The Irish ‘uncle’ of Rio’s poor kids

AWEEK on from meeting Conor Hartnett, a volunteer aid worker in Brazil’s second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, and it seems like it was just another amusing conversation with a witty Irishman.

I transcribe from the dictaphone his memories of college. It’s hard not to laugh at his turn of phrase as much as the turn of events of his life, as he recalls the transition from Millstreet to University College Cork in the mid-1990s.

Hartnett stayed in digs. “Mary and Arthur Butler, from Ballyphehane, looked after me,” he says with a boyish roguishness that defies his 37 years. “And Mary, on the day we met, she said to me, ‘I’m firm, but fair’. As it turns out, I could’ve had Pablo Escobar and a line of Las Vegas hookers over the next night and she wouldn’t have said a word. She picked up 115 cans of Carling from the lawn after a flatmate’s party once, but she maintained she was firm, but fair. Mary and Arthur Butler, from Ballyphehane. Great people.”