Tuesday, December 23rd

The kite was small and designed with the words “Tropa de Elite”.  I walked from the juice stand, across the street, and into the alleyway that led to the institute.  The child carrying the kite was seven years old, and running playfully in front of me.  His rubber sandals were too big, slowing him down and keeping me right behind him.  He led me all the way to the institute door, the kite’s words dancing in my view, and their significance pressing into my mind.

 

Amir, the Iranian born Swedish boxer told me the story.  “I was in the van coming home to Rocinha at 5am yesterday morning.  The police barricaded the road, and all the van passengers were made to lay face down on the road.  The inspection took thirty minutes and they searched everything.  We were cleared to continue and I got a motortaxi from the bottom of Rocinha to take me to the top.  [Amir lives in Cachopa, an area located close to the traffickers]  At Cachopa, the motortaxi driver did not stop to let me off; he slowed down enough for me to jump off.  He heard the military police helicopter above, and saw the weapons pointed down.  Something like two hundred traffickers, all with guns pointed to the sky aimed at the helicopter.  A young trafficker recognized me, ran over to me and to tell me to get out of here.  I began running to my home and then all hell broke loose.  I heard bullets literally ‘whizzing’ by and ricocheting in all directions.  It was like the movies.  I made it inside and took cover.” 

 

I came to Rocinha this same morning to begin preparations for my physical training class.  There was a big storm around midnight the night before and the streets were muddy.  Roosters were crowing from small metal cages, reminding me that Rocinha actually used to be a farm.   The garbage-filled aqueduct that carries dirty water out of Rocinha was roaring.  I met two lifeless bodies of decent sized rats, victims of last night’s storm.  I looked to my left and a young boy was riding a plastic tricycle.  It was just like the one I had when I was little.  He stopped and stood up, taking a look at his next path of travel.  He did not have any pants or underwear on; I thought this was quite unusual as the cold plastic must have been uncomfortable on the behind.  Just past this child was a heaping mound of garbage, wet from the rain and smelling terribly.  Later in the day I would watch a bulldozer move the heap around, and lift it into a truck.  This morning I went about my business in my usual manner, and did not hear anything about the previous nights clash between the police and the local gang.  The following day I read about it on page 12. 

 

 

“Tropa de Elite” is a new semi-fictional book written by a sociologist and two former members of the BOPE.  The translated title is Elite Squad and the BOPE is the special operations of the military police in Rio de Janeiro.  The BOPE are trained well, are strictly offensive, and shoot first and ask questions later.  They use the best of the world’s military equipment and train as hard as the SEALs.  Once in a while I will catch a glimpse of them, usually in a black vehicle, with their famous logo of a skull with knives through it.  The hoods truly fear the BOPE, much more than the civilian police who are on the grease.  The movie “Tropa de Elite” is very famous in Brazil, in and out of the favelas.  Its account of the perverse underground dealings with all major players in Rio accurately portrays the tangled web of greed and political subterfuge.

 

I take the white vans around Rio, made popular because they are the cheapest form of transportation.  Looking like a modern, squared-off version of a VW van, they are designed to carry 16 passengers.  I have been on several rides wherein we easily had 21.  No air conditioning, vinyl seating, and Rio’s summer heat seem to accelerate the level of intimacy between the passengers.  When you suffer together, you feel closer, and by the time we reach Rocinha, the entire van has experienced severely humid conditions with limited air flow, constant contact by fellow passengers in all directions, almost constant near misses, shoddy brakes, and a continual dance of loading and offloading of passengers.  I am happy that I no longer receive unusual looks from passengers, confused by the presence of blond hair and blue eyes on a van bound for Rocinha.  I realize now that it wasn’t my strange looks that brought attention; I was subcommunicating fear. 

 

The vans that crisscross Rio each have a fee collector that works the door.  The fee collector today was a young boy, barely strong enough to work the door.  He wore a red T-shirt and his bright white Adidas hat was on backwards.  He was mulatto and his long hair curled out the back of his hat.  His way was not the way of your typical pre-teen.  He carried the cash, folded in half, as if he had been doing this for decades.  He was demanding with the passage fee, though as I watched I felt he took a little longer counting correct change.  He must have fought his way into this job.  He ran this van as if he had something to prove.  His eyes were stern and cold, and you knew for him that childhood never really happened.

 

Luciano startled me as I was checking my email at the institute.  We had just finished the kids Christmas party upstairs.  We had decorated and set up food and drinks.  I had gone shopping a few weeks before for some of the gifts but someone else had wrapped them.  All the gifts were laid underneath a paper Christmas tree taped to the wall.  For several hours everyone talked and ate.  The music was turned up and the girls began dance routines.  Another American volunteer seeing my discomfort, tried to console me,“yeah, I remember the first time I saw ten year olds dancing like strippers to the delight of their parents.”  This was the culture, the truth was the girls did not connect the dancing to the act, they were just having fun by imitating, I hoped.  There was a three year-old girl in a pink dress standing with us; she shared our desire to finish the dancing and get on with the presents, and this fact she did not hide.  Post-party I turned around from the computer to see Luciano.  I had been fully engaged with one of those stupid forward emails, something about a teacher and her student, but it was too late when Luciano surprised me, I had to feint sickness for watery eyes.  At that precise moment the three year old with the pink dress walked by.  She stopped, held out her new present with a smile and beaming pride, and then walked out quietly into the night.  I recognized the gift as one I picked out a few weeks earlier.  A plastic turtle that you could disassemble and build again like a puzzle. 

 

My first physical training classes have begun.  I am adapting to a new set of clientele, much different from Marines and Vanderbilt NROTC all-stars.  However, I will keep the intensity level high.  They come to the class because I am a Marine, they have heard, and I will give them the intensity that they may not want but will keep them coming back.  The reader should picture circuit training with medicine balls, kettlebells, pull-ups, blasting music, and yes, a whistle.  The stretch routine is complicated for them, so we do it the exact same way every time.  The first two times were rough, but on the third time I hid my pleasure when one of the students corrected the other, who was not in the correct position. This is exactly what I wanted, a shared culture of correctness.   Already they are beginning to instinctively move to the next stretch position without command.  One day they will be able to lead each other when I am gone. The series I present for each workout is different, but always challenging.  We end with hands in the middle for our usual post-workout cheer, “força e honra”, in Portuguese, strength and honor. 

 

 

 

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

 - Seneca

 

The first two days in the desert of Southern Utah were an exercise in mental management.  New Age spiritualists would call it a cleansing of the soul.  I prefer the less abstract.   The lead instructor from the desert survival school had given us a briefing prior to stepping off, “stop thinking about what’s next, your instructors will never answer.  And always, always, contrast down.”  We had one Nalgene bottle of water and a knife as our only pieces of useful gear.  To say we “walked” through the desert would be incorrect.  We trudged.  The next water source and meal were constantly re-entering the mind.  Learning to manage the mind is like trying to tame a mustang.  A source of water was found in a canyon and we learned that drinking water teeming with mosquito larvae was safe.  We were only a few days into the course and the mental scrubbing was beginning to create an awareness of the present moment and revealing the narrow margin by which you are sustained.  We had reached the high desert mountains by the fourth day.  I was sitting on a rock next to a large mountain lake and I wrote down my question, ‘why is it that when you have little, you are grateful, and when you live in abundance you are annoyed?’