| A trip to Brazil goes back to Africa by Keme Hawkins How much can one vacation mean to a person? Can a little time off and an awesome tan really change a person's life? Well, my trip to Brazil not only changed my life but also my idea of blackness and my potential field of study. /It started as a way for my best friend Robyn and me to celebrate her graduation from law school. My international travel buddy and I only had two prerequisites for our destination. It had a to be a sunny and warm beach town and it had to have lots of brown people., at least that is what I called them before I became aware of the African Diaspora and all that it included. Brazil won, being a place that has the most people of African descent second only to the continent of Africa. Brazil is place full of magic and passion. The locals are happy and friendly, proud to call the paradise home. Even those who live in the slums, called favelas, high in the mountains, have the Brazilian glow that comes from living life to the fullest, not holding back, celebrating every moment and giving in to every passion, from life to death. It is not the typical vacation spot; it takes knowledge of culture and language to fully engage. Outside of Rio one is hard pressed to find anyone who speaks even a little English. As with any trip, especially the internationals, Robyn and I began researching the history of the places we wanted to go: Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Bahia, and the Island of Tinahare. We found out that Salvador used to be the capital of Brazil and is the place where one can find the most obvious African retentions. The majority of enslaved Africans that were brought to Brazil had come from Nigeria, Angola and the Congo. And the two Brazilian traditions of Candomblé and Capoeira reveal a purposeful preservation of African customs. / Candomblé is a syncretistic religion developed by slaves who wanted to continue to worship their African deities, called Orishas, while appearing to be devout Catholics. Capoeira is a martial art that comes out of Angola. Enslaved Africans continued to practice the martial arts by making it look like a dance. It just so happened that while I was taking a class on Nigerian Art and the African Diaspora, my travel agent at Avocet Travel, a company that specializes in delivering an Afro-Brazilian experience, was from Bahia and belonged to a Candomblé house there. How could I let a chance encounter like this pass me by with grabbing hold and taking the ride? I went. The agent had arranged for us to meet with another member of her house and he would take us to a celebration the congregation was having: "The Gift to Oshun" the goddess of river water, love, children and women's desires, was being honored. We were instructed to wear the colors of Oshun: yellow/gold or white to the ceremony. Our tour guide in Salvador, Marcos, intermittently used English and Portuguese as his conversation would shift from us to his riend who drove us to the house. We did not speak Portuguese well enough to understand, and the driving friend did not speak English. We each listened for our turn in the cycle of conversation as the car spiraled in large circles and the landscape began to repeat itself adding drastic new perspectives of hills and depth. That is when I realized we were indeed driving up into the mountains and into a favela. One sharp turn into the first level of the favela took us onto a narrow street lined with houses that looked like lean-tos windowless with metal roofs. Further down the same street and deeper into the curve we pulled to the side of the road in front of a long stoned wall with a centered gated door. Across from the wall was a small park with a cliff that over looked the city and a bit of the bay. We were here, at Pilão de Prata: One of the oldest Candomble houses in Salvador and a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site nominee. Marcos opened the gated door and a sprawling sculptured garden greeted us, acting as a polite welcome to the large building that stood below it. Stone walkways and steps zigzagged down a small hill, which ended at the front door of the house. Just inside the garden we found the Orisha to which we were paying homage that day. Oshun stood tall, her mermaid figure resting atop the tip of her fins above a large pool of water that held sparkling coins of silver and gold. Her eyes were opened wide, showing consciousness looking straight into the garden her gaze hanging just above the house. Further down were statues of other Orishas like a life-sized Shango, god of thunder and war, stood with axes in hand. Our wandering in the garden was cut short by the sound of drums coming from inside the building, which had an open door on each side of the structure. The window shutters were also pulled open delivering glimpses of a white tiled floor and white walls. Inside I could see the flash of large skirts that sprayed color against the white as the women were already dancing inside. Wearing our yellow tanks and white sandals (the colors of Oshun) we walked in mesmerized and immediately humbled as centuries of history and culture and African retention swirled around us. We were led to our seats but remained standing and clapping our hands with the rest of the congregation. Gifts to Oshun were offered in a pile in the center of the room in a large ornamental pot. The women danced and sang around the pot as they offered flowers perfumes, and dolls to the centerpiece, occasionally stopping to bow and chant. The immaculate building held tiny significant pieces in every corner above all the doors and windows, all paying homage to different deities. The ceremony culminated with a boat ride out to the Bay of All Saints (Todos los Santos) where the gift was delivered into the water and the women were filled with the spirit of Oshun and danced around the boat. Salvador has many places that are filled with stone and hold secrets to the slave trade and Africa. Evidence of the African Diaspora is seen throughout Brazil. The tiled beachfront streets of Rio along Copacabana and Ipanema are colored in white, red and black reflecting the Portuguese, African and Indigenous people that make up the Cariocas. The rhythms of Samba and the celebration of Carnival are also expressions of the rich combined cultures of Brazil. On the island of Tinahare, babies sport tans truer than the Tropicana kid on bottles of sunblock and take on ocean waves that would intimidate the most advanced swimmers. Dogs walk around unleashed, as if there were any other place they want to be. And the streets and stores and filled with music. I had only scratched the surface of Brazil and was only beginning to understand how the African Diaspora influences Latin America. After my trip, I began to learn more about countries like Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Costa Rica along with Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Guyana — that they have large populations of people of African descent. Latin American in general has a very African presence. My idea of blackness had been narrowed by an exclusively United States sensibility and now I had seen for myself that there is more to it. The dynamism of blackness in the Americas allows for so much more than what we see on television. My exploration has impacted my academic research as well. I now want to extend my research in African American studies to also include Latin America. What will this new vision of blackness bring? I'll let you know what I find. A Letter to My Brother ... My Hero and Best Friend by Pamela Pfeffer I count my blessing daily, yet sometimes I forget to recognize the simple things that bring me gratitude. One such thing is my brother and his unconditional love for me. As his claim has always been to "spoil me like milk," he has always been consistent in his lessons he has shared and his nurturing. I know I was a bratty little sister growing up, always telling on him when I didn't get my way or always making his friends mine too. How he tolerated me is beyond reason -- but he did and willingly. He was the one who taught me how to ride my bike, how to play basketball and softball. I was the first one to get picked when he was the team captain even though I was the worse player to choose from. I think even then he took being a big brother seriously and now that we are older and have both been adults for a LONG time, he still has it in his job description to take care of me, his baby sister. I try and think of ways to repay him but there aren't enough deeds to be done or thank yous to be said that could ever fully recognize the love he has shown or the lessons he has taught me. He's a brilliant man, a father to three girls, a partner in a major law firm, a committed community and church leader and a dedicated husband. I could talk about my brother all day; after all he is one of the greatest people I know! One of the most important lessons he taught me was perseverance. He succeeded at everything he did and that was because he never quit. I never heard him say, "I can't do this" or something was "too hard." Those words were not in his vocabulary. Being the competitive person I am, I tried to find something I could do better than him and finally, decades later it has come to me --I'm a better swimmer! Finally, something I can teach him! To my brother, my mentor, my friend, you are my hero. |
| Campus-Community Connection by Keme Hawkins and Pamela Pfeffer |
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