Anybody wanna paint? Seems like the logical next step. The rains are gone, the sun is out but its not too hot. The house is kinda busy, but it's only gonna get busier in coming months, so if we're gonna re-color, this week is the week.
An interesting thing happened yesterday, in the realm of Rio tourism: Marcelo Armstrong, who has managed the most widely known favela tour operation in the city for nearly 20 years, stopped by for a visit. He seemed legitimately distraught that we no longer send our bookings his way, and went on a bit of an agitated tangent over the hordes of start-up competition he now must compete against. I figured his op was so vast that we were but a pebble whose absence would go unnoticed, but I suppose there are a lot of pebbles our size needed to fill the wagon.
Anyway, the reason I find Marcelo's plight interesting is because he is now finding himself the victim of the success of the favela pacification programs and his own admirable efforts to bridge the gap between the outside world and the world on the hillside. Heck, even I could lead a group of foreigners on a walk through Rocinha in the afternoon without fear of being roughed up or assaulted... I wouldn't know what I was talking about, I wouldn't have the first-hand P.O.V. that Rodrigo does (the reason we book Rodrigo's tour), but the afternoon population in the favela has become so conditioned to the presence of tours, of foreigners, etc., you don't need a special pass from anybody to go in there. Maybe it was a lot different when Marcelo's groundbreaking business got started. Maybe he feels a little like others are thanklessly profiting from scaffolding that he erected. But maybe that was inevitable, maybe that's a sign of progress, and maybe Marcelo needs a second phase to trailblaze, so that his projects continue to receive funding, and so the gap between the cultures becomes even more of a blur.
