My most inventive blog title yet... But i am very tired!

So anyway... Tuesday! Up bright and early at six as per usual for the drive to CSL... however bright is a lie. The night before had been awful, bed at one and then waking up every half an hour for no apparent reason. As a result i was shattered, so Prab and I went in search of the elusive ´cushion room,´ a room where students of Colegia São Luís can go for some down time and a sleep if its all getting too much... Why they don´t have these in British schools i don´t know!

However the cushion room is a lie. Some builders gesticulated and Portuguese-ed that we couldn´t get by, so no luck. However, it was only half 7 so we went back to the computer room where some of the morning fellows were congregated. With 2 hours left before scheduled activities I had nothing else on my mind but sleep, so i unceremoniously pulled 4 chairs together (im 4 and a bit chairs tall it would appear), put on the ever-relaxing XX and promptly fell asleep. Next thing i knew the room was full of people and the lovely Liliane was waking me up Brazilian-style, with a hug.

We then had a talk from Reinaldo Pamponet, the founder of website Electrocooperativa- his English was very good, and it was nice to have the presentation in our own language. The website aims to harness creativity throughout the world, especially in youth: it asks companies to pay to post their problems and questions to the admin. The admin set up a ´creation call´which will be posted on the site which users can tchoose to respond to this creation call in any way they see fit- writing, photos, video etc. Then the money paid by the company is shared by the most appropriate solutions, with the admin keeping 20%. This sounds like a really good idea doesn´t it! For the first half of the presentation the man was really good, and i was thoroughly enjoying it- he presented arguments i really agreed with and the website sounded far less selfish and more about giving back to the world than taking from it, as a conventional business model works. For the first half the talk was one of the best we've had and really inspirational... there was some nice idealogy in there as well as some really good lines. But sadly after this the talk deteriorated pretty quickly.

For example he talked extensively about not wanting to have to judge pieces of work over others, as all the work is important. Fine, nice. However it is one thing for everyone to be equal, but when one person´s spent days on their entry and another has spent 10 minutes and to be rewarded the same isn´t really striking a good chord. Then it transpired that infact only a proportion of entries would be selected, usually around a quarter. The winners then, a bit of a U-turn on the ideals, and still if the company only found one entry useful then it would be rewarded exactly the same as the others. He also made quite a few of the fellows angry, forcing his own opinions on us and making some stonking generalisations. My favourite quotes were ´we wont operate in China, because the Chinese aren´t creative" (two Chinese fellows in Brazil alone, and im sure one of the selection criteria was creativity...) and "what is the point in giving money to a man on the street, all he will do is spend it on beer." He also slated charities, despite the fact several of us have worked or have family who work for charities, and we´ve spent a good chunk of our time here visiting NGOs and seeing the truly phenomenal work they do.

The more I heard about the website, the less I thought it could actually work- it is a really nice idea but just completely impractical and the only bits that would work seem to be the bits that go against its ideals. I would really love it to work, I have registered to the website and will have a look when it starts in the UK in September, but when he told me there were just 3,500 users and he didn´t believe in advertising that was the nail in the coffin as to me being able to take the idea seriously. Good luck mate, nice idea, but there are doubtless hundreds like it on the internet- word of mouth can´t get you so far these days.

After a quickie lunch we then had a trip to a state school, and a very good one at that. The place was very impressive and clearly the subject of a lot of government spending- it is primarily a school but is open for the public to use its facilities. It had 3 outdoor swimming pools, huge abstract pieces of metal attached to the main building and long, meandering, garishly coloured walkways to each floor of the other building. There were stairs inside too. It is things like this which makes me wonder more about the government... Huge decadent redevelopments such as this are made whilst to either side there were slums, and in the film we watched about a state school the budget was just R$500 per month- under 200 pounds. Big front-page redevelopments like this win votes though, especially with the country clamouring for more to be spent on education.

