Miranda brings you fruit from the Carnival

This is a virtual postcard from Brazil for you, in the form of a basket of tropical fruit. I tried these fruits during a visit to Brazil during which I worked with researchers at the University of Campina Grande, and danced in the Carnival of Olinda.

Morena Tropicana

"Morena Tropicana" is a song by Alceu Valença that was played very frequently at the carnival in Olinda. The song compares the dark-skinned tropical woman of the title to the fruits of the pink mango, ripe melon, sapoti, juá, jaboticaba, umbu-cajá, cashew and uruçu. So many fruits I'd never heard of.
Morena tropicana eu quero teu sabor
oi, oi oi oi
O minha gente tão bacana eu quero teu sabor
Tropical woman, I love your flavour, oi oi oi oi, Oh my great people I love your flavour.
I loved the flavour of the carnival and of the people I met. In this postcard I'll try to bring some of that fruitiness to you.

Lime

You want to know what the Carnival at Olinda is like? Imagine a million Brazilians partying. OK, I can't imagine that either, start by imagining thirty.

"I love seeing Brazilians enjoy themselves", I said to my left-hand neighbour at dinner after a workshop in Campina Grande, after I squeezed the juice from a neon-green loud-tasting lime onto my rice and beans. He followed my glance at the other thirty or so workshop participants at the table, and replied, amused, "yes, we're noisy people". (Actually, he was quite a quiet chap.)

Walfredo's name was incorrectly given as Walfredo Lima at one research event: lima is Portuguese for lime. Walfredo has gallons of gusto and enthusiasm. At the workshop dinner a live musician was playing right behind me, the workshop participants were having a good time, and the noise reached earplug-ready levels. Over it all I could hear Walfredo telling a funny story, although I couldn't make out the individual words. He waved his hands in the air in circles above his head, and then made an enormous WHA!-WHA!-WHA! noise, so loud that for a moment it drowned out all the other sounds in the restaurant. My left-hand neighbour laughed, and said: "Walfredo is imitating a helicopter".

Walfredo is far from being the noisiest Brazilian I know. For example Sandro, bless him, has at least twice Walfredo's decibel level. Sandro is one of the organizers of the carnival group that I danced with. He could pretty much make up a carnival group just by himself.

Sapota

Esther brought some sapotas to the lab for me to taste. They'd grown in her garden. What are they like, Esther? Well, like sapotis only larger. Translation: like a very ripe, mature pear that has been soaked in heather honey. Very sweet, but with a pear-like fleshy earthiness to the taste. I think "my sapota" would be a great thing to call your lover.
As I worked at the lab I listened on headphones to a recording of Elis Regina singing a song by Chico Buarque. Her voice was like the taste of sapota.
Vem que passa
Teu sofrer
Se tudo mundo sambasse seria tão facil viver
Come and let your suffering pass away: if everyone samba'd, living would be so easy.
- "Tem mais samba", Chico Buarque.

Starfruit

Starfruit has a lovely name in Portuguese: carambola. The starfruit that I tried was about twice as large as the ones I'd eaten in England. But I think it was old, it was turning brown along the struts and tasted acidic and very strongly citric. I left it and ate other fruit to take the taste out of my mouth.

It's so sad to see children begging at traffic lights. Especially at a time of day when they should be in school. Two girls in Campina Grande, about eleven years old I'd guess, did handstands and asked us for money. I saw one thin lad selling bags of mangoes and starfruit to passing cars.
At the carnival, street people made some money by collecting beer cans from the revellers and recycling them. They were very efficient.

A kid outside a Campina Grande restaurant was looking after cars in return for tips. He carried pieces of cardboard to cover the windscreen and stop the sun from heating the interior until the seats melted. I noticed that one of the pieces of cardboard was printed with the logo of the company I work for. It had been recycled from a computer box. It's nice to know we make something useful.

