Memories from Pelourinho





It’s funny how sometimes it’s the things you notice when you’re in an idle state of mind that seem so memorable later.

 

One night a couple of years back, I was out in the streets of Salvador, the capital of the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia, famous for its picturesque colonial architecture in central Pelourinho; what’s now considered the best Carnaval in the country; and the musical band Olodum, who made a notable appearance in Michael Jackson’s ‘They don’t care about us’ video in the 1990’s.  

 

In the midst of the partygoers, I caught myself watching an older, somewhat scruffy man sitting among the masses, busy with what might initially have seemed a strange task in the middle of all this. He had a collection of empty plastic beer and soda cans at his feet, which he collected from all the people partying around. What he did next seemed to require much physical prowess: he was crushing the plastic cans with his feet one after another, and collecting them in a garbage bag next to him.

 

Pelourinho in central Salvador 

I realized that this was a means of earning money for this man, and he was far from being the only one. Almost needless to say, this method of earning money is reserved for the less economically fortunate in Brazil, a reality of life that is sadly inevitable. Although I have personally only come across this in Brazil, I’ve heard that it’s a fairly normal (or should it be 'normal'?) occurrence of the day or night in other countries in Latin America as well – people even come up to you while you’re sitting down somewhere drinking your soda to ask if you have finished yet so they can take the empty can along. 

As much as this reflects just how persistent social inequality still is in Brazil and surrounding countries of the Americas, there is something about this business of collecting cans that might make you think what the possible advantages might actually be. The streets get cleaner the same night, the poor can make at least some extra money, and I assume that the lot of aluminum gets recycled, at least I hope so.

I must admit that back when I was in Brazil watching this, I didn’t think so hard yet about the recycling part. How weird though, isn’t it – on the one hand, you face a country’s sad reality of poverty, and on the other, you then realize, sooner or later, that there might be some environmental benefit to what these people are doing to earn money.

Soon after coming back from Brazil, I was hurled into the ungrateful European job market, which brought me to volunteer at a sustainability-oriented NGO in Amsterdam, where I gained my current interest in sustainable development and the green challenges we all face. But that’s a different story.

Let me just say, despite all the new information I learned about sustainable development, an episode like that of the man collecting and crushing cans still quite often comes up in my mind. Something that’s both so simple and so complex at the same time, maybe even just a grain of sand in a desert, but one that leaves a lasting memory.

What happens in Rio, stays in Rio... or does it?

Hi there to all!

Well, getting straight to business, and the title..! I do hope that whatever positive developments that did happen at Rio+20 last week in - yes, indeed - Rio de Janeiro, won't just stay there, but have a good influence worldwide on where we're going from here. Alright, so Rio+20, otherwise formally known as the UN conference on sustainable development, has drawn its share of criticism, and not just last week during the summit but already weeks in advance (and probably longer than that). There are multiple articles written and published on the topic, and I have tried to keep up with a small amount of it so as to stay updated on the developments and key ideas and issues. I will not repeat all that I've read in the past couple of weeks here; for some interesting articles and opinions, as well as useful overviews of the reached results (or lack thereof?) you can check out online sources such as The Guardian (which has a handy Rio+20 Earth summit section), TreeHugger, and Vice Versa for those of you with Dutch language skills ;), among others. But despite the fair amount of critical opinions, which is fair, there are some good things to take home from Rio, I hope. I told you before: I might just be the eternal optimist ;)

Seeing Rio through the green tropical foliage on the way to Pao de Acucar - Sugar Loaf Mountain

Twenty years after the historical gathering in Rio in 1992, this summit seems to have dissappointed many for the lack of concrete results, clear actions, and (particular? national?) interests that appear to complicate the process of reaching agreements. Will 'The future we want' affect results and will the current MDG's be successfully united with the SDG's (Sustainable Development Goals) from 2015 onwards? Time, effort and engagement might tell. I think there's still hope. Even though concrete results and action are lacking at the moment, I think the good thing about all this is that it clearly shows that now is the time to really throw ourselves in to try and make a lasting change. People care - otherwise they wouldn't care to criticize and point out where better work can be done; the attention towards the issue of sustainable development and the so-called Green Economy is certainly there. Sometimes we all have to go through some rough patches of constructive criticism, and why shouldn't that include political and national leaders? ;) Exactly. If your reputation is on the line, you'll try to do better right? There you go.

