24/07/2009 by Jonathan.

I am not sure whether this question hit me because I’d never been asked it before (in English or Portuguese) or because of how much it appeared to express the greatest of needs.  “Are you her dad?” was quickly followed by “Are you her uncle?” .  The young boy asking was clearly trying to ascertain whether the girl I was giving a piggy back to and playing with had a particular right to my attention or whether he could share it too.  Shortly after I had both of them and another girl trying to clamber on me.

I had gone to spend the morning in Borrel a favela here in Rio where my friend Kamila works with children and their mothers in dealing with psychological trauma.   This trauma is normally associated with the violence of favela life but may relate to the natural death of their mother or other causes.

Favelas come in two broad categories - those which are flat (as is the now world famous Cidade de Deus: City of God) or which are on a hill or morro.  Borrel comes in the latter category.  Then you have favelas which are controlled by the traficantes (drug dealers) and those which are controlled by essentially vigilante ex-police officers.

The traficantes like to keep life tidy in the favela and operate in a similar manner to the Italian manner and such organisations.  Within the favela they will make every effort to ensure there is not petty crime occurring as this attracts unwanted police attention.  However, if you work for them and you fail them you don’t need to speculate what the outcome of your performance review will be - you will end up the same way as a resident who breaks their rules.

The support of the favela population is essential to their survival - as a result they help residents with problems such as needing money for a child’s shoes, needed medication and such like.   One of the most interesting things I have heard in Rio is that as when the police are going to raid a favela, due to the corruption of the police force, it is very rare that the traficantes are not pre-warned.  The traficantes - at least in this one particular favela - contact the church who work there to warn them to stay away on that day.

I don’t know the situations of the particular children I was playing with at the ‘Festa do Juinho’ (a traditional party where the children dress as if they are from the countryside) but it is very common for children in favelas not to have or know their fathers.

Brazilian culture - though Rio’s in particular - is heavily sexualised.  This is in part the fruit of the Portuguese settlers approach to colonisation which involved sleeping with anyone they wanted to (native indians or black slaves) in order to spread the Portuguese seed and fill a country there simply weren’t enough Portuguese people to do.  It is common, and in fact probably the expected norm, for girls to be sexually active by the age of 15 and much earlier is certainly not uncommon [since I wrote this I was chatting to someone in Vigario Geral the favela where I am giving photographic lessons informed me that there are several girls of 10 and 11 there who are already mothers].  Girls with children from different fathers and very complex family arrangements and similar consequences to those seen in the UK then ensue. A line springs to mind which I think is from the film City of Men the follow on from City of God “I’m not stupid enough to have two kids with the same girl - she’d think she owns me!”.

Young boys in the favelas are brought into the drug trade very early being used to carry messages, drugs, etc. in, around or out of the favela but also as look outs and move up through the hierarchy.  This career path is desirable as it offers swift, bountiful rewards and appears to offer access to a lifestyle which would otherwise be out of reach.  While it does offer power and the ability to attract girls (as being the girlfriend of a traficante in itself brings advantages) it places them in the firing line of the police, BOPE (the elite force on which the film Tropa de Elite is based) and the rival gangs in turf wars.

Is it any wonder they want to know if they can share this ‘dad’?

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24/07/2009 by Jonathan.

**WRITTEN MONDAY 13 JULY & FINALLY POSTED**

Oi gente, tudo bem?  Yes I am in Rio again.

Some of you are probably wondering what I’m doing here this time and whether it is in fact just a super long holiday.  In a word: no.  While I will of course be enjoying it a lot I will be working quite hard.  I am continuing to do about two days a week of my normal work and on top of that having 2 hours of Portuguese lessons every day and doing some work with my friend’s social project in Vigário Geral a favela (slum) in Zona Norte (the north zone of Rio).  This last bit is very important as he has suggested that he could get me a 12 month voluntary work visa to work with him next year; if I am able to build on existing relationships with the guys who work with him and the children and youths that attend the project this could be very beneficial.

As I haven’t been keeping up with the blog while I have been in London I have been thinking it might be good to recap what my London life involves these days.  Some of you will remember that I returned to London at the end of January because I ran out of money and was offered my old job back.  This was quite clearly wonderful provision from God and even more so because I was allowed to take two weeks off to return to Rio in March in what was at that time only a two month contract.

