Thinking Like an Ancestor Retreat
A six-day learning retreat in Salvador, Bahia for people who want to live with greater care for what they inherit, what they interrupt, and what they leave behind.
We gather in Salvador, Bahia, during Black Consciousness Week, in a city shaped by extraordinary cultural continuity.
Here, African creative, spiritual, and cultural intelligence did not simply endure; it adapted, evolved, and flourished. Ritual, music, relationship, aesthetics, devotion — these ways of being were carried forward by Afro-Brazilians not for recognition, but because life itself demanded it.
Bahia does not explain this. It embodies it. And on this journey, you'll come to understand this intimately.
The Heart of This Journey
Being a good ancestor is not a one-time intention. It is a way of returning, again and again, to what matters. An ancestor is not only someone who comes before. It's someone whose way of seeing, being, and creating continues through others. Their orientation. Their ethos. Their practice. We're already becoming ancestors through what we normalise, preserve, and pass on.
This week is about making that conscious. About orienting to think and act like an ancestor in every domain of your life — your leadership, your creativity, your relationships, your impact.
How you'll learn
You'll move through Salvador as both student and witness. Each day, you'll explore a new dimension of ancestral intelligence. Immersed in culture weaved with rich, facilitated reflection and practice, learning unfolds through:
- Walking the city — Pelourinho, terreiros, markets, streets where history is lived
- Shared meals — Slow, relational eating alongside local chefs and community members
- Guided discussion and reflection — Processing what you're witnessing and feeling
- Rhythm and movement — Samba-reggae, embodied practice, rhythm as teaching
- Unstructured time — Rest, solitude, integration happening naturally
The Journey
Day 1
Arrival
You will arrive at Salvador Intl. Airport and a private transportation will take you to settle into Hotel Fasano.
In the evening, we gather for a welcome dinner in Pelourinho's colonial streets, where Afro-Bahian life animated the margins. During dinner we will name the purpose of this journey together, set simple agreements, and offer an orienting question to carry into the week. Dinner will be followed by a short stroll in the quarter.
Day 2
Continuity
Step into Salvador. This day is about witnessing: learning to notice what endures across rupture - how ways of seeing, relating, and creating survive and adapt through time.
We explore the historic centre's most significant sites: Start at Farol da Barra, where Salvador was founded in 1549, then drive along Sete de Setembro Avenue and Corredor da Vitória. We will make our way to São Francisco Church; Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos, built and maintained by enslaved and formerly enslaved Africans as a space of dignity and resistance; and the African Museum and Pierre Verger Foundation. Lunch is shared as we process what we're witnessing.
In the evening, live samba-reggae percussion awakens your body to rhythm of Bahia.
Day 3
Adaptive & Creative Intelligence
This day celebrates the forms of adaptive intelligence that sustain strong communities, and that has allowed African diaspora communities to flourish.
Begin with journaling to notice what's drawing you this week. Then we will begin a culinary adventure at São Joaquim Market, where you'll handpick fresh, natural ingredients. Under the guidance of local chefs we will prepare traditional Afro-Brazilian dishes, learning how they transform simple ingredients into dishes infused with history, love, and vitality. Shared meals become a slow, relational practice.
Afternoon is free for rest, the beach, or the spa. In the evening, a story circle over dinner creates space to explore: What is created for life? What kinds of intelligence do we value (or undervalue) in ourselves?
Day 4
Spiritual Intelligence
This day invites you into one of Salvador's most vital dimensions — the emergence of Afro-indigenous spiritual traditions. In Salvador, spirituality is not separate from daily life; it is woven through it.
You will be welcomed into a Candomblé terreiro—a space of community and devotion where you'll encounter the Orixás as a system of meaning-making and collective flourishing. Here, we will witness how African cosmology honours the unseen, not to convert you, but to expand your understanding of where power, grounding and guidance can come from.
Afternoons are unscheduled, honouring the integration that happens in silence and solitude. In the evening, we gather for a somatic practice, followed by a guided dialogue.
Day 5
Collective Memory
Black Consciousness Day is the energetic centre of our week — a day where history is not in museums but in bodies dancing through lively streets.
