My Visit to Maré

Maré is a favela people forgot about. It doesn’t boast a scenic cityscape from the top of a hill, doesn’t have an aesthetic arrangement of stacked multi-colored homes, it doesn’t conjure an artistic dissonance between poetry and poverty. Maré mostly has only poverty.

Spread across a flat landscape, it is a compilation of 17 neighborhoods, one of the largest complexes of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. I first arrived after a rainstorm. The streets smelled like they were rotting, the sewers overflowing. It felt like many of the other communities I’ve been to in Latin America. This was Olaya. This was Callao. These were all the places that the boxers on my journey had lived. I walked through nine blocks of people mean mugging the shit out of me, but nothing more beyond that. When I first arrived in Rio, my friend Gilberto told me, “nobody will steal from you in Maré. It is the code of the favela.”

I stood awestruck at the doorstep of my destination. Fight for Peace, an organization that I’ve been in correspondence with for over four years. I’ve read all their annual reports, watched every media release, and used their videos in a workshop that I give every year at Franklin High School back in Seattle. I remember first stumbling across the organization while surfing the web in Bogotá thinking it was too good to be true: A gym planted in the middle of one of Rio’s most dangerous favelas aimed at using the sport of boxing to provide disenfranchised youth with more options in life. It was basically everything I’ve ever tried to communicate through my art embodied into a non-profit.

I kept the place in mind as I continued traveling, dropping the name whenever someone from the boxing scene would propose a similar idea. Lima. Bogotá. Nicaragua. People throughout the world could see the benefit of the sweet science. “Can you connect us with them?” they’d always ask. “One day,” I’d say. “One day I’ll work with them.”

Walking to the doors of the center was like walking onto a movie set. I stood outside the gates for a moment and took in a deep breath before going through the doors, greeted with huge smiles from everyone inside. I kept telling the staff that I recognized them from the videos online. To me they were celebrities. They all smiled shyly in return.

The one staff member who wasn’t so shy was the gym’s head coach, GB, a short Afro-Brazilian with a scruffy voice and workman like demeanor. His eyes scanned me up and down, trying to determine what to think. 

“What are you like, a middleweight?” 

“Welter.” 

He looked at me like he didn’t believe me. Shit, I didn’t believe myself. Welter was back when I was in shape. I have no idea where I stand now. 

One of the gym’s rising stars, Michel, walked through the doors. GB led him over to me and said, “Here, your new sparring partner. He’s a welter too.” Equipped with two giant-ass banana hands at the end of a pair of long, wiry arms and some freakish Gumbi-like flexibility, this cat could seriously fuck me up, and he oddly had the same name as my sister. 

But he flashed the kindest grin when I spoke one of the only three French phrases I knew. Michel had been here training in Maré for over a year since moving from Cameroon. I asked him if he ever thought about becoming a professional fighter. “Oh man, that’s like a dream,” he said with kiddish excitement. 

It made me think about his experience as an exchange student in Brazil. I wonder if he would talk about the beaches, the samba, the Sugar Loaf mountain, the Redeemer, if he would talk about late nights out in Copacabana or strolling on the beach in Ipanema. I wonder if outsiders would know about where he trains, the conditions people have to live in, if they know the other side of Brazil.

The academy is located two blocks from the dividing line between two of Rio’s largest drug factions: Comando Vermelho and Terceiro Comando. The surrounding buildings are peppered with bullet holes and a public school sits oddly in the middle of it all. Locally, it is referred to as the Gaza Strip. Not many NGOs would place themselves in the middle of that kind of situation.

Throughout boxing literature, it has been said in many variations that "the boxing is gym is where kids go to be safe."  The saying couldn't be more fitting now. When you wear the academy's t-shit around the neighborhood, it's like waving a banner of peace. You get a pass because people know that you are part of something, they know that you are trying to better yourself, and for the most part, human beings are generally supportive of seeing their communities excel. 