While I was in Rio in March my boss in London extended my contract to the end of June.  This in the middle of the financial crisis demonstrated the incredible nature of God’s provision.  I was therefore astounded to be offered a pay rise when - purely out of a sense of obligation - I made clear to my boss that I thought I was out of my depth with the level of work I was having to do and the pressure I was under.  When this was relayed to our director it appeared to be interpreted as a request for more money which they wanted to meet to avoid me going elsewhere.  This amazing provision has made my current trip possible and means that by October I will be completely debt free.

Today, having spent a couple of hours trying to fix the wireless router here at the pousada, I walked up through Santa Teresa and down into Catete the steepness of which I cannot describe other than to say that flipflops really weren’t the ideal footwear for the task.  This took me into my old ‘hood Flamengo and down to Praia Botafogo with the awesome view of Sugar Loaf and - more importantly today - a bus to Ipanema for the first of my Portuguese lessons.  My lessons this time are one on one lessons with a guy called Marcelo who was recommended by friends.  So far I would say I agree that he is much better than most of the teachers at the school and I think lessons will be more interesting as we will read and discuss newspaper articles as well as doing things in my text book.  Maybe I’ll come back speaking fluently!

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26/01/2009 by Jonathan.

Friday was a difficult day!  After having received an email on Thursday night which gave me a tough decision to make and made sleeping difficult I had four hours to a) decide whether I was going to return to London 6 weeks early b) organise to start work in just over a week and c) buy a plane ticket.

So here is the deal: as I have already said in this blog I am short of money.  Having prayed for God to provide a solution I had not seen any large surprise deposits of cash into my bank account or discovered a shoe box of dollar bills on my doorstep.  On the flip side I had been offered my old job back.

Thinking carefully about this I had to figure out whether getting the next flight home stank of a lack of faith or was simply a wise course of action.  It was not in the way I would have wanted but God had in deed provided.  The bible speaks specifically about avoiding debt and while due to airfares etc there will be a short term increase in my debt in the medium term I will have a net position which is vastly improved.

The other thing I had to figure out was the impact on what I am doing here in Rio.  The questions I asked myself were: 1) have I achieved what I intended to in my initial trip? 2) and can I further things as well in London as in Rio?

This obviously required a recap of my initial objectives which were to work out:
1) If this was really where I thought God wanted me
2) If it was where I wanted to be
3) How I could stay here longer term
4) Learn Portuguese.

So the answers to these questions are:
1) Yes I believe it is.
2) That’s a stupid question: if it is where God wants me it is where I go.  Whether I like it or want to is irrelevant - just look at Jonah.  However, even though being here is less simple than being in London I love it here.  Once my Portuguese is better I can really see myself settling well here.
3) I think I know how to stay here longer term and I have contacts who can push that forward for me now.
4) Well I’m not fluent but I’ve made a good start and as London has 600,000 Brazilians I won’t be short of people to practice with.

In summary, the answer I came to having also spoken to Andrew who is leading the church plant here and Rhys (one of the Christchurch elders in London) was that not taking up the oportunity would be unwise and unconstructive.  Afterwards I realised how attached I had become to Rio as I had a couple of moments where the thought of leaving just made me want to cry!  (Particularly when I thought of having to leave my students at Tuiuti: Larissa, Welington and Guilherme).

On the up side I am very much looking forward to catching up with family and friends, being able to go to Christchurch again (man how I miss good worship in English!) and yes… the Christchurch Hollywood Ball at the Globe!!!

Now I have to work out what I am packing, what is staying in Brazil and complicated questions like that.

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26/01/2009 by Jonathan.

This weekend was fantastic!  I went away for the weekend with the social project Cristiano runs for the children from Vigário Geral the first favela I visited here.  We went to a retreat centre an hour or so from Rio in the countryside.

It was a great couple of days with some fantastic kids.  I had only spent a few hours with them on previous occasions so I was very impressed to see how well behaved they were over two days.  As well as myself there were two Dutch people wth us.  The kids are absolutely fascinated by the concept of people from other places and that speak other languages.  I was very popular but I have a sneaking feeling that was in large part to the very nice camera I had around my neck most of the weekend - these kids go crazy for photos!!!

