Kamaya “Kami” Jones has spent more than 20 years finding her way deeper into Salvador da Bahia past the tourist strip, past the surface-level excursions, and into the kind of cultural connection that makes the ground feel like it’s vibrating beneath your feet. A doctoral-level anthropologist and UX researcher who spent 15-plus years at Spotify, Netflix, and Google/YouTube, she was always the friend everyone texted before a Salvador trip. She knew the keyholders. She knew the temples and she knew which way not to turn.
Eventually, she stopped just answering texts and built the infrastructure. Chave pronounced “SHAH-vee,” meaning “key” in Portuguese is the travel platform she created to give the African diaspora a real way into Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s most African city and one of the most powerful centers of African cultural survival in the Western Hemisphere. With AI-curated itineraries, personally vetted cultural practitioners, and logistics handled end to end, Chave is not another listing app. It is a key. Jones sat down to talk about what it took to build it, what travelers keep missing, and why Salvador da Bahia is a portal not just a destination.
What is your background, and how did it lead you to build Chave?
My background is in tech. I was a user researcher at companies like Spotify, most recently Google, Netflix, and technology and building products is something that I’ve been doing for the past 10-plus years. AI was introduced, and user researchers like myself could start to build platforms ourselves, with the support and partnership of product partners and engineers, but we didn’t have to wait for someone else to build a product that we thought would be a great product.
Playing around with building is how Chave was born. But why did I build Chave? Because I am culturally connected to Salvador and to Bahia, Brazil, through family, through spirit, and I’ve been visiting there for over 20 years, and I am always trying to support people in finding deeper experiences when they travel. Those two things came together, and they birthed Chave.
For people who have never been, why is Salvador da Bahia more than just a destination for the African diaspora?
Brazil, where the United States got 500,000 enslaved humans from the continent of Africa Brazil got 13.5 million. Much of that culturally rich history still lives in Brazil. A lot of that still survived, and so it makes it this epicenter of diasporic African-ness, if I can call it that. The energy is there, the people are there. And it has that mix of being a little bit removed from the continent because of the history. So it’s a really unique place because of that.
You’ve described Salvador da Bahia as a portal, not just a place to visit. What do you mean by that?
The energy in Salvador is real. It’s not something I think of as a tangible, like, you’re gonna go to Salvador, and here’s what’s in the city, and here’s what you can do. It’s really about a feeling and a vibration that you feel when you step off the plane, and how you feel connected, how you feel like you’ve entered a portal into your own ancestry, especially for those coming from the continent of Africa.
That portal exists there, and we can get real surreal, depends on how deep you want to go, but it really is a portal. It’s a way to unlock your connection to that particular land. Speaking of unlock, that’s why we call it Chave.
What does that feeling actually feel like when you land?
I can describe my personal experience the first time I ever landed in Brazil. I literally felt like the ground was vibrating. Looking around, I was like, what’s going on here? The earth was not shaken, it was not quaking. We were not in Los Angeles, California. We were in Brazil. The earth was not moving, but I felt it vibrating.
There was this just undercurrent of spirituality, of me connecting to that land, and I felt like oh, wait a minute, I belong here. I’m home. My family is from the West Indies. Through marriage, my family is very much from Brazil, but we still have a lot of those cultural connections and similar connections in the West Indies that you have in Brazil. When I landed there, the way that they’ve retained a lot of that history and culture, it just felt very familiar to me.
What were you seeing over 20 years of travel to Salvador that made you say you had to build a solution?
Chave in Portuguese means key, so it’s the literal translation of the word key, and we are giving you the key to unlock that feeling, that spirituality, that connection to the people who are on the ground there. Over the past two or three years, Salvador has really gained popularity. You can go to an AI and say, hey, I’m a Black woman, traveling, single, and I have a dog where should I go? Oftentimes, Salvador is one of the places that the AIs are telling people.
Recently while there, I started talking to some people and saying, what made you come here? Folks told me they talked to an AI, and it recommended they come here. But what I’ve really been seeing over the past two or three years is a lot of Black Americans, Black Europeans, Black Afro-diasporic travelers in general coming to Salvador and having experiences that felt a little bit surface. On top of that, they were selling those experiences those really surface experiences to their followers. That was the only thing their followers would see.
Going deeper was the whole point
It was not the real deep experience. Even from the way that they were framing their content, I understood that their goals were to go a little bit deeper. It felt like, y’all want to go deeper, but this ain’t it. So I said, well, I can’t have y’all doing my city like this, and y’all are the only ones representing it, and not really representing it in a deep way. I gotta do something.
Tell us about the app what are the features, and how do people access it?
