fresh n juicy chunks of oyster :: RTW travel blog

In Rio it's easy to forget time. The luxuries of beaches and a great city all around you are enough to keep anyone occupied for weeks or months and then wonder what happened. And where all the money went - Rio eats money like nowhere else in Brasil - with the exception of Sao Paulo, I hear, so at least I'm prepared for where I'll be heading today. Bye bye Rio. :(
I did see the obligatory statue of Christ the Redeemer though - after we prayed to his Daddy for 20 minutes while he was hiding modestly in thick clouds. Another check on that list of '20 things to do in Rio before you die' - 'before you leave' won't do as I'll definitely be back some day... I may pick a different time of year though, as it's been decidedly rainy and grey.
So, last week, instead of going to the beach I visited the favela again: Rocinha, the largest in Brasil with 200k people. When I first set foot there by myself I have to admit there was a little trepidation in my step, however, my eel was winding happily around (to be continuing with the fishy metaphor).
But slowly, I started seeing it for myself: it is a safe place. People leave their doors open and a shop selling televisions was left abandoned, with the wares right in front of open doors and windows while the owner went out for lunch. Similarly shops with kids playing PlayStation2 were unattended - several months wages just lying around for seemingly anyone to pick up. In London, New York or anywhere else they'd have grown legs within five minutes. There are restaurants everywhere filled with people eating, living their lives, doing their jobs and building existences for themselves and their families. The place is alive!
Dozens of flimsy, home-made but airworthy kites flutter high above the city-within-a-city, each attached by a string to a throng of kids in the street. Children only go to school in either the morning or afternoon which leaves them free to play or make a killing for the drug-lords for the rest of the day.
One by one some of them started getting interested in the Gringo who was watching a footvolley game in a 'square' delineated by crooked houses and a dangling chaos of illegally tapped powerlines overhead. Before long, drawn by my very obviously amusing attempts at Portuguese, I was surrounded by children and their older brothers and friends, everyone chatting happily (weirdly I saw very few girls on the street - I wonder where they hang out...). I made a fool of myself at footvolley (no rocket science: I suck, while they play all day!) and was taken on a tour of Rocinha. Down through the alleys we went, five kids running ahead and behind me. They took me to their favourite eatery (cheap, delicious food in huge portions!), we went shopping for some local music and hung around.
I started understanding what they say about the place: the favela is indeed safer than elsewhere in Brasil where police patrol and enforce the law. Any minor crime within the community must be immediately found out about and dealt with by the gangs more efficiently (read ruthlessly) than the police ever could. A smooth social contract: residents are guaranteed safety and they in turn protect the drug-lords from the police by keeping schtum.
It may not be ideal but it's amazing how efficiently it seems to work, even making the place accessible to Gringos like me.
Then again, I probably only know the tip of an iceberg of problems there. Most street corners are populated by 'watchers' for the gangs and dealers with their tell-tale bleached hair and walkie talkies in hand.
But people still live and lead their lives in the midst of all this, largely invisible to the rest of Brasil, shunned for living in a violent and base world. As ever, I have no answers nor know half the questions that need to be asked but I have found a new respect for the complexities of this world and the lack of blacks and whites. I also suspect, however, that the police and use of state force are out of place there: things would undoubtedly get much uglier than they currently are and they'd have a war on their hands...

[Some pictures of Rio will hopefully be uploaded soon, I'll keep posting.]