Day 18: Thursday, January 23rd
I was pumped for today, our
service day painting a house in a favela. When the bus pulled up to a bright,
colorful neighborhood of concrete houses and big trees, I was pretty sure we
were not in a favela. I asked the president of the charity, and she confirmed
that we were in an underprivileged neighborhood, not a mafia-run urban slum.
This was probably for the best, since I’ve heard that favelas are extremely
dangerous and even Brazilians who don’t live in them are advised against
entering.
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| Colorful concrete walls. |
Our group split in two, and
my section was dropped off first at an unpainted house on a hillside. We
shifted from job to job, sanding rusty windows, priming walls, painting trim,
and staining wood. The experience reminded me a lot of my tenth grade service
trip to Louisiana, where I worked with eight classmates to repair a house
damaged in Hurricane Katrina for a displaced family. Today had the same sweaty,
hot, determined, disorganized feel.
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| Devon contemplating the yellow wall. |
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| The window I painted! |
In the end, I’m not sure how
much we helped the house. We weren’t skilled craftsmen, so our paint jobs were
smudged at the edges and my sanding was subpar. More importantly, we lacked a
central organization and nobody knew exactly what was going on, so I’m pretty
sure a couple walls got primed twice. If we had been better prepared we could have
been more efficient. In the end, we did accomplish our goal of the painting most
of the house.
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| Before. |
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| After. |
This house belonged to a
family who had lived there for 33 years. Recently, the house’s foundation started
to fail. The family couldn’t afford to remodel. If it weren’t for the housing
charity, this family would have needed to move into a house in bad conditions. I
got to meet the mother of the household and one of the children.
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| Two of the neighbor girls. |
During our break, I also got
to meet the neighborhood kids, who were swarming the top of the hill and
playing with flimsy plastic-bag-and-string kites. The kite strings were
incredibly long – you could barely make out the kite, it was so high in the
sky. I watched one of the older boys chat with the other kids while
nonchalantly twitching the sting of the kite up and down. He made it look
effortless. When he noticed me watching, he offered me the string of the kite.
I tried to imitate his movements, but within a minute the plastic bag was
diving from its incredible height. The boy laughed and took the string from me,
slowly nursing the kite back into the sky. I was amazed at how friendly and
inclusive these kids were to a random girl intruding on their game, and I
appreciated it more than they knew.
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| The neighborhood kids and the tree of fallen kites. |
At the end of the day, I
wandered down to the end of the block with Collin to look at the rest of the
neighborhood. We passed a brick house filled with birds. There was a wicker
cage holding a finch hanging from the street tree, and another cage visible
through every window of the house. Birdsong washed over us. A woman poked out
of the top window and waved.
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| The bird in the planter strip. |
We were only allowed to go to
the end of the street, but from there we could take in the hilly topography of
the neighborhood, the smells of barbecuing meat, and the colorful clothing and
food shops that filled many garages. In the distance, we could see the
packed-in rooftops of an even poorer area. Collin and I agreed
that this felt like the real Brazil we had expected. We wished we could have
spent time living and eating in a neighborhood like this, or even just an
afternoon exploring.
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| The unfinished construction projects and street dogs reminded me of where I lived in Ecuador. |
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| The neighborhood. |
Tonight we had dinner with
our host families! My group was three sisters – all tall, beautiful Brazilians
with long brown hair. They are similar ages to me and my sister. Debora is 20,
Marina is 23, and Fernanda is 25. They all spoke good English, but we tried to
use some Portuguese too. I loved how all three sisters were friends who banded
together to host a student together. I want to make a good impression so they host
more Buckeyes in the future.
Dinner was incredible.
Waiters came around with pizzas of every flavor – four cheese, arugula, shrimp,
broccoli, chicken, salmon, and more. I shouldn’t have eaten so many, so I could
have saved room for the dessert pizzas! That’s right, chocolate pizzas,
cinnamon banana, chocolate and strawberry, white chocolate mousse… holy moly,
America is missing out on the dessert pizzas! We stayed out late and now I can’t
wait for the homestay weekend.