Rebels Already…A Week Vacationing in Brasil and the Realization That I Look Like I’m Ambiguously Raced

Monday, June 23, 2008


Ok. TONS to update on, but so little time. I could seriously write pages and pages in Microsoft Word about this past week, but I’ll spare you all. I’ll try to hit the major points and my thoughts on each.

First off, Shanah and I officially slept through our first day of work (::insert Skype partying smiley here:: lol). We got back to the house in Natal around 12:30 am, but Eliana, Breno, and their doctor friend Ione (who was with us in Rio) were on a different flight that had been seriously delayed, so they wouldn’t get back until later. Turns out they got back at like 4 am, but we were exhausted and fast asleep, and no one thought to tell us we would had to get up at 7 today to go to orientation at the Center. Until Shanah checked her email half an hour ago and saw she had an email from Eliana, who had had to go to a meeting thingy in another city 4 hours from Natal and told us we had to go to work today =\. I really hope it’s not a big deal, though I honestly can’t see how it’s our fault if we had no idea…

We left for Salvador last Sunday, the 15th, and stayed until the 18th, when we left for Rio de Janeiro. Salvador is pretty close to Natal, only like an hour or so by plane. On the eastern coast of Brasil, you come across the cities in this order from north to south: Natal (us!), Recife, João Pessoa (Oskis!), and Salvador. Salvador is in Bahia and is really really laid back. Salvador also has like 80% of the black population, so there’s a lot of African influence that can be seen in the abundance of Capoeira, Candomble (a type of Santaria), and food (moqueca!). We basically spent three days relaxing on the beach (really pretty beaches), hanging out near the Farol (lighthouse jaja), eating ridiculously cheap food (can you say, R$ 4,00 per person for a fabulous meal??...That’s like 2 USD), talking to all the really nice people we came across, and then later trying to evade the advances of those same really nice people, jaja.

My Portuguese got exponentially better in the time I spent in Salvador because we made friends with a group of Capoeristas who we spent a lot of time with those two days. Indio had picked up a fair amount of English (and his accent was very good) from all the tourists that came by Salvador, but other than that, none of the other guys really spoke anything but Portuguese, so it was either speak Portuguese or play charades. I played a lot of charades for a while, jaja.
Ok, now I have to interrupt my retelling to just tell you guys how amused I am right now, watching Benji the dog literally run in circles, barking, around the backyard. End transmission.
So Indio, Marcelo, and Anderson taught us a little Capoeira one morning, right on the grass in front of the big touristy lighthouse! It was sooo much fun, but so tiring, jaja. I bet we looked really awkward doing it since the movements are so different from the linear structure of Shotokan karate (and even different from the circular movements of Goju-ryu karate), but they insisted that we were really good, jaja. Because of my karate background and Shanah’s background in a ton of different sports, we were "naturals" lol. Right. But I really liked it, and really hope to start going to that Capoeira school we found near Ponta Negra beach.
In terms of evading unwanted advances, let me just say that that was our life in Salvador. Most of the guys were too nice. Nick, I swear I told them I had a man in my life, they just wouldn’t back off, lol. Ah well.

The only tour we actually did was to go see a Candomble ceremony, which was very long and very odd. I wish I knew more about what was going on, since I was completely lost during the entire two hours we stood there. It’s a type of religious ceremony with emphasis on ridding of spirits and such. There were three large drums (congas?) that were basically played continuously throughout the night and there was a Santo Padre that did several dances presumably to do different things, such as sweep the bad spirits out of the room. During the ceremony, random people would suddenly "catch spirits" and start shaking, only to be taken to an unknown "downstairs," from which they would come back, with cloths wrapped around their bodies and one around their head, in a seeming trance as they would mimic the dance moves of the Santo Padre. It was very odd, and I prayed to every god I know that that spirit wouldn’t touch me, jaja. Shanah and I also got attacked my branches, when the Santo Padre cleansed everyone in the room, one-by-one, by brusquely brushing everything evil off them with a big green collection of leaves. It was an experience, though I haven’t quite found the right adjective to put in front of that word.

I sadly don’t have any pictures of anything whatsoever from Salvador because I refused to carry my camera around—I realized the first day that people thought Shanah and I were Bahianas (me probably only because I was with Shanah, but whatever, I’ll take it, jaja), so I didn’t want to lose the protection that offered me. As long as we didn’t open our mouths, we could walk around as natives, free of the dangers that follow tourists around everywhere, but especially in Salvador.

In my life, I’ve been mistaken for just about everything under the sun: a White person (screw political correctness, that paper actually said WF—White female), a Mexican (not just by you, Julian, jaja), an Ecuadorian, a Brazilian, an Argentinean, an Italian, a Spaniard, a Greek, an Indian, a Filipina, a Chinese, and since I’ve been in Brasil, a Bahiana, a Japanese, a Hawaiian, and even Pocahontas (I assume "Native American" was the term he was looking for, but he was too drunk to care lol). That means I’ve blended-in every where I’ve gone, except Curaçao and Japan (since I obviously don’t look Japanese compared to actual Japanese people, jaja). It’s a pretty awesome feeling to be wandering aimlessly around Rome and have an obvious tourist (map and all) ask me where Via Nazionale is, just like it feels great to have waiters say after an entire meal has passed that they really thought we were Brasilian.

It feels kinda funny though, that I don’t look Colombian in Colombia because I’m too Americanized by now, but especially with my skin being darker now because of my tan, no one here can imagine me being American either. Everyone I know at Yale knows me as a Latina because of my constant talking about/doing stuff for Alianza and La Casa Cultural in general. And I’d say most people know I’m Colombian because I bring it up whenever I can and to whoever will listen to me.

So it made me really happy to encounter, at least in little ways, a bit of the Colombian-ness I thought people didn’t see in me here. In Salvador, when we were walking with the Capoeiristas to a different beach, we passed by an old man sitting on a stool-like thing on the sidewalk, one of the many that were all around Salvador so that we didn’t even look twice. And then I heard the man yelling something, but I’m accustomed enough to catcalls and random hissing from strangers, especially along Roosevelt Avenue back home, that I completely ignored it (never try to get my attention by honking a car’s horn lol)—until I heard something odd, which totally threw me off guard, but at the same time HAD to be addressed to me: "COLOMBIANA! CO-LOM-BIA-NA!"

What the heck?? Everyone spun around to stare at my astonished face; I couldn’t even say anything other than "sim" (yes, in Portuguese) in a surprised tone. This random old man, who I had never seen before in my life, was apparently SO sure of my heritage that he proceeded to yell it out for all of Bahia to here. And I checked, I wasn’t wearing any Colombian colors or anything identifying me as such. We all pondered and laughed about it, soo very confused about how that man knew. I couldn’t let it go, and even though I tried to look for him hours later when we left the beach, I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to ask him how he knew, and would just have to deal with the fact that I looked Colombian to somebody in Brasil =)