The centre though was really interesting- we had gone during school time and in the main building there were children playing football and practising circus skills. Not your run of the mill juggling but some really impressive acrobatic stuff high up in the air. After that we toured the other, smaller building in which there were classrooms, displays and a really nice feel. Back to CSL, and then home, where instead of the sleep i knew i needed i decided on a blog til around half 12/1 instead... And I´m doing the same today. On that note!

Rio de Janeiro is famous for its beauty and infamous for its crime. It is a city with problems; as of 2007 there were nearly 30 homicides a week, in the same year the police allegedly killed 1,330 people, for comparison the entire police force in the U.S. killed 347 people in 2006. Death, crime, violence: they exist on a different scale here.

I have realised in my time in Rio that these problems are caused because a huge proportion of the residents are trapped. Trapped in the cage of poverty. Trapped in a vicious cycle. Underfunded public schools mean a poor education and so unemployment, and therefore poor housing, which then leads to poor health, stress and family breakdown, that in turn can lead to drug abuse and gang formation. From here the circle finally completes itself as a family can no longer provide for the young, who then receive poor education and therefore restart the cycle.

This situation reminded me of an anecdote that Stephen Fry once told about Oscar Wilde’s tour of America. Rio’s present problem’s of crime, gangs and poverty is similar to what U.S cities experienced in the late 19^th century. When asked, in interview, why he thought there were such problems with the poor, he replied  ‘It is because they have bad wallpaper’. Less enigmatically, what Wilde meant is; a bad environment will produce bad youngsters.  It is as simple as it is true, but rarely noticed. It is also obvious that this idea remains acutely true to this day in Rio; each previously mentioned problem would constitute as a ‘bad environment’, so when they are combined it is not a surprise that the communities in Rio have the problems that they do.

However there is a further fundamental reason to the problems in the communities, it is not only the presence of malignant factors of poverty but also a lack of the most important of things – opportunity. The fellows were given an illustration of this in our visit to an NGO called Bola pra Frente, in Guadalupe. The charity served the six surrounding communities by enticing the young to play football, which is unanimously enjoyed here in Brazil, on a proper pitch, with free boots, balls and training. The only requirement was that the child must attend school. For children without this opportunity, and who remain in the harsh environments of the communities, we were told the drop out rate at school was 48%, for those given the opportunity and enrolled in the program the school drop out rate had fallen to 0.5%.  The disparity between these statistics shows that a child who ‘drops out’ of school or joins a gang can not be blamed for that choice, as they are under the influence of factors that they cannot control. The guilt may lay at larger agents, such as the government, who has failed to supply the necessary opportunity to the child to let them leave their vicious cycle.

During our visit to AfroReggae, we were given a talk by an ex-drug lord who again demonstrated the importance of environment and opportunity, called Washington Rimas. He explained that for a child growing up in a community there can be no prospects and no hope. That is except for the potent symbol of wealth, power and manhood that exudes from the American rapper image adopted by the gangs who control the communities here. He spoke of owning kilogram gold necklaces and equally glamorous guns. However, we learnt that he was later arrested and sent to jail, this event removed him from his environment and broke the cycle he was trapped in. After years in prison he returned, and instead of re-entering his old environment he found opportunity through AfroReggae, who amongst many activities specialised in giving new skills and prospects to ex-convicts. He now tours the world, speaking at international conferences, such as the World Economic Forum and has a major role in the award-winning film, 5x Favela.

There can be no greater example than that of Rimas’: one change of environment, one positive opportunity, meant the difference between pedalling drugs in a favela, risking life, limb and family, to speaking to the world, and most importantly, having the world listen.

Friday kicked off with a reflection session... We have one of these every Friday and use them to collect our thoughts and what we´ve learned throughout the week. I understand that they are an important part of the programme, and i´m reluctant to criticize them but I don´t think pushing the group to make conclusions of what we´ve learned is the best way of going about things. Each fellow goes through different things, has different experiences even moreso now that we´re all living separate places, sees different things, interprets things in different ways and has a different take on life- of course the whole group isn´t going to be able to come to the same conclusion together. For example there is one fellow that lives a few minute´s walk from Colegia São Luis, gets in at 7am and goes home at 5-30; compare this to another fellow who lives 2 hours of unreliable bus rides from the College, gets in at 9-20 and leaves at 11. That means waking up at 6 and getting home at 1 every day! None of us are jealous of Jonny!