I feel like everything I’ve ever done for the past decade of my life has been for this moment. The writing, the research, the sparring, all of it. I was nearly brought to tears seeing this place in person for the first time. It is a negotiator for peace, casting a vote for something better in a world where so much has already been broken. 

Boxing saves lives. I've said it for years. This project, right here, does exactly that. I just need some time to show the world how. 

La Gloria

I love my new place. It’s ridiculous how amazing it is. Perfect size, perfect amenities. There’s a balcony overlooking the city, a cool breeze blowing through the windows at night. I have a shelf for my books and time to read them. There are chess boards engraved into the concrete tables sprinkled throughout the park outside my window and an organic farmer’s market comes a few steps from my apartment. I bought a loaf of gluten-free brown rice bread last Saturday. What. The. Fuck.

The only thing that I lack is a decent kitchen. I have jenky-ass hot plate and the apartment isn’t fitted for gas. There’s maybe enough room to hold a roll of paper towels and the kitchen counter doubles as the top of my mini-bar refrigerator. But I’m reminded that I once lived with someone in a dirt floor shack, and we made due with a two-burner electric stove and no fridge. In fact, she did it for nearly all her life. It’s strange that I thought of her here in Brazil, even stranger when I think about the name of this neighborhood.

“Onde voce mora?”

“Where do you live?”

“Eu moro na Gloria.”

“I live in the Glory.” 

This past weekend was actually the first time that I’ve spent alone since I’ve arrived in Brazil. The first week I had a roommate at the orientation in Sao Paulo. The second week I was Couchsurfing with whom I think is the Brazilian counterpart to my Spanish roommate, my spiritual guide for the last 6 years of my life. I can’t help but think that also wasn’t a coincidence.

I’m really enamored with this city. Everything about it speaks to my being. It’s like all the best parts of the best places I’ve been in my life mashed together into one city and I speak the language. But the novelty is beginning to wear off as I go deeper into my research. 

Today I came back from the university to which I thought was early in the day, but my hours were quickly consumed by writing real estate blogs, fucking around on Facebook, and preparing for my entry into the favela of Maré, the primary site of my research. I’m already beginning to see that my time here is finite. If I really want to get things done, I’ll have to focus. I’ll have to be alone.

Many people will claim that they are lone wolves but few actually are. It’s a path that’s much more glamorous to proclaim than to actually live. You have to do the frightening task of trusting yourself, and ignore most things said by other people because most people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. But on that same note, I don’t really either.

I didn’t sleep well the first few nights here on my own. Strange scenes of self-doubt woke me up at 5AM on a Saturday morning. I went for a run alongside the marina and watched the sunrise on the Rio horizon. Something at that moment told me that things would be okay. And I remember the last words Gloria said to me before I left her house in Nicaragua: “If you ever feel lonely, remember that I love you, wherever you are.”

I remember once thinking that difference between loneliness and aloneness is whether or not we know we are loved, that in those dark moments when we want to stab ourselves with self-hatred, we need to remember there is always someone out there wishing we were kinder to ourselves.

So although I’m surrounded by what I find to be paradise, I also know that I'll spend a lot of this time locked inside a room forced to deal with myself. But the love is there. The love to keep fighting against the normal, mundane drudgery of safety. That enticing, poisonous safety of life.  

And like Bukowski said, isolation is a gift. This is a chance, an opportunity to change, and I couldn’t be in a better place than living in "La Gloria."

Man go(e)s

Last August I wrote this story about a friend I made back in 2008. Wherever she is, I hope she's well.

She would never forget that look on his face. That hungry gaze in his eyes when he would move his hands in the places she was told never to let anyone touch. He slapped her hard when she resisted, pummeled her face until she submit. One time he busted her lip open and she had to tell the teachers at school that she fell down the stairs. By the teacher’s estimate, she fell down at least twice a month, sometimes more.

