A closer insight of how I am living in Gardênia Azul

For those who are interested in what my life looks like in the favela: I am living with a family consisting of the grand-grand-mother, the 50 year old uncle and three little kids at the age of 1,5 , 6 and 10 years. They all just speak brazilian- which is defenitely a good school for me, especially because they have a lot of patience with me. (and: they talk a lot)

I guess in the beginning it seemed very strange to them that I don't want to eat rice and beans everyday but salad instead from time to time. So I always had at least 6 pair of eyes wide open watching me while I prepared the salad....until they found out that this green stuff can actually taste good. Now they are even asking me to prepare it for all of them, which i find very nice because i love eating with them, it is always an adventure and there is always a lot to talk about. The choleric neighbour, the heat, the carneval, different eating habits......there is nothing which you couldn't discuss. But always accompanied with the television which is turned on 24/7. During morning and midday it is showing comics for the kids, afternoon and evening is dominated by criminal stories and telenovelas (the famous soap operas), watched by the 50 year old uncle......as u can see.....there is not more than one meter between him and his beloved tv!

He stays there for hours!

But he is still very up-to-date about everything I am about to do. In the beginning I felt too much sheperded by him and his mother and the neighbours etc., but now I am already used to have them asking me where I go, what I do, whom I meet and when I am back again. Let's say the reason for that is a mixture of two things. 1.:the dangerous situation in the favelas. and 2.: the personal tend to worry too much (at least in the eyes of an european girl; I have never experienced beeing followed to the supermarked incognito, to see if I was really able to go there all by myself; [the supermarket is one block from my place])




Because of my sisters petition I took
some pictures to give an insight of how I am living in the favela- you will see that it is actually a well developed area, but right on the next street it looks really different.
So on this picture u can see my street.......my house is on the left after the yellow sign.....



My entrance is the door on the right........#365..........(it happens about two times a day that i pass the door without noticing that it is the place where I am living...they all look kind of the same....;-)
Upstairs, a corridor to the living room, on the left side you see a lot of stuff lying around, the window of the grand grand mothers, uncles and childrens room, and the second window- my room........
The kitchen...........................
...the place where i wash my clothes by hands...sometimes it happens that we run out of water because noone pays for water here....we get it from the black market or somehow, nobody knows exactly........last time i was taking a shower when it happened.....and it lastet 24 hours......that's when you realize what you are using water for all day long......for washing hands, food, takinf a shower, using the water closet....etc...


And finally, my room, as you can see, the window and the "door" are always open and privacy is a foreign word in the favela...when I am in my room I am actually talking to the grand grand mother in the corridor, the uncle in the room next to me and the chidlren running around everywhere........and it is extremely hot because the sun is shining directly into the room.....without any wind.....

...and the streets full of dirt.......
(not always, but nearly always).....you shouldnt have a sensitive nose here...;-)

Gardênia Azul

The neighbourhoods
Rio de Janeiro definitely has a wide mix of social, cultural and economic diversity. One way to see the difference is looking at the neighbourhood hierarchies, beginning with the wealthy areas in the city centre like Ipanema where the typical Carioca may have a well paid job or well minded parents, a car and a garage, cell phone and a fable for fashion. The beach is very close and the streets have luxurious shops offering everything desirable, and bars and restaurants offer nice places to feel like staying during the night, too.

Leblon, with a similar mix of people, though with a greater percentage of older residents and families; Gavea, a little less expensive, as well as Jardim Botanico, where Cariocas live, probably having a car and a decent job to afford living.
Botafogo, still desirable but cheaper, offers a wide range of botecos (neighbourhood bars)…but even in the more luxurious places you can still find poor areas, just on one side street from the wealthy areas.
While nearly everyone in Rio has some concern about the crime problems, those with families tend to take extra precautions, such as high- security buildings, security at the front door and safe garages. Well-to-do families tend to send their children to private schools (I have been told that public schools have a very poor level of education, and teachers are very low paid).

Away from the Zona Sul, you’ll find working-class neighbourhoods where families earn enough to put food on the table and pay the rent, and children tend to live at home until they get married. Couples here tend to marry younger (I guess that’s way people look very astonished when they hear that none of my brothers or sisters are married but have boy- or girlfriend at the age over 19….)

At the bottom of the socioeconomic latter are the favelados (people living in the favela) who are, in spite film and media portrayals, are not all indigent street children or bloodthirsty drug lords. Many working families live in favelas, some areas are well developed, some are really poor regions lacking infrastructure.