My point is that whole group can´t compare Brazilian education to British education wtogether the British educations we´ve received are all so different. There are fellows from all over the country, some are from private schools, some haven´t spent all their lives in the UK etc... So i think its fair to say we´ll all have different thoughts about how Brazilian education stacks up against British. It is really interesting to hear these, but expecting the whole group to agree and come to a joint conclusion is pretty ludicrous.

Anyway... rant over... sorry... And the second half of Friday. After lunch, in which some fellows went to pick up tickets for a samba show in the evening, we visited the Museu do Futebol which was really really interesting! I like my football, and similarly to the fellow-organised visit to Maracana stadium, this fellowship-organised visit was a really great way to compare the English and the Brazilian game. The stadium had an exhibit with a ball from every world cup, video of black-and-white blunders and an abstract room with nothing but a radio on an oddly-shaped plynth blaring out Portuguese commentary. In addition to this was  a really interesting setup of 4 table football tables. For example there was a table with only one striker, a table with 5 midfielders, a table with two sets of 2 midfielders and thus 5 handles- each one took a different strategy for playing. My favourite exhibit however was a darkened room up high underneath the actual seating in the stadium with surround sound of crowd noises and huge TV screens in different parts of the room: these kept turning on and off giving the illusion of getting closer and further away, and the direction the crowd noise was coming from kept changing, making the cavernous dark room and its echoes really quite intimidating- just how the crowd at a football match should be!

Then back to CSL and home for the morning students, whilst evening students stayed with their hosts for night school. As my host has left school I get to choose whether to be a 'morning' or 'night' student. I've so far opted to be a morning student (I need my beauty sleep), but will be going to some night lessons next week to see how class atmosphere in morning/night students differ. I arrived home to find my host dad, Flavio, back from Rio de Janeiro, which was nice as I´ve not had much of a chance to speak to him yet. He doesn´t speak much English, so I still haven´t really, but we both love football and really don´t like Maradonna. He sympathized when my beloved Southampton lost their season opener against Plymouth (Martin won´t let me hear the end of it...) the next morning.

From what I´ve heard the fellows then all had very different nights- some of the evening fellows went out with their students after school, with hilarious consequences; some fellows and some hosts went to a samba show and unfortunately one of them got mugged on the way home; and I opted for a quiet drink at a bar near my house with Aniqa´s host who lives nearby.

Saturday followed, and still devoid of a host I latched on to Stevie and Aline to take the quick metro trip to another part of town. The place includes a huge multi-story indoor shopping centre dedicated to rock, hippy and gothic products. The place was incredible, you could buy anything from a tattoo to a giant stuffed Garfield to a DVD of U2 playing some obscure Brazilian city to a Hamas or Hezbollah T-shirt, should such things take your fancy.

Arriving home at around 7 O clock, me and my host mum, Lu, cooked some dinner together before her and Flavio went out to collect Allexia from the airport. She had been away with her work at a photo shoot near the Amazon rainforest, on an island the name of which has escaped me, and came back full of stories- wierdly there are African Buffaloes on the island- she´d done the epic double of both riding one and eating one! We had an hour or so to talk before setting off to a party of an ex-student of São Luis, Lou, who hosted a fellow last year and unable to do so this year decided to invite us all to her birthday party. This is typical of the Brazilian attitude we´ve encountered so far, out-of-the-way friendly to almost total strangers. Everyone who went, around 20 fellows had a brilliant time. It was an absolutely crazy party, held in a club with a loud downstairs, for dancing, and a quieter usptairs, for sitting/talking/singing/bellowing across the room. I can tell i had a good time because I arrived back at 5am this morning and i think i´ve lost my hoody.

