First experiences in Salvador

Hey dear people,

Due to some requests of english-speaking friends, this blog will be in English. :) Hopefully, the amount of grammar mistakes will stay the same as in the last blog. I have to admit that my head explodes from time to time because of the switching between Dutch, English and kind-of-portuguese. My kind-of-portuguese starts to feel like a new Brazilian dialect. Sometimes (OK, to often) it is just pointing with some words like 'how', 'how much' and 'where' and other times it is really poetic, like 'my nose already told me the food was bad' because you don't know the verb 'smelling' in portuguese. But everyone teaches me lots of things so hopefully I get better at it. :)

The 3rd day, a Zwiss women who stayed at the same house as me for holidays took me to Salvador. We did lots of shopping and lots of pictures, and I felt like a real tourist. (My 'profile picture' on this side, together with my 'omslagfoto' on facebook are taken that day). But even if I'm a tourist, and a social scientist (although I try to be, for my studies sake), the capoeirista in me is always the one that causes the surprises.

I was in a square in Pelorinho, the down-town centre of Salvador, and there was a capoeira-roda. Although I had my doubts, I started to play along (they threw me on the ground but that is expected in Salvador, I think). The Mestre was chatting and asking where we were from, and what we were doing in Pelorinho. So we explained of the holidays and my intention to do research for the police. He was (for some non-identified reason) really enthusiastic about my research, and called a student from the other side of the street that was working for the military police. (In Brazil, you have 3 types of police, the civil police, the military police and the state police. The military police is 'famous' for the 'clean wiping-projects' of the Favelas and the excessive use of force. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_police#Brazil if you are interested).

However, this guy was from the 'art devision of the military police'. Yes. The art division, they have an art division. In Brazil it is apparently very normal that the police carries out extra functions except controlling; like doing art projects with the community, give lessons in drug preventions and they even have a military police band! (I talked to the trombonist the second day I came there). The man invited me to come back the next monday at 10 o'clock. But I will blog about that later. :)

tchau amigos! :) Até mais!