Not rooted or identified as a Brazilian martial art, Capoiera Angola is the foundation of which African-Brazilians adapted the rhythmic form of self-defense and offense called Capoiera. The indigineous Capoiera Angola is the mother/father of Brazil's Capoeira, which was formed when Africans from Central Africa were brought to South America in bondage. Capoeira Angola goes further.
"The Black church is the success story of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. Therefore the church should not be an appendix to the celebrations but at the heart of it." So says Angela Sarkis, chief executive of the Church Urban Fund and vice-president of the African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA). Pauline Graham, the coordinator of the churches' Windrush celebration, is encouraging congregations, is encouraging congregations to write in for a Windrush Information Pack. * For further information, contact Ms Graham at ACEA, Whitefield House, 186 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4BT, or telephone 0171-735 7373.
A recent editorial in the Trinidad Express quotes V.S. Naipaul in describing the idea that "if people cannot live in the day they would live in the night", as indicated in the greater willingness of people to cross the fine line between legitimate religion and superstition as life becomes more complex and challenging. The `mental darkness' to which the author was referring is the result of "the inevitable accompaniment of social marginalization and economic hopelessness in which so large a part of our population lives." From Montreal to Toronto to New York and the Caribbean there would seem to be a proliferation of new churches (38 in one small Toronto community), and ministers with questionable credentials promising solutions to all problems (`miracles' to be more precise) including childlessness, drug and alcohol addiction, impotence, disease, release from `spells', and depression. All for a price, of course. Two recent cases involving the deaths of teenagers in Trinidad can also serve to highlight the extremes to which this new `religion' has gone. In the first case a 17-year-old girl who became sick at her parents home was taken to her late grandmother's house (apparently a well-known Baptist woman in South Trinidad) where her body was kept for three days after her death (in spite of decay and flies) in the hope that the spirit of her dead grandmother would resurrect her back to life.