As well as playing sports and enjoying the swimming pool - a very rare treat for these children. We also got to see a sizeable frog, a butterfly the size of which I’ve only seen before at London Zoo and a lizard which I think must have been about 60 cms long.  The boys desperately wanted to see it close up but didn’t understand that if they stood right outside the creature’s front door talking it was unlikely to be inclined to pop out for a walk!

The only low point of the weekend was the bus being four hours late arriving to take us back!

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09/01/2009 by Jonathan.

I realise this might be over doing the need to give you something to read but nevermind…

I said I would give you some photos of the storms in São Paulo from Christmas but I also wanted to show some amusing Christmas pictures… the whole Santa Claus, snow, materialist Christmas thing just looks so wrong here!

You may also be interested to get an update on where I am up to in terms of staying longer term.  I may have already explained that when I was feeling particularly down about being here and was struggling very badly with the language that  my godfather reminded me that I believe God told me he wanted me here and that this was backed up by the miraculous way he made it financially viable (which s also worth remembering now that the money is getting low).  He also pointed out that if I believe God told me to come here that unless God tells me to go elsewhere this is where I stay (visas and international law allowing of course but God has control over them too so it’s alright).

It was a little after this that I was talking to a Brazilian friend of mine on MSN (in Portuguese - be impressed) when a comment on an idea of mine that I had been explaining led me to realise the very obvious!  There are four ways I could stay in the long term: student, work, volunteer or missionary visa. For the latter I believe you need a theology degree, for the first you need to be a student and I don’t fancy that much, for a work permit well you need a job and I haven’t seen any obvious openings that feel right so I seemed to be left with the volunteer visa.  The difficulty presented by this is that you need qualifications in a topic associated to the work you are doing.  Except I found there is another thing which will get you this: relevant professional experience!

So while all the time I had been thinking I would need to find a music related project there was at least one other option: photography.  After the initial idea it was  easy work to write the proposal this being to teach photography to youths within the favela.  My hope is that with a group of 8 or so youths it will be possible to take them through the majority of photography techniques within a year and create images suitable for an exhibition to be shown here in Rio and hopefully in London too.  The proposal is currently being translated into Portuguese for me in order that I can give it to the organisation I am hoping will take up the idea.  They would then sponsor my visa which I’m pretty confident they would already be happy to do and then I get to have another 12 months here.

Being a volunteer visa that does of course leave the obvious question of how I support myself… however that is in God’s hands.

I forgot to mention… there is a fifth way to stay long term, a far more satisfactory answer and one which is strongly advocated by several friends here: marriage!  However, I think that might take me a little longer than 6 months to figure out.

Just to leave you with a nice picture: this was the view from my hotel room (shared with 3 other guys to be fair) on the English weekend I went on in Cabo Frio.  In case I haven’t explained the concept this is for people studying English here; they go away for the weekend where they can only speak English to put into practice what they have learnt… a pretty cool idea when doing an English or American Exchange would be prohibitively expensive and anyway… how many Brits and Yanks can you find who are learning Portuguese?

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09/01/2009 by Jonathan.

Today I have felt far more upbeat.  I used this morning to finish the update to my photography website which is now uploaded (see www.jonathannunn.com) this afternoon I had an unsuccessful and yet pleasurable photography outing.

On a slightly related note as I am going to be in the UK from March to at least the end of July if anyone is planning a wedding (it’s just been Christmas so Christchurch if nothing else must be busting with newly engaged couples).  In a few days - or maybe a couple of weeks - I will update my wedding photography site as well.

One useful thing which happened yesterday was that I went around the city with Al who I have mentioned before.  Al’s role in my life is simple: to find all the problems in the Brazilian clerical system before I have to experience them so that I know what they are and how to avoid them when I get there.

Yesterday this meant a morning walking around the city and sitting around mainly in federal buildings waiting to see people who then wouldn’t do what he needed them to do.

First stop was - ok I can’t remember the name of the building - but it was for Al to get his CPF which is their national ID card system.  He has the number but not the card.  When he did the previous stage of this he was told just to go to this place and he would be given it.  However, it turns out he was supposed to make an appointment which no one had told him and wasn’t in the instructions given to him by the post office.

