Sosiale vesen!

"Are you walking ALONE? Are you OK?"
"Did you just go for a run ALONE?"
7am in the morning: "You are so quite, something wrong?"
This is not rare comments to get if you live together with 70 brazilians for three weeks. The social talks are endless and the need to do something else than just talk does not exist. Especially if it's raining. People are almost afraid of rain. "Are you running in the rain? you will get sick!"
For me, running for 40 minutes is my way of getting my space, break from the language and get some energy continue. For the Brazilians, this is just a way to converse in a different environment.. If you want to go for a run, you should ask everyone to go with you. Not less than five together, if you're fifteen, it's GREAT success! And you don't even have to wear other shoes than havaianas as long as you are up for the social part! I think the only time brazilians needs to be alone, is when they sleep.
It's funny and different, the need to always be so many people together. You can even see it in the pictures. They always have as many people as possible in the photo. It doesn't matter if you are just walking by, it's impossible to escape. When I look back at my picture it's not abnormal to only recognice half of the group in the photo.




For me as a introvert person, this is kind of difficult when you live together with 70 of them. To get the time and space that you need alone in silence is something you really have to fight for. Finding a place, not necessarily being alone, but calm. It's only calm at night, when I'm not allowed to go out alone. It really makes you miss the safe norwegian nature, the ocean, taking a trip to a mountain for a weekend or sleeping outside. But I really learn alot of this and it really makes me notice my limits and I'm getting to know myself much better.

The Big Guys - UPP

I spent my christmas and New Year in Rio this year! I lived at a friends house in the favela Realengo were they already have implemented the police unit UPP. So it's a safe and calm neighborhood to live in. We drove pass them everyday we were going to the city. The last day, we desided to be real tourists and ask if we could take a photo with them. But it wasn't as easy as we thought. We needed promision from the chefe. We waited for a long time, before he finally came to make sure that we only wanted a photo and that we were real tourists. And our norwegian look and language was definetly convincing enough, because we didn't just get a photo. We also got a tour around the area and he showed us their work and talked about everything they do in the favela. I actually got really surpriced over how good it was. They have classes there for people that never got their education, they have a swimmingpool that people can use and all kinds of dans classes. The police really join in with the people and spend time with them. We saw them all around in the favela, talking to the citizens there, not just being the big guys with the machine guns.




This is one of the state’s attempts to make a safer and better life for the people living in the favela. A step in the direction to people being able to come and go from there house safely. There are around a 1000 favelas just in Rio. The neighborhoods for more than 1.5 million people, 20 percent of the city population, placed in the hillsides across the city. Many of the favelas are lawless and controlled by fear, gangs of drug dealers and private militias. This of course, leads to big problems with criminality and drugs, especially in the big favelas in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 18 of those 1000 lawless favelas in Rio are there now implemented police aims, called UPP. It’s not much yet, but the government has a goal to implement UPP in 40 different favelas before they are going to host World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. Their pride! They are also investing 15 million R$ in the qualification of the Police Academy. UPP is a public security initiative from the state government. They protect the favelas and fight the drug dealers. They try to take control and make a safer place for the people in the favelas. The officers are recent graduate and specifically trained for this task. Recently (10. Nov. 2011), as they also have done before, the BOPE (A Special Operations Squad) surrounded the favela (Rocinha) and didn’t let anyone in or out. They stayed for days and searched the area for drugs and weapons. The policemen arrested the drug kingpin; Antonio Francisco Bonfim Lopes (Nem), when he tried to pay a policeman to let him out of the favela. He where unlucky and actually met a policeman that wasn’t corrupt. They also confiscated a lot of weapons. They did all this, without firing any gunshots, which is much better than last time. In 2010, it became a “war” between the police officers and the drug dealers. It ended with many people getting killed and serious debates on human rights and respect for community residents.

I think they are doing an amazing job and I'm really glad they have the football world championship in 2014 to look forward to. It makes them work harder and faster and they have a goal.