When I was made aware of the upcoming bank holiday - Easter is not naturally engrained in my mental calendar - I envisaged a day of sleep, Netflix and maybe, at a push, a cheeky shower. Oh how wrong I was. Waking up to the sight of 11:00am on my phone quickly morphed into standing, awake, on the metro platform at 6:30am. I gave myself a slap but it was reality alright. Now why the f**k was I awake at such an hour on a bank holiday Friday? Not even a Monday, a FRIDAY. Well, it turns out the spirit of Easter is contagious. Not giving up anything for lent and claiming to be an atheist at any mentioning of religion is not enough to avoid the big man's powers, apparently.This wasn't a godly demand though - there were no arks or animals on the way - but an optional deed of goodwill. My friend Alex from work (top bloke, big shoutout) had invited me along to do some volunteering with an organisation, Teto, that he was a part of. The charity has relations with local favela communities, and organises to build houses for families that are most in need. It's a big organisation with a large army of enthusiastic volunteers, many of which turned up with semi-fresh faces willing to sacrifice their bank holiday Friday morning for the the sake of others. I also rocked up, and was immediately handed a Teto bib to wear. Sexy stuff.
I was part of a team of about 10 people that would painting and putting the final constructional touches on a brand new house in the middle of the community. As the alpha-male of the group I was quickly assigned the painting, as a handful of the guys lept up onto the roof of the house, like spider monkeys, and began doing all that DIY macho stuff. I picked up a paint brush and began to drag out my inner Picasso, and I mean drag. This part of my skill-set had been chucked away in Year 9 after lukewarm grades in Art and one too many offensive self-portraits.With a stroke of luck I was granted a little helper by the name of Mattheus. He was the son of the family that we were helping and, although shy at first, he quickly opened up to me and we struck up a sparky little friendship. He painted the lower parts of the house and consistently shouted at me to keep up the paint levels in the upper sector. In-between treating me as the Luke Shaw to his José Mourinho, we talked about his school life and argued about arithmetic. Unfortunately, I've been wrong all of these years in thinking that 3+3=6 when it was in fact 8. For anybody interested 4+4=9 and 6+6=10.
In all seriousness though, Mattheus was a complete joy to be around. He was articulate for his age and constantly had a smile on his face - especially as he poured half of our paint supply into the already full palette. The joys of being a kid, ey. My highlight of the day was when he recited an English song that he had learnt at school. Call me naïve, but English was the last thing that I had expected to hear on arrival to a favela, especially from a 6 year old. He asked me to speak in my natural tongue and was fascinated by my alienness. We struck up a bond and if there was anyone I wanted to be helping, it was him and his constantly beaming parents.The painting itself was less straight-forward that I expected. It was like Bear Grylls had teamed up with Grand Designs to see what I was made of. Being taller than the other members of the 'paint squad' (self-given name) I was expected to reach the top of the exterior, which was not easy. I found myself balancing on a bench on top of an uneven pile of piping and rubble, wobbling as I stretched to my maximum, and sprayed orange paint all over myself at ever stroke. Again, very sexy stuff. To paint the hidden side of the house, I then had to squeeze between the wall and the neighbouring 'structure', and take myself back into the Victorian chimneys. I brushed cheeks with some aggressively exposed nails that stuck out from the wall behind me. I felt like a much less cool, less badass Indiana Jones - but I got the job done.
Having left Mattheus and his family with their brand new - and 'immaculately' decorated - house, our team headed out of the community and back into the centre of the city for some celebratory beverages. Now this was what a bank holiday was all about. As Senna watched on, the other teams also arrived and a few drinks quickly became a bar that was swelling onto the street. I would say that about 60 people from Teto were there and, as the hours passed and the beers emptied, I met a lot of cool people and explained who I was and why I was there an estimated 786 times. There was also a 70 year old homeless guy draped in marijuana themed clothing that became my best mate for 20 minutes, as we shared life advice and i told him he was great. Looking back I think I was a little boozier than I initially suspected...