Second stop was the ministry of work where he was to collect his work book.  I’m not entirely sure what this is or how it is used however… it’s a book and you need it when you work.  Got it?  When we arrived Al asked a gentleman who worked there whether it was possible to get the book without the CPF João Al’s brother in law who is Brazilian was also in on this conversation so there was no misunderstanding that the guy said it was fine.  However after going through the musical chairs style queing system as endured by myself when paying for my visa extension it turns out that in fact Al should have got a certificate from the Policia Federal when he was given his protocol (the thing that means he has permanent leave to remain in Brazil).

The final stop was the insurance broker as Al had an accident with his car just before Christmas (he reversed it into a pillar in the underground parking at his apartment block… whoops!).  It turns out that the excess to have it fixed would be R$2000 (about £600) and it would cost less than half that to have some guy on the street fix it for him.  So we established one thing… insurance companies are the same all over the world!

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09/01/2009 by Jonathan.

I’m somewhat astounded by the number of hits my blog is getting so I realise I’d best put stuff up for you all to read.

This is where life becomes interesting… My money is running out (well including bills I have to pay over the next 3 months my money’s gone to be more accurate) and I am finding life here hard again.  The holidays that follow Christmas here are basically equivalent to the 6 week school summer holidays in the UK - if carnival is early then schools don’t go back until after if it is late then schools go back and then break for the days around carnival too.

However, the point of all this is that the two things I was doing during the week stopped for Christmas and as yet I don’t know whether one of them will restart and this has compounded and highlighted the problem that I have very little to do here.  You would think that once you arrived somewhere with the social problems of Rio and said “I’m available to do anything to help” that you’d be knocked off your feet from the stampede… apparently not.

As a result I do not get opportunities on a daily basis to speak Portuguese beyond the supermarket checkout.  I could easily manage to speak as much Portuguese in London as I am here.  The flip side of this is the catch 22 that it is difficult to make friends without good Portuguese and difficult to get good at Portuguese without the friends.

Please don’t get me wrong… I love Rio!  But being here isn’t easy.  Right now I would LOVE to be able to go for a curry with a bunch of friends in London or chat to everyone in the Warwick after church on a Sunday.

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25/12/2008 by Jonathan.

I wrote this last night…

This Christmas has involved a lot of firsts.  Perhaps most obviously it was my first Christmas spent in Brazil - though I am in São Paulo with Andrew & Nicky’s family rather than in Rio - and in fact the first spent outside of England and meant my first Christmas away from family.  As a result of the different approach to Christmas here it was my first Christmas celebrated with a meal on the evening of December 24th rather than lunch on the 25th.

However, what I imagine will make this a very memorable one more than anything else is that five minutes after siting own at the table a storm started.  This was not only rain, thunder and lightning but hailstones in excess of 1cm diameter too.  Shortly after the hail there were two momentary blackouts and a minute later a rather longer blackout.  When I say a little longer… I’m still sat here in candle light three hours later… ah it has just come back on!  The thunder however still rumbles on and the rain continues - good old Brazilian weather!

The meal was turkey, ham, potato, corn-on-the-cob and mushrooms.  There were a number of options for pudding: pudin (a Brazilian sweet like creme caramel), ice cream, panetone and fresh strawberries and cherries.  My food was complemented nicely by a bottle of Bohemia Escurra a superb dark beer made here.

After dinner presents were opened.  There was talk of only allowing the opening of one present per child and leaving the rest until morning an idea I was only mildly against until I realised that as I was sleeping in the lounge (the location of the presents) this would involve me being awoken even earlier than I would desire than I suspect is likely to be the case anyway.

Tomorrow I am being introduced to some of central São Paulo so I shall tell you about that at the same time as what I have been up to for the last few days.

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11/12/2008 by Jonathan.

Being one for detailed planning and rigid timetables (not!) this weekend having said I might do I decided to travel to Minas Gerais a neighbouring state to Rio de Janeiro State (the city being the capital of the state presumably as consolation for not being the capital of the country anymore).  The plan (more of a thought I guess) was to get the overnight bus to Ouro Preto an old town built during the gold rush its name meaning black (preto) gold (ouro).

The bus arrived there at 6am Sunday morning.  Being a little town with lots of old colonial churches and LOTS of hills it is very pretty but… what can I say? Dull?  So that afternoon I jumped on a bus to Belo Horizonte the state capital of Minas Gerais in order to get another bus to Parque Nacional Serra do Cipo on the other side of it.  As the bus network is pretty exhaustive but not incredibly regular I had to stay overnight in Belo Horizonte in a little hostel and killing time that evening at the cinema.

