Ben Warder
West Virginia University College of Law, 3L
Friday, August 8, 2008

A Sobering Day for Exhausted Students

Hello, Readers!

My name is Ben Warder, and my blog takes you from WVU Law’s last moments in Vitoria up until the first day in Rio de Janeiro. It would be impossible to talk about leaving Vitoria without first mentioning our last night out with our friends at UVV. Needless to say, everyone got pretty boisterous at the club, and I doubt any of us slept more than five hours before traveling to Rio for our jam-packed first day there. While leaving Vitoria, it was very special for many of us that our hosts were there at the airport to see us off. It was very difficult to say goodbye, and more than a few tears were shed. The students from UVV meant so much to me and my friends; they went out of their way to show us the Brazilian student experience. This often included staying out with us until all hours of the night and then going to class the next day around 7:00 AM. Many of us, including me, made life-long friends, and for this we were all grateful.

The states that contain Rio and Vitoria border each other, and thus our flight to the former was only about an hour. I tried to sleep, but I was still greatly hung-over from the night before. Upon arriving in Rio, we drove to our hostel in the ritzy Leblon neighborhood. On the way to Leblon from the airport, I could already see the great disparity in Brazilian society in the buildings I saw. Soon after making it to our Lemon Spirit Hostel, I felt that I was in a safe urban neighborhood. Then we made the drive to the Rocinha favela. The first thing that struck me about Rocinha is that it bordered a middle class neighborhood with nice housing and modern shopping centers.

The Rocinha Favela is the largest favela (shantytown or slum) in all of Brazil

My first shock on the trip was the motorcycle ride to the top of Rocinha. I had remembered my professors mentioning this as our mode of transportation to Rocinha, but I tried to block it out of my mind. I had never ridden on a motorcycle before, and I was scared to death. While staying in Vila Velha and Vitoria, my friend Jenny Feathers described driving in Brazil as a mix between motocross, drag racing, and karate, and the motorcycle trip in Rocinha was no exception. Somehow I knew I would be okay, but speedily passing buses and cars, or several buses or cars, on a motorcycle without a helmet did not do much for my constitution. Eventually, we arrived to begin our trip through Rocinha.

Upon starting the tour of Rocinha, I realized what a different world I was in now. This was not Leblon, or Ipanema or Copacabana, but somehow I felt safe. Rocinha is one square kilometer, and holds over 200,000 people. It is one of several hundred favelas in Rio that co-exist with some of the most beautiful and extravagant neighborhoods that I have ever seen. Describing Rocinha is difficult because it felt so surreal to me. The favela was like a fantasy or underground world to me. Maybe my feelings about the favela are also shared by other Brazilians, and allow them to separate it from their lives and brush it aside.

A view of the interior walls of a favela home

I came into the favela with several preconceptions. I thought it would be a place of total hopelessness and misery. While these adjectives described parts of the favela, not everything was in a gloomy cloud. The citizens of Rocinha did not walk around in a Dickensian pall of depression. I was surprised about all the life and vibrancy that existed in the favela: there were several stores that sold everything from food to cleaning supplies to clothing. There were also more than a few Internet cafes.

Other positive highlights included visiting an artist’s studio, who sold paintings that depicted Brazil and the favelas; going to a nursery school that was privately funded and seeing the young children of the favela in a healthy setting; and listening to the music of young musicians made with instruments that included an oil can and a pot. From the roof of the nursery school, two contrasting views were available. One provided an amazing panorama of the wealthy neighborhoods that existed so close to Rocinha. Another showed the sheer size of the favela, a collection of multi-colored shanties abutted against a mountain. Thus, from this spot two worlds, so close geographically but so far socially, culturally, and economically, exist.

The second perspective, displaying the massive presence of the favela, demonstrated the despair and degradation under which most favela residents live, and much more negative than positive exists in Rocinha. For one thing, the sewage system is deplorable. At any given spot in Rocinha, you can see untreated sewage at your feet, along with mounds of garbage everywhere. Sanitation workers, along with most outsiders, do not often come to the favelas in an official capacity. While the nursery school we visited in the favela was nice, Rocinha only has four schools, and I am sure that many of its residents are children.

Favela residences are often built directly on top of other homes

By the end of the tour, I was incredibly glad that I had to opportunity to go to Rocinha. Touring the favela is another example of Brazil’s massive income disparity. While walking to the bottom of Rocinha, where our tour buses would safely (as safely as Brazilian drivers drive) return us to trendy, wealthy Leblon, I noticed how seamlessly Rocinha blended with the nicer neighborhoods around it. The area directly bordering Rocinha was full of shops and street vendors, and the pleasant Rio winter weather reminded me of similar scene outside the monuments in Washington, DC during the spring time. A few blocks from Rocinha, about a 10-15 minute walk, my group and I were back in middle-class Brazil waiting for our bus. The difference between the neighborhoods in Brazil shows how intertwined the haves and have-nots are in Brazil. In the United States, it is difficult to find the rich and poor living closely together. In Brazil, the poor and rich live literally right on top of each other.

The tour of the favela took up most of our first day of Rio, my group found time to go out and enjoy Friday in one of the most lively cities in the world. Rio is truly a city that never sleeps, and I am sure many people in my group can attest to this when we get back to the United States. I will never forget my time in the favela, and I think that seeing a neighborhood like this should be mandatory for anyone who lives in the middle or upper class and complains about their existence. While parts of the tour were very sobering and a bit depressing, the people that lived in Rocinha did not give off this impression. This was their life, and they made the best of it, and hopefully with time, the people of Rocinha, especially the children, can look down to the valley below and see the middle class and wealthy neighborhoods as their reality in the future.