There is a different, heavier atmosphere on this side of the road;
a lot of loitering young men, soldiers of The Red Command who
rule the roost, watch us intently…. Now we walk through tightly
packed, identical blocks of flats all tied together with washing
lines and low-hanging electrical cables.

David Alexander Robert

City of God is the Brazilian film of the moment. Suddenly the name of one of Rio's so-called most dangerous favelas is sprawling across cities. A place previously avoided by most Brazilians and known only to a handful of foreigners working for NGOs, Cidade de Deus (in its native language) has now attained fashionable status. Thus, I could not resist the opportunity of spending a day there. It's not the sort of place I would just wonder into, especially in the capacity of a voyeur.

I had an inroad, a contact in the local community who would accompany me during my day. I had met my facilitator, Tony, long-time resident and photographer, when I had been taken in one evening by the NGO Viva Rio, for a night of rap music, part of the Urban Connections music project. I was to learn that far from being a neighborhood of violence, it is a land of creativity.

Though I awake early, the day is already cruelly hot. It takes me two buses to get from my apartment in the safety of the southern zone. I arrive punctually at the agreed hour of 9am at the designated meeting place, the district's main square. No sign of Tony. I wait and watch a world already in full swing of activity, when my mobile rings. It's Tony:

"I'm just going to take a quick shower. I'll meet you at the bakery."

There's no tea at the bakery, only coffee. They can't do the standard Brazilian breakfast of hot French bread with cheese as the hot plate's broken. I have it cold. I've already been clocked, my clothes are different, I'm different and I speak Portuguese with a strong accent. Shoeless individuals drift towards me requesting coffee and bread. Young teenage girls with mobile phones stuffed down their impressive cleavage stop, stare and smile.

Tony arrives, greets me fondly and buys some bread so we can have breakfast at his sister's house. We enter the street where she lives and we are confronted by a burnt out VW transport van. I should explain that such vans are the key to the local transport system. Drivers rent them from co-operatives and for the same price as a bus (about 36 cents) they'll get to any one of the neighbouring districts or right into the southern and central zones anytime of day or night.

The driver and door-opening, fair-collecting assistant get half the money. A guy and his son, neighbours of Tony's sister, are scraping off the burnt paint of the van's interior. They amusingly explain that this is all about a tale of the green devil, since an embittered wife set light to the van in a jealous rage and now the co-operative is taking civil action against her. The husband's paying for the repairs.

I receive a warm welcome at Tony's sisters where I finally get a cup of tea, anise taken from the neighbour's overhanging plant. The small, yet cosy, front room is full of sun-kissed children with bright eyes and dazzlingly white teeth. They tear their gaze away from the television, featuring the infamous Xuxa (once girlfriend of both Pelé and the formula one driver, Ayrton Senna), to talk to this guy who speaks Portuguese funny.

Tony asks me what I want to do during the day. Good question, what do I want out of my day? I just want to go walkabouts really, see the different parts of the district and taste a bit of daily life. "Ok," he says, "I've got people to see, people I reckon you'll find interesting and I've got a bit of work to do." Sounds good to me. Our first stop is the local Samba School, Mocidade Unida de Jacarepaguá. Amongst discarded costumes of frogs, alligators, princes and knights, a woman tells me that they're awaiting the result of the parade of Group E, the bottom group.

The result is due at 3pm, and if they win the now dormant drums of varying sizes resting behind her will get swooped up to make their musical magic in street revelry. Tony reminds the two women present about a project meeting taking place that evening at 8pm at the Residents' Association Centre. They already know about it and they'll be there. Off we go again, passing the motorbike taxi stand. I'm offered a tour of the neighbourhood on the back of a bike, visiting all the tourist attractions, including the places where the movie was filmed. "No thanks, I'm here all day. I've time to walk around."

We pass the Residents' Association Centre to check everything is organised for the meeting. I meet Maria Terezinha Justo de Jesus, the ex-president of an NGO that supports youths and senior citizens. She now gives needlework classes to the elderly and orphans. She'll be at the meeting, as will her friend, Benta, the president of The Senior Citizens' Committee based at the local orphanage.

A hand written for sale notice on the wall grabs my attention: there's a house going for 1.600 dollars. We go next door to the Community Citizenship Centre where I'm given a tour of the various administrative offices. With beaming pride they show the new, fully equipped odontological room. Unfortunately there's no dentist, they're still waiting for the government to send one. We nip into Tony's place, which doubles as a photographic studio.

Local Beauty

We can barely squeeze in as the place houses seven young beauties who are models in The Lens of Dreams project. As soon as they realise the American (British, actually) speaks Portuguese, questions bombard from these short-skirted and even shorter-shorted lovelies. Where am I from, how long have I lived in Brazil, do I have a girlfriend, and what the hell am I doing in CDD, as they fondly call it? I bounce questions back at them and find out about the numerous European fashion magazines and clothes designers that have come to CDD to shoot with the local models.