What's also good to observe is the amount of activity and positive energy (it's Rio, remember) that has been taking place at People's Summit - a variety of activities taking place in the city before, during and after the main conference. You don't welcome 50,000 guests at your party and not expect something to happen, after all! Granted, it's hard to make a sure-fire judgement from afar, but it appears to have gathered some good crowds of involved people from around the world. People are talking, discussing, protesting, writing about it and sharing their experiences and thoughts - and so on. I have tried to follow through social media and sources I've mentioned above, and the stirring up that this summit has brought among the general crowd seems worthwhile in any case. And that's surely good to see - and so there is the hope that some positive difference has been made.

It's funny to think that all this has been taking place in Rio. Seeing the photos of people I know who took part in the discussions and the photos in diverse online articles, I couldn't help always notice that yes, it is all in Rio! There is that familiar shape of the mountain in the background, and the sea, and the famous black and white tiles that line the avenues of Copacabana and Ipanema. Rio is the ultimate big city amidst breath-taking natural beauty, it's both a city and a jungle, and it has some of the most beautiful sights as well as some of the sharpest social contrasts that I have ever seen. Perfect place for an event like this, don't you think?

Watching the sea waves move in from afar, get bigger and crash at the shore and turn into sea foam always gets me in a musing mood, expressed not in clear thoughts but just have them kind of floating around in my head. I must not be the only one (if you understood my previous sentence you're probably another person like that). The venue of the main Rio+20 conference was in the city centre, Rio centro, a fair distance from the sea, the waves and all the musing, but the diverse activities associated with the summit took place around the city, including Rio's famous beaches. But whether it's musing or thinking clearly and taking action, we need to strap on some wheels now and start rolling!

When the coastline calls...

Hi there!

'Oh-oh-oh-oh' goes the official EuroCup 2012 song - in my last blog entry I wrote excitedly about the start of the Cup and the orange streets, but so far the first round isn't going so smoothly for Oranje... There's still hope though.

Well, the ball needs to keep rolling, so in the meantime I came here to tell a bit about the incredible Brazilian coastline as I have promised to do a little while ago. Quick recap: a couple of years ago, Nationalic Geographic Traveller published an article by journalist/writer Stanley Stewart, in which he goes on a rather decadent journey, to find the most idyllic beach in Brazil. That sounds good huh, but given the length of the Brazilian coastline, it's actually not such a straightforward task ;) (It's a really interesting piece, I got this magazine a little by chance actually, but it definitely makes you want to head in that direction as well). Anyhow, I re-read that article recently and as I have visited a few beaches in Brazil myself, I thought I would delve a bit into this topic myself...

Actually, I'm going to throw things up into the air right now and not start at the beginning and not follow a linear path in telling my tale. Among the most perfect beaches in Brazil are those of Morro de Sao Paulo, on an island off the coast of Bahia, a state towards the north of the country. I took this picture as we sailed off from the island, which can boast of beautiful beaches and a still relatively unspoiled atmosphere, or so it seemed at the time we were there. It's got the cutest central square with restaurants and soft lighting in the evening dark, local kids running about to entertain themselves, and ladies selling accessories at stalls set up around the praca. Morro de Sao Paulo lies close to Salvador da Bahia, a large bustling city known for its colonial architecture, lively population, old beautiful centre known as Pelourinho, crazy Carnaval celebrations every year, the Afro-Brazilian cult religion candomblé and Olodum, a famous musical assemblage from Bahia, featured even in Michael Jackson's 'They don't care about us' video back in the day. The craziest night in Salvador is considered to be Tuesday (!) in Pelourinho, when the centre explodes, and Olodum makes a nice contribution to this Brazilian weekly festivity :)

Naturally, Salvador also sports a number of great beaches, in the centre of the city as well as somewhat further out - and even though it took a little while to get there by bus and on top of it all, it rained - we still had a great time and even played fortress on the beach. Well, if you consider that our 'fortress' was fashioned out of a couple of large beach restaurant parasols on the aforementioned restaurant terrace :)

Fortress on the beach, see? ;)  Actually, Salvador is also featured famously in the novels by the well-known Brazilian write Jorge Amado, such as Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, which tells the tale of the young woman Flor, whose party animal husband Vadinho dies suddenly in the midst of celebrating Carnaval. Just as Flor finally manages to get over him and marry another, much more decent man, Vadinho comes back to Flor as a ghost, expecting to fulfill his duties as her rightful husband, putting Flor in a rather strange dilemma, as you can imagine. It's quite a hilarious book actually, I believe it was written at the end of the 1960's (so there are some gender values in there that a modern woman may disagree with, but for the sake of getting to the end of this otherwise well written and entertaining book one might have to ignore that), and describes life in Salvador colourfully and in rich detail. If you want to see more about what Salvador is all about nowadays, I would recommend the Brazilian musical O Pai O.

