Good news... bad news...

Well this is official now. The process for our permanents visas is finally being processed following many delays.

In the end we have to go back to the UK to pick them up at the Brazil embassy. We were thinking to fly off soon… but then!

Last Saturday we took our adopted puppy to a vet to start his vaccinations. It’s only the 3^rd vet he sees in 3 weeks! Anyhow, now we have an explanation for his increasing spams: Distemper (Called cinomose here).  We wait for the full blood test for more on that. The blood analysis also revealed he had a secondary infection following ticks bites. He is a mess.

We started him on a severe treatment, which includes a full range of drugs and vitamins and daily injections. Every day I have to drag him across most of Copacabana to the closest vet stocking it for a jab!  The injections leave him crippled in pain for several hours. I wanted to stop these but further research and talks to the vet convinced me it is the right thing to do. Today he had a day off and tomorrow I will try another painkiller with the injection. Hope it will be better.

The outlook is not great but our Scruffy is in good shape (with the exception of the spams) and we keep hope that he may pull through, although the vet told us the odds are against us on that one. He’s got a truly nasty virus!

So, with all that we cannot leave him; and also even if he starts getting better, without vaccinations, we cannot leave him in a Dog Hotel. However we have to pick up the Visas soon….

We will see what happens in the next few days. On Saturday we should know if he is still having Distemper or if he had it and showing only neurological damage (via the spams).

In 3 more weeks he will be done with most of the treatment. So the last solution for us would be to hire a”Dog-nanny”! Basically find someone to stay in our flat with the dog for the 10 days we will be away!

Oh well we still have few weeks to see how things go! We remain optimistic that Scruffy can make it!

I have finished my advance Portuguese class (since last Friday) so I can spend all my time looking after him.

Friday is Alistair's birthday, but with all that I have not been able to find time to get him a present! Planning to do this tomorrow after I come back from the vet.  Maybe I will have a look around Uruguainas tube station. There are lots of shops and a market selling anything at decent prices, or so I was told! SO I want to investigate that! I have to find a good copy of a Botafogo football shirt for Alistair!

I would also like to explore more the centre during the week now I am off school. But I cannot leave the dog alone for long at the moment.  

Meanwhile, our container with all our stuff is still in the UK. Once we get the permanent visas, it will be released and we can hope for it to arrive about 6 to 8 weeks later. So if we get to the UK by end of October, it means the container may turn up in Rio about end of the year, the worst possible time.

I can’t see how we could get our stuff released by custom until after Carnaval. My most optimistic date is for early March.  If lucky! Customs here like to take their time to release stuff.

Few amusing anecdotes on that!

Last year a big (huge, massive!) public owned company imported a piece a machinery (small, could fit easily in a suitcase!). It has been stuck with custom for at least 7 or 8 months now! Why they did not smuggle it in a suitcase, I ask! ;) – especially as they are desperate for it!

Another big piece of machinery was also imported by (again!) a big public owned company, 2 years ago, worth over 2m pounds. Again, it has been retained in Customs for ever. The last they heard about it, someone was trying to sell it on eBay. There was no bidder!

It is impressive to see civil servants working so hard against PUBLIC owned companies! Oh well not my country but I hear many of those tales and although I find them amusing, it does not bid well for the future development of Brazil. Either severe reform has to be made across the entire civil servants system or the country, with the help of computers, will end up in a complete stand still through dreadful red tape. I say no more….

Tales from Rio

This is the stories I have been told by various cariocas, and it is so interesting to understand the favelas and how it all happened that I decided to write it down! I may be wrong so feel free to correct!

In the 60s & 70s, during the Generals dictatorship, those guys had the brilliant idea of putting common criminals mixed with political prisoners, in Ilha Grande, which used to be a big jail. They hoped that the political prisoners would be killed by the criminals…. Well, as usual the law of unintended consequences applied! What really happened was that these political criminals mixed with the local thieves and murderers and started spreading their communist/socialist ideas within the favela people.

When the dictatorship eventually came to an end, the political prisoners were released. Those guys then took refuge in the favelas where thieves and criminals were usually coming from, and  they started setting them as “socialist” states within the state. Then came the discovery that drug money would be a great source of funding.   As a result nowadays there are 2 big Traficant groups: one called the Comando Vermelho (red commando). I cannot remember the name of the other faction.  In any case favelas are controlled by one or the other.

