marcia’s musings

pra iemanja (c) Marcia Chandra

Sao Paulo, October 2004 – The room was in the back of the house. He wanted to stop in just for a moment to see her, to pay his respects, to feel her blessing.

I stood back, unsure of whether I should be there. I was not a believer. Would they see right through me?

But the pae de santo gently pushed me in. To the right, Leandro stood in another doorway and began talking to someone. The language they spoke was unfamiliar to me… yet familiar at the same time. Yoruba – the language of Brazil’s African ancestors. The language that connects afro-brazilians to their past, to their faith, to the spirit world. I had heard it before, in capoeira songs that spoke of wars and heroes and Candomblé gods. But hearing it spoken so naturally made it more beautiful and lulled me with its singing intonations and rounded words.

Leandro was looking at me. So were the other three men in the hallway. She had asked to see me.

I hesitated. Somebody squeezed my shoulder and I stepped in to face the doorway. I had spent a lot of time looking at the work of Pierre Verger, of Candomblé ceremonies in Brazil and Western Africa, but black and white prints did not do justice to the scene before me. Palm fronds covered the small floor and were topped with bowls of popcorn, yellow beans, green leaves – food for the gods, the Orixás. The table was littered with statues of different sizes, purpose and cultures – an African mask, a Virgin Mary, a bent over black wood devil, a tin Orixá… Candles burned everywhere, except for a small fluorescent lamp that left a blue cast on the walls.

And the mae de santo was in front of me, covered in an intricately embroidered white dress wider than she looked, her neck weighted down by strand after strand of colourful stones. Her face was old, but her eyes were not. They were deep and alive. I felt her presence. I felt we were alone.

She looked at me and asked me what I feared. She spoke in Yoruba, and someone translated into Portuguese for me, but it was like watching a subtitled movie – after a while you forget you are reading. I felt I had understood her and we were speaking the same language.

She asked me what I feared and I told her I feared I would not find what I was looking for. She looked at me then and put her forehead on mine. I felt a rapid heat flush my face, move down my neck, into my arms, down my chest, along my belly, around my vagina and through my legs. Until my toes, my lips, my fingers, my nipples all seemed to hold fire. She stayed that way for a long time, feeling her way through my soul, and then released me.

She said I had traveled a long journey and was strong, but I had to know what I was looking for before it could be found.

The rest of the night felt like a good visit with old friends. We all sat on the floor and ate food and chatted together in a mixture of Yoruba and Portuguese. It took me a while to realize that the mae de santo was in a trance, taken over by a male spirit who was speaking through her. A small child later took his place, bouncing around the room giving presents to each of us – I got a hair elastic with a plastic bow. By the time we left, the mae de santo had recovered herself, and poured us cold drinks in the kitchen while she jokingly told stories about my friend that made me laugh.

On the bus ride home, as we winded through the favela I never would have had the courage to go into myself, Leandro asked me whether I believed in what I saw. I realized then that I hadn’t even thought about whether I believed, that I had experienced and absorbed this encounter without once questioning my faith in it.

It is a profound and beautiful thing to live these moments when you find comfort in knowing there is more to the world than you are capable of understanding.

- Ottawa, Canada, 17 degrees Celsius, partly cloudy night sky, listening to Bebe’s “Siempre me quedará”