Today has been Father´s day in Brazil which has been a really lovely family event. After breakfast the whole family stayed in the house and at quarter to four there was a meal of garlicky fish, potatoes, salad and rice- absolutely delicious, and as a tribute to their cooking I managed to eat nearly as much as the rest of them combined :) One of their friends came around and she speaks some English, and along with Allexia this means I´ve been able to really come out of my sign-language shell for the first time with the family. I´ll be really sad to leave, as they´ve been really lovely to me, and luckily and Allexia insists I´ll have to visit at the weekends when I´m on my business placement with Pearson.

Now off to an Italian street festival of some sort... Not sure what this is but it can only be interesting!

So, I´m going to sum up yesterday and the day before, but in the wrong order just to keep y´all on your toes.

Yesterday was a very long day! But still enjoyable. The 6am starts i could do without, but arrive at school for 7am I did, and spent the time writing a blog, listening to a wee bit of music and pondering the ominous ´final project´ that we´re all becoming increasingly terrified of. We were then in a 2 and a half hour session in which we discussed "being young in Brazil," before having some generic but still enjoyable icebreaker style activities, followed by some drama activities all organised by a Brazilian therapist/psychologist whose name evades me... Infact he may not´ve been a therapist/psychologist, just a guy someone found somewhere. We also had a good whinge about how we don´t like racism, but the session dragging on a little bit towards the end.

In lunch, needing a fix of food, Prab, Charlie, April, Hannah, Gillian and I found a bargain of a restaurant where you weigh your meal and pay on that basis. Prab is ill and has no appetite so as designated fatboy i essentially got two meals! The food allowance is not stretching to anything else, so the philosophy is not to turn down any free food in the hope of saving enough money to buy a jumper or something... São Paulo is a very different to Rio, the temperature skulking at the chilly end of double figures and occasionally dipping its toes down to 8 or 9 at night. This is made worse by the fact the Brazilians all complain about how cold it is but leave their windows open all night! Packing for the beach was not a good idea anyway.

After this the whole group was taken to be part of the studio audience in a Brazilian show for teenagers, Altas Horas. The show incorporates live music with various "teenagery" topics. Unfortunately as the show was in Portuguese we don´t really know what these were, although we had Brazilian students from Colegia São Luis with us, some of whom had an admirable stab at translating for us though. The whole audience thought Tatenda´s name was hilarious, and Martin got quite a bit of attention for laughing very loudly about a minute after a joke due to only just having got the translation.

Now for the day before yesteday, Wednesday. In the afternoon we visited the Ethanol, sugar, bioelectricity, bioplastics etc company Unica, but I think they´re worthy of their own blog so I´ll leave them out for now. In the morning we had a really interesting presentation from Tuna about some of the attitudes of Brazilians. I´m mostly going to regurgitate some of the statistics from that, which i found quite shocking- they are taken from the book "A cabeça do Brasileiro."

We were told the story of a gay couple who were told by a security guard to stop kissing in a shopping mall- this received national condemnation from both people and the media, and afterwards there were thousands of gay couples making the trip to kiss in the shopping mall, which is now something of a rainbow hotspot. So it sounds like a silly mistake by the security guard in a sexually tolerant and accepting nation, yeah? No. A staggering 81% of the population are totally against male homosexuality, with another 8% slightly against, and only 5% totally in favour. A similar 78% are totally against female homosexuality with 10% slightly against, and just 6% totally in favour. This probably has some roots in the country´s official religion of Catholicism (which along with most religions condemens homosexuality) but the prejudice obviously runs deeper than that- only around 90million people, half the population, attend church but it is four fifths who oppose homosexuality. Another interesting statistic was that half of all Brazilians totally disagree with pornography- not something you would expect when walking through the streets, as the metal shacks that are on most pavements are literally full to the brim of porn magazines, with explicity blaring from all sides in most cases, regardless of who may be walking by- children etc.

