A MONTH LATER, STILL IN SAO LUIS

Well, it's April 6yth, nearly a month since my last entry.   

The last bit of my last entry read.... 
"Next leg, a 14 hour bus trip to Fortaleza  .... A 20 hour bus trip to São Luis ...  And then down to Brazilian Amazonia (buses to Altamira and Santarém, and a 3 or 4 day boat to Manaus).  Amazonia starts with the city of Belém, which is to be the host of COP30 next year.  I’m very interested to see what that place feels like, having spent quite a bit of time at  COP26 in Glasgow"

but I'm still in São Luis, I've been here three weeks already, and I'm going to be here for ANOTHER week, I haven't got anywhere near Amazonia yet.... .  Why? Well, read on!

Fortaleza was great... just a day and a half, staying with  a lovely SERVAS host and also meeting a friend of a friend, whose husband makes really interesting metal sculptures... 

(to order and see more , see his instagram here. 

We went to the beach in the daytime - the very same beach that my Portuguese teacher took Jenny and me to way back in December when our ship docked here in Fortaleza after 8 days at sea, on our way to Salvador.  It was lovely to be back! 

Weirdly, the banks seem to run the cultural centres in Fortaleza.  We went to a gallery run by the Banco do Nordeste, of art by Ferreira. 

, and on the second night my host took me to an AMAZING concert in the Caixa Cultural centre... it was "Coco" music with the group 'Cantadas de Maria' from Cariri - 

I noticed an older guy doing the dance and he taught me the steps.  And then I started chatting with him.

He's called Rogerio Rodrigues and he's a photographer who's about to start a big four year really interesting well funded project training people in photography in the quilombolo communities in Ceara, the state that Fortaleza is in, with the idea of producing exhibitions, books and other products to increase the visibility of the black community in the state.    Quilombolo communities are communities founded by former enslaved peoples... the right to live there is enshrined in law (more or less)...  see links and photos HERE.  ... 

And he gave me the name of a documentary filmmaker in São Luis for me to get in touch with.... 
Years ago we learned about 'just in time' manufacturing when you order in what you need for the next week's shift at the exact time you need it, so you don't have loads of stock hanging around in your warehouse.  I'm doing 'just in time' contacts ... just before I arrive at the next place, someone gives me the name of a really nice person to get in touch with . It turns out you only need one person, and I already had two in São Luis so I was going to be well set up.  And they multiplied! read on... 

So why am I still in São Luis and it's been nearly a month????? 

I'd been invited to spend a week here by a lovely woman I met through the Jewish community of Salvador, who said I should come and check out São Luis, where she teaches music at the Uni... it's just next to the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park and there's lots to see, she said.   She'd been here for nine years but never been to Lençóis Maranhenses (very confusing, by the way, that  two national parks in Brazil are both centred round places called Lençóis)....  

I didn't have São Luis on my route at all, you can get a bus directly from Fortaleza to Belém... but I looked at the map and it seemed a perfect place to stop off on the way round to Belém.  

A week seemed a long time, seeing as my 'destination' was Manaus, all the other places were meant to be just stop-offs... but she persuaded me that I needed to give it a week.

She was very happy that I was going to come and that it would encourage her to visit the local beauty spot finally...

But what has actually happened is that I've got hooked on Cacuriá dancing and I can't leave!   (meanwhile she went to the Lençóis national park on her own...)

The day after I arrived,  my lovely host took me to meet a Russian family, the Itskovich family,  who have an art gallery in the historic quarter of the city - the dad's an unbelievably prolific  artist and poet and writer, with his subject mainly being the rest of his family.   His  wife is around my age and it was quite disconcerting  seeing so many paintings of her in the nude around the gallery - plus several of their son and daughter who also welcomed us to the gallery.... 

The dad also does alternative healing, which meant that after a bit of backwards and forwarding with calls and messages  I was  round at his house on the following Monday, interpreting for him between Russian, Portuguese and English, on the phone to a friend of mine in England who was having an experimental treatment for her chronic illness, on the principle of 'you've got nothing to lose and it might help'...[Let me know if you'd like to know more about this]. . Also they have a SWIMMING POOL at their beautiful house so I had a lovely time in the 30 degree heat doing lots of lengths wearing the mum's bikini.  I then sat around dozing in the sun....  
and eventually the daughter of the house, Maria, came home from her job teaching  art in a local school (she's  also as an actor and singer and dancer ... most people here have two or three jobs!).  She demonstrated a few steps of a local dance she said she was learning, 'Cacuriá' and I said 'ooo, is that something that I could learn?'  So she gave me the number of the organiser... I got in touch asking if i could go to a practice... and found myself three hours later dripping with sweat, transfixed, and absolutely in love with Cacuriá.   I haven't been doing much facebooking this trip, as I don't have facebook on the phone that I take out with me (see 'Russian Hackers' in an earlier post) but my facebook entry for the next day read: 

"Yesterday I discovered Cacuriá dancing and now I want to cancel all my plans and live in Sáo Luis for the rest of my life and do it full time*. Shame about the visa, the state of my knees, and the call of the Amazon. Also the fact that my English body doesn’t do that sort of Brazilian dance movement from the centre of the body !

