Thursday (day 1) CAMAROTE
I arrived in Praia do Flamengo, Salvador by bus from Capim Grosso, a small town in the interior of Bahia, in the black of night…no street lights and five big drunk and angry looking men covered in tattoos step onto the bus. Of course I was calm and collected. Thoughts such as “What if I disappear and I never see my family again?” did not even enter my mind. Just as well. My couch surfer ‘host’ (for those of you who don’t know, couch surfing is done by those who use couchsurfing.com – an online community of people who put people up for free and in turn camp on other people’s ‘couches’ - nothing to do with lack of money of course) was welcoming and funny, hosting two other girls, one from Poland and one from Estonia.
I must be the only person in the world who thought Carnival was a daytime only event, so I was surprised when they announced we were all going out. After a communal debate as to whether I should just ‘re-deodorize’ or shower, I got ready. Fifteen minutes later I found them customizing t-shirts they (and I) were going to be wearing to the Camarote. These are spectator boxes, usually set up in hotels where you look onto the Carnival parade from a balcony.
We drove into town, parked the car and walked to the Camarote where our t-shirts allowed us entrance, free booze, free food and clean toilets. No complaints about the toilets, the free food or the free booze (imagine an endless supply of sushi) but I could see I was going to have a hard time with the trio-electrico, cheesy pop electric guitar music – blaring out from the traveling podiums below. As I said, we were at the end of the circuit so by the time the bands got to us they were tired and bored and, by the looks of it, so were its carnival followers who, drenched in sweat, were shuffling along lethargically behind the musical lorries, to this terrible music.
I began also to notice a kind of carnival class separation. Standing in the camarote, a few levels above street level, I felt like I was watching Carnival on television. I told my carnival companions I’d rather go down in the streets where all the people were. The Estonian and Polish girls concurred. We decided in that instant that we would do Carnival our own way from then on.
Friday (Day 2) PELOURINHO DANCING
We arrived in the Lapa station and walked towards Praça de Ser. A homeless man kindly guided us in the right direction, for such a long time it looked like he’d be with us the whole night. We arrived at what looked like backstage to the Carnival circuit. All the different acts were practicing their dances and drumming. There was an atmosphere of anticipation and you could see slight nerves in the faces of the performers. The acts in this area of Salvador were a lot more traditional than the trio-electricos of yesterday; big groups of drummers and dancers dressed in traditional costumes with colourful hats and big dresses. Ah, I thought, here is the Carnival I was looking for!
One of the groups was doing a dance which looked more accessible to the mediocre talents of gringas, so we tried to copy their moves. After about ten minutes of them giving us weird looks they decided to take pity and teach us the dance. At this moment the parade started moving. With our white-skinned, backpacker looks, we obviously stuck out like a sore thumb amidst thirty or so dancers all dressed in green t-shirts. Nevertheless their grins disguised any embarrassment we might have caused them and soon enough a cord came up round the sides to create a barrier. At this point we realized we were part of the parade and there was no escape.
It was quite a strange sensation to go from feeling so far away from Carnival in the Camarote the day before to becoming a gatecrasher in the parade itself. It was incredible. The drumming was hypnotic and trance inducing. The way they danced was also very different to any dancing I’d seen before. The muscles are completely relaxed and the movement is very fluid yet also very strong. The Salvador Carnival differs greatly to that of Rio or Sao Paulo which is almost only Samba music. Here in Salvador there was no samba at all – it is much more raw African.
We did the whole circuit with this dance act and then joined the mass of bodies, trying to avoid being separated from one another, or kissed by the various sweaty men who, in half consciousness, try and grab you, rub their bodies against you. We succeeded most of the time and followed such bands such as Olodum and the Rebolacion man himself from the band Parangole.
He had very tight white trousers on, no shirt of course, and the girls next to us were screaming and fainting. We were next to a few fights during the course of the evening, half of them started by girls.
Of course, in this ‘bowl of popcorn’, you get people putting their hands down your pockets to try and steal your money but this is what bras are for. If you are male of course you have two choices, one: bring a girl with you or two: prison style. Money belts are always an easier option and do actually come in handy; even some locals use them during this period, which makes you feel a little less of an uptight European pragmatist. We danced until four or five in the morning dazed and in a trance, just moving tribe-like to the drumming.
Then we decided to find a bus stop so we headed back towards the Praça to ask for directions from there. We were so tired we couldn’t converse, walking like zombies, our faces sticky from all the sweating. We were woken out of our stupor when one of us was grabbed by a man who tried to force a kiss whilst seven other men formed a circle round her shouting “Do it! Do it!” The Polish girl who was closest, grabbed her out of the circle and we quickly walked away as the male in question jumped towards us in a cat-like predator way. When we later told the story to our Brazilian friends, who happened to be male, they just laughed.
Saturday (Day 3) BARRA, CHASING BOYS TO KISS
On day three we were only two, myself and the Pole. We decided to give Barra another try, we were aiming to get to the middle and see the performers where they would be at their best. We were driven in by the parents of the Brazilian family who were heading to the Camarote. Talking to them it was easy to see that they preferred to be somewhere safe and convenient where everything you might need is readily available and the family doesn’t get separated. I realized that if you live here you are brought up with Carnival every year and are not as desperate for ‘the authentic experience’, such as being thrashed about in a huge pulsating crowd.