I haven't been further north than Bahia last time in Brazil, but there are two other Brazilian cultural products that feature the sea and the beach in the North extensively that I want to mention here: first, the film Rania, which takes place in Fortaleza, a large city on the coast in the very North of the country. Similar to Rio, it really shows how the beach is a daily part of life of the people in this city. I've written about this film before just after I watched it at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival - so check the blog records :)

The other interesting thing I wanted to mention is the book for children and young adults by the Brazilian author Isabel Vieira, called Uma Garrafa no Mar (A bottle in the sea, which I read in Portuguese, oh yeah). It's a cute story of a young girl who in her loneliness and despair one evening on New Year's Eve throws a bottle into the sea with a letter in it, baring her soul - and sometime later this ''message in a bottle'' is found by a boy in... wait for it... New Zealand. This story largely takes place in Natal, another major city on the beach in the North, not too far (for Brazilian standards then) from Fortaleza. Obviously, the sea plays a rather important part in this story as well ;)

So it really seems that the Brazilian coastline is an undeniably large presence in the country's cultural works, as well as the hearts of those who live there and come to visit :) Now that we're here, the country's most famous beaches are of course in Rio de Janeiro - but that will have to wait till next week, same time as the Rio+20!

Thanks lots for reading!                    

Orange, green and yellow, white blue and red... and all the other colours, too!

Oi!!

Drumroll please... it's starting! Tonight is the kick-off of the European Championship 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. The Dutch streets are bright orange, and everyone is full of expectations. You know, football is an interesting thing, as every so often either 16 (for the European Cup) or 32 (World Cup) countries seem to fall into a trance for about a month in June-July. Granted, some countries are probably a bit more into it than others - like in Brazil in 2010, they would say that the country stops when the national team is playing. The same is pretty true in the Netherlands as well.
(Note to the boys who still think that girls know nothing about football: I am about to prove you wrong).

The first World Cup I really remember was back in 1998. I recall watching the final between France and Brazil together with my sister, who for one reason or another was supporting Brazil, so as the little sister I was supporting it with her. I really could not have had any clue yet that a few World Cups later I'd be watching the games in Brazil. Back then, the country lost the match to France but won the World Cup again in 2002. And two years ago Brazil lost the quarter-final to... Holland. And where was I? On Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. Khem.

Luckily, Brazilians seemed to take it well to the loss and I could show my face again among my Brazilian network (I think the unanimous feeling was: oh well, we'll host and win the Cup in 2014 anyway). I was even interviewed by a sports journalist for a rather important Minas Gerais newspaper on the eve of the final between Holland and Spain, which I watched in a Brazilian bar, surrounded by orange-clad Brazilians. Some of them even seemed to be more dissappointed about the Dutch loss more than I was, haha. That said, maybe Brazilians were so cool about being kicked out of the competition because they could release the tension the day after the Brazil-Holland game, when Argentina lost so spectaculairly to Germany in what I believe was a 0-4 count. Rio was shooting off previously unused fireworks to celebrate - unless, of course, they secretly did so for my birthday that day, as I am such a VIP ;) (I have to note that the hardcore Brazil-Argentina competition on the football front didn't stop several kids at the school where I worked to show up wearing the Argentina football shirt with 'Messi' on the back).


Sailing off the coast of Morro de Sao Paulo in Bahia, Brazil, I took the opportunity to photograph these guys playing football on the beach - how Brazilian is that!? And not to forget that football has the reputation to work as a ticket to a better life in some (former) developing countries - I for one can't help but conjure the image of kids playing football in a Brazilian favela... Or is that an image from a movie..? It would be cool to learn more about the social value of football, in any case...                                                              
Well, for the moment my green and yellow Brazilian flag will have to stay in the closet when it comes to football, as the World Cup is not for another two years. This year, I'll be watching the Dutch games back in good old Holland, though there is just one small glitch again. Four years ago, Holland lost the EuroCup quarter-final to... Russia. You see the connection? It seems every two years I have to face this painful and awkward situation where I'm not sure who I am actually supposed to support here. And this year, the chance is quite real again that Holland and Russia might meet on the road to the Cup again, given they both come through the first round - but this time, if they do play, I'm just staying neutral, so let the best team win!

Well, in a few hours the first teams (including Russia) will be playing, and tomorrow Holland is on. I remember that in Brazil during the World Cup, I would wake up to the sound of vuvuzellas on the day of the national team's game. I wonder how it will be in Holland this year? Aanvulluh!

Thanks bunches for reading ;)

World Environment Day 2012... and the host is Rio!