Persimmon

Persimmon (in Portuguese it's called "caqui") belongs to the tomato family, and looks like a plump, bright-orange tomato. But it doesn't taste like one, it's richer and less acidic, more fruity. Yum.

The carnival group I danced with is called the Minhocão, the big worm. Our mascot was a 12-metre-long Worm carried on poles by ten lads. It was made of bright orange cloth. The Worm's face was round, with a big silly grin, and a bobble nose like a persimmon. Behind the mascot came Luci carrying the standard, then a couple of dozen dancers (including me) wearing official Minhocão T-shirts and dancing the frevo, then our 30-piece brass band playing in the very jazzy local style, and finally a crowd of followers, also singing and dancing, which grew larger and larger as we paraded.

If you'd like to hear a sample of the musical style, and have a fast link, try this MP3, kindly provided by the State government on their site http://www.revista.cultura.pe.gov.br.

Whenever we reached the top of a hill we would stop and chant for the crowd ahead of us to make space. Then when there was room we RAN down the hill, as fast as we could go, cheering and yelling and laughing, the Worm a bright orange high-velocity streak in front of us.

É amor
É paixão
É Olinda no bloco do Minhocão!
It's love, it's passion, it's Olinda in the Minhocão carnival group!
- Carnival chant

Caja

The caja juice I drank on the University campus was light, a creamy-orange colour, with seeds floating in it. Students were drinking it under the shade of the fruit trees.

I bought a necklace made of royal palm seeds and caja wood at a stall at the carnival in Olinda, after drinking a carnival drink called a capeta. It was made from sugar, powdered guaraná, chocolate powder, milk powder, cinnamon, and lots and lots of cachaça, all shaken together in a jar. When the stall-holder prepared the capeta, first she listened to the music, and smiled, and began dancing, and as she mixed it she danced, shaking the jar to the rhythm. I didn't like the taste much - the powders didn't all dissolve, it was a bit like having caja seeds floating in your juice - but the effect, that I did like.

The Brazilian government's main social project is called Zero Hunger: one carnival group satirically named themselves "Zero Thirst". Actually, I spent most of the time at the carnival drinking just water. Water, I tell you. Look at this photo and you'll see documentary evidence of just how happy you can get at the carnival on water.

On the other hand Stefan, who was also part of the Minhocão carnival group, appeared to be confused about the difference between water and cachaça.

Se você pensa que cachaça é agua
Cachaça não é agua não
Cachaça vem do alembique
E agua vem do riberão
So you think cachaça is water? Cachaça isn't water, no:
Cachaça comes from the distilling equipment and water comes from the stream.
- Carnival song, Mirabeau Pinheiro, L.de Castro + H.Lobato

Cow-cactus

In the countryside I saw farms where they appeared to be cultivating cactus. They were. My colleagues explained that this particular type of cactus is used to feed livestock; it's not very nutritious, but it will grow with almost no water. The interior of Northeast Brazil has very low annual rainfall, and suffers from recurring droughts. When there's a particularly bad drought, people eat the cactus. It doesn't look as though it would taste good.

I talked to some meteorologists who thought they might be able to use the networking system we were working on in order to predict the drought patterns with more accuracy, to improve water rationing schemes and drought prevention. It's pretty motivating to think that our work might mean some farmers eating less cow-cactus and more cow.

At the Carnival I saw many dancing men in ox costumes, spinning round in circles to special music. They're a Brazilian folk tradition. Their dances are infectious and jolly.

Pitomba

The fruit-seller said I should try a pitomba. He gave me a small round fruit with a dull dark wrinkled skin. I bit into it and found most of the fruit was taken up by a hard nut. The flesh covering the nut was dense and intensely flavoured.

The house where our carnival group stayed was right next to Bar Pitombeira, the bar of the pitomba tree. As carnival groups came past the house, they played the carnival song of the Pitombeira, which sings the virtues of the overlooked and undervalued.

