Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/299622
32 g o i n g p l a c e s | s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 (both pages) daniel wood At the oceanside end of an obscure lane, on the out- skirts of the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia, sits a seemingly more obscure, one-storey, red-tile roofed building. It is called Casa do Peso, the House of Weights. On this mid-April morning, as the loitering fi shermen glumly testify, the catch has been ter- rible. ere are no fi sh to weigh or sell, only the aquamarine Atlantic to contemplate and the men's colourful boats bobbing nearby in Rio Verhelmo's bay. But on other days, on fi esta days, on those miraculous mornings when the starfi sh-crowned, fi shtailed African goddess arrives, tens of thousands of worshippers descend on Casa do Peso. ey ignore the windward porticos where the fi shermen normally dis- play their catch and enter, instead, the building's leeward door. Inside, her airborne mermaid image fl ying across the shrine's wall, is Yemanjá, the great Nigerian goddess, who left Africa more than 500 years ago on the first of thousands of slave ships destined for South America, and who now regularly inhabits the bodies of her Brazilian trance-dancing, female devotees. To the tens of millions of followers of the animis- tic, Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé, Yemanjá represents the rhythm of life. She's the power of the moon, the source of fertility. She's the Mother of All. Gathered below her painted image within Casa do Peso are blue plaster fi gurines that could – overlooking their revealing décolletage – easily be mistaken for the Blessed Virgin Mary. In fact, the fi gures are Mary, Christianity's Mother of God. In a place where miscegenation has long ruled, where mulatto is the norm, Africa's Yemanjá is Catholicism's Mary (and vice versa). In Salva- dor de Bahia, the very spot where Brazil began over 600 years ago, the genes and religions of two transported cultures, Portuguese and West African, have become inseparably mixed. Spirits CITY OF eXILeD Historic salvador de Bahia vibrates with Afro-Brazilian priestesses, trance-dancing spirits and music of the gods BY DANIeL WOOD The mermaid fi gure of Yemanjá, the Nigerian goddess of fertility, graces the altar at Casa do Peso; (below) the historic Pelourinho district of Salvador de Bahia refl ects Brazil's 500-year linkage with West Africa's transported people and cultures. p32_39Brazil.indd 32 14-04-10 2:26 PM