Rising early I took the 6:30 coach to Santana do Riacho which my guide book informed me was the right one for the national park.  The catch is it doesn’t tell you where to get off the bus.  It turns out Santana do Riacho is an hour past the park along the most incredible dirt track which the coach takes twice daily.  Once I had taken in what Santana had to offer but realising that in the midday heat walking back towards the park was not an option (that hour of driving isn’t at great speed).  While waiting for the next bus I was offered food and beer by some of the locals who I got chatting to (they were saving me from one of the local alcoholics whose Portuguese I couldn’t understand a single slurred word of).  Under such circumstances it would have been rude to take the coach and instead let them organise for me to stay at one of the local pousadas (guest house / B&B equivalent) for the princely sum of R$20 (£6).

In the evening neither the churrascaria (BBQ) or forro (style of music & dance) materialised due to a bit of thunder & lightning which knocked out the towns electric.  It seems there is a local joke that a dog only has to pee against the lamp post and the electric goes off.  Lacking entertainment though having been provided with some more food (loving the hospitality) I went back to the pousada and hit the sack determined to rise in time for the 6am bus to get to Serra do Cipo.  I thankfully made it in good time.  The drive out was beautiful with clouds sitting in the valleys below us.

The access point to the national park was about 1.5km up a track which took me past “Cachoeira Grande” the originally named ‘Big Waterfall’ which was some reason was temporarily closed - it was still there I could hear it!  Once at the park entrance map in hand (not exactly an OS map) I set off for Cachoeira Farofa which I was informed was 8km away and having made the important calculations that a) I would make it back in plenty of time for the bus which would get there about 3:30 and b) I wasn’t going to die from dehydration as it was only two hours each way and if nothing else I could drink from the waterfall when I got there.

The walk was quite spectacular!  Not only was the scenery beautiful but I also got to wade through a river (yes holding my bag above my head for the safety of my camera) this lent the whole affair a kind of Into the Wild feel.  The waterfall was only a little way on from this it was impressive and the water from the stream it formed VERY refreshing.  This left me to return - a harder walk as it was now 11am and involved walking through the midday heat (yes I had been applying and in fact  reapplying sunscreen and was wearing a t-shirt over my head to protect from sun stroke - a fetching look I can assure you).  The river crossing was much easier second time round as I didn’t spend 15 minutes working out which was the shallower of the two possible routes or in fact whether I was supposed to cross it at all.  At the end of the day the water didn’t even reach my waste so it wasn’t incredibly dramatic, the current wasn’t strong enough to wash me down stream and there wasn’t a bear watching from the bank as there often seems to be in American wilderness films.

In fact this wasn’t the only thing that happened which I thought only happened in films… when I was walking back into Santana do Riacho after taking some photos a couple in a pick up stopped and asking if I was going into Santana do Riacho and told me to jump in the back.  Great fun!

Farofa in case you are wondering is the toasted manioc flour that forms part of many dishes here in Brazil but the word can also mean boast, trifle or empty talk according to my faithful dictionary.
Once I got back to the main road I found a little store where I was able to procure a bottle of guaraná (a fizzy soft drink found everywhere in Brazil), a big bottle of water.  These were much needed and enjoyed but the food I bought - the worst crisps and the most solid bread I’ve encountered in my life - were unappetising even after walking 20km!

The journey back to Rio involved a lot of waiting, 2 hours by the side of the road waiting for the bus (I couldn’t afford to miss it as I had to be back in Rio Wednesday afternoon), another film at the cinema in Belo Horizonte, 2 hours at the rodoviaria (bus station) and then there is the actual traveling time.  Time is something you ned a lot of travelling around Brazil, either that or money; there is no equivalent to Ryanair or Easyjet here.  Internal flights are expensive.

Now the buses deserve a mention… The overnight buses I took I paid the extra to go ’semi-leito’ (semi-bed).  This basically means you have a chair like you’re in business class on a plane.  They recline pretty near horizontal and you have a foot rest that folds down in front of you.  However, while these are very comfortable and you are provided with a blanket and something resembling a pillow (a square of hard foam with a cover) this doesn’t make up for the fact that Brazilian roads are about as smooth as the M25 and far worse made.

