First days at the favela Babilonia
Today is Monday. My heart is bursting; the sights sounds and smell seem so alien. I don’t know where to begin. I sip green tea in my daughter’s kitchen. It is the hub of her home, a newly renovated and decorated apartment in a recently ‘cleansed’ favela called Babiliona. It was built by the army in 1930 while they were stationed here. One of the first favelas , with Providensia (built 1879), built to give the soldiers homes for a few months. When the army moved out it became the home of migrants, slaves and those who needed cheap living accommodation; now, no longer temporary homes but a vital part of the growing city.
‘M’ moved in here with her recently graduated partner, three months ago. Before that it had been a single story house owned by Seu Manuel. He lived here for over twenty years with his wife and only daughter who has since move out and has a home and children of her own.
During this time Manuel struggled with the effects of the Rio rain and poor damp protection, so he decided to build another story on the existing property and move upstairs. So doing he was able to make fundamental changes to the foundations and the lower brickwork and render the lower apartment damp free and comfortable for future tenants, who would provide him with an income during his retirement. Allowing Manuel to remain relatively comfortably in the community where he has lived and worked all his life. Having the time, expertise and improved cheaper building materials the little apartment became by Brazilian standards, if not palatial a desirable and cheap first home.
I return to my bursting heart. Everywhere, It feels is so foreign! The favela although it is built of concrete, not made of wood, is still a shanty town and difficult for a distant mother to understand. The streets are barely a few feet wide and very steep. There are cats, dogs, children dust, dirt and broken drains. The environment appears vulnerable and unstable. In the evening the streets are noisy with comings and goings; as I write, outside a television is being smashed and the copper wire being removed. As the night draws in so the quiet comes. The morning comes slowly and so the streets are swept, washed and rubbish removed. And the vast army of work men begin the day – regenerating. Me? I wonder whether a bursting heart is more comfortable than a broken one?
I think so.
Silent Sunday
Wednesday’s Wise Woman … Carmen Miranda
I apologise for this rather impersonal blog about Carmen Miranda … it was my hope to visit the Museum before the post, but events have a habit of changing and this is made more difficult when internet connection is so unreliable. I can remember watching old black and white films in the 1960s staring Carmen Miranda; a Portuguese Brazilian super -star, born in Portugal in 1909. She moved with her family to Brazil soon after she was born. While being a a hat maker, she able to create the traditional hats worn by the black women fruit sellers that became her trade mark. She began singing successfully in clubs and on the Brazilian radio and was soon discovered by a theatrical producer and offered a slot on Broadway. Keen to maintain her Brazilian image Carmen insisted that her backing band came with her. The Brazilian government wishing to to promote Brazil supported her request. She became highly successful but unfortunately the centre of a diplomatic trap; considered by the Brazilians as Americanised and by the Americans as a ‘fruit dancer and showpiece of the transcontinental friendship.
She married film producer David Sebastian it was an unhappy relationship, he was abusive opportunist only after her money. Carmen, a devote Catholic did not consider divorce an option. Instead, working harder and taking drugs, smoking and drinking which of course lead to her premature death in 1955. I am fascinated by Carmen Miranda and look forward to seeing the Museum here in Rio dedicated to her in the next few days and learning more about short passionate life. When I can post some more intimate information.
Leme Beach
Well today is almost over. This morning before breakfast we walked to Leme beach. Which is around 15 minutes walk from Babilonia. The alleyways of the Favela were coming alive; with mothers taking their children down to the waiting school buses. Others are going to work in the city or on the coast. All like us taking a bag of refuse down to the skip that is bought daily to remove rubbish. Several men are sorting, collecting and sweeping away the unsavoury remains.
We walk along the water’s edge to Copacabana beach. The sand was soft and pale gold, exactly as we see in the holiday brochures. Golden bodies paraded the length and breadth of the beach enjoying the warm breeze and rising sun.
We posed as regular tourists. But, I glanced back beyond the Copacabana Palace; a very grand hotel that entertained the likes of Mick Jagger and Madonna. Peeping through was Babilonia demanding attention from the rich and famous and not so!
As we returned at 9 o’clock the day was well underway for the engineers and the local workforce who work unceasingly it seems in very uncertain situations. For example there are men down deep holes for drains. Towards us come 15 men struggling with a 25 metre steel girder up many steep steps to reinforce the mountain side and increase the safety of the precarious homes below.
