Nap

I know, I'm overdue to post. I apologize profusely. I suspect it may happen again though, as it usually does, so...

It's not usual to see people just sprawled out on sidewalks in the city during the day. The homeless or poor pretend homeless generally have their "beat" they occupy and the traffic signals they prefer to frequent, sending their children to beg for change or anything really there is to offer. There is a gallera who hangs on at the traffic light on Paulo VI near my home who I walk by frequently, who all know me by now, and who generally don't bother me asking for things unless one of them is really hard up for something (the kids just ask regardless, it's in their nature) like juice for the baby or something along those lines. We have a generally amiable relationship, although I do not appreciate the amount of trash they leave on the corner where they hang out. Sometimes I walk by and they are all sprawled out on pieces of cardboard or old mattresses, sleeping at 4 in the afternoon. That is the best time of day to sleep, really. How many of us are just dead tired after lunch? Just find a comfortable and reasonably clean place to lay down, and close your eyes.



This guy found a way to do this which serves two purposes - make sure no one steals your wheel burrow while you sleep, and get off the ground!



At 4 in the afternoon, in the middle of a busy area, buses passing, people commuting, and here he naps and no one will bother him. Que vida boa, neh?

R$4 gets you a buzz cut

Need a hair cut? Shave? It's cheap!

Like many store fronts in the city, barbershops and nail salons can take on a hole in the wall appearance. It is, in fact, quite practical to just pull up the garage door in the morning, sweep all your trash into the street and scrub your floors with a broom and buckets of soapy water to clean at the end of the day because the liquid can just run out the door into the gutter. It's especially practical if you don't want to pay the high electric bill for A/C.

Ojá - white strips of religious tolerance

Anyone driving around Salvador may have noticed the plethora of pieces of white material tied to trees, lamp posts, and other tall objects. These are a sign of religious tolerance on the part of the Candomblé practitioners (? not sure, there may be a technical term for this, perhaps Markuza can correct me??) in response to a recent court decision. The story as I understand it is as follows - a woman named Mãe Gilda was persecuted by the Igreja Universal (IURD). Her picture was published in the paper with something to the effect of "these charlatan Macumbeiros do harm to your pocket and your life." The church was sued for defaming her and the ruling was made in favor of the Candomblé side. IURD actually had to pay out money to these people, which I have been told was unheard of up till now. In response to this decision, these Ojás have been tied up to show religious tolerance (and probably victory too). I feel I do a bad job of explaining it. There is more info here.





P E A C E

S H A L O M



P A Z

A 40 mile traffic jam

São João is a big holiday here in the northeast. The basic deal is that everyone tries to leave the city and drive to some tiny town in the interior, find someone's floor to sleep on, and goes to the public square to dance to Forró all night. It's one of my favorite holidays here, maybe because it's so focused on being in the country and just dancing - reminds me of home and going contra dancing. The holiday falls on the 24th of every June, but the major party is on the 23rd. This year the 24th is a Tuesday, meaning it was a 4 day weekend for anyone going out of town, and the public responded quickly.

This is a lame picture of my television of a live shot of BR324 in the BrasilGas sector, near Pirajá. This traffic jam went for over 80 KM, traffic stopped or moving slowly, everyone trying to get the heck away from the city. Having only 2 major highways to get you out, not at all surprising result.

See the number of people clustered at the non-bus station stop? And at the moment a good friend of mine visiting is out of town (Chapada) and will try to return on the afternoon of the 24th to catch an extremely early plane on the morning of the 25th - I hope she actually gets here in time....

Threats of chaos

Some time ago, maybe a year or more, there was a short bus strike. The companies wanted to raise the price of a ride on one of our many city buses some thing like another R$1 or so and when the talks weren't going well (or at all, I can't quite remember), the drivers took a one day strike that threw the city in to absolute chaos. Nannies couldn't get to their charges, doormen couldn't get to work, security guards were stuck at home, people who normally took buses had to brave the streets in their cars... I remember distinctly that there was a lot of traffic on the roads that day, and that several people were still waiting at bus stops in hopes of a bus coming by anyway, or that one of the opportunists would stop and give them a ride to where they needed to go for a small fee if it were on the way or a larger one if it wasn't. The city stops with out buses. We have no other transportation (save the monorail that has been under construction for 10+ years now) and those who are too poor to have a car but have a job and mouths to feed are the ones who get screwed the most. Some employers expect the employees to find there way to work on their own. Others will go pick them up or arrange other transportation. The traffic becomes ridiculous (when it already was before).



The buses are about to go on strike again. The drivers only make a little more than R$600 a month. If no agreement is reached for a pay raise, they will strike on Tuesday, as was announced on the news this morning. Lets all cross our fingers...

Rain Rain, go away....

Yeah, so this is an old picture. But the stretch of road looks about the same right now, so I don't feel too bad posting it. Between being gripada again and all this lovely weather we are having lately, I haven't felt too inspired to go out taking pictures of new things. Not that there haven't been some interesting things happening here lately - an accident involving a SKOL truck and some cases of beer falling off onto the cars behind it blocking the entire Orla in the Itapua bound direction comes to mind - I just haven't felt like dragging around my camera.

