Lauren Bolinger

Senior, geography and Spanish

Bolinger

Photo by Douglas Engle

When we entered Santa Marta, the favela where we worked in Rio de Janeiro, I felt as if I was entering into a place I shouldn't be. That first day, I was more aware of the fact that I am a middle-class, English-speaking American than I have ever been in my life. But as our time in Santa Marta and our project (as well as my Portuguese proficiency) progressed, that feeling went away. The more time we spent in the community, the more people we got to know, the more they accepted us and allowed us to be a part of their lives. That in itself was probably one of the most rewarding aspects of our trip.

Getting to work with the local children was also great. They were so quick to befriend us the first day we met them at the cultural center, situated high atop Pico Dona Marta. After being there only an hour, they had grabbed each of us by the hand and were pulling us all over the building, so proud to show us the view of Christ the Redeemer, all the books in their library and the costumes for their upcoming play. I let them take pictures of each other with my digital camera and they had a blast, squealing each time the photo they had just shot appeared on the small LCD screen.

It wasn't always fun and games though, of course. It never is in a place like Santa Marta. There were days we had to leave because of tension between the police and the drug traffickers. One day, brief gunfire broke out. There were days when members of our group were frisked and searched by police. And the constant presence of drug traffickers and their lookout men, guns tucked into their Bermuda shorts and grenades strapped to their backpacks, was ... well, something else. After a while we got used to seeing these things, but we always had to remind ourselves to never feel too comfortable.

We met many fantastic people, who opened their homes and their lives to us, and who made the whole experience, every good and bad aspect, absolutely amazing. From the time our friend Gabriel (whose relatives owned one of the houses we were working at) took us on an afternoon-long hike to the Corcovado through the steep, bamboo forests of the Mata Atlantica, to the first time I saw a trafficker holding an AK-47; from the evening we spent at the community's June Festival, watching all the children perform upbeat dances and the residents come together as one, to the times we were forced to leave work early because of problems with the police. It was inspiring to see that perfection does exist even in the most imperfect of settings.

And in a place where so much is bad, it made me happy to think that we were a part of something good.

Related Links:

Planting seeds of hope

Josh Meyer's experience, in the first person

Marion Lloyd's Chronicle of Higher Education article