Mobile store

If one wanted to leave the house and spontaneously go to the beach, without so much as a bathing suit, it would be fairly easy to find anything you would need being sold by vendors - bikinis, cangas, food, water, sunglasses, sunscreen.... Many people make their living walking around looking for customers. This rule actually can apply all over the city and the stores come to you both on foot and by vehicle. There is a woman in Pituba who sells hammocks, usually camped out behind Iguatemí, but if you so desired you could buy one from this guy, whose noise polution announces his arrival. It is a common practice to drive a vehicle around with a giant speaker, announcing your products and prices, or if you are politcal candidate, your views and to throw mud at your competition. I didn't really pay attention to what his prices were, but I imagine they might have been on the high side, considering the neighborhood he was driving through is mostly private houses.

Capelinha! Olha o sabor de fruta!

This is a rather nice shot of the roadsides of Salvador. It is not unusual to see livestock with in city limits - chickens and roosters run domesticated near favela areas. In the areas that still have green space in the city, there is often horses grazing at the side of the road, usually not tied up or monitored in any way. They seem to know someone will come for them eventually and just stay put.

This guy is selling popsicles, but not just any frozen treat - within the depths of this cooler is Capelinha, a frozen fruit puree that puts Dole strawberry to shame. The most common favorite here is the Amidoim (peanut) flavor, but they come in a range of flavors including Morango (strawberry), Côco (coconut), Goiabab (guava), Cajá (no idea), Acerola (no idea, but one of my favorites), and Açaí (a purpley healthy tasting thing from the Amazon). This type of vendor also has a song he sings (most vendors have a sound or song that allows you to recognize what's comming long before they appear), saying something along the lines of "Look! Capelinha! Fruit flavor!" This is one of my weaknesses for Bahian food - I cannot resist the sabor de fruta!

Garrafamento chato

Is it the engineers' fault? Is it the fault of building a city without urban planners? Is it our healthy economy that allows so many people the luxery of having a car? Whatever the cause, there isn't really a time you don't find this kind of traffic during a normal day. Only in the middle of the night is the road clear. And it's not just the cars - the buses are also standing room only. For lack of sidewalk , cyclists and motorcycles fly between the semi-stopped lines of cars, weaving in and out of traffic, beating the wait by a long shot. If it weren't so dangerous (would you ride a bike on the road where people made left hand turns from the right hand lane and seemed to think the white dashed lines were for decoration?), I would consider taking it up. Almost everywhere in the city has a maximum of two routes to get there. Most of these routes are shared between objectives. The other option for this route (from Rio Vermelho to Pituba) is to take the Orla, which runs the length of the ocean and is the main route to almost everywhere in the city. Although a prettier option, it's not very practical for that reason.

A job nobody wants

I know I have seen these people in the States, the lucky construction worker with the job of waving the flag at the oncomming motorists, warning them that there is construction going on. Apparently here in Salvador, they don't even want to bother paying someone to do this, so they put up these nice little wooden men to hold the flags. They even paint them in the worker's uniform and give him a real flag to hold. This one in particular has a severly shortened arm, I think because the traffic here was so tight it was in danger of being (or had already been) hit by a passing truck or bus. There are several of them along this route, guarding the ever present project of the Salvador Metro (begun over 10 years ago I believe, and still no where near being completed), an L type of public transportation desperately needed in this city.

Coffee on wheels

When one moves to another country, one never thinks about all those conveniences you thought you wouldn't notice had gone missing. One of my great losses was the coffee shop. Every morning I would get a Coconut Latte on my way to a 9 AM class, drinking through my lecture or teaching between sips. Even, gasp, sneaking in sips between on air breaks while DJing at The Impact. In Sampa, I am told, there is a great pleathura (did I spell that right?) of all things American, including our college town study houses, but here in Hickville Bahia, we are not so advanced. But hey, we can still get coffee just about anywhere, even without the Starbucks on every corner. Our coffee, and I mean coffee - not latte, can be found on these interesting rolling apparatuses in caraffs of all shapes. Sold in little plastic shot glasses (think Jell-o shots), you can get it in both black and with milk. These guys are all over, and their coffee carrying shops are usually on wheels. You can't see so well because this picture was taken in a moving vehicle, but there is a steering wheel in his right hand that he uses to steere the coffee "truck" around (this would be why he's on the street, since the side walks weren't really built for things with small wheels). In fact, often times you will see these things actually painted and built as miniature semi-trucks carrying coffee, and usually a radio. This guy is like a middle - class style, not so fancy. Hooray for the fillers of the "need a shot of EX-presso" urge.

