Strangers with Candy

Its been 3 years since I've been home and in that time I've been subjected to a lot of strange faces and random places.

Right now (or when I started writing) I'm sitting in Starbucks writing while my computer is being commandeered by two Russians that were recently robbed in Lapa. I've been coming here a lot to work to an employee asked if could help them out, my services have been paid for in a shit ton of free sugar.

They sell this overpriced Red Velvet cake that looks pretty fake here but whatever its my favorite and I've only had 1 Red Velvet cake in the 3 years that I have been away (not counting the Easter cake that was made for me for with beets to make it red, if we count that then I've had two).

If anyone really knows me they know I love Red Velvet and White Russians... but you know... a different kind of White Russian.

My life is punctuated by random events like this one, but thats cool, I wouldn't have anything to write about if it wasn't.

When your really far from home, sometimes its the small things that make you feel better and the strangest people that save your ass. This blog is a shout out to all of the random people I have stumble across along the way. Its far from complete but I have training so if I left you out...sorry.

 

Mr. Xere... who was forced to cut his Dreads in pursuit of a job

Digo Xere is hands down the person that I know the least but has helped me the most. Digo is a native born Curitiban who I happened upon one day in a park in Sao Jose do Middle of Friggin' Nowhere. I was writing in my composition book and he arrived shortly afterwards with a joint and slack line. Digo is a skinny dude in his thirties with dirty blonde dreadlocks down to his butt. As I was getting ready to leave the park, curiosity got the best of me and I just had to ask who did his hair. I love and miss my parents dearly... but my hairdresser... god how I miss my Kimisha

Backstory: I moved to Curitiba last august 2015 to train with PRVT. Problem was I wasn't in the city I was living in the middle of nowhere. Then I got hurt so I was stuck in Curitiba for 5 months and couldn't train and didn't know anyone. Oh and I wasn't IN Curitiba. I was in some small random town close to the airport but far from the city... far from everything actually.

Anyway, a week later I was meeting up with Digo at 5:30 A.M so he could accompany on what would be the worst medical fiasco of my life. (I had my hair done by then too). That first morning (of many early trips to different hospitals) it was cold and rainy. I had to climb out of my house because there was no electricity to open the door to the car port. I arrived at the appointed corner all sorts of pissed to find Digo happily smoking another joint (is weed legal in Curitiba? no. no it isn't).

 No one from PRVT asked to take me to the hospital. Not then. Not later. Not ever.  No one even asked if I was ok. If it wasn't for Digo I would have been wandering around Curitiba blind with my hair in all sorts of disarray. I didn't even get to say a proper goodbye before the team picked up and moved to another city (well first they moved me to a favela so I couldn't really see Digo even when I was still there). I leave so much disappearing has become second nature to me.

 

A group of Germans that came back to Connection Rio 

for a second time (I don't have pictures of the people I'm writing about)

 Next Up....




While exiled in Curitiba I also met a guy named John Smith. Mr. Smith hit me up via Facebook about the acquisition of some event tickets. I had no idea who he was nor did I really have time to find out between training and then subsequently getting hurt and wallowing in self pity. That did not stop him from sending me money for ADCC tickets a major submission grappling event that took place last year in Sao Paulo and of course I was recompensed for my struggles as getting anywhere in Curitiba without a car requires walking for at least 30 minutes or waiting for a bus for at least an hour!

I met Mr. Smith shortly after the tournament when we both found ourselves in Rio. Turns out he real name is Tavares and he is a big Terere fanboy. We talk often. He's from Alabama,  has two young sons that wrestle, and often holds my kids down with money (like for Brazilian Nationals... and the next competition!)

Barbin and JayJay are two of the most interesting strangers that I met here in Rio. Jayjay is a friend of a former Connection Rio guest who was put in contact with me while I was in Curitiba. Before meeting JayJay in Rio I heard a lot about his escapades in Argentina and Uruguay. Jayjay is in the military and apparently uses all his free time to travel. He hit up a couple countries in a small amount of time before making it to Rio and is planning another trip soon.