As a result there is literally nothing to say about Saturday, so I shall skip to Sunday. As a traditionally family-orientated time of year, I had predicted that Easter might be one of the tougher parts of being away from home. I was right, but not for the reason you might suspect. The blame for this is directly on the foreheads of 11 f*****g s***e b******s that turned up to Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon with the sole intention of making me put my fist through a wall. As Diego Costa gave the ball away for the 28,000th time whilst Chelsea were 2-0 down, I calculated how much the fine would be if I did damage my Air BnB property. I decided it would be too much and decided to transfer my frustration into a verbal machine gun. If my Nan is reading this, I'm glad you weren't there.Luckily there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it wasn't the FA Cup semi-final against Spurs next weekend (which looks oh so dark). I had a ticket for the biggest Brazilian game of the weekend. The semi-final of the Paulistão Championship between São Paulo FC and Corinthians at the former's cauldron-like Morumbi Stadium. My prior visit to see São Paulo had been my most dangerous visit to a football match, as violent mosh pits (yep, that's right) broke out on the steep upper tier that I occupied. The capacity that day was 14,000 against a nothing team. The capacity on Sunday was an estimated 45,000, and the opposition were their fiercest rivals. So I head back into the fire, again, on my own, again.
With this being my 8th football game in South America, and my 5th as a lone supporter, I knew the tricks of the trade and I was no longer phased by the rowdy drunks, the battery hen crowding and the constant banging of firecrackers that made the exterior of the stadium feel like the Middle-East. In fact I had taken quite a shine to it. Shuffling my way through the turnstiles and into the packed upper stand felt like real football, and a far cry from the iPad culture of watching a game in London. The number on your ticket is completely irrelevant here, and I headed to the very top row to find a vacancy to perch myself in the midst of the quaking home support.
For me, the beauty of South American football comes before lace hits leather. The torcedor (fans) bring out all of their songs, choreography and pyrotechnic props to put on a show. 10 thousand fans alongside me bounced up and down, screamed their war chants and let off a variation of flares and fire-crackers. It's one of the most raw, brilliant sights you can see in the world and anyone would take their hat off to the spectacle. Intimidating? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely. In England, the country would be put on shutdown at anything that was half as raucous, but the lack of any structure or conforming to rules is what makes South American football as sublime as it is terrifying.
It's a good job I enjoyed the song and dance at the start because São Paulo gave Chelsea a run for their money as 'bottlers of the day' and also lost 2-0. Ex-Manchester City flop Jô even scored to rub salt in the wounds (thats's two in two for him when I've been present) and the Easter football curse was well and truly resurrected. I left 5 minutes early to beat the crowds to a taxi, but this decision led me to physically climbing down the various rows of seats, weaving in and out of the standing fans as I followed a nippy teenager that was doing the same thing. That Indiana Jones reference suddenly became relevant again. I rushed out of the temple of doom, hopped in the first cab that I saw and was home 20 minutes later. A crack of the whip and the job was done. So that was my Easter. Like bloody everything over here, it was unique and put me into situations that I never in a million years would have ever envisaged 9 months ago. One minute I'm arguing with a 6 year old about basic addition in a favela, the next I'm climbing down rows of seats amongst the swirling smoke of flares in a boiling cauldron of football fans. My average Monday to Friday routine is the epitome of a bog-standard working week, and I often question where the next blog material is coming from; then a weekend like this comes along, slaps me in the face and leaves me with nuggets of anecdotal gold. Who needs chocolate eggs?
Back to the proofreading grind for now, until Friday that is, when another bank holiday comes and I devote my day to reading to the blind; orrrr going to an electronic festival called Electric Zoo. I guess you'll have to check into my next post (or Instagram @jack_colman *PLUG ALERT*) to see which option I take...
Thanks for reading everyone, here's a snippet of the São Paulo fans doing their thing - definitely worth a watch (then again, I said that about this blog...).
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