Three years ago, I spent New Year’s Eve amidst two million people at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach. As unbelievable fireworks lit up the sky, I watched the Cariocas all dressed in white, carrying candles and partaking in one of the age old traditions, or should I call it must-do superstitions of the night. They jumped over seven waves and made seven wishes, before thousands of flowers were then thrown into the sea in honour of Lemanjá, the Queen of the Ocean, as the first spiritual offering of the year.
That wasn’t the end of the festivities, rather the beginning of a long wild night, where I got sucked into the Brazilian spirit of Cachaca drinking and samba dancing. Lively and loud, hardly an atmosphere to conjure up meaningful wishes, I reserved my seven wishes for later. It looks like it took quite a while but I’ve finally decided on how I plan to redeem the wishes. Here they are and hope Lemanjá is listening -
1. Sometime in life, I want to teach Capoeira. I don’t know when. I don’t know whether I’ll be good enough. All I know is that I want to be able to share something I love so much with others and see the sparkle in their eyes as well.
2. I want to discover Africa. Not like a 2 week trip to some safari or the desert. I want to live in those small villages, wake up worried in borders, be lost in the wilderness for days, dance to the beats of drums and soak in the culture. Someday.
3. I want to delete all my social media accounts one day. Just disappear from the internet. (My blog is the only exception to this)
4. I will keep sending postcards in hope that someday, I’ll receive just as many. (I guess the problem is that no one knows my real address, but we can deal with that later. If they had the intention of sending me a postcard, they would’ve figured it out).
5. I will take my mom on a backpacking trip somewhere.
6. I will eventually work for myself or do something on my own.
7. This one wish – I want to keep reserved for a rainy day. Who knows when we go through that?