You can download it if you have an Android, you go right to the Play Store. It will be live in the Apple Store in a couple of weeks, but you can download it from the browser. Head to Chave.pro — C-H-A-V-E dot P-R-O — and you’ll get a little install app button right at the top. From there, you can install it from the browser if you’re on iPhone.
Before you even sign up for an account, which is free by the way, you can type in your vibe and tell the app what you want to do, when you’re going to be in Salvador, and what you’re interested in. There’s a prompt that says, tell us your vibe, and you can say, I like dancing and cooking, I’m arriving on June 13th, and I’ll be there for three days. The app will actually curate an itinerary for you based on what it is you want to do.
It’s not only going to give you our specific cultural experiences it’s also going to tell you what’s going on in the city. Scrapers and different AIs are employed to actually have a calendar that tells you what’s going on when you’re going to be there. And then, if we have an experience that fits your vibe and that’s happening when you’re there, we will surface that experience for you.
Paid experiences through the app range from $50 to $300, and we have some overnight options too. You could actually use our app and never do any of our experiences though I recommend that you do, because they’re very fun. Either way, you can go on there and say, hey, I want a nice curated day for me, and we’ll tell you what restaurants to go to, everything that’s in the area.
At what point did you realize your personal knowledge of Salvador needed to become a platform?
When I started cussing my friends out if they didn’t call me, because I thought that I was the ambassador. If people go to Brazil and they don’t let me help them figure out what to do, I get mad at them. And then, when they have a terrible time, I’m like, I told you. Being really emotionally invested in travelers getting to enjoy themselves and have a deeper experience is what made me realize oh, girl, you actually need to build this, because you are way too passionate about it. Go do a thing.
What has the travel industry failed to understand about Black travelers?
Can I start with everything? The Afro dollar is an important dollar, and the travel industry in general has really focused on these un-unique, base-level experiences that you can get anywhere and that don’t require an app. The Eiffel Tower, the Cristo in Rio, the Pelourinho in Salvador you can do all of those things, sure, but these are very surface experiences.
Maybe the majority of people who are traveling only want a surface experience. Maybe they just want a picture. But there are a group of us who really want to know the story behind the picture, who are not just traveling to sit in a space and post it. We’re traveling to understand that space and to connect to the culture and the people. That’s still a work in progress for the travel industry. It’s getting there, but it’s not there yet.
Chave has cultural experts called keyholders. Who are they, and why does that distinction matter?
We call them keyholders because they hold the key to the experience, and we like to say that they’re not tour guides, because they didn’t study to be tour guides. Several of the people I work with do movement experiences dance, drumming, Orisha movement. These are mestras and mestres in this space who do this for a living. Tour groups are not their business. You can bring them one, and sure, they’ll host a class, but that’s not what they’re doing.
Classes for the community are what they teach for the Brazilians who are there, who want to learn and dig deeper into their own movement experience. The people leading these experiences and who we’re crafting them with are actually experts in that thing. No one is saying, let’s go on a tour, let’s watch this class, let’s take this class. Instead, they are inviting you into their space. They are giving you a unique and connected experience where they are sharing more of themselves than you would ultimately get if you were just going to take a class, or if somebody brought a tour group and said, hey, teach them a couple of steps.
How did your background in big tech and anthropology prepare you to build something this culturally specific?
What made me a UX researcher in those spaces was actually my anthropology background. I have a master’s in anthropology, and I have a doctorate in human development, where I focused on sociology and anthropology the fusion of learning about human beings and why we do what we do. Understanding people and going deeper has always been my interest, particularly the exchanges between human beings in whatever space they’re in.
Having that passion already, and then fusing that with tech is why I became a researcher, because I got to talk to people and say, well, why are you using this product? What do you actually need from this product? There was just a natural progression one day you are going to create a product that’s driven from a passion you have, connecting to people, connecting people to one another, learning about humans, digging deeper, and you’re going to use your expertise in building product. Naturally, this is what emerged.
What did leaving big tech to go full-time on Chave require of you personally?
Prayer! Every day, it’s a challenge when you’re going for yourself. Right now, I am my own everything in this space. There is a co-founder, my partner, Ronnell he is there on the ground in Salvador, building out a lot of the experiences with me. But I’m doing everything else. Building the platform, troubleshooting, handling the marketing all of it falls on me. I don’t know if I was actually really ready for the amount of me that is required.
Cloning is something I’ve looked into. No technology exists yet that can make another one of me, so right now it’s just me doing everything, but it’s a learning experience, and I’m still learning.
What would you say to a Black traveler who feels an ancestral pull to Salvador but doesn’t know where to begin?
