The Chance of a Lifetime: Rochina

I thought now would be a good time to start catching up on the trip that I took in December. One of the stops on the tour was Rio, and we got to tour the largest favela in all of South America, Rochina. Favela is basically the term they use here for shanty-town. The 2010 census estimates that around 70,000 people populate this favela, but actual numbers are much higher. The favela in recent years has become rather urbanized, and almost all of the houses have basic sanitation, electricity, and plumbing.

In years past, the government has tried to provide various incentives for the inhabitants to move to another area. There was a time when they gave the people houses in another place, but the people simply sold these other places and remained in Rochina. It seems pretty silly to us, why would you want to live in a slum that has been controlled by drug lords for a long period of history. But the truth is that there’s so much more than the eye can see. The view that the people who live in Rochina have is absolutely stunning. You can see the famous parts of Rio from the right part of the favela. The areas where the government offered them houses did not have these beautiful views. They were far from the beaches. Drug lords have been pretty much eliminated from the favela, though police still patrol the streets.

When I boarded the vans I was expecting to see some pretty rough stuff, but honestly Rochina is very developed. It looks like an entire city in and of itself. There are banks, various stores, medicine shops, and almost every house has satellite TV. Now of course I’m sure that we weren’t shown the worst parts of the favela, but I was still surprised.

Our tour guide took us into a candy shop within the favela, and many people bought something. It was incredibly cheap in comparison to all the prices I’ve seen before. For example, one boy bought a box of 15 packs of mentos for 11 reais. That’s about US $5.50. Later one of the trip leaders asked him where he had bought it. When he said from the favela, they asked him if he knew that it was stolen goods which he had bought. While that would account for the cheap price, I sincerely doubt that our tour guide would have taken us to buy stolen goods. I guess we’ll never know though.

Favela houses are small in square footage. When the family grows they build another level on top. Some get up to four stories tall. The people who live within the favelas are a close knit community. Houses are very close together, and you can hear everything. The children who live in favelas frequent the public schools because they cannot afford private schooling, though it is cheaper than private schooling in the USA. The problem is that in recent years the public school system in Brasil has fallen in standards. The students do not get a good quality education. For this reason, many wealthy people are creating areas for the children to come and further their education in many areas; the arts, computers, games, basically anything to keep them off the streets.

Evem though I have been told that there are some rather wealthy people living in the favela, with high end objects such as iPhones, I know that the majority of the population is poor. It really makes one appreciate where they’ve come from when you get to experience a place like Rochina.