Globetrotting

“Quidada, e’ muito quente e vai te cremar!”
Ouch! By burning my fingers with hot glue yet again I understood my colleagues’ warning and that I had to learn Portuguese ASAP for my survival, literally!

Before going to Rio de Janeiro as a volunteer costume maker for a samba school I had never heard of hot glue. As for Carnival, I certainly had not realised it is the biggest live show on earth, an industry worth millions, employing thousands of people and ultimately, a competition!

“How far is your hometown from here?” was the first question my colleagues, all from the favelas, asked on my first day.
“About 10,000 kilometres.”
“How far is that by bus?”
Difficult to explain that the bus is not an option to go to Italy. Space is a relative concept and my colleagues had their own way to quantify distances, namely ‘bus hours’. So I guessed.
“Roughly two months”.

Slavery in Brazil was formally abolished in 1888. However, it has merely been replaced by a subtle yet just as merciless modern slavery. There are no chains or guards, you could run away, but you won’t. You need the money; your family depends on you.
So, you stay and work. 30ºc outdoors meant 40 or more in the poorly ventilated warehouse. Endless work days and meagre wages made it worthwhile for my colleagues to save on transport by occasionally spending the night at work, resting on the dusty floor. Often, while using glues, my fellow chainless inmates and I would suddenly find ourselves unable to contain the giggles. Then it would hit me: we were all high on glue! So we would drink a glass of milk, to reduce the effects of the toxic products.
Not only blood, sweat and tears went into the costumes. We got burnt, cut ourselves and got blisters. We spent sleepless nights stressing that we wouldn’t meet the impending deadline. Once we had to extinguish a minor fire in the workroom, because ‘health and safety’ hasn’t really made it to Brazil. Yet, with thousands of costumes to be made there was no time to panic, we just had to get on with it.

On the day of the parade the costumes were ready and looked exquisite. I was with my workmates when the winner was announced live on national TV. When we heard the name of our school, I couldn’t believe it! We instantly forgot those months of stress, exhausting prison-like working conditions, glue induced trips, scars and bruises. We were all shouting and crying. Carnival was over, the invisible chains were no longer there. We were the winners, and we were free!