Sorpresa
Salvador de Bahia, Brazil 2017
The workshop Sorpresa just ended and we all feel a great joy inside our heart. Each day was a great surprise! In seventeen years of teaching, I never experienced such closeness with our subjects! The pictures are what they are, as always, you can judge them for yourself, but what Robert, Juan Pablo and I are truly happy about is how all our energies combined with the ones that our friends gave us has resulted in a unique personal journey, a spiritual synergy never reached before! The more I teach the more it becomes clearer that we need to give back as generously as we can! We did!
Looking forward to going back to my beloved Bahia next February for the Yemanja workshop. She clearly let me know that she wants me to return. The images we just took are a confirmation of that. They are slowly revealing to me that my “reason”, my presence here in Bahia is to capture the African heritage that most of my subjects represent! More than in Cuba, I’m here to show the profound wounds of slavery, and despite the brutal treatment received for centuries, even now I’d add, black Brazilians are showing me, in each trip, that they have managed to keep their ancestral pride, roots, beliefs, customs and culture. I’ve been sent here to help them reaffirm their “Africaness”. Now, I know that what seemed a mere coincidence is not casual at all! It was meant to be from the very start!
In September, 2018 I’ll be returning again to do an even more special workshop in which we will complete the discovery of Vale do Pati with 5 days of trekking and spending nights with locals and to delve more in the incredible and intimate celebrations of faith we just experienced. The more I go the more intimate the journey will become! Are you ready Calvin and Sandra? Are you all ready? I already am! EB
