The capoeira inauguration was really cool because it was my first real (and very authentic) capoeira roda. Teófilo made Priscila get into the circle and join the fight, and she took off her shoes and went for it, which was very ballsy of her. I got it all on video – like a baby’s first steps. Some of the little kids were ridiculously good and showing off their flips, aerial twists, and flexibility. It was just a fun and colorful event with music, people clapping and singing along to the music, and playful fighting. Needless to say, my capoeira teacher started drinking beer at 10 AM and didn’t stop until we got home, so he was all sorts of craziness - for example, playing his tambourine in the car and distributing bits of wisdom about life and respect.
The following day I went to see another of the NGO’s projects in São Luiz do Paraitinga, which is a small country village one hour outside of São José. Actually drove on a tiny dirt road and arrived at a very small, colorful church located amidst pure farmland and cow pastures. The project is to teach arts and crafts to women who live in this rural area as an occupation that brings in income for their families. The day I went, there was a knitting class, so I finally learned how to knit. It was a group of 10-15 women sitting around a table together, knitting and chatting, with their children running around the courtyard. Since the women’s only exposure to American culture is through movies, they asked if I’d ever met Brad Pitt and a number of other famous actors. It smelled like cow, and stray dogs were everywhere, looking very flea-infested and lazy. Two men from the corporate sponsor, Votorantim, were there to snap a few photos, say a few words, and go back to their fancy offices. I must say, I really enjoy being out there because the women chat a lot and they make the most of fundamental things.
The reason the project got started is that the area used to be very agricultural, but currently, there isn’t much farming going on, at least none that I have seen. My guess is that these small farmers could not compete with large agribusinesses. Most of the land serves as cow pastures, and the women are really left with no occupations. Arts and crafts gives them a way to produce some sort of income, and it also returns them to more traditional days when the rural folk made their living off of artisan items. Their hope is to open specialty stores in the city, and I might possible serve as their point person in the US to contact stores that might be interested in imported Brazilian arts. They call it Artesanato do mato, which means “Arts of the countryside.”
I spent a week in Rio de Janeiro, and I am convinced that I have to live there for some part of my life. The city has everything I would want to be in a single location: a busy center, decent public transportation, outdoor markets, beautiful natural landscapes, mountains, distinct neighborhoods, forests, beaches, and nice weather. We did most of the tourist stuff, and we also went out at night in Lapa, where transsexual prostitutes make the night just that much more interesting. We rode an old school trolley, or bonde, up to Santa Teresa, which is a really cute and brightly painted neighborhood. Priscila and I have already picked out some potential houses there. The view from the sculpture of Christ the Redeemer is indescribable. I stayed with a student from ITA, which is the school where the students helped organize my trip here. He offered his house never having met me, which turns out to be a very Brazilian thing to do. They are amazingly hospitable. He lives in a gated community in Barra da Tijuca, so I got a sense of what a privileged life in Brasil is like…like living in suburb, walled-off from the “dangers” outside.
People are so paranoid and suspicious here, and it started to affect me when I went to different areas of the city. I felt like I had to watch my back, when there was really nothing to be afraid of. It’s like a mentality that perpetuates more fear, and hence, more misunderstanding, and more crime. Whenever we said we wanted to go to a different neighborhood, people would say, “Não! É muito perigoso!...No!, it’s so dangerous!” But when we got there, it really wasn’t that bad, and nothing happened that would even make me feel endangered. This mentality really explains why people only go places by car and live inside fortressed buildings and homes, reinforced with electric fences and barbed wire, or makeshift defense structures (i.e. broken bottles with their sharp edges protruding from the tops of the walls).
The favelas (slums) in Rio are everywhere you look. Rocinha, the largest favela in South America, supposedly has 400,000 people living there, and is so developed, that there are multiple-story structures and businesses. It is sprawled across the side of a mountain, and functions like a city within a city. Apparently the organized crime within the favela keeps down crime levels and violence among the favela dwellers. The real violence that everyone fears so much occurs when the police interferes with the organized criminal activity. Hopefully I can go back and get a tour of the neighborhood and a stronger sense of the community. Some tourists we met there said that they went on a favela tour and that the money benefited a community school there. Seems to me like a tourist spectacle and an inauthentic experience.
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