But i am def staying an extra week here to do four more classes ! Wow. Sexy Brazilian moves in pairs within complicated border Morris type or English Ceilidh type formation dance patterns and Capoeira style singing and percussion (is it still called acapella singing if there’s percussion ?) possibly the best dance night of my life . Didn’t take videos cos completely immersed . There are some online but they have costume and flute music … imagine a heaving sweaty full room and being right in there .

Do i know anyone who can teach me Belly dance type moves very quickly over zoom?

Ps yes I was the oldest there but made a good showing for myself and loads of people said it was great to have me there

Here’s a link to an Insta video of one of the dances we did last night https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4Nv2grgQca/?igsh=MXF1Z2kzdTJhbHN1ZA== "

*this feeling has never happened to me about anything, ever, before, I don't think.... 

So I've ended up staying THREE weeks already and I've just booked for another week so I'll have been here for nearly a month in the end.  I am totally hooked... there are now four classes a week - my next task is to try and learn the (very fast, Portuguese) words to the songs that everyone sings when they're dancing.    
Here, I think, are a couple of videos of them dancing at a local shopping centre but it doesn't really do them justice.. 

I was sent a video of one of this week's practice nights, clearly demonstrating that the English woman in the denim shorts at the back comes from a different species to the sexy sleek Brazilian dancers in the room -but she's having a GREAT TIME!  I can't include a link to it on this blog but if you want a good laugh, send me your whatsapp no and I'll forward it. 

I eventually had to move out of my friend's house as she'd only invited me for a week, I spent five days  being totally out of action with flu that she had to nurse me through, and ended up staying a fortnight anyway... (and everyone knows that guests are like fish - they start going off after a week). 

I spent a weekend at the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

a rather amazing World Heritage site, sand dunes and natural lakes as far as you can see.  As I expect you've noticed, I'm not one much for 'seeing the sights' but I went on this trip because it seemed to be expected if you're in this area (my landlady had arranged a trip the previous week but she had to go with another friend because I had flu!).  And very contrary to expectations, I spent the whole time on the trip feeling overwhelmed with amazement at the sight of flowing sand dunes  as far as the eye could see; and resolved to do more 'seeing' trips. 

And then I came back to two nights with a very lovely and kind SERVAS hostess who lives right on the beach, and has ANOTHER home with a swimming pool up the coast where we went to do water aerobics the other Saturday... 

and I've now moved into an Airbnb for a week in the historic centre (very handy, but you can only really walk round during the daytime so I'll still have to get ubers to and from dance practice even though it's only ten minutes walk away).   The great thing about this Airbnb is that it has a HAMMOCK IN THE BEDROOM which makes all the difference to me being able to sit still and write.  (hence the lack of blog post over the last few weeks - I find it much easier to whizz about, swim, walk, go and see things, or just zone out,  than sit, read, write, reflect - but a hammock seems to be a perfect thing for an ADHD brain - you're moving while resting, the body is totally relaxed and every bit of you is cared for, you don't have to take care of any of your limbs or muscles.... but it still seems kind of 'active'.  In Amazonia I learned about having a bit of string tied to a nearby tree so you could pull on it and rock yourself with minimum effort.  Here I can just about reach the bed to push myself off...). 

So here I am writing this blog post finally!  

One thing I also have to add is what happened on the first Sunday I got here. My landlady noticed that there was a band - Xanddy Harmonia -  on at the local shopping centre, which included a couple of her former music students.  So she contacted them and they came up with free tickets to the concert for her, me, my landlady's other student who'd been taking us round São Luis that day, and his wife. But what we didn't realise was that we were going to be invited to be up on top of the 'sound wagon' (they're called trio electrico here) where the band was playing...

Here's a youtube video of the actual band performance, during which you can see a quick flash of the fans in the front of the van, after about a minute 

but what I hadn't quite understood was that the wagon was going to start moving!  (someone said 'hold on tight' and I thought she was being really patronising, oops).  It turned out it was exactly like carnival in Salvador - hundreds of people in the crowd on the ground, a couple of 'camerotes' - seating areas .... a 'bloco' with a roped off area and a couple of young women dancing inside it.

It was AMAZING. I have to stress the unbelievableness of it.  At the time it really ranked for me as one of the big things in my life (along with being in the Amazon in 1984 and being at the US Democratic Convention in 1972 when I spent a week working on the switchboard for Senator Muskie... I can still visualise that big convention centre.).. so there we were dancing and waving on top of the trio electrico.... amazing night! 

