After graduating from college in May 1977, I lived in Ithaca, New York and worked in the Cornell University Libraries. From 1977 to 1979, I was working mostly with the Latin American collection, primarily with books written in Spanish and Portuguese. I had been a Spanish major in college and I was able to read a lot of the Portuguese because of my knowledge of Spanish and French. In the fall of 1978, I started taking Portuguese classes at Cornell, earning my very first A+ in any course ever. I loved the language. The professor, who came in once a week, spoke with a Portuguese (from Portugal) accent. The teaching assistant (TA), who taught us the other four days of the week, spoke Brazilian Portuguese. So I learned the magical, lilting, nasally Portuguese of Brazil. I met a woman my own age in class – another Cornell employee – and we often talked about taking a trip to Brazil. In our third semester of Portuguese we read Jorge Amado – the best known Brazilian author outside of Brazil – and the TA showed us slides of his trip down the Amazon. We fell in love with the country presented to us by Jorge Amado and by this young TA. We talked and talked and finally took the plunge. In December 1979, right around Christmas, we took a trip to Brazil, staying there for three weeks. We went to Salvador, Bahia – in the Northeast part of the country. This was also where Jorge Amado set his books.
The Historic Center of Salvador as a whole was listed as a national heritage site by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage in 1984 and it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. Salvador was the first colonial capital of Brazil founded in 1549 by Portuguese settlers. It was also one of the first slave markets on the continent, with slaves arriving to work on the sugar plantations. Salvador’s food, music, and culture is heavily influenced by African influences.
We stayed initially in a convent converted to a hotel – the Pestana Convento do Carmo. I don’t think it was part of the Pestana chain at the time and the building and rooms were much closer to the original than they are today, judging by the stock photos I have found online. I don’t remember exactly how we found this hotel but I assume it was because it was located in the Pelourinho, the old neighborhood of the city of Salvador. Many of the buildings in this area date back to the 16th Century. The Pelourinho is a cultural hub for the Afro-Brazilian community and it featured heavily in the works of Jorge Amado. The hotel was luxurious. I have no idea how we were able to afford it. The hallways and the rooms had very high ceilings with dark wooden beams everywhere.
My friend and I encountered our first bidet in our hotel room and we had no idea what it was. I remember how badly we embarrassed the poor bellman by asking him what it was for. The walls of the hallways and the rooms were very high, as the pictures below show.
The front desk area was opulent. We arrived at the start of holiday season at the end of December and the hotel staff would be sparse on the day after a major celebration. We didn’t stay all three weeks in the hotel but moved out to cheaper accommodations within the old Pelourinho neighborhood after we had gotten our bearings. But even though it was a luxury hotel, the rates were reasonable by American standards at the time. It remains one of the most magical places I have ever stayed.
Breakfast in our room was fresh fruit (mangoes, papaya, pineapple), ham, cheese, croissants, butter, jam, juice and coffee. I first discovered fresh-squeezed juice of maracujá – passion fruit – in Brazil. There were fruit stands everywhere where you could get fresh fruit and freshly-squeezed juice. Maracujá (pronounced mar-a-cu-zha with the accent on the last syllable) requires a lot of work to get the juice, as it is made from the fruit surrounding the seeds. When you cut a fruit open you will see lots of little black seeds, that are a bit smaller than watermelon seeds. Each seed is surrounded by a small yellow pocket of fruit that has the amazing sweet and tart juice inside. The taste is like nothing else I have ever had. It’s well worth the wait to have it made fresh in front of you.
The convent building was originally built in 1586 by the First Order of Carmelite Friars. It became, over the centuries, host to many events in Brazilian history. It is located near the Pelourinho, the most famous neighborhood in the historic center of Salvador da Bahia.
This adventure was before the Internet, before cell phones, before Google maps. My friend and I had only a guidebook, a Portuguese-English pocket dictionary, and our knowledge of Portuguese from three semesters of study, along with the fearlessness of youth, to guide us. Our first day out, we wandered through the Pelourinho and gradually wound our way down to the central market, the Mercado Modelo, in the Cidade Baixa. The Mercado is a huge tourist attraction, sells food, and has many artisan shops within it. Built in 1912, it sits right on the Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints Bay) and it’s visited by 80% of tourists who come to Salvador.
We wandered through the market. I remember lusting after the beautiful, hand-made hammocks and the brilliant turquoise lace sun dresses, Outside the market, we happened upon a capoeira show. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. Born of the melting pot of enslaved Africans, indigenous people and Portuguese influences at the beginning of the 16th century, capoeira is a constantly evolving art form. It is known for its acrobatic and complex maneuvers, often involving hands on the ground and inverted kicks. It emphasizes flowing movements rather than fixed stances; the ginga, a rocking step, is usually the focal point of the technique.
