Yemanjá Festival

This beautiful festival dedicated to the Goddess of the Ocean is celebrated every year on February 2nd. At dawn the area around the Rio Vermelho beach is lit up with fireworks. Shortly thereafter hundreds of people, all dressed in white, start to line up outside the temporary shack erected to hold the gifts to Yemanjá. Inside the shack is where the `main gift' is kept, a statue made of either silver or bronze of the goddess admiring herself in a hand held mirror. Sitting by and guarding the statue are a few Baianas dressed in the traditional white dresses, head coverings and beaded necklaces. 

Around the statue are huge wicker baskets ready to accept the offerings either brought from home or bought from street vendors just outside. These gifts consist of either plastic necklaces, perfume bottles of Alfazema, white roses, soaps, mirrors. Yemanjá is believed to be very beautiful and she knows it; offerings to her reflect this vanity. Many people write notes to her, asking her to grant them a wish. These notes will also enter the baskets later to be dumped into the ocean for her acceptance. 

Adjacent to where the gifts are held there is a Candomblé ceremony, involving Mães de Santo (Candomblé priestess) dancing and chanting. The area is dark, but the white garments, lively dancing and drumming brighten up the room with gaiety and vibrance. The gift baskets, once full, are taken to an area where all the baskets are held until the time they will be loaded onto boats, usually around 4:00 pm. This area is colorful, sweet smelling with about fifty huge baskets all filled with roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, as well as miniature boats, plastic dolls, perfume bottles, and ribbons from the Church of Bonfim.

At around 4:00 pm, all gather around and wait to witness the yearly spectacle. The fishermen's boats are filled with the baskets. The main gift, the silver statue, arrives and passes everyone on her way to the shore. All stand in awe as the beauty of Yemanjá gleams in the sunlight and graces everyone with her magical presence. She will accompany the boats, will oversee the dumping of the baskets, but will return with the fishermen, for she must be present the following year. 

Once the boats leave, people party to live music on the streets until dawn. Salvador has once again pleased the ever-powerful Goddess. Legend has it that fishermen's wives would send offerings to Yemanjá to appease her so that she would return their husbands back to them, since once at sea, the fishermen were symbolically married to Yemanjá and belonged only to her.