Carnaval 2009

WARNING!! LONG POST!!

After heading to Olinda by mistake, I finally made my way back down to Salvador for carnival. In Salvador I was met by Veronica and was lucky enough to be able to go and stay in the house she was staying in. She was staying with an extended friend of the family who lived really near the centre of town (Pelourinho/Lapa/Campo Grande), in a lovely huge house. We had a bedroom and a bathroom and wardrobe space all to ourselves! Such a nice change for me after quite a long time of backpacking and hostelling. Before carnival started we had a few days in which to sort stuff out: go and collect the souvenirs I had left with her as well as the 11 berimbaus, buy extra suitcases, and even more souvenirs for all you lucky people that got left back home!

I suppose I should explain the terms first before I start telling you all about our carnival adventure. There are basically three ways of doing carnival: with a bloco, in a camarote, or as pipoca. The bloco is basically the float that carries the artist, and you have to pay money to be able to walk within the ropes of the float. Camarote is a sort of balcony set up in buildings and houses all along the circuit, from which you get to safely watch the carnival parade go by. You also have to pay for these and the price varies depending on what is included: food, drink, massages etc. Pipoca is the last option and is free. Pipoca means popcorn and basically entails going out and following the crowd and the blocos but on the side, outside of the safety of the ropes. It is supposedly the most dangerous form of going out in carnival too, since it is free it is more available to all the people who cannot afford blocos or camarote (and these are quite expensive!). Also, there are three main carnival circuits: Dodo, Osmar, and Batatinho. Dodo is the circuit from Barra to Ondina which is on the seafront ; Osmar is the circuit in Campo Grande which is the in the centre of the city , and Batatinha remains in the Pelourinho. I hoep this helps to clarify a few things.

Carnival started on the Thursday the 19th, and so out we went to our first night. We had been told that on the first night there was a Mascarade bloco which was for free if you came in disguise, and that a friend of Veronica's would be joining this bloco and we should go and meet her there. So we pulled our costumes together and set off around midnight to go to Barra. We set off on foot from where we were staying, hoping to walk in the general direction of Barra and catch a taxi from the city centre. We had forgotten that there was also a whole parade going on in Campo Grande though and hit it on full swing. It was a bit scary as we were totally unprepared for this and found ourselves going AGAINST the crowd, with people pushing and shoving us all over, and it was genuinely quite hard to make any progress. Veronica lost her wig within seconds and we had to keep a tight grip on each other so as not to lose each other. We also had to keep on dodging the groping hands from the horrible men, who seem to think that carnival is an excuse to behave despicably and treat all women like objects. Eventually we made it to Barra in one piece, and tried to find the bloco we were meant to follow. It was lead by Magareth Menezes, and we did find it eventually and joined in. Inside the bloco was absolutely insane, it was full to the brim of people who were pushing, shoving and jumping around. The atmosphere was definitely better than that on the street in Campo Grande, but it was still quite an effort to try and walk with the bloco and so in the end we left it and went and sat on the edge and watched the other artists go by. (More details in another post I have decided).

Day 2: We headed out a bit earlier and a bit wiser this time and decided not to go back and try and walk through Campo Grande as that was as stupid idea. We headed back out to Barra and this time decided to stay safe and sit on the side of the road in order to watch the circuit go by as we had done the night before. It demands less energy and means you can still enjoy yourself and see bits of the artists as they go by. Our main attraction that night was seeing Marianne de Castro go by. She stopped in front of Daniela Mercury's camarote which is where we were sitting, and it was great because Daniela came out and sang a few songs with her. We got to join in and dance in the crowd and generally had a much better night that the one before, partly due to being more prepared. It rained on day 2 and we got a bit wet, but it was actually fun being out there and dancing in the rain and getting wet. The rain didn't last for long and it was just enough to be refreshing, as carnival was extremely hot! Not only the temperature, but mainly the crowds and crowds of people.