Gardênia Azul
Gardênia Azul, the favela I am living in, is quite far from the centre, in the neighbourhood called Jacarepagua, next to Fregüiseira and Cidade de Deus for example. These two neighbours couldn’t be more different, Fregüiseira, well developed with nice streets, houses, a nice huge park (Bosque) and even a Pilates and Yoga centre. And then you have Cidade de Deus, where no one from other Neighbourhoods would ever dare to enter because it is held for a very dangerous and insecure place.
And then you have Gardenia Azul which seems to be a very harmless place where everybody has the same everyday life, fighting with the heat and the lack of fresh air, the cars, entertaining themselves with one of the hot conversation topics:
■ Corruption- What’s the latest political scandal?
■ Real estate
■ Sex- Which Brazilian actress is doing nude spreads in the glossies this week?
■ Soccer- Who’s the hot new player for Flamengo?
■ Parties- Who went to the wild funk festa on the weekend?
■ Crime- Which gang burned a bus this week?
What you can’t see – even though if you are told so that it exists - the big problems between the police, the Militia and the drug lords. Just recently the Militia took over power and fought the drug lords out of this zone. The police and the Militia (a group of ex-policemen, firemen, and private securities etc., who are taking care of the region, armed with weapons and if it need so, acting against the law; above all, they are charging fees varying between R$15 and R$100 from the community for their work) are independently working, but you could say that the police is “accepting” them, both trying not to stand in one another’s way…
That’s why it really seems very calm here, the Militia made the favela “free” of drugs (well I am not sure about that, but I guess at least we don’t have powerful drug lords here). But still you have to be very careful with everything you do, play with open cards and show you role you have here. They shouldn’t get the feeling you will step on their feet trying to interfere in their business.

Salamaleque

That’s why Salamaleque doesn’t have many opportunities for their dancing rehearsals. Salamaleque used to have dancing groups in various favelas like Rocinha for example, but civil war inside the biggest favela of South America (about 250,000 inhabitants) makes it impossible to access this area. So we only practice in Gardenia Azul at the moment, and the only place where the children can practice their dances is a church because the NGO doesn’t have the remedies to afford an own dancing centre by now.
Actually the only donors the organization has are private donors, mostly from Germany because the founder of the Organization, Heidi Rehse, lives there doing a lot of projects to collect some money for Salamaleque in Rio de Janeiro. Until now, Salamaleque is only a german Organization, still waiting for the approval of the Brazilian government to become a Brazilian organization, too. There are some faster ways to achieve that, but the official way – the way we chose- can last years….
During the rehearsals, the children learn how to dance to various kinds of music such as ballet, afro, hip hop, samba, jazz etc, and to express themselves in a save place where they experience a secure social network. Instead of just sitting in front of the television or being in the house (because it is sometimes too dangerous to play on the streets because of the cars or the violence) they learn to control their body, get attention and experience discipline and fun with friends. There are no limits such as age or gender; everybody is dancing together, the very beginners as well as the very talented ones. Salamaleque is not aiming to educate professional dancers but to provide a wide range of children the opportunity to express them in a way they can’t in their everyday life.

Heidi Rehse has already reached a lot with her work, and every time she returns to her pupils in Rio de Janeiro the children welcome her with open arms, excited about the new dances they are going to practice with her. While Heidi isn’t here, Vânia, the very heart [and very hard working] of the Organization, is taking care that costumes for the shows are all kept together and that the kids practice their dances. She leads the rehearsals, disciplines them and shows them how to improve some movements. After the practice, the kids sit together with her and she tells them when to meet again, and talks to them about school, homework, sports and everyday life problems. For what I've seen by now I got the impression that the children have a lot of respect for her and they listen carefully to every word she tells them. I had the feeling they especially enjoy the attention they probably don’t get at their homes, which isn’t surprising if you take the average family situation here where the mothers live alone with their kids, mostly working during the day and not having anyone to look after the little ones.

