Tuesday the culture class was over gender in Brazilian society. A guest professor came in to direct the discussion and she started by having us comment on things that we had observed thus far. The commentaries went something like this:
-Brazilian guys are not subtle about checking you out. They will scan you up and down, blow kisses, and cat call shamelessly. You can observe this behavior even by boys of 7-8 years-old that haven’t even matured sexually. It is very much a societal-macho phenomena that is taught from childhood.
-If you are a girl walking on the street, don’t make eye-contact with any guys. Making eye contact means that you are giving them permission to approach you. Walk with your eyes down and don’t smile at strangers!
-Brazilian women are obsessed with being beautiful and skinny. They always dress to impress. I’ve yet to see a Brazilian that didn’t live on the street that didn’t have her nails done. The country has more plastic surgeries than any other country in the world.
-Many of the host moms will encourage their student to go out, flirt, and make-out with Brazilians they meet. Kissing is seen as fun and harmless. You have someone that you’re dating in the
-Women here have low-income jobs. You never see a man on the street selling acarajé or doing housework.
After we finished discussing our observations, the professor gave us some more background information and statistics about gender inequalities.
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-There is a saying here that a man who is a man doesn’t cry. He doesn’t eat honey; he eats the bee. Parents will start out their son drinking at 7-8 years old because being able to drink is an important sign of masculinity.
-The average male has his first sexual relation at 13 years and the average girl at 14.5 years.
-There is a phenomenon called the wife-swap where men will divorce their wives and marry women ~15 years younger than him in the second marriage and ~25 years younger in the third marriage. Middle-aged woman always marry me older than them for several reasons, one being demographic. The ratio of males to females is 49:51 and a huge chunk of the male population dies between 18-35 years from risky behavior, leaving older women with few available males to choose from.
It was a fascinating discussion. I may take a class from the same professor during the full semester here to learn more.
Wednesday the class was over music with another guest professor. He was a practitioner of candomblé so he has a very spiritual relationship with the music. He explained to 
us about the different Indian, Portuguese, and African influences in the music. For example, the Indians viewed music as communal with the power to cure and vital to every part of life. The Europeans, in contract, had a much more individualistic view of music. Music belongs in the church and any talk about using it to heal is witchcraft and nonsense. The Africans brought drums, syncopation, and the same reverence for music seen by the Indians. The blend of the three made the Potuguese language and music today. If you have ever heard it spoken, Portuguese is a melodic language- it is a song in itself.
When the negros first came as slaves they didn’t have any instruments so using the body to produce noise (i.e. clapping, stompping, etc.) became fundamental to capoeira and candomblé. Next voice was added, followed by rhythm (drums), melody, harmony, and dance. We had a very interactive class and by the end we were all singing, dancing, drumming and harmonizing. We finished off the class by listening to some CDs that demonstrated the progression of Brazilian music.
Right after the culture class I went to the federal police to register with them (you are required to register if you stay in the country longer than 90 days). It took about 2.5 hours to get through the line, process my paperwork, and fingerprint me.
That afternoon after my language class we went to a Balé Foclórico in Pelorinho. (www.balefolcloricodabahia.com.br) According to the brochure it is the folk dance company that the New York Times considers to be the best in the world, and I must admit that I thought that it was incredible. They performed the traditional dances of the Orixás, a fire dane, the fishermen’s dance, maculelê, capoeira, and samba de roda. I would have enjoyed it as it was, but having studying most of the dances before I found it particularly interesting.
Today in culture we had class over the religions of
-9,837,905 catholics
-1,516,404 evangelicals
-96,303 spiritualists
-11,590 umbanda and candomblé
-1,707 jews
-18,499 of oriental religions
The point being that candomblé followers are a very small portion of the population but it has a strong presence in the city due to its ethnic importance.
He also told us that people change religions frequently here and practicing more than one is very common (i.e. Catholicism and candomblé; spiritualism and candomblé/Catholicism).
I don’t know much about spiritualism but he said that what he witnessed studying it literally kept him awake at night. He saw a doctor put his finger behind the eye of a person, perform surgery with scissors, and even perform heart surgery. No sterilization was performed and he never saw blood spilled. There is a
house near the CIEE center and if I get brave I may have to see for myself.
Instead of having the normal 4 hour language class, we went on a tour the candomblé community. It was pretty dry and I can’t say that I got too much out of it. It was at the same place that we watched the ceremony. We toured a “museum” but there wasn’t much to see and the oldest artifacts that had were orange peels. Yep, orange peels. I did meet some adorable children however that posed so that I could take their picture and got to try some traditional food. Oh! I also saw chicken feet and other animal parts hanging on a porch as sacrifices to an orixá.
Tomorrow Bethany and I are planning to do a little shopping and stop by a travel agency to find out how much it would cost us to go to
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