But with time it appeared that she finally learned how to climb down stairs as the bruises slowly disappeared. Now when he crept into her room at night, she’d lay motionless. Silent. The only sounds were his grunts, the heavy panting, and the light sniffling of tears back into her nose.

No one told her that fathers weren’t supposed to do that, but it always felt wrong to her from the beginning. The moment she grew old enough to earn her own money, she moved into a small house that her aunt owned on the outskirts of town.

But she wouldn’t settle there. She would go on a few adventures. One time, she even made it to the United States. She met a man and married him, even carried his child, but he ended up being just like her father. She forgot how to climb down stairs when she was with him too. She came back to her small house on the outskirts of town to remind herself how. She vowed to never again forget how because of a man.

Normally, she wouldn’t talk to men she met at dance clubs. She wouldn’t be sitting outside on a park bench chatting about her life with a stranger. But he’s a foreigner and she thinks foreigners are different. He explains to her that he’s been looking for a place to rent, but failed to find anything.

“I have a spare bed at my place,” she says. She’s surprised at the words that come out. His eyes are intrigued. “But my place is ugly,” she shies.

They pull up to a small house thirty minutes later. She undoes a flimsy lock and creaks open the corrugated sheet metal door. There is no carpet, no flooring, just dirt. She flips on the switch. There is a single 60-watt bulb lighting the entire place. He looks around. A two-burner hotplate supported by an old wooden table stands against the main wall. In the corner is a 12-inch television propped up by a cheaply made DVD player. There is a hammock stretched across from the entryway to the backdoor, and two thick garbage bags that separate the bedroom.

“Livable,” he thought to himself.

Behind the garbage bags are two beds. There is a thin mattress spread across each frame. Both are hard as a plank of wood.

“This is my bed. You can take that one,” she says, clearing the folded stack of clothes to a corner. He moves in closer and kisses her. She doesn’t resist. For the next two weeks, the one bed remains as a wardrobe.

He learns a few things as the days pass. Lizards scurry through the cracks of the concrete walls, there is a barbed wire clothesline outside in between the house and the outhouse, and the bare aluminum roofing make the mangoes that fall at night sound like gunshots. Each time one falls she clutches him tightly and trembles. The first time he’s scared too. “It’s only a mango,” she tells him. He asks her why she trembles if she already knows. “Noises in the dark frighten me,” she says.

He treats her differently than the other men in her life. She never forgets how to climb down stairs while she’s with him. She feels safe, safe enough to eventually stop trembling when the mangoes fall. Then she remembers that he’s leaving.

They argue about it every morning like they’re a married couple. He doesn’t understand why she makes such a fuss over these small things. He’d be gone in a week. Enjoy the moment while it’s there. That’s how he lived.

“Imagine what it’s going to be like when I’m here by myself!” she screams at him.

He stands there and doesn’t know what to say.

On his last day he waits at the door with his bags packed. He asks for a final farewell hug. She dangles lazily on the hammock. She pretends like he isn’t even there, and continues to watch the telanovela blaring on the 12-inch screen. She’s making it easy for him. No messy goodbyes, no guilty conscious, just clean cut from something that never was.

He steps over the small concrete rise and moves out the door. She descends from her hammock and says one last thing to him before he leaves. She tells him that if he ever feels lonely to remember that she loves him, wherever he is. He says ‘thank you’ and that he loves her too. She turns around without a word and lets him disappear down the road.

She crawls back into bed and cuddles under a blanket. It is over 100 degrees with humidity. Moments of vague regret run through her mind. All these years. From the first man she ever knew to this man that just walked away, that familiar void, that same vacancy of meaning, was still there. She told herself she’d never let herself feel vulnerable, never let herself feel this way again. She risked it for a man, for what she thought was love. But he didn’t stay.

A mango crashes down on the roof in a loud clang and she trembles at the sound. She cringes into a ball and tries to sleep. Now, it is all a bit more unsure. The other men gave her reasons to leave, a reason to believe it was better to be on her own. It was easy. It was clear. But this one was nice. This one was sweet. But it was only that his poison was different. His poison just burned slower.

