CARNAVAL TIME

Carnaval eats people. Everyone and everything is consumed in its path.

Carnaval itself is a week of more or less round the clock partying which is practically impossible to avoid. But in reality, Carnaval madness consumes at least a month of the year. Trying to get things done, you lose track of the amount of times you are told things are somehow more complicated (or expensive, or just plain impossible) “because it’s Carnaval”. Beforehand, there’s a fervour of preparation, rehearsals and building, then you have your week of hedonism, then following that, many people choose to take another 5 days holiday to recover. There’s something I really admire about a culture which claims the right, and then makes such an effort, to throw such a huge great motherfucker of a party for no discernable reason.

Where we were staying in Salvador, in Barra, was directly in the line of one of the (three) major Carnaval routes through the city. For this reason, and because, since our Robbery Number 1 we’d been rather jumpy and tense, we reneged on the game of let’s-see-how-many-backpackers-we-can-squash-into-this-ridiculously-overpriced-apartment and went to stay for a few days with the family of my Capoeira mestre, Negao, forty minutes down the beach in Itapua, where we attempted to relax and get our bottle back.

One evening in Itapua we were invited for a couple of beers by Val, who ran one of the (mercifully few) barracas on the quiet beach. A genuinely lovely guy, he and his friends were getting ready to take the bus into town to do the Carnaval thing, and invited us to go with them. A tempting offer, particularly as we’d been in their company at least a couple of hours and there was no sign of the ‘where’s your namorado’ conversation transpiring. (We’ve had a lot of practice at the where’s-your-namorado conversation, and must say that our Portuguese is possibly at its most fluent following this now tiresomely-rehearsed script, which always runs the same way. We’ve even worked out how to short circuit it now, in an attempt to bring the predictable exchange to a swifter conclusion, and give wannabe namorados the lines they’re going to feed you next – “But your boyfriend’s not here so it doesn’t matter” etc etc). Anyway, we liked the idea of being escorted by three gentlemanly local Bahian men, but felt we needed at least 24 hours to mentally steel ourselves for being pipoca, so arranged to meet them the next day, instead.

There are three ways to do Carnaval. You can either buy yourself a very expensive entry into a camarote, which are huge tiered viewing balconies-cum-bars that are constructed all along the routes, and which end up packed with the people who want to do Carnaval in gated-community fashion. The second way is to buy the t-shirt for a bloco, (some of which go for hundreds of reales for the most popular acts – Fat Boy Slim was playing in Salvador this year). This means that you get to go inside the cordon which stretches out in front and behind the lorry on which the trio is playing – kind of entry into a slowly-moving club, the borders of which (a rope) is upheld by a crew of segurancas. Or, you can do the third way and ‘fazer pipoca’ (be popcorn), which basically means joining the street party, resigning yourself to zero degrees of safety or personal space and ricocheting around at the mercy of whatever greater forces propel you and everyone else.

Being pipoca, anything that’s not sewed to your body or stashed in an internal cavity is quickly stripped, like leaves in a wind tunnel, as we’d previously witnessed. Besides the phenomenally common pickpocketing we’d heard a lot of other horror stories, from guys grabbing the back of girl’s hair and forcefully kissing them, to people being trampled to death underfoot as the crowds surge to escape fights breaking out, to people being accidentally shot to death in front of you. When we floated the idea with Negao’s mum, she threw her hands up in the air and burst out laughing as if it were the most stupid idea she’d ever heard “Pipoca! Naaaaaooooo!”

All in all, Carnaval began to assume the shape of the worst possible party one could ever expect us to go to. “Being squashed and robbed and having boys forcibly snog you before you get trampled to death or shot – it sounds horrible” said A, several times. “Do we have to go?” We played endless games of would-you-rather as our impending sense of dread began to assume ridiculous proportions. “I can’t think of many things I’d less rather do” said A. Carnaval, or locked in a box in Afghanistan? “Oh, definitely locked in a box. As long as I knew when I was going to be let out. I’d feel safer.”

Being normally fairly hardy people, we were quite frankly amazed at our sudden lily-liveredness and decided that being in Brazil for the greatest street party in the world and not turning up was just not cricket, and that we had to steel ourselves to take on the monster.

However, our first attempt at the summit failed miserably. We set our all prepared – money in shoes, hair tied back, full body armour on, etc, to meet Val as agreed, and traipsed off on his tail to pick up his other two friends. But on arrival at their house, we were greeted, if that term can be applied, by possibly the most hostile woman either of us has ever had the misfortune to meet. The girlfriend of the younger of the brothers, she was all dressed up to come too, but was clearly mightily unimpressed by the expansion of their party to include two (very friendly) gringos. We sat in the garden with her whilst the others got ready, trying to make nice conversation whilst she sat sulking, arms crossed, and glowered at us with (not even thinly disguised) hatred. Her frankly indescribable refusal to engage in even a pretence of geniality stunned even the un-unlikable A into tongue-tied submission, and we were forced by the power of her fury to spend several minutes (which felt like hours) staring at our knees in uncomfortable silence.

