Stop the Press. I’ve been wrong on so many levels.

I fear I have done Rio a grave injustice with my first impressions. While I would like to share some of the burden of guilt with the guidebooks (Messrs Lonely Planet et al shall get a stern email in the morning) I must accept responsibility for taking their words a little too literally. More specifically, I have to recast my early views of Rio as a dangerous place. I’m sure it has it’s moments, but honestly, have you seen some of the elements hanging around Adelaide’s west end after dark? They are more threatening than anything I have seen here. And today, with brave undies firmly in place, I tackled my fear of the unknown and, it turns out, badly maligned and went on a favela tour.

To save you hunting on dictionary.com, a favela is ‘an informal settlement’ and is commonly regarded as a place riddled with poverty, violence, drug cartels, gang warfare and whatever other badness you can imagine. And certainly some of that is true but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Firstly, let me say I was in two minds about doing the tour. The idea of turning up to tour a poor community just seemed like voyeurism in very bad taste. I imagined a deranged version of the usual tour commentary, “Oh, look honey, there’s a poor person. Take a photo of it in it’s natural habitat. Wow, all that rubbish around it is so colourful.” Not to mention wondering what the people in the community thought about having a herd of white-bread, middle-class gawkers come in and take photos of them getting on with their lives. I was gravely concerned about the potential to be offensive to the communities being visited. After all, being poor isn’t a sideshow, but I very much wanted to understand the favelas, the people within them and the issues they face. As usual, I’m realistic in my expectations of what can be accomplished in a couple of hours. I am pleased to report that the tour was conducted with a high level of dignity and respect and while I still have much to learn, it has been an interesting beginning to my education.

For those with a short attention span, the take-home message is: favelas are largely made up of perfectly nice, ordinary people just trying to live their lives as best they can. Obvious when one stops to think logically about it, but a far cry from what the guidebooks and media would have you believe. Now for some facts.

Rio has over 1000 favelas. It is estimated that around 20% of the population lives in favelas. The largest favela in Rio is Rocinha with over 85,000 residents. The size of this place as well as the dynamics within it are extraordinary. As I have already mentioned in my earlier blog, the favelas are side by side with affluent suburbs. They do not fringe the city, they are integrated within it. Where there exists a suburb with houses, business, jobs and income opportunities, favelas grow up beside them on whatever vacant land there is. The establishment of these communities has a logic so pure, it’s almost poetic. The logistics however, are another matter.

Typically, the land is (or was) government-owned and people essentially started squatting on it, building dwellings from whatever they had in whatever manner they could. With no planning laws in place, there is no order to the development. That is not to say the favelas do not have a beauty of their own, but order there is not. In Rocinha (bear in mind the number of residents) there is one main road and four named streets. Every other house is accessed via alleyways. To say you are likely to get lost in such a place is taking Captain Obvious to stratospheric heights. Until today, it never occurred to me that mail delivery is impossible if you don’t have a street address. Never mind the late arrival of the Victoria Secret catalogue, how do you get your TV or new couch delivered when you don’t have an address? What do you put on your driver’s license or ID card? Rubbish collection when there are no streets for a truck to go down is a problem so residents have to walk to a communal dumping ground to get rid of their waste. In a country that generates waste as prolifically as Brazil does, this is a serious, daily undertaking. Building structural integrity is also a problem as there is no one enforcing building codes. Even if your house is solid, the fact that your neighbour up the hill might slide in through your back-door if it drizzles would, I imagine, be consistently alarming.

And now for the violence and other bad behaviour. Watch the film Cidade de Deus (do, it is extraordinary) and you can be forgiven for imagining that you will get shot the minute you step into a favela. There is no doubt that gang fights exist and people die. As we stopped at our first stop to admire the view and check out local handicrafts, a young man stood nearby with an AK-47 (or something of that nature) looking for all the world as if he was holding nothing more threatening than an umbrella. A sobering story from our guide, Marina: 8 years ago in Rocinha, there was a fight between the reigning gang and a rival one. The reigning leader was shot dead at the grand age of 23. As Marina said, lots of money but a short life. Most gang members don’t make it beyond their 20s. However, on the positive side, there is a rule in the favela to not mess in the neighbourhood. The gangs do not want to draw the police in and therefore protect their own turf. At least theft within the favela is not something the residents need to fear and once you are in a favela, it is probably one of the safest places to be. You are more likely to be robbed by a street kid on Copacabana than in a favela. Mind you, the fact that we couldn't take photos in some places did suggest a potentially violent subtext...

Until very recently, governments have ignored the existence of favelas. Residents got on with building houses and shops and business and communities without government intervention (or support). The government thus managed to keep a sizeable population of cheap labour on hand without having to invest anything in them. Sweet deal if you are said government. To call on Captain Obvious again, not so nice if you are a resident who has to walk 30 minutes a day to put out your trash and collect your mail. (On the plus side for all neighbours, the odds of you doing it in your bathrobe and accidentally flashing someone after locking yourself out of the house are low.)

For a large number of complex reasons, the balance is now shifting. Governments are starting to invest in a variety of infrastructure and social programs to improve the conditions in the favelas. Marina was very positive about the programs and their future success. Indeed, it seems that there are some wins being made in places. Favelas are slowly being “pacified” (that is, the police move in, eject the drug lords and maintain a 24 hour presence, coupled with a range of community social infrastructure programs) and there are also a number of NGO and government funded programs to provide activities to keep kids away from the gangs and to improve basic services. I am pleased about this. And it looks like the impetus to keep implementing and in fact increase these programs is growing ahead of the major dual world-stage events coming up (the World Cup and the Olympics).

There is a kind of delicious irony in the fact that many of the favelas have the best views available in Rio. It has the makings of the best under-dog story ever told and with the growing middle-class within the favelas themselves and various improvement programs, it is looking likely that these communities will be increasingly attractive places to live.

On a less serious note, evaluating whether to do this tour has also made me wonder whether I should remove 'African game park safari' from my bucket list. All of a sudden, the conversation in the lion pride played out in my head:
“Simba, you really need to do something about those tourists. It’s the fourth car-load this week. It’s getting so I can’t sit around my own waterhole without a full face of make-up. Can’t you just eat them or something.”
“Nala, darling, eating tourists isn’t the done thing anymore. I know our grandfathers used to love that sort of thing but it’s bad for business nowadays. Besides, you know how it ended for them - do you want to be a rug in someone’s McMansion by the sea?”
“I see your point, but seriously, it isn’t just the invasion of privacy. It’s wreaking havoc with dinner. The hoofed herds are so stressed and jittery at being photographed all the time that it’s making the meat stringy. Last weeks Zebra Tartare was an embarrassment. I can’t hold my head up if that’s all I can hunt down. Simba, are you listening to me? Stop ogling that antelope.”
“Yes, dear” (sighs loudly)

In next week's blog, I will tell you about one of the things that is best about travelling: meeting people and hearing their stories. On today's favela tour, I met two gorgeous women from the USA who had marvellous stories to tell. On my last trip to Paraty, I collected stories from an intrepid young Swiss man. Each person, each story is so much more interesting than mine, I will burst if I don't share them with you. Stay tuned....