Monday, March 07, 2005
viva, viva cred!
Hooray. I finally, finally hav ea job. Today I went in for what I expected to be an interview (man, how I was dreading that Portuguese interview) at a microcredit agency called Viva Cred here in Rio, but in fact it was my first day of work. Fine by me. I am quite relieved. And also actually really exhausted -- I forgot what it was like to spend a long day at work. I more or less shadowed a guy named Berto, who goes around to all the different satellite offices and has the case workers make little presentations to him about potential clients, then he acts really skeptical andlowers the amount of money the caseworker wants to give. I really like Berto -- he was really funny and smart. Most of the clients live in favelas, and the main office itself is at the base of what may bethe city's largest favela, Rocinha. By large I mean an estimated 180,000 people. Berto himself grew up in Rocinha. Anyway, still many things to work out like how much time I'm going to spend there, what I will be doing, where I will live, etc. But I'm excited and relieved and exhausted. I'll surely write much more about this place once I know more and I'm not at an insanely expensive internet café (Rio is awful in that respect). But yeah, I'm really happy I can stop searching and start working and learning.