The new "Shopping"

Some of you may remember my post on the old "this week in Bahia" site about the new mall going up in the Pituba area, near Iguatemí. Well, a little over a year later, here it is, almost finished! It boasts to be the biggest mall in South America. Iguatemí had this title for some time as well. It's supposed to be the huge competition "shopping" to Iguatemí, being built literally around the corner and within site of our beloved gi-ganti-mall (we call this kind of thing a "shopping" instead of a mall), in which I have gotten lost more than once, and the giant church across the street from it (also lovingly know as "God Shopping"). Nothing in particular has been done to deal so much with the traffic flow around this area, except to add this new overpass, which I believe will lead directly to the mall and be horribley congested most of the time. For anyone who has ever been here, you know that the area in front of Iguatemí is not the best place to be in a car, and you are likely to sit there for a minimum of of 15 minutes during a heavier than normal traffic time. Access to this exclusive road will come from that same vein of traffic, since we never make more than one route to each destination. Unfortunately, adding a lane is not an option, since all these roads are at least 5 lanes wide already. And we say Brasil's economy is suffering - yet we still have money to spend in the giant shoppings!

What's all that white stuff?

What's with the half painted poles, you might ask? So they stand out to those driving on the road, incase one should veer to the sides - whoa! A big white POLE! The bottom 5-6 feet of most concrete lamp posts, and other side-of-the-road objects are painted white here. This includes these huge rocks. Some rocks don't even need to be close by the road to become hazzardous to our motorists apparently, I have seen them painted white as far as 100 yards off the road, although this may be more for asthetically pleasing reasons than for safety. Not that white stays clean very long in a city with all this gook floating by in the wash-out rains plague us May through August, as well as of late. Most of the time, you see the nice white paint that fades into grey/brown dirty on the bottom 3 feet. These rocks appeare to be freshly painted, and therefore stand out. I would surely not hit them, if I were a crazy careless driver.

Super speed ants

Not that you can tell from this photo, but these ants move faster than any you will find in the States. You need not wait more than 1 minute for them to find any kind of food you have in their vicinity (they really like cat food) and will clear the area of it in under 5 minutes, taking it to their nest which I suspect is actually deeply embedded in the wall of our veranda. At one point on my way home I came across a plant whose flowers resembeled small roses, and that just happened to have some nice seeds comming from one of the buds. I brought them home and planted them, and low and behold I have grown an aphid magnet! To the ants' delight. Slowly but surely the sticky residue from my resident parasites is turning all my nice white rocks green. I think this plant is about to go bye bye.

My lunch

Rather than throw in random shots on the street, seeing that I didn't actually go anywhere today, here is a nice shot from home. Hmm, what's all that yellow stuff? No, it's not curry (I'm allergic you know) - it's dendê! Palm oil, the main main staple of all foods Bahian. Without it acarajé, abará, and the Brasilian version of Montezuma's revenge would not exist (I'm taking votes on names for it - be sure to participate). This scourage of the digestive tract is a heavy heavy yellow/orange oil that come from crushing up those little red berries on African palms. It also makes us all fat, since we like to use it so much in so many dishes. This one I ate today, on my nice gasoline sign table, is called muqueca. It's usually made with tomato (none of that here, I'm allergic), green pepper (also not present for the same reason), onion, some kind of meat or fish, and tempero verde (a garlic and green herbs mix we use to season everything). You eat it over rice, which I did here. Also on my plate is a goolash type thing called pirão made from some of the caldo (juice, gravy, etc whatever you want to call it) from the muqueca, and below it is pumpkin, also a typical favorite here. That wierd blackish thing near the top of the plate was what Neta called "chicken surprise" - chicken with plantain bannana in the middle, and it was actually pretty good.

An interesting thing to note - all this European influence makes us eat with a knife in the right hand and the fork in the left. Not how I grew up eating, but much more efficient, I have to say. It should really be adopted in the States, where people are less inclided to wash their hands before they eat, but end up putting their fingers in their food to get it on the fork.

More rainy days

Rather than give big explanations for these rainy photos, I am just going to post a mess of them here in the hopes that they will explain themselves. It's raining.... a lot.



