Mothers and sons

A window opens when you learn the vernacular and sacred languages of a new culture. Homey’s are more than just friends. Vale la Pena has a significance that embraces the church. Understanding the subtleties of cheeky, sleazy, funk and F-I-N-E give you a new credibility as an interpreter of your borrowed language. Rituals bespeak the essential nature of the hosts who carve the turkey and divide trimmings, jump brooms, dance limbo and cook Caruru for twin saints.

Being brought into the ritual experience marks the crossing of a cultural crossroad or hurdle. Cooking with Mae Stella at her Terreiro in Itaparica or living briefly at Terreiro São Bento made me turn a corner and pay a different kind of attention to the experience of Candomble. Listening to neighbors and friends coax and cajole the seven little children, Os Seite Meninos to eat their Caruru at a Festa de São Cosme e São Damião had a resonance that forded centuries. That this cultural retention was followed by Latin prayer songs with handclapped and acapella accompaniments’ for a female only Samba de Roda identified the roots of Brazilian culture.

Another window opened today. The ritual was both universal and unique. Unfortunately it was not an experience I had sought out. Junior, aka Arroz the key player in the quintet of Capoeira teenagers who had befriended my group of fellows, lost his mother unexpectedly yesterday. She was just 35-ish. He is fifteen or sixteen. I learned of her passing at dinner time last night.

Here as everywhere a medical certificate is required before the home based vigil can begin with family and friends until the early morning. The untreated body is placed in a simple wooden casket. Just before ten, friends and neighbors gathered taking turns to carry the casket through the town streets, acknowledging their loss to the community and winding up at the cemetery, the highest point in town. The most beautiful view, or jumping off spot. A simple stone chapel, with few adornments save a small wrought iron cross and a cast icon of a skull and cross bones set into the door lintel, provided a brief stopping place.

The coffin was placed on a low table and the congregants randomly sang and shouted cacophonous personal wishes and prayers for the departed. The set screws were tightly secured and we left there as quickly as we came. The townsmen carefully placed the box in the prepared grave, lowering her with long iron rods whose hooks grasped the casket handles. Everyone took the universal handfull of dirt before the men took turns with the shovel. No one was dressed in finery. No priest was present. I am sure that in some circumstances a Mass can and does occur.

Afterwards we began the descent back towards the family home. The people who were too unnerved to enter the cemetery, those standing just outside of the iron gates, rushed forward, embracing the clan and offering their condolences. Most of the remaining people return to their daily chores and activities. Children and friends did not miss school. Whoever could have easily come did. I assume that others not in attendance had participated in the Vigilia the night before.

The dearest of friends and blood relations returned to the home to help begin the seven days mourning. If the family has means, professional mourners will be secured to wail in front of the house. Junior’s family could barely afford to buy flowers. They live as caretakers on an Itaparica upper middle class compound for part time residents.

Before and after the funeral I tried my best to console Junior. Without any forewarning I viscerally recalled my own mother’s passing. In solidarity and in empathy with his situation we hugged each other closely and sobbed together. I was stung by the inequities of our situation. My mom had lived a long and fruitful life. I was not a teenager when she passed. Junior was bereft of comprehension. He often rose out of his sobbing looking for something, an answer or reason. Spent with grief that probably connotes his first and greatest loss, he seemed to beg for that breezy joy I felt on meeting him.

He is such a good young man in the making I know he must be caught in a crisis of faith. Junior and his family live sharing what little they have with the world around them.

I met his mother only one time. She was a sweet and comely woman. They helped me pick herbs, Mastucies, to make a poultice for a twisted ankle that I had gotten running for a bus and finding a pothole. She insisted that I take other herbs, manjerico, hortelâ, etc., for cooking, instructing me how I could lay the cuentro inside of a whole fish, then picking her best Mamão-Papaya, eyeing a Cacao for later. She told him to run in and get a small bag for the baby Berengela's, sleek purple-black eggplants and a few tomatoes. Why him? I have only seen him do good selfless work.

What is this test for? This profound sea change, a boy losing his mom before he becomes a man will inform his whole life. Often these tragedies will stymie his growth, or lead him down a path of destruction. I was and am comforted to know that Omara, his Capoeira teacher and coach was present and will continue to inform and encourage him. Augusto has always had him under his wing as well. I am not one to pray, but in that odd chapel I too sent my hopes forward wanting the best for one of the most deserving people I have met in years.

Rahul Chandra and Omara

We got to Sacatar and I wanted to crawl up a rabbit hole. I ran through some email, splashed water on my face and changed my shirt before we split for the Capoeira de Roda-Rahul show. Everyone else was far ahead of us. I couldn’t make it happen quickly. We had been up late for a few nights consecutively. I was not my own master right now. I also did not need to see the youngsters that perform. Three to nine year olds always play Capoeira between 5:30 and 7:30 PM.

We arrived just as Omara was announcing Rahul. As she introduced him, she and an assistant brought out first two, then three, then four more votive candles, mostly all already burning. They set them down in clusters, somehow random and intended. The lights were dimmed just as Rahul started his Tambour, the “Instant Karma” machine as Augusto called it. It set out a measured beat and pitch common to aid Sitar and Raga players who need to insure that they stay in tune and in time. The sleigh bell cuffs clanked as Rahul fastened them to his calves in the dark.


He began to speak, asking me to translate. I was burnt, not the time for me to think clearly in Portuguese. This had become our pattern, so I obliged him. He explained that Bangladesh was a country of rivers. Many, many songs were boatmen’s songs written and sung while working the waters. He picked up his flute, quickly found his stride with a haunting melody. Several songs later he put down his flute and sang acapella.


One of his first pieces was his caged bird song. Our ribs are a metaphor for a cage holding the bird of our soul. Do we hold it, controlling it with our will power? Or, are we a slave to its wants, fooling ourselves with fantasies of mindfulness? In the end, if the bird cannot live freely it, and our soul dies. He ended with a somber song of Chandra, a love story of unrequited; no a love of the soul not carnal desires. Periodically he stamped his feet adding the bell chimes as the story ebbed and ran forward, resolving itself in a tender and oblique way.


Now, Rahul’s chest was heaving and he was sobbing uncontrollably. Across the room, Omara the thoughtful, tender and disciplined teacher/coach was quietly crying herself. Three times they embraced, before he removed his anklets and strapped them to her legs. He stopped singing briefly to indicate that now she would join him on his road of passion and introspection. It was all more than many of the teens were prepared for. They had really come to see the tweens and late teenagers perform. A few hissed and giggled with adolescent emotions, misplaced and confused.



They were not any less caught up in their raging hormones than Omara and Rahul who had made a profound connection without having a shared verbal language. Inadvertently they had fallen into some kind of sacred love with each other. When the lights came up, the students passed out popcorn and Rahul quickly gathered his things and quickly went back to Sacatar. Now his emotions seemed less angelic, more down to earth and definitely outside of his cultural orientation. It seemed like he was not prepared for the reality he had unleashed on himself and Omara.