A bit of well-meaning syncretism gone sour

Poor Bernardo finally has more than one or two women living in his house…little did he know how much work this would actually mean. In the past several days, he has had us (meaning Luciana and Sara) chew him out for letting the garden turn into um mato (a forest), and for the fact that the fascineira (maid, who, incidentally, has showed up all of one time in my tenure in the house previous to this) didn’t scrub the fridge. Additionally, he was called at 10:30 pm one evening to come and catch a mouse. I saved him the trouble of removing one from a mousetrap the next day.

I walked by the interesting-looking figures in the area to the side of the house outside the kitchen window yesterday, paused for a moment, wondered why someone had put them there, and then continued with whatever I was doing. Sunday I was cleaning my bathroom, and I hear Sara yell: “MARIA”. I run out to the side of the house where, wide-eyed, Sara and Luciana are staring at the three figures. Luciana starts to explain to me that they are voodoo icons etc., which of course makes sense, and then they begin to speculate about who would be casting spells on our house and how long they have been there. She continues babbling about bad omens and how their presence offends their religious sensibilities. Understandable, I suppose. When they go to call Bernardo, I sneak out with my camera and capture them before they get banished:

It was as I had suspected: Bernardo had simply placed them there for a bit of good luck. I laughed inwardly and breathed an empathetic sigh of relief with Luciana after she returned them to him. I was reminded of one of the more interesting experiences I have had in my travels in Brazil….

September of ´05, in Rio Branco, I was staying with Foster Brown (a Woods Hole scientist). A biologist named Marcus was also staying there, and we ate a lot of açai and drank beers together. Marcus’ friend (Mariana, I think) was an anthropologist, and she invited us to go to a service. This wasn’t just any service she was inviting us to…this was a not-quite-catholic, not-quite-voodoo mix of icons, scripture, smoke cleansing by shamans, and imbibing of a psychotropic substance called daime (Ayahuasca of Ecuador). I was pretty freaked out about the whole idea of imbibing a psychotropic substance, especially after Marcus had told me about his first experience. So I didn’t try very much, in an effort to not be that foreigner running out in the middle of the chanting to puke on the church steps. As a consequence, I experienced little more than an odd sort of relaxation and detachment from my surroundings. I’m not sure it was my idea of spiritual enlightenment. But I did feel thoroughly cleansed and blessed after being chanted over by a shaman, who was probably more in touch with the spirits of the other world than I.

Anyhow, I think I might have been touched to have three icons blessing my house. But I guess I’m not at a point where I wanted to push my new housemates to be embracing of what they probably consider to be devil worship.