Helen and I went
hang gliding with two guys we'd met at the breakfast table one
morning at our hostel – Gianluca (Italian) and Marijan (Swedish).
When we saw the view from Pedra Bonita, where we were to run off a
wooden board, Helen, Marijan and I got very giddy whilst
Gianluca crossed his chest and muttered something in Italian about
his mother. It was absolutely spectacular – we could see the high
rises from Rio, the city slums, swimming pools on roofs, a forest of
trees, the thin strips of yellow sand from Copacabana and Ipanema and
the glistening water below us next to the gorgeous beach we were to
land on. Helen and Gianluca went first (Helen couldn't wait and Luca
didn't want to have to) and when the tandem instructors returned for
Marijan and myself, they told us they had had fantastic flights which
made Marijan and I even more excited.
Marijan and I were
not, however, so lucky. Marijan's was a short flight and landed some
distance from the designated landing spot so Gianluca couldn't get
any shots of him touching down. As for me, as soon as my feet left
the running platform, my helmet slid down over my eyes and I could
hardly see a thing. As my tandem instructor, Carlos, tried to adjust
it, we lost the wind current and our feet were back on land within
minutes. My disappointment showed and, gratefully, I was taken up for
a second flight with a new helmet. The difference was amazing. We
caught some good currents and soared like the birds who passed in
front of us. After about 25 minutes, Carlos asked me if it was OK if
we landed and I gave him the thumbs up; we'd had an excellent flight. He
let me have a quick go at steering before our feet came to rest on
the soft sand. Helen, eager for me to have had as wonderful
experience as she had, came running up to me. I smiled and then she
smiled and Gianluca couldn't stop smiling because his holiday hadn't
ended below a rock face. As for Marijan, who had landed at the other
end of the beach, well ... we had to get him to a bar quickly!
If my eyes had literally been opened
wide during hang-gliding, they were figuratively opened too during
our tour of the shanty town, Rocinha. Initially, I was very reluctant
to go on the trip as I didn't like the idea of a coach load of
tourists peering out of windows taking photos of poverty. It was,
however, nothing like I was expecting. Instead of a coach, we were
immediately thrown into the hustle and bustle of
the favela when we
were transported to the top of Rocinha on individual mopeds by
locals. As we sped up and around tight corners, we saw glimpses of
everyday life - women shopping,
children messing around, deliveries miraculously being made on the
narrow streets.
Once
at the top, our guide gave us some basic favela
facts. Rocinha is one of 900 shanty towns in Rio (the film “The
City of God” is based on one of them). In the whole of Brazil, some
50 million people live in shantytowns and about $4 million is made a
month with the drug businesses within them. The drug group in Rocinha
is the ADA – Amigo de Amigos – and we saw this abbreviation
painted on various walls. Men with walkie talkies oversee who enters
and leaves the favela.
We were not allowed to take photos of these men nor the known “drug
streets”. Each favela
has a leader; the leaders don't normally live beyond their early
twenties.
We were then led, on foot, down the
narrow, crooked streets whilst our guide expanded on how life within
the favela is. As
locals don't pay taxes and don't pay for amenities, they get their water from the mountains and
connect their own cables to the main electricity supply (this
explained the abundance of precarious-looking wires we saw wherever
we turned our heads). It is very difficult for the authorities to
exert any control over the favelas
and consequently the law is taken into the hands of the leaders. On
the day before our tour, for example, 4 men from Rocinha had been
tortured for having gone too far with a theft (they not only stole
from two men but pushed the victims over a cliff). If police do enter
the shantytowns, fireworks can be set off to alert the drug dealers,
who usually sleep in a different house every 4-5 nights.
As we
descended, we visited a beautiful art gallery, an incredible cake
shop and a nursery – the latter being financed with 60 % of the
money from the tours. As we approached the bottom houses, the living
conditions deteriorated. It was explained that the land within the
favela belongs to
whoever builds on it first. As Rocinha is set between two mountains,
the land is already exhausted. Those with property consequently often
sell their roof (for about 2000 Reais) to someone who wants to build
on it. The roof of the new house can, in turn, be sold, giving
Rocinha a higgelty piggelty housing structure which expands vertically. The foundations of the properties are very unstable so the
poorest families live at the lowest levels where rubbish and poor
health conditions accumulate.
All in all, I was surprised at how
'normal' parts of Rocinha looked. People dressed reasonably well and
seemed to go around their everyday lives in a similar way to those in
other parts of Rio. Whilst there is poverty, drugs and crime within
the favelas, our guide was
adamant that they don't deserve the image they have. Less than
10 % of the people in them are involved in drugs and the drug
business, in any case, is controlled by rich drug dealers outside of
the favelas who exploit
the hopes and fears of the poorer people inside them. Peering through
one door of a house, I saw a poster of Leonardo di Caprio on the
wall. I guess little girls dream just as boys play football there
like anywhere else.