However I also noticed that the poorer people would have their whole families on the streets dancing away whilst the middle class and upper class would pay to be separate. Is it fear of the poor that keeps upper classes from really taking part in Carnival? I did not ponder on these questions long, however, but instead decided it was time to find some boys to grab and kiss.
One thing we’d noticed during Carnival was that men were allowed to grab and touch whichever women they wanted. Why the women let them get away with this I couldn’t understand. Obviously I must be one of those “cold” European woman the men here always go on about so, with my friends, I decided to bite the bullet, down several (extra strong) Caipirinhas, and some Nevadas (a very refreshing cocktail of crushed ice, cachaza and condensed milk with a strawberry syrup drizzled on top).
We ran around in the craze of people looking for the guys we wanted to kiss. Let it be known that this is not my normal behaviour…blame it on Carnival fever. We saw someone and started chasing after him through the crowds, elbowing our way through the mass, ducking under ropes, jumping over the drunk guy and politely waited as the police pushed their way through only to find our guy kissing another guy! After the same thing happened ten or fifteen times (we lost count) we lost the motivation to avenge our male oppressors and joined in the gay parade. We made lots of friends that night but no boys for us.
Sunday (day 4) CITY OF URINE
At 5 am we arrived at the bus stop. We’d been told it was easy to catch a bus from here. The heavy air stank of urine. Male partiers actually seemed to prefer to pee next to the cubicles provided or onto them rather than go in them. Also, once the sun rose, the mass of shiny party people turned into very tired, unattractive zombie weirdo-types with makeup halfway down their faces, clothes torn and quite angry, as they tried to get home.
We waited two hours for a bus to turn up. It passed twice but was full of people, and when I say full I mean faces glued to windows and ten people hanging out of the back door. It did not even stop for us. Buses were full, taxis were full, and walking was not an option. We sat, a sad sight, on a patch of grass with a bottle of coke between two, the smell of piss so strong it almost kept you drunk.
We watched as the cleaners used Carnival edition three-metre-wide brooms to sweep away all the rubbish left behind. Special people with huge canvas bags would come and fish out the cans from the piles left everywhere. The dystopia of Carnival lay before us. When we finally got a ride home we drove past the corpse of a woman with two policemen examining her.
Monday (Day 4) HOME, SLEEP, THEN PARTY AGAIN
In the evening we decided to meet up with some Finnish friends who were staying in a hostel in Pelourinho. The bus ride into town took us through sunset into the night time where the party was getting going. We got to Pelourinho, found my friends and got started with the caipirinhas. Our group had gone from three to seven.
We set off with great intentions but soon realized that such a big group would be very hard to keep together. I tried to keep the two groups together but was in danger of getting left on my own. I didn’t want to leave either group and I felt bad having to choose one group, but during Carnival every man is for himself. I had already made my Carnival bond and set my Carnival pace with my new friends. Its just the way it had to be.
So we set off jumping through the Carnival jungle, dancing, walking, drinking, dancing, talking, walking, dancing, dancing, crashing on the pavement, dancing, drinking, walking and all this activity amidst the craze of Salvador. The music again was mainly drumming with common melodies being shared between the different groups.
Once again we made friends with a group of dancers and drummers, this time we showed them some of the dances we had learned during the second night. The two wise old men in charge of the group called Os Zulus Africa Do Sul allowed us to join them and gave us part of their uniform. We followed the big drum band and dancers going round the Campo Grande circuit. We danced until we collapsed. We felt privileged to have had the chance of joining this group, but our energy was spent. We struggled to make it home that night.
Tuesday (Day 5) - DAY OF REST
We spent the day at the beach, dead, drinking coconut juice straight from the coconut. This is a very important drink to remember if you want to survive Carnival as it is especially good for rehydration purposes.
Wednesday (Day 6) – THE LAST SUPPER
We decided to go into town and dine at a restaurant to celebrate our time together during Carnival and the new friendships made. So of course we ended up eating meat on a stick, accompanied by Caipirinhas, for a change. Soon the madness of Carnival took over, miraculously resurrecting the daily routine of dancing, sweating, talking, walking, dancing, walking, talking, being grabbed and pinched by everyone who walks by, dancing, talking, singing, dancing. The only difference was on this night the Filhos de Gandhis were out to get us.
Apparantly the age-old tradition of Filhos de Gandhis is to spread peace through kissing and giving out beads. However, as far as I could see, the modern day concept seemed to mean a final turbo-boosted spree of grabbing carried out by men donning white towel turbans, necks covered in beads and all armed with a bottle of perfume. So we spent the evening trying to escape guys who would try and lasso us with their beads or brand us as their property with their handy perfume bottles.
The new rhythm therefore became dancing, talking, dancing, drinking, dancing, avoiding the beads, dancing, coughing at the perfume, dancing, wrestling for twenty minutes with a particularly determined Gandhi lookalike, dancing, dancing, dancing. All this said, there were some nice Ghandis waiting for us within the mass of blue and white and we ended the night with some blue and white beads around our necks. Mission accomplished.
