Before there was the oh-so-famous samba, there was the jongo, which is an African “belly-bumping” (umbigada) dance that can be traced back to a Bantu people of modern-day Angola. The belly-bump, in Kimbundu (a Bantu language), is known as the “semba“, which is where the word “samba” comes from.

While for both religious and entertainment purposes, there is also a more magical side to the Jongo. The bonfire serves not only to tighten the skins on their drums but also to illuminate the spirits of their ancestors. The drums are considered consecrated as if they were ancestors themselves of the community. The circular dance with a couple in the middle invokes fertility and the rich metaphors used in their “pontos” (short and easy to remember verses) are understood only by those who are jongueiros, or jongo participants. The uncertainty in the meaning also serves to keep the rythym (“tava durumindu, cangoma me chamô / tava durumindu, cangoma me chamô / disse levanta povo, cativeiro já cabô”).

Within communities where jongo is practiced, the elder jongueiros, known as “jongueiros cumba“, are respected for their knowledge and power. Metaphors used in the dance attest to their wise nature, such as one that says an elder once planted a banana tree on the night of a party and by the morning it was full of bananas, ready to eat.

Historical research shows that the Jongo was used as a way to maintain traditions of African cultures that spoke any one of the 400 Bantu languages. It is believed that these practices aided, both organizationally and communicatively, in the resistance against slavery. Even to this day, the jongo is practiced in many of the cities where it initially took root here in Brazil, such as in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

From the 1970′s and onward, there has been a resurgence of the jongo, especially in Rio de Janeiro. By the mid-1990′s, the First Meeting of Jongueiros was created and since then it has continued to occur every year, attracting over 1,000 jongo practicioners per event in more recent years.

Check out the videos (in Portuguese) below for a better idea of what the jongo looks like!

Açaí, just like anything in excess, can be bad for your health. Is that stopping me from having it every day? No. I guess that means I’m on an açaí diet. If you are one of the people who still don’t know what this chocolaty blueberry type fruit is, let me explain.

Açaí comes from a palm tree grown in the Amazon known as the açaizeiro. People climb the trees to get to the fruit and can walk away with almost 1,000 berries. Eat it straight away and you’ll find it to be very tart and hard on the teeth since 80% of the berry consists of the seed. The skins are what eventually gets processed and the end product is nothing like what you may know as “Rio style açaí”, ie. “açaí na tigela” (açaí in a bowl). If you’ve ever been to the Amazon region, you know what I’m talking about.

(açaí with fried fish)

Ask for the purpley goodness up north and what you’ll find put in front of you is a warm, rather tasteless soup of sorts, often accompanied by farofa, tapioca or even, yes…fried fish. Believe it or not, this is the real açaí and many people there gobble the stuff up like there’s no tomorrow. My only savior in the Amazon was an ice-cream shop called Cairu where I paid a premium to get my hands (and taste buds) on the good stuff.

Head back to the Brazilian Southeast and you’ll find the açaí there is worlds away from the soupy stuff found in places like Belém. Why the difference in taste? Well, my best guess is that living in a beach culture, no one wanted something warm on a hot day. Add some bananas and some guaraná to the mix, chill it, and what you’ve got is a recipe for success. I have yet to taste anything better.

Unfortunately for people outside Brazil, and this includes my fellow Americans, anything labeled “açaí” there falls short in taste. This is partly due to the odd addition of apples in the blending process and perhaps partly due to some sort of different production process for US-bound berries. The closest I found was an ice-cream by Sambazon that used to be sold in Whole Foods but last I checked they stopped carrying it.

I could go on about how good açaí is, but it’s hard to think straight when there’s a supplier several doors down and I’m itching to get my fix.

By tomorrow, I’ll have been here one week. It’s hard to stop thinking about all the people I know who have told me countless times how dangerous favela life is. At best, these same people have come to a favela once, maybe twice, in their entire lives and just at night to go to a baile funk party. It’s incredible the things they tell me.

- “Smile a lot so they don’t think you are a snitch/spy.”

- “Don’t talk a lot about yourself with the locals.”

- “If women approach you, don’t engage them, they probably belong to a trafficker.”

I want to tell them all, “Look, I’m the one that shouldn’t know your culture and your language, yet I’m here living in one of the apparently scary neighborhoods where people speak your language and share your same general culture.” I’ve gone so far as to invite them all for a personal tour, but alas, they decline or go silent.

