The Feel of Salvador

Preamble: It’s now 9:30 in the morning on February 17th. For those of you living in Reno, it’s actually 4:30, so I hope you’re all dreaming sweetly. Having now lived here for exactly three weeks, I feel like I can write about my overall impressions of Salvador. You all know I'm the rambling, rhetorical type a lot, so this post is to satisfy my need to ambulate. The chronological history of what I’ve been doing here thus far only details the When and How portions of my experiences abroad. The What is a much more grand and unique experience for a person. I left a small and comfortable life in my hometown, where I am king of my little kingdom, and came to a large and incomprehensible place where absolutely everybody starts off as a stranger and where I’m essentially starting over in my knowledge. It makes me feel like a 4-year-old everywhere I go. I can only understand about 50% of what I hear and I can barely produce even the simplest sentences because my vocabulary is still fledgling. Just as true as my American culture has shaped my personality and my world view, the culture and the traditions here, which are still so foreign, are the fabric of the way of life for millions of people around me. There have been times here when I feel such a strong sentiment of being different that it produces almost an out-of-body experience. Self-reflection happens a lot, as the only mechanism I have to make any sense of what I’m seeing sometimes is to compare to my own way and my own life. The definition of who Brad is has a much more distinct and articulate meaning now. Things that I take for granted now seem like gifts or odd, individual quirks and perks of the life I’ve lived in the U.S. It’s humbling, empowering and enlightening. And it makes me feel very high sometimes.
This city was built so densely and so long ago that the inhabitants couldn’t really compensate for industrial growth everywhere. Some places, where the streets should be four lanes thick with ample parking and broad sidewalks, are instead crowded, rugged and confined. The pedestrian traffic everywhere is unbelievable. People cross the street at random intervals, trusting on their own judgment and the reflexes of the drivers here to keep them from getting run over. Even in the fastest or most dangerous streets, pedestrians begin to cross without caution or consideration. It’s all very devil-may-care. In the States, we are definitely more accustomed to driving quickly (even highways here only allow speeds of 80 kph or 50 mph and they are enforced by electronic radar and automatic license plate scanning and photography). But here, they disregard the lane lines, sidewalk distances, double parking restrictions, turn signals, and personal distance completely. I’ve driven around quite a bit already, and my notion of safe distance is totally different. It’s common to pass other cars or giant Onibusses with no more than 2 feet between us going 35 miles an hour with traffic converging in lanes all around us. Also, as bad as the streets in Reno seem sometimes and as much as they are the subject of joking, the roads here are much worse. Many of the roads are the same ones paved with cobblestone or dense black bricks from hundreds of years ago. They are very quaint and beautiful to look at, which compensates for the bumpy ride they create. Many of the sidewalks were built in a time when Salvador’s population was a fraction of what it is now, so they are only 3 feet wide with no gutter to speak of and no ramps for handicapped people.
I never really realized how devoid of smells my city is until I came here. Delicious cooking smells, body odor, animals, the occasional vomit or poo, thick engine smells, garbage left in the heat, the salty breath of the sea, and smells of the abundant fruit and flowers everywhere are pervasive and constant. The food smells, especially, are ever-changing and appealing. The other, nastier smells are rare, but the sweet stink of cooking grease, fresh fruit, fried cheese or potatoes or whatever, thick sauces, seafood, and acarajé is everywhere. A tourist without self control could walk around here and get really fat really quickly. The seafood and the fruit here are of such high quality and high diversity that they are staples of the diet here. Shrimp and fish are on average about a third of the price as in America and the cost of fruit is negligible. An eight-count bunch of succulent bananas or a bag of orange, plum-like fruits called siriguela costs only R$ 2,00, which is about $0.75! At any beach or restaurant, a whole fresh coconut will be brought to you with the bottom planed into a flat surface and the top chopped off and topped with a straw to drink the coconut milk for only ONE Real. Then, when you’ve finished drinking the milk, you can ask the person, “Você pode partir, por favor?” (Can you split it, please) and he will take it and return with the split coconut and a spoon so that you may eat all the fresh meat. On many corners, there are these clunky old blue or yellow machines that men wheel around to grind and smash fresh sugar cane into juice. You can walk up to them with one Real, watch them feed a long stalk of sugar cane into the gears of the machine, and receive a full, icy cup of sugar cane milk thirty seconds later.
The service industry here is shockingly cheap. To get a full interior and exterior car wash costs only R$ 10,00 and you can just drive the car up to the person’s place and go get a sandwich or something. Thirty minutes later, it’s like a brand new car for about five bucks! Even people living within limited means all have maids, cooks, housekeepers, and accountants. Every single building with a parking garage has doormen that stay in the kiosk all day to personally allow or deny entry to people. Shoeshines are R$ 5,00 and haircuts are only R$ 30,00 at the absolute most. Even the salons with the fancy signs and quality work have packages for a manicure and a haircut, wash and rinse for R$ 40,00. I’ve paid $15 in Reno before for a crappy, rushed haircut, but here that much money buys a professional job. Also, it’s like Oregon here. Nobody pumps their own gas. There’s always an anxious young guy in a spiffy uniform waiting to pump for you at every station. Also, valet parking is super cheap and there are poor people all over the city that wait around to help you find parking spaces. They only charge about one Real each time and they make sure nobody breaks into your car while you go off and screw around.