Ring the Bell

So far, Rio has treated me well. There are parts of the city that remind me of Colombia, across town the place feels like Spain: my two favorite places in the world. Throw in some Cuba and I’m home. 

I found a place sooner than I expected, the process was actually much less of a pain in the ass than I had anticipated; in fact, all of it has been quite serendipitous. I’m renting the former spot of renowned writer and tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw, and he wrote his book Narcisa: Lady of Our Ashes in that place. It's the only book that I've seen receive 5 stars after 115 reviews on Amazon. The guy is mad real and all heart. Plus he knew Charles fuckin’ Bukowski. Shit can’t get more synchronous than that. 

Last night I sat through a thunderstorm in that apartment. The thing is, I wasn’t supposed to be there. We were supposed to sign the leasing contract earlier in the day, but as things in the world go, I ended up there right before the storm. I sat there alone with a dying iPhone, sending out last messages to loved ones before I was only left with a pen, a pad, and my thoughts. 

There is an energy pulsing through the walls of this place. The book that I’ve been flirting with for nearly 5 years is trying to burst out of my chest, begging to be written. I expect to go insane at this small desk in the corner. I expect to lose myself in this storm and hopefully find myself again amongst all this chaos. 

But I have the right place, the right tools, the right people. I have the canvas to paint a masterpiece. I just need to believe. 

I can confront my demons here at this desk. Maybe I’ll win, maybe I’ll lose. Who knows. But I’m a live dog in this match and I trained damn hard to get here. This is my moment, this is my fight and I’m going in with my hands raised high.

I’m ready to go. Ring the bell. 

Thoughts of Ibiza in São Paulo

I’ve been in Sao Paulo for the last week, more or less living like a tourist at the Fulbright orientation. We have air-conditioned hotel rooms, attend city bus tours, our meals are comped at the hotel buffet. It’s not necessarily my style of travel, but after such a long hiatus from traveling, it has been probably the best transition into new surroundings. 

And the scholars. Jesus, the scholars. These are seriously some of the most brilliant minds I have ever met. It’s fucking ridiculous. From analyzing the effects of Chinese investment in Brazil to exploring the cultural currency of hair texture, these people have managed to develop a theory on damn near anything and have it make sense. People are doing projects on the open-source movement and I don’t even know what that is. I’ve connected with some wonderful minds, wishing that I had more time with them, but I’ll be honest. I didn’t always feel that way. 

If I had written this post a few days ago, I would have said I felt slighted, that there was too much ego and self-absorption floating around a room filled with the highest levels of self-accomplishment. I would have something about how intellect cannot surpass self-awareness, and at most times, it acts as a hindrance. 

The idea started when someone made a comment about Ibiza being nothing but a party destination, having nothing else to offer but drinks, drugs and massive trance parties. I mean, that kinda is true, but it’s not all that there is. Ibiza is a magical place; the party atmosphere consumes maybe 5% of the actual island. There is a significant indigenous population thriving on the other side and it was there I had my first sweat lodge experience, an experience that changed my life for the better.

I was ready to write off everyone who agreed with that comment about my beloved island, ready to jump to premature conclusions of people’s misunderstanding on the human experience. But I remembered what my friend Carolina had said to me before she brought me to the sweat lodge. I made a remark about there being a lack of connectedness in Ibiza, that I thought everyone seemed angry. She told me in response that if I saw that everyone around me was being antisocial, I was the antisocial one, that if everyone else appeared angry, that meant that I was an angry person. She said Ibiza was a powerful place; it had the ability to reflect our true nature.

I thought about that comment as I was busy conjuring assumptions in my mind that night in Sao Paulo. I thought about how if I felt others were slighting me, I was probably doing the same to them. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about a person if you’re willing to admit your faults and donate a smile every once in a while, and well truthfully, in 4 days, there’s really no way you begin to understand the complexity of another human being. 

