LITTLE AFRICAS

In 2011 and 2012, during excavations in the area where the Valongo Wharf stands today, near the Port of Rio de Janeiro and the only material vestige of enslaved Africans’ arrival to the Americas, Yalorixá Mãe Celina de Xangô worked in collaboration with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s archaeology team to identify domestic and ceremonial objects found there. Raised by her ancestors – mother, grandmother and great-grandmother – with knowledge of the herbs used for baths and therapeutic purposes, she honed her knowledge of the characteristics, uses and powers of herbs in Candomblé. Her contact with the pain caused by the memory of the atrocious arrival of enslaved Africans in Brazil occasions a purification, a ritual of sorts suggested here to symbolize the passage from pain and death to the celebration of life, which the nuclei of Little Africas represent.