Been a while...
Well, I've been out of touch for quite some time, haven't I? I'll try to make up for it with a good post, but no promises. Also, my English has been suffering recently since I`ve not been using it much, so bear with me. Only a few pictures since this connection is slow.
The big thing that's happened since my last entry has been travel. I was first of all on excursion for a bit over two weeks. The first destination thereof was Recife – which is in fact where I am now, but we'll get there in good time – which is one of the older cities of Brazil, with a history stretching back to the early Portuguese colonial days. It's got a beautiful old town with some incredible colonial buildings, which looks at times like Amsterdam more than anything to me (the presence of canals doesn't hurt there, either), and a thriving social-movement community. The majority of the week was spent visiting with said social movements, and in fact the structure was very interesting in that it was organised by a women's group (Grupo Mulher Maravilha) with whom a former student did her ISP and thus with whom SIT has a connection. Of course, the list of visits had many affiliates of theirs and activities with them, but that was fine, seeing as they are an excellent group with some great connections, as well.
Their own activities range from staging vigils in solidarity with victims of domestic violence (one of which we attended, which was both powerful and refreshing – seeing a Brazilian usage of a familiar form of social action was nice, and the issue is universal yet specific enough to be compelling) to holding seminars with women from poor neighbourhoods on making arts and crafts from regularly discarded items (as evidenced by the many plastic bottle sculptures, mosaics, and so on I've encountered), and they have a whole host of affiliates. Of these, the most exciting for me was EMAUS, of course, considering I'm now doing research with them. EMAUS's program here in Recife is really interesting, and I'll discuss it more a bit later. We saw a good amount of other signs of solidarity in action, the most interesting of which was a street fair of solidarity economics – arts, crafts, projects, and so on. We also saw evidence of the legacy of Helder Camara, the liberation-theologian archbishop who did a huge amount to bolster social movements during and after the dictatorship, including the humble museum and documentation centre that occupies his former residence. Basically, our visit to Recife was an affirmation of the immense effort social movements are putting forth in the Northeast currently.
Our second stop was a city much adored by tourists, activists, and Brazilians of the likes of Jorge Amado: Salvador. The original capital of Brazil has as rich a sense of culture and history as any European capital, and is home to likely the most vibrant African diaspora culture around. Having been the capital, it enjoyed quite a bit of prosperity, and as a centre of African population it has suffered rather a lot of in justice. One way or another, it is a fascinating and beautiful city, with a striking sense of history and topography to rival any European capital. This is in large part due to the fact that it lies on what is basically a cliff – there is a low city and a high city, with practically a sheer drop between the two in most places, with a rather impressive elevator being the most tourist-friendly way to get between the two (and for only 5 centavos, at that).
Beyond that, though, the impact of the African diaspora is much more palpable in Salvador than in the other two cities I spent time in. This starts in the most basic things: food in Bahia is significantly spicier and more aromatic than typical Nordestino rice-beans-and-meat fare, with a heavy touch of palm oil. But the influence extends beyond simple things, in large part due to it having been promoted as a way to attract tourism (in the sense of providing exoticism and mystery, which has worked). The culture aspect of our program really kicked in in Salvador, with a healthy emphasis on social justice at the same time. We started with a series of race-oriented sessions at the Steve Biko Institute, an educational program aimed at humanistically and conscientiously helping black students to surmount the obstacles laid in front of them by a racist society – as despite the relative openness of Bahian public life to African culture, Salvador remains a terribly racist (and worse, subtly so) society when it comes to real social power. The race issue and its mask of racial democracy was the key topic, with respects also given to how it relates to issues such as women's issues and homosexuality.
We also had several real cultural events as well: for me, the most exciting was our visit to OLODUM, a music school for impoverished and disempowered youth and quite an amazing program – in fact, the school provided the Brazilian component to Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, which comes with its own whole new pot of cultural-appropriation and exploitation issues, but that's another topic. We had a sort of silly participatory workshop on samba-reggae drumming, which was incredible fun, and brought back serious memories of Ghana (and made me a bit sad I'm not actually doing music for my ISP). Granted, what was learned varied broadly due to the nature of the teaching and people's different inclinations toward drumming, but we had fun. The same can be said for our samba class – some people demonstrated an obvious talent for and grasp of what was going on. I was not one of them; I spent most of the time working out the drum patterns and so on. But regardless, fun was had.
When it comes down to it, though, we had one opportunity in Salvador which was absolutely fantastic and significantly more special than anything else we did. We had a rare opportunity to go to the Terreiro Bogum Malé Rundô, a Candomblé community of great importance and history, and generally a quite closed place. We had an incredible two-part lecture there on the history and significance of Candomblé and its role in the development of black society in Brazil, in the context of general black history in Brazil. Beyond the feeling of having an experience few can claim to have had, beyond the excellence of the lecture itself, the feeling of really getting insight into a highly misunderstood tradition (which many Brazilians, especially Evangelicals, still consider devil-worship) which is of vital importance to the genesis of Brazilian society was absolutely incredible.
All in all, I really wish I could have spent more time in Salvador – it was beautiful, fascinating, and full of things I would love to learn more about – but we had little time, and I had already decided to do my ISP in Recife. Oh well, it's just another reason to come back.
