You've Got Mail!

View of the Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro. There was a time when the streets of Rocinha had no addresses, but then You’ve Got Mail! Eliane Ramos drew the first map of the area, which she used for her postal start- up. A success story from the favela. FABIAN FEDERL Translated by Stephen Smithson 177 espite the midday summer sun, young men are acting tough because of the alleyways of Rocinha are us – we are strangers – but the presence pitch dark. A thin ray of sun- of Nelson and Eliane does not worry them; shine will occasionally enter quite the opposite, in fact, for these lads Dthis Rio de Janeiro favela through a vacant rely upon them, as do a large number of lot, penetrating its labyrinth of nooks, Rocinha residents. alleys, corners and tunnels. Or one of the Nelson is a courier for a private postal becos (as the narrowest alleys – narrower service serving Rocinha, and Eliane is than an individual arm span – are called its boss. And just as it’s normal for the in Portuguese) will receive artificial light post to be delivered in Zurich, Berlin or from the window display of a bakery. The Paris, it’s normal for it not to arrive in air is stagnant; the stench of the open Rocinha. Residents have no addresses; sewers – which transport the effluent of the becos have no names – or, worse still, hundreds of thousands of residents down several different names. House numbers the hill – wafts through the streets. are assigned geographically in one place, Eliane Ramos Vieira da Silva, a woman chronologically in another and com- in her late forties with straight, dark hair pletely arbitrarily everywhere. The little and a sprinkling of freckles, was born here alleyways develop organically: one person and grew up in these becos. With her ele- builds a wall and another builds a tunnel gant clothes – blouse and tapered trousers, or some steps, and the street system is not the kind of outfit normally worn in altered completely. Brazil’s state postal these parts – she stands out. With hasty system made no attempt at first to find a steps Eliane takes us through the neigh- solution; Rocinha’s inhabitants simply did Above: Entering Rocinha. over the hill and into the affluent parts of bourhood. Reaching the end of a tunnel of not receive any post. This meant no credit Rio’s South Zone. houses we emerge abruptly from the beco cards, no pension notifications and no Rocinha is divided up into several to find ourselves standing, blinded by the legal way of obtaining an electricity supply. neighbourhoods named after streets that sudden brightness, before a football pitch Eliane Ramos Vieira da Silva had lived Rocinha, and it’s now probably the most lead off from Estrada da Gávea to form a surrounded by concrete walls. Nelson José her entire life without receiving a single successful business ever to have been set herringbone pattern. Rocinha is essen- da Silva, who accompanies Eliane, signals letter until one day she decided that this up in a favela. ‘Having an address makes tially uncharted terrain – Google Maps to us to wait and runs on ahead. wasn’t the way things had to be. Together favela dwellers into citizens,’ says Eliane. lists only a handful of streets. The navi- At the entrance to one of the becos, with her husband and cousin she set up ‘Being able to receive your post is a basic gation systems used by taxi and Uber driv- a dozen or so youths of around fifteen a firm, Carteiro Amigo – the Friendly right,’ she insists. ers can find their way only to the foot of or sixteen years of age sit on two sofas. Postman – and changed the lives of Rocinha, Portuguese for little farm- the hill or to addresses along the Estrada – Each wears headphones, and each is bare tens of thousands of favela dwellers at stead, covers a hillside in the south of Rio. which, for this reason, is where Rocinha’s chested with a walkie-talkie in the waist- a stroke. For a small fee subscribers can With around 250,000 inhabitants, it’s a public life is lived: bars and restaurants, band of his swimming trunks. These be just as confident that their letters and major part of the city. The view across shops selling car parts, iron goods, build- young men control the area on behalf of parcels will reach them as are residents the beach of São Conrado – granite rocks ing materials next to fashion stores, drug one of the drug lords. Nelson goes up to in one of Rio’s more conventional areas. rising up abruptly out of the rainforest, stores, pharmacies. Everywhere people are them, makes a gesture of reassurance, Within just a few years Carteiro Amigo the statue of Christ the Redeemer to the chatting, smoking; men in overalls lean turns around and gives a thumbs-up. The expanded into other areas similar to rear – is one of the city’s, if not the world’s, against the walls of houses, and, when the most beautiful. A single thoroughfare that sun is shining, everyone who can stands FABIAN FEDERL is a freelance journalist originally from France who lives and works between can properly be called a road, the Estrada in the shade beside the dense housing. Berlin, Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. He writes for the newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der da Gávea, runs through the favela in ser- Thousands of mototaxis race honking Tagesspiegel as well as the weekly magazine Die Zeit. His investigations have been published by pentine lines from the metro station near across the Estrada; buses carrying out titles such as Elle, Brand Eins, Reportagen, Internazionale and Libération. the beach to high up in the Atlantic Forest, impossible manoeuvres become wedged in 178 THE PASSENGER Fabian Federl You’ve Got Mail! 179 Left: Eliane Ramos Travessa Samaritana, Travessa Jordão, of Carteiro Amigo. Travessa Galileia. Eliane’s family is, like most families in Rocinha, evangelical; they are devout the bends. Hardly anybody turns into the believers. Eliane is one of nine sisters. Her side-streets – too narrow, too meandering, parents arrived in Rio as migrant workers too confusing; even experienced drivers from Brazil’s poor Northeast. Her mother get lost in them. Only the locals know their found a job in a kindergarten at the foot of way around, and even they know no more the hill; her father worked wherever work than they need to. could be found – as a bus driver, market Its singular geography and culture have trader, building labourer. At eighteen made Rocinha impenetrable for most Eliane left school and started a degree outsiders. Service providers – post, waste course. From seven in the morning until disposal, internet – have never managed late in the afternoon she would help out to establish themselves, nor have elec- in the kinder garten, and then she would tricity or water utilities. Two-thirds of travel into town where she would attend residents obtain electricity, internet and a teacher-training course until ten at water by illegal means. Waste is flushed night. But Eliane did not want to become down from the top of the hill into the sea. a teacher. She was interested in business Rocinha is nevertheless a functioning studies, in planning and organisation – micro- economy. You can get anything and yes, in money. She taught herself the here, albeit by alternative means. Like the basics of business studies, increasingly FAVELAS the 2010 census run by the Brazilian Institute other people who live in the favela, Eliane neglecting her teaching course until, of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), there knows the rules. She identified a need and despite strong protest from her mother, On the subject of the favelas, myth and reality are around a thousand in Rio, home to 22 per made it her business – and her life’s work she dropped out in the sixth semester. merge – starting with the term itself, which may cent of the city’s population. But in reality it is – to meet it. Eliane leads us past more concrete have been derived from a rash-causing plant impossible to produce a true statistical picture. ‘These stairs here were built by my walls and railings, through labyrinths of growing on the hills of Rio that lent its name If it weren’t for an informal census carried out father,’ says Eliane, and she waves us over becos, some of them almost completely to Favela, the original comunidade. But the by a few NGOs in the Complexo da Maré, as to concrete steps into a beco in the middle dark, closed off from above. These follow first to really develop was perhaps the Morro reported in The Economist in 2019, we would of Rocinha. Eliane speaks loud and fast, the typical construction pattern of the da Providência, which still exists in the port know almost nothing about that favela. The her voice picking up speed when some- favelas. The first generation builds on the area of Rio. In the late 19th century veterans of lack of information affects all the comunidades, thing is important, as though there is not ground floor; the next adds a first floor, the civil conflict known as the War of Canudos beginning with Rocinha, even though it is the enough time for so many words. extending the boundaries a little to add a arrived there, almost all of them black former one that has attracted the most attention and is Eliane knocks against the concrete wall few square metres. The same happens in slaves.

Load more