The rehearsals

The first time when I joined the rehearsals, the kids were immediately smiling at me, watching me and talking to me, very fast and with their eyes wide open. The fact that I didn’t really understand them didn’t bother them at all, and the second time I've been with them I could already have some conversations with them during their drinking break. I was talking to one of them- Andréa, a very lively person at the age of 16, who is enjoying entertaining the whole group. She asked me a lot about my dancing abilities ( à zero ;-) ), about my music taste and about if my brothers would look handsome. Then she decided to look for an “hot brazilian man” for me and that they definitely need to teach me samba, hip hop and funk. In exchange they want me to teach them some salsa tomorrow;-)
“You can come over to our place, u just have to follow this street, and when you see the bullets in the wall (bullets shot with a gun) turn to the left….“ she said. Well, that seemed too normal to her to have bullets in the wall.
But not all the children seem so open to me like her, many of them seem very shy and not used to play an important role in their surrounding, but talking to Vânia and Heidi they told me that many of them learn to express themselves by dancing, and after some time they are more opened then ever before.

Here in Gardenia it is even hotter than in other places because it is no situated next to the sea, and the garbage on the streets, together with the smell of the heavy food sold at the restaurants and the heavy traffic make the air smell very bad sometimes. Shops and bars are selling fresh meet nearly direct on the streets (not really stored in cool places), and people are used to throw everything they don’t need anymore on the street.

The supermarket
This topic seems to be worth an own topic here because I have never ever before experienced something like I am experiencing here in little Gardênia Azul.
All the social life is more or less taking place at peoples homes because there is not a great variety to be at the major plaza, which is quite small place, easy to overlook. Only the cars, bicycles and holes in the street are unpredictable here. The mayor place is also the main bus station, where public buses leave to the neighbourhoods and to the centre. On the sidewalk all along the plaza there are some shops, decent botecos (neighbourhood bars) where you can see mixed groups hanging out, sitting outside on plastic chairs drinking some chops (small beers) or Guaraná ( a traditional drink).And you can find the only supermarket in Gardênia Azul here. It is quite big and is always overloaded with things. With people. With flies. With heat. The only thing which isn’t too much is air to breath.

Finding your way through it is already an adventure, a balance act between food, old people, playing children etc. It uses to happen about three or four times once I am inside, that tinier women ask me to get them some products from the upper rows because they can’t reach it. (Majority cant, but the supermarket doesn’t care).
But the really big event is when you line up at the place where you pay.

1. No matter at which time you are at the supermarket, you find yourself in a line of at least 20 persons (there are 7 lines to row up!)

2. People apparently don’t like to think about if they really want to buy the product when they take it out of the storage- NO! They just put everything in their bag, and when they are about to pay-.THEN they start to think about it. If they all of a sudden don’t want to buy it, they just leave it there, no matter if It is milk, cheese, oil or pasta. That’s very common.

3. And obviously, that needs some time! So while the women who types in the prices of the products collects all the “wanted products” together, the person who is buying them, looks at the display if the products. After having been approved a second time (1. taken into the bag; 2. approved at the place where you pay), they are still not about to be bought.

4. NOW the person, who wants to buy them, starts to stare at the display, highly concentrated, because they didn’t think about if they have enough money with them. So they start to negotiate. If they don’t take the eggs, they can afford the cookies? But what if they leave the detergent here? Than they could buy the chips and the cookies and the coke……But no, maybe it’s even better to go away and to look for cheaper meat, leaving the people waiting in a line till he comes back……
(Maybe you have already noticed the sarcastic way I am writing, but honestly, this text is written without ANY exaggeration. The entire contrary, I am leaving out some details rather than exaggerating…..or did I mention the lady at the paying station cleaning here place while everybody is waiting- because the meat in the plastic bag fell out and the blood is everywhere?

5. One big lack of organisation at the supermarket is that 50% of the products are not registered. Wouldn’t be a problem if the lady would know the codes of the products…..but: NO; they never know them. Ok. So she calls one of the supervisors, He doesn’t know it either. He calls his manager. And….he doesn’t know it either…etc…so they call one of the children hanging around in the supermarket to go to look for the product and tell them the price. Of course that takes a looooot of time because how would the little child exactly know where to find the product. (Don’t forget, this happens with every second product! AND don’t forget: it’s really hot, children cry, people sweat, air is bad, people bump into you…)

6. Ok so the child is back, the lady types in the wrong price, a supervisor has to come, they argue why she typed in the wrong price (it is the 400dst time she does that today). He calls another supervisor to type in a security code to continue. They argue. They people waiting in the line start to argue with the supervisor and with the lady, and with the other persons in the line…

7. Finally, after like 20 minutes, she tells the price, the person who purchases the goods is still surprised, even though he had precisely negotiated about the productsbefore.

