"Fragmentos de Santa Teresa"

Esse foi o assunto do email que acabei de receber do Luke, um amigo inglês do mestrado que acabou de chegar ao Rio (mais precisamente a Santa Teresa) para o trabalho de campo para a dissertação. Para quem vai morar lá por pouco mais de um mês, nada como a experiência de ouvir as críticas de um taxista durante toda a viagem para casa. Apesar da dissertação dele não ser sobre Santa Teresa, o field work não poderia ter começado melhor.

When I tell him I want to go to Santa Teresa, he grimaces, and looks as if I have just asked him to inspect my shit for worms.
Err Rua Aurea, a conhece?
Long pause. No I don´t know it. I don´t know any roads there
Um perhaps you have a map?
Why do you want to go there? Are you staying with a friend? Its so ugly, so dirty, puro favela, you just have to walk two blocks and you`re in the wrong part of town, why don´t you go to the Zona Sul, not that ugly place, you know how many times I`ve been there?
I don`t know, once?
That´s right. Once was enough to know I never want to return....
and so begins the taxi driver´s 20 minute monologue of misery (punctuated by diplomatic moments in which he tells me It´s not his beach = not his cup of tea, and each to their own hammock and so on), either way at the end I am dissatisfied with my decision to stay there, questioning my judgement, thinking I`ll look elsewhere after a day or two, somewhere safer, more polished, neat,clean...
As we approach the hill which demarcates the neighbourhood I ask if the adjoining area we´re in is Lapa
That´s right. Another bloody horrible place. Dirty, ugly, even the women are more ugly here than other parts of town
We climb the steep cobbled streets and pull up outside the beautiful turn of the century house in which I will stay, we unload my bags and he walks to his car without so much as a goodbye, then zooms off to his unhappy wife in his unhappy home in unhappy street, unhappyville, feeling unhappy.
I meet Dona Rosa, the lovely maid, and sink in to a deep sleep on synthetic sheets, enjoying the fact that my skin is exposed to the muggy air....I don´t need to wear pyjama bottoms, I could but I don´t hee hee...sleep is busy and thoughts, information of the last few days rushing past, I am sweating it out, uncertainties, song lyrics, accomplishments, fears, the-same-over-and-over quick flash past and it hurts, but it is cathartic I wake, I eat, I stretch, I bathe in the sun in the verdant garden, plants which sit in the centrally heated comfort of my room in London are running about giddy in the sun outside all around me, home for hummingbirds and lizards, but still the thoughts, I`m not here, not now exercise to cultivate presence I focus on my body and narrate out loud stream of consiousness I note my trails of sweat, the patterns of light and the trajectory of a fly which fitfully settles on my arm, then leg
I start to arrive in the peaceful, art filled, dark wooded space in lovely, abundant Santa Teresa