Now for a Brazilian joke, accredit this one to Tuna. A rabbit escapes from someone´s garden and runs into some nearby woods. The police are enlisted to help recover the rabbit. Were the American police used, the rabbit would be recovered in 1 hour in perfect condition. Were the British police used, the rabbit would be found in 2 hours, a bit shaken up. (Personally i think they should switch us and the Americans, but remember we have a bad reputation over here after the Jean Charles de Menezes scandal). However if the Brazilian police were sent to find the rabbit, they´d return 2 days later with a pig, with the pig squealing "i´m a rabbit! I´m a rabbit!."

I´ve spoken enough about my opinion of the police here... but it would appear that a worrying large proportion of Brazilians support the methods, if not the force themselves. Torture is, of course, illegal in Brazil, but it still goes on and a staggering one in five Brazilians think that torture should always be used to until suspects  of crimes confess ("i´m a rabbit!"), and less than half (46%) believe that it´s always wrong. Fifteen percent think that police should kill robbers after they´ve apprehended them, and again, less than half (48%) think that this is always wrong. The same proportion, 15%, are totally in favour of lynching suspects (just suspects!) of violent crime with just over half (52%) always against this.

The statistics get a little less shocking after this- just 5% and 3% think it is acceptable to take the law into your own hands, or pay someone else to do it. But in a country of 180million people, remember that is 9 million and around 6million people respectively. One such case we have heard of is the high-profile story of Flamengo goalkeeper Bruno, who allegedly (and this is no old wives tale, he is in custody now) paid people to murder his ex-girlfriend, chop her into pieces and feed her to dogs whilst he watched. Horrific. And we thought John Terry and Wayne Bridge´s girlfriend was a scandal!

A few other stats of note are that only 53% of Brazilians regard paying a police officer a small amount so that he won´t give you a larger fine for speeding or something is corruption, and getting skipped to the front of a surgery queue by a doctor who is your friend is regarded as just a favour by 16% of the population, whilst half think of it as ´Jetinho´, a Brazilian word for "you scratch my back i scratch yours" or similar, which is considered acceptable by most.

Just a quickie:

Had a really good last night in Rio- met the ´global changemakers´ for a meal in Ipanema before moving out to Lapa for a night out. This didn´t go exactly to plan... everyone started freaking out, i nearly got robbed and we ended up back home by 12-30, but then a few drinks in the good old Mexican Bar who threw us a little party, to bed, then woke up at 5-30 (obscene) to watch the sun rise on the last morning along with about 7 other fellows.

Then there was the battle to get sand of all of my clothes before packing them in the bag, which has put on 6 kilos... this can´t all be sand but it sure does feel like it!

A quick word for all of the fellows who´ve been affected by some kind of illness! Global Fellows are dropping like flies but we´re all looking out for each other. The plague is rushing through the group like wildfire- there´s been vomit, diarrhoea, dehabilitating sore throats, dizziness, chest infections... you name it. We are all having a great time but the trip is seriously no walk in the park: very little scheduled free time, late nights, early mornings, travelling... blazing heat and tap water is undrinkable meaning you have to carry around big bottles of water to stay hydrated and the it is extremely challenging mentally with a lot of listening to do and a heck of a lot to take in. It´s really no wonder people are starting to get worse for wear. Hopefully now we are all with host families and thus living separately it´ll be harder for the bugs to spread, and we are starting to get more used to the pace and conditions.

That brings me nicely to the next point: host families. After a moderately frantic rush to the airport after goodbyes to Roberta, Dani and Teddy, there was the 45-minute plane journey from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo. The views from the plane we immense! It was really nice to see Rio disappearing behind us, picking out places we´d visited and I´m told that the scenery for the whole journey was amazing as we flew next to the coast. I say I´m told, as along with most of the fellows I fell asleep for the entire journey, even missing the food! :(

Yes, host families. There was a quick talk before hosts started to arrive. In typical Brazilian fashion, most were a bit late (it is customary to show up anything between half an hour and 2 hours late here). My host is Allexia Galvão, a 19-year old from Rio who is living in São Paulo for university. She hasn´t spoken English in around a year but there is enough to get by! Her parents are very nice as well and they´re all trying really hard to make me feel at home.