Another thing I should report, on my first Tuesday my hostess took me to her music class, where I ... get this... DID A TALK ABOUT MY MELODEON ... IN PORTUGUESE (but mainly in music, actually).   And then had a very nice time playing some English and Irish tunes with the class members joining in, especially a very inventive one on trombone, and another on fiddle. 

That evening,  Amarina, the film-maker contact through the photographer I'd met in Fortaleza, had invited me to meet her... we met for street food and beer, and she told me about her filming (she's spent six months doing a documentary about the local 'Tambor da Lua' phenomenon, which mixes drumming, dance, song, tradition, art, community, political struggle and resistance.... ). When it comes to Portuguese, there are some people who I understand perfectly, others can repeat the same thing to me over and over and I just don't get it. But then I suppose, thinking about it, that happens in English too.... Anyway it was brilliant spending the time with Amarina, so good to hear her political take on things. She is very driven to do film storytelling.... it's so good to meet committed artists.    We went on to a bar round the corner - one of those great Cachaca bars where the owner brews 20 different types of cachaca, like the one in Lençóis. 

 where she introduced me to two more friends, Robson an artist and Alberto a journalist...


and since then I've been hanging out a lot with Robson, who took me for a day out to the beautiful little seaside town of São Jose do Ribamar the next week 

I think the stained glass windows in the little church  are worth a look, hence pix of all of them - many represent the local indigenous people coming into contact with the church.... 

there was a busker on the bus on the way home!

and he took me to see the preparations for his art exhibition seeing as I won't be here for the opening next Friday

 

What else have I been doing here? 
a couple of art museums

and the Reggae Museum

Thursday night I managed to get out to see the Tambor da Lua drumming which  Amarina's documentary is about. It's amazing, totally compelling and hypnotic and all-encompassing.  The sound on my phone is a bit rubbish but you get the dancing here... 

the bit where the two dancers touch navels is called 'umbigada' I discovered...

and last night I went out with some local Couchsurfers to the coolest bar I've seen in my life.... the Bar do Leo, Leo's Bar  - here's a beautiful article about it https://oimparcial.com.br/noticias/2017/09/leo-um-bar-que-cura/ (you can do autotranslate) and here are some photos and videos I took - it's pretty much a 'museum of everything' - I sent pix of all the manual typewriters to my lovely fellow French Institute Secretarial College students ('72-'74) - funny to see stuff in a museum which was our normal.  The menus were on the back of LPs (there was another guy my age in the group, the others were Young People, and I asked them if they even knew what they were!!! - they said they did, but I'm still not sure...)

So as I started... next leg, down to Belém - current plan is to set off on Thursday.  Staying in the Amazonia Hostel as recommended by the Rough Guide to Brazil AND my Belém Couchsurfer contact... meeting my Lancaster-based Brazilian friend Juliana's brother for general company and orientation... 

then after five days, a 3 day boat to   Santarém, where I'll be meeting up with the local Sephardi Jewish community for Passover suppers 

meeting friends in Altamira
and on to Manaus, my final Brazilian destination
then I have to leave the country for a month because  I HAVE BEEN INVITED BACK TO THE SAO JOAO FESTIVAL HERE TO BE IN AN ACTUAL BULL in the Bomba Meu Boi dance..... 
a bit like this one  

.

I got measured for my Bull costume yesterday by  a real tailor! 
 ...
side musings.... 
the 'flow' of time in Brazil is so different to how time works in the UK.  As my Lancaster based Afro Brazilian dance teacher Louise Gibbons told me, everything happens on the day - you'll get invited on the day to do something that evening.... there doesn't seem to be much 'save the date' 'get your tickets in advance' etc etc round here... so I am getting quite relaxed with having a totally free week before I go off to Belém- I already have 2 dance classes and a party slotted in for today, (and turned down the offer of swimming and breakfast in the nearby snazzy hostel so I could like in the hammock and finish this blog post)... tomorrow beach, market, samba.... some day next week I'll take up that breakfast and swimming offer, I'm going to a local sort of island place on a boat, I have more dance classes,  there's tambor da lua at the fountain just outside my current accommodation...

, Wednesday a second trip to the best dentist I have ever had in my LIFE, and Thursday I set off for Belém.... 
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More side musings

I absolutely LOVE it here. I feel I'm part of a community. Joining a dance class is brilliant - it means that wherever I go I  bump into one of the dancers from the class and I feel really connected.  Living here in the historic centre is fantastic - walking distance to everything I want to do (as long as I have someone to walk with...) and I am absolutely looking forward to coming back in June - I've booked in at a fantastic hostel/hotel in the historic centre  with a swimming pool. (wanna join me for the  São João festival in São Luis?  I think I'm here from 20th June.  )

email me at fionaistravelling@gmail.com - I love comments about my blog, it helps me to keep going
lots of love Fiona xxx