I have plenty more to say (particularly about my ISP!), but that sums up the excursion nicely, and it's a reasonable place to stop for now, I think. Expect another post fairly soon (by my standards at least).
The big thing that's happened since my last entry has been travel. I was first of all on excursion for a bit over two weeks. The first destination thereof was Recife – which is in fact where I am now, but we'll get there in good time – which is one of the older cities of Brazil, with a history stretching back to the early Portuguese colonial days. It's got a beautiful old town with some incredible colonial buildings, which looks at times like Amsterdam more than anything to me (the presence of canals doesn't hurt there, either), and a thriving social-movement community. The majority of the week was spent visiting with said social movements, and in fact the structure was very interesting in that it was organised by a women's group (Grupo Mulher Maravilha) with whom a former student did her ISP and thus with whom SIT has a connection. Of course, the list of visits had many affiliates of theirs and activities with them, but that was fine, seeing as they are an excellent group with some great connections, as well.
Their own activities range from staging vigils in solidarity with victims of domestic violence (one of which we attended, which was both powerful and refreshing – seeing a Brazilian usage of a familiar form of social action was nice, and the issue is universal yet specific enough to be compelling) to holding seminars with women from poor neighbourhoods on making arts and crafts from regularly discarded items (as evidenced by the many plastic bottle sculptures, mosaics, and so on I've encountered), and they have a whole host of affiliates. Of these, the most exciting for me was EMAUS, of course, considering I'm now doing research with them. EMAUS's program here in Recife is really interesting, and I'll discuss it more a bit later. We saw a good amount of other signs of solidarity in action, the most interesting of which was a street fair of solidarity economics – arts, crafts, projects, and so on. We also saw evidence of the legacy of Helder Camara, the liberation-theologian archbishop who did a huge amount to bolster social movements during and after the dictatorship, including the humble museum and documentation centre that occupies his former residence. Basically, our visit to Recife was an affirmation of the immense effort social movements are putting forth in the Northeast currently.
Our second stop was a city much adored by tourists, activists, and Brazilians of the likes of Jorge Amado: Salvador. The original capital of Brazil has as rich a sense of culture and history as any European capital, and is home to likely the most vibrant African diaspora culture around. Having been the capital, it enjoyed quite a bit of prosperity, and as a centre of African population it has suffered rather a lot of in justice. One way or another, it is a fascinating and beautiful city, with a striking sense of history and topography to rival any European capital. This is in large part due to the fact that it lies on what is basically a cliff – there is a low city and a high city, with practically a sheer drop between the two in most places, with a rather impressive elevator being the most tourist-friendly way to get between the two (and for only 5 centavos, at that).
Beyond that, though, the impact of the African diaspora is much more palpable in Salvador than in the other two cities I spent time in. This starts in the most basic things: food in Bahia is significantly spicier and more aromatic than typical Nordestino rice-beans-and-meat fare, with a heavy touch of palm oil. But the influence extends beyond simple things, in large part due to it having been promoted as a way to attract tourism (in the sense of providing exoticism and mystery, which has worked). The culture aspect of our program really kicked in in Salvador, with a healthy emphasis on social justice at the same time. We started with a series of race-oriented sessions at the Steve Biko Institute, an educational program aimed at humanistically and conscientiously helping black students to surmount the obstacles laid in front of them by a racist society – as despite the relative openness of Bahian public life to African culture, Salvador remains a terribly racist (and worse, subtly so) society when it comes to real social power. The race issue and its mask of racial democracy was the key topic, with respects also given to how it relates to issues such as women's issues and homosexuality.
We also had several real cultural events as well: for me, the most exciting was our visit to OLODUM, a music school for impoverished and disempowered youth and quite an amazing program – in fact, the school provided the Brazilian component to Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, which comes with its own whole new pot of cultural-appropriation and exploitation issues, but that's another topic. We had a sort of silly participatory workshop on samba-reggae drumming, which was incredible fun, and brought back serious memories of Ghana (and made me a bit sad I'm not actually doing music for my ISP). Granted, what was learned varied broadly due to the nature of the teaching and people's different inclinations toward drumming, but we had fun. The same can be said for our samba class – some people demonstrated an obvious talent for and grasp of what was going on. I was not one of them; I spent most of the time working out the drum patterns and so on. But regardless, fun was had.
When it comes down to it, though, we had one opportunity in Salvador which was absolutely fantastic and significantly more special than anything else we did. We had a rare opportunity to go to the Terreiro Bogum Malé Rundô, a Candomblé community of great importance and history, and generally a quite closed place. We had an incredible two-part lecture there on the history and significance of Candomblé and its role in the development of black society in Brazil, in the context of general black history in Brazil. Beyond the feeling of having an experience few can claim to have had, beyond the excellence of the lecture itself, the feeling of really getting insight into a highly misunderstood tradition (which many Brazilians, especially Evangelicals, still consider devil-worship) which is of vital importance to the genesis of Brazilian society was absolutely incredible.
All in all, I really wish I could have spent more time in Salvador – it was beautiful, fascinating, and full of things I would love to learn more about – but we had little time, and I had already decided to do my ISP in Recife. Oh well, it's just another reason to come back.
I have plenty more to say (particularly about my ISP!), but that sums up the excursion nicely, and it's a reasonable place to stop for now, I think. Expect another post fairly soon (by my standards at least).
posted by Sasha at 11:37 PM
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