The pictures that follow are all mine, which means they are grainy and not very clear. But they represent my memories and my very personal experience.
The sound of the berimbau is quite distinctive and can be heard in this classic song by Astrud Gilberto, Baden Powell, and Vinicius de Moraes celebrating capoeira
Brazil changed my life, for good and bad. It ended my marriage to the most decent, ethical person I have ever known. But it also awakened my sense of myself. Being in Brazil felt like coming home. The people I encountered were boisterous, full of life, enjoying food, music, and dance as a part of their daily lives. They were all larger than life, by American standards and, for the first time in my life, I felt normal. My emotions and expressions were mild compared to the Brazilians I met. Throughout high school and college I remember attracting judgmental stares and criticisms because I was too emotional. In Brazil, I was perceived as CALM.
Those three weeks in Brazil were also the first time I was seen – and began to see myself – as attractive. Here I was a Caucasian, strawberry blonde in a city that was overwhelmingly multi-racial. The 2010 census of the city revealed the following self-identification: 1,382,543 persons identified as Pardo (Multiracial) (51.7%); 743,718 as Black (27.8%); 505,645 as White (18.9%); 35,785 as Asian (1.3%); and 7,563 as Amerindian (0.3%). Salvador’s population is the result of 500 years of interracial marriage. The majority of the population has African, European and Native American roots. The African ancestry of the city is from Angola, Benin, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique. I attracted lots of attention just walking down the street and it was not uncommon for these gorgeous men to call out to me: “O, Belleza. Tudo bem?” (Hey, Lovely. Everything good?) Those were life-changing moments.
The easy intermingling of races I observed in Salvador was also very appealing to me. Of course, I was unaware of most of the nuances and the systemic racism of Brazilian society, which was different from the U.S. version, but still insidious. But it certainly felt a lot healthier and more relaxed than what I grew up with in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The mixing of the races was much more pervasive than in the U.S. and produced some of the most astoundingly beautiful people I have ever seen.
I fell in love with the Brazilian joie de vivre while I was there. December/January were the lead-in to the full scale holy season, with lots of festivals, eating, drinking, music, and dancing in the streets. One day we were out in streets packed so full of people that the only way to move was to samba along with them. After a day and a night of citywide partying, there was only one person staffing the front desk at the hotel — all the other staff had been out partying all night and had not come in to work.
At the end of the three weeks, my friend had to beg me to get on the plane and return “home” with her to Ithaca, New York. I did go back, reluctantly. My first day back to work, my boss in the Catalog Department at Cornell University Libraries saw me and jokingly called out, “Here’s Carol back from Brazil. She’s going to quit her job and go back.” I followed her into her office, told her that was exactly what I was doing, and I was back in Brazil within a week. Going back to Brazil alone this time, I quickly discovered that things were not all that they had seemed and I only lasted two weeks before I had to come back, with my proverbial tail between my legs. They had not filled my job and I was able to slip back into my job in the Catalog Department, all the while plotting to go back.
I scrimped and saved for several months until I had saved up enough for a ticket back to Brazil. I had a spare 20 dollars in my pocket and was supposed to be met at the airport in Salvador. When I arrived, there was no one there to greet me. I used my last 20 dollars to take a taxi from the airport to the Mercado Modelo where I found the brother of the man who was supposed to meet me. He took one look at me and told me, correctly, how stupid I was. But he also took pity on me and took me to stay with his godmother.
The next two and a half months, I stayed with my reluctant savior’s godmother, Dona Ana. She was probably in her sixties, very poor, and lived in a single room on the second floor of a boarding house in the Pelourinho neighborhood. In the front of the house on the second floor was a shoe manufacturing shop with floor-to-ceiling windows (no glass but with wooden shutters) looking out to the street; the shop operated every day but Sunday. Moving from the front to the back of the house, you passed through a large common room with a balcony overlooking the hillside below. Dona Ana’s room was off the common room and she had a small cooking area in one corner of the common room. An elderly couple also had a 12 x 12 room constructed out of flimsy drywall material off the common room. Dona Rosa, the 8o-year-old woman of the couple, became my main friend and protectress. Moving to the back of the house overlooking the hillside, was another balcony open to the elements where there was an outhouse-style toilet in a closet and a small, cold-water shower stall. There was a sink nearby. This was poverty of a sort I had never known. But, in spite of it, these were the most generous people I have ever known. Dona Ana would cook her meals and she and I would sit out in the big common room to eat and, as the men from the shoe shop walked by to use the toilet during their lunch break, she would invite every one of them to join her in her meal. And she meant it. Dona Ana seemed surly to me at the time. Yet, looking back I think she was a saint who took in this clueless little white girl — who could speak Portuguese well enough but could understand very little of what was said to her — and fed and housed her. I had my own little bed in her room (which I was glad of in spite of Dona Ana’s heavy snoring and the large cockroaches that would drop down from the ceiling when the light was turned off), I had clean water and access to a toilet, I had food, and I got to watch the telenovelas for a couple hours in the evening with Dona Ana (this is where I first came to know the great Brazilian actress, Sonia Braga). Watching the telenovelas is where my ear finally got accustomed to understanding what was being said to me (although one person did still nickname me “papagaio” – parrot – because I could speak but not understand.)
