Dia 145 - Tuesday May 3rd, 2011: African Experience in Bahia

Our tour guide, Marco, is a “Baba”, “father”. He is a priest of one of the 3 major African groups that were brought to Brazil. He organized the Afro/BR experience through religious practices, particularly synchronicity. We started at the AfroBR museum. It tied up the differences and similarities of the Ghana & Benin spiritual practices – sometimes different names, substantially similar ideas. The idols are not the 27 gods themselves, but rather vehicles to help reach their Spirits. Voodoo is one of the names given to one of these practices. Healing & spirituality are their objectives, not evil, except in the eyes of the Catholic Church & Hollywood. The sun spirit represented women and the moon and men. The Catholic Church forced a reversal and the African religions to go behind the Christian symbols. We went to a spiritual house as well as a synchronicity church. We went through AfroBR parts of this great city, the Afro markets and the high rent district. Apparently, the richer you are the whiter you become.

The shirt I wore today smelled like mildew. It never fully dried since the Country Inn after Rio. Anisa tried to be upwind. Never mind that I didn’t like the smell either. Once outside the tranquility of the hotel, like other poor parts of the third world, vendors and beggars accosted us. The Sao Francisco Church across the street has over 600lbs of gold. It is surrealistic and all about wealth. There is a big religious festival in our area this evening. We dined at a local fejouada restaurant that is run by a Brazilian national treasure (Alaide do Feijao). It was the tastiest we have had so far. We attended a festival with a live band at Pelourinho Square after dinner.

There is no scholarship system in Brazil for the underprivileged. Silvio, the concierge and all around guy at the hotel has tremendous drive and intelligence. We are looking into arranging a tuition scholarship for him to complete the last 2 years of university. It looks like all the car arrangements will be finalized tomorrow and hopefully we fly out of Salvador Thursday morning arriving in LAX at 9PM. We are looking forward to playing golf in LA this weekend!