This weekend I, Dave, took the boys from my group to a farm 2 hours drive from Belo Horizonte. The environment is completely different from what they are used to with a lot of open space and quiet and they are also able to experience new things like milking a cow, swimming in a river, horse riding and night walking. The most interesting thing for me was the night walks. The boys are 'tough' kids - streetwise, have many scars, are used to fighting and living in a hostile environment. However, during the night walk they were actually scared. In the favela it is never dark (unless there is a power cut) and there are always people and noise around day and night so when the boys were experiencing darkness and quiet they became like 'normal' children. They clung onto our arms and seemed timid. It was really cool to see how much they trusted us in the darkness and, for me, illustrated a little bit of why I was there - to help them in their darkness.
Another group leader took some video footage of the boys during our time there and he's going to make a short film which will be posted on Youtube. When it is done, I will put it on the blog so you can have a clearer idea of what we are doing.