What's it like in Rio?
“So what are you exactly doing down there?”
And…
“Is it unsafe?”
Are the two questions coming at me the most when I tell people I’ll be moving to a favela in Rio de Janeiro. I also get puzzled looks like, what the heck is a favela, and how good is your Spanish? So here is a quick Brazil/favela overview and a delightful video sandwich of sorts bringing to life what exactly is a favela, is it safe and what is a digital nomad and co-living?
When the opportunity came in 2016 to do an internship in Rio de Janeiro, I had no idea where it was in Brazil. I knew it was a Portuguese speaking country, and I assumed (to my chagrin) that must be just like Spanish, but I did not know that Rio de Janeiro was a city on a coastline. Not any coastline, because Lord knows Oregon has a “coast” but definitely not a “beach”, but Rio’s coastline is on some other level of spectacular. The whole city stretches vertically hugging the white beaches that creep onto land and then straight up into lush tropical hillsides. The topography might be similar to Hawaii or parts of Thailand in the way it provides both water playground and equally urban hillsides wrought with jungle hiking trails and rock faces for epic climbing. Rio is actually home to the world’s two largest urban forests, and Latin America’s longest ciclovia, which spans the length of the city’s coastline. The beauty of the people in Rio is a testament to the amount of physical fitness you can partake in. The whole city is “sexy catholic” as my boss would describe.
At the time of considering coming to Rio I was a University of Oregon student and looking at internships. The promo video for “Favela Experience” showed a lot of young people eating together, exploring the hillside streets, looking over the scenic rooftop view onto the beach, kind of like a surfers dream. I don’t surf (yet) but am obsessed with warm climates. Lived in Miami for 5 years and would go back in a heartbeat. But Rio was Miami on steroids. It was the unsterilized and Americanized version. I was in. So despite countless horrific YouTube videos of pick pockets and gun violence friends shared with me, I went. You can read about my first 48 hours in Rio in my post “Lets get Wild”. Flying into a favela on New Years Eve, and being embraced by the community with overwhelming love and hospitality, set the bar for my experience living and working in Rio. Love, so much love. And in the states, we often forget the residual love that you experience when living tightly with others, when your neighbor shares your power and water source and if one goes out its up to you and your ten other neighbors to fix it. That is the lived reality there. We have essentially created a co-living space in a favela, which inherently practices amplified co-living.
So what is co-living and what the heck is a favela? For that, the videos. Below first and foremost is a video by Vox news on what its like in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. I share this to not sugar coat that yes it is magical living in community, in a space that has been essentially ignored by the government and thus creates it own, but that also creates room for drug trade. Before watching please keep in mind that when I say drug lords and cops, in Brazil those are largely separated by race, and both carry guns and sometimes the drug lord, actually a lot of times the drug lord, will be the protector of the favela community because he or she lives and works there. That has been one of the most difficult but rewarding aspects of this work, breaking down deeply seeded racism, stereotyping and belief systems. So enjoy the first of two:
So now that you have an idea of what a favela is, what do we do there?
When I started at Favela Experience (FavEx) it was just after the 2016 Summer Olympics. FavEx was a hostel and social impact tourism company but after the Olympics saturated the market for hostels, hotels, and home stays, we had to change our business model- enter the digital nomad. My task going into my 2017 internship was to connect our hostel with digital nomad experience providers- Remote Life, Remote Year, Surf Office etc. We re-branded our space to Nova Era Co-Living and made improvements on the internet and accommodations to hit a different market, moving away from the backpacker, and toward attracting the digital nomad, the millennial who can travel anywhere while working on their laptop, but still craves a sense of community.
When I returned to Eugene in the summer of 2017 to continue my work for the City of Eugene organizing community events, I continued to work remotely for Nova Era building international partnerships. In Eugene I was living in, and managing an Airbnb, so my entire life had become digital, global and always in constant flow. I was co-living. A phenomena poor and young people have done forever but now given a name and trending hard. So hard, especially with the millennials we’ve re-branded our flavor of accommodation in Rio as Nova Era co-living and co-working and this year with a partnership with Co-Liv (used to be Pure House lab) we are creating a sustainable model for co-living in the favela the integrates traveling digital nomads with locals while inhibiting gentrification. Why? And what is co-living? For that video number two in our video sandwich, this one made me cry y’all. Co-liv made this lil film to show just how imperative co-living is, enjoy:
The last video is what happens when you mix co-living, digital nomads and the favela. A phenomenal combination of arts, innovation and tech. But for that you will have to wait for tomorrow’s post!