Home security

As you may well know, crime is expected here - better safe than sorry. One generally does not walk around on the street without being constantly aware of the surroundings, who is walking behind you, and who is looking in your direction. Surprisingly, few people carry "self protection" type things like mace, rather it is safer to hand over your things than to resist the inevitable. For homes, however, we can be a little less discreet. Take this example - too cheap to spring for that electronic home security system or razor wire? Just break some bottles and mix up the cement and you can easily show off your "don't come here" attitude without removing your welcome mat. The poor man's answer to a low wall or an easily hopped border. Although, after having watched the last movie in the Borne series, one could think of some easy ways over it.

Fight global warming!

This is an interesting advertisement on the back of a bus - "Against global warming? Have a cool Skol at Amanda's". Can't think of a better way to spend a hot afternoon than that.... Well, maybe not at Amanda's - it's not on the beach.

It seems to go on forever...

For New Year's, we went to the island of Itaparica. It's a lovely little place, relatively safe, and just drive a little bit and it's like you're in the country. There are three ways to get there, if you are a commoner - take a ferry launch, take a car ferry, or drive all the way around to the bridge on the other side of the island (a 4+ hour trip on roads that cannot really be depended upon for upkeep). Most people choose the first option, as it's the cheapest (about R$6 per person; about $3 US). New Years is a popular time to go to the island, as any holiday is a popular time to travel here, and so the line to get on the ferry launch was extremely long to go to the island, but that was nothing to the size and endurance of the line to go back. We opted to stay as long as possible to try to avoid the line. These pictures were taken on the 4th of January - and the line still seemed endless. I imagine many of these people may have camped out all night to not loose their place in line, having obligations on the main land. Thank goodness we didn't.


The beginning of the line.


The middle of the line.


The end, or maybe not....

Caldo de Cana

Mmmm, sugar water! Just what everyone finds refreshing on a hot day while walking along the beach. Quite literally, this sugar cane juice is made by shoving the whole sugar cane down a sort of wood chipper / juicer and catching the juice coming out the bottom. It's not bad, you know, tastes like sugar because that's what it is. The residual parts of the cane come out looking like wet cotton fluff. I personally prefer coconut water, but this drink is popular enough to find at least half as many caldo de cana vendors as agua de coco.

Alternative modes of transportation

Nothing really educational in this post. These kids happened to be running down the side of the road with the wheelbarrow in action. They may even be playing, although I doubt it. More likely they are off on some errand or trying to find a quicker way to get somewhere.

Horses Xing

Not that you would ever see a sign indicating that anywhere around here. Although I was unaware of it at the time I was living in the States, there is some kind of law prohibiting farm animals inside city limits. I never thought much about it, but it would seem rather striking to see chickens and pigs wandering around down town Lansing or Grand Rapids. There is no such law here, however, and I would be hard pressed to think of a day that I have gone out on the street here and not see at least one rooster on the sidewalk or a horse tied up on the side of the road, nibbling the grass. The farther outside the city you go, the less restrained the animals are, until you start finding them wandering around on the road, just waiting to scare the bajeezes out of you as you come around a sharp turn. I only hit one deer with my car in MI and I cannot imagine the damage a full grown horse would do to the tiny cars we drive around here. Luckily, the pot holes are so bad in most of the roads, the speeds you need to drive at will most likely allow you to stop in time.

Maintenance

Obviously, all lights need to be changed once in a while. You know, the ones in your house are so easy to do, but what about your friendly neighborhood traffic light? I know these things need to be fixed once in a while, yet I could not think of any time in my memory that I actually SAW one being worked on, or a light bulb being changed, or anything, in the States. It was just like some kind of magical state that they remained in perfect working order, always.

Not here. This scene is taking place during the end of rush hour here, on one of the only TWO major routs to get ANYWHERE>>> The Orla. And not only did they decide to do this one particular light (I cannot recall if it was burned out, but it might have been) at this time, but they proceeded to do the rest of them in this stretch over the next several days, always it seems, at the same time. Just to give any non-locals a perspective : This is a two lane in each direction road that runs along the ocean - no way to turn off or go around. One lane was completely blocked by this truck.

The two lives of Pineapple

In case you never got to see a real pineapple growing.... Here, they can be both breakfast and landscaping!

Morning Rituals

7 AM is a very busy time here in Salvador - people on their way to work, kids on their way to school, and delivery trucks are out in storm, leaving their goods where ever they are needed, often in the middle of major traffic routes.

Here, for example, is our coconut distribution service. Besides the local kids who collect them and sell them individually, there are companies that "harvest" the coconuts and bring them into the city in big trucks that may have "DISK côco" painted on them (DISK is what you call truck delivery; we have DISK banana, DISK sugar cane, DISK gas...). Unfortunately, as traffic was moving, you can just barely see there are two guys with large metal shopping carts, loading up coconuts to take to their stands which I assume must be somewhere nearby. This particular delivery was being made near a bus stop on Tancredo Neves Ave, one of the main veins (even shown on Googlemaps as a yellow road, so you know it's a serious route) of the city. Not that we would be concerned about traffic slowing....

