December 31, 2004; Rio: Happy holidays! I am officially on vacation until after New Year’s. The project is closed until the 3rd of January, as is Viva Rio. So I will report about an interesting conversation that I had recently.

I went to pay my light and gas bill to my landlady yesterday. Her maid was sitting outside the service entrance of the apartment. I knew her from when she cleaned my one bedroom apartment a few days after I moved in.

She was happy to talk to me then, and seemed to understand my Portuguese. We talked about what I was doing in Brazil for Viva Rio, as well as life in general in Rio. She told that me she lives in a favela in the Zona Norte area and travels everyday by bus to work for my landlady.

She said she once went to a friend’s barbeque in the Complexo de Maré favela (where the Luta Pela Paz project is located), and stayed the night because she didn’t want to leave after dark. She talked about her relative (of some sort – I couldn’t understand some of the details) who was helped by a Viva Rio project and another that was involved a project similar to Luta Pela Paz (or “Fight for the Peace”) but with soccer, and not targeted to ‘at risk’ youth, just offered to everyone (I think I understood these details correctly, but perhaps not).

I can now actually speak and even joke with her, though my Portuguese still needs a great deal of improvement. She was happy to chat with me again. Since I am now more familiar with the map and neighborhoods of Rio, I asked her again where she lived.

She told me that she lived in Madureira, a name I recognized because it is home to one of the famous Samba Schools that spend most of the year building floats, fantasias (carnaval costumes), and rehearsing for the huge annual carnaval parades and parties in early February.

It turns out that there are two or three Samba Schools that are either in her favela or close-by. It is a lively place because of this. Every Saturday anyone can go and dance the night away to the samba baterias (drum contingents of the parades) and party carnaval style as they rehearse.

The favelas of Rio house the Samba Schools, and these schools are the engines of Carnaval (which I have yet to experience) and Carnaval is a point of pride for the whole city. Everyone is welcome to participate, even an American with a big smile but no rhythm..

I was dancing away a rythmless gringo-samba up and down the hallway thinking of her mythical samba-filled favela as she told me about marching in the Carnaval parades, and the parties and celebrations in Madureira. She found it funny enough to call to my landlady and scream updates through the apartment that I was putting on a samba show.

Also funny enough that she offered to find out about arranging for me some to get some fantasia for carnaval and ask about me being able to come to rehearsals and march in carnaval along with her and her mother (who is in the Samba School ) and 12 year- old son, who all take part.

Anyone is welcome to march as long as they are willing to pay, so it isn’t like some special offer I’m getting. However, I don’t think the logistics will work out though I would love it if they did. The eagerness she had to invite me to take part in what is a favela-driven tradition, was both exciting and sobering at the same time.

It didn’t even occur to her that it might be a problem for me to regularly go to a favela on my own and meet her and her family. She thinks the bus transfer in the downtown bus station was more dangerous.

I have found that this mentality is common across classes throughout Rio. Every neighborhood is safe if you ask someone who lives there. But all the other neighborhoods are very dangerous. Only a few, mostly from Maré, have talked about how dangerous their own neighborhood is.

My new friend from Maduriera compared her favela, known for samba schools, with Maré, known for regular shootouts among drug traffickers fighting for territory. That is how she sees it and how the news portrays it. That’s why she spent the night when she went to Maré instead of leaving after dark.

Probably a wise decision on her part. There aren’t shootouts every night in her neighborhood. And in much of Maré there aren’t either. However, in some areas it is pretty bad, like near the Police Posts. One Maré resident I talked to said she can hear shots fired almost every night since the police set up a post, but that it at least means the shots are over there, and not on her street.

I can’t even imagine being a teenager and having to live in such in an environment, or an elderly resident who hears the sound of gun shots being fired on a regular basis, or even having to work as a police officer there (more on the police later, because perceptions, trust and reliability of the police seems to be a contributing factor to the problems),

And there are nowhere near enough Luta Pela Paz type projects for all the kids who would want to join, at least not according to the unscientific sample of my landlady’s maid. She asked about Maré, like I was more informed than her, which I am not. Reading about it is not the same as actually living there, no matter how much more real that would make my goal of understanding life in the favelas.

She wanted to know how kids can join the Luta Pela Paz project. And she was disappointed, in a way that revealed she often encountered the same type of disappointing news, when I told her that I thought that only kids from Maré are in the Luta Pela Paz project. She wanted to find something to occupy her 12 year-old son’s time.

He plays soccer, and a musical instrument that she described as like a small guitar (I didn’t recognize the name). But she doesn’t think this is enough.

So I will see if I can find another project or activity for her son, even if it means spending some time in a different favela for the fun of Samba instead of Viva Rio work.