I met up with Jayjay and Barbin one day at Bibi's sucos. Barbin... I can't remember for the life of me how I know him, but I know him... and it turns out JayJay practically did too. Barbin and Jayjay came to Rio on the same flight, they live in the same state, and that was not the first time that they had been on vacation at the same time in the same country. Instant Bromance was started. They can thank me later.

I don't drink a lot, but when I do, I go to my shitty sushi place and get Caiprinhas for r7! Barbin knows all about that and I plan on finding some shitty food places with good drinks when I make it to New York.

Last but not least there is Ze. Ze is the fake name of one of my favorite, friendly neighborhood lookouts. After several late night mishaps that compromised my living situation in Pavao (the other side of the favela) I saw myself forced to relocate to an area of the community known as the Gaza Strip (well it was known by THEM but not by ME at the time). Ze worked the night shift right outside of my door so he was always there to greet me when I got home from training. He made it to an orange belt in Jiu Jitsu before getting sucked into the life. Money and kids keep him from training. Ze is a straight up dude and we got along well except for nights were he would get bored and listen to music a little too loud a little to late.

A lot of people are scared of drug dealers because they have guns. I'm not. I'm scared of crackheads because they lack logic. Ze kept the crackheads off my door steps and ensured that I could sleep peacefully with no fears of home invasion. The day I was supposed to turn in my key and evacuate the Gaza Strip was one of the worst weeks of my life, I cam pretty close to spending the night sleeping next to him (technically this girl offered to let me sleep on her couch but she was trying to sleep with Ze so she had no intentions of going home before the wee hours of the night so... yeah). At 11:50 at night I was still in the strip with nothing but a fridge, my kimono, and the key that I was supposed to turn into another dealer (and my landlord) before 12 A.M.

  

Some of my kids on in the favela

I'm not about to tell you this whole story for free. But the gist of it was that in a city full of friends and people I pay for to compete in tournaments, when I needed someone the most, the only person around was a stranger slinging crack on the corner and a 16 year old girl. 


There have been a lot of other random people that have come in and out of my life over the past three years. Sometimes its hard to invest time and energy in a person that you know is only around for a couple weeks or a couple of months, but at the same time its nice to be able to have a drink with a cop from the Carolinas (because when you live in the favela you don't  hang out with cops), pick up some editing tips from a dude from Canada and I even met someone that delivered a baby with a headlamp... that last one blew my mind. 


Ok I suck at goodbyes. and ending blogs.

I'm going to do Yoga at the project.

Peace.

Closing Time

As my time comes to an end here in Brazil I started to realize a couple of things.

1. I’m tired of being in Rio. Cariocas have worn me out and I miss the familiar places and faces of the DMV and, of course, my family. I miss the hell out of home for most part of every day. I miss driving in a car, and having money, and being able to go out and get tacos and vent in my own native language without have to think about conjugations and pronouns every time I open my mouth. I miss being able to have deep conversations with someone about the practically of fixed blade knives over folded, the most effective way to choke someone, and or the best way to execute a high crouch. I miss being able to get mad and tell people how I REALLY feel because lord knows you can’t really tell someone off in your 3^rd language without sounding like some kind of spastic Donald Duck. I miss common sense. Logic. Free night and weekend minutes. The dollar store. The beltway. 95. Petworth. Hoodbridge. The $200 something dollar fine for riding on the HOV. I miss all the familiar places like Malcom X park, Azteca, or the baseball fields behind WaWa.

I used to say that Americans lacked culture and values. It was all about McDonalds and money… But now I would kill to be walking through Bus Boys and Poets running my fingers over the brand new books before sitting down to poetry with a peanut butter sandwich. I want to chill with people that know who Meth and Red are, laugh at the same jokes, and who understand why I get pissed off every time I see a Redskins hat in Rio because SERIOUSLY why the hell is there so much Redskins apparel in Rio?!?!

