CANDOMBLÉ AND TIME: Parte II by Reginaldo Prandi

II
It is not unusual to find new followers of Candomblé or another traditional Afro-Brazilian religion who have been born and raised outside this religion and have joined it by personal choice (Prandi 2000a). Ever since Candomblé was transformed into a religion open to everyone, regardless of racial, ethnic, geographical or social origin, many followers, and even the majority in many regions of Brazil, have joined recently without any previous personal or family contact with its characteristic values and ways of behaving. In most cases, joining a religion also means changing many concepts of the world, life, and death. The recent Candomblé participant, going to the terreiro (the temple) and taking part in numerous collective activities indispensable to worship, is soon confronted with a new way of regarding time. He will have to undergo resocialisation in order to live with things which at first seem strange and uncomfortable. He will have to learn that everything has its time, but a time not determined by the clock but by the fulfillment of certain tasks, which may come before or after others, depending on the circumstances (some unforeseeable), which may accelerate or set back the whole chain of activities. But the terms “accelerate” and “set back” are out of place, because in Candomblé everything has its own time, and each activity lasts as long as necessary. The activity defines the time taken, and not the other way round.
The Candomblé festivals, the public celebrations of singing and dancing, during which the orishas manifest themselves through ritual trance, are preceded by a series of propitiatory rituals. These rituals involve animal sacrifice; preparation of meat for the community banquet and of the ritual foods offered to the orishas which are being celebrated; care for the members of the community who are encloistered to fulfill initiatory obligations; preparation of the public festival; and lastly the carrying out of the festival itself, the so-called toque. Preparing the toque includes care of clothes, some sown especially for the day, which must be washed, starched, and ironed (the quantity of clothes for starching and ironing is always enormous!); putting the ornaments in order, which includes cleaning and polishing; preparing the food to be served to everyone present, and providing the drinks; decorating the barracão with appropriate leaves and flowers, etc, etc.
In a Candomblé terreiro, practically all the members of the house take part in the praparations, with many of them doing specifically priestly tasks. Everybody eats, bathes and gets dressed in the terreiro. Sometimes people sleep in the terreiros many nights in a row, with many of the women bringing their small children. There are so many things to do and so many people doing them. There are guidelines to be followed and fixed times for each activity, such as “at sunrise”, “after lunch”, “in the afternoon”, “when the sun is cooling off”, “in the late afternoon”, “in the evening”. It is not customary to refer to or to respect clock time and many unexpected things can happen. In fact, it is common to take watches off in the terreiros, since they have no function. While slaughtering animals, the orishas are consulted through oracles to find out if they are satisfied with the offerings, and they may ask for more. So it might be necessary to stop everything and go out to get another kid or chicken or more fruit or whatever. The orishas can manifest themselves at any time, and then it will be necessary to sing for them or even dance with them. In trance the orishas may even alter the ritual. They may stay for hours “on earth” while everybody present pays attention to them and everything else has to wait. During the toque, the big public ceremony, the unexpected presence of orishas in trance means extending the cerimonial time, as they too must be dressed and must dance. The arrival of dignitaries from other terreiros, with their followers, means additional greetings and song and dance sequences. Although there is a minimum script, the festival does not have a fixed time to end. No-one knows exactly what is going to happen the very next minute, since all planning is upset by the intervention of the gods.
When going to the terreiro, it is better not to have other commitments on the same day, because no-one knows when one can leave and how long the visit, the obligations and the festival will last. In fact, Candomblé does not have a fixed time to start either. It starts when everything is “ready”. The guests and sympathisers arrive at a more or less expected time, but can wait for hours on end sitting down. So many prefer to arrive late, which may mean more delays. And one cannot complain, because then someone will say, “Candomblé doesn’t have a fixed time”. Once, after a long wait, I asked what time the candomblé would actually start. The answer was: “After the mãezinha (the mãe-de-santo, the high priestess) changes her clothes.” In short, time is always defined by the tasks which the group considers necessary, according to the formula: “when things are ready”.
This idea that time depends on events and on fulfilling necessary tasks can be seen also in the daily life of the terreiros outside the festivals. Researchers starting field work are surprised at the “lack of punctuality” of the mães-de-santo (iyalorishas, high priestesses of Candomblé) and pais-de-santo (babalorishas, high priests), having to wait hours, if not days, to do an interview they thought was scheduled for a fixed time. Clients who go to a terreiro for the jogo de búzios (divination with cowuries) or other magical services may also feel bothered by the way the povo-de-santo, the followers of Candomblé, use their time.
In 1938, American anthropologist Ruth Landes came to Brazil to study race relations and stayed for many months researching the candomblés of Salvador, in Bahia. Her report of her first encounter with the young Mãe Menininha do Gantois, who decades later would become the most famous mãe-de-santo in Brazil, is fascinating. Having arranged a time, Menininha received her and began conversing pleasantly. Then one of her iyawós (inatiated women) came in and greeted her with all possible reverence, telling her something in a low voice. Menininha asked the anthropologist to excuse her for a moment, telling her to make herself comfortable and that she would be right back. The afternoon went by, with a lot of people leaving and entering the house, but the mãe-de-santo did not return to the room. After dark, Ruth Landes discreetly went back to her hotel. Only some time later was she able to continue her conversation with the iyalorisha. The anthropologist found out that the woman who had interrupted the interview had problems and that the mother had gone to do the necessary rituals to resolve the daughter’s affliction (Landes 1994: 86-99). Commenting on the episode, Ruth Landes wrote: “Throughout my stay [in Bahia] I remained astonished at the liberties the mothers could take with time. Menininha never did return that day, and I realized subsequently that she was always late, always delaying. It was a privilege of her station, and even taken for granted in a land of aristocracy and slavery. What was time? Time was what you did with it, and she was always occupied” (Landes 1994: 84). However, what Landes considered a privilege of a land of aristocracy and slavery was in fact the expression of an African concept of time, very different from the one we are used to in our European culture.
For African thinker John Mbiti, while in Western societies time can be thought of as something to be consumed, bought and sold as if it were a potential good or service (time is money), in traditional African societies time has to be created or produced. Mbiti says that “the African man is not a slave of time, but rather he makes as much time as he wants”. He comments that, through ignorance of this concept, many Western foreigners judge that Africans are always behind in everything they do, while others say: “Ah! These Africans are always sitting down wasting their time in idleness” (Mbiti 1990:19).