Cachoeira, a waterfall

Last Saturday began the Festa de Ajuda in Cachoeira, Bahia, my current town and love. I woke up at 12 am Saturday to watch the parade begin outside my window with a band and about 100 people running around the town parade (carnaval) style. Every day since, at 4pm, there is another, for lack of a better word, parade, that starts by my pousada, and circles the city, adding people as it snakes around. When it ends at one of the city plazas, there is a beautiful sweaty odor and usually a bloody nose because of some overly-earnest elbow dancing. Each day has a different band, represented by colored t-shirts that are from their neighborhood association. Monday was a parade of Bahianas--traditionally dressed Afro-descendants.




I didn't sleep last night because there was samba from 10 pm until 5 am and I couldn't find a good enough excuse not to participate. At 5am, the "real" party (climax of the week) began with bell ringing, parade gathering and this time, halloween-like dress for the hundreds of participants. Vendors of beer, water, and coke ran down the hill with their carts along with the crowd and I ion't get my foot run over, but I did get a close-up of a real avatar. Real, I tell you. Just look how believable the nose is.

As an added benefit for this lovely day, my American classmate surprise-visited me last night. I returned to my hostel to her sleeping in my room. Thank God for small towns where the question, "at which hostel is the American named Rachel staying?" works better than an address.

And what's more...today was a culinary delicacy. Returned to my pousada at 7 am to guayaba juice, bread, cooked bananas and an egg fried just right. Ate acai for lunch for only 4 reais (What’s up OB Smoothie, What’s up?) and then mid-afternoon snacked on marisoba (I think it's pork. It's really salty and looks like algae). I had two cups of sugar cane juice (squeezed in front of my happy nose...smells like sunshine to me) and a good cup of coffee (in a cute little cup).



Although it's hard to study with constant firecrackers and bell ringing and pagôge-music-from-cars playing, I have learned, as they say here in the rural areas, a "mouthful". Observing at CAPS, the health center for people with mental illnesses, I have fallen in love with my research topic and want to give my whole self to writing my findings in understandable Portuguese. On Friday, we had a "beauty salon" and spent the whole day talking about self-esteem and looking at ourselves in the mirror and asking, "mirror, is there anyone in the world more beautiful than me?" And I cleaned and polished nails, curled hair and laughed hard, hard, hard.