Little do they realize that despite Brazil being a country of smiling people, residents of the favela are a tad happier than most. Life is a buzz here and people are thankful for what they do have, rather than unhappy for the things they don’t yet have. It’s refreshing, to say the least. Being here makes me want to be out on the street instead of on my computer.

Over the last several days, I’ve taken every new route I can find through the favela. I’ve gotten lost for a few minutes but most alleyways here lead somewhere and they all either go up or down, eventually pouring out onto a main street. Sometimes I just follow the noise and when it’s distant I know I’m deep in the maze. Other times, I just follow the people as they dart through their own “backyard”.

Where else can you go where people you have just met offer you help to find a place to live or food when you are hungry? It goes further than that. The people I’ve met are either interested or active in giving back to their community. One guy in particular happens to make what would be considered good money here and, among other things, he routinely donates bags of beans and rice to the families of the kids at the local daycare centers.

Like I said, I’ve only been here one week, so the case could be made that I still have a lot to learn. Regardless, what I’ve found here is rare and I hope the pacification process that is taking over many favelas will not ruin their unique cultures, though I’ve been told my a few people that things have gone stale since the police moved in. That’s interesting because I would never use any word like “stale” to describe life here.

I have a confession to make. While my recent article entitled “Between Two Favelas” was an accurate portrayal of exactly what the title suggests, it is far from living in a favela. For the last week, I’ve been doing just that, living in one of Rio’s 1,020 favelas (albeit, a pacified one). In a two-part series, I’d like to share what it’s like living here on a daily basis, starting with my first day.

I arrived here and got off the city bus with my bags in tow. To one side of the street, I saw armored tanks and men in black (BOPE) with very large guns and to the other side, residents going about their day, taking motorcycle taxis up the hill and buses out of the neighborhood and off to work.

As my luck would have it, my contact was waiting for me in another place and my cell phone literally just ran out of credits. There I was, in one of Latin America’s “most notorious” favelas, by myself and kind of wondering what exactly I was getting myself into. It was then that I asked myself, “What would Chuck Norris do?” So I started walking through the favela without much of a clue as to where I was going. I went through a long “tunnel” of stalls, full of people selling everything and anything, and when I saw the light of day again several minutes later, my contact was at the other end looking for the lost guy with all the bags.

We walked up the hill and in a few minutes I found myself almost out of breath, lugging my bags and trying to not be run over by the few cars, the hundreds of motorcycles and the endless stream of people going every which way. None of the residents on the street stopped to welcome me and they weren’t awaiting my arrival. No flowers, no parade. It was business as usual and if I couldn’t beat them at their own game, I was going to join them.

For the last little stretch of road, we took a van taxi to his place and I carried all my bags up the several flights of stairs, one step at a time, to where he lives. In favelas, you have two choices, go up or go down and if you aren’t the hiking type, you’ll probably only last a day.

After getting settled, we went to the local market and he introduced me to the employees. Despite the media that told me favela residents are bad people, these guys were all smiles, happy to meet me and keen on practicing their English. We stood and chatted for 30 minutes about this and that and towards the end, one of the guys was already inviting me to party with his friends at 2AM when the market closes. That was over 4 hours from then and when the time was approaching, I couldn’t muster up the energy to leave my bed, especially after a long day and a big move. I dozed off quickly, not even caring to complain about the funk music coming from down on the street.

While anyone can theoretically travel or live anywhere else, there are types of people I wouldn’t expect to see in certain countries. For instance, a Somali in Ecuador or a Nepalese in Estonia. In Brazil, one might be slightly confused to learn of the great-great grandchildren of Confederate soldiers in the city of Americana (São Paulo), to hear Hunsrückisch (a Western German dialect) in Rio Grande do Sul, or to see Japanese people speaking fluent Portuguese. While all three examples are worthy of further study, I’m going to take a look at the last on the list.

The glaring fact that pops out when it comes to the Nipo-brasileiros (Japanese-Brazilians) is that they make up the largest grouping of Japanese people outside of Japan. There are an estimated 1.5 million Japanese-Brazilians here, with over 80% of them residing in the state of São Paulo. Other states they were attracted to upon arrival were Paraná, Rio de Janeiro and Pará (as an aside, I lived near the Japanese community there).