Ola galera,

Today is the eve of the World Environment Day (WED), an annual event which this year is celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil! Just a couple of weeks before the kick off of the Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development, WED marks a lovely green celebration in host city Rio and around the world. The 'umbrella' theme for this year for both WED and Rio+20 is Green Economy. 'Green' is a truly in-word right now, and I do hope that it's not a phase, but we'll find a positive way to make it a real and lasting concept and practice.

I've been reading up on WED on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) website (unep.org/wed), which has been really interesting to learn more about. Did you know that Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen is the UNEP Goodwill Embassador? I had no idea before I started looking into this. It seems Brazil really is the new host for so many events, with Rio+20 drawing near, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. I hope they can handle it, haha..!

Apparently, the festivities for WED in Rio have already started - today, on the eve of the celebration, Gisele planted the first of the 50,000 trees which will be planted in Brazil, as she won the WED Challenge last year. 50,000 trees, how awesome is that! And Rio is already so lovely and green :) Perhaps next time I'm in Brazil, I will go have a look at the result by then.

Through the UNEP website I also found a cool website page launched to celebrate and follow the WED events and activities: greennationfest.com.br - although the homepage comes up in Portuguese. Good practice I guess ;)

Brazil and the environment have been in the spotlight recently - it seems Rio+20 and the decision on the new Amazon forest code have coincided somehow. As I've been reading these past couple of weeks on guardian.co.uk/environment (handy source!), Brazil's president Dilma Roussef has partially vetoed the new forest code (which would make (illegal) deforestation easier), but this 'partially' bit is causing some tumult indeed. Hmm, not such good news just weeks before Rio+20, but I have hope for the Amazon. It's not the end of the game yet - even if I'm just the ever positive thinker. We do need the Amazon forest to survive - our planet needs it, the Amazon is called its 'lungs' for a reason; just imagine all the natural beauty and riches it holds within it, many of which are probably still unknown to humankind. We could be missing out on so much! I saw a photo of the Amazon forest, the right half of which was deforested - it is so sad to look at.

Actually, I have to admit that before this year and the Rio+20 conference coming into the news, I didn't know that the last conference in Rio in 1992 had been such a breakthrough for environmental policy. Well, that's why it's called '+20' of course, to mark the 20 years that have passed since the first conference in Rio, so who else would host this conference but Rio again? So much has changed in those 20 years; sustainability and 'greening up' and taking better care of our planet have become truly significant concepts. For most of the 1990's I was still a child though, honestly I'm not even sure how to say 'sustainability' in its right context in Russian... I have become a lot more involved with the concept since fairly recently when I started my internship at Fairfood in Amsterdam. There's always a time and a place to learn ;)

In any case, as Rio celebrates World Environment Day and gets ready for the Rio+20 summit, the world's attention is directed to Brazil. Time for critical questions and solving the challenges we face starts... now!

Thanks for reading and come back soon! (So will I ;))

Um beijo

Like the girl from Ipanema

Ola!

I can imagine that quite some people, upon hearing 'Brazil', immediately associate it with an image of a tanned perfectly shaped Brazilian girl on the Rio beach, and samba, and Carnaval, and football... (although you'd have to stretch the imagination a bit to fit this last one into the same picture). The things Brazil seems to stand most famously for. I recently (re)read a couple of articles about the importance of beauty and looks in Brazil, published in the beauty magazine of Ici Paris and the promotional magazine about the Brazil festival in Amsterdam back in October 2011. It got me thinking a bit about this whole idea... you know, the girl from Ipanema was, after all, a real girl who has inspired such a famous song.

Brazil is actually the runner up for the most plastic surgery operations in the world, did you know that? (First place is taken by the US.. surprised?) Not that I know many women (or men, let's be fair) in Brazil that have actually had plastic surgery, to my knowledge. And in Juiz de Fora, where I lived in Brazil, despite the average population being handsome and good-looking enough, I didn't notice such a strive to wear the beauty crown; apart from the girls in high heels and short dresses going out in the fancy clubs, perhaps. Then again, Juiz de Fora is not a beach town ;) Rio de Janeiro of course is most well known for this - one look around Ipanema beach says enough, and they sure are a sporty and working-out bunch!

When I was a little girl and watched Brazilian telenovelas on Russian TV, I always noticed how many good-looking people they have in the shows and how closely they always bring the camera to their faces (especially during the romantic scenes... haha). In Brazil, I noticed that watching telenovelas really seems to be a family thing, at least in the host family where I was staying, but I'm pretty sure that is a good reflection of the whole. Curious, right? Well, I read somewhere recently as well (I believe in an article from the National Geographic Traveller... but I will get to that) that if you want to understand Brazil, you have to go to its beaches. It's called a 'crab civilisation'  for a reason - a vast number of Brazilians live in the cities along the coast, and spend much of their free time at the beach, so it's no wonder they want to look good, ey! What I would add to this is - if you want to understand Brazil, you have to give the telenovela a go; despite not falling in the taste with many people, of course, it can give you an interesting insight into the culture, especially if you watch it with other Brazilians who are into it.