We participate in Black Consciousness Day celebrations and move through the Liberdade neighbourhood. Informal conversations with community members offer windows into collective memory. Our conversations will centre how people carry and honour what has been preserved, while remaining free to evolve.
Day 6
Stewardship
On our final day together, we gather for a carefully facilitated Stewardship Intensive where participants distill the week into a personal orientation they can carry forward. Using the journal, guided reflection, and witnessing in small groups, each person articulates their own ‘Thinking Like an Ancestor’ orientation — a personal protocol you can return to over time, across contexts.
Day 7
Departure
- Breakfast
- Goodbyes
- Optional Praia do Forte extension begins
What's included
Your Sanctuary
6 nights at Fasano Salvador, a restored colonial masterpiece overlooking the Bay of All Saints. White linen, rooftop views, spa access, and ample time to rest and restore between experiences.
Nourishment
Meals thoughtfully prepared. Many meals include time with local chefs and community members.
Seamless Travel
Private airport transfers and all ground transportation for scheduled activities. We handle the logistics; you simply have to arrive ready to engage in the journey.
Expert Facilitation & Experiences
All curated cultural immersions, guided reflections, workshops, and activities led by Ijeruka's hosts alongside local guides, artists, historians, and practitioners.
Membership Continuation
All Learning Journeys include 3 months of Ijeruka Membership.
This ensures you are not left alone to integrate what you’ve begun. Membership provides ongoing developmental reinforcement through quarterly Dilemma Labs (live forums for real-time, high-stakes decision support), access to our global village of leaders, and our curated library of tools and resources for sustained growth.
At the end of your included period, you may choose to continue membership on a quarterly or annual basis.
For full details, visit ijeruka.com/membership.
This Journey is for you if...
Your Decisions Outlast You
You recognise that your leadership and choices ripple outwards. You are navigating responsibility, influence, and long horizons of impact.
You’re Done Optimising
You are drawn to ground your work and life in something deeper than urgency or individual achievement.
You Want Wisdom, Not Doctrine
You want to understand ancestral intelligence not as nostalgia or doctrine, but as a practice relevant to how you lead, steward, relate and create change.
You Trust Emergence Over Answers
You are willing to slow down, sit with questions that don't have quick answers, and let insights emerge through experience.
You Learn Through Place and Presence
You're drawn to learn in a place where history, culture, and beauty are woven into daily life, and you're excited to spend a week in Salvador.
Hosts / Contributors
Key Information
What to Expect
Salvador is alive with beauty, power, and an ineffable energy. Consistently, Black people who visit feel something awakened and at home in them. It is a powerful anchor for our work. But what's even more powerful is the orientation we bring to it — not as ordinary tourists, but as conscious students absorbed in noticing, reflection, and integration. Every street, every conversation, every meal becomes part of your learning.
Expect to expand the way you think about your identity, your role, and how you influence the future. This is not a wellness retreat that happens to have a theme. This is a facilitated expedition designed to shift you from performing excellence to practicing possibility. From reacting to consciously shaping what comes next.
It takes a village.
Make ours your advantage.
An incredible intentional space to navigate uncertainty with the support and love of a community that you can relate to.
The Ijeruka Space and platform felt like coming home. The sessions were well organised, the online platform was very interactive, and they provided multiple modes of learning.
It’s been a long while since I’ve joyfully anticipated showing up for collective study, eager to listen and reflect with others. Each session felt like a communal gathering, which takes skill and trusted intuition to facilitate through virtual spaces. I’m continually grateful for the many resources, questions and frameworks woven throughout that I know I will return to again and again.
The best part of the Ijeruka for me was being in community with people across the Diaspora, hearing their perspectives, and understanding our shared and stratified histories. I will always carry this particular experience with me.
Anwulika and Gabby were excellent facilitators, and brought so much space and life to the exploratory discourse. I enjoyed and learned so much from every rockstar presenter, and everyone's contributions to the resources that underpin their work.
The organisation, as well as the speakers that were invited were varied, interesting and enlightening in thematic scope. For me, the course opened up a new world of ways of living, doing, and understanding that is so necessary for these transition times we live in. Thank you so much, Anwulika, and your team.
I wish this existed years ago! I feel so happy for the younger black generation. I really do!