This is what happens with the little stands on the street when it rains - they get covered with random pieces of plastic, old umbrellas with beer slogans on them, and then are flocked to by men without shirts who wish to remain semi-dry.






Trash anyone? I hate to imagine what kind of uckyness is going into the ground water from this pile, or into that water running down the street in a big river over the concrete that you have to wade through to get to the sidewalk.





I just think this is funny. There is a whole wall of HAM in Brotas. It's the wall around the Hospital something or another, but all the HAM is comical to me. HAM HAM HAM HAM....

Favelas in the rain

It has been raining non-stop pretty much since Friday here. Although a common occurance in Michigan, in our lovely coastal city here it is not so common. Grey and rainy weather doesn't make for good picture taking (I know, I took about 20 shots today and only two came out and the quality is not really top notch either), it can make for good story telling about Bahia. In a city built like most "developing" country cities, there is a great hail-all to cement and not so much room left for open ground and vegetation. When there is more than a light sprinkel, water pools in various low laying places, runs like rivers down the street, and in favelas creates huge, resident-killing mud slides. Many favelas are built on hillsides, those areas being less desireable by people with monitary means because they are difficult to build on. One dwelling is built and sells the rights to build on their roof top, or perhaps half on the roof and half up the hillside, and POOF, here we are in a disaster waiting to happen. Last year I think I heard a number around 160 people killed by mud slides in favelas. I am sure it is actually higher than that and those are just the ones who make the news.

For the hearing impaired

Such a simple concept, yet almost never seen in the States. This is an ad about voting. It consists of a "teacher" in a class of students telling them how patriotic and easy it is to vote. It's full of these images of Brasilians stepping up as a group and walking around, going into voting posts and casting their ballots, an image that is not all that far off from the reality here (see my video from election day if you don't believe me). And the nice little extra - see that woman there in the lower left hand corner, she's signing all of this for the hearing impaired, because we don't leave ANYBODY in the dark about how easy it is to vote here. Almost all the government sponsered ads I have see are like this, usually with the same woman in the corner. She both mouths the words and signs them. Way to go Brasil! Unfortunately, I'm not sure everyone who is deaf gets educated in common sign language, and I am sure there are some populations who are entirely without television.

Wow, just like home!

Third world elections aren't done with stones anymore.... Despite being behind bars, the election booth is much the same as back in the States. The lines to get into this barred room are much longer, however. And yes, that is a desk in the background. As in the States, the election boothes are housed in schools on election day. The bars are to keep theives out, rather than students in, I think, but what do I know....

Vota Brasil!

The foot traffic outside the voting post was never ending. This picture was taken during a lull right before some famous guy, a former govenor or mayor or something, came through in a big mass of people so quick I had no idea what was happening. This is the only place I have seen people leave bicycles just out in the open, unattended. Old guys sat in chairs at the gate chatting about politics, most likely. Three different versions of icecream were sold outside the gate, along with churros, agua de côco, and some other things I did not identify. Everyone being required to vote, these vendors had nothing to loose sitting in the same place all day. Must have been pretty sweet for them. For more of this view, see the video.

I made a short video

Of election day, but I cannot find the cord for the camera, so you all just have to wait in suspece until further notice.

You know it's election year if...

You can always tell if there is an election comming up, unlike in the States, even in low traffic areas. All the lovely graffitti I never took pictures of is being covered with these types of paintings of "vote for X" generally the same colors, so one gets so used to seeing them, they kind of blend into the background. I wouldn't doubt that the commitees for the candidates pay much less for this boring version of graffitti by the same artists. For those who don't know, all parties in Brasil have a number and a name, but since the number is shorter, it appears more often. 13 is the number for P.T., Lula's party (the current president ) - partido dos trabalhadores: the worker's party. There are actually so many parties that Brasilians can't keep track of them all, each with a number. I would have thought there would be an order to the numbers according to left or right wing, but no, they are rather haphazzard in their numerical choices.

Now, another fun job, if you want to earn R$10 a day, is to stand on the side of a busy road wearing some kind of propaganda, or waving flag. This poor girl is standing in a median between 5 lanes of traffic on one side, and another 6 on the other, all going the same direction (with a bus station and a another 6 lanes going the other direction on the other side - who says we don't have progress here!). More elaborate displays may include people wearing matching t-shirts, waving in the back of a truck, driving down the road with loud music playing so everyone will turn and look, with or without the candidate speaking. I even saw a guy sitting in a coffin secured to the top of a car, speaking into a microphone and waving at the people on Orla.