Se a turma não saisse
Não havia carnaval
Pitomba é uma fruta besta
Se compra com qualquer tostão
E o doce e sem igual
E como ponche é o ideal
If the crowd didn't turn up there would be no carnival.
Pitomba is a fruit fed to animals, they cost ten a penny,
and the sweet has no equal and it's ideal in punch.
Actually pitombas cost a good deal less than ten a penny, but I don't know of a cheaper idiomatic expression to use as an English translation of "qualquer tostão". Jaboticabas are fifteen a penny. It must be very tough trying to make a living as a fruit merchant. But if the fruit merchants, cane-cutters, maids and market porters didn't turn up, there wouldn't be the carnival.

I was surprised at just how artistic and folkloric the carnival at Olinda and Recife was, it's not just a loud gaudy party, it has deep cultural roots among the people of Northeast Brazil. It's their music and dances, their home-made costumes, their creativity and gift for joy that make it what it is.

Juá

Fubica showed me a juazeiro, the tree that produces the juá fruit. The fruit were not yet ripe, they were small and green and bobbly, growing thick on the branch. The branches were thickly interknit, with long elegant leaves. Fubica told me that juá are not particularly good to eat even when ripe. The best thing about a juazeiro, he said, is the deep shade it gives, you can lie under it all day.

The lecture room was horribly hot. Elizeu, who was presenting his thesis, appeared to be the only person in the room who wasn't overheating. He had smooth golden skin and a cool insouciance like the taste of melon juice. The rest of us sat fanning ourselves with pieces of paper and trying to make our brains work. I gave up trying to understand the graph of Elizeu's scheduling result, whose outlines were blurring in the heat haze, and wished I was lying under the shade of a juazeiro with no need to understand computers.

Cashew

"Morena Tropicana" describes the smooth flesh of the cashew fruit. The fruit has a similar taste to the nut that grows, oddly, on top of it. Another of Alceu Valença's songs is called "rains of cashews":
Ela virá no verão
Com as chuvas de cajus
Os flamboyants estão sangrando
Nessas trades tão azuis
She will come in the summer with the rains of cashews
The flamboyant flowers are bleeding in these bright blue afternoons
A favourite activity of children at the carnival was squirting the crowds with water pistols. There seemed to have been competition in the size of the water pistols, because as carnival wore on I saw larger and larger ones, until near the end I saw kids carrying what looked liked daglo-orange rocket launchers. It was physically very pleasant to be cooled by a child-bandit in this way. But at the same time it was an unpleasant reminder of the footage I saw on the television news, of gun battles taking place under pitiless blue skies in the slums of Rio.

Late one night Stefan returned to the carnival house looking pale. "Something happened at the crossing", he said. "The street is covered with blood."

Umbu

Some fruits from this part of Brazil are unknown even in other parts of Brazil. "What are those?", asked Takeo from São Paolo. They were yellow-green, spherical, a few centimetres across. Raquel and I had bought them on the way to work that day. "Umbu", we replied.

Umbu has a thick layer of skin like a crunchy lime. Inside that is sweeter flesh around a chunky stone. The taste is refreshing, astringent. It's related to the umbu-cajá, which Alceu Valença describes as having an "astringent kiss".

At the fruit stalls at the very lively central market in Campina Grande they were selling silver tubes of umbu, with the small shiny-green fruits peeking out of the top. Three chatty, jolly women were trying out a hammock. At a fudge stall a taciturn man in a stetson hat stared into the distance. There was a heady-sweet smell from the garlic strings and spice stalls. A vendor was trying to mend his pocket calculator with the point of a meat knife. Every possible kitchen implement hung from strings tied to the roof of the hardware stall.

Jaboticaba

The song by Alceu Valença compares jaboticaba to a nocturnal glance. They're small mysterious-looking fruits with glossy black skin. When you bite into one your mouth is suddenly flooded with juice that tastes of of mulberry and cloves. Like mulled wine in fruit form. What remains after the whoosh of juice are a few pips with tender, delicate white flesh around them; the flesh has the same flavour.

