Morro das Sereias

2007-09-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

Morro das Sereias as seen from Praia da Paciencia (The tallest building on the hill in silhoette, slightly to the right of center, is my new home in Salvador.

A glimpse of Itacaré (where I ended up after a 7 hour bus drive south of Salvador).

Well after a short, sweet trip to Itacaré (more on that later), I´ve finally settled into my new home which is a funky, loveable beachfront Pousada (motelish type lodging). My friend Lauren from London had introduced me to the place and I loved it immediately. The pousada is situated at the top of a concrete hill in a small, unique kind of favela, not notably large or dangerous, which overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. The hill is called Morro das Sereias which means Hill of Mermaids, or Sirens. Living in the pousada is a mixture of Brazilian and International travelers and Bahian locals that have seemingly sought a sort of transitional resting place. Some of the tenants have been there for years though the transitory feeling seems to be in them too. Even the house structure itself seems to be in a semi-frozen transitional phase, with additions and improvement projects left partially completed.

view from third floor of pousada looking north on the coast over Praia da Paciencia.

As meninas da Morro das Sereias (Girls of Morro da Sereias)

When approaching the giant concrete gate to the Pousada, which is decorated with some mosaic tiling, you can just begin to see the ocean which becomes visible when looking down the opposite slope of the hill. The vibe inside the pousada is very warm and communal (albeit a bit strange), sharing kitchen, bathrooms and lounge areas- and Portuguese convo is flowing non-stop which of course is wonderful for my linguistic development.

The walkway up the hill is lined with homemade buildings and living spaces of stacked, cement-slathered hollowbrick and there is a lots of social activity along the concrete staircase which is essentially the mainstreet of the community- children laughing and running up and down, friendly neighbors chatting and listening to music and dogs and cats perpetually lounging in the sun.

I´d heard from a tenant that the hill use to be much more crime-ridden some years back when a notorious drug dealer had set up his operation on the oceanside of the hill but lots had changed since then. Their are community organizations that have a high profile there now, including a community capoeira group for kids which I´m planning to check out.

The view from the third floor of the Pousada is incredible- the same view you get from Pestana Bahia, Rio Vermelho´s giant luxury hotel where tourists pay amounts unknown to me...... The rent is $R250 ($135?)per month which is right in the sweetspot of the price range I was looking for. It is certainly a bit dodgier then living in a well secured apartment complex in a nice section of Rio Vemelho but I feel relatively safe there and definitely more at home than I´ve felt since I arrived in Brazil. Besides, muggings, robberies and worse can and do happen anywhere and at anytime in Salvador. 4 people that I know of have been mugged/robbed, two of them my classmates, on or near to University campus. Being robbed at gunpoint has been most common but my friend Morgan from Seattle was robbed of his backpack at rock and scissor point. He joked later that his backpack only contained paper, defeating the rock but not the scissors.

My friend Sola, who works for a Salvador tv station, TVE, told me that 10 murders occur each day on average in Salvador, a city of roughly 3 million people. There is constant battle between street gangs, drug traffickers and military police (Military police corruption which is apparently not infrequent, is reported relatively well by some media outlets though not much more is done to curb it).

Knowing your surroundings and keeping your wits about you, understanding where you are and making true friends who are knowledgable of the area is very important. There are many places in Salvador that appear sketchy (and perhaps are a bit) but are really wonderful good places to live, visit, be. There are also places that seem very safe, secure and touristy but can get real sketchy real quick. Anyway I´m very happy to have arrived on the hill of sirens. O Morro das Sereias is a beautiful and curious homebase for me here in this amazing city, Salvador da Bahia....

O Começo (The Beginning)

2007-09-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

After a somewhat rocky, confusing and at times arduous first month, I am beginning to almost feel at home in Salvador da Bahia do Brasil....almost. Getting here was hard enough...luggage arriving two days after me, cockpit door bursting open on the airplane landing impact, and a terrible case of altitude ear popping/pressure that left my hearing ``underwater`` for nearly two days...couldn´t barely understand English let alone Portuguese. But alas, I arrived safely.

My experience so far at the University of Bahia has been one of confused intrigue. There´s been an UFBA worker´s strike which made the matriculation process incredibly difficult. Also, English is not spoken by any administrative people nor by my professors. Speaking Portuguese proficiently has become more than just something that would be cool to do. It´s pretty crucial to my overall success inside and outside of the classroom. I´ve made great progress already, especially without Portuguese classes or tutoring for the first month (wish the program included it) but the task is daunting- It seems I must also learn Bahianese! The first week I used my ill-equipped and disjointed Portuguese almost exclusively having not met anyone who speaks more than a little English. I did find myself bursting with English when I finally met an almost fluent English speaker (Merlin from Germany who is now a good friend).

My two favorite classes are Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) and Capoeira (Brazilian martial art/dance). In my MPB class the very chill professor plays old records and then takes breaks to explain the historical context around the songs and the artists. His casual manner makes me feel as if we were all sitting around in his family room listening to his favorite old records while he remininisces. Such a cool guy!

The Capoeira class is half physical Capoeira and half history of Capoeira...very cool to get both. I´ve also got a very interesting Anthropology course covering the history of indigenous societies in Brazil and a class of Contemporary Technologies in Education in which we create blogs and thus I produced created this one. Beyond that, I have an engaging ´outside the classroom´ course called Estagios which is a kind of onsite observational study of institutions in Salvador that assist individuals (mostly children and adolescence) with physical and mental deficiencies. All these classes require great concentration on my part with regard to deciphering the language and when the class is 4 hours long in Portuguese severe mental exhaustion can set in.

I did finally manage to snag a Português para Estrangeiros course which has been a wonderful and much needed support for communication and comprehension in my other classes and in daily life in general.

Outside of school has been a lot of fun. Typically, the group I´ll be out with on a given night will be speaking Brazilian-Portuguese, British-English, and German..and when you stir in enough Skol, Brahma or Caiporinha you may begin to hear Portingles, Germortuguese or Brazilian-Germenglish. My friends Merlin and Sola from Germany have been teaching me bits of German here and there. German is a nice language to take a break from Portuguese with...so markedly different in style and flow. I have some American friends too though there are very few here by comparison to Europeans. The three Americans I know, remarkably, are all from Seattle though they did not know eachother.

I´ve started surfing- first time was on August 25th, my 30th birthday (or new 20th birthday as some blogs ponder- http://www.ethankbirchard.com/blog/). I don´t know if thirty is the new twenty or if starting a super badass surfing career at age thirty is the new twenty. At any rate, surfing is amazing! I guess I always wrote it off, thoughtlessly, along with surfing pop culture as something that just wasn´t me but now that I´ve experienced it I find it is me! It´s a beautiful challenging meditation of body and mind..and sea. It´s all about balance, sensitivity, humility, daring...and pure joy! I learned some fundamentals from some Bahian surfers who´ve been surfing at the very same beach, Pituaçu, since they were babies. One surfer in particular named Leonardo, who was my main surf instructor, seemed to have a quiet wisdom and joy that´s just gotta have something to do with that ocean (his main surf instructor) that he knows so well....I forgot all my pop culture surfing preconceptions (and the fact that I´m not really a surfer) and got in touch with what surfing must have been like back in the day, like in the 1890s...and I´m surfing with Walt Whitman. Just the basic elements - a man, a board, an ocean....Surf is up! for real.

pre-conceived surf pose, not pictured: Walt Whitman

Zazinho Zao

Morro das Sereias

O Começo (The Beginning)