If you live in a favela you will never be victim of crime. Petty crime, theft etc  is dealt by the drug lords… it usually involves a bullet on someone’s head… hence  a big incentive, you don’t rob your neighbour! Also the commando controlling a favela would provide lots of freebies for the locals: cable TV,  if you need money for medical treatment you would go to your local drug lord who would give you the money for treatment, etc… 

During the pacification of the Complexo El Alemao (circa 400,000 people live there) the police found about 4000 stolen motorcycles, left in streets of the complex (which include various favelas) for the locals to use.

The other side of the coin is that if one of the Traficant asks you to do something for them, you comply, you don’t argue with a guy who carries a gun!  This puts people, who live in favelas and have honest jobs, into an odd situation.  

Many cops live in favelas too, because their salary is so poor that they cannot afford to live elsewhere. This is very dangerous for them as if the local drug lords find out, they would be killed. As a result they would not even dare to wash and dry they uniform at home. Obviously, outside family members no one knows what job they do. It’s insane!

One of our teachers told us this story which happened few years ago.  She lives near to a favela, in the north of the city. Actually the favela starts at the end of her street. One Friday night, one Traficant faction invaded the favela which was controlled by the opposite group. They wanted to take control of the favela and the income from drug traffic that comes with it. The war started at midnight and continued until 8am. My friend was staying well away from windows as she could see bullets throughout the night. People from the favela, who had been going out on  Friday evening, just slept on her street and waited, as they could not enter the favela and go home!  The police was just waiting, very happy that the drug lords were killing each other. Eventually at 8am the BOPE arrived. These are the Special Forces. Within 2 minutes the war was over. Mainly because the BOPE just shoot to kill and ask questions after!  That is the reputation anyway.

Now this is just stories I hear and I find interesting.  However nowadays I don’t think that Rio is more dangerous than many other big towns. The big shoot outs occurs between drug Traficants  as it does in London and many other big towns. Unless you get involved with that sort of crowd,  this is just the sort of thing you read in the newspapers.

My friend, the one who live next to a favela, tells me that it is actually very safe for her to walk around even at night, because crime is not tolerated within and next to the favela! I know of one French girl who takes Capoeira lessons in a favela which apparently is not pacified yet. She goes there in the evening and tells me it’s very quiet.   

Locals have mixed feeling about the pacification because they lose all the help that the traficants provided and this is not replaced by the government social programs. Also the pacification itself can be very heavy handed. Apparently the BOPE was shooting at traficants from helicopters or even from the streets during the pacification of the Complexo de Alemao. Mind you the traficants have so much weaponry that even the police don’t have the sophisticated stuff that the drug lords can afford, including rocket launchers!  I was told that many mothers in Complexo Alemao, were so worried during the pacification that they took their teenage sons (involved with the drug lords I presume) to the police to be arrested because they were so afraid that the boys would be shot down instead!

On a slightly lighter note, when Amy Winehouse came to Rio, she stayed in a Hotel in the favela Santa Teresa. Apparently, just in front of that hotel is another favela where you can buy the best cocaine in town! You can draw your own conclusions… I said nothing!

That’s all for now! My Portuguese lessons and the puppy are keeping me rather busy! I leave you with few pictures:

Churrasco (=BBQ)at Thiago's house in Niteroi with his wonderful family!

BBQs in Brazil are AMAZING!

And of course more pictures of Scruffy:

We adopted a dog...

We went to Suipa yesterday as we were thinking to adopt a dog and wanted to have a look at the process of adoption. Since our cat died last year (she was over 20 year old) we missed her so much and wanted a pet.
So we went to the local Animal Shelter located in Benfica ... and came out with a puppy! Unexpected but hard not to.

Suipa compound is a grim place but they do a tremendous job. They have over 3000 dogs and many cats too.

We were given sort of VIP treatment and given the dog, getting the Vet coming out of his clinic to check out the dog so we would not wait. Really kind people working there. If you can spare few reais I would encourage anyone to make a donation. Or even better, get there and adopt one of their abandoned pets, if you can!

For now, just a couple of photos of our new family member. This is Scruffy, about 3 or 4 months old, of unknown origin: