A Busy Week

This week was a busy one at Two Brothers.

Sunset at our building in Valão

We decided to build a garden on the roof-top terrace of our building. Even though the task of ordering, carrying and putting the bricks together with cement and mortar seems like a trivial task, it turned out to be slightly more challenging than we expected. Carrying the bricks and the 30-kg bags of soil up the three sets of narrow stairs to the roof was pretty tiring, but that was only the first bit of the challenge.

The volunteers perfecting their building skills:

Because we had zero experience with any building related activities, the work that we thought would take us an hour, lasted from noon until late at night. We were pretty sceptical about whether our garden structure was going to hold, but when we checked up on it after a few days, all the bricks were still holding together!

After a few days, however, we realised that the heavy structure might be a bit too much for our roof-top terrace to hold, especially when the soil gets wet, so we decided to change our plans a bit and create a hanging garden instead.

While one part of the volunteers was busy building the garden, Giselle was teaching on the floor bellow

On Monday we did a field trip to the cinema with our adult students 

We took them to the cinema to watch "the Maleficent". Even though some of the students were a bit sceptical about going to see a Disney movie, most of them enjoyed it in the end.

The volunteers with their adult students at the cinema

Our school will be open during the period of the World Cup and our English lessons will continue.

Rocinha Turning Yellow and Green

There is less than a week to the start of the World Cup and the whole city of Rio is turning into Brazil's national colours. Rocinha is no exception. There is practically no bar, restaurant or main street without the Brazilian flag or at least some yellow-green-blue decorations.

A local supermarket 

One of the Travessas leading to Via Apia

A local clothes store

Nova Rocinha

Ignored by the government, Rocinha was responsible for it's own development for many decades. Resident Associations eventually formed and took over the job of the government, drug gangs replaced the police force and some NGO's helped out the few schools located within the favela. This history formed a community distinctly different from the rest of Rio's Zona Sul, or as a matter of fact, any other place I've been lucky enough to spend some time in. 

The obvious differences are the crazy amount of power cables across the streets, the never ending labyrinth of becos (allies) on both sides of the main roads and the obvious lack of infrastructure. Some differences also reach beyond the surface. People here build their own houses, fix their motorbikes by themselves and clean the part of the road in front of their house. Unlike anywhere else, this community looks after herself instead of waiting for help from the outside.

Still, there are things which residents struggle to provide. Education is a perfect example for this. Most of the residents being immigrants from the Brazilian Northeast, a poor region dominated by agriculture, there is a lack of formally educated people.

How motivated they are to learn new things, if they have the opportunity, is proven to me by my students in every single lesson. Not only are they grateful for every piece of information they receive during the lesson, they frequently ask for additional exercises and homework(!). It is a pleasure teaching students with such a high degree of motivation!

Damian Durrer, Resident Volunteer