Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [134]
As the sculptures in the lake proclaim clearly, Candomblé is no longer an underground religion. Many of its adherents remain Catholic as well, but even more important in its impact on local culture and cuisine, a lot of nominal Catholics in Salvador also openly revere the orixás. Since the orixás love and respond with appreciation to song, music, dance, and offerings of food—rites employed in their worship for centuries—their enthusiasms spill over to the human population.
To gain any appreciable understanding of Candomblé, it seems important to us to experience a worship service. Dinner shows advertised in Pelourinho include a Candomblé presentation, but that won’t do. After asking around about opportunities to attend an authentic ceremony, the tourist office informs us there’s only one open to the public during our week in town. The four of us sign up eagerly, agreeing to a stipulation that we dress conservatively and don’t wear black, a color that offends many of the orixás. This requires Cheryl to go shopping for something other than the few black slacks she’s carrying. She looks at some beautiful white dresses typical of the area but reluctantly returns them to the rack as too extravagant to wear at home. In the end, she opts for a more versatile pair of soccer pants that can be rolled into capris.
A minibus picks us up at our hotel in the early evening, then stops at other places for ten additional guests from a variety of countries before delivering all of us to a white house in a humble residential neighborhood, where our guide, Carlos, joins us. Shortly before 9:00, we follow people from the neighborhood in filing down a narrow walkway on the side of the house to a covered outdoor terrace. This is the only section of the terreiro, or sacred space, where visitors are allowed. Earlier in the day in private areas of the terreiro, according to insiders, initiates of the order have sacrificed animals in a ritual butchering to prepare the favorite dishes of the orixá being honored tonight. They set the hallowed fare on an altar erected on the open-air terrace, and after we and other outsiders leave at the end of the public service, they will feast literally on the food of the gods.
Our vanload of guests troops onto the terrace and takes seats around the sides. Above us, a simple handmade chandelier, bare lightbulbs, and strips of white fabric hang from the corrugated-tin ceiling. The spiritual leader, or ialorixá, of this house of worship enters wearing white lace, with a flowing skirt and a puffy-sleeved blouse. A turban covers her head and beads dangle from her neck and wrists. A septuagenarian, we guess, she circles the space swinging an incense burner, the same kind Catholic priests use, and presents all of us in the room with a little manioc flour in our cupped hands, blowing more of it to the corners of the terrace.
Three other mature women assist the main priestess in conducting the rites that follow. A half-dozen younger female initiates also take an active but more subservient role, and three men in the same age range play drums and other simple percussion instruments. Tonight, they want to summon the spirit of Oxóssi, the orixá of the forest and the hunt. The musicians set a beat that’s known to appeal to the god, and the ladies dance in a circle in a distinctive shuffling, swaying style, to further entice him.
Men from the congregation gradually join the circle, and one by one, a number of them begin to shake and tremble, sometimes stumbling and falling in a trancelike state. Oxóssi has possessed them, joining the ceremony in their bodies. The elder women lead these men away, escorting them to another room behind a closed door. Later, after a couple of hours of drumming and dancing, the possessed men reappear in the attire of the orixá, wearing simple woodlandlike costumes and smoking big cigars. Now a link for the night between humankind and