Cultural Exchange

Part of the Cross Cultural Solutions program is cultural exchange, we bring our knowledge and skills to the local community and at the same time learn about the culture in our host country.

The mornings are spent at our volunteer placements and in the afternoon CCS offers cultural programs. We have Portuguese lessons twice per week with Tatiana, a local language teacher.

On Monday evenings, we have Capoeira and Samba classes with Beto, one of the local guys working at the house. He is part of the Capoeira group ‘Ginga Mundo’ in Salvador. Capoeira is a combination of martial arts, sports and music and was initially created by descendants of African slaves around the 16^th century.

Beto gave us all a Capoeira name and taught us some of the basic steps and movements of Capoeira. Ginga is the basic step of Capoeira. While teaching us some Samba, he kept saying ‘mushy mushy bum bum’, that’s his way of saying shake your booty.

 Every Tuesday afternoon, Bruno, a local with blue eyes which is very rare in this part of Brazil, takes us around parts of the city. Our first city tour was through Pelourinho, Salvador’s famous old town built by the Portuguese which is now an UNESCO world heritage site. Although Pelourinho is very touristy it is a wonderful place to visit. The cobble stone streets are lined with colorful houses that have been restored and now house restaurants, small hotels, shops, theatres and museums. We also visited the Pierre Verger exhibition; he was a photographer who spent a lot of time documenting Candomblé ceremonies in the 1950’s. Pelourinho is great on Tuesday evenings as there are small bands playing everywhere in the neighborhood. 

This week Bruno took us through São Cateano, one of Salvador’s favela. We also stopped at a tile artist’s house in the Ribeiro neighborhood; his name is Prentice and all of his tiles are hand-painted and depict Bahian life. After a short stop at the oldest ice cream shop where we tried peanut ice cream we visited the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim, which is the most famous church in Salvador and is famous for its power to effect miraculous healing cures. There is a shrine inside the church with all sorts of plastic body parts such as arms, legs and heads, put there by people who got cured of their ailments. Thousands of colorful Bonfim wish ribbons are tied to the iron fence outside the church.

Professor Fred comes one afternoon per week and teaches us Brazilian history. He is a wonderful character born to a Lebanese father and Negro Brazilian mother (in Brazil, black people are called Negroes and it is not an insult). He traveled around the world for 10 years without any money when he was in his 20’s and he had some interesting stories to share with us.