Gabriel, Marcos Vitor, and me with Professor Nogueira 

after fighting int he PRVT event in the Cantagalo Favela

After 3 years of being away from home, I’ll never say we have no culture again.

2. I don’t want to leave Rio. I miss home, but I don’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want it when I had it so I’m not sure why I’m going back. Except that I’m tired of new people and I want my black belt. I assume there are still people expecting me to come back and get a job teaching again… they don’t know me very well. Have a salary was great, and I loved my kids (I was a teacher in D.C.), but its exhausting going to work everyday just to watch a broken system failing more and more as the days progress. Don’t get me wrong, its exhausting trying to deal with the outright corruption that’s rampant in Brazil, but at least I can explicitly see the importance in what I do. I know that if I don’t get up and go to work (lies I stay in bed but I am working) that 5 people won’t have money for food for their trip next week and 16 kids won’t fight next month and no one is going to print out the bill for the internet (not that we are going to pay it anywhere near on time anyway).

Filming with Academia Gorila from Poland in the Cantagalo Favela

This girl turned out to be one of those assholes that I trusted, 

trained, and paid to work with me...  you live and you learn

At my old job the principal sent me on a 3 day quest for books they never ordered to teach a curriculum no one ever wrote because the teacher quit/was fired… but then re-hired as the director of education in another branch of the school!

I could still be teaching in D.C., and you know, paying those student loans that I owe, but I’m not. I started a blog, that turned into a business that is benefiting a lot of people where I live. I learned to edit videos, subtitle videos… had to learn a language to do that, write articles, translate interview, translate private lesson, hustle private lesson, hustle favela tours, harass photographers for high definition photos for print, organize international charity tours, smuggle supplements into a country, smuggle merchandise out of a country, pass guard like a boss, produce something that appears to be a legit financial statement, deliver kimonos to the north side (I don’t care how favelada I may seem I keep my ass on the south side), and orient black belts and UFC fighters who want to come train in Rio…. And I’ve managed to do that all while making an estimated 300 dollars a month.

I worked with Deus Fight Co to design the TKP logo and now 

Shoyoroll is selling TKP shirts for the European Charity Tour 

that Thomas Oyarzun is doing for the project. 

I don’t know what I’m going to do in the U.S. or where i'm going to live. I definitely plan to hit up Renzo Gracie’s in PA and hope they are still gracious enough to let me train there for free (I most definitely have kept both my t-shirts and my rashgaurd with me here in brazil) and then once I can’t take the suburbs of Philly anymore… its off to sleeping on couches and training MMA in VA.

3. I’m not staying home. There was a point when everyone wanted to know when I was coming back. “When I feel like it” was always my answer. I wasn’t lying. Now I  feel like its time to come home, but I don’t know what I’ll do and I don’t know where I’ll stay. I do know I’ll keep moving till I find it though… and despite my desire to get my black belt. I have no intentions of messing with that winter business.

 I recently read a quote by a Swedish musician:

“I will never lose the love of arriving. But I was born to leave.”

Unfortunately that seems to be my present predicament.

I don’t regret it. Like I said, everyday I can see the impact of my actions on the lives of others, but notably, being alone fucking blows I’m tired of doing everything for myself and for other people. I’m tired of not being able to trust people and finding out people I trust are actually pretty big assholes while the biggest assholes in my life are more often than not more helpful than friends.  

So the fourth and last thing that I’ve learned in Brazil is

Photo by Josue Wong Baez

4. Trust no one, tell no one, and cover your ass at all times.

 I just mind my business and train BJJ.

Trap House Take 2

His alarm went off for the second time in 10 minutes ensuring that I would never be able to get back to sleep.

I slammed my fist against the thin wooden wall that separated our beds.

“PARAGUAY” I yelled, not really caring who else I woke up. It was 5 A.M., only an hour before I’m normally tossing in turning in bed. Sleep is not something that comes easy to me, so I cherish it.

