De acordo com essa reportagem, existe um número de estrangeiros se
mudando para o Rio de Janeiro pra morar em/visitar favelas. Isso mesmo,
Favelas. Eles alegam que a vida é muito mais calma e humana e que
apesar dos tiroteios a noite, é uma experiência que vale a pena.
Segue a reportagem completa. (Em inglês)
Shantytowns of Rio woo visitorsFavelas offer taste of ‘real Brazil’
silvia izquierdo/ap
Barbara Caroli, who moved to Rocinha, Rio de
Janeiro, from Milan, caught “favela fever” after glimpsing all the
points of light twinkling nightly from the hillside houses.
Most of the massive hillside slums that rise up around Rio’s posh
Ipanema beach district are places where middle-class Brazilians would
never go. But a growing number of tourists are shunning the beachfront
zones with their pricey hotels and shops to get a taste of the “real
Brazil,” one outsiders rarely see up close.
Gabe Ponce de Leon is one — he came to Rio as a college exchange
student in 2001 and lived the high life until he discovered the slums.
Teaching English for pocket money, the Brooklyn native got his first
taste of a “favela” when a student took him home to Rocinha, a place
whose very name makes many Brazilians fearful.
“Rocinha looks daunting from the outside, like an impregnable
fortress,” said Ponce de Leon, 27. “But inside it’s like a hamlet, with
kids playing in the streets, and you know all your neighbours.”
Ponce de Leon decided to rent a room in his student’s home for $75 US a month and immerse himself in the favela life.
ricardo moraes/AP
Painter Bob Nadkarni straightens up at his home at
the Tavares Bastos favela in Rio de Janeiro. Nadkarni, from Britain,
rents out rooms and features a monthly Jazz night.
“There’s a lot of fun there. There are samba groups, ‘funk’ dances and
more bars than any other business. It’s a cop-free zone, no lawyers, no
bureaucracy, no corporate regulations or commercialism,” he said. “But
there’s also old-fashioned human warmth, people help each other out.
For a guy who grew up in Brooklyn, you see this way of life still
exists.”
Barbara Caroli of Italy caught her favela fever after glimpsing the
thousand points of light gleaming each night from the jumbles of
hillside houses.
“I felt it was an invitation,” said Caroli, who quit her job at a real
estate agency in Milan, moved to Rocinha, married and opened a
pre-school. “This is life. There are shootouts, and sometimes you can’t
sleep because of the gunfire, but you almost never see a body. People
don’t celebrate death — they commemorate life.”
While there is no exact count of how many foreigners live in favelas,
Rio’s Federation of Favela Associations says the number has risen
sharply, from dozens a decade ago to hundreds today, especially from
Europe and the United States.
Most got their first taste of favela life on the Jeep and walking tours of shantytowns that began in the 1990s.
More recently, bed-and-breakfast inns have opened up in some of the
less violent favelas, even advertising in English on the Internet to
attract more adventurous travellers.
Consulado-Geral do Canadá em São Paulo