The city of São Paulo itself has it’s own traditional neighborhood called Liberdade where one can find Japanese influences at every glance. These days, the neighborhood is mostly about Asian-oriented commerce but back before the turn of the 20th century, Liberdade was called the Sul da Sé District and it held a working-class population of Portuguese and Italian immigrants. As the Europeans began to move to other areas of the city, the Japanese immigrants started to move in.

And move in, they did. Due to the quantity of houses that held basements there, living “underground” meant lower rent. The living quarters were sufficient enough to house groups, thereby bringing the rent per person down even further. It was from there that the Japanese population got their foothold in a foreign land and culture.

Without their influence, Brazilians might not have been introduced to a variety of things so soon. Things like jiu-jitsu, better fishing and planting techniques, strawberries and caquis, and the sakerinha (caipirinha, but with sake…which I now want to try!).

Here’s a few other interesting tid-bits.

• According to linguists, the word “Japan” is a corruption of “Cipan” and most likely comes from the pronunciation given by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century.
• For Japanese-Brazilian offspring, each generation (up to 4) has it’s own denomination. Issei is 1st generation, nissei is 2nd, sansei is 3rd and yonsei is 4th. The inside joke is that nemsei (nem sei = I don’t even know) pertains to any generation thereafter.

A few years ago, 100 years of official Japanese immigration was celebrated. Here’s a report on the festivities.

I’m a self-confessed technology nerd and an Apple hipster (I liked them and used their products 15 years before they were “cool”). When I came to Rio, I brought my Macbook Air with me and that’s it. It was working great until I started my journey here and the sound stopped working, the battery lost its “juice” and it began to shutdown on its own. The random shutdowns were fixed by three benjamins (converters), one on top of the other, and a healthy use of tape. Since I work from my computer, my current problems have me searching for a replacement. I’m hoping an iPad 2 will do the trick but how do I go about getting one here?

Back in California, I had played with the iPad at the Apple store and didn’t think much of it. I type quite a bit and the virtual keyboard just didn’t sit right with me. Luckily, there are real keyboards that can work with the iPad 2 so that solves that. The price tag back home is US$499 (R$870) for the most basic version of the tablet, coming to around US$600 (R$1000) with tax and the keyboard. In Brazil, together with import taxes and any kind of markup, the same device goes for US$950 (R$1650) alone or US$1100 (R$1900) with a keyboard. Being rather broke, what that all means is I’m out of luck to the tune of US$600, not to mention the additional US$500 hike in “import taxes”, etc.

As for other options, one includes the person receiving the item to have a friend send them a US-bought computing device through the mail and hoping it doesn’t pass through Customs where they might get dinged and have to pay a few hundred dollars to have it released. I’ve heard that anything under US$500 can go through Customs without a problem as long as there’s a receipt that accompanies the item(s). From reading the Customs website, I see that items are taxed at 50% of the amount over US$500, meaning my US$600 investment would be taxed a mere US$50. If that’s correct, then whether it passes through Customs or not, it’s not that much of an issue.

(Correction: As I now understand it, via mail, anything over US$50 gets taxed and anything over US$500, brought in person, is taxed)

My second option would mean waiting until early 2012 when the iPad 2, which will be built domestically by Foxconn Brazil starting in December, will come to the masses here. When President Rousseff took office, one of her promises was to bring tablet devices to the local market at a more affordable price. After looking at the options, it was decided last spring that the iPad would be the best bet. Since then, there have been many hiccups in the process but the latest reports say production plans are back on track.

For both those that have bought their imported iPads at higher prices and those that will soon own the domestic version, I’m hoping the ease of transporting them around town and the lower cost will open up Brazil to the work-from-a-cafe culture that the US has had for several years. I’d love to do such a thing but unfortunately it makes a person stand out a little more than I feel comfortable with.

In the Zona Sul of Rio, some of my American friends have noticed recently that iPads are being used freely by passengers on the metro. Also, some of the Starbucks that have popped up around Rio have started to attract people (aka, table-tenants) who, for the price of a coffee, stay as long as possible. Last time I checked, at the Botafogo mall, the entire seating area was full, all with people typing away at their laptops and iPhones. Together with the coming of the Brazilian iPad, it’s a sign that the times are starting to change…well, at least in Rio de Janeiro.