I’ve never seen so much foliage and green before as I’ve seen here. We tend to separate lush areas of trees from the urban or residential areas in the U.S. and throw in an occasional tree in parking lots to break up the manmade monotony. Even government buildings are surrounded by gigantic lawns with indigenous ferns and huge coconut trees drop their seeds all around. Large estates have basically small, fully-functional rainforest ecosystems all around them, and even the downtown area has little plazas all over the place with ancient trees and thick bushes hedging them. It’s a constant reminder that man is trying to sprout up out of a crack between the huge ocean and the vast, unending jungle that used to occupy the area. Here, civilization is a weed being crushed or plucked from out of the crack in an otherwise perfect and smooth nature preserve.
All around town, there are many walls separating the roads from hills and from neighborhoods. And on many of the walls, there is really elaborate and beautiful spraypaint art. Contrary to the way it is in the U.S., only a small amount of it is crappy gang signs. Here, there is modern art, wild colored abstract graffiti, and lots of scenes from local culture. Brazilian military scenes, historical events, cultural musical instruments, poetry, capoeira, African gods and goddesses, people, and stuff about Carnaval. In addition, there are very tall hills here rising up to tower above the roads that curve around them. Especially along the coast. Many of the walls are among the earliest things to be built in Salvador. Consequently, they are rugged and dark in color. So to compensate for their simplicity and sometimes ugliness, local artists set thousands of white tiles into the walls in the shapes of seagulls, white silhouettes of people on a black background, fish, turtles, and words like Bahia and Ãe (a local slang word like “cool”). A true feast for the eyes.
The way people interact with each other here is much more intimate than I am used to. Even total strangers, when meeting for the first time, hold each other’s shoulders and make direct eye contact. When men meet women or women meet women, they kiss each other on both sides of the cheeks. They only suspend such intimacy in courtroom or business settings. And it doesn’t matter the age. When I met Fernanda’s grandparents, I hugged and kissed them like we were family. I can only imagine the response I’d get from that in Reno!
The diversity of people here is one of the most amazing things. I’ve seen Brazilians that look just like I do, with long features, blue eyes and blonde hair. Then, in the same restaurant or at the same table, there are authentic first- or second-generation Africans. Plus, the myriad of Cuban-looking, European, Latin American, Indian, and Asian people and everything in between. There are full-blooded Japanese Brazilians here. They look like they just arrived on a plane from Kyoto but they’re born and raised in Salvador. It’s really amazing. All around town, there are artistic paintings of the words “Diversidade Cultural,” or Cultural Diversity. Roughly 75% of the people living in Salvador have African heritage and the blend of cultures and lifestyles here is more than comparable to places like New York or Chicago. A really surprising thing to me is the amount of accident victims, scars, deformities, birth defects and prosthetic or orthopedic devices. Many people have large scars or large burns, or they’ve suffered a major injury and the patch-up surgery is apparent. We truly have gifted surgeons in the States. Only the most heinous of accidents leave hideous scars once our best surgeons have worked their magic. It’s just not the case here. The medicine is about 20 years behind here as far as I can tell. Obviously, the vaccinations are all the same and the toothpaste isn’t made of arsenic or anything weird (they have Colgate and Pantene), but maybe 1 in 5 adults I’ve seen has braces on his or her teeth. It’s much rarer here for children to receive them since only the most recent generation has had the benefit. Very interesting.
A sad reminder of how some of this city is very third world is the high number of poor people. True, there are homeless people in every city in the world, especially in places like Portland and Sun Valley. But here, it’s a big percentage of the people. Some are dirt-poor, with no home, no school, and digging through the garbage in broad daylight or at night when the garbage is taken out. Some are cornered economically, and have been for generations I imagine, and sell cheap wares on the beach or direct traffic for tips only. There are many beggars that stand on the lane dividers at stoplights and knock on the car windows with a pitiful look on their face. It’s just the way it is here, and it doesn’t seem immoral to me at all. It’s a social problem that requires generations to fix and government intervention, and even the mighty United States haven’t fixed it yet. When I see these people begging, it just reminds me of the blessings with which I live every day and encourages me to never sink into mediocrity and poverty.
This place is so very alive that it’s too potent sometimes. Life explodes out of everything here. All the bars are hopping, all the clubs are loud, all the music incites people to dance. Nothing is bland, almost nothing is colorless. It’s very rich and encompasses all the emotions I have. My mind has not been so productive and curious as it is now since I was a young boy soaking up everything for the first time. My friend Andy, with whom I will meet in about two weeks in Chile, told me that traveling becomes an addiction. Now I know what he means. The time spent between trips like this one will seem so easy and so comfortable. I liken it to be like a downhill cruise with a spectacular view after a brutal uphill struggle on a bicycle. Truly amazing. A once in a lifetime experience.