Lucas Oil Ppl Tractor Pulls

A tour of the favelas.

Thanks to the hostel, we returned to a project that the outside is allowed to do within a short walking tour of the favelas, and in return the money is donated to projects for the community, such as schools, laboratories, painting, and so on. It 'just that even the less fortunate kids can enjoy decent public services and facilities.

The small streets to prevent public services to retrieve the garbage, which are known in every local area to carry waste on the highway because they are caught and brought away from trucks. The favela we visit is the most Rio larger and perhaps all of South America: it is called Rocinha . Our guide has passed a three-week training which was known by locals, and also moving on the path to do and people to avoid. In fact you can not take pictures, for obvious reasons, in the presence of observers or dealers of the band's dominant drug traffickers.

Thanks to the knowledge of the guide, we take the most modern transport service movement in the slums: the bike! Every day, several riders are paid to bring up and down the hill the locals. The police listlessly stationed here, all corrupt to the core, gets about a real head by motorcyclists, which in this way should not wear a helmet and are allowed to play their role. This organization is highly reminiscent of Naples ....

Our ride up the winding roads of the hill is a beautiful example of a favela is seen from the highway. This is poor houses, concrete in sight, dominated by electrical wires, but in general stores and food shops, enough to serve a vast population, which reached here at least 500,000 people. This is a real city, with all the services and commodities - clearly low cost - of which a large population in need.

What I like most of the favela is the simplicity of the people, people like us, who has a family, own a home (which does not pay taxes ), and has a life more strenuous than a normal person, with his 2-3 jobs in wealthy areas of the city.

95-99% of the population are people whose only "defect" is to be poor. They are not murderers, they are not thieves, not aggressors. A small minority is made up of groups rather than of drug dealers who share the various favelas and damage stability and organization. As in Naples, the boss is aware of everything: who enters and leaves the favela, who violates the order and so on. Are not allowed thieves or troublemakers, so that traffic in drugs, here protected and hidden in narrow streets, is not compromised.

Most people know who is better not to have to do is continue their difficult but honest life in the favela. Here everyone knows it's like a big family. This is why anyone who wants to enter the favela, to be safe, he must know someone who lives in the same. As in any place, know the locals is an advantage. Ernesto has never even been in a favela, he tells me, but friends who could bring it into this labyrinth of narrow streets and crowded houses.

It does not feel any sense of danger, and people even smiles and greets us. The bravest children are asking for their photos, others play for dusty passages from which emerge often small garbage dumps unhealthy air. Every now and then spend a few cockroaches and other animals ... but after living in New York than in Rio seem cute and almost justified even in a place like this!

We head to one of the structures that we are helping to expand the money of the "tour" is a small building in which adults and children test themselves in the painting. It 'a way as any to occupy the leisure time of children and distract from other more dangerous activities. You see it around very young bear automatic weapons ... perhaps a more turbulent to make more money faster. Most of the paintings on canvas depicting the favela, designed but the houses are surprisingly rich in color, although it Staglin black and high on a hill, whose summit is bare. I buy a small painting of a boy named Carlos, who unfortunately will leave in a taxi in the middle of the night in Sao Paulo ...

Continuing the tour, we stop at a bakery by the heady fragrance, and tasted all kinds of homemade desserts: coconut, walnuts, a non-memory-more-like-taste but remember cakes that were delicious! Taste even a bit of a strange fruit, like a huge melon, hanging from the trees in these areas: the Jack-fruit. E 'in yellow and a bit' sticky not so tasty ... as shown below, the cart of a vendor met in Sao Paulo.

We offer it with the nice boys who enjoy playing ... samba! The pace is pressing while the kids beat the drums with a simplicity that only Brazilians can have a naturalness that when they grow up turns into wild dances, such as funk, that our heroes have obviously experienced in another favela.

While we try to spit out the Jack-fruit without being seen, we have with music and beautiful that people with children the favela. There are many mulattos (and hence the population of blacks and poorer than the Brazilian lighter skin ...) Here are some shots:

A girl drummers.

A little boy asked.



A little girl smiles.

say that is just amazing. Let instead reflect their condition, a condition in which they were born by the will of destiny, and where we might be born too. But I am Italian, I have a beautiful family, and I'm lucky to be supported and loved by my parents. How could I know when I was born? I could be a child of the slums, with a life in the hills, many brothers, and friends or armed honest. But this is not, so I say.

the evening we go to another favela funk for an evening at a nightclub. We are immersed in a huge cube with two floors (the floor for the "VIP") is chock full of people of the favela, or outside. The music is deafening, so much to having to protect pieces of paper in his ears. The way to dance funk in Brazil (and perhaps especially in the favelas) is very, very very uninhibited. I have dubbed the dance of "pre-copulation"! It is fitted with girls in short skirts that sculettano in an extreme lowering and rising, with the seat in plain view and in motion. The two guys are placed in turn behind the girls and take a swing sculettanti monotonous Emboss their river back and forth, in perfect synchrony with the female sculettamento! Never seen anything like it.

Some of us commented that perhaps this is one of the reasons for overcrowding in the slums ... and soon after a girl was dazzled by Yvette. With the unmistakable gestures from behind tries to convince her to dance with her, but want to be spoiled, either from exhaustion, so much lesbian Yvette does not accept invitation! Unfortunately I am not a fan of disco, and even the type of hormone that behavior in these places has the upper hand, but this is an "favela" interesting. Basically we are in Rio should try everything! And I think from this point of view we have not spared!

was high time to leave!