Water doesn't grow on tress, but we have DISK water as well. This truck is loaded every day from the distribution center building, or maybe vice versa, I have never been sure. Nice clean water, coming out of nice blue bottles. Yet not more than 50 yards from this nice clean water waiting to arrive in your home, is a small river that is so full of garbage and sewage that you can barely walk past it without passing out from the fumes on a hot day. And, I might add, it is populated by dwellings of the lower class who must be immune to the smell by now. At least this DISK, on Orla - another major route to everywhere, parks on the sidewalk instead of in the road...

For sale

There is no shortage of abandoned buildings and homes here, even in the "nicer" neighborhoods like Caminho das Árvores and Pituba. Some fall victim to squatters who can enter and live in a property for some time and then claim it as theirs because they are occupying it. Still others remain untouched except for the signs spray painted here and there and the graffiti added some time afterwards. These places have been abandoned since I moved here, but perhaps now they will find an international buyer since I am posting their photos on the site (*smirk*).

The makings of a fun afternoon

Welcome back!

This shot was just too good to pass up. Some friends of ours live in a rather rustic condominium towards Itapua. It's full of kids who play soccer in the street and pot holes and a couple of stray dogs. This past weekend when we went to visit, it also had a large Skol (a popular Brasilian beer that I personally think tastes like ass) cooler in the middle of the street next door to a really interesting chopper that vaguely reminded me of a dune buggy and may even be designed for use on the beach. Unfortunately it was not plugged in...

This week in Bahia goes on vacation

I know it seems like I must be doing it all the time, due to my sporatic posts over the last few months, but now I am going on a actual vacation - out of the country. So, obviously I won't be able to post anything until I get back, unless it is of something other than Bahia, which would, really, defeate the purpose of this blog. So, just to hold you all over for a while, here are several photos to ponder until my return in July.

As you may or may not know, the months of May, June, and July are winter here. Winter means rain and sun in the same ten minute stretch with no way to be assured that you will remain dry if you leave the house without an umbrella, no matter what the sky looks like in the morning, or what the forecast (hahaha) says. Most of the time, there is so much rain that the streets flood a bit and slow down traffic. And no matter what time of year it is, drivers seem to feel rain merits more cautious driving (hahaha), so you will likely be later than you plan if you head out in the rain. This particular door has nothing to do with the story, other than that the shot was taken in the rain. I thought it was a particularly nice picture, somewhere in Brotas.



This photo is particularly nice because of the nice "late" day sun shining on select spots on the building (late day being about 4pm, sun setting around 5:30ish), as well as showing the ingenius "jeito"for older building adaptations to electrical connections. Coming from somewhere out of the shot is a direct connection to the wires running electricity into this particular building - one connection obviously is somewhat planned, because you can see the glass fuses on the side of the building. The other, however, comes from I'm not sure where and goes directly into the corner of a window to supply power to a store that probably didn't have any connections before. Rather than breaking through walls and doing costly renovations, the easiest way to get your power is to go around the outside. Not astetically pleasing, but very common, even in newer buildings (our downstairs bathroom uses this route for an over head light, and it was built in the late 80's!).



You can buy almost anything you want on the street. The most common is pirated CDs and DVDs. Just yesterday I saw that Shrek 3 is already out for sale on the street, along with Ocean's 13. There seems to be no way to prevent it, at least in this country, and guys selling these illegal copies are almost as common as window washers. This one is stationed next to a bus stop, as vendors often are (there and at traffic lights). I have no idea why no one ever gets arrested for doing this, but I have never heard of it. I suppose it's better to be selling something, however illegal, instead of stealing.


And last but not least....

This great green tunnel is the entrance to the Salvador Airport, where I will be headed tomorow afternoon for an 18+ hour journey north. It's kind of a landmark and very memorable. This great green forest is made entirely of bamboo (it grows wild here, all over, who knew?) and goes about 3/4 of a mile (I think). It's quite attractive and makes you have the urge to pop out and take a few pictures, except that you might get run down by the other passing motorists who drive like bats out of hell through it. I have a friend who actually did wander around being photographed here, naked, as she told me, and was almost arrested.

Urban Cowboy

It's not terribley unusual here to see horses, or any kind of farm animal/livestock, within city limits on a regular basis. People keep them all over, and they are left grazing the grasses at the side of major roads, sometimes tied up, sometimes not, and are frequent road hazzards for unsuspecting motorists if they happen to think the grass on the other side might be tastier than where they are. Less common, at least in city limits, is the cowboy riding along the street (other than cops). This guy wasn't really riding in the street, but on the sidewalk between the lanes in each direction. He even had a saddle, which you usually don't see, and seemed dressed for the part. The only thing missing here is the cellphone he was chatting on right before I managed to drag out my camera.