Stuck in Bahia

I had a good job in Rio de Janeiro working for an international aid organization for the past five years, but they restructured and I was laid off in December. Unemployment compensation is low in Brazil, but you also get a big lump sum of cash equal to around 7% of your total earnings at the former employer. Since my girlfriend and I first met while drinking tequila, I invited her on a holiday in Mexico. She suggested that I try to hold onto my money and that we could have as much fun traveling up to Northeastern Brazil in Bahia state and stay with her relatives. One thing led to another and I ended up getting a five-day ride from her truck-driving, whore-mongering uncle to a little town called Jandaira, where her brother, a construction worker, lives.

I was warmly welcomed and enjoying my stay there, when the state military police went on strike due to a breakdown in negotiations with governor Jaques Wagner over their notoriously low salaries and poor working conditions. Leaders of this movement were recently arrested and the strikes have been somewhat quelled, but before this happened around 200 police officers occupied the state assembly building with their families. The army was sent in to surround them and to protect the rich neighborhoods in the state capital of Salvador, leaving the rest of the city and state completely vulnerable. Some people speculated that the striking police themselves might have been behind the wave of violence but in any case the ensuing standoff resulted in 129 deaths in less than a week, along with lootings, bank robberies, and all kinds of other crimes. Regardless of what was causing all of this, after a post office and bank were robbed in the neighboring town of Rio Real, the bank, post office, and all local businesses shut down in Jandaira and the inter-city bus service stopped running. I was stuck. On the positive side, I was invited to a barbecue at the local swimming hole.

After several hours of false starts, a group of us started carrying things down to the pond, which sits in a little valley below the town, presumably out of reach from farm animals and sewage. Ronaldo handed me a machete. Ze Pedro pulled up on his 1970 Barra Circular bicycle with a cooler full of beer,  his wife carrying a bucket full of mixed beans, dried beef, and cassava flour called feijão tropeiro. As we arrived, children were already splashing around in the murky pond.

It was 9 AM and there were already people standing around, drinking. I was handed a can of beer and a plastic cup full of scotch.  Ze Pedro hacked away at branches with a machete and soon, with the help of some plastic bags, a fire burnt away with two Y-branches supporting a grill full of chicken feet.

“Hey, Buscopan,” Ze Pedro said, referring to my new nickname, a popular cure-all painkiller, “Remember this fulano here? You were playing guitar and singing with him the other night.” I, in fact, did not remember this. “You look like Curtchy Kobainy, that guy from Nirvana,” my mystery guitar partner said. “I mean, you are fatter than him. But anyway I love rock. I used to be crazy about Megadeath, that band that broke off from Metallica after that fist fight. What was his name again? But anyway, I stopped listening to them when I started skateboarding and got into technotronic--” He yelled at a teenage son, “Boy! Go up to our house and get my guitar. And bring the horse back with you.” He turned back to me, “It`s a beautiful horse. Calm. You can take it for a ride if you want.”

Two teenagers waded out into the marshy end of the pond with a 30-foot-wide net and staked it into the ground. There were alligators back there, apparently, but since they’re considered good eating around here they never get that big. Two people showed up on a 100cc two-stroke Honda with a drum and a tambourine. The boy arrived on the horse, carrying the guitar. He dismounted and a little kid in wet underwear jumped up and started riding around, breaking out in tears 15 minutes later when he couldn`t figure out how to get off the thing.

Soon there was a jam session going, with samba, romantic music, Brazilian rock, and Bahian Pagode. Ze Pedro came up and said, “Let me show you how to eat a chicken head, Buscopan. The first thing you have to do is rip off the beak.”

Ronaldo offered to show me a house that is being sold for $6,000. I jumped on the back of his 1984 Honda. The seat was broken and sagging down, and there was nothing but a bunch of rust and sharp broken metal to hold onto. As he inched up the pothole-ridden dirt path it popped into a wheelie and I slid off, burning my calf on the tailpipe. “Fuck it,” I said, “I’ll meet you at the top.”

When we returned I went for a swim. The boys were now pulling the net out of the water. I followed them over to the barbecue, where I see a big tainha and a half dozen piranha. This became a subject of conversation: Nobody knew that there were piranhas in this pond. I looked over and it was still full of kids splashing around. Apparently, I learned, if they haven`t bitten anyone yet it won’t happen unless a women who’s menstruating or anyone else who’s bleeding goes in there.

I looked over at a tree where the machete I carried is sticking next to two chicken hearts, some kind of Macumba magic ritual or something. The drummers were now playing Macumba music. I asked about the hearts and Ze Pedro said, “We can throw them on the grill if you want.” Next thing I knew I was handed a perfectly cooked piranha and a chicken heart, and the drinking continued, in the Brazilian tradition of trying to find a bright side to any kind of calamity.

I ended up getting out of there in the back of a pick-up truck the following morning, traveling over the state line into Sergipe. Today, under public pressure to guarantee safety in Salvador for the upcoming Carnaval, the strike ended in 14 counties but is still going in more than 450 others.