This past week has more or less been an incubator coddling me before I set out on the actual journey. I already know the first few weeks living in Rio is going to be a giant pain in the ass. The heat, the obstacles of securing housing, and the impending sadness of the absence of those I love sinking deeper into my chest is not going to make for the best coming weeks. But I had some great people at the orientation prepare me for the next step, and truthfully, I’m lucky to have them on my side. I’ve worked through a lot of emotions, and found capacity to be a decent person. I think I'm ready to move on to the second stage. 

Back in the Ring

Perhaps it is silly for me to say that I feel old at 28 years of age, especially as I sit here preparing to board a plane to Brazil to start a 9 month journey in Rio de Janeiro. “Old” is probably the last feeling I should have, but for the last few days of my life, “old” is exactly how I’ve felt. 

I feel like a retired fighter going back into the ring, unsure if his chin can hold up to the same shots or if he still has the punch to carry him through a fight. He wonders about his movement, if he has enough youth in his legs. The first two usually stick around with a fighter; it’s the last one that fades with age. A boxer’s vehicle are his legs. They are what gets him from corner to corner, to set up combinations, to avoid danger. Legs are a key asset to prizefighting and they deteriorate with time. 

Veteran fighters facing off against a prospect are a reflection of how gracefully one has dealt with the trials of time and a test for those entering into a new stage. In those bouts, experience usually trumps youth, but I find myself awkwardly in the middle. Not enough under the belt to be veteran, but not young enough to continue making careless mistakes. Sometimes I wonder about my chances.

When I look back on my life, it’s strange, comical really. If one was to judge me based on my accomplishments alone, you would expect to find a completely different person. A gregarious adventurer conquering the world full of confidence and self-belief, excited at all opportunities for risk and change. But I’m really quite the opposite. I go to sleep early. I like to stay home and read. My biggest comfort in the world is to have someone hold me and tell me that I’m enough. It’s almost as if that’s all I ever wanted. 

It sounds strange to say this, even stupid to some, but I don’t want to leave. I’ve spent so much time searching the world for something, yet for the past three years, I’ve finally found a world where I felt at home. My best friend lived a block from me, and I spent every Thursday afternoon with talented writers. I finally felt like I understood something about family and about my place in it. And I’ve always maintained that I’ve said “I love you” three times in my life and only meant it once. Now that score can be upped to two and four. 

Friends, family, and love. Those were the only things I’ve ever seen keep communities together.

I’ve told people that I had plans in Brazil, things I wanted to accomplish, empires to build. But the likelihood of that actually happening is very slim; in fact, I’m not too sure that’s what I really want. Most likely this time will pass faster than I expect and I will try to return to a world that may no longer be there. I don’t know what this trip means to me, but I do think there is some part of me buried in Brazil and I’m on my way to dig it out. Let’s see how far these legs will take me. 

A Writing Assignment

*Today my writing teacher assigned us to write a short story in 4 minutes. We could choose between the topics of "tomato", "teeth," and "Sunday". I chose "teeth". This is what came out.

There is a line of thousands outside trying to get in. Most that show up are immigrants from places like Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. I flip through my pocket dictionary. How do I say things like, “cavities, gingivitis, extraction, root canal?" I ask myself.

The dentists provide three services: cleaning, fillings, and extractions. Anything else had to be done elsewhere. Anything else had to be paid for.

“The pain is back here,” one of them tells me.

I translate for the dentist. After a 30 second examination, the dentist says to me that he needs a root canal. They don’t do root canals, but they can take out the tooth.

I explain this to him. He asks for clarification. I translate to the dentist.

“Take it out or pay for a root canal,” the dentist says.

I translate back. He thinks for a bit.

“I think I’ll keep it. I don’t have many left,” he smiles.

There are maybe 6 teeth left in his mouth.

He gets up slowly. Having waited in 4 hours of lines, he goes home with nothing. He stands for a moment, then begins to walk away. The next patient sits down.