Day 3: On day 3 we went out dancing with the local Afro group Male Debale. Veronica had been doing a dance course in Salvador, and her dance teacher who worked closely with this group, had suggested that she go out dancing with them for carnival. Since she was up for it she put my name down too, and that is how we ended up going to dance in Afro bloco in the Salvador carnival 2009! In the morning we went to pick up our costumes from the costume factory which sat on the roof of someone's house in the middle of the favela, where 5 people had single handedly made all the costumes for the show. In the evening we went to our meeting point in Campo Grande and waited for ages. Now as mentioned above, the Campo Grande circuit is a little bit tougher than the one down in Barra. In fact it has a reputation as being a bit more dangerous. This is because for a start it is situated in the city centre, and therefore the streets are much narrower which makes the whole situation much more crowded. It is also just a bit more rough in general. Anyway, we started out with the bloco and made our grand departure, though the dancing fell through pretty early on as it was hard to keep everyone in organised lines in order for us to dance. Unfortunately the cordeiros (the people who hold the ropes around the blocos) were not very fussed about their jobs either and so they let lots of random people into the bloco who weren't supposed to be there. Gringos, spectators, people walking through the bloco all the time...We made slow progress. Also on this night it rained, and not just a brief shower. It rained pretty full on for at least half an hour if not longer, and we just had to continue marching on. At first it was fun, but then we got truly soaked and I started worrying about my camera which I hadn't thought to protect. On this circuit we also had to avoid a lot of fights. This is the main danger during carnival: running away from a fight. It is very easy to end up in the middle of one and one also has to be careful to avoid the police as they are a bit like the CRS in France and are bloody violent no matter who you are!! So on our circuit with Campo Grande we had to make a quick escape from several fights and in fact at one point the whole thing just went pear shaped. I saw a scuffle on the side and the police trying to arrest someone, and then I just saw cans flying everywhere and a huge jumble of people right within the bloco. It was a bit sad that the circuit had to be tainted by fights, but that is the reality of the carnival I suppose...Anyway we made it safely to the end of the circuit and did the WHOLE thing! Then we stayed on a little longer in order to watch Ile Aye come out. To be honest by this time I was so tired and aggravated by the crowd I didn't really care who was coming out, but I stayed on the none the less, and eventually we went home.

Day 4: we ended up having a quiet day after being so exhausted from our previous day in Campo Grande. We decided to go and check out what was going on in the pelourinho but unfortunately it rained for most of the time we were there and we just stayed sheltered under a roof. Eventually we saw an internet cafe was still open and migrated in there as we had been having problems with the computer at home and both needed to get some stuff done on the internet. We danced around a bit on the square outside the internet cafe where the was some live samba music going on but ended up going home quite early to collapse into bed!

Day 5: was the day of our bloco. We had decided to go out with Daniela Mercury as she was much cheaper than some of the more famous artists and was still someone we knew and whose music we trusted. We did really well on that day, as we stayed out on the streets for more than 12 hours. We had to sell a shirt for the bloco that we had extra as a friend of Veronica's was meant to come and couldn't in the end. So we left the house early, arrived at 2pm in Barra and attempted to sell the shirt. Lukcily we were successful and got to have a bit of a sit down before we went running off to see Ivete Sangalo start at 16h30. I am a massive fan of Ivete's partly due to Veronica and so was well excited about seeing her. We got there early or rather, they were running late and so we got to see Claudia Leitte first sing a bit of her repertoire. Finally, Ivete came out and sang her songs, and it was so much fun! She is so famous that the whole crowd knew the words to all her songs, and so everyone was sining along and jumping up and down and it was such a great atmosphere. Also, it was daylight which meant that we got to see her a bit better than normal and take some good pictures. We did really well as we even followed Ivete as pipoca for a bit in order to get a bit more of her show. I was so proud of us for doing that! After her we just biding our time until our own bloco went out, which ended up being quite a long time. Finally we joined our bloco and got to experience the madness of going out in the crowd within the ropes. It was good fun though exhausting as we did the whole of the Barra Ondina circuit and had been out since 2pm until 2am, so we were exhausted by the end of it and I could hardly walk anymore!! Daniela put on a good show though, and at one point along the way we saw Gilberto Gil in his camarote and so she sang with him, which was nice. Anyway we made it to the end of the circuit and of the day all in one and decided we were real warriors of the carnival!

Day 6: Last day of the carnival and we ended up in it by mistake. We had set out during the afternoon to go for a quiet wander around in the pelourinho. On our way there we realised the carnival was still going on but somehow this didn't register in our brains and so we continued to make our way into the pelourinho. By the time we were done with whatever we were doing though, we hit the carnival full blast! The filhos de Ghandi were going out on a procession (which actually looked really cool) and Ivete was following really close behind. The crowds were massive and there we were in flip flops, skirts and with handbags. There was no way we were going to get through so instead we just stayed there and watched Ivete go by a second time, and finally managed to find a less crowded shortcut way home. Once we had made it through our unexpected carnival we got ready and went out again down to Barra. This was our last and the last day of carnival, and we stayed out there until we got to see Chiclete com Banana, another massively famous group in the region. We were a bit worried as we had heard that their pipoca was the roughest that came, particularly when we saw them coming along rather unexpectedly and had no idea where to go and sit. Preferably out of the crowd, except that it was moving quite fast, and it was full of dodgy looking people all over the place!! We did manage to find a place to sit though, and in fact they were moving so fast that we even managed to follow them as pipoca (far behind the main crowd) all the way until our exit to go home. And that is how the carnival ended for us! I will write more facts about carnival in a seperate post as this one is already very long!