I thought jaboticaba were so fabulous I wanted to share one with Jeremy, in England. I phoned him at night and ate one live on the telephone. He heard my mm, ooo, mm! sounds as the juice hit me, and said "Don't overdose, Miranda".

One night at the carnival a forró band (accordion, guitar, triangle) set up right outside the house where we were staying, and played into the early hours. In Campina Grande they hold a big festival of forró music each June around the feast day of St. John, São João. When I told people in Campina Grande that the Carnival of Olinda had been the best party of my life, they said "ah, you should see our São João."

The forró musicians outside the carnival house wore big tricorn hats with stars on them. Dancing couples took over the street. Maria-José danced beautifully and romantically. A reveller in a princess costume was dancing with a Superman, a hippie with a Pierrot, and I was dancing with a tiger, who looked at me with jaboticaba eyes.

Pineapple

Even fruits that I was familiar with didn't taste like they do in England. Pineapple in Brazil is called "abacaxi", and tastes so different that I wondered whether it was a different plant. It's amazingly delicate and sweet. You can eat it with bread and honey, and it tastes just as sweet as the honey.

During the time of carnival, famous Brazilian musicians give concerts in the evenings in Recife, just over the bridge from Olinda. In Recife I heard Paolinho de Viola sing sad sambas so delicately, so sweetly. After the concert we went back to the carnival house in Olinda and the next thing I knew was that I had just woken up, and my heart was still full of love from Paolinho de Viola's music, and right outside the window in full sunlight a carnival group was playing and dancing full-tilt, and throwing into the air streamers and confetti and foam and little multi-coloured parasols.

Coconut

Olinda's lovely coconut palms are mentioned in the most famous Olinda carnival song, which we sang many times as we paraded.
Olinda,
Quero cantar a ti essa cancão
Teus coqueras, o teu sol, o teu mar
Faz vibrar meu coracão de amor, a sonhar
Em Olinda sem igual
Salvo o teu
Carnaval
Olinda, I want to sing this song to you.
Your coconut palms, your sun, your sea make my heart beat with love, and dream of Olinda, you have no peer except your carnival.
- Carnival song (originally of the Elephant carnival group)
So what is it like, dancing in the carnival in coconut-palm-fringed Olinda?
Well, the most obvious thing is that it's a huge pleasure, a humongous blast of joy. Lasting five days.
It's a very physical experience. And very sweaty indeed. Dancing in a carnival group is a bit like dancing in a conga-line in an overcrowded sauna. For hours at a time. Whenever the music stopped my feet hurt, but as soon as it started again I just felt pleasure and my feet started dancing by themselves.
Eduardo told me that what he likes about carnival is that every second is different, every second you see something new and interesting. While I was inside the huge, complex, brightly-coloured crowd I got caught in the present, I didn't think back or reflect or wonder what was coming next.
A final effect was that the distinction between myself and the other people in the carnival group seemed to weaken. A carnival group is like a big animal, consisting of all the dancing crowd, with its own will and dancing style. I felt I was part of the animal, rather than a separate person.

So in summary, it's very physical, it makes you live in the instant, you lose some of your sense of individual identity, and it's an enormous pleasure.

Amor é bossa nova, sexo é carnaval
Love is bossa nova, sex is carnival
- "Amor e Sexo", Rita Lee, Roberto de Carvalho + Arnaldo Jabor

Fruit salad

On the last day before I took the flight back to England, I went to a cafeteria whose speciality is a fruit buffet. I went a little crazy and ate a salad of about thirty fruits, and drank a juice made from another five. But I still didn't manage to try the sapoti, umbu-cajá or uruçu mentioned in "Morena Tropicana". I hope that I will some time.
Until then, a big tasty thankyou to all my friends in Brazil.
Copyright Miranda Mowbray, 2004. You're welcome to copy this postcard for non-commercial purposes, as long as you retain this notice.