2 weeks in Rio de Janeiro have been truly stunning!

Since my last blog we have visited the eye-opening Santa Marta slum which is overlooked by the Christ the Redeemer statue. This juxtaposition of wealth and poverty is exactly what we´re here to study, but if I´m honest I felt quite intrusive walking through the favela. Sanitation was, as can be expected, quite poor. We saw an absolute monster of a rat whilst we were waiting for the ´train thing´ to take us up the hill, and once in the higher levels of Santa Marta there was a lot of animal poo lying around. However it is clear that either charities or the government has invested a large amount of money in the place- most notable are the two free (for want of a better expression) train things, which carry up to 20 people up the near-45 degree slope. More importantly however is the installation of an effective sewerage system, this will have immeasurably improved sanitation and saved many many lives.

The favela itself was really really interesting. From the top of it we could see for miles as the irregular sprawl of colourful buildings surrendered to more orderly blocks in the next district of the city. We could see an astroturf football pitch with teenagers playing on it... They had a little shout at us but it was all banter! The interesting thing about Santa Marta is that it is a UPP (Unidade de Policia Pacifidora) zone. This means that is has been recently ´taken back´ by police forces from the druglords who run most favelas. This is a violent and difficult process, especially with the irregular terrain of Santa Marta, and keen to stop drug dealers re-establishing themselves in the area there is a permanent police post at the top of the inhabitable part of the mountain which overlooks the entire slum. We paid a brief visit to this facility where two officers gave us a short talk, translated by our Cultura Inglêsa guides, and took a few questions before with dark approaching we had to set off back. We were privileged enough to be able to walk all the way back through the favela- something which would never have been possible if it were under control of druglords. All the same, I won´t lie, it was an intimidating walk. Dogs were barking and snarling, and people would hang out of their windows to gawp at us- and fair enough, there are very few, if any visitors to areas like this and we were walking through their back yards. The children offered us some respite however, as with when we visited Afro Reggae, they were keen to approach us and say ´hello´, and ´bye bye´. We also briefly visited a mosaic of Michael Jackson- in honour of when he shot parts of his video for ´They don´t care about us´ in the area. The locals seem to be very proud of this, as unlike most writeable surfaces in the favela, it is devoid of graffiti. The graffiti in other areas however is not offensive- the most common word used is ´Jesus´ which reflects the fact that despite the high violence rates, walls pockmarked with bulletholes and horrific past, the favelas are some of the most intensely religious (Catholic) areas in Brazil, which itself is a very religious country with around half of the country attending church, far more than the UK.

So rare was our visit and so ground-breaking and contreversial is the UPP that we received local and national news coverage. Back at the hotel many of us jumped around over-hysterically as we saw ourselves, most notably Bintu who said a few lines in Portuguese and Dave (Lauren) who sang the chorus of a famous favela rap we´ve all listened to a few times this week. We were also featured in a newspaper the next day, and in true tourist fashion i´ve bought a copy- well i do look rather dashing ;)

Anyway, at the end of our time in Rio I´ll write a few high and low points-

The police station ´incident´, and resulting argument. Luckily this is all sorted now :)

Leo, one of our Portuguese teachers, having his car and all his posessions stolen at gunpoint during a visit to a favela- luckily, this was also sorted out, a call from the bosses of the centre we were visiting around the community meant the car was swiftly located and returned. It sounds odd, but it is presumably only due to the kingpin drug dealer in the area that this happened- his/her respect for the football youth centre project and whoever robbed Leo´s car´s respect, and undoubtedly fear, of reprisal meant the car was quickly returned. In the favelas there is very little in-fighting and robbery is usually only extended to visitors... who admittedly are fortunate to leave with their lives, forget posessions. Drug use is also frowned upon, which i was really surprised to find out, but apparently drugs are only really sold to the more affluent areas of the city, the lawless favelas are just an ideal hideout for drug lords.

