8. THE CITY TREMBLES
say that when an aircraft flies over Bay shakes. They say that many roads that cross in this incomprehensible world, there is no poetry more beautiful than that which emanates from his basement, which can still be heard, say, old drums with the slaves cried to their gods Orixás. That the people's resistance to the misery produced an opening in the souls of those who tread the sand. Salvador de Bahia de Todos Santos, a land to love or to hate, a land, in either case, to learn of the uncomfortable pleasure of humility.
I think it was the first night in Salvador when my conscience had finished the last yawning. I left the backpack on a small pension from Pelourinho, the neighborhood with more havaianas per square meter of the northern half of Brazil, when the sun is still pressed and ignoring, of course, the accumulated fatigue after 30 hours bus ride from hell.
The drums were moviesen the walls are like paper and discussions of the tourists, who walked these streets exalted color built when Amerigo Vespucci, who had no hair fool, fell in love with these costs in the sixteenth century, echoed in my head, shattering any chance to rest a few minutes. So, the only other to go out and see what happened.
I have a theory that when you travel with the intention sympathetic to popular culture, humility, a low budget and the receptive heart, one can not draw more than the company of the gods. In this case was backpacking the hippie Orixá journalist, who doted on me and guiding me. And we put consciousness and playfulness Alma and me on a street of bars in which African Americans, fortunately, the only foreign, and whether the only white, we could. And I say luck and white with the intention presumably away from "black picture", but telling you that in a neighborhood known as Heritage, find a real place was not so obvious.
And if we shed body odor travelers "scabs" was recognized a few meters away from our peers, we begin with a dynamic of friendship with the artists / musicians / vendors ends (street or indigenous) in Latin America that would last the remaining six months of travel. And with them, following our infallible intuition, we moved to the house of Zoid (of sperm). We thus, by chance or fate, the first class district of Brazil, on top of Lake Tororó.
infallible intuition, but the first moment of tension, fear and sadness simultaneously arrived at that way. When night falls, life becomes Salvador. But it becomes like Rio de Janeiro, Bogota and Quito, the cruelty of poverty tremble night there as when an airplane passes overhead. The doors are locked with locks, windows are closed, families are hidden from consciousness and the music stops. Looks dangerous misery among people who go out to look, among the debris of the day, something that sustains and there in the moonlight, on busy streets (almost like when it's sunny) for the most lost of the city, accompanied of local friends new acquaintances, I dropped the first tears of the trip.
They stopped to decide, at a time when the streets are divided, whether it was safe to go with us for the shortest route and in what they ate something, adults and children under the influence of the adhesive, the crack and hungry approached me curious. I remember a man, half naked and lost, than trying to sell, convinced a dead pigeon. And touch is really quite touching, was a drastic change of mentality and aggressive and have believed. The decision fell in favor of the short road and "dangerous." Took air, and we looked at Alma. This night my concept of beauty and my struggle for the "voluntary poverty" became adults.