A room with a View

Although be it not such a sought after one. But what a view it is, of 3 lanes of traffic in each direction, full and loud at all hours of the day, complete with graffitti and guys selling bottle of water in the cement median. This hillside actually is quite clean, compared to most dwellings of this type I have seen. Usually it serves as a place to throw trash and refuse of all kinds because favela neighborhoods usually lack good sanitation service. What you can't see in this picture is the narrow staircase that goes up this steep incline to reach the houses at the top. In another 15 years or so, this hillside, or should I say steep cliff, will probably be filled with other house like structures, waiting for the next big rain to dump them all into the street in a big mudslide.

The other 70% or more

Favelas are everywhere. Over 70% of the Brasilian population lives in poverty, so I am told. Many of them probably live in places like this, small, brick, open holes for windows, built into hillsides, on top of one another, with thin little dirty alleys for streets and paths between then. This one happens to be located just a jump from a 3 lanes in each direction road promising lots of noise and pollution most of the time. Still, that would be better than living on the street, so these people are at least that lucky.

O Posto

I remember when I was about 8 and my grandmother drove away from a gas station in GR without her gas cap because she, GASP, had to pump her own gas. I, on the other hand, grew up having to freeze my ass off pumping my own in 20 below February weather, having one hiccup in Jersey where someone always does it for you, which at the time seemed very strange to me. Here you never pump your own gas - it's always done by uniformed gas attendents, which there are many of at each station. I suppose it's to keep you from driving off without paying, considering the price of gas here, or perhaps it's also a safety issue. Sometimes they even do the air in your tires for you, although often it's a street kid or someone of the like who mans that area.

Reading material

Lack of QD or 7eleven can get to you down here. The closest thing besides your common pharmacy that you can find is the banco de revistas that dot the various streets. It's about the equivalent of a newstand, with so many things hanging from it and around it that the person inside usually remains hidden from view. You want cigarett papers, gum, phone cards, A Tarde, Mulher Abusada, you got it. You can even pull up in your car and ask them to sell you what-not through your window. Convenience at it's best, but without some other basic necessities, like tampons or canned peaches...

The dreaded SETT

A vague memory of the little heart skip when you pass a cop parked on the side of the road in the States - was I speeding? did I use a blinker when I passed that car? Or when one comes up behind you and follows you for 5 miles, making no attempt to pass, just waiting for you to do something wrong. The dreaded BLACK AND WHITES. But in our lovely land here, no one worries if they are drinking and driving, speeding, or cutting someone off when a cop is around - cops have no authority to enforce traffic laws. They could of course stop you and hold you for a time, but they can't write you a ticket, make you pay a fine, or arrest you for breaking the laws of road. But look out if you see that ORANGE AND WHITE! Not only do they set up automatic radar that takes a picture of your license plate and issue you a speeding ticket, they hide at intersections where people make illegal lefts, U-turns, and issue tickets for using your cell phone while driving. They even occationally give tickets for illegal parking, although rarely during Carnaval I am told. Driver beware.

Driving off the edge

Your very own thrill ride right here in Salvador. Countless roads like this one (found in Rio Vermelho) angle down steep declines, seemingly strait into the ocean, yet at the last minute you will see there is a road to save you from certain wetness. The degree incline that some of these roads have make me worry about the longetivity of the clutch in the cars traveling up and down them, and the driver's ability to master that break/clutch bounce with use of the parking break to keep yourself from barreling backwards into the motorist behind you. If you drive here, you must, absolutely MUST be able to do this, and stand the buring smell your engine will make in the process. This is probably one of the main reasons I don't drive here. That, and the amount of these types of roads that I have seen that DO actually end with no warning, either sending the unsuspecting driver into a building, a large walled off trash heap, and in one case, a road that becomes a stairway that empties on to the sidewalk below.

I promise I promise, new pictures tomorow!

Moving

Geocities is too much of a hassle to maintain. As much as I love doing HTML, I am going to move the "This week in Bahia" pictures and stories to post here from now on, in the hopes that this will enable me to actually update it on a regular basis. Lets see if it works. You can see the previous posts at their original page here.