Lauren and Andrea´s Favela Tour

Hey All!

We just arrived at Dario's house and so the blog is back. We have been pretty busy this last week or so traveling in Brazil and then staying on Dario's estancia (ranch) in Paraguay. However now that we have reached Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, we will have more time to write. One thing Lauren and I wanted to post was a series of pictures from our tour of two of Rio's favelas. I'll start by giving some quick facts about favelas: 1) the word favela was orginally used to describe a dry plant that would invade areas in the desert but now refers to largely unregulated settlements on invaded public or private lands, 2) there are 752 favelas in Rio today but up till the 1980s Rio refused to recognize them and they would appear on maps as forests, 3) the people who live in favelas range from very poor to lower middle class which in Rio means someone who earns twice the minimum wage $400 Reals per month, 4) Most of the favelas developed during the two construction booms in Rio during the 1930s and then again after world war II. The city had to import workers from the north to complete construction but the new workers couldn´t afford to live in Rio so they built favelas.

Below are a couple of photos Lauren and I took during the tour. Our guide was a woman named Martha who had been trained by the Brazilian government's tourism department and decided to specialize in the favelas, Rio´s forests and colonial Rio.

Unfortunately, we did the entire tour in the rain so lauren and I got to wear the really cool ponchos above. One perk of the rain was to get to see how the favela dealt with flooding.

This next picture is a view from a rooftop in the favela. This favela is called Rocinha and is one of the biggest. The government claims that it only has 170,000 people but Martha thought it was closer to 300,000. Rocinha was the worser of the two favelas we visited as it was more heavily controlled by drug lords. We were surprised to learn that these drug lords actually import drugs from South American countries instead of exporting them and then sell them to local favela inhabitants or rich cariocas (Rio residents).

This third picture is of an electricity pole in the Rocinha favela. Lauren and I were amazed as the number of split wires on the line. It turns out most of the electricity in the favelas is stolen from Rio itself.

Next is a picture of Lauren walking through some of the homes in Villa Canoas, the second favela we visited. Something that struck both Lauren and I was the lack of ventillation in the community´s maze of underground alleys.

This last picture was outside of a school in the favelas. 80 percent of the money that Martha and other guides earn from their favela tours go to a school built for the community. Amazingly, only 3 percent of children in Brazil who go to public school are able to pass the Brazilian state test to entire university. In Brazil public schools are all half day due to the large population but this favela school gave kids a place to go after normal school to do their homework while their parents work.

That is all for now, although we need to blog again to tell the ridiculous story of Lauren, Nick and my ride to Curitiba...

- Andrea