Running with Bianca

Today I moved from the delightful Village Novo, down in the beach area of Barra, up to Pelourinho. This was partly to be near the drum classes and partly because I´m saving every penny to try to buy a good timbal. I already miss the Village Novo and its lovely bright rooms with the stained-glass windows, and the beach and fantastic rooftop terrace, wireless internet and actual hot water (!), but I´m afraid I´m back down to a hostel budget again. So now I´m at the Albuergue dos Anjos in Pelo. It´s not nearly as classy as the Village Novo, and definitely not the place to come for a peaceful night, since it´s directly across the street from Pelourinho´s absolute noisiest stage. But I kind of enjoyed falling asleep last night to Olodum. My little room there is very tiny and spartan, but it´s clean and cheery, with a good new fan (sleeping well in Brazil is all about the fan!), the bathrooms are clean, and it´s only 30 reais (US $12 per night) including breakfast and a half-hour free internet per day. And the staff is friendly and does a good job guarding the place from the Olodum crowds - they lock up the main doors as soon as the Olodum fans starts to gather.

Yesterday I was killing time while my friend Pat got her hair cornrowed after timbal class with Macambira. I ended up sitting on the curb drumming a little bit with my drumsticks. The hairdresser´s little daughter sidled over to me, asked to borrow my sticks and started whapping them around in that aimless way kids do, not really even looking at what she was doing, twisting around to look at her friends, kicking her flipflops off, absentmindedly banging the sticks the whole time. Except, in her random, inattentive way she was drumming out an absolutely perfect reggae clave that was perfectly in time with the street band drumming a few blocks away.

Her name was Bianca and she was `almost 9´. I had my digital camera out and took a few pictures of her, then a little movie, and next thing I knew she was directing me through movie after movie, starring BIANCA THE SAMBA DANCER! Part 1, part 2, part 3... She studied each one intently and then would insist on trying to make a better one with more elaborate choreography. (I´ll post the final masterpiece tomorrow)

Then I let her take a few pictures, and after about 3 or 4 I could see her suddenly realize `oh... some pictures come out PRETTY if I pick something pretty to take a picture of!´ - and she grabbed me by the hand and we were off on a pell-mell tour of Pelourinho so that Bianca the Photographer could take approximately 300 pictures of all of her favorite places and things. She dragged me into six or seven stores, in each of which she´d stop in front of her favorite toy or piece of art and carefully take 2 or 3 pictures of it. Her photos rapidly improved in composition and lighting, till she was carefully framing each one and making sure her fingers didn´t block the lens. We ended up in her aunt´s shop with Bianca taking a series of (rather good) pictures of her aunt´s beautiful straw-and-cloth weavings and artwork. She took a minute to review all of the photos (she´d figured out the review function by herself) and we both agreed on the best ones.

By the end we´d spent almost an hour together and were pretty good buddies. I offered to buy Bianca something for a couple reais, but I told her I only had a few minutes left because my friend needed to leave soon. Bianca gave me an intense look, and immediately went into hyperdrive. She grabbed my hand again and this time we really raced in earnest - she was desperate to get me somewhere in my last couple minutes. Where was she taking me? What was the 1 thing that she wanted so badly that she would run like this? We RACED through Pelourinho, really pellmell, tripping over the cobblestones in the dark, and finally pelted into, where else, the ice cream shop! I should have guessed! Kids are kids, all over the world! Bianca tore into there like a bat out of hell and yelled at the guy `A really big piece of chocolate cake and a large chocolate brigadeiro FAST!´ (a brigadeiro is a gooey ball of a sort of sticky chocolate mousse, covered with chocolate sprinkles.)

I felt a little sorry for rushing her so much and told her she could stay and eat the chocolate cake in peace and I could find my own way back, but she said `no, no, no, I have to take you back!´ The guy brought out one of the largest pieces of chocolate cake I have ever seen and Bianca wolfed the thing down in about three enormous bites, then carefully wrapped the gooey chocolate brigadeiro in a twist of paper so she could carry it safely in one hand, grabbed me again with her other hand and off we went racing through Pelo again, back to her mother´s cornrowing-stall, where sure enough my friend Pat was waiting for me with her magnificent cornrows all done.

As we left, Bianca was already chomping her way through the huge brigadeiro. I had forgotten that kids have a separate stomach just for desserts.