Slumming It

I’m seeing a lot in the news about Brazil’s crackdown on favelas, and I can understand where the government is coming from. It’s an eye sore that permeates a large area of Rio, and the people who live in the favelas are not paying taxes, often stealing electricity, and sometimes involved in illegal activity. But that being said, the favelas are one of the most interesting parts of Brazil’s culture.  

When I was there in 2009, we took a tour of the favela Rocinha, and it was the best thing I did in Rio.

Before going to Brazil I’d seen City of God and Tropas de Tlite, both of which left me slightly scared or the favela lifestyle, but never the less I was ready for an adventure. 

We get picked up by a van from our hostel, and after picking up a few other people we were dropped off at the “entrance to rocina” then we were told that from there we’d get on the back of one of the many motorbike taxis that wait at the entrance.  Most of the favelas are on steep hillsides and the roads aren’t big enough for cars.  I was already a little sketched out, thinking “what if this moto driver just runs off with me and holds me for ransom.” But it was perfectly fine, and they dropped us all off at the top of the hill, just like they said they would and we gave each of our drivers 2 reais. I started to think ok it’s fine, I’m in a big group of tourists” but then Right when I got off my motor bike I saw a bike drive down the hill and the guy on the back had an ak47 wrapped in a tshirt. “Holy fuck” I thought.

Our guide who did these trips twice daily said that the residents of the favela actually liked the tourist coming in because 1. We buy things along the way and 2. It stops the police from randomly coming in and shooting up thugs. (Oh great, now I feel safe). 

The interesting thing about the favela was that it really was like it’s own little working city. It was a neighborhood, whee everyone knew everyone. If you needed groceries, you went to the guy who sold groceries out of his “shop” aka in front of his house. 

Our guide told us about a Brazilian footballer who grew up in the favela. Even when he made tons of money, he wanted to stay in the favela. So he did up one of the dwellings, which on the outside looked like run down shit, but was lavishly decorated on the inside with flat screen tvs etc (which by the way a lot of the houses had nice tvs. It might have been one room made from randoms bricks snd concrete with 8 people loving there, but they had a tv god dammit).

The tour started at the top of the hill and the tour would end at the entrance where we first hopped on the bikes.  Our guide would lead us down through narrow zig zagging pathways stopping at a few local shops along the way including a bakery selling delicious pastries, a woman selling bracelets made our of telephone wire, and an art gallery.

If I could go back I would have bought something from the Art gallery.  The paintings were of favela life and were really quite cool.  I hadn’t brought much money (we were in a favela after all) and they said they could hold it and you could come back, but that seemed to much of a hassle. But, that’s one thing I think back on and wish I had purchased.

The highlight of the tour was probably all the cute kids who would run after the tour saying “Hello!” to all the tourists.  When I asked if I could take a picture of them (as the guide instructed us to do before taking any pictures at all) all of them would immediately strike a pose ready for their minute in the limelight.  Our guide also mentioned that at times he would tell us all to put our cameras away and for us to strictly obey him. This would be when he saw someone who was involved in illegal activity – one of the thugs, if you will.  They knew we were just being typical tourist, but they didn’t want their faces caught on camera and somehow ending up in the hands of the police. At one point our guide shouted for us to put our cameras away as a guy turned the corner with a gun on his hip. I obeyed.

Overall it was a really rewarding tour because you got to see how someone else lives. One thing that always amazes me when going to very poor areas is that the people are usually so happy!  I wish I had a bit more of their perspective on life in me.