We weren’t entirely able, given our still-rather-crap command of Portuguese, to understand from her vicious whispers to the others where her animosity came from, but were pretty pleased to leave her house when Val announced that we’d go on ahead and they’d catch up with us. Furtive discussion ensued. Perhaps she thinks we’re a fucking liability? we wondered, and will result in no end of trouble. Perhaps it’s better if we don’t go. Yes, we’d definitely better not go.

We persuaded poor Val that we’d rather not head off on the bus to meet the monster that particular evening (our team of personal bodyguards now reduced to a pitiful 1:2 ratio) and instead ended up hanging out in the centre of Itapua, where a street party and concert was taking place. Even there, the chivalrous Val quickly appeared to realise that acting as male protector to us two was no easy feat, sticking out as we did like two pale beacons in the entirely Bahian crowd.

But it was a fun evening, and we ended up eventually meeting up with his friends – minus the seething girlfriend, and had a few more beers with them over which the story became clear. “I’ve split up with her!” announced the younger brother. Just now? We asked, incredulous. “Yes. Tonight was the last straw. She’s completely crazy. Insanely jealous, she’s always doing this, she won’t even let me out of the house without an interrogation and a screaming match.” How long have you been together, we asked. “Oh, about a year” he said, not-too-upsetly. “I never wanted to live together, she asked if she could stay at mine while her house was being painted, moved in and never left. I’ve had enough of it.”

Glad to have an explanation to the situation, (although we did wonder whether he’d go home and she’d have finished sulking and they’d make up again) and having had a very pleasant evening which included a satisfying late-night portion of cheese on a stick, we went home, our Portuguese vocabulary having expanded to include the word for jealousy, “ciumente” which is a very useful one.

Our second attempt at Carnaval was rather more successful. We set off early(ish, for us) the next afternoon for Pelourinho, the incredibly scenic (and heavily policed) old colonial centre of the city, with the aim of doing a couple of things (mainly organising our escape) before heading off to Barra in the evening. After an amusing but long bus journey all around the houses, where the bus gradually filled up with people dressed in all manner of regalia, (including several Filhos de Gandhi, dressed head to toe in white robes, swamped with ropes of blue and white beads and with towel headdresses) we were deposited in the centre. Not before, it must be noted, it was proved to us that we are not the only ones in Salvador to flinch at loud bangs – the whole bus jumped out of their skins and ducked at a sudden explosion which turned out to be the engine of a nearby overheated bus.

In Pelourinho, the party was well and truly underway – not the anarchic mass of hedonism we’d been dreading, but a much more pleasant kind, loads of families with kids out, bands promenading round the streets, hoards of Filhos de Gandhi (one of the biggest blocos, we discovered, with over 5000 participants) sitting on chairs having their hats sewn on by old ladies. As night fell, we stayed on, watching as blocos began to start on their way to the Campo Grande circuit from Praca de Se, deafening axe music pumping out. Before we knew it, we’d been befriended by two tall capoeristas (both, weirdly, called Rogerio) in the white robes of another bloco, who, after a while, jammed their hats on our heads, strung us with their beads and, us thus somewhat disguised, smuggled us into their bloco as it left the square.

And from there, we delightedly realised that, following our usual practice of abandoning our own rubbish plans in favour of someone else’s better one, we had ended up being able to do Carnaval properly. Off we went, for six hours, drinking shared beers and dancing, in the thick of a bunch of jubilant capoeiristas, watching the mentalness of pipoca-dom unfolding on the other side of our rope. The rope in itself is a right spectacle – at the front of the bloco, you’ve got several men throwing themselves against the front of it with all their might to hold the circle taught, and a hundred or so metres further up the road, behind the lorry at the back, you’ve got several more with their backs against it, being dragged along, straining with all their might to pull it back.. We’d never really understood how the rope is so effective at providing safety – it’s only a bloody rope! we’d previously reasoned – but now we got it. It’s a psychological border, more than anything – wriggle under it without the costume and you’ve gate-crashed a party (of, in this case, several hundred 6ft martial artists) and are swiftly ejected. And within this cordon, everyone else gets on with having fun. This suddenly becoming clear, we got on with it – and for the first time in days forgot about everything, stopped worrying about anything, and got into the spirit of it all.

It really is incredible – the human spectacle as we came over a hill at one point, and saw the city at the mercy of this magnificent phenomenon will always stay with me. Stretched before us was a massive junction, where two enormous strands of blocos were crossing each other, thousands and thousands and thousands of partiers in every direction and more hanging out of every window of the grand buildings which seemed to be floating on the chaotic sea of humanity below. Just awesome. In the wee hours, when our legs could barely hold us up any more, the Rogerios hailed us a taxi, sorted the fare, and bundled us in to zoom home, still with our hats on. Like most things, after a week of worrying about it, in the end, it was actually brilliant. We fell into bed (after vigourously scrubbing our disgusting feet) knowing we had only a few hours before we had to get ourselves and our worldly goods to the airport to in order to try to procure a flight to leave – our job for the day, which, somewhere in the partying, we’d somehow forgotten to do.

At the end of the day - or rather, at the beginning of the next - even this worked out for the best, as it meant we were able to do the thing I´ve always wanted to do, and arrive at an airport without a ticket (crazy on-the-hoof behaviour!) and end up skywards in a tiny plane shortly after.