Salvador da Bahia

Salvador is a lovely colonial city about half-way up the coast of Brazil. Unfortunately it´s plagued with the usual Brazilian city problems of poverty and drug abuse so the place feels quite sketchy. I had a very strange encounter with one of the locals late the first night I was there. Don´t really want to go into the details but in the end the whole situation turned out to be harmless.

One charming aspect is a custom where a local (usually trying to sell you something) ties a ribbon around your wrist. You are supposed to get one wish for each knot they use to fasten the ribbon around your wrist. So, when one of the street vendors approached me with her "gift" (I put gift in quotation marks because she wouldn´t leave me alone until I bought a necklace), I happily made my three wishes.



The only catch is that you only get the wishes if you let the ribbon fall off on its own. If you take it off yourself you become cursed - I think the voodoo gods strike you down or something. I didn´t think this was such a big deal because it was a cheap little ribbon - how long could it take to fall off? Well, that night I went out for dinner with some people I had met (shish-taouk for all you Montrealers. One of the guys had recieved one of the ribbons before and had been wearing it since September. Hmmm, the prospect of wearing this thing for a year wasn´t really exciting me but neither was suffering eternal damnation or whatever curse was supposed to befall me if I voluntarily removed the ribbon.

Luckily I didn´t have to wait that long. A mere three days later I was sitting at dinner on the island of Morro Sao Paulo when the ribbon came off. Everyone immediately instructed me that I had to throw the ribbon in the water and my wishes would come true.




Now I´m just waiting for my superhero powers to kick in.