Adeus Adeus Bahia

Back in Rio after just over two weeks in Bahia.

Bahia is a beautiful place.

After spending a couple of days in the capital of Salvador (which I wrote about last time), Maisie, Omar and I set off to Permangola in Kilombo Tenonde, which is kind of an organic farm based on the principles of permaculture, set up by Mestre Cobra Mansa, near the town of Valenca.

Permangola was an amazing experience, a week dedicated to capoeira and learning about permaculture. We would wake up every morning just before 6am, start training capoeira at 6 until about 8, then have breakfast. It´s amazing how long a day becomes when you actually use all of it! The food there was an experience in itself, as it was all vegan, and as much as I wanted to like it (although the fruits were amazing!) my body just couldnt seem to digest it properly. So although I didn´t get sick at any point, I had a number of quick runs to the dry toilet. Near misses. And yes, that´s right, dry toilets. No flush, you just throw some dirt on top of whatever it is you have contributed to the earth. They weren´t really part of the amazingness of permangola. Nor was the lack of showers. Actually maybe the lack of showers was, because it meant that you had to shower in the river, and sitting by the river was something close to complete bliss. It made you forget that an outside world existed, there was no such thing as worries about the future, or jobs, or careers, or obligations. All that existed, were just happy people, playing capoeira, in a small paradise in the middle of nowhere.

It was also really cool learning about permaculture, and watching it being put in practise, and just the general vibe of all the people there, and the feeling of community. The most amazing bits, were the capoeira rodas every evening, where you got to watch and play with some of the biggest names in capoeira angola, like Mestre Cobra Mansa, Mestre Cabelo, CM Guaxini, CM Gege and many many more. It was just amazing. (Can´t seem to find any other word to describe it so I´ll just keep using that one)

After a sad departure from Permangola, we set off to another event called Artangola, organised by Mestre Lua Santana, in the Chapada Diamantina. The Chapada is a national park, with impressive nature, waterfalls and the rest. There we went on hikes, saw a 100m watefall and, yup, you guessed it, did some more capoeira. Lua also has a project set up in the nearby town, where he has a space that the kids of the town go to, to keep busy playing music, doing art and capoeira. It was really sweet as the little girls there were really taken with us older girls who could do capoeira, and kept asking us to play with them and teach them.

After Artangola we got a night bus to Salvador, only to discover upon arrival that the city had fallen into chaos. The police had gone on strike (they still are) and if Salvador is a dangerous place under normal circumstances, without the police working it was just chaos. After spending just a night there and attending a FICA roda the next morning, we set off for the island of Itaparica, where we hoped things would be calmer.

We stayed at Mestre Lua Rasta´s campsite, a beautiful place next to the beach, another small paradise and attended an Angoleiros do Mar roda. It was turning out to be another blissful escape from the city, however it all went wrong when we made the mistake of cicling into town at night to go out for a drink. We paid for our mistake when returning back to the campsite at midnight, with our first Brazilian (well, my first ever) robbery. While we were cycling back on an extremely dark road, a motorbike which had just driven past us turned back. We were worried. When they drove past us and then turned back again, we knew we were screwed. We started cycling as fast as we could but obviously they cought up. They came up by my side and starting pushing me off the road and shouting something. I was eventually forced to stop or otherwise get thrown off my bike, and after a couple of seconds of confusion in which they were shouting at me and I just stared at them trying to figure out what the hell was going on, I looked down and saw a gun pointed at my stomach. That made it all pretty clear. I emptied out my pockets (a 30 euro phone and an amount of cash equivalent to about 4 euros) and somehow, luckily, they seemed satisfied with this and drove off. We got back on our bikes and ran for the campsite. All in all, a lucky escape. This drove home the fact that Salvador and the surrounding areas really weren´t safe, and we were grateful to have bought a ticket back to Rio for the next day.

So here we are, back in Rio, recovering from 2 weeks of sleeping in a tent, and planning ahead for the next week...Can´t upload photos right now, but will do so pretty soon.

Comments are welcome :)