Well it has been nearly two months since I have been in Brazil which is quite amazing really. I am staying in a great place pretty much smack in the centre of Rio, in an area called Lapa … near St Teresa. It is perfect … 5 minutes walk to work, 5 minutes run to the beach, 5 minutes walk to music, bars, parks, galleries … 5 minutes to everywhere really 🙂 Living with two guys (NB picture below) … one a cinematographer and the other a web designer.
If you know Brisbane, the area is kind of like the Valley was about 10-15 years ago. Very artsy, bohemian and on the other side, full of people who have no where to sleep but the streets as well. Rio is a strange and uncomfortable place like this. There are so many places I’ve been where the distance between the richest and the poorest is a matter of metres … including where I live. Here’s a pic about 50 metres from my place.
My three main reasons for coming here were to (1) Get more in the realm of fluent w my Portuguese (2) Start getting an insight into the key issues/problems affecting women and general social/economic development (3) Have some work experience in the region … and all these things are rolling well. The place where I’m working – Instituto Promundo (www.promundo.org.br/en) does some great programs and research in the realm of combating violence against women … fabulous happy wonderful people as well, so this time has been and continues to be great. The world of issues is about as opposite as you can get from my Laos/Asia world … so this is keeping my brain and instincts ticking well. I was actually in a pharmacy buying something in about my first week here, when two men rolled in on a motorbike for an armed hold up! They took all the money from the tills and then patted us all down. Not very smart robbers I would say though, bc I had $R10 waving in my hand above my head that no one seemed to see and left me with it!
What else … oh yes … the guy who owns the apartment where I am living, is a cinematographer, and needed to make some extra cash to buy some equipment to finish his film. Carnaval occurred about two weeks ago, so he took to the streets and sold “sacoletes” ie frozen alcoholic fruit iceblocks essentially! He got me thinking, and I decided to make jelly shots (with the brazilian cane sugar rum – cachaça) to 50% entertain me and 50% assist my volunteering ways! And it was a hit! NB pic below from a very happy group that purchased about 15!
A great way to be out and about amongst the Carnaval festive times as well!
I’ve also decided to cook up a big pot of rice and feijão (brazilian beans … yummmmmmy) a couple of times a week and deal out to the people living on the streets around me … 50% bc you can’t walk past “your neighbours” like that every day and do nothing and 50% to enable conversations to help my brain go a little deeper with some of the key issues occurring here. I was speaking to a guy the other day who told me that he mainly only slept on the street bc it was too dangerous to go home to his favela (NB photo of a typical Rio favela below).
Why? Bc of the constant gunfights between the police and druglords. He also mentioned that a new drug had just recently arrived in Brazil and until now is only in a couple of favelas (slums) but is spreading. He (and I feel bad that I can’t remember “his” name) said that it is worse than crack cocaine … in that it is cheaper, more addictive and the overall debilitating effect onsets much more quickly. Drugs here are ridiculously cheap … ie you can get your hands on crack cocaine for about $R2 or 3 a pop ie AUD $1.50 or so. And one beer in any random bar (ie not special) is $R4. You can quickly see why drugs are a problem. And it’s clear I haven’t even begun to get my head around any of this yet.
On a brighter note, the sun, energy and general joy for life of this country is quite infectious. The beaches are hilarious with the very verrrrry small bikinis that are going around. Interestingly enough, it is actually against the law to sunbake topless … but seriously the size of bikinis that the majority of women are flaunting around are no more than a couple of cm’s over the important parts of the breast! Here is one of my favourite running routes … through Botafogo, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon.
Well … that’s it from me for now. Heading off to my first samba class 🙂 Beijos xxx
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