Saturday, April 24, 2010

Carnival festivities



February 2110
Carnival was right after I got back from South Africa (travelling by yourself with an arm in a sling brings out the best in people) and although my shoulder was very painful & the amount of movement allowed by my sling was quite limited, we were determined not to miss it. We booked a car to take us down for 2pm with an arrangement to pick us up 2 hours later – we figured that would be more than enough time to take photos but would get us home well before it got riotous.

Having a “big” camera at carnival is an amazing experience – just like last year we were mobbed by people asking us to take their photo, when we asked people if we could take their photo, they almost always said yes. In fact one of the biggest issues we faced was more & more people crowding in on the photo we were trying to take. Also it was quite crowded – so many people in a small space.

There were many more police & security people around this year – although we were on a different section of the Marginal. We got to see some samba teams practising their dance, which was very cool. Everyone just looks so excited and happy.

Costumes were similar to last year – there seemed to be quite a few guys wearing condoms as part of their outfit & as always, lots of guys dressed up as girls. There was a man whose costume was hundreds of clothes pegs & another had a tie made from a loaf of bread with fish embedded in it! Very weird.

It’s hard to judge the mood precisely when you can’t speak the language – I felt most people were happy to have us take their photos, but there is an underlying current with some others – they pose, but you get the feeling that their attitude is more aggressive.

The timing of our return home was just right – it was getting much more crowded & as it was it took ages for our driver to be able to get in to pick us up.

2 comments:

Emilio Fernandez said...

Good morning how are you?

My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Angola? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Angola in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia,39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain

If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

Yours Sincerely

Emilio Fernandez

Louisette said...

Lovely fotos, and articles in blog. Greeting from Belgium