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(note: this is one of my pre-scheduled posts set to appear at 5:00am EST each morning I am in a port city. I will post follow-up information about each trip once I am able to get back on the computer.)
Today I woke up, ate breakfast and then went back to sleep until I had to get up around 11:30 am. At noon, I had to meet up with the people going on the Global Nomads Group event so about 14 people in total waited outside the ship, waiting for one of the Global Nomads people to show up. The place where we were going was about a half an hour from the ship so Mark had said the other day to expect to pay about $20 per person total, but that we would have to negotiate with the cab drivers to take us to the place, wait for us a few hours and then to take us back. The one professor (Rocky) who was taking some students collected everyone's money and then Ben eventually showed up to tell us he had three taxis that were going to take us to the place. Rocky and Ben negotiated a price with the taxis drivers and then we all loaded into the taxis. Upon getting to the candomblé temple, Mark, Joanna, Mary (the religion professor), a translator and some of the candomblé heads were sitting in front of a camera set-up, trying to see if the connections were working with the groups in the other places. We took our shoes off, entered the temple and then took a seat and watched as they began.
Essentially, Mark served as a moderator and began by introducing where they were and giving a brief description of the Candomblé religion. He then introduced the video segment that Joanna had edited the night before and Mary (the religion professor) spoke a bit about what the students back in the States were seeing in the video. From there, Mark asked a high school (I think there were three schools in general on this live broadcast) to ask a question of the Candomblé people and this type of question and answer session lasted for about an hour with, of course, the translator doing a lot of work.
It was a neat concept in general to watch the teleconference and it seems like the Global Nomads Group is really doing important work in helping facilitate understanding and interaction between cultures. I think all of their broadcasts on this trip relate to religions around the world and I know they are doing three live broadcasts in each port. Basically, Mark, Ben and Joanna work all the way through each port so they don't get to go on any of the field trips being offered by Semester at Sea, but they don't seem to mind it much.
After the live broadcast, the head Candomblé guy asked us if we had any questions. A girl who was about 10 years old came out and offered us a platter of these plum-type fruits and one of the Candomblé women explained the various structures on the property. There was a tree in the backyard area that was the holy tree and there were also dead bird parts hanging on different house-type structures which were homes of the orixas (essentially there are about 20 or so orixas which are deities). Each house structure is supposed to be home of a deity and in Candomblé, they make offerings to them. Each orixa represents a different idea - for example, one of them is an orixa representing peace, another is mischevious, etc).
I went back into the temple area after taking some photos in the backyard area of the property and then sat with Shawn (the wife of Rocky) and their 8-month-old son Ryder. Ryder is the most content baby I have ever seen. He's extremely social and every time I have seen him on the ship, he is constantly smiling and clapping and looking at people who are interacting with him. Shawn said that he just started teething and crawling in the last two weeks, but given the discomfort of teething, Ryder still seemed to be totally chill and happy as could be.
Ryder (his dad is another professor on the ship) and his mom Shawn in a Candomblé temple in Salvador, Brazil
Ryder (his dad is another professor on the ship) in a Candomblé temple in Salvador, Brazil
We headed back to the ship and I arrived back in my room around 4:00 pm. I made a quick call home and talked to my dad for about five minutes to tell him I was back on the ship and that we were leaving for South Africa tonight. As I'm writing this it is about 5:30 pm, so I am going to try to upload some photos from yesterday and today in a little while and then I'll go eat dinner. We have a faculty meeting tonight at 9:00 pm (as we always will following a port) so that's all that's on the agenda for me tonight.
The ship is scheduled to depart at 2300 from Salvador, Brazil.
NEXT DESTINATION: Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday, March 2, 2007, at 0800.
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