Brazil!

Explore Brazil with Graduate Student Adesoji Adedipe: Q&A

KU Hist: Where was your favorite place in Brazil to conduct research?

INSTITUTO COUTO MAIA (ICOM) Salvador Bahia (A medical facility)

KU Hist: From the research you conducted, what did you find that surprised you?

The extent of inequality and diversity was more profound than I thought I knew.

The numbers of Afro- Brazilians was higher than I thought, the state of Bahia is 80% African.


KU Hist: Besides the research, was your favorite part of the trip? Did you have a favorite city? Attraction? Place to eat?!

The food was nice, both in restaurants and on the streets of Salvador.

I tried the Afro-Brazilian dishes Acaraje and Abara (street food) and Moqueca in restuarants.

The Afro-Brazilian music and dance was exciting

Salvador was my favorite city; the weather and the people were too nice to be ignored.

The street-to-street carnivals were a spectacle to behold with the drums and the dancing.

The on-the-spot learning of Portuguese was interesting.

The residential area is filled with sky rise buildings.

KU Hist: How did you spend your free time?

I attended parties where Brazilian live bands played on the weekends.

I also went to the beach a couple of times; Salvador is a city of beaches.

I did some capoeira practice.

KU Hist: What was the biggest challenge you experienced during this winter break program?

The language was a challenge, my Portuguese is not great, and I will be working on that.

KU Hist: Did you have any fears going into this trip?
I had no serious fears save the security concerns which I knew about and was careful, hence there was no incident.

What did you learn about the culture and the country?

Brazil is diverse, along ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional dimensions.

The different ethnic groups have varying cultures which brought the beauty in diversity in the country.

What’s your biggest takeaway from visiting Brazil?

The huge size and the diversity of the entity called Brazil today. The "myth of the three races”, mistakenly calling contemporary Brazil only a mixture of these major peoples (Indigenous, White, and African) is a big reduction of the racial make-up of the country. Leaving out the many Japanese, Lebanese, Syrian, and Jewish immigrants, for example, who have helped Brazil to become what it is today was a major lesson for me.