Among all the many beauty treatments that I've probably only ever vaguely heard about (although everyone probably knows about the 'Brazilian wax'), Brazilian women seem to be ahead of everyone else. In Brazil, I noticed that manicures and painting your nails are a really important beauty signature for women; even some of my students at the school where I worked have already been to a nail salon to get a manicure - girls as young as 9-10. I remember once, a young student of mine aged nine or so, usually quite quiet and shy, was particularly excited one day - it was because she was going to a salon after school to get a manicure. Oh boy. At that age, I still thought painting your nails as a child was unhealthy... I no longer remember who ever had told me that..!

What also caught my eye in Brazil is the female love for tattoos - never have I seen so many women with (so many) tattoos before! From the girls with tattoos I know, these were often fairly subtle or small pictures, but the popularity of tattoos among girls did surprise me. It seems that some get tattoos with specific meanings, so they know exactly what picture they want - but I still wonder actually to what extent tattoos are also a reflection of the beauty factor.

Well, I think that's almost that for now. Just one thing to add - I mentioned the National Geographic Traveller. A while ago they published an article by a journalist who went travelling around Brazil in the search for his perfect beach. The Brazilian Atlantic coastline is thousands of miles long - certainly enough beaches to pick from there! Not an easy - but certainly not an unpleasant - task. There's much beauty there, whether natural or man-made, haha...

Anyhow, since I've travelled along the Brazilian coastline a bit myself, I thought that in the spirit of National Geographic, next time I'll share a few pictures and insights myself. You might just want to get packing for a holiday! ;)

About the hutong and the favela

Hi all!

This week I read an interesting article on the Dutch One World website about the traditional Chinese courtyards and (narrow) streets in Beijing called hutong, built between and around the siheyuan communities. As China is becoming a world and economic superpower, many of these hutong have begun dissappearing, taking with them a part of traditional Chinese culture. Now I'm really interested in seeing all this. I saw both modern and traditional aspects of China when I was in Shanghai, but Beijing is of course even more loaded with Chinese culture and history. According to this article by Hans Wetzels, about 60 years ago, Beijing still counted about 1300 hutong, but there are only a few of them left now. Modernization comes with a high price of course...

What's really interesting, it seems the interest of foreign tourists may be what might help these remaining hutong to still be kept in life, at least for the time being. As a visitor to Beijing, you can come along on the tour to see these communities, riding a rented bike through the streets and alleyways. According to the report and the man who took action to try and rescue the remaining traditional hutong, it has been a struggle to start this initiative off, but it seems to have taken flight now. While I was reading the article, I had to think of the Brazilian favelas, because of the many challenges they also face as communities and the similar idea of their recently rising popularity with foreign tourists.

If you pick up a travel book about Brazil nowadays, it will likely have a section on the favelas in Rio, their social significance and advice on how to choose and join a (good) favela tour. Some popular guides already place the favela tour high on the list of the main highlights in Brazil, in between, say, visiting the Christ the Redeemer and celebrating the Carnaval. Some years ago, this probably would still have been fairly rare, but now the exception has become the rule. Or something along those lines! ;)

A couple of years ago, I was on such a favela tour, and I have written about it before, so I won't go into detail here, but it's certainly worth the effort! (And the money, for the price is surprisingly steep, like the hills on which the favelas are typically built... attempt at ironic humour here! Nah, just kidding - it's very affordable so not to worry, and part of the money is often intended for community development). Being in the favela and seeing the contrast between the houses built along the hills down below and above and the beautiful sea and modern tall houses in the distance is quite impressive indeed.

The Chinese hutong and the Brazilian favelas, built largely out of what I'd think was sheer necessity for a place to live, have in the past and still face difficult dilemmas and challenges, and it is very interesting to draw some comparisons between them in this context, at least for someone who has spent sometime getting to know each of the cultures ;) And it is interesting how so many people are now becoming interested in learning more about life in these communities. Admittedly, I have much to learn about the hutong (and now I definitely gotta go back to China sometime ey), but I have been interested in the favelas for a while now, and I really wonder about the deeper influences and impact that this rising international interest is having for both, and will have in the future.

Soon we might have a guidebook on Brazil that features a favela community on the front cover instead of one of the country's numerous beaches - I'll just have to get that one, won't I?

Thanks for reading!