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4th - 8th August: Politics has well and truely reared its ugly head ahead of the federal elections in November.. the Evangalists are supporting a party with their 15% of the population, flags, football and cars with stereos on the roof as well as the standard flyiers are commonplace. I head back to Rio, staying one night in Ipanema, and one in my old Pousada in Barra, catching up with all the students who are now back from holidays. I manage to enjoy the monkeys (not like that) and the Toucans in the botanic gardens and explore the historic center of town. I read about a fantastic miniature of Rio, including mountains in one building so I go asking for its location. I still can´t believe that clerks looks blankly at you even when you give up speaking and point to the word - 'cartalers' in The Imperial Palace - on the wall. Its not so much a blank look as one of faint surprise and awe... 'WHAT?' I feel like shouting. The cathedral at the end of the 75m wide Avenida Presidente Vargas is an oasis of calm, and there I sit and begin to understand the solace people find in belief. I still need another day in the Centre, and another for the Tijuca national park, but its always hard to leave Rio. I´ve made myself incredibly tired over the past few days, living off coffee, guarana and açai, so the comfortable 18 hour bus trip to Florianopolis passes in a dream after the first 2 hours. These hours were spent driving through the extreme poverty of the northern suberbs which until now I had not seen.. I spend the time trying to think of a way to help, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, find little. The best I could do is organise a project and attempt to educate. Living in the favela would also help as more money would then enter the community. These people live amidst huge factories, those not 'lucky' enough to get a job there spend the day on the traffic congested highway, hawking foodstuffs and chasing the passing wealth (cars) for hundreds of meteres on foot. |
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14th August
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He comes on chosen evenings,
my blackbird bountiful and sings,
over the gardens of the town,
just at the hour the sun goes down.
His flight across the chimneys thick
by some divine arithmetic,
comes to his customary stack,
and crouches there his plumage black,
and there he lifts his yellow bill,
kindled against the sunset till,
these suburbs seem like Dymock woods,
where music has her solitudes,
and while he mocks the winters wrong,
rapt on his pinnacle of song,
figured above our garden plots,
those are celestial chimney pots. John Brinkwater via Eric Janzow
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