8. Apparently he doesn’t have the money he thought he would have. So back to Nr. 4.
Etc.

9. (That’s what I experienced just one hour ago): The person in the line in front of me is finally about to pay: R$ 12, 35,- So he gives R$ 10,- to the lady, the lady types in R$10,- into her machine and gives R$ 2,35,- as a change……………………………

10. The supervisor comes with an angry face…..etc ect. See procedure NR 5

11. The lady still doesn’t understand why everybody got so mad about it, she still wants to hand out R$ 2, 35,-

This story didn’t end here in real life, but I wont continue….I guess it is not so exciting to read every little detail( actually I already wrote a lot about it ;-)…but as you can see, it’s a long long adventure to go to the supermarket here.
I considered myself as a very patient person, but that is really challenging me. I leave the supermarket absolutely stressed out, feeling like I would never ever again enter this supermarket. What I forget is that there is NO other supermarket here!

So there is no privacy, neither with the neighbours, nor in the own house, wich is a very new experience for an European, but actually it is really ok (until now at least;-) because i really feel very comfortabe with them, especially the young ones are adorable when the watch some music on televison and dancing like crazy.......

(If you can see it in the background: a bottle, filled with water....an invention of the strange drunk neighbour who shouts all the time at any hour....he is living above and tried to fix somethin- no idea what- and to make it safe- he uses the bottles...;-) Very funny, especially if you think of the summerstorms we have here now...they take away everything, even though it might be fixed with a bottle filled with some water....;-) ...

Ipanema -Niteroi- Gardenia Azul

After having had some time in Ipanema in a Yoth Hostel I am finally living in Gardenia Azul now, the favela wehre I am working. It is a 50 min - 2 h drive with the public bus from the centre, depending on the traffic, the hour, the bus and the busdriver...;-)...so I will spend most of the time here and not go to the center. Life here is quite different from life in the center, of course. I am still working on my portuguese and on my adaption to the brasilian way of life, the food, the heat, the traffic...(it is still very hard for me to cross the streets here because cars, buses and even bikes appear out of nowhere...and VERY fast..)
I am staying with the mother and the brother of Vania, the responsable of the NGO here in the favela, which makes it a lot easier to get to know the plave and the people and to learn the language and the custums....what I am not used to is the way they are taking care of me. Wherever I go, whenever I go....whatever I do...they are informed, they accompany me or they arrange someone to look after me...I have to admit- I love my liberty and the ability to do things on my own- but I will have to change this while living here. The fights between the drug lords, the milicia and the police is getting worse and it is worth a lot lisytening to the inhabitants of the favela and to behave like them. They know what you can do and what the Milicia or the police or the drug lords "allows" and what you shouldnt do...not to make them "not very amused".....so I will continue listening to them carefully....

In Ipanema I had time to enjoy the attractions for tourists, the beach and the night life....as you can see in the pictures......
I have been to "Corcovado"......


And- yes- I went to beach aswell........defenitely a must when trying to be like a "Carioca"........... Here we are at Ipanema Beach- friends I met at the Youth Hostel. It is quite common for Brazilians (from Sao Paulo, Bela Horizonte,etc) to come to Rio de Janeiro even just for the weekend or more......and to stay at the Youth Hostel.



And what shouldn´t be missing is a Samba night.....so we went to a famous Samba dance school in Mangueira

which is placed in a favela named the same, Mangueira. Incredible....

.........the amount of people who fit into this Samba-"Stadium"

.........the heat together with the great humidity (99%???!!!)

.........the music, the drums.."baterias"...about 100 men as seen in the picture below

.........the brazilians dancing samba like crazy....and for hours...uff, i had the hardest workout there..;-)

.........the amount of alcohol they are able to consume...(actually, is Skol beer or water...?? ;-)

In front of the Samba - Stadium, proud owners of tickets ....

Copacabana Beach......

Chill Out in the pool with friends at CJ´s place ...after a long day at the Beach in Niteroi....

Well, and it´s Carneval soon....................very soon.........and everybody´s in Carneval-mood........like Emma, a friend from Ireland ....

The public buses I am using to get to the Centre....but i am not taking the bus you can see below because it is going to "Cidade de Deus", the neighbour favela.....(Have you ever seen the film "City of God"? Well, i d rather dont mix up the buses ....would be too dangerous if i found myself there....