15 minutes later Paraguay was out of the house leaving behind his student that was sleeping undisturbed on the floor and Sorriso an 18 year old kid spawned from Baixada Fluminese, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Rio. There is one other occupant of the house, a black belt in Muay Thai, who is in charge of keeping Sorriso out of any trouble. 

I capitulated any desperate efforts to resume the peaceful sleep I had been woken from, grabbed my laptop, and went downstairs to make some coffee and start working.

It was Saturday and it was way to early to be awake, let alone working, but work and training is all I know.

Later in the afternoon Paraguay returned, with his Paraguayan girlfriend in tow. Apparently his early morning expedition was a quick trip to the airport to pick up his girlfriend who would be moving in with him (and now we are 6!). Paraguay arrived in Curitiba three days ago to train for an MMA fight. About two days ago it was decided he would just move to Curitiba. At someone point it was decided that we would all leave Curitiba, Mestre is going to Rio das Ostrias. So, like yesterday I guess, Parguay’s girl packed up her stuff and moved here so she could follow him and mestre.

Through thick and thin right? The good and the bad?

My survival in Curitiba is based solely on two factors: faith and obedience.

It’s the PRVT methodology really. You train when your told to train, you fight when your told to fight, at what weight your told to fight at, in what style your told to fight in, and when you don’t have money to pay rent, you live where you’re told to live. Which is exactly how I ended up in this trap house in the suburban favelas of Curitiba!

I’m not going to lie, it seems like a cult like mentality, but with the expectation of me who enjoys an incredible amount of autonomy, most of the fighters here rely on mestre for everything from finding fights, to get jobs, to securing food. If he were not doing what he was doing I’m positive that within a week the majority of the team would either be hungry, unemployed, or engaged in some sort illegal activity.

So when mestre says jump, we are all waiting outside of his house to pack up the pieces of an octagon into a truck, drive it into the city, and assemble it, even when some of them have to step into the very same cage to fight within a few hours.

I fight because I love fighting, because I love martial arts.

Mestre’s fighters fight because they have exhausted all other options in life. Nuce has over 100 fights under PRVT with a mediocre record that will keep him from major events like the UFC.  Just last week he lost another MMA fight after receiving a hard hit to a rib injury that he had been suffering from previous to the fight. He accepted the fight despite the injury, and showed up ready to fight despite having been in an accident early that day. All of the odds were stacked against him but he fought anyway. Because of his pride and because he has a son he needs to feed. Win or lose the US85 he would gain would go a long way for him. (he owes me US60).

Curitiba has definitely been an interesting stage in my life, but I’m happy this will be my last month here. Afterwards I plan on spending a month in Cantagalo, and then what? No clue, but I have 5 more months til I com home…

Coming Home

People are always asking me complicatedly frustrating questions, like:

“Where do you live?” or

“When are you coming home?”

Where I live varies. Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Barra, Sao Jose, Cantagalo, in the favela are all possible answers. More often then not though, I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to lay my head.

This fell on me when I came home as no one 

thought to inform me that they broke it!

Currently I am living in Curitiba, in a house filled with entirely too much testosterone and not enough doors… well NO bedroom doors really. I sleep on a used mattress, with no sheets, thrown on a broken bedframe that was left behind by the previous owners.  The frame slops down in the middle, so through out the night I’m constantly sliding down towards the other end of the bed where I found just enough space in between the flimsy wooden wall and my mattress to shove my suitcase. Common sense would see it fit to throw the broken frame out and put the mattress on the floor, but the upstairs of the house is mad entirely of wood, and there are definitely some things living in between the floorboards that I would rather distance myself from as much as possible. There is no light socket in the room so I run an extension cord from the other room.

Note: I am not that tragic that I cannot buy sheets. I had sheets before but everything here is so damp and the boys don’t take care of anything so there is mold. A LOT of fucking mold. EVERYWHERE! I will get sheets next week (although it will probably involve a couple hours of walking).