The course was perfectly tailored and the often interactive teaching framework was great. The teachers were incredibly well versed in their subjects and a joy to engage with and learn from. This course literally changed the trajectory of my life in terms of how I plan to approach projects and relate to my immediate environment. I now have a list of books and resources that’ll take me a while to get through but I couldn’t be happier. Thank you so much for creating this very much needed platform. It is a blessing.
I am grateful for the gifts of knowledge, conversation and connection I now have from the time I dedicated to this brilliant course. Thank you to my fellow participants and major gratitude to Anwulika Okonjo for creating this space.
I highly encourage anyone curious about what Ijeruka has to offer and I promise you will not regret it! There was a great deal of engagement among like-minded individuals from different backgrounds. It was a wonderful experience to learn together, reminisce together and be awestruck by the lessons.
I cannot recommend Ijeruka highly enough! From the incredibly accomplished and knowledgeable speakers to the capacity of the facilitators to create the right environment for discussion, Ijeruka met all of my expectations. I could totally do it all over again!
Through Ijeruka I was able to challenge myself into new ways of thinking that have been very useful for the navigating some of the challenges in my professional life.
Thank you so much for a beautiful course! I was able to enrich my learning and appreciated that we heard from people based across the globe. I look forward to more courses in the future.
Ijeruka has been a joy. I came to the course seeking purposeful alignment in my work, and an alternative path to fulfillment that is not trauma-based. Through Ijeruka, I had the experience to visit different timelines, imagine and discuss alternative futures, and deepen my appreciation for Diasporic intellect, community and consciousness. I would recommend Ijeruka to anyone who is seeking futures where they exist in wholeness.
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Commonly Asked Questions
How is Ijeruka different from other leadership or professional development platforms?
Ijeruka is a learning ecosystem for people who care about their inner growth and outward impact. We don’t focus on surface-level skills or motivational content. We focus on who you are becoming, how you make meaning, and how you handle complexity, because that determines how you lead, build, relate and shape the future.
What makes Ijeruka different is that we work holistically and developmentally. We integrate evidence-based research on adult (vertical) development, leadership, and systems change with a rigorous attentiveness to African and Afro-diasporic contexts and traditions.
Who is Ijeruka for, and who is it not for?
Ijeruka is for African and Afro-diasporic professionals who are actively growing into their next level—personally, professionally, or both—and want to expand their capacity to hold the life, leadership and impact they’re called to.
Our participants are usually already capable, driven, and in motion. What brings them to Ijeruka is the sense that their outer responsibilities, ambitions and influence now requires inward expansion to be elevated or sustained: e.g. clearer internal authority, stronger coherence, cultural confidence and better decision-making under complexity.
If you’re looking for quick fixes or credentials without inner work, this won’t be the right place. If you’re ready to engage meaningfully with yourself, others and the world, you’ll feel at home.
How do programmes and learning experiences work? What level of commitment is expected?
Our offerings range from self-paced, short-form learning and live conversations to multi-session programmes, retreats, and longer developmental journeys.
You can expect a mix of frameworks, guided inquiry, and practical application. This is not “watch and forget” content. The value comes from engaging with the material and, where relevant, with other participants.
Time commitments are always stated clearly upfront. We design experiences to be deep enough to be effective, but realistic for people with full lives and responsibilities.
Do I need to be a member to participate in Ijeruka programmes?
Some experiences will be open to the public, while others will be reserved for members or offered first to our community. Membership is designed for people who want ongoing access to learning, dialogue, and a values-aligned peer village.
Becoming a member signals a deeper level of commitment to your own development and to being in community with others on a similar path. Membership details, benefits, and pricing will always be transparent before you’re asked to join.
You can engage with Ijeruka without becoming a member, but membership is where the full ecosystem comes alive.
How do you handle safety, confidentiality, and trust in group spaces?
Psychological and cultural safety are non-negotiable for us. While Ijeruka is not a therapeutic service, our spaces often involve honest reflection and meaningful personal insight. We set clear community agreements around confidentiality, respect, and responsible participation. What’s shared in closed sessions stays in the room unless explicit permission is given. We curate group experiences intentionally and design them to support depth without exposure for its own sake.
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