. Well, another great success are their Melissa shoes, stylish plastic shoes in all sizes and colors. I’ll go and try on some today, ole!
END
No, this was something different all together. Candomble, it was called. A bunch of white men and women, sixty of them and maybe two Africans, all dressed in white robes with lace frills that made them look seven times bigger (fatter), and the men often with what looked like a sheet draped over them and skinny white pants underneath, decorated with bracelets of woven straw on which cowries where attached, a white cloth draped around the women’s head, the men often with something resembling a surgeon’s head wear, lots of colorful items attached to their waist belts, some with a string of goat teeth around their necks … these people all throwing themselves, in turn, on the floor in front of their gods and goddesses, dancing around to the sound of drums and their own songs, whilst a woman went around carrying a pot of fumes that smelt very much like marihuana, which might have explained some of the even weirder dancing that followed, as if they tried to imitate the swiveling dervish, and then some other woman pouring a liquid on all those disciples heads, but that did not seem to calm them down much. Anyway, it looked like a circus, or maybe more accurately, a bunch of old hippies gone mad.
After this ‘religious ceremony’ the different reincarnations of deities could call you and give you advice or just energy. I got the latest, from a trembling rather young man whose very warm hands slid over my shoulders and my back, who put rose petals on my neck and kept shivering and trembling while massaging my hands and uttering things in Portuguese of which the last part got translated to me, and said that I ought to put that very rose petal under my cushion for a week and, I assume, that life will be great ever after.
Well, to tell the truth, life is pretty great right now. I guess I was born to just wander around. Whenever I am in airports or on planes, I just feel so very happy, so filled with possibilities that a wide grin shows up. I suddenly feel like the plastic cover around me has been taken off and I can breathe freely. I remember being in an airport in Europe once to take a flight to a place not so far away, but passing by all the other boarding rooms and watching the signs and being so jealous of the ones sitting in the room that said ‘Shanghai’ or ‘Tokyo’ or ‘Rio de Janeiro’. Oh, if I could just walk into one of those rooms and get one of those planes! This time I just did it, I got on the plane to Brazil. Whilst sitting in that boarding room this time, I had expected that half the passengers would be black, or at least some creamy color (I’d promised my girl friends to bring one gorgeous bronze one for each of them!) But it wasn’t. White people only, the whole plane load. My neighbor, who turned out to be a Brazilian vegetable garden enthusiast living in Bristol (whose garden yielded more than 65 different fruits and vegetables last year, with Jamie Olivier filming it and using its produce in his cooking shows), well, this neighbor, who after eleven hours chatting felt like a brother I’d known all my life, showed me a book which said that the whole of Brazil has only 6 percent of African population, and about 30% mixed but the greater majority being white. So I don’t know why I had this impression that it would be mixed like in Cuba…
Here in San Paulo, where I’ve started the journey, you’ll be lucky to spot one African in the street, and in the buildings they are the cleaners, not the residents. Also, another mystery is the impression I had that all Brazilians were good-looking goddesses. What I see here on the street would fit more my idea of the East German population, a few decades ago! With the only difference that every single one of them seems to wear at least one tattoo (and I doubt whether that was the case in East Germany). Also, another difference is that people here talk about carnival all the time -- it seems that their year, their job, their life will only start after the carnival.
Anyway, people tell me it’s good that I’ll be heading to Rio too, that there I’ll see more of what I had been expecting. Let’s see!
Meanwhile it has to be said that the there’s a great offer of food from all over the world, especially a lot of Japanese, and it’s of great quality and easily found. There are coffee shops on every corner of the street and the people are very friendly. When you start talking to someone they are very welcoming, nobody asks you if you are from the police, as people in Belgium ask me on occasion, like when I sit next to someone in the bus or the doctor’s waiting room and start to chat with them.
And the Brazilians are great with plastic. You’ve heard of the haivananas success, those flip-flops in all sizes and colors. Well, another great success are their Melissa shoes, stylish plastic shoes in all sizes and colors. I’ll go and try on some today, ole!
END
posted by Griet at 6:41 PM
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