Thinking Like an Ancestor Retreat, Bahia
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.
Beyond the Horizon of the Self: An Invitation to Salvador
There are places that move you, and then there are places that rearrange you and re-orient what feels possible.
This November, during the electric atmosphere of Black Consciousness Week, we invite you to Salvador, Bahia — a place where African creative and spiritual intelligence did not merely survive; it adapted, evolved, and flourished. Here, the rhythm of the Samba-reggae ringing out in the streets is a heartbeat of continuity.
Thinking Like an Ancestor is a curated, facilitated expedition for those who have finished "optimising" and are ready to begin stewarding. It is a journey for leaders and creators who recognise that their decisions ripple across generations and who wish to anchor their impact in something more enduring than the urgent.
The Heart of This Journey
Being a good ancestor 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.
How You'll Learn
You'll move through Salvador as both student and witness. 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
This is retreat is a sanctuary for your becoming. It is a shift from performing excellence to practicing possibility. From reacting to consciously shaping what comes next.
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.
What's included
Your Sanctuary
6 nights at Fasano Salvador, a 5-star luxury hotel and restored colonial masterpiece overlooking the Bay of All Saints. White linen, rooftop views, spa access, and ample time to rest and restore between experiences.
Meals
Daily breakfast and two dinners, thoughtfully prepared, including time with local chefs and community members.
Seamless Travel
Private airport pick up and drop off, 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 12 months of Ijeruka Membership. For full details, visit ijeruka.com/membership.
On-ground team
An on-ground team will provide timely support throughout your experience.
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 Afro-Brazilian religion preserves African values amidst the city's growth. 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 embark on a boat journey to the Museu do Recôncavo, a historic former sugar plantation and cultural site, followed by a seaside lunch and the Black Awareness Day procession in Salvador’s Historic Center, the Liberdade neighbourhood. 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.
Key Information
What to Expect
Salvador is alive with beauty, power, and an ineffable energy. Consistently, those who visit feel something awakened and at home in them. It is a powerful anchor for our journey. Expect to expand the way you think about your identity, your role, and how you influence the world around you.
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. 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.
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 do I know what offerings to engage with?
Book a discovery call. We'll help you figure it out.
However, as a rule of thumb, if you're in a specific season of transition or growth and want structured depth, a Learning Journey or coaching is likely right. If you want ongoing insight, reinforcement and community, the Village is designed for that. If you're an organisation and want a partner, our advisory work is the place to begin.
How is Ijeruka different from other leadership or personal 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 the vital inner architecture of perception, judgment, and creative will that shapes every decision you make. We help you access and refine the wisdom you already carry, and build the capacity to activate it under real pressure. We work holistically and developmental, integrating evidence-based research on adult (vertical) development, cultural and relational intelligence, and systemic awareness.
Who is Ijeruka for, and who is it not for?
Ijeruka is for people and organisations doing uncharted work — building something that matters, at a scale or complexity that is outpacing how they currently operate. You might be navigating a transition, holding greater responsibility, in a season of reinvention, or pursuing a bold vision. What unites everyone here is a commitment to the quality of what they're building and to who they're becoming in the process. Ijeruka is not for people looking for quick-fix productivity hacks, prescriptive answers, or passive content consumption. If you want someone to tell you what to do, this isn't the space. If you want to develop the capacity to know for yourself, even when the way forward is unclear, you're in the right place.
How do programmes and learning experiences work? What level of commitment is expected?
Every Ijeruka programme is designed around a developmental arc. You won't just learn ideas. You'll practice them in your actual life and work, reflect on what shifts, and return with what you've discovered. Programmes typically combine live facilitated sessions, self-paced material, peer learning in small groups, and structured experimentation.
The emphasis is always on integration: connecting what you're learning to the real decisions, tensions, and aspirations you're navigating right now. We design for depth over breadth, and for transformation over information.
The time commitment varies by programme, but the commitment is consistent: you are here to grow, not to observe. We keep cohorts intentionally small so that your presence matters to you and to the people learning alongside you.
Do I need to be a member to participate in Ijeruka programmes?
No. Learning Journeys and other programmes are open to anyone, whether or not you're a member of the Village. Membership offers ongoing access to the broader Ijeruka ecosystem — practices, community conversations, and resources that sustain your growth between programmes. Many people find their way to membership after a programme, when they realise the work doesn't end when the cohort does. But it's not a prerequisite.
How do you handle safety, confidentiality, and trust in group spaces?
Every Ijeruka gathering space operates under clear agreements around confidentiality, respect, and the distinction between challenge and harm. We create containers where people can name what's real without performing or protecting. Facilitators are trained to hold complexity, not smooth it over. That said, Ijeruka is a learning and development space, not therapy. If something surfaces that requires clinical support, we'll help you find the right resource.
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