On the first floor of the boarding house lived an elderly woman and her middle aged son. She made a living crocheting lace tablecloths and blouses. She was kind enough to lend me some of her handiwork and I copied them. I would spend my days sitting in a public plaza, crocheting. I did manage to sell a few of my creations and earned a little bit of money that way. I must have gotten my mother to send me a little money because I was able to buy some basic supplies and pay Dona Ana a small amount of room and board.
After getting my mother to send me another $200, I moved out to a small room on the second floor of a boarding house in another part of the city. My room was the only occupied room on the floor and there was a window with wooden shutters overlooking the street. There was a market across the street and I used to watch the comings and goings of the market during the day. The back side of the building on the second floor had no walls, as it was built directly into the hillside. The bathroom was at the other end of the building. It had a toilet, sink, and a cold water shower stall. The only light at night in the bathroom came from a lightbulb that had to be screwed in to turn on, as there was not a light switch. One night, I encountered a tarantula sitting on the light bulk when I went to screw it in to turn on the light. Not my favorite experience! My room had a cot that I purchased to sleep on and my food supplies. I spent my days going out to the supermarket to buy cheese and fruit and the bakery to buy bread, sitting in a public plaza, sitting in my room to write letters to friends and family back in the States, or standing at the open window at the front of the house looking down on the street below. The huge spiders (that I called tarantulas but which might have been something else) used to come into my room, probably because of the food I kept there. I also splurged on a can of bug spray to kill these monstrous spiders. One night I soaked one of these monsters with the bug spray as it sat in the corner of my room. When I woke up in the morning, it had managed to crawl all the way over to my bed before it died! I still have occasional nightmares about these spiders.
I entered Brazil on a tourist visa, good for three months, and got it renewed once while I was there. Since I entered on a tourist visa, it was not possible to get the visa status changed without leaving the country. I was working illegally as I sat and crocheted to sell my handiwork. After four and a half months of selling everything of value and not being willing to keep asking my mother to send me money, I finally had to concede defeat and leave Brazil. I always planned to go back but I have not been back since I left in the early autumn of 1980. I kept up a correspondence with Dona Rosa and one or two other people for a while but life took over eventually and I lost touch with everyone I knew there.
I spent a total of three weeks (original vacation), then two weeks (first failed attempt to live there), then four and a half months in Brazil in 1979-1980. I went to the beach only two times, once on New Year’s Eve 1979/1980 and another time with my former TA from Cornell and his Brazilian girlfriend who came to visit me. I remember him telling me that I was the LAST person he would have expected to do what I did, Yeah, me too. But I am so very glad I did it. The first time I jumped in the water, I kept my eyes open because the water was crystal clear and I forgot it was the ocean.
I ate some wonderful food that I still love to cook. Much of the food from Salvador uses palm oil, which gives things a distinctly nutty flavor and an orange color. It is used extensively in African cooking and can be hard to find in North America. One of my favorites is the moqueca de camarão. I always made this for my staff during the annual holiday parties at USF St. Petersburg and at Florida Atlantic University.
I also learned to love and make the Brazilian national dish, feijoada. Although I usually cook the version made in the state of Bahia which uses brown rather than black beans.
Another favorite food item is the Brazilian national drink, caipirinha. It is made with fresh lime juice, sugar, and cachaça. Cachaça is like rum but it’s made from the fermented juice of sugar cane. Everyone I have introduced to this cocktail loves it.
I fell in love with the people of Salvador, quickly came to love the music – especially samba music and the music of Antônio Carlos Jobim and his contemporaries, and I became fluent in Brazilian Portuguese. By the time I left Brazil, people I met out on the street would ask me what part of Brazil I was from – they assumed I was Brazilian but they couldn’t quite place the accent! For the rest of my life, I have been able to pick out Brazilians anywhere in the world and have often eavesdropped on their conversations. For years, I would strike up conversations with random Brazilians when I encountered them. When they would ask me how I learned Portuguese, I would always tell them, “Sou americana mas meu coração é brasileiro” – “I’m American but my heart is Brazilian.” Somewhere, deep in the body of this old woman, that young girl still lives.
Lifetime musings 