Have I got a religion for you!

I may have written something about this once before, but lord knows I don´t want to go back and read all my posts. I know that at least part of this is new.


During the slave days in Brasil, the Africans found a clever way around the prohibition against the worship of their own deities. When the "christian" slave owner saw pictures or statues of the virgin Mary, or St. Teresa, or whoever, in the slave quarters, it probably salved his conscience to think that he had made new converts to Christ. But the slaves were using the images as representations of their own gods and they continued to practice their own religion(s) under the slave owner´s nose. I have no idea how many African religions there might have been, but at least some of their practices survive today in the Northeast state of Bahia.


I first became aware of this bit of Brasilean history a few years ago when I was with my friend, Moa, in the city of Campinas. We were visiting the mother of a friend of his who (the mother) was doing a sewing project for Moa. We spent most of an afternoon at her place and, based on the general conversation and the fact that at one point she went out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette and have a conversation with one of her spirit friends, I was surprised to see a statue of the virgin Mary prominently displayed. I asked Moa about it afterwards and he explained that to her that was a statue of some African god, not Mary.


This woman had a miniature pinscher dog. She and her husband left the next day on a trip and took the little dog to stay at their son´s house. Now the son and his wife, who had two miniature pinschers of their own, were also going on a trip, leaving Moa and me to house sit and take care of the three dogs. One afternoon we came home and there were only two dogs. The mother´s dog was missing, and we determined the spot where she had crawled under the fence. We looked around the neighborhood, but eventually Moa had to make the call to the son and say we had lost his mother´s dog. Lucas (I just remembered his name) called his mother. The mother said she had to have a conversation with her spirit friend; call her back in ten minutes. Lucas called her back and got the message and then phoned Moa to relay it. The message was to walk up to the house on the corner (a long block) and we would find the dog. And, indeed, we did. Ready to convert?

Tchau

Unfinished thoughts about African Influence

You may recall, in my little story about the old lady who didn´t die, that I asked Heitor if it is a common practice for friends and relatives to come to the house of someone who has died, and that he said he thought it might be common in the Northeast. Since I knew that the Northeast is the part of Brasil with the strongest African cultural influences, I thought Heitor meant the practice might be common in areas where African culture has influenced christianity. But, no, wrong again. He reminded me of a Brasilean movie we saw that was set in the Northeast state of Ceará, an area with no significant African influences. There was a scene in the movie when someone died that was more like what I imagine an Irish wake to be than anything else. The body was in the house, with family and friends, not exactly partying I guess, but not in obvious anguish either.

I only came to know recently that Brasil has 5 distinct regions...North, Northeast, Central-West, Southeast, and South. I am reasonably sure these regions are not governmental units, but they are clearly defined on maps. I can hear an elementary school teacher asking students to name the 9 states that make up the Northeast or the 5 that comprise the Southeast. (All of which made me wonder about groupings in the U.S. like New England, Middle-Atlantic, Deep South etc. According to Wikipedia, there are "nine geographic divisions within the United States that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau." Who knew that?)

Since my original thought was about African cultural influences, that subject is on my mind. The state of Bahia in the Northeast is famous for its Afro-Brasilean culture. Do a Google search on Bahia or Salvador, its Capital, and you will see why it is the one area more than any other in Brasil that I have always wanted to visit. I don´t know the source of this quote, but I like it: "Before there was Brasil, there was Bahia." It was the most important region of early colonization, and Salvador was the original Capital of the colony. By coincidence, I was at a little party last night at the home of one of Heitor´s friends. She and a couple of her friends had just returned from three weeks in Salvador and Recife. It was her first trip there, and she was ecstatic about it.

My apologies, by the way, for an odd posting or two that I didn´t mean to make, which has (have) since been deleted. It must have been happy hour.

Tchau

An Ave Maria for Little Yip

When I came home one day last week, the door of my neighbor´s apartment was open and there were six or seven elderly ladies chanting what I am quite sure was some sort of prayer. Anything that includes the words "Ave Maria" must be a prayer, don´t you think? I didn´t want to stand around and stare, although I think a case could be made that an open door is an open invitation. It went on for another 45 minutes or so, and I decided the only thing it could mean was that the old lady or her husband who lived there had died. When Heitor came home, I described the scene and asked if it were common among religous people in Brasil to come to somebody´s house and pray when they died. He said he thought it might be in the Northeast, and that he couldn´t think of any other interpretation of what I had seen.

So we decided either the old lady or her husband had died, and we hoped it was the old lady. We had never wished the old woman dead, but who can blame us, if one of them had to die, for giving the old woman our vote? She is one of the most unpleasant, sour people I´ve ever known. Her husband, on the other hand, while not exactly a back slapper, is tolerably social. He at least will respond when you wish him "bom dia" or say thanks when you hold the door for him. They have a little yippie terrier of some kind that barks at all hours of the day and night. The next day there was no human or canine activity in that apartment and all we could do was wait and wonder. Then on the second morning, we woke up to the sound of the Little Yip and everything is back to normal. And we have no idea what the old ladies were praying about.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

From The Onion´s "Our Dumb World:" "Brazil: People at their most beautiful, humanity at its ugliest."

