Sunday 17 April 2011

Favela Rising

I don't believe in the glamourization of favelas. Favela tours I think are kinda voyeuristic - that being said, I have never been on one although having read this, maybe I will). I believe favelas to be homes of communities of people who eat, drink and crap the same as everyone else. I respect that. I also respect that I haven't grown up or lived in a favela. I don't know their rules. So when a friend of a friend wanted company into a favela, I hesitated before saying 'yes'.

The back story was this. Girl meets boy. Girl and boy dance together and fall in love together. Girl lives in London. Boy lives on a morro. Girl and boy visit back and forth and the love in strong. Last week, girl surprises boy in his favela home only to find him face down in the lap of someone else. Girl gets mad, breaks up with boy and tells him she wants all of her stuff back.

Fair enough.

However, boy doesn't respond and so with encouragement and support of friends, girl + 2 friends (myself included) go forth. Operation Retrieval of The Things.

She says it's not far from where we'd just been sitting having drinks and shooting shit about relationships. There's a lift which takes us up and the Favela has been pacified after the UPP so I'm not too scared as we walk up the 19 flights of stairs up from the street to enter the level of the Boy's house. We pass a group of kids who are all playing on the stairs, commenting to themselves about these 3 girls walking through their streets. "Que e isssssso?!!!" We placate them with jokes and play flirtation with the loudest one who's subsequent blushes quieten him down. We walk up steps, through narrow alleys, right turn, sudden left turn over steps and planks of wood and Lord knows how many cockroaches until she gestures for us to be quiet. We're near his house and we don't need any nosey neighbours getting involved.

She still has her key and unlocks the door. We go in and she quickly gathers her things. Including 2 quite cumbersome Ikea blinds. we're in and out in less that a minute but a boy sticks his head over the wall at the sound of the door closing to ask if Boy was home. Girl says no and we start down the hill before she remembers something else in the house. Like a bad movie, she looks at me and tells me she's going back for it. I know it's a bad idea but she's hurt and she wants him out of her life and so I nod at her to get what's hers out of his possession. She runs into the house and as she walks out, like a bad movie, He appears.

Not so much Boy, he is a Man. A tall man who's stature immediately evoked a slight panic in me.

He calls after her. She says hi but carries on walking, signalling that we should walk too. Faster out than our walk in. He runs after us and asks her what she's doing. What's in the bag; who are these people that were in my house. She answers - she's getting her things, it's her stuff in the bag; she's here with friends and she's not leaving them. At first there's still tenderness in his voice when he asks her to come back so they can talk but her resolve is firm.

"There's nothing to talk about, I'm leaving."

On realising it's not going to be an easy conversation, if a conversation at all, the tenderness disappears from his voice and is replaced by urgency and anger. Come, let's talk, turns to Get back here, I want to talk to you. She walks away. His walk turns into a run and before we realise, he's right behind us tugging her bag off her back. I just want to talk to you. These other people can get lost.

We're not leaving without you I tell her. Mistake. Now he's more concerned with us. The Intruders. He grabs the plastic bag in our other friend, let's call her A,'s hand, asking if it's from his house. She's feisty and will not back down. "That's my book, that's nothing to do with you" to which his anger spikes and he turns to face her. "What were you doing in my house?" And throws the bag at her. It crashes to the ground, rips and the book rolls in front of my feet. He is angry.
To the Girl he hisses "Tell these people to get out. Get out of here."

She won't leave without her bag. She's stubborn and she wants what's hers. A is stubborn too and she's had her property ripped out of her hand by this man who has so hurt her friend. I'm standing behind holding two 2metre blinds wishing my Portuguese was good enough to have something to say when he eventually turns his anger on me. I place the blinds down so he has nothing from me to grab when I step forward to help my friends.

It's weird. You know people are listening from inside their houses - rooms in the community are so close to one another - but they don't do anything. It's their own business. What a man will do to the woman in his life is His Business. So when Boy grabs Girl by the arm until she shakes him off and shouts that she wants her bag back now please, there's no reaction from anywhere. A stands in his way and Girl who has now broken free from his grip, starts towards me. Angry that she's gotten free, he clips A's arm and stomps past her. Girl has rushed ahead of me muttering in English "let's get out of here".

It suddenly dawns on me that we are in a favela. His community. Whatever he wants to do or say, he has people there who he can trust and he knows the rules. We are definitely on the back foot.

So we get out of there. He runs after us for a bit saying "You've already come up to the hill so you know what to expect from here when you go into someone's house".

We run faster.

Through alleyways, down steps. I barely know where I'm putting my feet, which way I'm going, I just follow Girl. She's steps ahead of me hurrying us along. "We've got to get out of here girls, come on." I look back at A. There's a look on her face I recognise as fear and anger. She doesn't like to get pushed around, she's angry he manhandled her friend, but she knows as well as I that we're not on good ground up here where the air and the ways are different.

Back down on the flatlands of Ipanema, we drop the pace - but only slightly - as A and I accompany the Girl to her door. She thanks us for coming with her and apologises for putting us a horrible position. I think how brave she is and how hurt she must still be have wanted to venture into a favela at 11pm. I look in her eyes and know that the man we saw was not the same man she fell in love with, but also that she did still love him. Love turns to hate so quickly that sometimes we forget what it used to be. When we're faced with the person, sometimes we're forced to recognise it and it hurts.

After we left her, A and I thanked each other for being brave and being good friends. There was no telling what would have happened if we hadn't been there with her. Maybe they would have spoken calmly as he wouldn't have had the provocation of knowing Intruders had been in his house. Maybe he would have hit her. We'll never know.

What I do know is that after we left her, he went to her apartment, pushed past the doorman and tried calling her out from the street. But is was on the Flatlands now where his tactics had responses. She stayed inside and she is fine.

Tomorrow, she's coming to stay with me.

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