SALVADOR, Brazil, 20 September 2003 — They live in Salvador, Brazil’s most African city, but they long to return to the continent where they were born.
They are Salvador’s “new” Africans, studying and working in the city that was Brazil’s capital until 1763 and looking on with curiosity at the rituals and customs left behind by their predecessors brought here centuries ago as slaves.
Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia and Brazil’s most populous northeastern city, was the entry port for hundreds of thousands of African slaves.
More than three million African slaves were shipped into Brazil before it became the last country in the Americas to abolish the practice, in 1888.
Nearly half of Brazil’s 175 million people define themselves as “black” or “pardo” — a loose definition including virtually all dark shades of skin — giving the country the world’s largest black population outside Africa.
Now Africans from countries like Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe are rushing here as students.
Fatima Nunes from Guinea Bissau, who is studying for a doctorate in public health in Bahia, adores wandering in the labyrinthine streets of Pelourinho, the neighborhood where Salvador’s slave market used to stand.
Named by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, today Pelourinho is a mirror of life in Bahia, filled with restaurants and shops offering “Afro-Brazilian” food, crafts and African clothes.
“There are ancient traditions which existed in Africa and have disappeared but you can still see them practiced here,” said Nunes. “They value the clothes, food and crafts from Africa more than us and have turned them into a source of income.”
Swarming with tourists, Pelourinho’s cobblestone streets are filled the drumbeat of Oludum, a group based on African musical roots and the legends of the Africans who arrived in Brazil as slaves.
Lola Acani, a Nigerian who arrived in Salvador 10 years ago, took advantage of the African trends sweeping through Salvador by opening a shop in Pelourinho. She offers clothes, bracelets, necklaces and even African-style combs in her shop.
“Salvador is my second home, but some day I will return,” she said.
Most of the students come to occupy university places left open by Brazil, which wants to reactivate its relations with Africa, or were sent by governments which need professionals to build economies at home, or rebuild after years of war.
Many have found the possibility of a better future than they had at home but the dream of returning remains even though many left behind pain, destruction and death.
Pedro Neves left Angola in 1996, leaving behind Africa’s most bloody civil war, in which his brother was killed. He graduated from law school in Brazil and now works as a lawyer in Salvador.
“I decided to work here because Angola was at war,” he said. “But today it is better and I think about returning. I came to Brazil trying to overcome the pain and I am thinking about returning for the children my brother left behind. I miss them.”
Physicist Roberto Andrade, who works for the secretary of International Affairs at the University of Bahia, said that the university has begun an aggressive policy of cooperation with African universities, offering courses and training in subjects like geophysics, medicine and health.
“In many areas Brazil is a reference for Africa, in subjects like the fight against AIDS and health for women,” said Andrade.
Brazil has a world-renowned anti-AIDS program, which offers patients a mix of cheap generic drugs.
Recently the University of Bahia organized a trip to Luanda to create closer ties.
Still, most African students want to pay back the help they get from their governments and countries by returning home after studying in Brazil. “I want to return and I need to return,” said Neves. “Angola invested in us to help rebuild the country.”
Guinean Isidoro Semedo, who is taking a masters degree in economics at the University of Bahia, agrees.
“When I finish my course I will return,” he said. “Nostalgia beats in my heart.”