Living here, it really feels like every other week there’s some sort of day off…either that, or there’s been an apocalypse (ie, everyone disappeared) and I didn’t get the note. The easiest way to tell there’s a holiday on a weekday is not to consult a calendar but to walk down the street. Virtually every shop will be closed and the neighborhood will resemble a ghost town. In fact, similar scenes can be found every weekend since Sundays are no different.

One might think that if they open up shop when their competition is closed, they’ll get all the potential business. Not so, though. On such days, customers are also hard to locate. So where do Brazilians go, then? Barbeques, beaches, bars, the house of a friend or relative? While I have yet to figure out where they go (there’s only 190 million of them to ask), knowing Brazilian culture, I can say I’m pretty sure they are simply enjoying themselves. What a concept!

The Brazilian calendar has eleven public holidays that everyone gets off from work or school. Depending on the state, one probably has another five added on (like in Rio), totaling sixteen days off. When the national and state holidays are combined, and one throws in weekends, it’s easy to see why a foreigner might feel like a loner on these days.

I’ve met many Brazilians in the US that were like working-machines, going from before sunup to after sundown on a regular basis. I met one guy in particular who slept 4 hours a night and worked the rest of the time, seven days a week, for years on end. If work ethic isn’t something that is picked up overnight, then Brazilians who leave Brazil are leaving with such an ethic in tow. For people that are really hard-working and entrepreneurial, how is it that they have such a laid-back culture?

After thinking the question through and coming back to it later, I remembered reading about a possible reason for the duality. If someone lives in a country that has a history of handing out unforeseen tomorrows, which is to say, where no one knows what will happen tomorrow, they might develop two strong, yet opposing needs (working a lot and playing a lot). Brazilians work hard because they know how to take advantage of the moment. And when there are days off, well, those moments are taken advantage of with the same amount of determination.

I live in between two favelas and I’d like to share what it’s like to live here. At no time have I felt like my life was in danger but I’m told it’s not smart to go walking at night where the favelas end and the “regular part” begins. In fact, once I was standing next to my then-girlfriend waiting for a late-night bus to drive by and she told me to keep vigilant and to not stand close to her so we don’t look like a couple. I suppose the thinking behind that is that one ‘target’ is easier than two. That being said, I’ve never felt threatened in the 12-13 months of my life I’ve spent here.

Unlike most ideas of favelas being violent places, living in or near one is one of the safer places to be. If any petty thief were to rob someone who lives here, he might not wake up tomorrow because no favela boss wants to attract the police or any extra attention. It is quite important that business (ie, drug trafficking) continues as normal and that the middle to high-income customers have a safe place to buy. I suppose this safety factor is one of the perks of favela life, both for said customers and for its residents.

There is one exception to the rule and that’s when one favela is trying to take over the other for more power, prestige and money. If that were to happen here, it’d be a little too NSFL (Not Safe For Life) for my liking. From what I’ve been told, such a scenario played itself out here 10 or 15 years ago. These days, Rio’s favelas are getting the UPP (Pacified Police Force) treatment and while that’s good for those favelas in particular, the risk is that other favelas will endure hightened struggles for power and control, thereby becoming not safe to live near.

As for my daily life and how the favelas up the street affect me, it’s mostly in the noise department, as I hinted upon in a previous article about sounds in Brazil. Mornings are owned by the local wildlife (birds) and the portable gas delivery men. Weekend nights fill my ears with funk music from the local bailes. The evenings, in most cases, bring about sound-only fireworks from the hills and ‘open mic night’ from makeshift evangelical churches while nights generally go to random gunfire (a few shots here or there, every other night). Best I can guess, they’re guns being fired into the air, on account of being told by locals that this area is pretty chill.

In terms of street life, there’s the oh-so-famous street corner, attracting people from near and far, young and old, drunk and sober, all seemingly happy folk. As I wrote about on my blog, I’ve never seen so many people, on a consistent basis, on one corner in my life. Night or day, that corner is chock-full. While I go for the local shops, it seems most people go for the conversation. The idea of making time to chat with the guy who sells the news or the guy who sells the bread is part of Brazil that I have yet to adopt. I just want to get in and out and perhaps that makes me more of a foreigner than my accent.

If you are looking to live outside the fancy parts of town and are in search of a more realistic environment, I’d recommend trying to find a place near a favela, at least for a few months. It’s a sure fire way to gain perspective and when people ask you if Brazil is just partying and going to the beach, you can tell them Brazil is not just an idea, it’s real life…and you’ve lived it.