Now the big question is where next???  Salvador, Recife, Foz do Iguassu, Florianopolis… so many places to visit!  Well unless I come into some serious money and can afford to fly places Recife is off the list.  38 hours on a bus anyone?

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30/11/2008 by Jonathan.

Today I will depart from the usual format of my blog entry to tell you a little about being a ‘gringo’ in Brazil.  Gringo is a term used in Brazil to mean anyone from outside of Latin America.

The assumption is a gringo doesn’t know their way around, they are stupid, have lots of money and certainly don’t know what they should be paying for something.  I would also direct you to the blog of my fellow gringo Al Dobbs on ‘The Gringo Tax’.  It is also assumed gringos can’t dance, are boring and the girls are unattractive.  As generalisations I think they are all wrong besides probably the first.

Yesterday I had an interesting taxi experience which can in part be explained by gringo assumptions and the tax.  I was trying to make my way to a football pitch to watch a match between some of the guys from Union Church and Andrew’s company play some of the guys from Cristiano and Justino’s projects.  The football pitch was in an area of Barra I had not been to before but I knew I could get the bus and get pretty close.  However, the difficulty as I think I’ve explained before is that Barra ALL looks the same!  So thinking I had gone too far I got off the bus and walked back a fair distance to find that actually when I was able to ask someone I hadn’t gone far enough… more walking.  I eventually got to the right turn off but having walked for 40 minutes or so fancied a cab for the rest which I estimated to be about 5 minutes drive or so and a fare of R$10 (just under £3).

When I explained (in Portuguese) to the taxi driver where I wanted to go it was very clear that he didn’t know where this place was.  My concern was raised a minute later when as the meter was going up quicker than it should have been he asks a second time ‘aeroporto?’.  Clearly introduction of The Knowledge to Rio would be useful but then so would eradicating the possibility of bribing your driving test examiner.

The driver drove past the place I thought was probably right and a few minutes later stopped to ask someone for directions to the road I wanted even though I’d shown him a map (admittedly hand drawn but Brazilians don’t like or own and almost certainly not READ maps).  This person was unable to help so he continues driving away from my destination.  He stopped a little further on by which point we are almost in Cidade de Deus (City of God - yes as in the movie) fortunately they were able to help here.

Now by this point the rapidly rising meter was already around R$30 an outrageous sum and approaching the limit of the money I had in my wallet.  Raising this issue required careful timing however - I didn’t want to be dropped off in Cidade de Deus to the shout of “Thieving Stupid GRINGO!” as it could have limited the possibility of seeing let alone enjoying Christmas.  Another five minutes and now being oh yes… about 5 minutes from where we started, we reach the destination.  The meter now reads R$46 which is pretty close to £20 and is about the same as I would have paid to take a taxi all the way from Flamengo where I live which is significantly further.  I explain in a friendly but assertive manner that I am not going to pay R$46.  Obviously recognising the cordiality with which I am taking the situation he concedes saying “No that’s fine - just R$40.  The figure I was thinking was more in the region of R$15 but could see that going down very badly told him holding out the single note that I was giving him R$20.

This was not taken so cordially.  I understood this from the raised tone he immediately took and the repeated use of the word ‘policia’.  So quickly assessing the likelihood of finding any helpful policemen in the area (though it was unhelpful ones I was more concerned about - i.e. any Brazilian policemen you haven’t already furnished with a bribe) opened the door and went to leave.  Still not very happy at my uncompromising approach to this bartering situation the driver grabs my bag.  I had the (very strong) strap so knew I was going to win - particularly as he couldn’t drive off with two hands on my bag - and was able to release it from his grasp and casually walk off in the direction of the football pitch.

I can only assume he believed I wouldn’t have realised that he drove back more than half the distance he had driven there.  This situation is far more honest however than one I was told of yesterday: When John and Flor Evans (who I’ve mentioned before) were visiting Andrew and Nicky before they went to the Porcão restaurant which is less than five minutes away from Andrew and Nicky’s however there were too many to fit in one car.  Andrew was following the taxi rather than the other way around (lesson learnt) and so the taxi driver rather than taking the correct turning took them down to Copacabana before driving to the Porcão - a cunning ploy to get more money out of the gringos who don’t know their way around but pretty dumb with a local driving behind you!

On the upside it looks like we might see some sun this week after two weeks of rain and in some areas flooding.

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