I am fortunate not to own a car, because I wouldn´t drive here for anything., but also because the people watching is so great on the buses and subway. Sorry, I don´t have a great story to share about any particular experience, but I recently had an email from a friend in California who mentioned having driven to Venice Beach to, among other things, just enjoy watching the beautiful people. It made me realize that I don´t have to go anywhere to do that because I do the same thing every day whenever I go anywhere, even when I´m walking, for that matter.


Speaking of the subway, however indirectly, I have to say that some of my original enjoyment is fading. Some of that enthusiasm was just the satisfaction of having mastered the system and knowing I could use it. The Metró is easy to navigate and one never has to wait long for a train, but the cars are so packed with people at certain times of the day that I get a little claustrophobic, especially the three days each week when I have a language class that ends at 5 pm. Are there really people in the Tokyo subway whose job is to push and cram people into the subway cars? I´ve seen films, but who knows? There are no professional people pushers here, but it is hard to believe they could get many more people into each car than we all do on our own. Inevitably, once I´m in the car I have an image of there being an accident and me being stuck in a sardine can with panicked people screaming in a language I don´t understand. (Yes, I do understand more of the language all the time, but I am willing to bet I don´t understand panicky Português.) And people watching just isn´t that satisfying when your face is stuck in somebody else´s arm pit.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my local Metró station about 6:20 pm because there was a classic movie I wanted to see at 7:00 in another part of town. I knew the system would be busy, so I was giving myself a little extra time, but I had no idea what busy meant. People always cue up in groups that are spaced on the platform to coincide roughly with the train doors, but I had never seen so many people. There must have been about 20-25 in each group, with more coming down the escalator all the time. The train arrived and, despite all of the pushing and shoving, I think only two people managed to squeeze into the car from my group. Then an empty train came trough the station without stopping; it was headed to the hub station 2 stops further down the line where there must have been even more people waiting. That is when I said screw it and went back home. It was my first and last experience with the subway during the heart of rush hour. As I said, the train I take routinely at 5 pm is always packed, but I am told the normal work day for most people is 9 to 6.

I think I mentioned there is a lot of pushing and shoving, right? Everybody wants to be the last person into the car regardless of who they have to step on to do it. Forget nice orderly lines and whether you were there first. Really, forget all of that. All of this probably doesn´t qualify as an instance of what The Onion meant by "humanity at its ugliest" (they were referring to gun violence, I think), but it isn´t pretty.

I used to say that I would be a better person, in a moral sense, if I never had to drive. Here I am a better person for avoiding the subways between 5 and 7:30.

Tchau

Remember Randy Newman´s "Short People?"

I am almost always struck by the thought, when I´m out and about in São Paulo, that I am considerably taller than the average man here, and I find that curious. In the U.S., I hardly ever have occasion to think about my own height in comparison to others.


I´ve never discussed this with any of my Brasilean friends because I can´t think of an inoffensive way to ask "how come you´re all so short?" My first thought (and my last, too, for that matter) is that it must be a matter of national nutrition and infant health care, the quality of which, it is admitted everywhere, reflects the economic inequality in Brasil.

I believe I read somewhere recently (probably one of those factoids on Yahoo) that the average national height is the greatest in the Netherlands. The U.S. is a little too market oriented to be number one. How is that data gathered, by the way?

Now I must go study some Português. Tchau.

I Want to Get Back Into The Habit...Thanks, Fred.

In answer to the question more than one person has asked:

You may (or may not) find this hard to believe, but I didn´t do a single thing for carnaval except enjoy the absence of people. That´s right, the absence of people. I don´t know how it is in Rio, but in São Paulo, carnaval is something you have to go to, to seek out. It isn´t something that comes to you, ex cept on television.

My image of carnaval was always the city streets packed with gorgeous revelers, one massive city-wide party of booze and sex, or at least a ton of good fantasies. But here it is held in one specific location that you pay to go to, not unlike the state fair. Well, actually, I guess, it is a lot unlike the state fair, except for the fact that it is at a specific location that you pay to enter. I don´t know anyone who went there. But Monday and Tuesday of last week were my two favorite days so far in Brasil, because the stores were closed and the streets were empty of cars and people, with just a tiny fraction of the activity of an average Sunday morning.

Before I knew how peaceful it was going to be, I made some half-hearted attempts to see if Heitor couldn´t be persuaded to go to carnaval, but he had no interest at all. The main attraction is the competition among the various samba schools, and some year I will make a point of seeing that; for now I just watched it on television. Heitor is a marvelous singer and dancer, and he used to be a member of one of the samba schools. He was pleased to see on line that his old school had won the competition this year, but he didn´t even watch as much of it on television as I did.

Some year I will make a point of going, just as I used to go to the state fair once every few years. At some point whenever I was at the fair, I was struck with the thought that "oh my god, these are all my fellow citizens and they all have a vote." If I have the same thought here, it will be even scarier, because in Brasil it is against the law not to vote. Cést la vie.