For the last month, I’ve been on the lookout for rooms to rent at a reasonable price. Finding that middle ground is tough, especially when most people rent out their rooms for prices that are crazy-high or suspiciously-low. Living in Niterói, across the bay from Rio, should have its perks, in that it’s just far enough away to offer lower rent. Not so, I find.

Scouring over the half dozen rental sites, plus a few social networking sites, I see prices set at R$1,000 per month or more. Ok, so sometimes it’s a little less but not by much. On the sites, most renters require me to be a female, though I seem to be missing a chromosome for that. The same sites almost always ask for people who study or work outside the residence, which creates a problem for me since Brazil doesn’t have the kind of work-from-a-cafe culture that the US has…and I work from my laptop.

On the social sites I check, ads are placed every few days (or at least once a week), yet no one lists the price they are asking. I can’t make heads or tails of this practice because the price point is, um, kind of important. In frustration, I started my own practice of asking “how much?” on every ad, to know for the sake of knowing but also to make a point. Perhaps it’s like jelly beans in a jar. I just need to make a guess and if I’m correct they’ll rent it to me for free or at least for that price. For the few that do respond, they inevitably throw the R$1,000 price at me.

No matter what the price, there’s always extra costs to be added on. Sometimes that cost is entirely expected (gas, electricity, water) and other times it’s a surprise to the unsuspecting foreigner (the “condomínio” tax). Roughly-speaking, the condo tax is to pay for the security guard and the building’s upkeep, while potentially increasing the cost of renting by a hundred or three hundred reais. For example, if renting an apartment is R$500 (good luck in a big city), the condo tax is almost R$300.

The best way to beat the system (ie, the high price points) is to live at least an hour or two outside the big city or to move to a less popular big city…basically, to move out of Rio or São Paulo and go elsewhere. In my search, I found many room rentals in two capital cities, Belo Horizonte and Salvador, for between R$200 and R$450 per month. From living 2 hours outside of Rio once, as well as in Belém, I can say that is on par with what I paid previously. So for everyone who thinks Brazil is automatically cheaper to live in, it really just depends. Sticking with the candy-themed analogy I made earlier, perhaps jelly beans have nothing to do with it. Renting here can be more like a box of chocolates.

I have since found a place in Rocinha, through a friend and for a good price.

Far from any coastline, in Brazil’s Central-West, lies a proverbial gold-mine of beauty. Just in case such an allusion slips the visitor’s mind, the name of the city says it all: Bonito.

Located in Mato Grosso do Sul, near the border with Paraguay, the city lies within the valley of a plateau and is the self-proclaimed “capital of eco-tourism”. The ground is made principally of limestone, meaning the water from the rivers of the region passes through a natural filtering process, making it crystal clear.

For nature-lovers, Bonito has a little bit of everything, including: snorkeling, diving, rappelling, tree-top rope courses, light rafting and horseback riding. There are also natural spas, waterfalls and caves to visit (check out a small picture gallery here). The discerning tourist might also want to keep an eye open for fig trees in the region as there’s a chance of striking it rich. A local legend says that Paraguayan soldiers in the late 1800’s, on their way to fight in Brazil, hid gold under fig trees. Some even say the ghosts of those who never made it home roam about in search of their lost treasure.

With all that Bonito offers, and in order to preserve the natural beauty, one of the local laws limits the daily number of tourists that can take guided tours of the activities offered. Any type of visitation of the region’s main attractions requires a local guide accredited by EMBRATUR, Brazil’s official tourism board, so it may be beneficial to shop around for the best prices. Between December and March, one will find the most tourists and therefore the highest prices for hotel rooms and tours. On the flip side, this period is also during the wet season and therefore everything is greener, animals are out and about and the rivers are full.

If ease and comfort are what the visitor needs, there are ways to experience a lot of what the region provides just by visiting Praia da Figueira (and Parque das Cachoeiras). Admission varies depending on the season and on the number of activities one does but, in general, it doesn’t get too expensive.

No matter how the days unfold in Bonito, there’s something for everyone (as long as that “everyone” likes nature, of course). I imagine it’s best to try a little of everything in light of the fact that a direct roundtrip ticket from Rio de Janeiro to Campo Grande (the location of the nearest airport, 3 hours out) is around US$300 for a mid-October flight.