Thais Leitão      Reporter Agência Brasil

Rio de Janeiro – A street vendor (“vendedor ambulante”) says that working during carnival is like being able to complete a marathon: hard, but worth it.

Edmilson Silva, 53, left home on Friday, February 17, and, as of Wednesday, February 22, had not been back since. He moved temporarily to the center of the city where the revelry goes on around the clock. That means tourists and locals (“cariocas”) who dance and jump (“pula”) carnival for hours on end. They need food and drink once in awhile. That is where Edmilson comes in. He says he has not had more than a couple of catnaps inside his car since Friday. “I am up all night and can doze off a little during the day only. I am far from my family until Ash Wednesday. I work the area around where the big samba school parades take place (“Sambódromo”). It is very busy. On a good day, and they are all good days during carnival, I sell 1,200 cans of beer, plus hundreds of plastic bottles of water. The money I make here will sustain my family for a couple of months,” says Edmilson, who adds that he has sold beverages for 30 years at soccer stadiums. “The only thing like carnival is New Year’s Eve on the beach in Copacabana, but that is only one night. This goes on almost non-stop for more than five days.”

Ms Maria dos Santos usually sells her beverages on Rio beaches. But, she says, during carnival she goes to the city center and works. “I dance a little samba, listen to the music and make money,” is the way she describes it.

Luis Carlos Ferreira da Silva is a street sweeper (“gari”) who has 23 years experience cleaning up the center of Rio de Janeiro. He explains that during carnival the workload is a lot, really a lot, bigger. “But we work our normal shifts and don’t get paid anything extra,” he says.  “It can be very heavy work, especially when a big popular samba band (“bloco”) marches. You know, thousands of people dancing along. They have a lot of fun but it gets really dirty and we have to clean it up, the job has to be done.” Luis Carlos adds that during carnival, just to get in the spirit of things, he always wears a colorful hat along with his uniform. “We try to do our work and have a little fun at the same time. We do our work in high spirits,” he says.

The urban cleaning department of the city of Rio de Janeiro (“Comlurb”) reports that it has 745 garis and other workers on duty daily during carnival: 210 garis clean city streets after the passage of blocos, another 445 take care of the Sambódromo and the area around it. The rest clean the rest of the city.

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English

Link - Ambulantes garantem que trabalho extra nos dias de carnaval vale a pena