And now for the high points! To be fair pretty much the whole trip has been a high point, but I´ll pick a few things out:

Visiting the Christ the Redeemer statue- I doubt i´ll ever see views like this again. The majestic statue towers above everything on the tallest mountain in Brazil, watching over Rio day and night. Yes, it is a touristy place to go but it was very special, with Aniqa and I paying a visit to the small chapel at the foot of the statue.

Maracana- absolutely huge football stadium, lots of legroom, and a pretty good atmosphere.

The beaches!

The people- this really is an absolutely top group. So many contrasting backgrounds, lifestyles and personalities yet I have made some really great friends and there is nobody in the group I wouldn´t feel comfortable spending time with.

Now off to a meal with the global changemakers, who i know very little about but they sound interesting from what i have heard! Then maybe a trip to lapa to see a live band, planning to stay up all night to watch the sun rise on our last day in Rio... sleep on the plane.

Two Brazilian films- Five times Favela and Tropá de Elite.

Five times Favela is a film produced by people living in Favelas across Rio, it is essentially 5 intertwining storylines about Favela life, and its highly anticipated release is set for the 27th August in Brazil. Last night we were lucky enough to meet a few members of the production team and watch a ´making of´style documentary. Also on our first fully-programmed day in Rio, when we visited AfroReggae we met one of the actors in the film, a former drug dealer. In the film he plays a drug dealer in a similar vein to his former life, ensuring an accurate and empassioned performance from him- when we were interviewing him he joked that he expects an oscar for his performance! I think his story shows that projects like AfroReggae really can help to change the direction of a person´s life- from violent druglord with over 100 people working under him, to a big role in a national- and possible international-level film.

The second film, Tropa de Elite, is known in Britain by the name ´Elite Squad.´ It is in Portuguese with British subtitles, and deals from the perspective of the elite level of police in Brazil, whose job is to infiltrate favelas through intense violent opposal to try and rid them of druglords. I´ve not seen this film yet but i am now really looking forward to doing so when i return to the UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-rUfBTQ1g Later this afternoon we  are going to visit a favela which has been ´pacified´ by elite police and we´ll look to see if any real difference has been made, and whether the locals feel the difference was worth the brutalisation of their community. Brutalisation is by no means an exaggeration- the protocol is to shoot first and ask questions later, if there´s anyone left to hear the answer- collateral damage is huge and there are reports of children (who are used as runners for the drugs as they cannot be arrested under the age of 16) being shot by police to force the drug dealers themselves to deliver their drugs. Reportedly one in three murders in Brazil are committed by the police, and a government official was unable to deny this statistic when asked about it by a member of our group on Monday night.

Food for thought next time there´s a police brutality story in the UK- our police problems pale into insignificance compared to the militia-like force here.

Apologies for the last few blogs... they´ve been very rushed, not particularly well-written and a bit inaccurate, and i get the feeling i´m repeating myself quite a bit. When there is time (if ever!) i´ll work on editing them a wee bit, but at the moment they are templates for me to make sure i remember details of the trip which i can refine a bit later :)

Just a quick few comparisons between the countries to prove how much cultural immersion I´ve been doing...

Dogs

In Rio, there are a lot of dogs! Certainly in uptown Ipanema where we are staying, there are plenty of those annoying little handbag dogs, as well as plenty of massive ones. I´d say there´s probably more than in London.

People

The whole of the city seems to be obsessed with fitness. There are pullup bars and parallel bars dotted every few hundred metres along the beaches and in other locations too, there is an entire lane next to the beach dedicated to runners and cyclists, and even most 50 year old men seem to have better pecs than me. Despite this culture of fitness and perfection the beaches are still full of people of all shapes and sizes and nobody seems to wear a shirt and tiny tiny bikinis are the norm. Compare this to Britain where we have a rising obesity problem and for the most part anyone who isn´t the size OK magazine tells us we should be wouldn´t dream of donning the swimming cossy and going for a dip in the sea.