Silent Sunday
Morro da Favela
Morro da Favela – the mountain where the bitter shrub grows
In the forests beyond Rio
Newly free slaves not yet to grace equitable society
Finding work and homes proved difficult.
They in Leblon with runaway slaves
Joined a quilombo
Droughts of the 1870s misplaced others and then
Economic devastation by sugar decline.
So the poor became more dispossessed,
Looked for the antichrist to bring repair,
The wandering Antonio the counsellor brings hope
But, displeasure for the authorities.
Ten thousand dwell enraged in Canudos
Destruction of republic feared
From Rio the federal force took Canudos by storm
Massacred every man, woman and child
Brutally erased from memory,
The settlement
Jubilant the soldiers and the families return
To Rio and a promised hero’s home.
Where the government cruelly negated the command
On a hillside Morro da Providencia
The avenged camped
Near a hardy shrub twisted to shelter.
The plant’s bitter irritation offers hope.
Favela offers protection for the defenceless souls
Wednesday’s Wise Women … Clarice Lispector
“So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.” The hour of the star
By Clarice Lispector (1925-1977)
I have now arrived in Brazil for long a waited visit with my daughter in Rio de Janeiro. I thought I would like to give my blog a Brazilian feel and feature Brazilian Wise women. My experience is very limited I am ashamed to say. I apologise to you and my perceived wise women now for my feeble attempt to diversify.
When ‘M’ went away she gave me a book called the Hour of the star by Clarice Lispector to read. It was a very thin compared with the Apple in the dark I had read earlier. I enjoyed them both, the latter a little more sophisticated and profound for my needs at the time. However, the Hour of the star was less challenging but nonetheless deep; a mix of fiction and philosophy – a rich result of Clarice Lispector’s investigations into the psychological consequences of poverty. (Lispector 1992)
Brazilian writer style much like Virginia Woolf and I would like to read more.
In her short life she wrote seven novels, some short-story collections and some children’s books
Clarice Lispector died of cancer 1977 aged 57 the Hour of the star was published that year. It is a story of a poor girl called Macabea from the state of Alagoas, the state where the Lispectors landed in Brazil. She, like the Lispectors migrated to Rio de Janeiro. It is about a girl who is a bad typist, a virgin and only drinks Coco-Cola – a hopeless misfit – she died under the wheels of a yellow Mercedes. It is believed to be Clarice Lispector’s self portrait. And I am inclined to agree and can relate to Clarice’s/Macabea’s angst.
Bibliography
Lispector, C. (1992). The hour of the star. Manchester, Carcanet.
Off to Rio
Sand Sculpture on Copacabana
Well, I am on my way to the holiday of a lifetime in Brazil. It feels as if it has been planned for a lifetime; my daughter’s lifetime. She graduated from Liverpool University with a degree in Latin American Studies and then discovered the opportunities in the United Kingdom with such experience were limited. Her distinction in Portuguese language and her dissertation about Human Rights in Brazil proved to be of limited value. So she decided to return to Rio de Janeiro where she had spent one year of her course.
I did half expect this but it was still a mighty blow; the Empty Nest Syndrome hit me like a right hook from Mohamed Ali and I have been reeling ever since.
I began preparing for this separation like most mothers for when my carefully hatched fledgling flew the nest. But we must prepare and I did; with further education and some beefy hobbies, including a creative writing course and joining a gym.
My first fear was that I would not be able to get internet access in Rio when I arrived. My only other fear was that the security at Heathrow would not allow me to take my sewing machine with me. Fortunately my little red apparition was not considered a health and safety risk even with its needle. However the internet is not so obliging. So my communication with you all will be inconsistent I beg your patience.
Silent Sunday
Boots the poem
Unwanted, the choice of colour, texture and design.
Wanting only shiny black. Shine, permanent shine
More shine with a duster and some spit
Who says too old, too expensive
made in China?
Disdainful remarks from so called loved ones.
A serious work of art say perfect strangers
bewitched.
Are they ?
The rest?
Entranced, seasons and weather duped
It can rain and snow on my parade!
From the bouncing book they protect
The feet
the vital fashion accessory
and fun I say.
To complement with sparkles,
leggings, 10 denier, thick ribbed or dainty ankle socks;
let’s not discuss.
They cycle, drive and walk – I know
All day with cushion tread they say.
It is for me to gaze and spit
and wish they wear well and not beyond repair.
Coat Hanger Doll's House 