Touch down in Brazil

As my connecting flight from São Paulo arrived over Rio de Janeiro early on the morning of 7 May I spotted a small runway in amongst the concrete of a city that flows inland from the coast like a broken wave, filling every space on the plain and lapping the hills. The green around the Campos dos Afonsos airforce base stands out. With the characteristic hill behind it and the dual carriageway which could only be the Avenida Brasil beneath me, I realized I was flying over Marechal Hermes, the burrough where my mother-in-law Dona Maria lives and raised her 6 daughters and one son. The neighbouring burrough is Bento Ribero, famous as the home of Ronaldo, who scored eight goals in the 2002 world cup. My brother-in-law used to drink with Ronaldo’s father when they were both postmen.

I was in Brazil at the time of the world cup and reading the clichés in the on-line media about how Brazilian football is so strong because it is one of the few routes out of poverty prompted me to write a letter to the papers about my wife and her family (The Guardian, The Independent). Sonia’s parents came to Rio from countryside near Recife in the North East of the country, looking for a better life. Sonia, the youngest, managed to gain a place at Vassouras medical college. Her father, a naval officer, died soon after she began her studies and so her sisters helped to pay her way through. One became a solicitor, one a secondary school teacher, one set up her own nursery school, the fourth and fifth joined Petrobras, the parastatal oil company, one as an accountant, the other in human resources. Sonia’s brother is an x-ray technician. Football is a central part of life: my 2-year-old nephew, Guilherme, is already an ardent supporter of Flamengo, like the rest of the family (sadly, they are having a bad season this year). But education is the route out of poverty in Brazil as everywhere. Aside from the schools and private institutions, language and IT schools abound. The graffiti on the walls surrounding the urban railway line is not tagging or sloganeering, but advertising for lessons in one skill or other, if not promoting a business. In amongst the advertising on television are government promotions of its education grants: low income families (over 5 million are targeted) receive a monthly payment if their children attend school each day (as with other schemes, this is administered with hi-tech smart cards - see Bolsa Escola).

It was a hazy day, but it was possible to make out Christ in the distance perched upon Corcovado, looking down on the famous part of the city that clings to the coast. This is the city of Copacabana beach, where James Bond fought steel-toothed jaws on the cable car up to the Sugar Loaf. Of Ipanema, from where Tom Jobim’s girl was heading when he spied her passing by from his seat in a bar and immortalized her in the song made famous in English by Frank Sinatra. The plane descended over stinking rivers and favelas with bare footed children on dirt streets to land at Tom Jobim airport. As we taxied to the terminal I noticed military transport planes on the tarmac. I saw them again on that evening’s news as they had delivered an army contingent to help tackle the drug gangs that control the slums and outgun the conventional police.

In the airport duty free I bought the Calvin Klein perfume requested by a niece and was then reunited with Sonia and a sister who whisked me away along the same Avenida Brasil just seen from the air to a family gathering to celebrate my birthday.

Seven years before, Sonia and I had met in Guatemala where campaigners from around the world gathered to strategise over tackling the marketing malpractice of transnational baby food companies. Sonia was coordinating the Brazilian member of the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) and I was working for Baby Milk Action, the UK member, which coordinates the Nestle boycott. The results of IBFAN’s latest monitoring project were launched in Guatemala city, showing Nestle once again to be the worst of the companies when it comes to violating marketing requirements adopted by the World Health Assembly. As I would learn, Brazil is setting an example to the world in implementing the marketing requirements in legislation, stopping the malpractice and reversing the decline in breastfeeding. As luck would have it, Sonia came to England a couple of months later to study English in Coventry, a short coach ride away from Cambridge. We will be reunited with IBFAN friends in Brasilia next week at the International Milk Bank Conference, where I am due to make a couple of presentations.

Sunday was mothers’ day in Brazil and another family gathering and opportunity to catch up. With twenty people, most of them speaking at once, it was also a good opportunity to brush up my Portuguese.