On the whole the city seems to be a whole lot laid-back than Britain. Nobody is in a rush and people on the street will quite happily go through ten minutes of sign language and fractured portuguese to tell you the way to some obscure grocery shop. Britain on the other hand, especially London, and people are always in a rush for their next meeting, manicure etc and try make small talk to someone in the street and you´ll be flat out ignored or given a look as if you asked to lick their face.

Smoking

In Brazil smoking is at least 4 times cheaper than in Britain- although from what i´ve seen this doesn´t increase the amount of people who smoke, as logic would suggest. This surely confirms that putting higher taxes on cigarettes will not make a significant difference to whether or not people choose to smoke, as economics tells us, they are a very inelastic good.

Police

The police here are suffering from a long-term association with corruption, hypocricy and violence- none of this is undeserved. I´ve mentioned in a previous blog visiting a district where 21 civilians were killed by police, and it is not unusual for areas, predominantly the poorer favelas to have stories such as these. Speaking to the local chief of police was certainly an eye-opener- he spoke about trying to repair the bond between the people and the police. So deep runs the mistrust that most people are more likely to turn to their local druglord for help than the police. Certainly, however progress is being made- there are partnerships in place from the police with Natura and Afro Reggae, and bridges are certainly starting to be built. However in my opinion there is still a long way to go- speaking to our reggae friend, apparently in his experience being caught taking drugs on the beach at night can be overlooked by a R$50 bribe to the police officer who catches you.

The last few days have been brilliant- free time on Sunday morning yielded a self-organised trip (thanks lauren) by most of the fellows to see Corcorva/Christ the Redeemer, the huge statue of Jesus which stands on the highest mountain near Rio and is visible from most of the city. This was simply mind-blowing, and from the top there was not only the chance to stand by the simply enormous statue- must´ve been over 100 feet tall- but simply staggering views, the city laid out in front of us like a map.

The pre-departure briefing was good and I know I'm not the only one who enjoyed meeting a lot of people, and I am now more than ever enthusiastically waiting to depart. The morning spent at Cadbury House for the Kraft Foods meeting went very well and week 5 and 6 with them should be really good. They talked to us about CSR, Corporate SocialResponsibility, and how they plan to merge Kraft with Cadbury. This is an exciting time for the company, and I am looking forward to learning a lot more. It was also very interesting to learn that in Ghana, the cocoa beans are controlled and regulated by the Government.

I've spent a little bit of time trying to learn more Brazilian Portuguese, and I've enjoyed using my little phrasebook and dictionary to reply to my host family who I will be staying with in Sao Paulo for 2 weeks. By then I will be able to be less reliant on the phrasebook and dictionary, and maybe even use an online translator less...that's the plan anyway!

I am about to depart on the next stage of the Global Fellowship, an experience which is fantastic for me personally, but more importantly, when I get back I am looking forward to spreading the word about what I have experienced to as many people as possible. It is not simply about me being part of 30 fellows who go to Brazil, nor is it about me being part of the 100 fellows involved in the programme, the Global Fellowship is about communicating the message across to as wide an audience as possible.

Ian

So now that dates are set and everything is all about to kick off... (hey hey get it The world cup!) :/ bad joke...sorry :P

Yes back to the reasons for my third blog as they say 3 times charm...( some how  in my head I have never heard of that but I will use that expression anyway XD)

Exams are fast comign to the middle stint with an exam tomoz wooo Maths the joys of numbers :/!

My mother has decided that a good way to help me relax is to tell me about soem fine foods or dishes that are quite well known in Brazil this including the Feijoada some Beef and rice oh and soem beans which is meant to be yum! I do love my food! Anyway this lead me to check out some other things and have come acroos such things as Guarana Fruit which when ripe looks liek a human eyeball! and if fish eyes are anything to go by......YUM!

oh and not forgetting  some roast suckling pig!

all in all i am going to be ...pigging ;) out on all things which are edible in Brazil and as i have been on a diet i will be eating at least an amount no one will believe :D

Thank you for reading my blog its not the most educational but its all come from me hope you enjoyed my suckish jokesand in grammaticla errors I have made :)

Blog out XD?