My first memory after leaving the house to cycle was being taken by the ambulance to the hospital. I was evaluated by several medical professionals. One of them spent two hours stitching my mouth and forehead back into something that resembles a human being.

Brazilian SUS is not perfect by any means. It's unorganized and some procedures and operations can take a long time to happen. There's lots of corruption with doctors that work in multiple places at the same time.

But, a lot of the time, it freaking works. The paramedics were gentle, affectionate, and competent. Some in the street knew my mother so they when to my house and called her--she accompanied me in the ambulance.

The hospital was not pretty by any standard. There were burn victims screaming bloody hell and I'm pretty sure I saw a woman die--but hey, that's a hospital, people die there!

An actual orthopedist made sure I did not have any fracture. An actual neurologist made sure I have no neural damage. A surgeon stitched my mouth and forehead back together into something that doesn't look like a character out of Frankenstein. It still looks bad, but it'll improve with time. A very nice nurse cleaned up all my bruises and have me aftercare orientations.

On several occasions, we had to manually seek people and procedures that were supposed to happen automatically. The operation itself was a mess, but the doctors and nurses were extremely caring, competent, and dedicated.

This all cost me exactly zero dollars. I didn't even had to fulfill any absurd form or provide an excess of documentation: just my national registry (RG), something almost every citizen has unless they're a very specific kind of homeless.

This is in a very poor unstable country. It is absolutely not perfect, but on many occasions, it kinda works!

With my sister arriving from another continent along with my nephew/godson and brother-in-law, and my mother also coming from abroad to stay with us, I had the first reunion from this side of the family in more than 2 years. It was awesome for obvious reasons, and one of them was the fact that women in my family usually love food and cook very well. I'm not a bad cook myself, but they're tough competition.

So I had the idea to take a few pictures and share them with Tildes, along with some commentary.

Theses dishes are typical of our region of Bahia, Brazil. They may have versions in other states, usually with significant differences.

All foods are savory.

With one exception, all photos were taken in my kitchen.

1. Shrimp Stew

Just shrimp with some spices and farofa de mandioca^[1]. The quality and freshness of the shrimp are one of the most important factors, and living in front of the ocean certainly helps.

Images:

• Shrimp in the pan
• Farofa de mandioca
• Shrimp and farofa on the plate

2. Lambreta

A kind of clam that's only available in Bahia (or at least mainly appreciated here). Like many things from our coast, it's naturally tasty and doesn't require much preparation. Salt, onions, tomatoes and lemon juice are more than enough. They're quick to cook — lambretas are ready when they naturally open.

Image: Lambretas on the plate (source).

3. Mangrove Crab

Our crabs are very different from what most people are used to eat elsewhere. They do not come from the sea, but from manguezais^[2] (mangrove vegetation), an ecosystem that grows in brackish water (salt-water and fresh-water mixed together).

These crabs are smaller and carry less meat, but are way more succulent, with a unique taste that is hard to explain and easy to love. We use a variety of ingredients and spices to enhance their flavor, but it's overall a simple preparation, mainly consisting of water, salt, onions, and cilantro.

Many people, including my mother, used to cook them alive for a better taste. I convinced her to stop doing that and they're still delicious.

Image: crabs cooking in the pot.

4. Abará

This one is neither simple nor easy.

First there's a dough made of mashed black-eyed peas. When fried on palm oil, it becomes the acarajé. When you add palm oil to the dough and cook it in banana tree leaves, it is called abará. They're both highly sought treats across the country, and I happen to live in the most African city of Brazil, which has the best acarajés and abarás in the country :). It's really hard to digest, though, and it's not rare for tourists to feel sick after the first time they eat those. But they always come back for more! Acarajé and abará are actually "comida de santo" ("holy foods"), meaning they have ceremonial significance in the African-Brazilian religion called Canbomblé.

It's usually eaten with vatapá, an Afro-Brazilian dish made from bread (my mother uses black-eyed-beans for that), shrimp, coconut milk, finely ground peanuts and palm oil mashed into a creamy paste.

Abará is a popular street food in our region of Brazil, sold mostly by women from humble origins. Along with acarajé, it's a point of contention with neo-charismatic "baianas de acarajé" who sell the same product using the name calling them "Jesus cakes". They do so because, for them, religions of African origin are literally "the Devil".

Ingredients

• Cilantro
• Onion
• Tomato
• Peanut
• Dry Shrimp
• Black-Eyed Peas

Image: the ingredients together (minus the black-eyed peas).

Preparation

The vatapá must be constantly stirred. It is quite thick, so that's a labor-intensive job. Everyone must help.

Image: stirring the vatapá.

Images of the end result:

• Image 1
• Image 2

Footnotes

^[1] A gift from our Native heritage, it's the toasted version of "farinha de mandioca", a kind of rough flour that enhances the flavor and texture of the dish.

^[2] The equivalent page on Wikipedia only address the mangrove trees, and doesn't really convey that manguezais are unique ecosystems in which includes those trees.

For those not in the know, Brazil is going to be having a presidential election this year. The reason the title of this thread is what it is relates to the scandals that engulf all three of the current and past presidents: Current President Michel Temer, and past Presidents (in order of most recently in office) Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula was found guilty and began serving his 12-year jail sentence for accepting bribes in early April, maintaining his innocence and that his investigation and trial were politically motivated to prevent him from running in this year's election.

There are few countries as publicly wrestling with corruption allegations in explicit quid pro quo deals between politicians and companies as Brazil.

If you're interested in a pretty decent introduction into this wild ride, the wikipedia article on Operation Car Wash--and that is how this scandal gets referred to--is a good place to start.

So, using publicly available evidence (in Portuguese if you have to), what role does corruption play in the highest political offices in Brazil, and how can Brazil begin rebuilding what seems to be a clearly shattered reputation?