Hit me up! That’s what I’m here for. Send me an email hello at Chave.pro. It’s a unique place, because it’s really open and also really closed. Humility is something you need to bring with you. You need to be clear about what it is that you’re looking for and what you’re not looking for. Then download the app, type in what you want, and see how we can help you. It’s an interesting space, because it’s closed and open at the same time, and you could use some help figuring out how to really get in.
Is Salvador da Bahia safe for solo Black women travelers?
That is what the app is for, and that is who it’s for. Because you asked me about safety sometimes it’s a trigger, because I’m born and raised in New York, I live in Los Angeles part of the year, and I can’t say that I always feel safe here with the climate and everything that’s going on. So when we talk about safety, it’s real specific, and it’s real individual.
Personally, I feel safe in Salvador. Making sure I’m not in places where I wouldn’t feel safe is something I do there the same way I do it at home. Just like any place you go don’t go where you ain’t supposed to go, and you’ll be alright. Plenty of Black women solo travelers in Salvador love it and end up staying. It really just depends on your own comfort level and what it is you’re looking for.
Trouble has never found me there. Have I heard of people who have experienced it? Absolutely. Have I heard of people who have had trouble down the street from me? Yes. Deep-rooted cultural experiences are often not in the tourist areas, and for travelers, you’ll tend to stay in the tourist areas because you’ll feel safer. That’s another reason why an app like this matters we’re going to help you connect to those experiences, and we’re also going to bring you there in an air-conditioned car, in a way that you’ll feel safe and comfortable.
Walk us through how keyholders and liaisons work together on Chave experiences.
We get real fancy, because we have keyholders and we have liaisons. The liaison is an English- and Portuguese-speaking person who is going to be with you the whole time. They’re the person you’ll meet, the person you ride with, the person who will translate for you. As for the keyholder they’re only going to be in their space, because they’re not a tour guide. They do what they do you come, they invite you in, you get out, they’re like, bye.
Employees is not what they are. These are people who are allowing us to participate in their space. Your liaison is the person who stays with you throughout. The keyholder is the expert. We have to be very gentle with them.
What do you want people to carry home after a Chave experience?
Something that is internal, something that has changed or shifted your perspective. Even a small shift in perspective matters a question you can go home with and apply to other parts of your life. One of our cleansing experiences is bringing you into the Terreiro, meeting with a Mãe de Santo, and getting a cleanse. Hopefully that just allows somebody, when they leave there, to feel different. Dictating what that feeling is isn’t something I can do, but hopefully there’s some sort of shift.
What’s one experience in Salvador da Bahia that every Black traveler should have at least once?
It’s a tough one, because part of me wants to say visiting a Terreiro and having a cleansing. But that is such a deep and connected spiritual experience, and it requires a lot of respect, a lot of quiet, and a lot of understanding. Not everyone should go and do that, particularly if they are not ready and open to the experience. But for those who are open to receiving spirituality in a different way, I absolutely think that they should at least visit a Terreiro.
What’s one thing tourists get wrong about Salvador da Bahia?
They go to the Pelourinho to party and never really get to explore the history. The Pelourinho is a party — they get that part right. But understanding the deep, rich history of the Pelourinho, and the fact that bodies were sold there — that’s something that gets missed. When people go to Senegal and they see the Door of No Return, they understand what that space is. Dancing and listening to music is what they do at the Pelourinho, without really connecting to what that space was.
What does it feel like to stand in a place where African history did not disappear — where it survived?
Oh, it’s delicious. I already told you, it makes my body vibrate, and it’s something that my body craves when it is not there.
What do you say to people who think heritage travel is just another trend?
What? Now what now?
What is the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural extraction in travel?
The word extraction, I don’t love. Cultural connection and cultural exchange are what I prefer. Appreciation, to me, signals that there is a little bit of an outside looking in. Extraction, to me, means there’s a little bit of a taking of what you see, and we see a lot of that. Exchange means that there’s an opportunity for discussion, a learning moment, an opportunity for you to share something and for you to receive something. Same with connection we’re actually exchanging, we’re actually connecting. That’s why I like the words connection or exchange more than extraction.
Where can people find Chave and follow along?
Go to chave.pro — C-H-A-V-E dot P-R-O — and sign up. Drop your email address in there, and we send out newsletters, blogs, and all that sort of thing. Questions are always welcome email me at hello@Chave.pro. On Instagram, find us @unlockchave that’s U-N-L-O-C-K-C-H-A-V-E. My own Instagram is Kamijonesssss with five S’s and Chave is something I post about all the time.
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