I also learn about their plans to set up a web site called Pure Beauty offering beauty tips. Heh, did you know that propolis, the resinous substance used by bees for hive building is good for spots? And that washing your face in the water used to rinse rice is good for the skin. I ask if I can take a photo and amidst the cries of "not in these shorts," "no way, I'm pealing," and "but I haven't washed my hair;" make-up gets passed around, clothes get exchanged and hairbrushes get tossed between mirrors.

"What ever happened to pure beauty?" I enquire.

"Not during a photo shoot, darling."

I get to take my photos out on the street in front of crumbling walls supporting inclined bicycles. As I look through the viewfinder of my cheapo camera I notice that only one of the seven is even approaching the height required to be a catwalk model. Tony gets in the photo, as does a three-year-old nephew of one of the models, and as the midday sun punishes their bare shoulders, a beauty, a pure beauty radiates from them all.

Off we go again on our travels, popping our heads into auntie's house to be told `lunch ready in 5.' We take a walk over the footbridge, across the Yellow Line, a major road that splits the district. On the other side is the housing estate, the first part to be built back in the early sixties. Tony explains that various favelas in the southern zone suffered floods in 1966 and the inhabitants were moved to these buildings. Inhabitants were also moved from other favelas that weren't affected by the floods but were demolished anyway in a campaign to clean up middle-class areas. That's what brought Tony to the neighbourhood himself, when he was five years old.

There is a different, heavier atmosphere on this side of the road; a lot of loitering young men, soldiers of The Red Command who rule the roost, watch us intently. I am not to take the camera out here. Tony goes to speak to a middle-aged man in a wheel chair. I am summoned over and the man in the wheelchair offers me his hand and welcomes me. Now we may continue, walking through tightly packed, identical blocks of flats all tied together with washing lines and low-hanging electrical cables.

We pass the home of Coroado, one of the two local blocos _ that's a carnavalesque group that Pied Pipers through the streets. It's nearly lunchtime, so we make our way back to the footbridge. A VW van screeches to a halt and an excited man jumps out clutching a chit of paper. Coroado has come second in its bloco group. They'll be a party on the streets tonight. As we leave, the riders of the motorbike taxi firm on this side of town offer me a guided tour of the major tourist attractions.

Seconds a Must

Lunch is ready, so a table is improvised in my honour and apologies are made about the fact that the tablecloth is not clean. A huge plate of rice, beans, polenta and dried meat with pumpkin knocks my recently manifested vegetarian principles back down to a polite corner somewhere in my bowels. I accept the offer of seconds but my request for just a little is ignored/not heard/not acceptable. A man arrives delivering a stack of boxes. It turns out that auntie, as well as making a mean dried meat and pumpkin, is an Avon representative. I get given a musk marine deodorant which I immediately take to the bathroom and slash all over in an attempt to counteract the effects of a punishing sun.

Back on the street the guy has got the engine out of the incinerated VW van. Every rubber seal and tube and all the electrical cables have been burnt out, but the block is still OK. He chuckles to himself and thanks the lord for the thoroughness of a jealous wife who has given him a good week's work. It's 3 o'clock, so we decide to pass the samba school to find out the result. A couple of nearby gunshots divert us into another aunt's house for a glass of water.

Fireworks go off: that means the police are in town. We spend a sufficient length of time at the aunt's house, while things settle down outside, as Tony's advice is sought about whether his cousin Wagner is responsible enough to be bought a motorbike to become a mototaxi rider.

Passing the samba school, we learn that the judges are still in conference. We go on to DJ Duda, the king of funk. DJ Duda has been producing funk for years, he discovered the band Bonde do Tigrão, which has toured the world. He tells me of his recent moment of fame when he got to play five tracks during DJ Marlboro's set at the Urban Connections gig last week.

"I was there mate," I tell him.

"Great. You should come to one of my funk parties on a Sunday evening at Coroado's."

"We just heard they came second in their bloco group"

"Nice one," he exclaims. "They'll be a party there tonight."

Tony tells Duda about the evening project meeting but he already knows. I'm starting to get a sense of the rhythm of my day. A lot of interesting people need to be told about a meeting that they are already well aware of. Clutching my second gift of the day, a funk compilation CD, we go to visit the director of a young filmmaking group called Mouth of Films. They've just completed a documentary made with borrowed equipment called Frontier, which compares the two sides of CDD, "the poor and the miserable." The poor are those who live in the housing estate, the miserable those who live in an area called Rocinha II, with its constructions of nailed together bits of wood with discarded pieces of asbestos as roofs.

They tell me how the film crew donated food baskets to help the poor families being interviewed. They go on to describe some of the highlights of the documentary. There's Dona Rose, who's been pregnant thirty times, but only seventeen of the children are still alive. Then there's the five-year-old, blind, deaf and dumb boy who lived in a cot. When the crew returned with food, the family had moved back to the Northeast. Another glass of cold water is downed and we have to make a 5 o'clock photo shoot with the models.

"You know about tonight's meeting?" Tony enquires.

"We sure do. We'll be there."