My room, ok maybe it is that tragic.

So, where do I live? Right now, in Curitiba. I’ve been back for a day and I’ve just found out that this might be my last month here. Apparently Mestre is moving to Rio das Ostrias, somewhere in the state of Rio, north of the actual city.

What does that mean for me? Well frankly I have no clue. Next month I will go back to Rio to train  for IBJJF Brazilian Nationals that will take place at the end of April in Sao Paulo.

Afterwards, I’m not sure what I’ll do or where I’ll go.

But for once, I know when I’m coming home….

They say coming home, but I call it going back.

When I first moved to Brazil my plan was to stay here for 6 months. A year at the most. Then I was supposed to come home and fight for my team, MiKiDo. “tear up the east coast” or something like that.

Now 3 years later I’m still here.

People ask me all the time when I’m coming back and I never have an answer.

“When I feel like it”, never flies with anyone! But now, the stars have aligned and for circumstances out of my control, I have found a reason that I need to be back in the U.S.

It’s always been a hard decision, as I don’t really want to be back. I’d love to visit and to see my family, but staying there… that’s a whole different story.  And no one understands that.

Going back terrifies me. Everyone expects me to come back three years later and pick up were I left off teaching and training and doing normal 1^st world things like going to happy hour and shopping for pointless shit. To them it may be normal, but to me, it would be a monumental failure.

So in July I’m going back. Afterwards, I’m not sure what I’ll do or where I’ll go.

Closest to family I've been for awhile

Carnaval and Shitty Sushi

Carnval is a week away but the debauchery here in Ipanema has already begun. I just had to fight my way through 3 blocks of scantily clad drunken party goers in order to find my friend on the beach. 

I waited until well past 5 to leave the safety of the favela which meant that most of the drunks were leaving the beach and making their way inland towards the bars and cheap fast food stands that were posted up every couple of feet. I clutched my new cellphone with superhuman strength as as i weaved my way through groups of people selling beer and bottled water out of Styrofoam coolers.  I never worry about getting robbed in or around the favela (Favela law extends a few blocks down and away from the favela. i.e.  you cannot live in Cantagalo and go rob a store that is in Ipanema or Copacabana, you have to go another neighborhood Leblon is a fantastic option). But Copacabana + Ipanema during holidays is just asking for some thug from the north side to come roll through and snatch your shit up! 

On top of worriying about the saftey of my cellphone, huge puddles of what appeared to be a cocktail of piss, beer, salt water and sand presented another obstacle. Luckily I recently broke my only pair of flip flops so my feet were protected by the pink New Balances that had been sent from my mom last year. 

I hate carnaval and the only reason I left my house in the first place was because I hadn't seen my friend in so long. 

The New year in Brazil doesnt start til after carnaval. Kids are released from school on summer break in December and don't return til Feb, at which point they go on vacation again for the week of carnaval and a little bit after as well. 

and adults, well the adults don't need an excuse to lay down responsibilities and drink their problems away. 

I recently read a blog about a girls travels in Ghana, she talked about how everyone was so caught up in "temporary happiness". Thats just it... Brazil is a beautiful but really fucked up place. Its hard to get anywhere here and damn near impossible to get ahead in life.  So temporary happiness is all people have. 

If your born in the favela. You will most likely be raised and die in the favela. You will most likely be lacking a suitable education and you'll never be given the opportunity to  acquire a decent job. When your born in the favela you grind. Its the only way to survive.  If your born int he favela (and you have the right mind set) the Carvanval is a way to get paid. 

I hate it, but a lot of people I know are relying on it. Exploiting the drunk is a profitable endevour. Add gringos into the mix and you are looking at a potential fortune if you know how to play your cards right.

Thats what they call "maladragem" or street smarts. Maladragem Carioca or maladragem native to rio tends to be a more refined extreme form of savagery.  

Either way, I hate the Carnaval and have every intention of spending the week hiding out in the Favela.