It's Now or Never: Congress in the Forest 4: A Shared Life in Favela

Mountain of Mercy

The first thing we did for our Action Project was to carry chairs and walk to a community hall in favela located along Sierra da Misericordia (The Mountain of Mercy), the target community selected by the World Youth Congress with collaboration of Raízes da Tradição (Roots of Tradition institution), Universidade da Juventude (University of Youth) and Info Jovem (Youth Info). Then, we had a background introduction about efforts that have been done by the local communty and ngos (and had it translated by Ana Paula Jones, general director of Raizes da Tradição) in this environment.

No longer Natural look on the Mountain

The Mountain of Mercy covers approximately 43.9 km2 in Rio de Janeiro municipality. It is a major residential area for industrial activities such as cement and granite mining. However, there was no effective control programme for environmental destruction to the surrounding neighbourhood due to the increased number of quarries at the granite mining region. The rock formations of the sierra are composed of rare types of granite and it had been covered by dense rainforest - but today is in an advance state of degradation and left only the coverage of grass. Besides loss of original vegetation, accelerated soil erosion and sedimentation, people who live at the slope of the mountain are also endangered. Such environmental impact had raise awareness for the local communities to work with the people's associations, groups and NGOs in order to restore and preserve its natural environment.

So, we as the participants of the World Youth Congress had this opportunity to contribute something to the local community - even though we were not really familiar with the culture and lifestyle of the people living in the favela. There were a few working groups for us to choose: Permaculture, Tree Nursery, Ecotourism, Environmental Programme, World Cafe, Photography, Graffiti and Cultural programme. We chose our favourite action group and had discussion on what could we do in this particular section. I chose to be in the ecotourism action group. Since we did not have a clear picture of what had been done and not done by the local community and NGOs, we drafted out an idea of sending a proposal to mayor of Rio de Janeiro on how to develop and promote ecotourism in favela, espcially where there is a mountain for people to hike and cycle about.

Though it was a bit misty in the day, me, Ezra (Singapore) and a few participants hiked the hill which took us roughly 30-45mins hour to the top - where we saw 2 granite quarries at the other side of the mountain and many houses built along the hillside, a typical scene of Rio de Janeiro. Because of granite extraction, the hill that we hiked was 'botak' (Malay word, means bald), left only long and firm grass which appeared as used to be burnt by local for us to hold on...poor Ezra even cut his hand while going down the slope!

The local people live their lives as usual. We saw people playing football on the hill, using horses to do their daily farming or transportation work, and pigs looking for food around - and of course, rubbish were spread elsewhere on the hill. I supposed there was a small dumping site but had just recently been cleared for our - maybe others' visit.

I just learnt that these glasses were put there for... stopping people from climbing over the wall.

Presentation and briefing session before the projects started.

There are remaining of some granite stones, but the trees were gone.

A bald hillside of the mountain of Mercy.

A view from the hill top: a dense neighbourhood.

Me and Patricio (Argentina) made friends with the local kids.

About Favela

In the next day, we continued our action project at Favela Penha. I got to learn more about the favela from a local friend, Dudu. He told me that favelas are usually inhabited by poor people who are excluded from society - social inequality and poor income distribution in Brazil are the main reasons to the emergence of favelas. These favela are built at the edge of Rio, and they are expending it along the hillsides (I was surprised that the hills are fully occupied in the city by the typical shape of the favela houses, see the picture below). Usually the source of income of these people are from mothers and fathers who are engaged in societal primary functions, such as: working maid, janitor, bus drivers, cafeteria attendants, and other jobs. Some people own small businesses such as selling snacks, sewing factory, soccer schools and so on. The main problem in the best-known favelas of Rio de Janeiro is drug trafficking. It is done by some rebel groups who lived underclass and need money to survive. Dealers (Mafia), rule the area and keep most favelas dwellers or even prisoners as hostage in exchange for exploration services. Though fires and gunshots were very common for decades in the favelas, these had been reduced in last several years after the setting up of UPP (Pacifying Police Unit) which aimed at reclaiming the territories on favela from the gangs. So it was still ok to walk in the favela, but we need to be guided.

At the cultural festival arranged by the organisers, I observed that the kids like flying kite and running after it, besides playing football. For youth, they liked graffiti or some kind of vandalism (If they drew the paint badly in a private or public area). To fulfill the graffiti artists' desire to express, some local ngos or authority would make a space for them to paint the art, and repaint the wall and staircase after some time. Most children living in favelas are studying in government schools but there are many other children did not go to school and assist their families to generate income. The main cultural activities in the favelas are based on music like funk and samba and also football. There are many Brazilian musicians of samba born in the favelas and other poor places, such as Arlindo Cruz, Luiz Melodia, Zeca Pagodinho, Seu Jorge, Martinho da Vila, etc, and some players like Zico, Ronaldo dan Romario are also emerged from these poor places. Outsiders can learn more about life in the favela in this film called 'Cidade de Deus' (City of God), another film talks about the Mafia versus police in drug trafficking is "Tropa de Elite" (Elite Squad) - Dudu said it's a very nice movie and he had watched it for 2 times. For a romantic story, you can find out "Era uma Vez", a movie that talks about love between a rich girl and a boy from the Favela.

Actually, I hope I can talk more with people live in the favela, but it seems that we had troubles to communicate - they don't speak English. So we ended the second day of Action project with local musics and samba festival performed by the local school and some of our members.

Tadaaaa, I would like to congratulate Rio de Janeiro for being recognised as a World Heritage Site last Sunday (July 1) by the Cultural Heritage Committee of UNESCO for its cultural landscape value, which include Favelas as part of reason. Residents of Rio, also known as Carioca, are very proud of that. I hope the municipality of Rio de Janeiro could work harder to develop and improve the poor conditions in those favelas, as they are part of the society and have rights to be treated equally as well.