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Published: February 28th 2009
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Day 6 turned out to be one of the most eye opening days of our lives, we went to the largest shanty town in south America. We went on an organized tour with a few folk from our hostel. Our group of 10 headed into the favela city and our bus pulled over at the bottom of the shanty town. Ok.....so the first bit of we info from our guide.....we are only allowed to take pictures when the guide says its ok, we will be seeing drug lords and murderers so we cant risk exposing them. There are a number of favela towns in rio and they are all controlled at the gate with men with machine guns. Theres a kind of unwritten rule that as a general person born and living in the favela town u don't steel, if you want to commit this type of crime you do it down from the hills side in the city center. People born in the favelas will not enter other favela towns, people living at the top of the hills side are richer favela people than those at the bottom. surprisingly enough there is a social divide between favela people living at
the top and those at the bottom. This is because the water runs down the hill side from the top. The water runs on top of the drainage pipes and often the two meet, therefore people at the bottom receive the poorest water, if they receive any at all, most will walk up with buckets and bring the water back home.
We all got out of the mini bus and there were a load of guys waiting at the bottom with motor bikes to ferry us to the top of the shanty town so we could walk all the way back down on our tour, we had no helmet no body guard nothing! we each jumped on the back of a motorbike and held on for dear life as our geezer thrashed it up the hillside. they were all racing with each other and it was amazing to drive through the main street of the shanty town. My driver had to stop mid journey and wait for a another biker (a local) to move out the way, the reason he waited instead of over taking him like every other car bike person, was that he was holding
a desert eagle in his hand while riding!!!!. yes i bricked it! anyway we eventually made it to the top after driving through the hectic streets. There four bikes between the group so we had to wait for the bikers to head back down and pick the rest of the group up.
WOW WE ARE HERE!!!! we are stood at the top of a favela shanty town and every one is looking at us. We get dropped outside the only governed part of the shanty town which has government influence, this is a post office, hospital and shop, other than these three buildings there is no police, government influence the town is run by the drug lords.
The first bit we are told about is the electricity (see pic) the electricity, water, gas is all free in the favelas all you have to do is hook yourself up so people just plug a wire into the mains and run it back to there favela. In the early days people would get electricians out to fix the lines but they would often tampa with other peoples and would get shot so now they just do
it all them selves. incredible. People living at the top of the hillside in the favelas often work normal jobs in the city, shop assistants, bankers, doctors etc but they still live in the favela because if they were to move to a new apartment in the city they would have no respect from the locals because they would know they are from the favela so people choose to stay. This shanty town is incredible as we begin to walk down the very narrow alleys we pass butchers, internet cafes, homes with satellite, cable, tvs its amazing. Our first stop is an art school where they are graffitt artists, you can buy the pics from there website as well!! lol we then kept going down the hillside continuously dodging the rubbish and sewage running down with us. We then had a group of children waiting for us to play music, they played some tune and it was quality, the group gave them some money for the performance. the next stop was a school nursery. this school is a charity run school which was donated by some wealthy woman (cant remember her name) it was clean and made in the traditional
building style unlike every other building which is just built with which ever materials the people could find or buy. we then stop at a local shop for some snacks and drink. we then keep walking down the hillside, as we are walking down you can see into peoples houses, its awful living conditions it so weird you will see one favela with just a bed, the the shack next door will have kids playing on a play station on a wide screen tv!!!! people are saying hello in street to us, playing football, dancing, while others are walking to work, building there homes or look like they are going to use a ak47 on us, we stop for our final view point for pictures and our guides tells us about the drugs, people these days don't solely work for the drug lords people in the shanty towns have developed from five, ten years ago, they now want to make a better life for themselves so they own shops, sell work in the shanty towns or in other parts of rio. they still respect the drug lords because they hold all the keys but people no longer have such a
drug connection. some times there are wars in the shanty towns and the towns are locked for 3-4 days while the wars go on between the drug lords. people sit in there houses and wait it out until they can go outside. the government will use insiders to tell them when a war is about to start, they will then wait until the war is over and a 1000 men kind of like a swat team will come in kill the shooters and collect the bodies in body bags.
this tour was amazing, it was so poor and awful at the bottom compared to the top of the shanty town, over 200,000 people live in this one shanty town. the tour lasted 3 hours
in the afternoon we went to sugar loaf on the cable car to watch the sunset of rio, in the evening about 15 of us played drinking games, we played this game called horse races was quality, then headed out into leblon until the early hours...
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