The models have undergone a transformation since I last saw them. Now heavily made-up, hair dripping with gel and tight clothes clinging their skinny, adolescent forms, they are all involved in a heated discussion. With them all squawking at once I find it hard to follow. As Tony calms things down a bit, I am treated to a potted version. There was a street party on the Tuesday night of Carnaval and model Elisa is out with Pepé, who's the ex-boyfriend of Dani, friend of the model Shirley. Now Shirley's got the hump with her boyfriend, Philipe, `cos he's been flirting with the model Carol. Meanwhile Dani gets her friend Gisele to spray Elisa, who's out with Dani's ex-boyfriend remember, with some Carnaval spray and Carol gets hit in the crossfire. Carol is so pissed off she goes to tell the authorities, i.e. one of the young soldiers of the Red Command. When available he comes over and reminds them of the laws of the land: no disputes, no attracting attention during parties.

It's a time when the Command needs a police-free environment to conduct business activities. "Do I know the punishment for breaking the laws?" "No." I'm informed. It's headshaving for women and a beating for men. The incident gets nipped in the bud; a shaven head is not the way forward for a young model. By now a fresh argument has started. Carol went to Gisele's house and borrowed a hairdryer without permission, saying it was for Gisele. Tony reminds them they are here to work and that if they can't be professional he won't bother wasting his time. The mood changes dramatically and all of a sudden models set up lights, load cameras with film, clear the mini stage, fix each other's hair and straighten each other's clothes. What goes on from hereon is pure work, pure professionalism, pure beauty.

Meeting's Off

It's now nearly time for the meeting. We grab a slice a cold pizza on the street and have a look in a second hand shop. I spot a kerosene lamp which I ask the man to put aside as it will be useful for camping. Tony is also into camping and so picks up one of the many of Vespa satellite telephone receivers and tells me that we should buy some. I can't see the connection between camping and a now defunct telephone system that nobody uses since the price of mobiles has gone down and more landlines have been laid. He'll tell me later.

We make it to the Residents' Association Centre a bit after eight and there's a large crowd assembled outside. They can't enter because of a double booking, there's a church service going on which consists of a man on an organ and a woman singing to a congregation of three. There's a great deal of grumbling going on in the assembled crowd as it's now 8.30 and the president of the Residents' Association hasn't appeared yet. This is more of a problem than I imagine as the meeting has actually been called by him to discuss accommodation problems.

Tony has a small crowd assembled around him in front of the centre. I join the huddle and find all the faces that I've met during the course of my day. "You're still here then. Having a good day?" they enquire. Tony decides to call the project meeting off as the priority is housing and he doesn't wish to sidetrack this. They all disperse, bidding me a fond farewell.

"What would the meeting've been about?" I ask.

"I want them to get behind a system of centralised funding where money comes into the neighbourhood and is then shared among projects. Some people were a bit reluctant at first, as it seems bureaucratic. But I told them that they'd just be doing what they've always been doing, but in a more organised fashion and with some forward planning. And it brings in more money. They're coming round to the idea."

Tony decides to take me to Rocinha II, to see the misery of improvised housing. Finally we give some custom to a mototaxi firm and cruise over the river into a labyrinth of pothole-filled lanes lined with wooden shacks. As our bikes brush past people freeze and we are stared at by big-eyed, pot-bellied children, women with babies in arms, men in improvised bars clutching glasses of beer and old people knowingly chewing. With our bikes side by side, Tony shouts above the noise of the engines. He tells me that there are about a thousand dwellings in the area.

It gets its name from the fact that after landslides in the mid-nineties in Rocinha, South America's largest favela with a population of over two hundred thousand, many of the homeless moved here. The tour is rapid and we get dropped off back at the second hand shop. We pay the riders, 55 cents each. Tony has found a hair dryer, the type you sit under. He decides to buy it for his photo studio cum dressing room cum home.

"That should put an end to arguments about borrowing hair dryers," I chirp.

"Are you joking? They'll just argue about who uses it first."

Tony explains to me the connection between camping and satellite telephone receivers. I'm impressed and I buy a couple together with the kerosene lamp, though embarrassingly I have to borrow some money off him. We go to Tony's for a demonstration of what you can do with a satellite receiver. Hooking up the 12 volt, rechargeable, sealed lead battery to one of those emergency strip lights that you plug into the place where the cigarette lighter is in your car, gives you about 12 hours of strong illumination. He is the envy of the campsite.

Clutching my bags of shopping I am walked to the main road by Tony and the model Gisele, who's really chuffed with the new hair dryer, and we learn that the Samba School came near bottom of their group. A van stops and Tony and I embrace each other warmly as I thank him for a great day out. I sit in the van, which will get me home for 36 cents, and start drifting off already planning my next visit.

The funk party on Sunday? Another weekday visit with a better camera? It all seems a bit inappropriate now. The next time I come I want to give something rather than take. I don't want to be yet another visiting gringo, the type who has exploited these lands throughout their history. I too must seek to be an angel in the City of God.

David Alexander Robert is a British freelance writer and journalist who has been living in Brazil for over five years. He can be contacted on: davealexrob@yahoo.com 

Discuss it in our Forum

Send your
comments to
Brazzil