Taste Guilt, Tasting Freedom

Today we went to 2 Juevenile Correctional Facilties to do workshops
One for lads, one for girls, the centres were seperate as you can imagine, only 5 mins walk from eachother.

To be honest we were a bit nervous about this one, as you would except, but it was very humbling and interesting

The centres house young people who commit crimes from simple theft right through to gang affilatied crimes, drugs and other misdeamours.

The lads had to be seperated due to their gang or commands as they are known here, we performed and taught them in a large sportshall, it was a bit intimadating at the start as they eyeballed the 'gringo's' but once we did some moves, and showed respect to them we were welcomed to some degree.

About 10 lads out of the 50, took part in the workshop, some of them had brilliant flips and capoeria skills, Raw-b had a wee caporeia play with one of them, and this went down a storm.

Doing this type of work was very different and it made you realise the actual scale of the problems here, when you seen the various bullet marks, gang tattoos, scars on the kids 12yrs old to 20ish.

The centre does not like to be known as a prison, but it really was a prison, albeit a prison with dope graffiti murals, and decent sporting facilties, but their were still the bars and razor wire, uniforms but un armed guards.

Afro Reggae haved worked here for a while now, and the kids, showed us a drumming piece, which was fresh, a mix of afro reggae style, and baile funk.

We had dinner there, which was lovely and then left.

Felt weird leaving, when we could look up, at all the kids, peering out from behind bars, shouting 'amigo' and whatever else they were saying, when we could hop in a bus and return to our clean, clean lives.

The girls centre, was slightly different, if you didnt know any better, you could have mistaken it for a youth centre/ retreat but some of the girls were in for serious crime, majority of it drug related. They were a bit less receptive to the show and did not take part in the workshop. However when the Baile Funk provided by Afro Reggae came on, the girls got up and started going for it. Dancing verging on obscene happened before our eyes, haha, a mixture of dancehall moves, traditional brazilian and some street, these girls loved it and taught us the dances.

We left the centres with a strange taste of freedom/guilt/awe and headed back to our plush hotel, leaving them to their lives. Was a different day to say the least, a day we will never forget.